Alexandra – The Making of an Air Witch

Chapter 2 – Burrs and Bella V0.01

Now I'm in the zone again and having finally finished the latest "Strandpiel" update, it's back to this one and then to the Hanna in Love storyline of The Price of Flight. We last saw Alexandra "Lexi" Mumorovka having, in a covert late-night sort of way, learnt how to fly. We catch up with her out on the Baikal Steppes, close by the inland sea of Lake Mouldavia, the body of water known to local Rodinian-speakers as Lake Baikal. While there will be ducks ("What ducks?") a feature Lake Mouldavia shares with the Baikal Sea of Siberia, Roundworld, any resemblance to Siberia or Russia is all in the mind of the beholder. Even if Lexi has ridden all the way from a place not unlike Moscow, with overtones of Volgograd, to get here. The resonance between linked worlds calls her native city Blondograd. (1)

Damn, I only meant Lexi's backstory to be at most a couple of pages of a chapter of Strandpiel, as with Yulia Vizhinsky's. But it became apparent it would grow. So I had to bud it off and transplant the cutting to a tale of its own. This is it.

Now read on…

The Steppe, Baikal.

Alexandra sensed something was wrong when she untethered her horse. Palmyra was usually a good-tempered mare and easy to manage, and she had a lot of experience with her. She had left her horse, fully saddled and ready to ride, reasoning she could safely be left unattended while she and several others were detailed to collect additional things considered essential for the group ride. These would travel in the support caravan that was accompanying them. After helping load the caravan, she had gone to retrieve her horse from the stable paddock and to accompany the rest of the Cossack children who were going on an escorted ride out into the Steppe. It would be a moderately demanding four hour ride to a nearby stanitsa, where they would have lunch and then ride back to the main settlement. Alexandra knew the purpose: to test the riders' awareness of when the trail called for them to canter, trot or walk their horses, and to deal en route with any of the hundreds of little emergencies a horse-rider might encounter, such as a thrown shoe, a bout of lameness, minor injuries, and what the weather might throw at them. A Cossack had to be prepared for anything, after all. One of the many things the support caravan carried, for instance, was a portable forge that could be fired up to replace any lost horseshoes. And that meant having to speed up to a trot or a canter to make up for time lost while everyone waited for the new shoe to be fitted, which placed an expectation on the rider not to push their horse too far and too fast. It was all a test.

Alexandra had been sent to locate some farriers' tools, and while she was gone, her horse had been in the communal paddock behind the stables where people came and went all the time.

She found her horse without difficulty and began to walk her out to where the rest of the youth sotnia was waiting for her.

She frowned; something was not right. Her horse seemed a little bit spooked and unsettled. This was not the normally amenable Palmyra. She was also aware the rest of the sotnia was waiting for her and that she would be one of the last to mount up.

But even so….

She soothed and checked her horse, aware of the sneering remark from Peter Stepkin – it just had to be Peter Stepkin – that the little girl from the city couldn't control her horse, and that was a shame, a fine horse wasted on a girl who didn't know how to ride.

She heard his little clique sniggering, and flushed red. Her first thought was to leap straight into the saddle and show him. Then the Inner Alexandra, the voice inside her head that was still her, asked That is what he wants. Why does he want that?

She looked more closely, and frowned. Then she experimentally grabbed the edge of the saddle and checked its fit. It moved slightly under her hands. It was not meant to do this. She'd tightened that girth strap herself, as Papa and her older brothers had shown her. She remembered her father telling her it must be tight. Always.

She looked closer. This was the saddle she always used. It had the usual girth and cinch straps to be fastened underneath the horse's body. Properly tightened, the prongs on the double- buckle had worn grooves in their usual holes, where the tension of the belt had tugged against them. The holes and the corresponding grooves and distortion were there. Where she always buckled the girth strap. But both cases they were empty, two holes away from where the girth strap was actually fastened…

She also noted Palmyra whinnying and shying and soothed her horse.

"What is the delay, Alexandra Violovna?"

It was the sotnika, Marisa Denikovska, an adult who held rank and would lead and command the Youth Sotnia on its ride. She was normally pleasant and approachable, but right now she sounded impatient and tetchy.

"Report that somebody has slackened my girth strap while my horse was unattended, Sotnika." Alexandra explained.

Marisa snorted, disbelieving.

"Or else you yourself failed to tighten it sufficiently, Alexandra Violovna Mumorovka." she replied. "This is your horse, after all. Who else would want to interfere with it?"

