The Rot of Koschei

[Ataraxis]

From the shoreline, Lillian had called Vogstok a sleeping city. But here, looming ever closer to its chill mouth, the girl understood that she had been deceptively wishful. The vast hamlet sat in the crook of a low valley, blue with solitude. Steeples from various chapels and a bell tower were sheathed in snow, while the lower rooftops were the dark grey of compact ice. Residential chimneys and industrial smokestacks were equally dry, leaving the night skies clear of disturbance. There were no lights from the windows, none from the streetlamps, not even the slightest glow of a fading candle, of a dying match.

And one final thing, the last dagger to sink in her hopeful heart. The streets were a cold and unbroken white, as if the snows had gently settled over the weeks. “No footprint to upset a single flake.” How she wanted to cry, yet the tears would not form in the merciless cold. She had seen it now, and could no longer deny what she had suspected all along. Through a film of sorrow, she watched the empty roads, heard the silent lament. Long. Long had the city been nursed to sleep, and gently had it gone into that good night.

“What are you doing here?” Caught unawares, Lillian spun on a heel and stepped back, her expression wild as she faced the stranger. The glass dirk had somehow found its way to her hand, brought to bear in a defensive stance. “A foreigner,” he went on in his jaded Salvic, grey eyes studying her with a calculating iciness. “Yes, only foreigners to do something like that.”

“Who are you?” Lillian asked in the same language, none too gently. The girl was unable to quell the drum of her heart, the mixed feelings it harbored. Someone was alive, and that had been the best news in this night of ill tidings, but could that someone be trusted?

“That was my next question.” He paused to consider for a moment, so immobile he seemed a statue draped in a cloak of black fur. “Yet, I see no trouble in answering it first. I am Valery Nabokov, of the Vogstok Politsei.” He tapped something under his ample black cloak, the sound like a knuckle against wood. His police baton, most likely. “Now, I believe you owe me two answers.”

Though she eased her guard, Lillian did not let up her state of alertness. “In order, then. I am here to seek an old friend. My name is Lillian Sesthal.”

“You seem a little young for longtime friends,” the officer remarked, his grin suspicious.

As unflinching as a glacier, Lillian replied with naught but a casual smile. “Indeed. My friend is the one who is old.”

“Good, humor.” Valery seemed delighted by her response, the old rag of his face made soft by laughter. “Had you shown none, I would have killed you.” The dirk stiffened in her grip; she resumed her stance, boots kicking up clouds of snow. The shadow of a black ghost as the officer dashed, sliding across the powdered cobbles, already stepping in to grab her wrist. Success. “Don’t be impetuous, chil–”

“I suggest you move no further.” Blue steel pressed against his rugged throat, close to breaking skin. Lillian could see through Valery’s eyes the cogs of his mind, spinning furiously in an effort to understand. Then, a sigh of futility. The glass-made dirk had been a red herring. The design was so remarkably foreign that he was lured away from the undersized dagger, concealed in her right palm from the very beginning. Shameful. He was fooled so easily. “Now, this child would like to know what you meant by that.”

“Oh, about killing you?” Valery laughed heartily, but regretted the action when the tip punctured his skin. Blood drew thin to stain the blue metal, to trickle coolly down his throat like meltwater from an icicle. Lillian made no move, her breaths steady, misting. “Why, I only mistook you for something else.”

“Something?” Lillian scowled. She was tired of these riddles, tired of the dreadful conjectures that subsequently haunted her mind. Enough. Once and for all, she would seek an answer worthy of the name. She carefully drew back, the dirk returning to her rope belt, the dagger vanishing in the fold of her fur coat – the illusion of disarmament, if only to induce in the officer a false sense of security. “Mister Nabokov, please tell me what happened here. Where have the people gone, and how did this city die?”