Chapter Text
CHAPTER II: SANKTA MARYA OF THE ROCK
Sankta Marya of the Rock: patron saint of those who are far from home
*
Kaz first sees the posters on the Boeksplein; bold letters YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!, an illustration of a serious-looking young man in a helmet and a purple military grab. They are plastered on the walls everywhere, no matter where he turns.
All the way home, the man from the posters watches him, his blue eyes solemn and soulless. Your country needs you. As if this country ever gave a shit about any of us. We are all just factors of production to those above us.
He doesn’t like it, all the globalpolitik news he reads about in the papers every morning. Not a fortnight ago, the treaty between Fjerda and Shu Han was signed at Ahmrat Jen - it was about the shared tariffs policy, the mutual free exchange of goods, a way for both of them to import directly from each other to avoid Kerch transit taxes. But Kaz hasn’t been able to sleep well since he heard about it, even if no one takes him seriously when he shares his worries.
He has tried to explain, so many times. Fjerda and Shu Han can crush Ravka in between them, he said, to his Da, to Jordie, to Imogen, to Inej, to his colleagues at the University. They can divide the continent between them. They will not need Kerch for anything - together and with Ravka’s resources, they have more than we can offer. And we are just a tiny island. Why let us streamline all the trade through us? We make them look stupid. Fjerdans don’t like looking stupid, I’ll tell you that. And the Shu always want to seem like the smartest players.
Nobody wants to listen. Jordie is too tired, too distracted to care about anything but money and savings, and checking every bill from both sides when he is forced to spend it. He is making enquiries about vacant flats every other day and always looks so defeated when he hears the sum of the rent. Da, doing even longer hours at the artillery factory now (how was no one else concerned that the government increased the shifts to fifteen hours for artillery, arms, metalworks? How did no one else seem to care?), barely has a moment to exchange a few words with Kaz over a bowl of soup before dropping into a sleep deep as a stone, and he only answers all his arguments with Don’t worry, boy; we have the best navy in the world. Focus on your studies and don’t bother yourself with all this nonsense. Just get that degree, that’s all that matters.
Imogen finds the whole topic boring - she wants to go dancing, go to the pictures, make love in stolen moments in between work and classes, not talk. She puffs out perfect round rings of smoke and grabs him by his chin to silence him with her lips when she doesn’t want to listen anymore. His college friends call him an old maid afraid of her own shadow. A war? Kerch hasn’t been at war for decades. Have a drink, Rietveld, chill a bit; you look like someone stuck a broomstick up your ass and fucked you with it. Actually, we could use a good war, couldn’t we boys? We’d love some action. Kill some squints, come back home heroes. Imagine the send-off we would get.
Inej listens to him though, her dark eyes focused, her brows drawn. They are often alone in the flat together now - Kaz, hunched over his textbooks and Inej, hunched over her sewing. They make breaks for tea, for coffee, and they talk. She asks him questions. Ravka has a strong army, though. They will not give up without a fight, especially when winter comes - Fjerdans can fight in the winter, but Shu will only find their death on the Steppes. You cannot conquer Os Alta in the winter. Don’t you think Shu Han will be satisfied with just taking the Sikurzoi? Re-drawing the borders?
She’s working at a chocolate manufacture now - a nice job, starting early mornings, working till early afternoons. Her boss is decent enough and she comes back home smelling sweet, cocoa powder in the crevices of her skin. She takes half of the meticulous embroidery jobs of her cousin Yara, who’s pregnant now and feeling poorly. She cooks, cleans, and does the laundry for all of them. She is a steady, bright flame and they all warm around it.
Honestly, Kaz does not quite know how they survived without her for so many years.
She and Jordie barely see each other, through their conflicting schedules, but when they are in the flat together, Kaz tends to make himself scarce. The flat is too small for so many people, just one room and the kitchen, the washroom on the corridor shared with the whole floor of neighbors- not a lot of space, he supposes, for newlyweds to enjoy each other. He tries to make it easier for them; tries not to think, at the same time, how they will all bear it when a child or two arrive. He tries not to think about children, period. Children with Inej’s smile and Jordie’s curls and how they will toddle around him and call him onkle Kaz.
He knows he should’ve rejected the grant. He could bring in so much more money, working full-time with his Da during the days and dealing nights. He could’ve afforded his own room or chipped in for Jordie and Inej to find something of their own. Jordie wouldn’t have to break his back trying to save up for it, wouldn’t have to walk in shoes with their soles peeling off and his old jacket that is more patches than the original material at this point.
But. It is what it is now. Kaz just has a few semesters left and then he will make it up to them, all of them.
The posters are all over Ketterdam. He cannot rest easy in his bed, thinking about them. YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU.
If it looks like a trap. If it feels like a trap. Then what is it, if not a trap?
*
YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU
The foreman orders to tear the posters down, afraid to lose men, but Jordie sees them everywhere anyway. There is a recruitment office set up in a Devil’s Corner, two blocks away from the edge of the Rookery and, every morning, a queue of young men waits for the door to open.
His friend Filip enlists first; he meets up with Jordie for a beer right after and tells him, eyes as round as coins, how much money he’s going to make.
“They told me it is completely safe,” he says, wiping the foam mustache off his upper lip with the back of his hand. “You know, they just need manpower for supply lines, pretty much the same shit I do at the harbor anyway. Carrying the boxes back and fro. But I will earn enough to pay for my sister’s wedding and help out my Ma. You should go too, take advantage of the opportunity until all the spots are taken.”
Money. Money. Money. It’s all about money, isn’t it?
Jordie walks the streets home, slowly, his hands in his pockets, and thinks, thinks hard enough that it gives him a headache. He walks through the Staves and the Barrel, the vice districts packed full of people losing enough kruge during one game of cards that he could’ve bought his wife an apartment with it. Watches the red-faced merchers and their mistresses dressed in ermine fur and diamond earrings the size of a baby’s fist.