"Sotnika, she's making excuses for being a bad rider and incapable of doing up her tack correctly!"

It was Peter Stepkin. And people were sniggering and laughing.

"How many times? A slack girth causes the saddle to slip. At speed this can throw you. People die from falling off horses at speed! Horses can get damaged!" Marisa almost shouted.

Palmyra whinnied and shied again as Alexandra, flushed red with shame and humiliation, unfastened the girth strap. She seemed not to like the saddle moving against her back.

Marisa stopped and paid attention to the horse as Alexandra calmed her.

"Wait. Let's take this saddle off completely. Something's wrong here." the Sotnika said. "We need to take a little more time here."

They carefully lifted the saddle off completely. Palmyra whinnied in what sounded like discomfort and relief. Something, or things, fell from the underside of the saddle to the ground. Marisa frowned, said the sort of words Alexandra had heard many times from the Cossack troopers her father commanded, the sort of word that gave Mama the vapours, and very carefully lifted the saddlecloth free from the horse's back.

As Alexandra moved to steady her horse at the bridle, hearing Palmyra's hooved clattering on the ground as she shied, Marisa, with infinite care, began picking out the things that were underneath the cloth.

She showed them to Alexandra.

"I was wrong." she said. "I apologise to you. Somebody has, unmistakably, been interfering with your horse. These did not get under the saddle by accident."

Burrs. Spiky seed pods with lots of sharp edges. Horses picked them up in the normal course of things, in season, and a necessary chore of grooming was picking them out of mane and tail and disposing of them, But they only got under a saddlecloth one way. And that involved somebody putting them there.

Alexandra considered the abominable Peter Stepkin. Her fists clenched. She knew it was him. Or else, one of his ugly sisters. They were the sniggerers. Inner Alexandra said Beware. They're cleverer than you think. You noticed the slackened girth. Your instinct was to tighten it up. You'd have ground those burrs into Palmyra's skin under the saddle. Even if she didn't scream and bolt, thus making you look silly in front of everyone and incapable of controlling a horse, she'd have been in pain. And say you got on without noticing the girth was loose? You'd have fallen off when the saddle slipped. If you were not hurt, you'd have been humiliated. And my weight on that saddle would have been unbearable to Palmyra. She'd have thrown me. The Stepkins want me to be humiliated or injured. Or both.

She threw a single killing glare at Peter Stepkin, and methodically set about checking her horse's back, that all the burrs were gone, and that she could resaddle her mount, properly and correctly this time.

She noted Marisa Denikovska ordering everybody to "dismount, stand by your horse, look at me!"

"Who did this?" she demanded. "Who? Who among you is responsible? Somebody has done this. Somebody has placed the life of a sister Cossack in peril. Somebody has knowingly acted to potentially injure a horse. This is not the Cossack way! This is mean, despicable, lowly, cowardly!"

Alexandra, as she had been taught, tightened the cinch and the girth, taking care for Palmyra's comfort while ensuring the saddle was properly secure. In the background, Marisa was berating the troop and saying she would raise this with her Hetman, who would then in all probability raise it with the Ataman. And woe betide the person or persons who had done this!

Her anger spent, the Sotnika turned to Alexandra and offered her hand.

"I was wrong to accuse you of negligence. Especially in front of the others. I apologise. I can see you know what needs to be done."

She drew the girl in for a hug. In the close hug, Marisa whispered into Alexandra's ear.

"Watch out for the Stepkins. They are trouble."

The Youth Sotnia eventually rode out. But others in the camp had been drawn to the commotion. Iliana the Witch turned to an old pupil of hers, one who was there on official business from Ankh-Morpork.

"Stepkins is trouble." she said, laconically. "And there are four or five of them out there. And only one of Alexandra Mumorovka."

Serafima Dospanova, Air Witch, considered this thoughtfully. She was to wait for a considered response from the Ataman of the Baikal Cossacks to a request being made of him by Lady Margolotta of Bonk, who at one end of the Baikal Cossacks' territorial range was their neighbour. Bonk didn't have any territorial claims out here. Not officially, at least. But the issue of where Mouldavia's borders ended and Überwald's began was one that had never really been settled. Especially when on the other side of Lake Baikal, something called the Untied States of Aceria was beginning to emerge, a new player in the game, one whose people were not Rodinian and did not speak the language nor appreciate the culture. Life out here had the potential for getting confused.

