Page 6 of Spring's Arcana
And Mom would say the same thing every time.Then do it right in front of me, Natchenka, or go finish your chores.
“You must have told Dascha you don’t want coffee, which is your bad luck.” The businesswoman didn’t smirk, which might have driven Nat right out the door anyway. Instead, she looked faintly pained. “Now, you want to help your mother, hm? What would you say if I told you I could?”
“I’dsay you should run away and hide,zaika.” Dmitri-Dima grinned at her, but the expression was a mask. The idea that he could take it off, roll it up, and stick it in a pocket was unsettling, and wouldn’t go away.
It was coming again, the silly stupid urge to believe there might be a way out for Mom. Since this woman—whatever her real name was—knew about the cats.
Or she guessed, in which case… Nat’s brain tried to turn in a complete circle like a cold, exhausted dog settling in a too-small hiding spot.
My little Natischka, one day you’ll know exactly what to say.Mom’s shaking, too-thin hand on her daughter’s hair, smoothing the brown that was such a disappointment…
… right before she collapsed and Nat called the paramedics that awful night two months ago.
She hadn’t even had time to tell Mom,I’m moving out.
Nat’s ears were full of a panicked rushing, and her mouth opened as if she was six on the playground again and about to tell Sister Roberta Grace Abiding about the aneurysm that would six months later drop her in the middle of chapel like a string-cut marionette. “I’d say I’ll find it for you, Grandmother, but more I cannot promise.”
Oh, shit. Nat blinked as the slipstream receded. The gangster’s smile was gone as if it never existed and the businesswoman’s cup halted on its way to her mouth; even the snowflakes in the window seeming to pause.What did I just do?
“You see, Dima?” Grandmother took a delicate sip, and smiled a feline, satisfied smile. “This is my granddaughter after all.”
MUCH TO LEARN
Dusk came in midafternoon, which meant night arrived early under an orange-tinted sky accompanied by yet more falling snow, fast-clotting flakes shrinking as the temperature dropped.
“This isn’t like you.” Dmitri lifted the bottle, eyeing the amber liquid inside. It didn’t look like nearly enough, but then again, it never did. Snow caked his dark hair, stacked itself on his surprisingly broad shoulders.
“You’re too young to know.” The old woman stopped before one of the statues, peering into its weeping copper eyes as she flicked a finger; the red-and-white Santa hat someone had perched upon this particular malefactor was whisked away on a cold, dissatisfied gust.
No snow clung to Baba, of course. She smiled, a sleepy, satisfied expression. A cricket-faint sound rose from carved, frozen lips before dying away as she made a soft patting motion with one vein-wrinkled hand on the statue’s cheek.
Every once in a while, one of the more perceptive among mortals remarked, perhaps with an atavistic, ignored shudder, that parts of the art installation in Pessel Square were really very… lifelike.
Dmitri could maybe free one or two of these bumblers—some of them were, after all, thieves—but he granted his aid to the careful, the skilled, the desperate, and occasionally to the lucky. You could make the case that being caught meant they were none of the above, and besides, many of them had notstolen,they had merely betrayed the grande dame in some other fashion. “You honestly think she can get it?”
“Masha hid it, which means only Masha or her fledgling can retrieve it.” Yaga—de Winterwas her own private joke; the old country loved literature a little too well—said it as another might have saidthe weather has changedorthe traffic’s bad today. “I taught her well, the little flower.”
“Too well.” Dmitri took a hit off the bottle, relishing the sting.
“That’s debatable.” The dame was in a fine mood; even his graceless swilling could not disturb her. There was no point in drinking at all, sometimes. “Anyway, you’ll go along and keep little Natchenka safe.”
It would be stupid to askfrom what. The girl was incarnating, and the trembling vulnerability of that state would call more than one predator. “What will stop me taking it from her the moment—”
“Maschka wouldn’t lay it down without a protection or two.” The dame gave him a sideways look, but didn’t make the spitting sound she reserved for stupid questions. It was good to know he could sometimes not-quite-surprise her. “It’s probably in a setting, and how do you think that will go if you put it in your chest, greedy boy?”
Unspoken, of course, was what could happen if someone else—oh, maybe even Friendly with his little pink nose, or Seamus the Bastard, or even that Cosa Nostra fellow with his cannolis and bad accent—got their filthy paws on the gem.
Maschka wasn’t able to eat it, but she could very welltrade. And where would Dima be then?
He knew exactly where. “Bitch.” There was no heat to it; sometimes, only the politest of insults was necessary. Dmitri shook snow from his hair with a quick, flicking motion, a razor cleaning itself. “Fine. I’ll watch over the little rabbit. Might even be fun.”
“If anyone else finds out what you’re after, it will be.” The dame nodded thoughtfully, shuffling to another statue and examining its face closely. “Yes.”
“I’m sure you’ll undertake to tell a few people.” No, he didn’t feel like drinking much more tonight, he decided. There were clubs he could visit—the city was full of them—but he also didn’t feel like watching naked flesh jiggle at the moment.
Which left the fights, or visiting a few of his favored ones to see if they had any offerings for their beloved uncle, the one who kept them from the notice of the authorities. He could be generous when properly propitiated.
Like the grand old dame herself.
