Zagreus asked for little. In myth, there always seemed to exist a tithe to cross the river, to delve beneath the ice, to descend into the underworld - some bribe to be paid, some price to be bartered. And yet, for Zagreus, all the journey demanded was her patience and time. It was an easy descent into hell; clawing your way back out again, now, that was where it grew difficult.
Zagreus asked for little, though Gavril tended to ask a great deal. She was messenger and psychopomp, something between plenipotentiary and envoy, because although she rallied between one Tsardom and the next she was unable to do anything but speak the words of one prince or another. And the princes were so often on the quarrelsome edge of war.
Zagreus asked for little, but Zagreus did ask, and today all that she asked for was peace - peace for as long as the two tsars had to dwell together in the same shadow. To meet in one world or the other was forbidden; instead, Gavril and Viktor met in those places where death and life met and mingled - in hospital corridors and on the edge of worn battlefields and within the walls of necropoleis. Today, Zagreus descended into the catacombs of the city, her shadow stretching long in front of her along the walls of the subway tunnel through which she travelled.
Gavril was waiting in one of the abandoned metro stations, sitting on one of the ornately wrought benches with his hair dishevelled and his hoody full of holes.
"Good morning, Your Imperial Highness," Zagreus said. Her voice was soft, very soft, too soft. "I am sorry to intrude."
"No intrusion."
"He's late."
"Isn't he usually?"
That was true, so Zagreus said nothing as she clambered from the rails onto the asphalt of the platform floor and watched what little light leaked into the room play against the gold and silver of the walls. How beautiful these stations were, and how pointlessly so. So many things in the Tsardom were like this: gorgeous and buried deep beneath the ground and forgotten. The stairs leading to the sky had been bricked up long ago, but a little of the wood had rotted allowing a small amount of starlight to illuminate the space; Ksenija stood at the top of the stairs with her arms crossed and a knife glinting with veiled menace at her hip.
Above them, sky; below them, bones. Zagreus put her arms around herself at the phantom cold that threatened to leech her breath and set her gaze stonily on the darkness of the tunnel burrowing into the ground, knowing that Gavril's brother was approaching. No doubt the tsesarevich could detect his counterpart's arrival similarly - he sat up and straightened his collar as though nervous.
A light flared into existence at the threshold of the tunnel, like a firefly at dusk, and Zagreus made out the carved-sharp shape of Viktor, dressed like a corpse: a fine black waistcoat, a fine white shirt, fine black shoes, with his hair slicked back and the pallor of the dead. He did not smile, but walked from the shadows without delay as Gavril rose from his seat, and observed closely.
The girl carrying the light drifted behind him slowly, without expression. Could you call that a girl? Zagreus thought so, until she turned her head to murmur something to her master and the witch saw the rotting skin at her jawline, the blackened flesh at her temple, the brittle curl of her brown hair and the stain spreading across her eyelid, a bruise in birth. Her bones, very close to the surface, were as brittle as a bird's, and Viktor helped her from the tunnel tracks with a gloved hand before ascending himself.
"Handmaiden," Gavril said, and the dead girl folded her hands over the light in her hands - a rose, Zagreus saw now, all its line aglow with fire as though cursed. Magic.
"Tsesarevich." Her voice was hoarse, scratchy, unpleasant, and she stepped around the puddles of starlight in favour of the shade, her eyelashes slowly turning grey over her left eye.
"How goes hell?"
Her voice was soft, and there was callous cruelty in that softness. "Inescapable," she said simply, and the pale corner of her eye twitched with gallow mirth as though considering a smile.
Zagreus held her breath as a silence erupted between them, sudden and awful, broken only by the staccato of Viktor's footsteps towards them, as Gavril's lip curled.
"Cruel humour," the tsesarevich said finally. "Wasn't it, naming you Zhivka when your parents knew that you were mortal and could bleed with the best of them."
"What name would have suited better?"
"Gruoch," he said, after a moment.
Zhivka's expression did not change. "You think me Lady Macbeth?"