Inej wore a hand-me-down dress for their wedding, passed down through all the women of her family. And he didn’t mind it, not at all, because Inej is an angel regardless of what she wears and the dress was beautiful on her. And she didn’t seem to mind either. But he thinks she deserved better than that. Deserves better, still. Not to work. Not to worry. She deserves all the best.
His mom deserved better too, better than what their Da was able to give her - Jordie thinks about her more now than he has done in years. He looks at his own wife pushing her sleeves up to do the washing and imagines her in his mom's place, doing that with a round belly underneath her apron, always overworked, worn thin by the bills and the harvest and stretching one loaf of bread and a few potatoes into a meal for the whole family. Working so hard and worrying so much that she had no strength left for the birthing bed.
Inej is waiting for him at home, greets him at the door with a lit candle in her hands. She takes off his coat for him and then takes him to bed, pulling on his clothes insistently, her laughter sweet against his mouth. He puts his hand underneath her nightgown, between her legs, and finds her wet, ripe and ready, gasping so beautifully when he caresses her. Her dark nipples are peaked; she sighs when he sucks them into his mouth.
Pressed close on their narrow cot, he makes love to her, as slow as he can, holding her tightly when she unravels around him like a blooming flower. He breathes in the smell of chocolate on her hair and all the thoughts in his head quiets down for a moment. But when he tenses, on the edge of his own release, she presses a hand flat to his chest and pushes herself backward. His seed spills across her belly.
He sends her a pained expression but she avoids his eyes; wipes the mess with the edge of her nightgown and sighs.
“We have talked about it.”
“Indeed,” he grits out. “Children. You wanted children, remember?”
“I want children.” She still won’t meet his stare. He looks at the little crease between her brows instead. It’s there so often now that it’s forming into a wrinkle already, and she’s not even twenty. “But we cannot afford children now. We can’t even afford our own space. I cannot afford to lose my job and you know it. I don’t want to - I don’t want to struggle with a baby on my hip.”
He does know it. This knowledge is like a pebble in his boot, sending a ripple of pain through his foot at every step. He dreams of kids, little babies with soft hair and wide eyes, their little hands wrapping around his finger. He dreams of Inej pregnant, full and glowing, resting her palms on the top of her belly and asking him to rub her feet.
But there is no money. And there is no space. And Jordie understands Inej’s reasons. It doesn’t make it hurt any less to think about them.
He’s a man. He’s the man of his little family. His Da always used to tell him, didn’t he? You will grow up to be a provider, Jordie. You are an older brother now and you will be a man soon enough. Work hard and don’t complain, and you shall be rewarded with good fortune.
His back hurts. His arms hurt. The next shift starts in two hours.
Inej scoots closer to him and tucks herself under his arm. He loves how she feels in his arms, warm and little, so neat. He loves her full eyebrows and the little chip in her front tooth that she got when she was seven and playing tag with them.
“We’ll make it work,” she breathes out. “My love, be patient. Saints help us, we’ll figure something out. I will take more sewing jobs; Layla told me that they are looking for someone to do Komedie Brute costumes at the Kraiiplein theatre and I am very good with sequins -”
He combs his fingers through the wealth of her hair, kisses her slender hands with their hard, hard calluses and thinks no. No. I’ll make it work.
The next morning, he takes off his hat and walks into the recruitment office with his head held high.
“Jordan Reitveld, my pleasure,” he says, sitting down in front of the official. “I heard you offer military accommodation?”
*
It is a rainy afternoon when Jordie shows up home in a uniform and with his hair cropped short, brown fuzz in place of his curls. It rains so hard, raindrops hitting the rooftops like bullets, that they almost drown out the sound of Inej’s gasp, shallow and pained.
But they don’t drown out any words.
“What have you done?” Da Reitveld, always so steady and so solemn, drops his cigarette into his coffee mug and springs to his feet like a man twenty years younger. “Jordan. What have you done?”
Jordie sighs. His eyes drift away to the corner of the room, avoiding his father’s stare and Inej’s stare and Kaz’s stare; there are shadows underneath them, purple like twin bruises. He looks so tired and all she wants is to lock him in his arms. But she cannot move. She is frozen, on her chair by the table, Kaz on her left side. Frozen and shocked into this stillness.
“What had to be done,” Jordie says at last. He puts his hands in his pockets and straightens a bit, raises his chin up. “Da. You don’t understand. They want men just like me, they are going to create opportunities for me -”
“Of course, they want men just like you! Young fools, their heads full of nothing!”
Inej has never seen Da yell, but he is very nearly yelling now. All the everyday noise from the neighbouring flat quiets down, the banging of pots and pans. Kaz’s thigh is pressed against hers, under the table, and she feels how all his muscles tense.
“Don’t you realize what you have done? What you sold your skin for? Is that why I moved us all here, to this city, so that you could throw away all the chances I tried to give you?”
She can almost see it, the tension snapping like an electric shock between Jordie and his father. Da Rietveld, straighted up to his considerable height, his face dark red and his eyes narrowed. And Jordie, tall and lean, looking right at him and something so terrible in his stare now that she can hardly bear to see it.
“Chances!” he snarks and it’s so unlike him - there’s such bitterness in his voice. Kaz puts a hand on her shoulder and she realizes that she’s trembling, just a bit. “What chances, father? To break my back shoveling coal twelve hours a day until I am too old or too broken to work anymore? Like you?”
“Jordan!” she shouts, still frozen to her seat, but Kaz gets up, his chair toppling onto the ground, and he snarls, his palms braced onto the table fuck you, Jordie. Are you really that dumb or are you just pretending? Two dark, cherry-red stains of blush bloom on Jordie’s face and what follows is a blur. Jordie says something and Kaz answers and suddenly they are both screaming, positioned on opposite sides of the room, snapping at each other like rabid dogs, their father standing between them with his head low, low, low.
