AS I BEHELD THE GREAT CITY, MY EYES WIDENED LIKE A CHILD’S. I hadn’t felt such wonder since the first time the Romska had performed their strange and mysterious dance around a campfire when I was a little girl. How is it I have come to live among these people? I’d asked myself then. How will I be one of them?
The same questions overwhelmed me now as we passed a sleigh with a nobleman wearing a tall fox-fur hat and a silver embroidered cloak. A lady sat beside him, pearls dangling from her headdress and connected in deep scalloped rows beneath her chin. Beyond the couple, the magnificent palace glimmered in the late-afternoon sun. My belly ached for something more substantial to eat than the hard cheese and bread Anton had given me from his satchel. Perhaps it was my hunger that made the palace appear like an enormous confection.
The tall arched windows had a candied effect, their edges rimmed with multicolored tiles and brightly painted stonework. An intricate network of engravings trimmed the various curving walls like icing on spiced cookies, and topping each tower were what looked like giant dollops of gold-plated cream.
Everything I’d ever seen in the vast countryside of Riaznin looked dim and dull in comparison. Several moments passed before I could tear my gaze away. Only then did I glimpse my closer surroundings and what lay beyond the beauty of the quaint shops, their carved wooden awnings, and the streets lined with cheerfully painted houses. Worse, I began to sense it. The ravenous craving of the barefoot boy dodging into a shabby alleyway. The resentment kindling within a sunken-cheeked man as he tossed the contents of his chamber pot outside and turned his glare on the palace. The weariness of a pregnant woman as she strung her dingy laundry on a line. The apprehension of the nobleman who had passed us in his sleigh, the way his eyes leveled on the road and angled away from the steely looks of the peasants.
The people seemed to multiply before us as we traveled deeper into the city. They packed the streets until anywhere I looked, in any given direction, there were hundreds of them. Some extended their palms begging for coins. Others held up their wares for purchase—lacquer art, bone carvings, furs pieced together from small animals. Beyond the people I saw, I felt thousands more, their pulsating desires and despairs.
But could I really feel them—all of them? Or did I only fear what would happen if I did?
Anton looked askance at me. “Are you all right?”
I’d shrunk down in my seat and gripped the edge with white knuckles. My body trembled. “There are too many.”
“Aren’t you accustomed to gathered people? The Romska must have taken you into cities.”
I shook my head, my nerves tingling with panic. “No, they kept me from them. Even the villages. They passed me to other caravans or hid me in the woods until they returned from their day’s work.” My experience proved the same at the convent. Unbidden, a memory seized me—being gagged to silence my screams as the sestras dragged me away in a fit of madness, yet another failed attempt of training my ability by testing me in a crowded marketplace.
“Why?” Anton frowned. Behind him, a mass of bodies wove past one another, their movement a constant, confusing swirl of colors. “What happens when you’re surrounded by so many?”
A burly man approached the troika and rattled off something about a fair price. He held a slab of meat near my face. I whimpered, smashing against Anton before the bloody flesh could touch me, before I felt the death of the elk or deer or whatever it was.
A baby cried. The sound cut through the shouts of the bartering and bustle all around me. I whimpered harder and dug my fingers through my hair, my body burrowing into Anton’s. My movement knocked the reins from his hands, but he caught them up again. Our troika trudged along, slowed by the throngs of people.
“I can’t do this,” I mumbled through chattering teeth. I wasn’t cold—I couldn’t be—not with the warmth of pressed bodies and the thick, cloying air of the streets. But somewhere out there, someone was. Maybe many were.
A young woman, close to my age, leered at Anton from the opposite side of the sleigh. “It’s the prince!” She placed a hand on her chest. When he wouldn’t look at her, her gaze drifted to me, her thin brows lifting with question. Her aura darkened mine with a stain of jealousy. Something crashed in the square, followed by shouts and pounding fists.
Up ahead, past a large fountain, a market stall had careened over and blocked the road. Two men threw punches at each other. More joined them, yelling and taking sides. Their fury scraped beneath my skin and itched for release.
“Stop that,” Anton said to me, voice strained, lips tight.