The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

Chapter 4: Elise

Five days ago, my sisters and I gathered in the icy garden at midday, there to perform the only rite that takes place under the sun’s gentle gaze. As Celestia cited the holy scriptures of the spring equinox, I led Sibilia, Merile, and Alina six times around her in concentric, clockwise circles, then six more times around her in the other direction. Captain Janlav watched us from the porch, either as a silent observer or as someone afraid to stop us. I still don’t know which, but he skied off right after, without a word said, without a message left behind.

As yet another dinner without him drags on, I can’t stop wondering: did we anger him when we performed the sacred rites or has he somehow uncovered one of the secrets Celestia so carefully guards? Her secrets are more dangerous than mine, the deals she has crafted more intricate, the risk associated with them abominable. She bargained with the witch, swallowed the foul potion, and bled away the gagargi’s seed—a deed, had it gone wrong, that could have harmed her permanently!

“Could you pass the salt?”

I stir from my darker thoughts to Sibilia’s bony elbow. We sit at our usual places, in the second-floor dining room, by the large oval table with our backs against the windows that let in only night. The draft gnaws at our backs, for there are no curtains and the cream-colored tapestries must have been threadbare already years ago. In the light of the chandeliers that never shine as bright as those in the upstairs drawing room our meal looks more meager than it is: beetroot soup and rye bread.

“Please?” Sibilia grits her teeth as if the simple act of seasoning her soup could suddenly make a great difference in our lives.

It won’t. What is done is done. These walls, these rooms have always guarded secrets. First those of the former occupants. Now ours, those of Millie, and those of the guards.

“There you go, dear.” I hand over the white enamel salt cup. In this house, time stands still for long stretches at a time. But when it moves, it does so in great, uncontrollable leaps. The evidence of this is right before us. The salt cup doesn’t match with the porcelain bowls or the plates that bear flowers that bloom stubbornly through the winter. Though we are only eleven—with Captain Janlav gone, with no idea if or when he might return—even the glasses form a mismatched assembly. There are only two or three from each setting, those that the former occupants didn’t take with them when they moved on and that no one deemed pretty or useful enough to steal afterward. No, I’m allowing myself to foolishly fantasize that the former occupants had hope. Did I not hear with my own ears Captain Ansalov announcing this house cleaned and liberated?

“And pepper.” Sibilia offers the salt back. Thank the Moon it’s Celestia who has the pepper closest to her and not me. For lately when my thoughts have veered toward darkness, I have been struggling to keep up my carefully practiced charade of calm. And when I think of Captain Ansalov, my hands, they do shake.

That is how much I dread the day he returns to this house.

I know the sort of man Captain Ansalov really is behind his polite words and seemingly kind smile. I know this even though my sisters and I used to lead a sheltered life where all the evil under the Moon was hidden from us, kept out of our sight. Captain Ansalov is a man ready to follow instructions to the letter, who may not be able to pull the trigger himself, but never hesitates to order others to do so in his place. He takes, I believe, pleasure in seeing pain and misery, and this is what sets him apart from the man I thought I once loved. If there’s a way to obey without hurting others, that’s the path Captain Janlav chooses.

Or that is what I hope, but I can’t be certain of it anymore. Why did he depart? Why hasn’t he returned?

“And some more bread.” Sibilia turns to me again, and from the corner of my eye I catch Merile rolling her eyes at our sister. Hers and Alina’s is still the privilege of childish diversions and secrets that don’t matter. “If you’d be so kind.”

I understand all too well the underlying currents that no one ever mentions, and because of this my hands tremble so badly that I have to hide them under the table. Even if we are safe for the time being, my younger sisters haven’t yet realized that we are treading in the footsteps of this house’s former occupants. As history tends to repeat itself, we already sit on the same chairs and sleep in the same beds, and eventually we will come to see every twist and turn of their path.

“I say, the soup is good as it is.” Beard lifts his bowl to his lips and gulps what remains of his portion down in one go.