It’s awful, all the things they are hurling at each other. Old animosities and words designed to dig into weak spots, to draw blood. They know each other so well. They can hurt each other like no one else.
Inej refuses to listen to it, to witness it. She grabs her coat and slams the door on her way out; she doesn’t think either of them noticed her leaving.
The last thing she hears, despite doing her best not to, is Kaz’s voice, low and mocking, so eager to leave Inej a widow, are you?
The air is cold. The rain beats on her shoulders and her head, soaks into her hair. It’s autumn still, but it has already snowed, once or twice, and the streets are full of puddles of dirty sludge of coal dust mixed in with remains of snow, freezing over the night just to melt into mud again in the morning. She walks right through them, blind and uncaring. It is only when she arrives at her parents’ door that she realizes her shoes are caked all the way to her ankles, her stockings covered in a shell of wet mud. Her only good shoes, the ones she wears to church.
That’s how her Papa finds her. Wrapped in an unbuttoned coat, crying over her dirty shoes.
They usher her inside, sit her down on a sofa with a cup of tea. Her mother is at work, but bibi Zara takes her dirty clothes to clean and borrows her some thick, clean socks to wear in the meantime. Yara comes over and lets Inej cradle her baby; Inej buries her nose in little Sara’s curls and cries harder.
Papa sits beside her and holds her hand and, when she calms down a bit, he tells her that it’s a job as any other and she has no reason to worry just yet.
She raises her head up and finds his stare.
“And what will I do?” she asks. “When the time to worry will come?”
Her father sighs and pats her shoulder. There are lines carved deeply in his face that she’s never noticed before; his hair is thin, grey like the fog in the morning.
He’s not even forty-five, but in this very moment, sitting beside her, he looks eighty.
“You will brave through it, my child,” he says. “As we have always braved through hard times. We must greet the unexpected visitor - when the fear shows up, something is about to happen. And we will be ready for it.”
*
Kaz knows it’s coming. He’s known it for half a year now, actually, ever since the Shu army crossed the Skirzoi. Ever since the battle of Caryeva. Ever since the Slaughter of Chernast. But this foreboding knowledge does nothing to soften the blow when he wakes up at dawn to the sound of alarm sirens.
He looks outside and, for a moment, he thinks that the snow must’ve fallen during the night; the streets are covered in white. Only when he opens the window and reaches outside, he realizes that there are leaflets lying on the pavements and rooftops, not snowflakes. White leaflets with text printed in bold, thick letters, written in Kerch: Citizens of the nation of Kerch, stand down and you shall be spared. Do not engage. Do not engage. The Union Forces are no enemies of Kerch.
The sirens keep on shrieking, loud and piercing. Through the noise, Kaz doesn’t hear his Da getting up; a heavy hand lands on his shoulder and he startles, dropping the leaflet onto the floor.
His father has his eyes wide open, looking outside in numb silence.
They watch as other widows open in the buildings all around them. They watch other people and their stunned shock, the same as theirs. They watch and they stay silent, for there is nothing to say.
*
“Two cream puffs, please. And a glazed cookie. Oh, can you also give me one of those rose rolls? Thank you, darling.”
The sweets are served on a paper-thin porcelain plate, rimmed with gold. Jordie carries it back to the table and barely dares to breathe all the way there. He doesn’t even want to guess how much this stupid plate must cost.
In their new, military-issued flat, where everything still smells like paint, they have a collection of random plates and cups donated by the neighbors and family. It still felt precious to him, putting them in a cupboard in neat stacks.
The coffee shop is filled with warm sunlight, spilling inside through the high windows and reflecting off the glass cabinets and silverware. It makes everyone look rosier, happier. It’s warm outside already, even though it’s been barely two months since Nachspel. The prettiest spring in a living memory, or certainly the prettiest spring Jordie can remember ever since he left the countryside with its bloom of fresh grass and lambing season as a child. The city is overcome by the hustle and bustle of excitement and tension. The recruitment offices seem to spring up on every single corner and every single girl is wearing purple and a ring on her finger. There are weddings every day now; the bells never stop ringing. They play patriotic songs on the radio all day long.
Jordie’s wife is sitting by the table in the very corner of the room, half-hidden in the shadows. Only her hands, lying flat on the white lace of the tablecloth, are submerged in a pool of light from the opposite window. He spares a moment just looking at them, some sweet affection rising within his heart. Her small hands, so worn through. The narrow ring on the fourth finger of her right hand. The delicate bones of her knuckles and her elegant wrists.
He tries to capture every smallest detail, burn them into his brain and keep them safe there.
He crams himself in between two other tables and gently lays the plates in front of her.
“Have your pick, sweetheart,” he says, “but one of these cream puffs has my name on it.”
She sends him a half-smile, her eyebrows rising slightly when she looks down at the sweets.
“You shouldn’t have,” she shakes her head. “It’s obscenely expensive here.”
“It is,” he shrugs. “But we might as well treat ourselves a bit, right? I mean, when if not now?”
The whole damn city certainly thinks so.
Inej’s face falls and he reaches across the table for her hand, cursing his own clumsy tongue.
“Sweetheart,” he runs his thumb across his knuckles, “don’t be sad. Eat your cake. You look so beautiful today that I am stupid looking at you.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “I wish I could lick this cream off your sweet tits.”
Inej blushes slightly, shaking her head at him and sighning, but it is a fond sigh; shadows leave her eyes and she delicately follows the golden rim of the plate with her fingertip. Under the table, he places his hand on her knee.
She does look beautiful, dressed to the nines with her hair curled and a choker of glass garnets clasped around her neck. She even has some lipstick on, and black khol lining her eyes. Jordie doesn’t know from whom she borrowed the dress she’s wearing, dark crimson and snug around her narrow waist, but he has never seen it and can hardly tear his eyes away from it. Half the coffee shop is sending coy glances at his wife and he cannot really blame them for that.
