ANATHEMA—THÁNA—ATHAMÉ

      Well, there was the burial. 
Townspeople were at bay — white of face, of clasped hands, black of mourning clothes; magpies that coveted the ceremony with swollen, red eyes. Their voices, too, were ravenlike: low, hoarse, croaky with a pain that bulged in their throat.

Just far enough from the ceremony as to not be included, but involving themselves nonetheless, two girls observed the rite. Burakh recognized one — dull and bleary, pale and thin in her long blue dress and too-long coat; that’s the cemetery keeper’s daughter, ghostly Grace. Burakh looked around, and saw neither her mom or dad, and it struck him that she might be the only one left. His heart sank with profound sympathy — even more as she brought her eyes on him, and they were clear and wide, her gaze wan, as if bleached

      “It’s you,” she spoke, and her voice matched her lotoks in its eidolic, fraying tone. “You’ve come back. You’ve brought people to me, and you’ve shown yourself.”

Burakh opened his mouth to reply when the other girl, eyes on the burial, spoke. She wore earth tones and dirt stains like one fed the other, unkempt brown hair peeking from her woolen hat.

      “Why is the earth so unkind to him? She yielded to me when I crawled out…”

Burakh frowned. 

      “Oh, you did?”
      “I did.” She frowned back, and her nose crinkled just above the bump on its ridge. “Didn’t you?”
      “No. I came by train. What are you even for? Did you know my father?”
      “I’m here as a witness,” the stranger girl declared. A hint of pride tinted her juvenile voice, but she sounded somber and solemn. “Someone has to, so they can recognize his face and usher him into heaven. So, that is your father?”
      “He’s not going to heaven, missy,” Burakh scoffed. (Still, the words scraped his throat with a bubbling, bitter sorrow.) “That’s not what our kind believes in. He’s… going back to the earth. He’s going in the hole you left when you crawled out.” He exhaled longly. It came out faltering and shaky. “And yes. That is my father.”
      “I heard he was killed by his own son,” the girl said, and her voice changed—her voice shifted shape. It grew thorns. They pricked Burakh as her eyes raked his face. “If you’re the son, ah, that means… we have found his murderer. We should turn you in.”
      “I didn’t kill him,” Burakh said through gritted teeth.

He had to grind his molars against each other so as to not bark, as to not growl at her with unwavering anger.

      “Look me in the eyes. You won’t usher me into heaven, but witness me well. This is not the face of a murderer.”
      “How can you know?"
      “I would, wouldn’t I? I would know if I had turned my blade on my own father,” Burakh scoffed.
      “Some people’s souls can separate from their bodies,” the girl said assertively, but with great calm. “Like two yolks from a same egg. Some people in this town… can do it. Yes. I can feel it.”
      “That’s very nice,” Burakh caustically replied. “Well, I can’t. Can you?”
      “I don’t know. I hope I can. I hope I can be many… be multiple. I hope I can fragment myself in loving shards so everyone who needs a kind touch can have a piece…”
      “How sweet,” Burakh said flatly. The girl’s emphatic, rising voice made him start to wonder what her deal was.
      “You’d need a kind touch,” she continued, “but I’m scared you’ll cut my hand off.”
      “Go do your proselytizing somewhere else, will you? Or I just might.”
      “Do not bicker,” interrupted Grace, voice flat and thin. “Do not hurt her,” she ordered Burakh.
      “Do you know her?” he asked.
      “I have seen her escape the dark damp soil. Oh, she was confused and disoriented. Be nice to Clara, will you? Look how dirty her skinny legs are… Oh, how the soles of her boots threaten to come undone.”

Burakh threw another glance up and down the visitor. 

      “I am not disoriented anymore. Lost, maybe. But I can slowly draw the shapes of the magnetic poles of this town… Yes… Everything converges there and then.”
      “That’s nice, girls. Well, I’m going to converge somewhere that is not as dramatic. Might go get a drink.” 

He could use liquor to drown the kindling of grief that was just catching its first flames

      “When this is all over, I might. Grace, will you want something?”
      “No, thank you. I have been brought bread already."
      “Alright.”
      “Will you go to the pub after this?”
      “... We have a pub, now?”

She nodded. 

      “Yes… Oh, right. You had already left when the owner came into town. Oh, it’s a place of sin and debauchery. Men wear knives on their hip like nothing but casual coin pouches. Children feel comfortable enough to lie to the bartender’s face to be given liquor, and they are. The air is unhealthy with smoke.”
      “Can’t be worse than out there. The pollen is making my head hurt…”
      “I don’t feel anything,” interrupted Clara.
      “Yeah, well, I had a hunch you’d be weird.”

At that, and as a slow, somber song grew from the gathered Herb Brides’ tight-lipped mouths, Grace waved him off, and gently, wearily directed him back to the rite. She had her job to do, and he had his.
He offered Grace a tilt of the head as a thank for her time, and threw a glance at that Clara, who threw it right back.

      There was the—the… tensile distress that lingered and soared over the ceremony like a bird of prey.  Burakh came forward, and the waiting, waking Kin parted to let him through. Herb Brides, standing in a semi-circle before the open grave, haloed the buried Burakh father — no, the very much unburied Burakh father. 
Laid there open the earth like a ravenous, yet empty, mouth; teeth of clods and clumps of clay lined its trenched lips — the father laid next to it like he had washed ashore. 

      “What is this about?” Burakh asked a woman of the attendance.
      “Unfinished business,” muttered a woman, her arms crossed at her chest like she wanted to soften a blow. 
      “What kind?”
      “Go and look,” she replied. 

And the grave seemed to say: come and see.
And Burakh did. 

