“A wild goose!” Fox whispered.
“I beg your pardon? A gander!” Orlando snapped his fingers, and the feathers dropped from his skin, making the cobblestones at his feet look as though a cat had just made a kill. Or a fox.
Orlando pulled his shirtsleeves down over his reddened skin. The next time you hunt a goose, think of me.”
“Why not a raven?” Fox picked an icy-gray feather from the ground.
“I didn’t want to develop a taste for the eyes of the hanged. The man who sold me the comb told me I could wish what bird I wanted to turn into. When I was a child, my favorite book was about a boy who was turned into a wild gander by a Wizard.”
Fox liked his choice. The vixen was going to have to take wild geese off her menu.
Orlando put his jacket back on and tucked the comb into his pocket. “Is it as easy to call the fur?”
Fox again hesitated. She was used to keeping the fur secret. But he understands, Fox.
“It’s getting harder.” It used to come almost by itself. That hadn’t happened in a long time.
The house where Orlando rented his apartment was painted the same green as many of Moskva’s housefronts. It was a beautiful house, with tall windows, stone friezes, and wrought-iron balconies. It reminded Fox of Lutis, though the plaster was stained from the rain.
“As you can see, the King of Albion doesn’t pay enough for a palace,” Orlando said. “But there’s not a single Kikimora in this house, which is rare in Moskva. I know they’re useful, but I can’t stand them. The one next door leaves dead cats for those who don’t leave a bowl of milk for her, and many of the cats have been dead a while.”
An old woman walked past, eyeing Fox as though she reminded her of her own younger days. What was she imagining? What are you imagining, Fox?
A small painted statuette stood in a nook by the entrance. Someone had left flowers at its feet.
“This is Vasilisa the Wise,” Orlando whispered. “You see the bowl next to the flowers? That’s salt water. Vasilisa is the daughter of the Sea King. She protects many houses in Moskva.”
He placed a feather at Vasilisa’s carved feet before he unlocked the door. His hand was so warm as he brushed Fox’s arm. Maybe he could wipe the Bluebeard’s caresses off her skin. Maybe Orlando could make her forget the one she’d longed for all these years. The Bluebeard’s forgetyourself had managed only for a very short while.
A few Malenk’y scattered as she followed him up the stairs. In Baryatinsky’s palace, they always stole the sugar from the breakfast table.
Orlando’s apartment was on the second floor. It was bare, as if its inhabitant feared any objects might give away too much about who he really was. The walls were as gray as the feathers the comb had sprouted. A plain desk in front of one of the three high windows. Three chairs, a couch, a chest with a samovar. Fox found the plain interior very soothing after Baryatinsky’s overstuffed rooms. Two of the windows were open, flooding the room with the scents of a cool, foreign summer. For an instant the vixen stirred inside her; she wanted to be off, into the woods she could smell through the smells of the city. But Celeste wanted to stay.
There had been other men before the Bluebeard: the son of a wood trader during one of the times Jacob was gone for weeks, and a young soldier who’d nearly caught her shifting shape in the woods. Both had just made her miss Jacob even more.
The maid who took Fox’s coat spoke only Varangian. Orlando spoke to her as if he’d spoken it since birth. Shape-shifters. The girl poured some tea from the Samovar while Orlando went to look out the window.
“She should be here soon,” he said. “When Ludmilla is late, it’s time to start worrying.”
A strange house, strange rooms... And they came again, the memories of another strange house, empty except for a few corpses. Fox shook her head a little too abruptly when the girl offered her a cup of tea. Who did she think she was fooling? She would never be free of the memories. They would stay with her like the scars on her wrists. The air suddenly smelled of small white flowers, sweet and alluring.
“I have to go.” She could hear the servant with the bloody antlers behind the door. Someone touched her arm. She slapped the hand away and spun around. Orlando gently took her arm and stroked the scars left by the Bluebeard’s chains.
“Sometimes we think we know people at first sight,” he said. “As though we’d met them a hundred times before, in another life, in another world. And then we realize that we know nothing. How did they look as children? What dreams startle them from their sleep?” He let go of her arm as if he were returning it to her together with the memories still caught in her skin.
The girl was still standing there, holding the cup. She nearly dropped it when the doorbell rang.
“And there she is,” Orlando said. “The best spy in all of Varangia.”
The Dwarf woman who was being led into the room was dressed in the newest fashion, which was quite unusual for one of her people. Dwarfs generally preferred old-fashioned garments, to show how much older their traditions were. They also aged more slowly. Orlando’s visitor could’ve easily been over seventy, though Ludmilla Akhmatova’s face was that of a young and beautiful woman. An untrained eye probably would’ve missed the fact that she was carrying a gun under her coat, but Fox was used to spotting such little secrets.
“May I introduce you?” Orlando said. “Ludmilla Akhmatova...Celeste Auger.”
The eyes that took in Fox’s face were so large and expressive that there seemed hardly enough space for them in the beautiful face. They were almost as black as Ludmilla Akhmatova’s hair.
“Ah, the vixen,” she said with the surprisingly deep voice of a Dwarf woman. She offered a delicate hand to Fox. “What an honor. I’ve been following your career with keen interest. Women treasure hunters are even rarer than women spies.”
“Fox was trained by a man,” Orlando interjected.