Jordie ends up eating both cream puffs. Inej nibbles on the rose roll. She wrapped the glazed ginger cookie up and hid in her bag, and Jordie did not ask for whom. He knows that she and Kaz still talk; he tries not to feel betrayed. He has promised himself, back when he started courting Inej, that he would not break apart their friendship. He intends to keep it, even if his brother is a mule of a man, barely speaking to him more than a few words when Jordie comes over to visit him and Da.
Last week, he announced that he enlisted as well. Said it with an air of finality that left no room for argument but argued they did, both Jordie, feeling like a hypocrite for it, and their father, his voice desperate. You are throwing your future down the drain, they said. You were supposed to make it out. You worked so hard to make it out. We worked so hard so that you could make it out. Jordie could see that it hurt Kaz to be reminded of it, of all the money and all the sacrifices his education cost their whole family. But Kaz is Kaz and, ever since he was a child, there has been no reasoning with him whatsoever when he made his mind up about something. He kept his head high, clenched his jaw and let them talk and talk, and, when they ran out of words, he just gestured towards Jodie. If he’s going to to the front, I am as well, he said, and that was the end of it.
Jordie knows that their father is devastated that they are both leaving. He also knows that a part of him is relieved that they will be braving through it together.
He knows it, because is half-devastated, half-relieved as well. His little brother. He is selfish for wanting his company in this great unknown that stretched out before them all. But he should stay and take care of their father. Take care of Inej. Finish his studies and be safe.
He and Inej finish their drinks and take a stroll through the streets, hand-in-hand, looking at the flowers blooming on every windowsill in Zelver. Without consulting out loud, they unanimously pick their favorite route, the one they take every Sunday after dinner, sometimes with her cousins and sometimes alone, just the two of them. They like to watch people, make little stories about them - this lady is having an affair with her driver, did you see how he looked at her? He would buy Inej flowers from an old lady selling bouquets on the pavement, and she would always tuck one underneath the band of his hat - roses or poppies or daisies, red and white and yellow. This street is usually rather quiet on their walks, but now it’s bustling; full of young couples kissing against lampposts, laughing in coffee shop gardens, sharing smokes by the fountains. Slightly older men carry children on their shoulders, and their wives’ faces are strained with smiles.
There is a photographer’s studio tucked in between a modiste and a shoemaker and a queue in front of it, which they join; Inej quiet and wistful, Jordie engaging in some mindless small talk with other waiting couples to pass the tiime. Inside, in a small, windowless room, Inej perches on a chair and Jordie stands behind her, one hand on her shoulder. He straightens his back for the uniform, puffs his chest a bit to look better in the picture.
He can feel how she trembles but she keeps her head up, does not let a single trace of fear show on her face. Chin up. Smile on. Back straight like a soldier.
His girl. He will come back to her. He knows he will.
*
It is a beautiful spring day when her boys are deployed; all sunshine and white clouds, fluffy like a flock of sheep. The wind blows west, taking the residue fumes from the factories with it, and the air smells only of salt and dried-up seaweed washed onto the shore. Half a Ketterdam is crammed in the Fourth Harbour, either out of some sense of patriotic duty or due to familial ties. The crowd is so thick that Inej can barely breathe, her face on the level of other people’s shoulders and armpits. Sweat drips down her spine, sticking the material of her best dress to her back.
It’s a fine blue cotton, printed with forget-me-nots and little white dots. Immaculately cut and crafted, stitches near impossible; it feels like a second skin. Jordie bought it for her with his first military pay. She remembers when he handed it to her, packed in an expensive cream paper that all of the modistes in the Zelver District used instead of the regular brown; she remembers how his eyes shone with pride. She called him a careless fool, and then she kissed him.
She cranes her neck now, trying to see above the heads of the people, but she’s too short. There are so many others like hers here; Mr Rietveld came as well but she lost him a while ago. Her family is here, the entire Rookery is here, the entire Barrel is here. Yet all the faces that surround her are unfamiliar. Shouting, crying, waving handkerchiefs, raising children up. Screaming names. Misha, goodbye! Andres! Joost! Goodbye, goodbye, vaarwel!
The best she can hope for here is getting crushed in between bodies.
She turns around and slips through the crowds, back to the long, narrow strip between the street and the promenade on the shore. There are fewer people here - she can finally catch her breath in deep, desperate gulps as she’s skirting through the maze of cranes and cargo until she finds a stack of crates that looks promisingly tall.
Without hesitation, she climbs on top of the first one. Then another. And one more. It is tricky, with her dress and heeled shoes, but she’s always been a good climber and she’s determined, so determined; sweat spills down her face now, right into her eyes, but she keeps climbing.
When she stands on the top of the last crate, she is far above the crowds. She can see the warships perfectly well - their smooth sides made from light metal sheets, the way they bob on the little waves in the harbour like a pack of silvery sharks. Their banderas of Kerch flying fish swaying on the breeze. And soldiers, of course. Cramming against the railings of the ships just like their loved ones cram on shore, waving their hats.
It’s so many of them and they all look so young, clean-shaven and in their identical purple jackets. Like a bunch of boys in school uniforms.
She scans through the faces, desperate now. Fear tastes like metal on her tongue. What if she doesn’t get to see them? They said their goodbyes already, of course. But it feels important to see them now, lock eyes with them. One last look before they leave her.
She almost didn’t let Jordie out of her embrace, back at home. He stood patiently and let her hold him, her arms around his waist, her face buried in his chest. He rubbed her back and whispered sweet nothings to her; called her sweetheart, called her baby. Told her not to worry and that he loved her. Promised her that he would take her for hot chocolate at East Stave when he came back and that they would have this dinner at Cilla’s, a proper one, with champagne. And when the time came, he kissed her hands before kissing her mouth, and it was a kiss that lingered. She can still feel it now, a shadow on her lips like a wax seal.
