The Fifth Doll(59)

His gaze shot to the palace, its walls glittering with sunlit ice crystals. He saw a shadow on the white stairs. Kharzin, wearing a smile.

Slava understood. It was not the first time the devil’s man had spoken ill of Slava, only the first time his words had, apparently, convinced the tsar.

Slava growled. Someone tried to push his head down; Slava pushed back. “In aethere,” he growled, his arms shaking as he resisted binding, “ad locum meum. Vola!”

The magic prickled as though he’d swallowed a horsefly’s nest. It didn’t used to hurt, but spells didn’t take kindly to growing years. The weight of the soldiers’ hands vanished. Slava appeared inside the troika, grabbed his dolls, and vanished once more.



He had little time.

Kharzin had poisoned the tsar’s mind. It would not be possible for Slava to right that wrong now. Not when the heat of the empire bore down on him. Kharzin would expect him to try to escape, but surely he wouldn’t expect Slava to linger in the palace.

He had risked appearing in his room, traveling bag in tow. It still contained soiled clothes, a half-empty water skin, and the two layered dolls painted in the likenesses of the peasant rebels. Outside, the shrill cry of whistles pierced the air.

Slava dropped to his knees at his bedside, pulling out his old spell books. They were too large and too heavy for him to take them all; Slava selected one and shoved it into his bag, mourning the loss of the others. Before sunset, Kharzin’s greasy fingers would no doubt ravish their pages.

“In aethere,” he began, but the Latin caught on his tongue as his eyes met the chest of drawers. The one that held the Japanese doll and his remaining supplies.

They would follow him out of St. Petersburg. Kharzin or another mysticist would catch up with Slava eventually, and if he could not cleanse the tsar’s mind of lies, Slava’s neck would meet a rope, if not a pike. He would run forever, or find himself banished.

Yet Slava had another option, one Kharzin did not know about. He had the dolls.

Raucous footfalls bellowed beneath him. His time was slipping away.

Rushing for the drawers, Slava wrenched them open. Two pieces of wood left, his carving utensils, a silver paintbrush. He grabbed whatever could fit into his bag and began to sing in Latin.

The door to his chamber burst open on the last syllable.



Slava worked in a dark room, spinning the wood and carving, carving, carving. He cut and sanded until his fingers bled, chanted spells until his tongue dried and threatened to crack. For it would not be just him.

He would not be content spending his days with brainwashed rebels. Such a world would be a place of deep loneliness, no matter how pretty he painted it. No, he wanted more. A future, a community.

Betrayed as he’d been, by both Kharzin and the tsar, he deserved it.

He cut, sanded, carved, painted.

They would thank him one day. He would save them—all of them. The peasants wanted food? Shelter? Sunshine? He’d give it to them. He would save them from the harshness of the world, and in return they would be his comrades. His community. His family.

When he was finished, half-mad from the ceaseless work, Slava carried the dolls into the village called Siniy Kamen and uttered the spells to the families there, then settled the magic onto himself.





Chapter 17


Matrona stumbled into the wood, blinded by the surge of secrets flooding her senses. She stubbed her shoe on a root; a twisting hornbeam branch snagged her braid. She tripped and weaved through the trees until she reached the children’s glade and collapsed at its edge, breathing hard. Slava hadn’t followed her haphazard path. No footsteps dropped behind her. In fact, there was hardly any sound at all. Even the glade was eerily absent of laughter.

The sun shined brightly in the glade, but shivers coursed up and down Matrona’s body. Russia. The word was foreign, yet familiar. She blinked away the face of Tsar Nicholas II, of Pavel. Sacred heavens, Pavel! And Oleg! Revolutionaries? Rebels?

She swallowed against a dry throat and gasped for air, her heart pounding hard in her chest. The images summoned by the third doll . . . snow and thunder, marching feet and the younger face of her mother. Those were memories. Memories of this other place. Of Russia.

Pressing the palms of her hands into her eyes, Matrona took several deep breaths. The village, this village, existed somewhere else? Or it had, until they’d all been brought here by Slava’s hand. Because of Oleg and Pavel . . . No, because of Slava. Because he had feared what the tsar’s men would do to him. Because he hadn’t wanted to be alone.

“So you took us with you,” she whispered, lowering her hands, staring at the boulder in the glade as colored spots faded from her vision.

But how did she know? She hadn’t opened Slava’s doll, so why had his secrets flooded her mind? Had he opened it? But no, the tradesman had chased her from the doll room. Unless he had snatched up his doll before following her, he couldn’t have opened it at the exact moment she’d burst out the back door. That, and Matrona had searched for the tradesman’s—the mysticist’s—doll several times. If he had one, she knew it did not sit with the others.

She stiffened, then clambered to her feet, looking wildly into the wood behind her. Had someone followed her into Slava’s house? Found his doll and opened it? Or was this another spell entirely?

“Jaska?” she called into the wood. Only insects and starlings answered.