      Burakh was drained. The grave was filled. The earth seemed to be coursed through by a hiccup. 

Come forth, with, within, witness who you bury, croak the crows, the birds of prey, the cold omens.
Come forth, with, within, witness who you bury, scatters in a whisper the soundless word of the attendance.
Come forth, with, within, witness who you bury, speaks in the wind a stranger, a foreign sister, a strangely amiable specter, red and earthy for one — her hands are clasped in front of her stomach, her silhouette is covered in rags as if she had climbed out of the very dirt they were lowering the father in. 
Come forth, with, within, witness who you bury.
Well, it’s dad. 
Burakh has never felt this much like a kid — not even, his heart stings, when he was a child.
The threshold, the sill, the pale linen — all close, become curtained, then fantoms, then fade. The earth takes her due. Burakh takes the rest.  
(He steals, as the weight creeps up on his back, the notice of his father’s dry skin, the clay-filled hollows under his nails.)

Oh, how he wishes he could go drink. How he wishes he could go get a drink. 

He walks to the stranger’s, the foreign sister’s, house — just like she asked him to. He comes in bent and crooked by sorrow; he leaves crooked and bent. What’s he to do with this? What’s he to do with that? He has to care for more names on top of his name — oh, worse, he has to care for the people beneath them (and that stands for his, too).
(Well, the people, and… Whatever is this. Whatever this could be. Udurgh. It sounded familiar on the tongue like any other word he had once spoken and forgotten. He looked at the sigil intently and the sigil didn’t offer a glance back.)

      Burakh feels strung along—because he is, he is growing mad of it, with it, because of it. Who wishes to bury the son who has buried the father who has buried the rest, rest who has buried the Town, who has buried the… Burakh wants to go home. He has to go home, he’s been told something is here for him. He’s strung along, house to house to house like a fish on a hook. 
The kids are strewn across the town like wind-swept leaves — uncatchable and fast just like them.
Burakh gets some repose once: by Olgimskaya’s room, an… engineer of sorts is crushing the last ashes of her cigarette. “How are the roads treating you?” she asks, among other things she has said. “Can’t complain about the roads,” Burakh replies, “but the people walking them are starting to get on my nerves.”
She wishes him luck. She says she doesn’t have anything else to offer.
He finally gets that key — that goddamned key. He has to hold back from kissing it, honestly.

      (There was then the house.)

Burakh knew of dead silence — but Death’s Silence… that was different. That was lukewarm, viscid like molasses, airy — no, draught-like, breathing down his neck. It counted his steps. He counted his breaths.
He found… soot, or ashes, or—could even be ground pigment. As he went to touch it, his hand burned — a warning, a pull. So, he didn’t. He walked through the home and heard it whisper around him. (He had started to get accustomed to murmurs in his wake. As long as they didn’t start throwing punches…)
The room was red — closer to beetroot than blood, rash than ruby; it was growing. It grew when he walked in like a bear rising on its hind legs, it showed teeth. Burakh broke a seal open — fitting! — shoved everything he could in his pockets and booked it for the front door.
Leaning against it, his heart was pounding in his chest, and something was pounding on the walls — like so many hands reaching for his shoulders, his back, like they wanted to climb him, to climb inside of him to split him open. He stumbled forward, as if pushed, stunned — and directly into the statuary silhouette that anchored itself in his path like a standing stone.
He didn’t apologize (that was his fucking home, he had every right to be here), and neither did the stranger (what’s this guy’s excuse?)

      “What are you doing here?”
      “I could ask you the same.”
      “But you won’t.

Burakh’s eye twitched. The stranger’s voice was placid, almost flat; still it bore an edge of conceit that Burakh felt himself bump into. Looking down — because the stranger was small, small enough that Burakh thought he could crouch down if it came to having to stand his ground; he was taller than Lara by a palm, if that — Burakh found two prying basalt eyes, scratching at the surface of his face inquisitively. They were crowned by thick, straight brows, the meeting of which in the middle rose, fell, and curved with his increasingly impatient look.

      “Well?”
      “This is my house.” Burakh paused there. He didn’t lie — that didn’t feel quite truthful still. “My father’s house. I have come to retrieve… things of mine.”

The stranger pulled a folded paper from one of the deep pockets of his coat — the sleeves and flanks of which were a garish silver snake-skin. Has he prepared a speech? Burakh could see, by transparency, the sparse words on the page. The prying, black-head pins of his eyes looked him up and down, and Burakh was growing increasingly irritated at the stranger’s impeding, indiscreet stare. Trying to avoid it, his eyes caught themselves on the pin on his ascot: a snake-head silver swirl with red dots for eyes. Come on, now…

      “Burakh, is it?”
      “The one and only.” The only one left.
     “My name is Daniil Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine.” He didn’t offer Burakh a hand to shake, he noticed. (He also noticed his black gloves — is that the Kains’ guest…? They’ve gotten worse tastes in company over the years.) Instead, he hitched his head up and back imperceptibly, mouth pulled in a thin, dimples-flanked line, and his eyebrows rose — a haughty, patronizing stance that ran through him as he squared his shoulders, and Burakh grew just one notch irater. “I have been delegated by the ruling families of this town to conduct sanitary inspections at my own professional discretion, and your house — your father’s house — is to be closed and quarantined.”
      “What’s wrong with it?”
      “I have my mounting suspicions… which you’ll allow me to keep for myself, of course, until the scientific method has borne her fruits, so I can make a simplified synthesis of my findings.”
      “I don’t need things dumbed down. I’m a surgeon.”

Should have kept his mouth shut. The stranger — the Bachelor, with his asymmetric, mismatched, ridiculous coat — eyed him down, up, down again. His upper lip twitched, barely a nauseated hint at the mud and blood on his boots.