Patrician Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork was keen to mediate and assist in tidying up administrative details. Therefore prominent and powerful local people with opinions to express, such as the Ataman of the Baikal Cossacks, were being invited to express them.

Pilot Officer Serafima Dospanova of the Ankh-Morpork City Air Watch and Pegasus Service, herself a Baikal Cossack by birth, was the responsible link-person in this region. She was also a Witch.

"There are Dospanovs riding in the sotnia." Serafima said. "I notice they did not join in the laughter when the Stepkins sought to shame Alexandra. They looked more thoughtfully. At the Stepkins. My clan has always been friendly to the Mumorovs."

"More than friendly, once." Iliana said. "More than once, in fact. If I reckon it right, you and that young girl are cousins. Second or third cousins or somesuch."

"Da." Serafima agreed. But my family has never married any Stepkins. Ever."

"Explains how the witch-stuff got into the Mumorov clan." Iliana remarked. "You Dospanovs have got loads. The Mumorovs, not at all. Until Alexandra."

"She's family." Serafima said. "Sort of. Distantly. And we have old ties of friendship and marriage to the Mumorovs."

The two Witches regarded each other.

"They're riding out to Potemkin, aren't they? The new stanitsa?"

Iliana nodded, and looked grim.

"That's where it'll happen. The Stepkins want to damage that girl. I can feel it. Nothing's going to happen on the ride. They'll try to get at her there. Potemkin."

She looked up at Serafima.

"Reckon you can get me there, girl? On that flyin' horse of yours?"

"You think they're going to attack her?" Serafima asked. Inside, she could guess at the answer.

Iliana nodded, grimly.

"It ain't Alexandra I'm worried for. Much." she replied. "It's the Stepkins. I saw the look on that girl's face when she worked it out about Peter Stepkin. And that look says she wants her own back."

It took Serafima Dospanova a few seconds to realise the implications. She tried to stop her mouth dropping open in horror. (2)

"I'll fly you there. It means I might be delayed getting back to Ankh-Morpork. But this is Witch business, and Olga Anastacia did ask me to keep a lookout."

Potemkin, midday.

Potemkin was a new stanitsa, in the process of being built and established as a permanent Cossack settlement. People agreed that Potemkin would be a fine village, when it was finished. And even now it was showing a fine front to the world.

Felled wood from the other shore of Baikal was being shipped across the Great Lake and delivered directly to what would be the quayside. Cossacks were receiving this, shaping it at waterside sawmills, and transporting it to where it was needed. Inevitably, one of the first buildings to go up had been a church, of the Orthodox Rite of the Great God Epidity. Some permanent habitations had been erected, for those who would reside here all year round. Workshops and forges had been built. And the priority, silos to store grain and barns to store summer hay to sustain the horse-herds over winter, were in place or being built. And as old manners of thought die hard, men were digging a defensive ditch and marking its course with a palisade of wood, whole tree-trunks cut to rough points. Every stanitsa needs its defensible perimeter.

The Youth Sotnia had been welcomed, given hospitality, and then assigned to manageable jobs around the new stanitsa, necessary work within the capabilities of children between ten and fourteen years old. Alexandra had been assigned to watering the livestock, and had cheerfully accepted that this gave her freedom to walk between the Lake, where she filled buckets, and the various barns and stockades where animals could be found who required water to drink.

She filled various troughs and watering stations, on the way marvelling on how a recognisable and imposing onion dome had been built on the Church with no other materials than wood, pegs and nails. Men were up there now, painting it. Strictly speaking this was not immediately necessary and there were more important and immediate things, but apparently the priests had Insisted that the God should be properly honoured and His Temple not left unfinished.

She heard the exultant shouts of the men as another long heavy treetrunk was lifted into its place in the defensive wall and it fell neatly into its post-hole. She gathered that once the extended wall was long enough, the carpenters would follow up behind to reinforce the wall and erect a walk-way for guards to tread. And the wall itself needed to follow a straight line to that point there, where what was clearly a watchtower was being built. At the moment, that tower was being built in isolation, waiting for the town wall to catch up with it.

She shrugged and walked on, to a barn where she had been advised a family of goats was being kept, a nanny and her kids who had taken up residence. They would need water too.

She walked into the big largely empty barn, where to her brief surprise she found no goats. She frowned. And then somebody grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms.

Outside in the sky, all work stopped when the Pegasus was seen above, coming in to land. A Pegasus in flight was rarely seen out here. The winged horses tended to attract attention.


