Chapter 23
XXIII.
Days blurred into each other. Alaina visited during the evenings when she could, although never for long.
I did get my blanket, but I dearly wished that, in treating me like an abnormally large bird, someone would have decided that my cage should be curtained off during the night, both for peace and for warmth.
Nobles, both major and minor, milled about in the foyer most days with their attendants and distinguished friends, their footmen and pages occupying the space for longer durations when not permitted any farther.
The engineer delegation for the ice palace construction came through several times, each time their faces more grim.
And Drook and Klessa came by several times, maintaining their distance, but obviously there to see me.
I couldn’t wave them over. I couldn’t ask them to see me later. I couldn’t tell them the truth. I didn’t know that I wanted to. Mikhail was dead and had been for months. But they never came near enough for me to debate it with any seriousness. That made my decision for me.
No word on the tsarina’s health reached me, although, by her visitors, she must be feeling up to resuming her obligations.
Perhaps that was why the delegation returned so many times, hopeful to be seen but turned away.
But before I could be grateful for her forgetfulness of me, I was ushered back to her bedroom.
“Oh, look! Someone tried to make you pretty,” she said when she saw my wristband ties knotted into bows. “Who did it?”
The samovar that now lived full-time in her bedroom served as the only indication that she had been ill. I wanted to suggest that she not drink so much kvass too, but I didn’t care that much, except in how her ill-health might benefit me in the long term.
“A child who didn’t have the sense to be afraid,” I lied.
When she was done with me, she left without further conversation.
For time interminable, that was the most variety I had in my life until an unusually busy day in the foyer.
The bulk of those waiting were not the usual palace residents, and while not serfs or peasants from the city, the fashions did speak of a lower-class populace.
Had I still not been able to see them, I would have smelled them even over the stench of my own excrement in the unretrieved chamber pot.
Unused to seeing the tsarina’s firebird, they crowded around my cage.
I largely ignored them. And then someone grabbed my tail feathers and yanked.
As if torn directly from the end of my spine, I yowled. I circled to see a young woman standing at a distance from the cage holding one of my golden red feathers aloft.
“I want a feather from the firebird too!” others cried when they saw.
Dozens of arms reached in and grabbed at me, their searching fingers pulling and tearing feathers from my shoulders, wings, head, anywhere they could grasp.
I lashed out. When my attackers started screaming from the wounds I inflicted, the guards stepped in to separate us.
I didn’t hold any illusion that the guards’ intervention was for my safety.
My own wounds throbbed too much to care about the injuries I inflicted on others.
I bled from the sites where hands tore indiscriminately, some rendered bald from the assault.
Those patches did not reveal the truth of my origins, no human skin hidden by feathers, just wisps of down on flesh punctured by empty feather shaft sockets.
Eventually, the foyer cleared, those waiting for audience diverted to other halls and reception rooms to prevent another round of idiots from wanting their own souvenirs.
And no one checked on me. I didn’t expect that anyone would, but the confirmation of my own pessimistic outlook on life vindicated me in continuing to hold it.
Beloved pet, my arse. Maybe the willingness to be proven wrong constituted a type of hope, but I didn’t have the energy to contemplate the philosophy behind it. I hurt too much.
I slept, determined to make the most of the quiet and solitude despite the pain.
“Kaylay?”
My name on her lips pulled me from sleep.
I blinked several times, banishing the lethargy so that I could be a fit companion.
When I looked up, I gazed directly into her eyes.
She sat beside the cage. The deep hollows in her face, pronounced beyond the shadows of evening, betrayed more than eagerness to see me.
“Princess.”
I pulled the blanket over my shoulders to hide the glaring bald patches as I sat.
“I thought you stirred,” she said. “I didn’t mean to rouse you.”
“Of course you did. You love to torment me.”
“Ah, you’ve discovered my devious intentions. How unsubtle.”
“Nothing about you is subtle, princess.”
Instead of a round rejoinder, she offered a faint smile.
“Not going to pretend to affront?” Something had to be wrong. “Are you changing routine with me now? I may not know how to converse with you if so.”
“I have not the vibrancy today to be witty in insult,” she confessed. “Only dull enough to bray like an ass should I attempt it. I do not wish to give you such an upper hand.”
“Most strategic. Would you prefer to sit in silence then?”
She shook her head.
“No insults and no silence. You have effectively struck out our only two pastimes. Whatever do you propose we do?”
“Would you think less of me if I only wanted to talk?”
“It would be difficult to think less of you,” I assured her, “as I think so little of you already.”
“Mercy, please! I concede to your wit. You are the clear winner.”
“Something is wrong. You would never give up so easily.”
“I’m tired,” she said. “I have not the wherewithal.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Do stop being so perceptive. I’m peevish and out of temper, and I may cut you if pushed.”
“It is far too late for that. Have you already forgotten our first days?”
She threw her hands in the air. “Kaylay, please!”
I reached between the bars and put my hand on her skirt, presumably where her knee was. “Tell me?”
“Will you be serious?”
“Life is already so unbearable. Being serious might make me more miserable. Then you would never visit me.”
“I know.” She put her hand on top of mine. “I’m sorry.”
“An apology! Things must truly be dire. Tell me.”
“You won’t be derisive about it?”
“That depends. Is it a real problem, or did they not chill your vodka sufficiently?”
“So much worse,” she said, smiling truly this time. “The caviar was warm.”
“Oh, that is a problem.”