       “What were your graduating honors? Any recommendations from the physicians you have trained under during your internships? Name of your college?

Oh, you prying, pretentious weirdo, what’s with the sneer?

      “Capital’s Grand Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. No internships, but I have the warmest recommendations from three captains and a lieutenant of the southwestern front, if you care,” Burakh gibed.

The Bachelor’s sneer didn’t falter or fall, but Burakh saw how his brows flattened from a prideful arch into a somber wave. Sensitive subject? … A fellow field medic? Burakh dared to let himself think, but not too much — this guy looked way too proper on his person to have raked guts from cots under medical tents.

      “I am sorry for your loss,” the Bachelor said, and Burakh flinched again; this time at the… unforeseen genuineness he thought he could have heard in his voice.

Burakh wasn’t sure which loss he was sorry for — of his father? Of his university years? Of his house? — but he didn’t have the time to dwell on it: the Bachelor had walked to the door, circumventing him like a twisting breeze, and had taped off the entrance from hinges to handle, stamping the wood of a seal and a folded paper that, swaying in the wind like a white flag, read in bold “SANITATION ORDER”, and a bunch of fine print that Burakh wasn’t going to bother with. Tape—seal—paper; the entryway looked like a crime scene.

      “They say my father was murdered in this house,” Burakh caught the Bachelor as he made his way down the stairs. He brought his basalt, heavy-lidded eyes on him like he was inconvenienced, uninterested, almost. “Know something about it?”

There was a hesitation — which Burakh greatly, greatly disliked. The stranger was hiding something from him.

      “… I do.” Burakh kept an insistent gaze on him. “And I do have my… as I’ve said, mounting suspicions. ”

His stare raked up and down Burakh again, intrusive, forward, well-boring, trying to scrape the surface of him — Burakh felt anger brew in the back of his throat, where grief and sorrow already poisoned his mouth and all the words swimming inside of it. Was he suspecting him? Him too?

      “Not towards you,” the Bachelor added plainly, evidently.
      “Oh,” snickered Burakh — somehow both mad he could be suspected, and madder that someone would think him too weak to kill. (Rough homecoming, eh? It just felt like Burakh needed to be angry at something, anything — angry so grief didn’t eat him whole), “you seem very sure of yourself.”
      “Of course. You’d have to be a fool or an idiot to believe you could have done it,” the Bachelor replied — plainly, evidently — and Burakh breathed out short, sharp puffs through his nose: a laugh he was trying to contain. (On one hand, that was true; on the other, Rubin believed it, and far from Burakh to wish to call him an idiot. Well, not too far. He did want to, a bit.) “After all, your father was dead before your arrival, and a murderer fleeing the scene of his crime would have jumped on a departing train... not hopped off an arriving one.”

Burakh stared at him blankly, relieved, a little; drained as the events slowly dawned on him; unnerved as he remembered Rubin, with his belief of fools and idiots, still wanting his head for a crime he didn’t commit. The Bachelor’s lips pulled in an apologetic, thin pout; Burakh didn’t quite know what to make of it.

      “Burakh, if you think of yourself as any good in your surgical trade, come see me. I am staying at the Stillwater, by the Kains’. If my suspicions are correct, I’ll need your hands for my cause.”
      “Do you expect me to work for you?”

Shouldn’t have asked that. The Bachelor raised his eyebrows, shook his head imperceptibly and blinked, as if Burakh had told him the dumbest thing he had ever heard in his life.

      “I do,” he said, the tone in his voice indicating it was, to him, obvious. “I sure hope you will, for your sake.”
      “Thing is, I’m going to be kind of busy these days,” Burakh tittered. “Y’know, with my father murdered and all.”
      “I do know. Find your footing quickly, reflect and judge — think, Burakh, find, and maybe you’ll understand why I might need you on my team.”

Couldn’t be more cryptic if you wanted, huh? What’s with you?

The Bachelor didn’t answer — because he didn’t hear, because Burakh didn’t speak. He sent himself down the few stairs; as his coat flew, Burakh thought he caught a glimpse of the shape of his belt — a snake, again. “Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a motif”, Burakh thought. Then, more aptly: "Okay, weirdo."
His silhouette thinned and slithered through the dense autumn air and into the streets. Burakh watched him leave with a powerful quirk of disdain on his mouth. That city-slicker will not last a day here with these shoes.
He closed the thought on that. Others came: sorrowful, somber, heavy. They clung to him — like that ridiculous coat clung to that other guy’s prideful shoulders. Burakh couldn’t shrug them off. He weighed the key, the crumpled papers, the herbs still wet and alive… the names, the weight itself, all in his palms. He made sure the door was closed, held the tape and the seal. He offered a bow of his head — that’s all he had.

      He had to meet all of the children on his list; he had to, and… he had to decipher the sigil. Udurgh — it looked like a cradle, overseen by a branch of snaking paths, and a small anchor on its left. He had to go to the Stillwater. (Burakh sneered. Bet. He’d make him wait.)

He had to get a clue on where would lead him to the key he had torn from the specters now lingering in his hollow house. (He got the clue.)

He—well, on this, the Bachelor had been right: he had to get to Rubin, because he was a fool and an idiot for believing Burakh could have done this. He shoved his hands in his pockets and trotted to Rubin’s apartment — if he couldn’t find him there, he would wait. He preferred that to running into him in the streets; he wasn’t sure Stanislav wouldn’t try to gore him like a bull. Inside, at least, he would be able to… hide under a table, or something.
The web of the town tightened around him as he made his way there. He tried to avoid them, he did — pursuers cornered him, and the first blade thrown was not his. Neither was the second or third — but the fourth was. 
He crawled out of the pile of entwined limbs covered in blood — his own, and not.