He tried to put on a brave face on her; he tried to joke around to ease her worries. But he is her husband and she knows him like the back of her hand and she could see the frantic glint in his eyes. The nervous edge in his laughter. He is so young still, and afraid.
To Kaz, she said goodbye quietly, in the middle of the night, for he left like a thief.
He was so startled when he saw her, sitting in the Rietvelds’ kitchen with her hands laced on her lap and waiting for him. He had a bag thrown across his shoulder; his shoes were perfectly polished. His eyes looked endlessly wide on his face with his hair shorn so close to his scalp now - he looked like a kid again, just a boy from her memories. Youthful and innocent.
He didn’t ask her what she was doing there, when she has a perfectly nice little flat now, the flat that she is to occupy alone when Jordie is away. She didn’t ask him, like his dad and Jordie already had done so many times, why he was throwing his future away, only months away from the final exams and thesis defense, when students were exempt from the draft.
She knew why. If she had the option to follow them, she would’ve done it as well.
They simply looked at each other in the silence of the night, Mr Rietveld's quiet snoring echoing in the other room.
She stood up, opened her arms for him, and he stepped towards her with no delay and no hesitation; they hadn’t hugged since they were children, but her body still remembered him. He grew into manhood, so much taller than her now, so much broader. But still Kaz. Her Kaz.
Her brilliant friend.
“I’ll take care of him,” he whispered into her hair. “I’ll bring him back home to you.”
She felt hot tears prickling the corners of her eyes.
“Bring yourself back,” she said. “Come back to me, Kaz. You and Jordie. I will pray for you both.”
He made her promise that she would take care of his Da before he left. She was insulted that he thought he needed to ask about it in the first place.
A low, mechanical whirring pierces; the ships’ engines kick-start. She’s standing on her very tiptoes now, eyes squinted and - yes, yes, here they are. They are up on the rigging, of course, her boys, Kaz right beside Jordie. Just small black figures against the backdrop of the blue sky, but she can see them. She can recognize them. And she knows they can see her as well.
She’s so happy that they are together. As long as they stay together, they will be fine, she’s sure of it. She can feel it in her heart. They will protect each other.
She pulls the scarf from her neck and waves it above her head; jumps up, the soles of her shoes landing hard on the wood of the crates. Jumps as high as she can.
Kaz - or is it Jordie? - lets one of his hands off the rigging and waves at her. The other brother follows, like a shadow.
Jordie, Kaz and Inej Rietveld.
We were children together, she thinks, salty breeze brushing her cheeks like a caress, drying her tears. When did we grow up? It happened so fast; I didn’t even notice it.
*
My dearest Inej,
I hope this letter reaches you without much delay. The post is hardly reliable here, but I will be writing as much as I can, and maybe at least part of my words will find their way to you.
We’ve been stationed at Crofton for a week now, just getting to know everyone. There is a Zemeni regiment with us as well - do you know they call us Kerch crows? Apparently they find Kerch language rough, like a crow’s caw. Kaz finds it very funny - he reminded me how you would always leave crumbs out on the windowsills for them -
*
Moje serce,
Thank you for your letter. Your Da sends his love and so does my whole family. Bibi Sofija knitted you three pairs of socks and my Mama is working on a sweater for you - told her you might not need it, in Novy Zem, but she cannot be deterred -
*
The airplanes start coming at night, like birds of prey circling in the sky.
More and more often: once a week, then twice a week, then every other night and then Inej learns how to fall asleep in the basement, her head leaned on Nina Zenikova’s shoulder as the bombs drop above their heads and set the buildings aflame, window glass and rubble scattered on the pavements.
Her chocolate manufacture has closed, of course. But the textile mill her Mama is working in converted to producing tents and parachutes and they are taking all women who have two hands and can hold a needle. Mama says Inej’s sewing is too good for this crude job and that she should be trained as a nurse. Her cousin Zahira has already enlisted and Inej made an enquiry but the recruitment centre does not allow married women to serve in the field.
Maybe it’s for the best. She thinks she could do a well enough job at the hospital - she is quick on her feet and diligent and, yes, good with a needle. But what if they brought her Jordie one day? Or Kaz? Or her cousin Grigori? Her uncle Ivo? Alfred, who lived two doors away from her family? What would she do then?
She wants to be brave, like her father told her to be. She tries her best. But it would kill her, she thinks, to see the men she loves in pain, dying from chemical burns with nothing for her to do but to wipe their brow. There are so many stories circulating the street, so much talk - they come back mutilated, it is said, passed from one ear to another in horrified whisper. Begging to be put down.
So she sits her ass down on a stool and sews parachutes. All day long. And then comes back home only to go down to the basement and fall asleep there. Jordie sold his skin for their little flat at the very edge of Zelver District, but got to live there for the full three months before leaving for the front and she’s barely even there between the work and the bombings.
She tries not to think about it too much. They would’ve drafted him anyway. All able-bodied men got the draft in the end, save for the essential labourers. Maybe Jordie could’ve escaped it, in his metalworks plant, valued by the foreman as he was, but Inej knows, deep in her heart, that Jordie would never have stayed behind, not even if she begged him to. Not when his friends and neighbours went.
Maybe if there were a child. If she were pregnant. Maybe then he wouldn't have left her.
She tries not to think about this as well.
If Jordie stayed, Kaz never would’ve enlisted on his own. She wonders how often their father thinks about it, alone now.
The letters come rarely, envelopes crumpled, opened and re-opened a dozen times by unfamiliar hands, and they are full of sweet lies. She still drinks in every word, every stroke of pen against the paper. He’s alive, that’s the most important thing. He’s alive and he’s unharmed, and his brother is with him. That’s all she really needs to know. Nobody ever says Rietveld when there are lists of fallen soldiers read out on the radio, and she receives no ominous knocks on the door, no terrible envelopes with a purple ribbon and my condolences, Mrs. So she reads Jordie’s letters, light, sweet, full of anecdotes from the camp and tales of strange Zemeni fauna, as if he was on a trip with his school year friends. She writes him back about the children who play football in the bunker and does not mention the bombs.