Merile and Alina giggle, no longer frightened to share the table with the guards, but rather amused by this willing display of bad manners. I’m happy about this distraction, something else to think about. I don’t know whose idea it was in the first place that we start eating every evening together with the guards. Perhaps it was Celestia’s—this might be a part of her grand plan, a piece that might not seem to fit in anywhere yet, but that will later prove to be crucial. Or then, perhaps, it was Captain Janlav’s idea. His and the guards’ duty is to protect my sisters and me. Be it as it may, this practice is very fitting for the new age of the empire, and it means less work for poor Millie, who never says a single word, not when she sets the table, not when she sits down to eat with us, not when she collects the dishes away. Not even when I offer to help her.

I might not have ever been able to connect the dots if it weren’t for Millie and the drawing room’s clock. Though the years haven’t been kind to her, her eyes are still the same, gray as wisps of smoke, ever narrowed in suspicion. I remember them, even though I was so very young when I last saw her, no more than three. I was taught to forget her mistresses, pretend they never existed, and after so many years of denial, acceptance doesn’t come easily. Celestia and I mustn’t speak of their crimes to our younger sisters, for ignorance in this matter is bliss.

“Was really good.” Beard burps, and his whole massive body expands, then shrinks. Boots and Belly and Tabard burst into laughter and drum their knees with their fists. They wipe their mouths on their tunics’ blue sleeves. With Captain Janlav gone, it feels as if everything in this house were unraveling. It started with manners. These grown men have turned into boys, apart from Boy, who partakes only because not doing so would set him apart, but who at the same time feels ashamed to commit vulgarities.

I cherish this ray of normalcy, refuse to think of what my sisters and I might lose next. Boy has his eyes set on dear Sibs, who seems completely blind to this fact. My sister fancies someone else, but who that is, I don’t yet know. She’s too embarrassed to admit to admiring one of the guards to share his name even with me.

These silly avoidance games I play in my mind, they are of no use. It took me days to acknowledge that I’m not anxious only because Captain Janlav left, not knowing the reasons behind his decisions. I… I miss him. The unsteady jolting of my heart drives air from my lungs, knits my ribs together, and lets me breathe only in gasps. I can’t stand the pain, the uncertainty any longer. I have to ask if the guards know more, though this single question might reveal to my younger sisters how little control we have over anything here. “When do you think that Captain Janlav will return?”

Though the guards have been with us for over three months now, they aren’t as accustomed to us talking to them as we are to their perpetual presence. This isn’t because of any sense of novelty or honor of being addressed by a Daughter of the Moon. According to the scriptures, under my father’s gaze, we were meant to be equal in the first place. But perhaps during the train journey the guards grew used to us being silent and demure and would prefer things to stay that way, to forget that we exist, that we must stay here supposedly for our own safety, that any day, any moment someone might come to threaten us and these men might need to pay for the privilege of protecting us with their lives.

They might remain with us in this house, live in this flux, for mere days or then for decades.

“At some point.” Beard grunts, lowering the bowl on the table in such a firm manner that it spins around on its own for two full laps. It’s a miracle that any of the dishes have lasted for this long.

“But…” I do falter then, for I can sense Celestia studying me. She must be as worried about Captain Janlav’s absence as I am; she must ponder if her secrets are no longer hers and mine. Though each of the guards has skied to the garrison on their turn, none of their visits has taken this long. I wonder then, and not for the first time, if he somehow found out about the deal Celestia brokered with the witch. If he did, did he see it as his duty to report directly to the gagargi? It’s an understatement to speculate that the gagargi wouldn’t react well to the news—his wrath would be beyond vile. But there is still a chance, a shivering, shrinking one, that Captain Janlav left simply because my sisters and I performed the sacred rites without asking his permission or acceptance for that matter. “He has been gone for five days.”

The guards stare back at me blankly, and it occurs to me, they don’t know why he has been delayed either and they must be anxious for their captain’s whereabouts, too. For without him, who would lead? Beard himself? Or Belly or Tabard? Not Boy, for he can’t be older than sixteen. And Boots likes following others, not going through anything unknown first, having spent too many months, years in the tunnels chipped under the mountains. Without Captain Janlav, one of them would have to talk with us when the need arises, escort us to our outings in the garden, ensure that the rumble of our dance practice is indeed merely our sabots and heels clacking against the floorboards, nothing more sinister.

Belly lowers his fist on the table. “Eat your soup before it gets cold.”