_____________

      The first thing Burakh noticed was that Rubin’s head was shaved. The second, that his eyes were murderous. The brown of them tried to pin Burakh to the wall like a knife. (This didn’t count as third, because Burakh didn’t see her: Lara was here; she had tucked herself in a corner, not out of fear, but out of desire to see if they could talk it out.)

      “You shaved your head,” Burakh said, flatly, the shock still not settling in. 

Rubin had had long hair — a dense, dark cascade on his shoulders that he often tied in a ponytail. Lara once had a habit of braiding it when they hung out; Burakh would have loved to try, but he didn’t know how. Now, his head bore a sparse stubble; a small scar on his forehead, and a long, straight one at the back of his neck. 

      “You killed your father,” Rubin replied.

He was shaking with unabashed rage. He lunged at Burakh — and Lara jumped, screaming at him to stop, to get between them. Rubin staggered back, as if afraid he’d have crushed her. 
Burakh left the building infuriated, exasperated. Now he had gone and fucked it up. Now THEY had gone and fucked it up! Stanislav’s skull was so damn thick he would survive a bullet to it. 
Burakh pestered himself at the thought — no bullet, no bullet, Jesus Christ, you’re sick. He was unbelievably pissed at Stanislav, and Stanislav was unbelievably pissed at him, but he thought he could hammer some sense into him. He prayed he could hammer some sense into him. Rubin had been more of a brother to him than anyone else the earth had put in his life.
Well, the earth and the rest. 
He wasn’t too keen on reliving Cain and Abel’s plight. 
Burakh was angry, but more than that, he was so fucking sad. 

He lingered in the streets for a while, scraping gazes less and less aggressive as he kept his head low, and bartered. 
He crouched out of sight and tended to his wounds — nothing major, nothing lethal, everything irritating enough to make him want to go back to the men he left for dead and kick them in the ribs for good measure. But he wasn’t going to do that. (He took a deep breath.) He wasn’t going to do that.

He ran his eyes down the papers he had been given by the rags-wearing soul, had found in his bloody, restless house. Blood — black — brown. Water, fire, distill. It almost reassured him to see the formulas be this straightforward — something, at least, which was . (Seeing his father’s writing made his heart ache. He folded the papers back and stuffed them in his pockets.)
The light had dimmed. The air had thickened with the warm evening wind. 
Fine, he’d go to the Stillwater. (He gritted his teeth.) He’d go.

_____________

      What greeted him was a woman’s scream. He flinched too, and hit his elbow in the doorway. 

      “Oh you butcher, why must you come here!”

Burakh took a step to the side, peeked behind a wooden room divider, and saw her — clad of golds, ocres and ivories, who he guessed was the Bachelor’s hostess had curled up on a bed tucked in a corner. She was panting heavily, wide and terrified hazel eyes on him. 

      “No need for that, miss,” Burakh tried to temper. “The Bachelor has asked me to come.”

She squinted. 

      “No, he didn’t.”
      Burakh squinted back. “What the hell do you mean? He did. I would know this.”
      “He is not here. He couldn’t have told you to come,” she lied.

The floor upstairs creaked. Pace-pace-pace. The wood sighed and heaved.

      “Lying girl,” Burakh said. “I had thought a forked tongue would be your tenant’s thing.”
      “You reek of blood. He will find it distasteful.”
      “If he is truly a Bachelor of medicine, he has dealt with it before. If he hasn’t, he’ll have to get used to it.”

He had quite understood it was the lady of the house who found the stench of it disagreeable. Tough luck! The whole town reeked of it — but maybe she didn’t leave the house too often. She did seem like the homebody type.

Burakh scaled the stairs, and Dankovsky was immediately in his way. 
The upstairs was a big circular room, a side of which was bitten off by a long, tall bookcase that seemed to stretch from the door to the next wall. Immediately by the door, a divider; it was of dark wood and crimson tapestry. As Burakh walked in, he spotted the bed behind the screen, unmade; and at its end, in a hollow between the shelves and the wall, a small door. The floorboards had been laid in patterns. Luxurious rugs had been thrown on the planks with care. The wallpaper was a beige coating upon which shadows seemed to linger. A desk, across the room from the bed, bore a pile of books, neatly placed papers, tools, and a leather handbag. It overlooked the main Atrium street through a round window. 

      “Burakh. I heard you come in.”
      “Did you, or did you hear the girl downstairs scream like she’d seen a ghost.”

The Bachelor let out a sigh — he meant the latter, regretfully. 

      “Wipe that frown off your face. I know you're not pleased to see me, but I’ll ask you to at least not let it show too much.”
      “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not frowning."

(Burakh was very much frowning.)

      “Listen, I am sorry this is how you were greeted. Your… reputation precedes you. I will talk to miss Yan—to Eva about you.”
      “Oh, pray tell,” Burakh sneered, “what will you say to her?”

At the disdain in his voice, Dankovsky’s eyes pinned themselves to his face with a perplexed, analytical squint.

      “You think I dislike you.”