“I will probably cry myself to sleep over it.”
“I should never have doubted you.”
She squeezed my hand. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“I didn’t even tell you anything, and you still managed to cheer me up.”
“Now you see why the tsarina keeps me around.”
“I hate her.”
“All the hate in the world won’t change anything," I said. "But I hate her too."
“You have cause.”
“Tell me — what happened?”
“The tsarina heard petitions today.”
“That’s why it was so busy.”
“I asked her if I could go home again. I explained how useless I am to her household and to her court, no longer fitting properly within the hierarchy since I had been left a widow. Altania would be better provisioned to look after me, maybe find me another husband, and let me start a proper family. I thought she might understand, being a widow herself and stuck in Talvia for such a long time.”
“She declined your petition?”
“She left her chair and slapped me in front of all assembled for wasting her time. Then she berated me for expressing such discontent after the years she spent hosting me, and that she’s ultimately doing me a favor because no one would have me again as a wife.”
“That’s her own fear speaking. No one wanted her, and she couldn’t bear to let you get married again while she could not.”
“How do you know that?”
I found myself without a way to answer that wouldn’t give me away.
“I pay attention,” I said, hoping that would be enough. “You hear much when everyone thinks you cannot understand.”
She nodded and dropped her gaze to her lap, to our hands.
“I just want to go home, Kaylay.”
“Don’t we all,” I said, intentionally rhetorical, but she perked up.
“Where do you call home?”
I cursed my idiocy. I did not want to have to invent a backstory, lie to her, and remember the tale I told.
“I used to live in paradise and now I live in torment,” I said, that at least no lie.
“Any family?”
Alexei didn’t count anymore, did he? And neither did any of the other numerous Karilitsyn aunts, uncles, and cousins. But Irena blotted out all thoughts of anyone else.
“I had a... a mate,” I admitted, only barely managing not to use the term “wife” because it would give too much away.
“Like you?”
“No. Beautiful. Like an angel. And she teased me like a demon.”
“That sounds apt.” Alaina grinned. “Where is she?”
“Dead,” and I didn’t cry this time. Irena and her husband were both dead now. “You’re a widow?” Although I already knew Alaina had been married, I couldn’t know that in my current circumstances. And it took attention away from me.
“Of several years now.”
“Were you happy with him?”
She met my eyes and then shook her head.
I reached out my other hand to put it on top of the two of ours. The blanket slid off a shoulder.
“What happened?” Alaina pointed to a featherless patch of skin on my now-exposed arm.
“Nothing.” I withdrew both hands and pulled the blanket back over me.
“That's not nothing.”
“I had my own incident today,” I confessed, “but I didn’t want it to take precedence over yours.”
She glared me down until I told her about it.
“I don’t think there’s any permanent damage,” I assured her, “and I washed off most of the blood. There’s a spot by my wing that I couldn’t reach. Would you look at it?”
“Of course!” She gestured for me to put my back to her.
I shifted position, dragging my back along the bars so that the wings would have no choice but to go sideways, leaving my shoulder exposed to her view.
Her sound of disgust told me more than any description she could give me.
“I’m going to get the water.” She stood, walked around the cage, and then slid the water dish around to where she tended me. She resumed her seat and began working the tip of a handkerchief into my shoulder. “Were all your wounds this bad?”
“They don’t hurt anymore. I think it’s just the dried blood pulling on the feathers with this one.”
She rubbed, working at the crusted blood and lymph.
It should have been painful, but I relaxed into her touch and settled back against the bars.
Irena used to sit behind me and peel dead skin off my shoulders, scolding me all the while for basking in the sun long beyond what my fragile Ilyichian skin could handle.
Alaina wasn’t Irena, but I almost forgot for a moment.
“I hate that you’re subject to such cruel treatment,” she grumbled.
“Ilyichia little cares about its people. Why would anyone give a thought more for one of the tsarina’s curiosities?”
“Kaylay,” she ventured after a long stretch of deep thought, “is the tsarina done with you?”
“If only. But she does not seem to require my presence as much as she once did. Why?”
“What if I could have you come under my care?”
“I do not think she would relinquish her hold on me so easily.”
“Unfortunately, I agree. But if I could have you moved up to my apartments, that might keep you safe.”
She dropped her hands from my shoulder, and I turned to face her.
“I am going to have to make a perfect nuisance of myself,” she said.
“That should take no effort then.”
“I’m going to have to complain, often and loudly, about today with you. About how cruel it is. And about how neglected you are. And how something so ugly needs to be protected, for how could such a rabble be expected to control itself when faced with such a creature?”
“Thanks.”
“If I pester her enough, maybe she’ll decide that, if I’m so concerned about your upkeep, I should take responsibility for you.”
“It sounds like a distant possibility — for normal people, anyway. For the tsarina? It sounds like. And she hasn’t been in good health, so maybe she’ll be too tired to think of anything more clever.”
“No promises,” Alaina said, “but I can try. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll come right out and tell her that I could do a better job.”
“If you cannot, I will not blame you.”
She reached out and touched my cheek, her thumb lightly stroking the beak.
“You deserve better,” she said. “And I cannot have you getting hurt. I would miss you if anything happened.”
“Ah, ha!” I teased. “Your seeming concern boils down to selfishness.”
“Of course it does,” she agreed without shame. “Did you forget who I am?”
“Not at all, princess.” I reached up and took her hand from my face, holding it within both of mine. “You wouldn’t let me.”