First, we hear the front door slam against the house’s wall, as if someone had just yanked it open with much more force than required. Then there’s the swaying steps up the stairs, muttered curses and expletives. These sounds should frighten me, but they do not. I can hear but one pair of boots, and that can only mean that…

“Who. Who can it be?” Merile demands, ever so impatient. Her dogs reply to her from upstairs with high-pitched whines.

“Hush,” Sibilia replies, but to her or the dogs, I can’t tell.

The guards get up sluggishly, gingerly picking up the rifles hanging at the backs of their chairs. Celestia, she nods in approval. If Captain Janlav were to have uncovered her secrets and reported them to the gagargi, he wouldn’t be returning alone but with Captain Ansalov and his soldiers.

Yet my sisters and I remain seated as we are, for then both the table and the guards will stand between us and the doorway. Though, as the stumbling steps approach, I recognize their tone, the weight behind them, the cadence. This is no intruder. The cruel fingers clutching my heart ease their hold at last.

And this is the distraction Celestia must have been waiting for all along. For now that the guards and Millie have their backs turned toward us, she reaches out for the rye bread basket, picks up the loaves, and then they are gone, no doubt hidden in the pockets we recently have sewn into our day dresses. She notices me noticing.

Now she knows I know that she has a new plan. Should I ask her about that later or rely on her sharing with me what I need to know? The steps reach us before I can make up my mind.

“I’m back!” Captain Janlav bursts into the room, his cheeks and the tip of his nose glowing red, tiny icicles still clinging to his beard and moustache. He wears a wolf skin cap with the flaps tied under his square chin. His coat isn’t the one he wore when I watched him leave through my room’s narrow window, not the blue one with the wooden buttons and scars left where he tore away the epaulets. He has donned a trapper’s fur coat, warm but soiled with death. “And look what I brought with me!”

Eleven pairs of eyes turn to stare at his raised hand, but I stare at his face, his expression. It’s one of pure pride, not one filled with scorn. He doesn’t know. Relief washes over me like summer waves against a lakeshore, but it is soon gone, replaced by ire. Oh, I can smell the stink of liquor from where I sit; the melting snow on his trouser legs and the rags tied around his boots is already pooling at his feet. How dare he show up like this when I have been fearing for the worst, wasting away in worry!

“A pheasant!” Captain Janlav cherishes the bird’s carcass. He has tied the knurly gray feet together and the copper-speckled wings against the sides. As he shakes the bird, its beady yellow eyes bulge accusingly, though the white-collared neck has already been split, the blood drained. “Freshly shot. This calls for a feast!”

He’s boyishly proud, and so very, very drunk, and this escapes no one. The guards clap hands and each other’s backs. Tabard and Boots exchange bets on him vomiting or otherwise further embarrassing himself. Alina and Merile lean against each other, stifling giggles. Sibilia stares at him as if all her dreams had just been shattered. Celestia…

“Thank you, Captain Janlav,” my oldest sister says, in a perfectly calm and collected voice as if she had never worried about him learning her secrets in the first place, “but we have recently finished enjoying our dinner. May I suggest that we spare this magnificent catch of yours for tomorrow so that Millie can prepare it with the dedication it deserves?”

Captain Janlav glances at the pheasant, then at Millie. Old Millie stays completely still on her chair, and yet I can tell she’s hoping to sink so far back that she would disappear from our sight until everything is decided. If Captain Janlav has his will, she will be up all night. But she would never say a word in disagreement. Even in this new world, some things never change. She’s still but a servant in the guards’ eyes.

“I believe there is still some soup left. Celestia and I would be delighted to keep you company,” I say in my girliest, silkiest voice. He’s in a good mood now. Let him stay that way. “But please allow the younger sisters to retire upstairs, for the time for them to go to bed fast approaches.”

Captain Janlav notices the empty plates and glasses only then, the bowls and stained beards and sleeves. When he speaks, his questions aren’t aimed at me. “It’s that late already? But not too late for a few more drinks, I hope!”

Beard and Tabard assure him that it’s not too late. This is the cue for my sisters and me to return upstairs, first into the drawing room, then later into our rooms for the night. But he still holds the dead bird up in the air. I dare not to think what will be left of it come the morning if he starts drinking with the guards now.