He had said it so flatly that Burakh found himself disarmed. The even tone was more bewildering than any of his contemptuous, snobbish gazes and manners. It hid — or maybe even lacked — intents to mock, judge or assess. 
Finding composure, Burakh pouted — he felt like he did. (Or maybe he hoped he did, so he had a reason to reciprocate the feeling)

      “I don’t, Burakh,” Dankovsky said intently, and Burakh shuffled under the intensity of his gaze. “I have reasons to believe we will find ourselves to be inseparable from one another. As things shape themselves, I find myself haunted by the lingering thought that I will need you to be my fingertips in the hollows of this town I cannot reach.”
      “... A bit blunt, aren’t you, Bachelor?”
      “I will not hold my tongue. Do not let… the lady downstairs discourage you. I will talk to her about you. I have already talked to your colleague. He has accepted to aid me — and in doing so, he came to realize he had… gotten the wrong idea about you.”
      “You have…? He has? He did?”
      “Yes to all.”
      “How come? When?”
      “Earlier today — he seemed to have been just out of a fight with you. Furious. Hurt.” Burakh flinched and swallowed thickly. “But he listened to me. He should, hopefully, stop trying to kill you any chance he gets, and when I am done explaining the situation to miss Yan, the word should spread quickly that you had nothing to do with your father’s untimely death.”
      “How have you managed to convince Sta—Rubin? How have you found out?”
      “As I told you, I had… a suspicion.” His dark eyes thinned into slits. “And with Rubin’s help, I think I’ve managed to truly pinpoint it.”

Burakh noted how he said he had managed. Come on, come on, talk, you fop.

      “We have sustained suspicions, based on circumstantial, but solid evidence, that your father died of an infectious disease.”

First slap. 

      “The doyen Kain, Simon, succumbed to it too — hours before I came to town. The people who are after you for patricide have, and will continue to pile his death on your back well, until the news of the sickness spreads into town.”

Second, third slap. Burakh didn’t move. Dankovsky fell silent, and grimaced. 

      “... And I am afraid the disease itself will spread faster than the word of your innocence.”

Burakh eventually caught his breath. He heaved, then asked: 

      “Do we know what it is?”
      “No. Not yet. As my aid, Rubin has accepted to do tests on any and all infected organs and organisms he can find. He is terrified, though.” He shook his head. “He speaks of a sudden outbreak five years ago — do you know of this?”
      “I do not. I was away.”
      “He speaks of a wicked illness that tore through the eastmost part of town. A wildfire of a disease that swept through town — and that your father only managed to contain through forced quarantine of the Crude Sprawl.”

Burakh stared at him. The thin smirk had shed from his face. 

      “Many, many people died.” the Bachelor said. His voice was unspeakably bleak.
      Burakh withstood the grim look on his face. “... Who knows about this?”
      “Myself. You, now. Rubin. I have discussed this with the Kains, Saburov, the OIgimskys…” He grimaced. “To various… levels of success.”
      “How can they manage to work with you?”
      “... I’m affable,” the Bachelor said. There was a piqued hint in his voice, and Burakh would have been lying if he said he wasn’t looking for a reaction. He held back a barking laugh and a crunched noise came through his nose (it wasn’t even that funny, Burakh just wanted to be loud — and pinch at the Bachelor's prim and proper facade as retribution for his mocking, arrogant glances earlier). “I’m amiable,” the Bachelor added, voice rising. “I know how to compromise and to talk to people.”

Burakh curled his mouth in a restrained smirk-grimace — on purpose, exaggeratedly. Dankovsky’s eyes hardened, and Burakh found he wasn’t kidding. 

      “I’m your best chance at finding mercy in their eyes, Burakh. Don’t throw my offer away.”

Burakh fell silent, and his face flat. 

      “... Alright,” he spoke. “What is… the plan?”

Somberness shed off Dankovsky like a porcelain shard hit the ground, and he started pacing emphatically.       

      “If your colleague’s accounts of the illness are anything close to the truth, we will need anything we can get our hands on — serums, pills, antibiotics, painkillers. Burakh, tell me — have you come into your father’s inheritance?”
      “I have.”
      “Has he bequeathed you…anything that could help us?

Burakh hesitated. 
Had he?
His hand buried itself in his pocket. When it grazed the rough paper, he had never been less sure he wanted to show anything to the Bachelor. 
Ah, fuck it. He’d been pretentious, then complaisant, then pretentious again; Burakh was willing to throw the coin and see on what it’d land. He pulled out the papers.  
Dankovsky looked at them with a clueless look on his face — it grew stumped as he realized what he was being shown.

      “... Herbal recipes?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
      “Yes,” Burakh replied. “Those were… my father’s trade.”

The Bachelor's mouth pinched — the corner of his smirk turned down, and his lips thinned as they were pulled inward.  

      “... Well,” he eventually said, “better… than nothing, surely.”

His eyes followed line after line again. The frown on him only deepened. Should’ve kept those to my damn self—alright, no, no. The Bachelor had said they would need all they could get.

      “You’ll excuse me, Burakh,” (He didn’t sound apologetic one bit.) “but this doesn’t seem esoteric to me, but rather… looks like unscientific folk tales. Fantastical herbalism.” He pouted, as if in thoughts. “In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t turn to them as my first choice, obviously, considering how… inconclusive they seemed to me.”
      “... But?”
      “But this is not, Burakh, normal circumstances.” His voice had fallen, solemn. “I do not know the extent of the damage the illness can cause, but… if I am to believe your colleague, and his recollection of the last outbreak… We have reasons to be worried. Very, very worried.”

He glanced over the loose pages again. Burakh saw how his brow furrowed and strained with the effort he put into attempting to decipher the foreign sigils. 

      “Burakh, would you brew some for me?”
      Burakh blinked twice, perplexed. “What for? Why would I do that for you? You just said it was unscientific folk tales.”
      “I didn’t, Burakh, I said it looked like unscientific folk tales.”
      “Right. Huge difference, khonzohon,” Burakh sneered. 
      “Indeed,” the Bachelor retorted, refusing to entertain either of his sarcasm and aggression. “I’m glad we agree, Burakh.”