She writes to Kaz as well, even though he never responds. I’m scared, Kaz. And I feel stupid and selfish for being scared when I’m here and you’re there. But it’s all so scary. Do you remember how you used to hide in the coal basement with me? I wish we could hide there now.
She still cooks for Da Rietveld, every other day, and comes over to rub his poor back with herbal liquor and warming oils. He looks older and older, every time she sees him.
His cough is worse now and the flat is oftentimes cold due to recent coal rationing. She tries to get him to move in with her, says there is plenty of space - but he is his sons’ father and he refuses her pleas with an unflinching, mulish stubbornness.
“Kaz doesn’t write,” he grunts one time. “I should’ve expected that. He’s like a clam, that boy. Once he shuts, no power can pry him open. I could never get him to talk to me and now he’s so far away.”
And Inej, tired and careless, wrings a linen into a bowl and her mouth runs before she can stop it.
“He talked to me.”
Da Rietveld raises his head at that, some knowing look shining in his eyes that makes her thoughts scatter like a pack of scared mice.
“Ah, but you were always special to him, ja?”
Her collar feels tight around her throat. She’s about to let something out - what exactly, she’s not entirely sure - when Da clears his throat and lowers his eyes, releasing her from this strange spell.
“Anyways. Jordie says they are both well. Asked me to give you a kiss from him, dear girl.”
And so she leans down and lets him kiss her cheek, the beard he refuses to let her shave coarse against her skin. All awkwardness disappears, soap bubbles bursting without a trace.
Three times a week, Inej prays at the chapel where she and Jordie got married. She has a favorite bench, right underneath the altar of Sankta Marya of the Rock; the wood creaks and groans underneath her when she kneels down and laces her fingers together, pressing them to her chest.
Sankta Marya, she closes her eyes and sents a prayer into the heavens, Watch over them. Bring them back to me. My Jordie. Keep him under your eye, whenever he goes. Don’t let him do anything stupid. I offer up my sorrow, my fear at your feet. My Kaz. Watch over them.
*
The Southern Zemeni front is how Kaz imagines hell must look like.
Except the afterlife sort of hell doesn't exist; real hell is here, on the scorched, dry soil, under the white-hot sun that bleaches their uniform pale lavender. They are all grateful for it; their previous shade, dark like a bruise, made them excellent targets. Islies were taking them down like flies, one by one, with bullets and with napalm that set the dry bushes on fire for days, for weeks. The air smelled of smoke and burned-up carcasses of sheep and wild animals. It filled their lungs. Soaked into their clothes, and hair, and skin, caked them head-to-toe with the stench.
Now, those that survived the initial slaughter blend in a little better and they learned to hide better as well. They dig holes like moles and sleep in shifts through the days - those who can sleep, anyway.
And they march, march, one foot after another, they march, march, the sun beats down on them burning their faces and they march, guns digging into their shoulders, hot metal against their hands they march, march, for what Kaz does not know, does not care. And every day is more blisters, skin chafed raw by hard leather and sweat-stiff cotton, fat flies buzzing around them, drunk on the smell of blood. Their backpacks are heavy; the straps dig under their arms, bruise their lower backs. His head hurts, from the helmet and the sun. His feet hurt. His thighs hurt. His whole body is an aching, tired collection of shaking limbs and quivering muscle, and he puppeteers it more out of habit than out of any genuine desire to carry on. He marches, Jordie marches beside him, they march, day and night, they march, and they dig, they shoot, they march, one foot after another they march.
They march, they kill, they kill, they kill, and they march.
Jordie writes letters home and sleeps with the rare replies he receives pressed to his chest, meticulously folded and tucked into his breast pocket with a picture of Inej.
Kaz starts writing a thousand times.
My dear Imogen
Only to cross it out and write My dearest, Inej.
Only to cross it out and write Da, I’m scared.
He feeds all the letters to the fire.
He can hardly remember any of their faces anymore. He closes his eyes and all he can see is fire.
And they march, march, one foot after another, they march. There is no end. There is only the man in front of him and the man behind him and they all march forward.
*
One year passes, then another. The first Yule without Jordie, who loved the holidays more than anyone, sang carols the loudest, made the best gifts, and would pull up his sleeves and do the mountain of dishes after family dinners, an empty chair is pulled to the table to mark his absence. The next holiday season, there are a few more empty chairs, for family friends and neighbours, and bibi Roza, who died under the rubble of the University district hospital. Inej’s Mama does the dishes herself and sniffles quietly to herself, refusing anyone’s help.
Her aunties learn to cook from seemingly nothing and the radio broadcasts advise how to subsidize meat and eggs with potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes, how to make bread from turnips, but they all lose weight anyway. Ketterdam, the city that got fat on international trade, starts to starve. Da Rietveld gets pneumonia and Inej has to pawn off her engagement ring to pay for a doctor’s visit and drugs. Children no longer play football in the bunker; they all sit calmly now, with their big, haunted eyes wide open, flinching at every sound. The textile mills spit out millions of bandages to be shipped to all fronts, all women knit scarves for war efforts, and the Merchant Council declares wool and cotton rationing. Bibi Nessa gets the purple letter. Mrs Lotte gets the purple letter. Riza Pietrovna gets the purple letter. Her neighbour Nina gets the purple letter. Anika gets the purple letter. Mrs Verdeen gets the purple letter. Sofja gets –
Two and a half years since the Fjerdan army attacked the Southern Colonies, a bomb falls onto the chapel of Sankta Maradi and does not leave a single stone standing upon another. Inej walks through the rubble and collects colorful shards of stained glass into her pockets; for what exactly, she doesn’t know herself.