"I certainly do not," he said. "Mistake you for a lady."
Her dark eyes were humourless. "Cruel humour," the dead girl said. "Wasn't it, naming her Anastasia, when her parents knew that when she was lost, she was lost, and that hell never released its grip on anyone."
Gavril's eyes flashed with something utterly unspeakable, but before he could reply, Viktor had moved between his handmaiden and his brother, placing a soothing hand on the shoulder of the former and glancing at the latter with a benign kind of weariness.
"Let us be at peace," he said, his voice persuasive.
"Leave us," Gavri told the dead girl, but Zhivka did not move until Viktor caught her eye and nodded sharply. She walked to the edge of the platform and sat down there, suddenly becoming rather small and diminished against the reductive glamour of the gilded station.
"I know your game," the Tsar of Life said, watching the handmaiden with a slight chuckle. "And I must say, you could have chosen worse."
Viktor seemed determined to feign ignorance as his brother spoke, raising an eyebrow only and greeting Zagreus with a slight incline of his head as she came to stand between them, the broker as always between life and death.
"The king of the dead must marry a living queen," Gavril said thoughtfully. "The king of life holds no such restrictions."
"She's a nice girl."
"Yes." The tsesarevich's voice was dry. "I hear hell is full of them."
Viktor put a hand to his hair as though to slick it back but could find no stray hairs to correct and returned it to his pocket, rings glinting. "Does it do harm to make introductions?"
"To me? Not at all. To her? Look at her. She wouldn't last a day above the ground."
Viktor did not look at her, but Zagreus knew from his expression that he was well aware of the slow atrophy his handmaiden was experiencing. The spreading bruise had reached one high cheekbone now, staining it green and purple as though she were transmutating into a snake. Her eyes were laced with the red of broken blood vessels.
"It can't be too pleasant for you, either," Gavril added thoughtfully after a moment, and although Viktor shrugged casually, the shadows under his eyes and the pallor of his skin spoke the truth. "So, to business. You are aware, I'm sure..."
"The fire or the flood? Yes." Viktor's eyes darkened. "My kingdom is full of drowned men, and burned children. Two hundred in all, am I correct?"
The brothers looked to Zagreus, who nodded silently in assent. The orphanage in Abovyan had blazed for hours before the inferno had been doused, and no child had come safe from within. An electrical fault, they said. No one's fault. The shipwreck, that had been someone's fault, and that someone had died along with the rest of the crew and all of the passengers as their vessel charted a path between Baku and Aktau in the dead of night. Two hundred dead before midnight. They had not been mentioned on the Report that evening.
"I have cells full of sinners, damned men, forsaken souls. Murderers and arsonists and rapists all, fifty in number. Surely that is a fair trade for the lives of the children."
"You would think so," Viktor said. "It is enough for thirty."
Gavril shook his head but his brother spoke over him.
"Balance in all things. You think I should favour you, because you favour life. But that is not my domain."
"Fifty," Gavril said. "I want all fifty of those children returned. Safe. Alive."
"I will allow forty," Viktor said measuredly, as Zagreus had always known he would, but Gavril was stubborn when it came to such matters and although he knew it would only anger his brother he continued heedlessly.
"Forty five. The babies - they cannot be worth much, unformed souls that they are. You know that whatever you allow me shall return to your tsardom eventually, brother."
"It isn't as simple as that," Viktor said, and Zagreus believed him.
"It is nearly dawn," she reminded them.
Those were the rules - you had from dusk until dawn to bargain, to try and win back souls, to win back your loved ones for a few more years, a few more decades, a few more hours. After that, they were lost forever to the underworld. Zagreus looked at the dead handmaiden and wondered how she felt to know that no one had bothered to bargain her back from the darkness when she was lost there.
"Forty one," Gavril said finally, the words torn from him reluctantly. "It is a good, odd number."
"Forty one," Viktor agreed, and they shook hands on the matter.
