“My father?” Nikolai took a tentative step toward the woman.
She began to hobble down the street. “You inherited from your father not only his broad shoulders and confidence, but also his adaptability. Despite his many flaws, he was quite skilled at adjusting himself to thrive through change. He would not have survived the war with Napoleon and all the other upheavals without it.”
“I knew he was a soldier. But that is all that I knew.”
The woman laughed, although it was more a shrill screech than a joyous chuckle. Nikolai cringed. “Your father was no mere soldier. He was a leader of men. Your father was the tsar.”
Nikolai stopped in the middle of the street, in front of a small church. “Pardon?”
“You heard me right. Your friend the tsesarevich is your half brother.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it? I think I ought to know. The tsar took me as his mistress during a monthlong visit to his army on the steppe. I was young and beautiful then, and we spent every night in his tent. Eight months after he left, I bore him a son, whom I named Nikolai.”
“No.” Every muscle in Nikolai’s body tensed. It had to be a lie. What game was this old hag playing at?
“Oh, yes.” She paused in front of the church’s wooden doors, as if for dramatic effect. “In fact, since you are a year older than the tsesarevich, you could contend his right to be the next tsar. It’s rumored the tsarina had her own affairs, as well, and it is reasonable to doubt whether the tsar was Pasha’s father. You could be tsar, my darling. I’ve already been busy spreading gossip about the possibility around the city.”
Nikolai clenched his fists. Then he snatched the invisible edge of the bubble surrounding the woman—he knew precisely where the edge was, for he had created it—and yanked her into the church. It was empty at this hour. He slammed her into the pews. She cackled.
“You could be arrested for treason,” he whispered furiously. “I could be arrested for treason, simply for walking and talking with you. How dare you spew these lies.”
The woman straightened her cloak and adjusted the hood over her head. Being hurled into the pew seemed to have had little impact on her.
“I don’t know how you came to know my identity as an enchanter, but I could chain you to this bench for eternity if I so desired.”
“I have no doubt. But you wouldn’t do that to your mother, would you?”
“I have no mother. She died when I was born.”
“I almost died. But I resurrected myself.” The woman lifted the hood and let it fall to her shoulders.
Nikolai stumbled backward into another pew across the aisle. The woman looked as horrid as she had smelled before he contained her stench in the bubble. Her skin was yellowed and mummified in places, gray and sagging in others. Only her eyes glowed, wild with savagery.
God forgive me, Nikolai thought. I’ve led the devil into Your sanctuary.
“It is truly I. My name is Aizhana Karimova, and I was a faith healer on the steppe. The village thought I had died, but I actually lay in ante-death, the amorphous space between life and death. It took eighteen years, but I healed myself, leaching energy from the worms and maggots that squirmed over me. And when I emerged from ante-death, I went in search of the only thing that mattered: you.”
Nikolai clutched a book of psalms that had been left in his pew. “It’s not possible to rise from death.”
Aizhana sighed, and all her audacity fell away. “It is when you are motivated by love.” She frowned. Or what would have been a frown had the muscles of her face worked as they were supposed to, rather than pulling taut in some places and hanging loose in others. “But, my dear, why should you not believe in ante-death, simply because you did not know it exists? Healing is the business of transferring energy; resurrection is healing, but more ambitious. And there is nothing too ambitious for a mother separated from her son.”
Nikolai remained in his pew, but his grip on the book of psalms eased. Just a fraction. It was nonsense, what she spoke of, and yet . . . it seemed possible that there could be a kernel of truth. Perhaps even more than a kernel.
She inched closer and opened her arms as if to embrace him.
“Stay back.”
Her entire body slumped, but she did not try to advance farther. “I have been in the city a while now, but I did not feel worthy of you, Nikolai. I failed to protect you, and protection was my job as your mother. I could not face you until I felt I had been redeemed.” Her face drooped. The skin near her mouth looked as if it might fall off her chin. It was a ghoul’s rendition of regret.
“And are you redeemed now?”
Her eyes brightened. “I am.”
“How?”