*
By the end of their second year of Novy Zem, Jordie makes Captain, a promotion that hardly matters anything in the grand scheme of things, since it most likely means that he will not receive permission for leave at home for the foreseeable future. He’s more needed at the front now than he has ever been.
He also holds no delusions about his skills and merits being somehow recognized. The previous Captain died of dysentery and there was an opening left. He was the only one in his company with an official officer’s training, back from when he enlisted before the war started. Other men liked him well enough and he was not power-hungry nor prone to conflicts. He fit the requirements and so he was picked, end of the story. It does feel uncomfortable being in a position of power over his friends - over his brother, most of all. But he bears it as gracefully as he can and thinks that it might come in handy, this promotion and the pay, after the war, when he finally comes back to Inej.
He wouldn’t necessarily celebrate it, except his whole company gets a weekend off at the recently liberated Shiftport and Jordie can hardly say no to a night at a tavern. It is enough that he refuses to be dragged through the brothels, to what some of the men take offence.
You think you are better than us, Rietveld? Someone barks to a murmur of a few other voices. What’s wrong with you, are you above whores somehow? Maybe you would prefer a pretty boy to fuck?
By his side, Kaz starts to straighten on his chair, but Jordie waves him off, their eyes meeting in an unspoken conversation. Easy
“Give lovely ladies of Shiftport a kiss from me, Bastian,” he says, good-natured and with a laugh. Keeps his voice light. “Without me there, you have a better pick. And for now, sit your ass down - the next two rounds are on me, anyone interested?”
When they finally stumble out of the tavern, hours later, Jordie and Kaz with their arms around each other’s shoulders, they are drunk enough to sing the dirty songs they learned on the streets of Rookery at the top of their lungs.
“I once knew a - rare maid,” Kaz hiccups and stumbles a bit, but then picks up the tune undeterred. “Sharp as a switchblade. Who had a knack for whiskey and – and-”
“Liked it quite frisky,” Jordie finishes the line. “She had a tail, that was all scale-”
“In hindsight, it was quite fishy.”
“I am not sure that’s how it went.”
“Ja, I reckon it didn’t. Why would she be a fish? Would you fuck - would you fuck a fish?”
“Only out of patriotic duty.”
They dissolve into a bout of laughter and almost stumble into a lamppost. Someone in a flat on the second floor in the townhouse on their left yells something in Zemeni and angrily shuts the shutters closed, which only makes them laugh harder.
Kaz’s dark eyes shine like two dark beetles. He points at a shop down the street, his eyebrows furrowing.
“Is that a tattoo shop?”
Jordie has to squint to see; the street lanterns are down, and the night is a dark one, new moon, a scant scatter of stars in the sky. He can barely make out the lettering above the red door.
“I think so?” he says. “Or it might say potatoes. I always mix these words up.”
Kaz throws his head back and laughs. Jordie looks at him and something warm fills up his inside, comfortable and familiar.
“Let’s check it out,” he proposes, and they continue stumbling forward on the uneven cobblestones.
It’s warm, with his brother by his side. He’s not lost, he’s not afraid. He’s not even all that homesick. To have a piece of home with them the way he does - there is no other soldier that lucky, he recons. He’s the luckiest one of them all. His girl and his father are waiting for him, safe from harm. His brother, his best friend, like his shadow, is here with him in this strange, foreign country.
He looks at him now and marvels to himself: We are the same height now. When did it happen?
The shop is small and, by some miracle, still opened. There is a Zemeni soldier inside, getting something done on his biceps - he tips his hat towards them when they barge in, butchering two different languages at the same time, their speech slurred with whiskey. They flop down on the worn-out bench and wonder aloud what they should get.
Jordie, feeling particularly wicked tonight, suggests Kaz a lovely Zemeni lady with some lovely attributes as a memento of his time abroad (especially as a memento of a certain pretty postmistress) in response to what he is promptly whacked in his ear.
“What? She is making eyes at you whenever you are on a supply run! Dang, maybe you should write a letter sometime so it would take you more time to buy stamps. Or maybe have her lick your stamps -”
“Fuck off, will you?”
Jordie smiles. He has his stare on the tattoo projects hung up on the wall, but he watches his little brother in the corner of his eye. He’s unshaven; burned skin is peeling off the bridge of his nose. All the soldiers shave their hair regularly to prevent lice, but Kaz’s grows back quickly, dark and unruly, falling onto his brow constantly and annoying him.
“If she cures you of your grizzliness, you have my blessings to marry.”
Kaz rolls his eyes. It makes him look five years younger in an eyeblink.
“You are so dull now. Who says anything about marriage? Can’t I just walk her home after her shift?” he snickers, one eyebrow raised suggestively, and Jordie sighs.
“The youth nowadays,” he does his best imitation of their old caretaker’s, Miss Hanneke’s, grumbling. “All values thrown out of the window. All decency forgotten. You could buy her a dinner first, at least -”
The Zemeni soldier leaves with a bandage around his arm and Kaz sits down on the tattooing bench first, pulling up his sleeve. The tattooist gestures towards the board of patterns but Kaz shakes his head; he meets Jordie’s stare and grins, wicked and sharp.
“How do you call us, Kerch soldiers?” he says to the man in his messed-up Zemeni. “Crows? Give me a couple of crows - a pair. Two. Two crows. What’ya think about it, Jordie?”
Not a bad idea, all things considered. He rather likes it - it reminds him of the crows nesting in the Rookery, their sharp cawing, dark beaks and intelligent eyes. Inej has always been fond of them. She used to scatter crumbs and sunflower seeds for them.
“Make it three. A little murder.” He says and Kaz’s face lights up, like he was a little boy given a pack of cards for Nachtspel again.
Their Da was so mad at Jordie for this gift. He said that cards are immortal - definitely not something for Jordie’s baby brother to play with. But Jordie could see Kaz’s joy then and he can see it now. And he could never resist it when Kaz asked him for something - never, in his entire life.