"Hope we're in time." Iliana said, from the pillion seat.

Serafima felt the buffet in the air that suggested she'd hit an air-pocket, or else a stray local gust had hit her. She steadied her mount in the air as the disturbance passed on, making a couple of unwary geese wheel sideways in honking confusion. You got this sort of thing at this height at this time of year. She heard Iliana making a "tccch" noise. I'm going to be late back in Ankh-Morpork with the reply for Vetinari. Before then I have to visit Bonk briefly, to take a copy of the reply to Lady Margolotta. And I will have to explain to both that Witch-Business detained me here. Nichevo. Maybe speak to Olga Anastacia first and explain why.

"Down there, love. Big barn. Feel it?"

Serafima focused. Then she felt it. Big magical discharge. Building up. Unmistakeable. She heard Wee Shuggie Neville, her Navigator, saying "Help ma'boab!" from the mane.

"Got it. Landing as quickly as I can."


Alexandra sensed that whoever had grabbed her from behind was bigger and stronger than she was, but also female. She also registered two others running at her. They were both female, too. And it didn't look as if they intended to do her any favours. Wildly, she kicked out at the bucket she had dropped and kicked it. Her toes jarred all the way up her foot, but the bucket flew straight at one of her attackers, who tried to dodge it.

As she pulled her foot back, she reversed the sole of her boot and kicked out, backwards. She felt it connect with hard bone and heard the girl holding her cry out in pain and surprise. Alexandra used this moment to weaken the grip holding her around the chest and stomach, raking her fingernails against the hands holding her. With her arms partly pinioned, it was the best she could do. And as she and her assailant shuffled for position and advantage, Alexandra realised she had to break this grip quickly. She realised her assailant's feet and legs were close to hers, and remembered something she'd seen in a wrestling match involving two of her father's soldiers. The man in the choke-hold from behind had...

She lifted her left foot, adjusted position as best she could, and stamped a booted foot as hard as she could, straight down onto her attacker's instep. She heard a scream from far too close too, and the smell of old cabbage on the girl's breath, but the grip slackened and broke.

Then she stepped to the side, looking for an escape route.

There was none: the two others running for her were in between her and the barn door. Alexandra dodged again, and, reasoning there was no shame in it, shouted for help as loudly as she could. But the only person there was Peter Stepkin…

She recognised her attackers now. Stepkin girls, Peter's sisters and a cousin. The oldest one, the one who was limping from the kick, was the only one wearing Cossack swords.

She fought as hard as she could when they closed in, managing to bloody one nose and deliver a couple more kicks, but the outcome was never in doubt, and involved punches and kicks. Hard ones. She managed to dodge the worst blows to her face, but realised she'd come out of this with a swollen lip and a black eye. At the very least.

She found herself dragged up by the people she was calling the Ugly Sisters, one either side, to face Peter Stepkin. Alexandra glared at him.

"Are you such a big strong man, Peter Stepkin, that you stand back and let your sisters fight your battles for you?" she demanded, trying to ignore a trickle of blood from her lip.

Peter's little piggy eyes glittered.

"Such a hero. Such a coward." she taunted him.

"I respect the Code, Ear-Biter." he said. "A true Cossack man does not hit or attack a woman. Ever."

"So he asked us." His sister Sylia said, in a coarse hissing voice. "A Cossack woman may strike a woman."

"Does your ankle hurt?" Alexandra said, buying time. Somebody must have heard…. She looked Sylia full in the face, aware one of her eyes was closing. "Good."

Sylia scowled and slapped Alexandra's face again. It hurt, but she did not cry out.

"Peter with his lopsided ears." Alexandra said. "You with your mismatched ankles… you will remember me."

The hands holding her arms and shoulders pulled more tightly, pulling her forwards.

Sylia Stepkina grinned. She took one of Alexandra's hair braids and tugged it, hard. This time Alexandra expressed pain.

"Such pretty hair." she said. Her voice oozed malice. "On such an ugly girl. The only pretty thing about you."

She reached down and drew her kjindal dagger. She showed it to Alexandra.

"Wasted on a piggy little face like yours. When I cut it off, there will be nothing beautiful about you. Nothing."

Alexandra remembered earlier nights. One under a caravan, sleeping underneath it. And one in the air with Barbara. Inner Alexandra was shouting prompts at her. She understood, and raised her head. She would, she decided, quite like to keep her hair.