Burakh pinched his lips in turn. It took a lot from him not to try to think of other poetic names to call him while he hadn’t picked up on the language.

      “So, will you?” the Bachelor insisted. “I would like, at the very least, to study them. Bring me… let’s say three. One to observe the general structure of, one to observe the action of in infected tissue, organ or blood — God, we’ll have to retrieve some… Yes, we’ll have to retrieve some too… Well, one thing at the time — and a third one for control.”
      “I better be paid for this,” Burakh scoffed. “Didn't have the best welcome wagon, and I’d like to recoup my losses.”
      “I don’t have much money, or I would of course repay you, Burakh,” the Bachelor sighed — and Burakh flinched at his heartfeltness. (Well… Now he felt a little bad for having insulted him. Just… a little, though. He was still a… grating individual.) “I’ll do my best to talk you up to the Kains and Saburov. I’ll mention your good deeds to the lady of the house, too; and the news that you are helping me should spread fast and hopefully clear your name soon enough.”

Burakh was going to open his mouth to speak, to say he had never (well, not yet ) agreed to being his aide — but the Bachelor cut him short: 

      “Besides, this attic will stay open to you. You have my permission to tell my host that you are expected. In the event that you would need a microscope, or any other material I might have in my possession, this (he pointed at the open back on the desk, at the sprawling books and booklets, at, indeed, the microscope) is yours to use. Just… don’t break anything.”

Burakh threw him a sidelong glance, and saw that this hint of haughtiness had returned to his half-lidded eyes. The Bachelor gestured at the bed behind him, flush against a bookcase the height of the full wall, flanked by a wooden room divider. 

      “And the bed back there is yours too, I suppose. Don’t get too attached to it, though — you won’t be the only one who’ll need to rest.”
      “I hope someone has warned you about the pollen, this time of year.”
      “I’ve been warned multiple times over, yes. Thank you,” he gritted, visibly irritated — how many people could one man heed the warnings of?

Burakh nodded then. That’s all they had, so far, wasn’t it? His father’s recipes, his… unsteady grip on the trade, and the foreboding sense that something was brewing — oh, not in a good way.

      “Alright. I’ll bring you tinctures. Might need to go gather more herbs…”
      “How do you find these plants?”
      Burakh blinked. “Outside.”
      “I could have assumed, colleague.”
      “What else do you want me to say? I go outside and I look for them.” He shrugged. “They can be… a little unyielding. I don’t think they’d let themselves be found like you,” he said, the hint of a taunt in the voice. 
      “Which is why I need your expertise, Burakh,” Dankovsky said. 

Burakh stood there. He wasn’t stunned, but it was pretty close. What was this guy’s deal? He shifted from earnest and shockingly poised to cavalier and dryly haughty. 
Burakh saw his gaze on him didn’t falter. 

      “Were there… any other things, in your father’s inheritance?”
      Burakh shrugged. “Herbs. I have… this list of names.”
      “I don’t recognize any of those.”
      “You just got here,” Burakh said dryly. “Those are children of the town. Orphans, mostly. And there’s…” He pointed at the sigil. “Whatever this is. Udurgh.”

Dankovsky held out a hand to grab the list, and Burakh swiped it away before he could reach it. Dankovsky frowned at him and pulled his smirk on a thin, severe line. Burakh held the paper for him to read — but no touching. Dankovsky looked at it, and his strict frown softened in something confused. Burakh felt a twinge of derision knock at his mouth, and he had to hold back a smirk.

      “... Steppe matters, then?”
      “Yes.” Damn right!
      “I’m afraid I cannot help you with that.”
      “I had guessed.”

To each his field, and the cows would graze peacefully. 
They wished each other goodbye. The Bachelor’s voice was calm, composed, and yielding a hint of grace. Burakh left not knowing what to make of the guy. 

Night had fallen on the town — sleep was refusing to fall on him. 
Ah, Burakh sighed at the touch of cold evening air. He was finally going to be able to get himself a fucking drink.

_____________

      The place had concrete stairs eating into the ground. (Burakh felt a shiver.) He went down them slowly and pushed the heavy door. The vapors, the effluvia, the drowned music all lunged at him, and he almost stumbled back like he had been hit. 
Christ, he thought, Grace didn’t lie… The air in that place is unhealthy with smoke. (And, as he stepped in, men did wear knives on their hip like coin pouches. He didn’t see any children, though.)
The bartender threw him a sidelong glance. Burakh saw in it that he recognized him as the butcher, spotted the blood on him — his eyes looked away, not out of fear, respect or shame, but a placid acknowledgment; an acknowledgment that said under its breath that he had seen worse. The smoke seemed to swirl, to spiral and dance with, around, because of the music — its sound hammered at the wallpapered walls, knocked against the large wood panels that delimited secretive tables, immisced itself into Burakh through his lungs. 
Burakh walked, looking around for a damn table. 
Unavoidable, standing in the middle of the room like the epicenter of all noises and shapes, someone Burakh had never seen — the sleeves of his long, white open coat were rolled up dry, sinewy, veinous arms; his neck, from which hung a loose, tied rope and a black nerve-like string, was straight and sturdy as a marble column; his knuckles were adorned of braided silver rings, fingertips of white gauze. His gaze shot through Burakh like an arrow.

      “Don’t you drag these muddied and blood-soaked boots of yours all over my pristine establishment,” the man spoke. His voice was low, deep, taut like a tightrope carrying a creeping hiss.