“Why don’t you take the bird to hang in the cellar first?” I suggest with the innocent tone that has never let me down.

He turns on his heels, and his eyes widen. Again, he looks at me as if he had never seen me before. The spell the gagargi worked on him has made him forget me so many times already that all I feel is mild annoyance. “Ah, yes! What a splendid idea!”

He sways back to the hallway, and I instantly regret my suggestion. Father Moon help me, he will fall on the stairs and break his neck. That wasn’t my intention. His death would benefit no one. It would shatter me beyond repair.

“Should someone not go with him?” I ask.

But the other guards find his inebriated state only funny. Celestia and my sisters remain seated. Of course they do. Descending to a cellar for a man’s sake isn’t something any one of them would ever do.

“I shall come with you.” And without waiting for an answer or protest, I rush to shelter the man who can’t remember that once upon a time he swore me love under my father’s light.

The arm of the man I once loved is around my shoulders at last. But this isn’t what I imagined the return of his affections to be like. He smells of frost and smoke and brandy. His steps are heavy and unsteady, and if it weren’t for me holding him upright, he would have fallen down the stairs multiple times already. The arm that isn’t wrapped around me clutches the feet of the dead pheasant, and I’m sure he wouldn’t drop it even after breaking every single bone in his body.

“And then I saw this pheasant, strutting with its head high and wings wide, and I thought—” Captain Janlav belches. He wipes his wet beard into the sleeve of his fur coat, then looks at the sleeve to see what he left behind. He seems boyishly happy to find nothing but an old, rusty stain. “A feast! I shall shoot it dead and bring it here, and we shall have a proper feast.”

“And a feast we shall have, but for that Millie needs a bit more preparation time, don’t you think?” I say as we pass the door that leads into the room that once was a library, but now serves as the guards’ living quarters. I think of the third floor and the three chambers there. When we first came to the house, I insisted on having a room of my own. Celestia must have realized instantly what I had in mind, though not even once has she asked if I still intend to… “There are, after all, the feathers to pluck, the bones to break, the sauce to simmer, and meat to roast.”

“Suppose so,” he mutters when we come to the steep steps leading down to the cellar. Just as no soul lights the bird’s eyes, none lit our way down. “But, mark my words, we shall have a feast to remember!”

With all the grandiose waving of his arms, I manage to keep us both upright only barely. Out of sheer annoyance, a part of me is tempted to let him fall, or even push him down the stairs. But my sisters and I, we might yet need him. Even though Celestia hasn’t asked me to try and win over his trust, during the lonely nights, I have often asked myself: if it were to benefit us, would I share my bed with him?

I don’t trust myself enough to provide an honest answer.

We reach the door of the cellar. It’s plain and undecorated compared to the other doors of this house. And yet, a terrible sense of foreboding lands heavy on my shoulders. My gaze returns to the stain on his coat’s sleeve. Is it blood? And if it is, is it from the dead bird or from someone else that the previous owner of the coat let out of their days?

“Mashed potatoes!” Captain Janlav pulls the door open triumphantly.

His voice doesn’t echo in the corridor beyond. The walls are too porous to reflect back sound. But I sense… I don’t know, a presence of sorts, something vicious waiting for us. No, it’s just my imagination, a childish fear of the dark. If someone had been hiding in the house, the guards or Millie would have found them weeks ago already.

“We shall have mashed potatoes and roasted onions!”

This boisterous talk of his! I consider telling him to be silent, but I can’t go around giving orders, for that might sow in his mind the idea that I’m not as meek and demure as he thinks I am. As my sisters and I must be in his eyes for the time being. Though I don’t know what Celestia’s plan is, I know it depends on this.

“I’ll gut this bird myself and take the carcass apart!”

On the even, black floor he leans on me less. The smell of dark spring, of wet soil untouched by sun, and persistent mold and root vegetables floods my nostrils as we wander deeper down the corridor that is so very narrow, almost like a tunnel. He stumbles closer to me so that we can walk its length—a distance feeling longer than it possibly can be—side by side.

“And a sauce! What would a roast be without a decent sauce?”

I can’t stand thinking of him as a fool, though he would very much deserve to be called such now. For to be so close to him, to reclaim what I once cherished… I still find this man too much to my liking regardless of whom he serves now.