(and at that moment a burning beam broke and collapsed and in a shower of sparks exposed the basement of the orphanage where huddled forty-one dirty, scared children, clinging to one another and coughing smoke and they were carried away burned and unhappy but alive, alive, alive)
On the matter of the sailors there was no easy compromise to be had. Gavril, as always, demanded the lot - Viktor, as expected, offered only the bare minimum. Finally, they settled on the matter of fifty even - "Fifty one," Gavril said, "it is a good, odd number" - and shook hands on that matter also.
(and at that moment a dead man surfaced from the water in the Caspian Sea, gasping for air, his skin bruised and battered, and he was followed by fifty others, men and women and children, drenched to the skin and terrified and cold but alive, alive, alive)
And Gavril signaled to Ksenija that they would soon be leaving. Zhivka likewise rose from her seat and pulled the ruffled fire-flower from her pocket.
"Well," the tsesarevich told his brother. "Until next time."
"Fourteen."
Gavril blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Fourteen," Viktor repeated. "It is a good number. Even."
Of course. The Selection. Zagreus had forgotten, though it seemed that Gavril had not - had only wished to pretend he had.
"So few? An odd number, a large number, is luckier, more traditional. You'll have more choice."
"I won't have any choice," the tsar of the dead corrected him mildly. "I leave that to your capable hands, brat."
A pause, and Gavril inclined his head in acquiescence. "Very well. Fourteen girls. Is that your only preference?"
"Of course."
To say otherwise would be an insult, would imply Gavril was not capable of performing this task alone and without instructions, would insinuate the brothers were strangers to one another. And even if it was the truth, Zagreus thought, it had to go unsaid.
"I'll be in touch," Viktor said, and turned, and walked away, without another word. Zagreus watched him go. Zhivka flashed Gavril one final, dead-faced look, one eye obscured by cataracts, one side of her face giving way to wasted flesh and bone, and then followed her master beneath the ground.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Ksenija murmured, nearly making Gavril jump, for a moment forgetting that they were no longer children and no longer friends as she leaned over her crown prince's shoulder to keep an eye on the retreating backs of Viktor and his handmaiden.
Gavril's voice was droll as he handed Zagreus her small cotton bag of gold coins. "She's brunette?"
Ksenija's eyelashes fluttered in a wink. "Should have put money on it."
Sorry for the brief delay in chapters - Christmas and the New Year kind of took over my life for a little while. I wanted to use this chapter to give a bit more world building as well as a look at the five 'court' characters through whose eyes we will see the Selection from one side - Gavril and Viktor, the royals; Zhivka and Ksenija, the servants; and Zagreus, the outsider.
The Selected girls, of course, will see the Selection from another angle, as contestants. Speaking of which, the Selection is still open and accepting characters! You can find the pinterest for this story here: / hereliethorns. I will only be choosing fourteen girls so that all of them will get more attention and time to change. Although Zhivka was submitted by a reader, she will not be in the Selection.
Next, many people have said they are having difficulty understanding some of the Russian words so here is a quick explanation of some of them. If you are still uncertain, please PM me!
Tsesarevich - the crown prince, next in line for the throne. Although Gavril's parents are dead, he has not yet been crowned as Tsar. On the other hand, Viktor is already Tsar of the Dead.
Ksyusha - this is a nickname for Ksenija, like "Kat" for Katherine.
Gavrik - this is a nickname for Gavril, like "Fred" for "Fredrick".
Vitya - this is a nickname for Viktor.
Zhitiye - this is a nickname for Zhivka.
Vědma - a witch.
Dorogaya - sweetheart, an affectionate term.
Solnishko - sunshine, an affectionate term.
Gruoch - the name of Macbeth's wife in Scottish myth.
Also, the meaning of the name "Anastasia" is resurrection and the meaning of the name "Zhivka" is life, which is what Gavril and Zhivka talk about.
Finally, thank you all so much for your lovely reviews and support. The reviews are what keep me going, to be honest, the longer and more detailed the better - I really want to hear what you think of the characters, the world, what will happen next! Thank you all so much!