Burakh looked down at his shoes — muddied and blood-soaked indeed — then up at his interlocutor again, who held an icy stare on him. His eyes were wide, prying under a frank oblique scar that ran from his hairline down like the crooked finger of a fishing hook. Burakh’s own wandered on the walls, across their overwhelming, hypnotic patterns which were swollen with heavy, heady smoke. Then, at the company around, that looked back at him with small, inquisitive, hard and defiant eyes. At the floor, finally — which was, indeed, pristine. Too pristine, if that could be. Scrubbed clean.

      “You won’t make me believe my boots are the dirtiest things here. I’ve heard this place was a den of sin.”
      “Why’d you care? You’re a christian?”

Burakh pinched his lips in a line and blinked.

      “It might be,” continued the man without missing a beat, as if he’d never asked, “but I still mop the floors.”
      “I haven’t seen your face around.”
      “And I have.”

That doesn’t narrow it down much, Burakh thought. A fellow university student? He hoped not. A soldier? With the bandages around his stomach, it felt more plausible — Burakh still hoped not. He found in his interlocutor’s voice and flippant stare a temperamentality and fickleness that would be no match for the battlefield. Still, they sent all sorts of fools to the ranks; so Burakh asked anyways: 

      “You’ve been to the southwestern front?”
      “Hells no. I’d rather have gotten my legs blown off than go marching. And with the luck of infantrymen, it’d have happened regardless.”
      “Have we met at the Capital, then?”
      “We haven’t met, fellow; but I am from the Capital.”

Talking to that guy felt like navigating a minefield for no damn reason — Burakh assumed there was a point to all that slithering around, his teeth-gritting, his hard, insectoid look.

      “What brings you here from the Capital?”
      “I’m an Architect.” His tone had changed. There was pride and poise in his voice. His shoulders tilted back, regal, cavalier; his chin hitched up — all vaguely reminiscent of the city-slicker’s body language. Oh, you two will become great friends if he… frequents such establishments. “An engineer. My name is Andrey Stamatin; Andrey, and nothing else, and I am the second head of the Janusian duo my brother and I form.” He eyed Burakh up, down. His gaze coldened again. “And I’m the only one allowed to strew blood on these floors.” Before Burakh could ask him about that brother of his, the Architect asked first; “And you are?”

Not a trick question, but Burakh still hesitated.

      “If you knew my father, Isidor Burakh… I’m the son. His son. The heir. Artemy Burakh.”

Andrey watched him — watched, and not looked. 

      “I did know him.”
      “You don’t seem the sickly type,” Burakh tried to joke.
      “He knew Simon well, and Simon knew us well. I wish I could say we knew any of them well too, but that’d be a lie. And we won’t be able to know more now…”
      “How so?”

Andrey’s eyes thinned into slits. His gaze on Burakh turned grey and curious. 

      “Simon is dead,” he said. “You’re wanted for your father’s murder, aren’t you? Are you for Simon’s too?”

Burakh didn’t answer. He knew this, he knew that already, but hearing it, spoken, worded, with that weight in the voice, with that creeping belligerence, was a punch of its own. Stamatin stared. He was hard of eye and of jaw, tense, wound up in a tight, animal way. 
Eventually, he spoke:

      “I don’t think you killed your father,” he said. His eyes raked Burakh’s silhouette — down, up, down, up again to his face. “You’re too soft.”

Burakh’s breath was knocked out of him. He recalled his reflections — the sharpness of his face, hollowed and hungry; the stiffness of his shoulders that drew him salient and straight like a cliff’s edge. Burakh recalled the swinging of his fists, but not the faces caved under their weights. Soft? He grew uneased at the implications, at what violence Stamatin could be brewing.

      “I don’t think you killed your father,” Andrey repeated. He stopped himself, held his thought still and silent like he was toying with Burakh’s curiosity. His head dipped, his eyes grew sinister and teasing. “But if you did…” He brought his hands up in… a shrug, a showing of his scarred palms, a bitterly nonchalant comradery. He smiled. He smiled. “You wouldn’t have my sympathies, but you’d have my understanding.”

Silence waltzed in; a hot, disapproving silence, that shook the heads of patrons like a displeased breeze — but no one stood up. Glances tore themselves from Burakh like Stamatin had wiped them off. 

      “I have no intention of fighting you for whatever throne you think you’ve crawled up to,” Burakh eventually said, low, grave, greatly disliking Stamatin’s sudden, venomous familiarity. 
      “You won’t,” he replied. “You will not dare.”
      “Piss off.”
      “Which is a shame,” he added, not ticking at Burakh’s bark. “You seem like a worthy fighter. Like you like it, too. You’ve already got nicknames around.”
      “You think I liked being jumped the second I stepped off this train? You think I liked that homecoming party after I’ve spent six years away?!”
      “I think much more.”

And his eyes slithered down Burakh’s granitic, static silhouette to gawk at the red on his hands and dried crimson stains by his sleeves. 

      “You won’t soon,” Burakh replied — hard, dry, sibilant in Andrey’s ways, with a taunt in the back of his tight throat. The Architect raised an eyebrow. Go on, he seemed to say. “We’ve found the murderer. And that is not me.”

Stamatin gauged the cold look on his face again. 

      “Oh, really? And do I know his name?”
      “No,” Burakh said. “You will be surprised,” he snickered. 
      “I love surprises.”

Stamatin stepped away, then, freeing a table and chair with purpose as he swiped an empty bottle. Burakh sat down and ordered something alcoholic — anything alcoholic — from the waiter, who had kept eyes on them like a silent owl. 

            “Are you going to drink to your father’s memory?” Burakh didn’t answer. “To your own grief, then?” Burakh didn’t answer either; instead he cracked a painful nod, pinched his lips to hold… something, he wasn’t quite sure what, in. Andrey hummed. Andrey nodded. “Well. Stay here long enough and you might meet my brother. Stay on his better side, butcher. I won’t take kindly to you otherwise.”
      “What does he look like?”