“When did it get so dark, eh?” Captain Janlav laughs, a throaty sound accompanied by a friendly jab. “Can’t see a thing!”

“Hold on to the wall, will you?” I’m more annoyed at him than anything else, and at myself for thinking of him and all that we once had. I really should have brought a lamp with me. But I didn’t have time to think, and going back isn’t an option. My sisters have no doubt retired for the night already. I don’t want to face the guards alone. And given his drunken state, Captain Janlav might well end up piercing himself in the hooks if left unattended for even a minute. Some boys never grow up. Some never get the chance.

“The wall is gone,” Captain Janlav announces, and he sounds both proud and smug, as if he were a particularly keen student of a particularly harsh master.

I can still feel the cold honeycomb of bricks against my trailing fingertips. But I sense the room widening off to our left, the tune of our soft footfalls changing. We turn, and there, right before us, faintly glows a narrow, rectangular window. A slanting ray of Moon’s light paints a white beam on the floor, and in this light, I see that the walls here in this low-ceilinged room are made of bare, frosted granite.

“Ah, the hooks!” Captain Janlav sways toward the window, and I’m left behind.

Though I’m comforted by my father’s presence, something in this space, in this sad room under the house, haunts me. It’s not the wooden crates of beetroots and potatoes, onions and carrots, and other simple things that people who don’t live in palaces rely on for sustenance during the long winter months. It’s not the pile of empty bottles waiting to be reused come next harvest. It’s something else.

Father Moon, will you show me what it is?

I step into the beam of the Moon’s light. At this spot, on this stripe halving the room, I’m safe.

“Why, where is it?” Captain Janlav waves the pheasant in the air, near the wall where the Moon’s light can’t reach him. Feathers tall and small come off from the carcass. He will ruin the bird if I don’t stop his fumbling. I don’t like the thought of even one life lost in vain, not even an animal one.

I stride to him, into the void under the Moon’s light. The darkness feels worse than it should. I want to return fast to where my father can see me. I crane at the ceiling while Captain Janlav mutters and meanders about. There, is that dull glint that of a hook? I reach up, rise on my toes. And it’s then that something—of course it’s but Captain Janlav—bumps into me, and my balance betrays me. I seek support from the wall to avoid taking him down with me.

The rough stones are cold, the spaces between them colder. But it isn’t that which chills me. My fingers press against the round holes in cement, too many, too regular, to be anything else but…

“Aha!” Captain Janlav spots the hooks at last.

Breath flees my lungs. It can’t be. I feel for the shape of the holes, the smooth edges carved by metal, hoping to find any other explanation. But it’s always dark in this cellar and my father can’t see those who stand under the window.

“Tangle-tang-tang-tangle there, birdy-bird-bird.”

Holes carved by metal… I pull my hand away, cradle it against my chest. I know why this house was built here, in the middle of nowhere. I know the people who used to live here, the crimes they committed against the empire. Of course I have wondered before what became of them, had an inkling of the truth. But now the truth is here, before my eyes. The bullets lodged into the cement between the stones. The demise of my mother’s sisters.

“See?” Captain Janlav grabs my shoulders and yanks me into the Moon’s light. Dazed, I don’t resist. Wouldn’t, even if I could.

The pheasant’s carcass, hanging from the string tied between its legs, swings on the hook, before the wall against which my mother’s sisters were once ushered. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was Captain Ansalov who oversaw the gagargi’s order carried out.

“Did you know about this?” I grip Captain Janlav’s right wrist with both hands. His skin is sticky, but warm. Life pulses strong in his veins. “Did you know he had them shot?”

Moon’s light frames his silhouette as he stares at me, puzzled. He hasn’t been the man I fell in love with in months. He has been but a soldier, fueled by his duty.

But now, in this room, under my father’s gaze, his expression softens. The glaze over his eyes breaks, and they once more glow brown as young pines touched by the spring sun. “I didn’t know of the order. Not before Captain Ansalov showed the letter to me.”

