Yeva joined her sisters, not wishing to hear any more than she already had. They all piled into Asenka’s bed, the three of them and the dogs too, and for once Lena didn’t push them away. Doe-Eyes lay with her head trembling in Yeva’s lap, keeping as still as possible in the hope that no one would notice her and make her leave. Pelei kept licking and licking at the hem of Yeva’s skirt, scenting the nervousness in the air and trying to make sense of it.
They waited, none of them talking, although Asenka moved now and then to shift her weight and ease her twisted foot. It wasn’t until they heard the front door open again, a brief gust of air howling through the house and tossing their hair back, that Yeva lifted her head. The door slammed again, leaving them in utter silence.
Lena spoke first. “Should we—?”
Yeva drew in a breath, trying to still the shaking in her legs as she slipped out from underneath Doe-Eyes’s head. “I’ll go.” Both of her sisters relaxed a fraction—they had been waiting for her to offer. She was their father’s favorite, though it was no source of angst or friction among them. It was part of her family duty to be her father’s daughter.
She told the dogs to stay, although Doe-Eyes scrambled off the bed and followed her as far as the doorway of the room. Bare feet tingling against the chill of the floorboards, Yeva made her way back down the stairs.
She found her father still sitting in his chair, though he was leaning forward, feet braced against the ground. He looked somehow smaller, elbows propped on his knees, forehead resting on his balled fists. The firelight granted false color to what she could see of his pale face, the lines etched there throwing ghastly shadows. Yeva had never realized that her father’s face was wrinkled.
Yeva swallowed and crept forward. Her father gave no sign that he was aware of her presence, but when she reached out and touched his shoulder with the tips of her fingers, he didn’t jump or cry out.
He merely sighed, the breath leaving his body in a low groan. “Oh, Beauty,” he said, without lifting his head. He raised one of his hands to grasp at hers, fingers wrapping around her hand with the strength of a drowning man. Saying nothing else, he only sat there clasping her hand against his shoulder, head pressed against his fist.
“Oh, Beauty.”
BEAST
We are uncertain how many years it has been, or how many centuries. To half of us the passage of time is tiny and measured, and with no measuring devices it is impossible to track. To the other it is infinite, immeasurable, a stream in which all things drown in the end. We are at odds because of this and so many things, and when the sun fades and the dark returns we mark it only as a change in the light.
The storm that comes tonight is not the change we felt coming. But in the howl of the night wind and the blinding violet of the snow, there is nothing else to be sensed. And so we retreat, to pace inside our den, to remember sleep, to wait for another change in the light.
TWO
YEVA’S FATHER ASKED FOR the night to think of a plan, so Yeva did not share with her sisters what she had overheard, nor participate in their whispered speculation after they had blown out the candle in the room they shared. She lay awake after her sisters had drifted off to sleep, watching the ceiling and listening to the wind beyond the window.
At dawn she rose sandy-eyed and stiff and crept down to the kitchen, carrying her shoes so as not to wake her sisters. The kitchen was cold and empty—Pechta had declined to make an appearance yet, unsurprising after the previous evening’s excitement. Yeva stirred the fire back up, checked on the bread rising in its nook in the hearth, and put the kettle on over the flames. Then she slipped her icy feet into her shoes, shivering and standing with her back to the kitchen fire.
After a time the household drifted to life again, the servants waking and accepting mugs of tea, her sisters joining them once the sunlight reached the edge of the window. The wind had tossed around the snow but the storm had not brought much more of it, leaving the world newly coated in a thin layer of white, with dark patches of frozen slush all up and down the sides of the buildings and the windowpanes. The ice shattered the light as it entered the house, sending it in knives and sunbursts across the rugs and floorboards.
No one spoke of the previous night, neither the sisters nor the servants. And yet there was an air of uneasy expectance, as if everyone were waiting, but too fearful to ask what they were waiting for.
Eventually Yeva’s father appeared in the entryway to the kitchen. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired, his face drooping and mouth tight. He looked as if he’d gotten no more sleep than Yeva had.
“Girls,” he said, the sharp-cut sunlight outlining his form in the doorway. “Staff. Would you all please come join me in the parlor?”
Yeva poured a mug of tea, then followed the rest of the assemblage out into the living room. Her father had relit the fire there, but only moments before. The room was still freezing, and she pressed the mug of tea into her father’s hand before huddling close to her sisters by the fireplace.
He stood next to his chair and gazed at the floor near Yeva’s feet for a time. He lifted his head. “A month ago,” he began, “I sent out a caravan headed for Constantinople. If the venture were successful, it would mean a new trade route, which would bring you girls—and the town, and all the surrounding cities—countless luxuries. And perhaps the return of the priests and of books, education, maps, life from beyond our borders. The Mongols prevent us from making outside contacts, but I thought—” He shook his head, as if at the folly of such a dream. “It was a foolish risk. A gamble I should not have taken.”
Yeva wanted to look at her sisters to see if they had figured it out yet, if they were beginning to understand the meaning of the visitor in the night. But she could not take her eyes off her father’s weary face.
“Our entire fortune was tied up in the caravan, along with investments from merchants and noblemen, vouchsafed by me. It is all gone.”
The breath went out of the room. Yeva felt Lena go stiff, and from across the room she heard one of the maidservants stifle a gasp.
“I have thought all night on what to do, and spent some time adding up what I owe to the investors. Our only option is to sell the house and most of our possessions. For you, the staff, I will find positions with the neighboring households. You will all have outstanding references. I still own my hunting cabin in the north wood. The girls and I will move there, and I will take up hunting again, and attempt to earn enough to pay back our debts.”
Silence followed this announcement, as though everyone in the room were waiting for him to continue. He stepped to the side and sank down into his chair, doubled over with his elbows resting on his knees, mug dangling between them from his fingertips.
Pechta began to wail, turning to one of the maidservants and burying her face in her shoulder. It seemed this was the cue for the entire household to break down—the two maidservants started to sob, as Albe stood gawking in shocked silence and Yeva’s sisters put their arms around each other. Yeva stood alone, watching her father. Amid the chaos, he lifted his head to meet her eye.
Yeva had always longed for nothing more than to live at her father’s hunting cabin, where she had spent so many happy days with him as a child on their expeditions. This—this meant she was free of trips to see the baronessa, free of figuring out how to deal with Solmir, how to tell her sisters where his interest truly lay. But at what cost? Would Radak still want to wed Lena if she had no wealth and connections to offer? And the hunting cabin was leagues from the nearest town. There were no eligible young men in the wilderness to speak for her and her sister, only the trees and the wind and the beasts.