"Vedogon!" she shouted. "Vikhor! I summon you! I ask you to keep the agreement!"

"They say she's a witch!" one of the Stepkin sisters shouted, alarmed.

"Then stop her mouth, stupid! She can't say a spell if she's gagged!"

Alexandra took pleasure in biting down, hard, on the hand that went over her mouth. This provoked another flurry of hard slaps and punches.

And she hoped they were near enough to have heard…


Serafima landed outside the barn, and waited for the wings to fold back. Cossacks were now running towards her, drawn to the spectacle. One or two were looking inside the barn, suspecting something out of the normal was happening inside. One of the first to get to the barn was a harassed-looking sotnika, who paused at the doorway and shouted

"You Stepkins! Stop this at once!"

She made to step inside. And then the people who were gathering started to shift to left and right as something invisible pushed through them. Large men were buffeted aside by what they later described as "a really strong freak wind." The sotnika in the doorway of the barn glanced once over her shoulder, did a wide-eyed double-take, then leapt over to her right, bouncing off one of the open barn doors, going down one one knee against the swinging door. The sudden wind wasn't helping.

Serafima helped Iliana off the pillion.

"You saw what that was, girl?" Iliana demanded.

"Da." she replied. "And it is angry."


Alexandra heard the angry shout of "You Stepkins! Stop this at once!" and realised Marisa Denikovska had arrived. So maybe she would be spared having her hair cut back to the scalp. But the unpleasant Silya Stepkina was still in front of her holding a sharp knife. Alexandra reckoned the fact two other Stepkin girls were holding her arms tightly might help her here. They'd hold her up and allow her something to brace against, when she lifted her legs, and kicked out with both booted feet…

And then she saw Marisa pushed, or thrown, to one side. She heard the distant commotion outside. Her head spinning, she watched the dust being kicked up from the barn floor. She saw Peter Stepkin, now wide-eyed and terrified, backing off from some unseen peril.

Alexandra refocused.

She got the barest glimpse of her family's guardian warrior spirit, the Vedogon, a tall warrior in the armour of olden times, levelling his ghostly spear and thrusting it at Peter. He was hastily retreating from the point as the Vedogon pursued, at a slow but relentless walk.

She heard the shrieking of a sudden wind, a howling gale, as it swirled around the barn until it found them. She sensed unseen fingers caressing her hair.

And she heard the howling wind screaming, at Silya Stepkina,

You dare? You really dare? You attack my friend Lexi, and YOU ARE TRYING TO CUT HER HAIR OFF? Her beautiful, lovely, hair?

The kijndal knife clopped to the earth floor. Silya screamed in terror as her feet left the floor. Alexandra saw her head jerk from left to right several times as if she was being slapped, really hard, and then she was flying, in the wind, and out of the barn door, the wind picking up her two sisters on the way and bowling them out.

Alexandra struggled to stay upright, knowing she'd taken a beating and she was beginning to feel it. But she still said

"Zephyroshka? I thank you. But do not kill them, if you can avoid it."

I hear you, Lexi. But I am angry for you.

The wind picked up around Alexandra and for a moment she was buffeted by it and stood swaying. Then it died down as it swept outside.

Alexandra bent down, wincing against the pain of her bruises, and picked up the dropped dagger, feeling slightly surprised at its weight. She wondered if it were now hers, a trophy of battle. She knew without needing to touch the blade that it would be sharp. It could easily have shorn off her hair.

She shrugged, and forced herself to walk towards the open door and out into the air.


Serafima walked over to help the sotnika to her feet. She accepted the offered arm and got up.

"Thank you." she said.

"Safest we stand to one side." Serafima suggested. They walked out of the way together, just as the first of three screaming frightened girls were blown out by what Marisa took to be a sudden freak wind. One of the three ended up sprawling awkwardly in the dirt, legs akimbo, her skirts blown up to her waist. People were watching. Somebody laughed.

Marisa glared at her.

"For goodness' sake, girl." she snapped. "Pull your dress down and show some dignity!"

"Stepkin clan?" Serafima said. If you were a Baikal Cossack, you recognised family traits instantly.

"Da." Marisa agreed. She looked appraisingly at Serafima.

"And you're of the Dospanovs."

"Pravda."

They watched the terrified Peter Stepkin backing into the light, as if something was forcing him. Iliana ambled over.

"You see it, Vorona?" she asked. "The other thing that girl's got?"