Only once has he made his brother unhappy, cut him right to the bone; he knows that he will have to carry this knowledge until the day he dies.
*
It’s early evening, velvety and soft, quiet. Inej hums under her breath while rolling the dough for the dumplings; she thinks that she might manage to bring them for Da Rietveld before the curfew. He can have them for breakfast tomorrow.
She’s up to her elbows in flour, a rolling pin moving smoothly under her hands. A woman speaks on the radio, in a measured, somber voice that has been Inej’s constant companion all these years. She barely pays any attention to it, really.
With a narrow glass, she carves out round pieces of the dough. She has the filling all ready in a bowl and she reaches for it now - just a spoonful of cottage cheese, onion and potatoes into each dumpling, like great-aunt Reba taught her. She used to make them with meat, before war.
She must bring the recipe to Linda at the factory. She promised to do it last week, she thinks.
The woman on the radio clears her throat and begins rattling out names and ranks, one by one, like a machine gun firing.
The filling on the very middle of the circle. Then fold the circle in half. Press the edges together and crinkle them in a little frill. Inej’s hands move automatically. It’s so good that there hasn’t been a bombing alarm yet, tonight. Thanks Saints. One, two, three, four, five, six dumplings -
-Rietveld. Lieutenant Kazimir Rietveld. Lieutenant Anders -
Inej freezes half-motion, her hand outstretched above the table. Slowly, she looks towards the radio but the woman keeps on speaking, unfamiliar names, unfamiliar men. She has moved on to T. Inej tries to breathe, but something presses on her chest, steals air from her lungs.
She must’ve misheard. Yes, that’s what happened. She has misheard. She must’ve.
Damn her for not paying attention. Now her ears are playing tricks on her.
She places the dumpling on the board, carefully, not to disturb the shape. Everyone always compliments her little frills - oh, she dropped the spoon. Silly her. Her hands are shaking. Why is she shaking? She can hear her teeth rattling, but she cannot stop it.
She wraps her arms around herself, tries to catch her breath.
You did not get any letter, did you? You have misheard. You goose.
Her family listens to the radio as well. They will know. She will just - just to make sure. She will ask them if they heard any familiar names and they will say no, of course, they will say no. So she’ll check with them and go to bed easy, her heart light. Because her boys promised they would come back to her. Her husband promised.
Blindly, she stumbles out of the flat and down the stairs. Did she close the front door? Ah, hang it, it doesn’t matter; it’s not a long walk, just a few blocks. She keeps her hands tucked underneath her armpits but they are still shaking, she’s shaking whole, a leaf on a wind. Her legs tangle together and she almost drops face-first into the gutter. Stupid. It’s not even cold. It’s spring, a pretty spring weather, she doesn’t even need a coat.
Her teeth keep rattling, white noise whistling a high note in her ears.
-Rietveld. Lieutenant Kazimir Rietveld. But these are not uncommon names. Every second Kerch man from the countryside is named Rietveld. There is a Rietveld working in Van Eck’s shipyard and he is not a relative of theirs at all.
She crosses the inner courtyard, under the clothes lines. Didn’t her Mama once walk them? For her birthday? She cannot remember; maybe she has dreamt it. She just remembers dancing, Jordie. Dancing with Jordie. His handsome face and the freckles on the bridge of his nose.
She pushes the door open with her shoulder and walks inside the building, climbing the stairs one by one. They used to race, she and Kaz, over and over again, from the attic to the basement and back up, till the neighbours complained to her parents and Kaz got a spanking. Her Papa said idle hands like mischief and had her get poultry from the butcher’s with bibi Varvara and then pluck it clean of feathers, which she hated violently. How old were they then? Seven? Eight? He didn’t have his front teeth. He would spit from his desk at the very back of the classroom all the way to the front row where Dijk Verker sat, the one who called her names and said she must be so brown cause she doesn’t wash herself -
-Rietveld. Lieutenant Kazimir Rietveld-
There is some commotion behind the door of her family’s flat. Some loud wailing, raised voices. Maybe someone got injured. Someone else got the purple letter. Cousin Ravi is fighting in Ravka, that might be it. That must be it.
Her Mama opens the door right after the first knock and her eyes are red, something horrible on her face. Her wrinkles look carved into her skin, as if someone cut her with a knife. She stretches her arms out towards Inej but she shakes her head, takes a step backwards.
“No,” Inej says, “No, Mama, flour. You’ll get dirty.”
She raises her hands up to show her. Her fingers are caked in dried-up dough and some got even on her rolled-up sleeves. She has left her wedding ring by the board.
“Inej,” her mother says, infinitely soft. The flat gets quiet as a grave. “Moje kochanie. Moje serce, I’m so sorry.”
Her throat is closing. Her tongue is thick and clumsy in her mouth, just a stiff piece of meat she cannot get moving.
“No.” Inej shakes her head again. “No, what are you sorry for?”
Something bubbles in her chest. She thinks it might be laughter.
The door on the other end of the corridor opens and someone says my condolences, Inej.
Bib Zara is standing beside her mother now, crying. And Yara is crying as well, little Sara on her hip.
“No,” Inej hunches over; covers her face with her hands to not see their faces.
Her legs give up but she doesn’t fall - someone grabs her, warm and familiar. Presses her head against a soft chest and caresses her as if she was a child again.
“No. No, it’s not happening, no, I have misheard it - I must have misheard it, haven’t I, Mama? You didn’t hear anything. You couldn’t have heard anything, because - because -”
She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She cannot hear herself, just this voice on the radio, somber and measured, rattling out the names like a machine gun. She can hear it so clearly now, as if the woman was standing beside her and reciting into her ear.
Captain Jordan Rietveld. Lieutenant Kazimir Rietveld.
Jordie! She called in the harbour. Kaz! Goodbye, goodbye!