I hate them both, but one more than the other, and even more so I detest the man who made them that way. Both captains are Gagargi Prataslav’s pawns. He ordered my mother shot dead. He ordered her sisters executed so that no one could deny Celestia’s right to rule. And this is a very frightening thought. Though neither me nor my younger sisters have ever even dreamed of becoming the Crescent Empress, in the light of this new knowledge, does this not mean that in the gagargi’s eyes we are threats, to be disposed of when he comes to claim Celestia?

“I…” How long would it take for people to forget my younger sisters and me, to start believing that we never existed, that we are just a myth, a story told to entertain children? I don’t want to find out the answer. As soon as the snows melt and we can think to survive the nights without cover, my sisters and I will have to flee, regardless of the risk. I need to make sure Celestia understands this.

He cups my face like he did once upon a time, callused palms against my cheeks. His gaze, it is kinder, caring, familiar. “Elise, what is it?”

And it’s as if he had never fallen under the gagargi’s spell.

“Do you remember?” My voice trembles, and it’s not so by my choice. Would he help us if I so pleaded? Would he let us go without trying to stop us? Would he delay in reporting to Captain Ansalov, to give my sisters and me a head start so that we would be too long gone for the hounds to detect our scent? How can I know for certain without alerting him—he still thinks he’s keeping us safe, not captive.

“I…” He stares at me, and the Moon’s light is so bright. There’s understanding and pain in his eyes. A personal struggle behind them.

That night when the train halted in the snow, I didn’t want my father to intervene. But now I lay the safety of my sisters and I in his celestial hands. For surely it can’t be considered wrong to help the man I once loved to break the spell that makes him forget where his loyalties should lie.

He jolts. His hands fling to cradle his head. He moans as if he had been punched and sways away from me, away from the Moon’s light, to lean against the vegetable crates. I rush after him. He’s hurt by my wish, by my father’s interference.

“Janlav?” And now it’s me brushing his shoulder, comforting him.

“The cause is just. The cause is right,” he repeats under his breath, his chest heaving as if he had fled for miles, until his legs could carry him no more, but he still needed to keep on running. “The cause is just. The cause is right.”

“Hush, my dear, hush.” I wrap an arm around him, and there I am, so close to him, as if our ways had never parted. He remembers, even if it’s only for a mere moment, and that feels like a victory to me.

“I’m only protecting you.” His knees give way, and he sits heavily down on the rough edge of the crate. “You know that, don’t you?”

I take a seat next to him. I lean my head against his shoulder, so wide and muscular and familiar. I don’t care if he smells of cheap brandy. I don’t care if his coat is shedding fur. “I know.”

“I was in the war.” He sounds confused, torn between what he thinks has come to pass and what actually happened. “I learnt life’s lessons the hard way. The life of one person doesn’t matter before the greater good.”

I remember the night at the train depot, the gathering of the insurgents, the hopes and fears of the people who had had enough. The railway men and factory workers, the fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers of the soldiers that marched into the war and never came back, that once believed in making a difference in the ranks of my mother, only to be bitterly betrayed. I remember and shall never forget them.

“This new world… I don’t know if it will be better than the one we so easily discarded. But trying to turn back now, after so many lives lost, would be just needless waste. For my people, things are better. Things will get better. They have to get better. We’re almost done with the fighting. Only a rare few dare to stand against the gagargi’s might anymore. It will soon be over. It will soon be over.”

These tidings… they are the first news I hear from the world outside this house. They aren’t good from my perspective. It seems like the report Celestia’s seed gave her before his demise was indeed correct, not just the gagargi cruelly toying with us. “I know.”

The revolution isn’t only about my family but about our people and what benefits them the most.

We sit there on the crate, side by side, both staring into the distance, seeing nothing at all, but too much still. It’s clear without either one of us saying it. If Celestia were to try and depose the gagargi, the wounds that have yet to heal would tear open again. The blood spilled would be that of the common people. Thinking in the grander scale of things, my life, that of my sisters, doesn’t matter a thing. For what is a drop compared to a tidal wave of blood?

“Do you hate me now?” he asks.

“Hate you?” I press my head more firmly against his chest. No matter how I were to try and persuade the man who once loved me, he won’t go against the cause. This stand comes from his heart, not from Gagargi Prataslav’s spell. “No, how could I when you only have the best interest of our people in your mind.”

And that is the truth. I don’t hate him. Not yet, in any case.

But one day I might.