"See what, exactly?" Marisa asked, curiously.

Serafima could just see the outline of the spectral warrior, indistinct and insubstantial in the light of noon. He was prodding at Peter Stepkin with the insubstantial spear, but not running it into him. The boy was dodging backwards, eyes wide with terror, looking for an escape.

"It can't actually kill anyone." Iliana remarked, watching. "It ain't got the power. But it can lend strength. It can frighten. It can scare the living bly'at out of somebody. My guess is, if it stabbed Peter Stepkin with that spear, you'd not find a hole afterwards. But the boy's going to think he been stabbed."

"Ved'ma. What is the "it", please?" Marisa Denikovska asked.

Iliana looked at her, kindly.

"Called a Vedogon, love. My guess is, that's the distilled essence of what it is to be a Mumorov in a fight. A thousand years worth, on lots of battlefields. The Stepkin boy got to see it full on, and he is terrified."

Vedogon? He is mine. He began this. He incited his sisters to cut off Lexi's hair. I claim him.

The spectral warrior bowed and disappeared, his part completed. And Peter Stepkin found himself lifted into the air by the same freak wind that had appeared out of nowhere. The wind lifted him and slammed him into the side of the barn, held there about ten feet up.

"Oi, you." Iliana called up. "I admit the boy's been a nuisance and he's an unpleasant little piece of govno, but there's a limit. He's been scared enough. My guess is he'll leave the girl alone now. Could you get him on the ground now? People down here want a word. Lots of words."

I hear you, old Witch. And as you can see, he is so frightened that the fear is running down his leg and into his boots, and overflowing onto the ground. As all can see.

Nobody but the witches heard this. But all saw Peter Stepkin slide slowly down the wooden wall, landing in a curled and shaking heap at the bottom.

Last of all, Alexandra Mumorovka came walking out into the daylight, on unsteady feet, showing signs of the beating she had taken. She walked with her head proudly high, as if her injuries counted for little. She was a Cossack who had been in a fight, taken wounds, and had won her battle. People parted to let her pass as she walked over to where Silya Stepkina was sitting, crying and shaking.

"This fell from your scabbard when we were fighting." Alexandra said, offering her the dagger, handle first. "Take it. It's yours. And don't be so careless again and lose it." She nodded, turned about, and walked away with dignity.

"Did it." Marisa Denisovka said. She glared at Silya.

"You drew a weapon. To an unarmed opponent. We will talk about this, later. In the presence of the Hetman who rules here. And you will be answering to him, in his stanitsa."

"Come on, love." Iliana said. "We'll get you looked at and patch you up. And we can talk. You, me and Vorona here. About what happened today."

"Mark my words, Mistress Stormcrow." Wee Shuggie Neville said, from the mane of the Pegasus. He'd been watching with excitement and interest. "Yon wee lassie is a Hag, and nae doubt!"

The Air Station, Ankh-Morpork. Later the same day.

"You're two hours late, Pilot Officer Dospanova." Captain Olga Romanoff remarked. "I'd say "Care to explain?" at this point. But you did think to stop at the nearest Clacks tower to send a sitrep. Timed for eleven-thirty this morning and advising me about urgent and emergency Witch business."

Olga steepled her fingers and looked at her pilot.

"I know and you know that takes absolute priority. So does Lady Margalotta, who is understanding. But I still need to explain this to Vetinari. So. Care to explain?"

Serafima explained what had kept her. Olga whistled through her teeth.

"So. We have an emerging Witch. I know who she is. I met her when she was seven years old and it was in her then. She impressed me."

Serafima nodded appreciation. It took a lot to impress Olga Romanoff.

I've had people, including you, send me regular reports about how she's coming along and I know Barbara Borodinska has been keeping her under observation. Relative of yours, isn't she?"

"Da. Distantly." Serafima agreed. "But it's taken a turn, Olga Anastacia."

"Indeed. She's potentially got a lot of power. She knows her house-spirits by name. She taught herself to fly a broomstick. Well, Barbara says. A natural pilot. For that reason alone, I'd want her here. And now you tell me she can call on her family vedegon for help, and on top of that, command a vikhor? Which would have happily killed four unpleasant little children who were menacing her, and inflicted what could have been a very bad beating on her?"

"Da, Olga Anastacia. Although she had restraint enough to ask the vikhor just to frighten them, and not hurt them too badly."

Olga sighed.

