Plain Kate

Kate edged toward him. Drina was crouched on the platform steps, Taggle in her arms.“Mira,” she pleaded—and then the name she was never supposed to say again: “Linay…”

“I wish you weren’t here, though,” Linay said. “Everyone here…”

Kate could feel it, behind the clouds, the shadow and the rusalka drawing together, lowering like a slow storm. The blood, the fire: The spell was beginning.“Everyone here is going to die,” said Kate.

Linay made a noise deep in his throat, and stepped sideways, away from the fire. The tie on his wrist brought him up short. Kate reached to help him and the winged carving cut into her hip. Suddenly she knew exactly what to do.“Why?” she said.

Linay gave the heartbroken, startled laugh she’d tricked from him once or twice before. “But you know!” His eyes shifted to Drina, and he pleaded: “To save her! To save my sister!”

Kate held the carving out to him.“This is her. Your sister’s face.”

Linay looked thunderstruck, staring at the carving.“Lenore…” he said. And the thing behind the clouds seemed to answer:yes.

Kate set the carving on the smoking wood at Linay’s knee.

“What are you doing?” said Linay. “Don’t burn it!” Hot smoke made his zupan skirts swirl. The fire ticked and fluttered.

“Would she want to be saved, like this?”

“She was a witch. She understood—the exchange of gifts. The sacrifice.” His eyes darted sideways to the carved face of his sister. “Pick that up.”

“If you’ll answer me. Would Lenore have wanted this?” Fire was raising around the carved face, pushing up from under it and arching above it with fast-beating wings.

Linay’s bound wrist was jerking and jerking like a mink in a trap. He didn’t seem to be aware of it, or aware that he had pulled as far away from the growing fire as the lashing allowed. “Kate,” he said, his breath shuddering. And she lunged forward to cut him free.

Linay flung up a hand between them, and cowered as if from a blow. Kate found herself caught again, in his spell of glass air.

“I can do this. I can do this.” Blood dripped from his cut hand, from his bound and twitching wrist, and fell burning, burning, burning. “Lenore!” he cried, and sobbed as he cried.

“She wouldn’t want this!” Kate had to shout above the roar of fire. “Linay! Let me go!”

Flames were snarling in Linay’s clothes, hot yellow winds lifting his hair. Kate knew how it felt, the pain and panic. And yet still the force of his will held, and she was caught, helpless before the fire as a chestnut on the coals. Her masterpiece was turning black, flames eating through the thinnest places in the wings. “Look at her!” Kate shouted. “Look at her face and tell me she would want this!”

Above them the clouds rumbled and an ugly death stirred.

And from below, high and hysterical, came Drina’s voice. “Lie to her!” Drina shouted. “Lie to her—it will kill you. It can all be over. Just lie to her!”

Linay’s face—it too was turning black—suddenly calmed, suddenly hardened, and his eyes locked with Kate’s. “Yes,” he said. “Lenore would want this.” And he folded up as if he swallowed a sword.

The glass around Kate shattered. She plunged into the flame, clambering over the smoking wood, her knife in her hand. She sliced his wrist free, shouting,“Drina!”

Linay rolled from the fire, and Drina tugged at his arm. Blood poured from his mouth, where the lie had cut him. Kate leapt from the woodpile and crashed, rolling beside them. She saw Linay look at her, his eyes dreamy, and then they turned to the sky.“Sister…” he whispered.

Kate yanked her carving from the bonfire, scorching her hands. She waved it in Linay’s face. “Don’t!”

“Sister,” Linay whispered. “Please. Help me.”

And so called, out of the green-black sky, the winged thing came. Down into the trampled dead and nearly dead, the people heaped at the gates, it swooped like a striking eagle. Kate saw the double wings—fog-white and clotted shadow—saw the bodies sink into a sick, black fire.

“Take it back!” she screamed at Linay. She thrust Lenore’s carved nose at his nose, though his ice-pale eyes were thawing into dull water. “Take it back! Stop it!”

The wing Kate was holding snapped, and the carving fell to the stone and broke open along hot lines. Kate crouched over it, over Linay.“Please,” she said. He was dying in front of her, burned everywhere, his red mouth open. “Please stop it!”

“There’s only one way to stop it,” came a voice from her elbow. She turned. It was Taggle, sitting on the lip of the burning platform, solemn. “And you know what it is.”

Kate looked down at the knife in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” said the cat. The rusalka was coming across the square slowly, tearing at the piles of the dead. It grew bigger as it fed, filling the air above them like a ship at sail. “It has to be you who kills me,” said Taggle. “I was his gift to you. You must be the one to give it back.”

She felt her jaw open, her head shake itself from side to side.