"So until the Baikal Host works out what to do with her, she's been sent back to Blondograd for now, to recuperate from her injuries and explain to her delightful mother exactly how she got them."

Olga shook her head.

"Also, is there now a blood-feud between the Mumorovs and the Stepkins? That sort of thing in a Cossack host isn't good at all."

Serafima shook her head.

"Nyet, Olga Anastacia. The Hetmans heard the case, noted there is also a suspicion that the Stepkins interfered with her horse earlier in the day with the intention of having it throw her off, and ordered the Stepkin clan to pay a fine of eight good horses to the Mumorov clan in compensation. Both sides accepted that. Especially with Witches in attendance at the hearing."

"Good. So we can advise Vetinari that another reason for your late return is that, as a Witch, you helped adjudicate a dispute in the Cossack camp that might have led to serious bloodshed and fighting in the Host. That's valid too."

Olga smiled.

"Serafima, I'm obliged to go to Blondograd on family business in a couple of months' time. The Kazachok cavalry are a Romanoff family Regiment, so one of us has to be there for the Review parade. Mother and Father and my uncles pay enough to sustain the bloody thing, after all. While I'm there, I'll look this girl Alexandra over, and if I like what I see – and by all accounts I will – I'll persuade the parents to allow me to sponsor her, then we'll get her over to Lancre. At least to begin with. Deal?"

She pushed back the office chair and stood up.

"Okay, now let's go and see Vetinari."

To be continued

Damn, this is going into Chapter Three. In which Cousin Bella arrives and poses a houseguest problem, and Olga has to go full-on Romanoff to persuade Alexandra's mother to give up her daughter to Witch training. Watch this or some other space…

(1) A place more suited to resonate with Leningrad/StPetersburg is elsewhere: Nobinovgorod. That's just next door to the Pskov Oblast, which will be key to a coming tale, which is partially plotted.

(2) Serafima knew that showing emotion when contemplating potential ruin and destruction was not a good look for a Rodinian, and she would lose marks with regard to Steppe-cred.

Notes Dump:-

Reply to a PM from reader Ksandra Mallen re Strandpiel update:

Thanks! Took a while, but I've got Word back on my PC where nature intended it to be - catching up with stories now...

BOSS will now ratchet up a little pressure on the Lensens. Getting into the history of the real thing, they had to act with a semblence of legal constraint in South Africa. They overlapped the regular police force and while there was an expectation the civil and secret police would be separate entities, in practice the lines blurred. SA wasn't alone in this: look at the role of Special Branch in the British police system. Still paid for, funded, and where appropriate uniformed as policemen, but in practice a third intelligence and spy service alongside MI5 and MI6. Sam Vimes, of course, has his version of BOSS/Special Branch in the Cable Street Particulars. The other murkier and less morally supportable functions of BOSS would be reflected in the Palace Dark Clerks. Everywhere has something like this: elsewhere in the Tales I've given Brindisi its Camini Neri (the Shirts of Black), and my Rodinians still speak of the Kommittee of General Benevolence who will kindly take the time to talk to you at three in the morning, if troubling thoughts are causing insomnia.

BOSS, the Buro vir Staatsveiligheid, wasn't the only intelligence agency in SA at the time. The SA Police had their own security service and saw them as an external threat; the military intelligence services and the official foreign intelligence agency viewed them with suspicion and saw them not as a government service, but as an ideological one responsible only to the Prime Minister and the ruling political party, with a remit of maintaining ideological purity and liquidating threats to the maintenance of apartheid. In other words, a reflection of the GeheimeStaatsPolizei, a local Gestapo.

As with the excellent Tom Sharpe, I want to fudge reality a little bit and have BOSS, in Rimwards Howondaland, being responsible for everything it can get with regard to spying and intelligence work, for policing, internal monitoring, acting as internal security to the civilian police force, and external intelligence/spying. Rule of Funny as well as establishing they're a powerful threat, even to people called Smith-Rhodes.

The South African intelligence services were integrated more closely in the 1980's and BOSS officially ceased to exist: however, it's interesting that the very last Director of Intelligence in the whites-only state, Dr Niel Barnard, became a loyal friend and advisor to Nelson Mandela.

Mahayo: home-brewed native beer in Zimbabwe (Smith-Rhodesia here). Apparently a township staple in apartheid days and still drunk to excess to compensate for President Mugabe's wise management of the nation.

Mbare: former township serving Salisbury (now Harare) in apartheid days. Now a suburb of the city with a massive open-air market.