When the Architect didn’t speak, Burakh turned to him. Stamatin brought his hands to his face, curtained it with, then parted them, revealing nothing new but the self-satisfied line of a smile. “Just like that” was what was meant. 

      “Longer hair,” Andrey eventually added, like it was the only thing that truly set them apart.

And with that, he slithered between parted curtains and into an open mouth of the pub — a slender hole between two panels of wooden, wallpapered walls. Short drapes hung at the lintel, making a row of straight, patterned teeth.
The glass was brought—a tower-like thing on a long stem and small foot, ribbed on its side where Burakh’s fingers rested. He toasted with ghosts, just once; with the patterns of the walls that the smoke seemed to infuse with a reptile, crawling life; with the thick, heavy smoke. At another table, a clink toasted back. He drank, and the liquor set him ablaze on its way down, its flames biting at the wispy hay of Burakh’s vocal cords. 

      The prophesied brother came in and, seeing him, recalling the other Stamatin’s gestures of the hands, revealing nothing but his own face, his addition of “ longer hair” , Burakh thought “ Jesus Christ he wasn’t fucking kidding.” He almost frantically sought differences; finding some, he just short of sighed of relief. He thought the brother had thinner lips — he realized soon he just had them pinched; sour, angry, restrained. Guilty. Burakh couldn’t shake the feeling he himself couldn’t look that much different.
The brother waded through the thick, smoke-dense air with the heavy steps of a stone-bound ghost. He sat by Burakh and turned his eyes on him — the same astringent, biting, cold winter eyes; a piercing blue, their pupils not bigger than pinheads. (A malaise caught Burakh at the throat, and a grasp he couldn’t shake off tightened around his neck.)  These wet stones were cradled in a stratum of brick-pink inebriation, then, deeper, one of charoite-purple insomnia that bled onto the highmost point of the middle of his cheeks. He looked like a cursed artist. Smelled like booze, pigment and turpentine like one, too.

      “There is a shocking kindness in these ireful eyes of yours,” he spoke; and his voice was strained, brittle, raking still the depths of his throat. “I haven’t seen you around. What say thou?”
      “What say me…? There is not much to say.”
      “Why do you drink? What do you drink for?”
      “Do I need a reason to?”
      “You do not need it. You have it.”

Burakh measured his words, weighted them. 

      “I drink to my father’s memory.”

The brother’s eyes crawled up his face like a scurrying spider. 

      “You’re the Burakh son, aren’t you?”
      “I am.” I am the Burakh son. “ I am Burakh’s son.”
      “I am sorry for your loss.”
      “What a strange name,” Burakh laughed meagerly, sourly, through a forced line of teeth.

The Stamatin looked at him out of the corner of his eye, his wet blue fish-iris caught in the corner of his trawl-sclera; not laughing one fucking bit.

      “You are?” he asked, properly this time.
      “Peter. Peter Stamatin.”

Peter marked a pause. A short, yet heavy, ruminative pause. 

      “Yes. Peter…” (He tapped his fingers on the side of his cup, his long nails clinking against it.) “And, not before I have erected the tower whose steeple will scrape the underbelly of the sky,  I will be—” he raised his glass, his pinkie and middle finger lifted off the cup, “ — the second… or third Architect this town will bury.”
      “Who was the first?”

Peter didn’t answer, and instead, drank. His gulps were long and silent like he was swallowing back his own spit.

      “Drink, Burakh. Your kind needs twyrine more than I do. Your ears… understand her whispers. I cannot live without her, but you will find your ways through her heavy, green drapes… Weave… along the paths uncovered when her intoxicating aniseed scent recedes, and bares its secrets to you…”

Before Burakh had the chance to ask him what the fuck he was obviously-drunkenly talking about, Peter violently swung off his chair, overcome with a shiver. 

      “Damn it. Damned be it.”
      “Hey, are you okay?”
      “I’ve never been more okay. Drink, Burakh. Drink. I’ve heard you haven’t been home in a long time.”
      “Who told you that?”

Peter slipped off his chair. He extirpated himself from the pub squirming, crawling out, furiously reaching for his diaphragm — the liver… 
Burakh watched him leave. A hand—the ghostly, hazy hand of Andrey hovered over the table, and whisked Peter’s empty glass away. His face was blurred, or blurry. Burakh felt dizzy, and excused himself. He, too, crawled out. He found himself weaving, weaving indeed, along the paths uncovered by the fallen leaves that his unsteady steps would kick. 

He managed to get himself to the workshop, the Lair, the—home, it was to be home, it had been his father’s. The path was lit, as if it had been for him. (He came across wandering Herb Brides on his way, and he realized it probably was.)
He managed to find light in the dingy, dim place; oil lamps had been scattered around to bear witness to sleepless nights. The golden hue of the flames caught itself on the bronze of distillation tools, upon which Burakh saw his own face dance. Right. He had to brew something for Dankovsky. 
Twyrine almost knocked Burakh on his ass when he spotted a silhouette in a corner — a skinny, blonde, freckled thing that sat atop a stool too big for it like a swallow. Burakh almost yelped. 

      “What in th’Devil’s name are you? What in th’Devil’s name are you doing here?”
      “Hey, be polite! And don’t speak of the Devil like that, you’re gonna get his eyes on you.”

A kid walked into the golden light. 

      “I’m Sticky. I used to come here often.”
      “Couldn’t make yourself known earlier when I was looking for all of you, could you? I thought it had already gotten to you.”
      “Not funny. I’m not laughing.”
      “It’s not a joke, fellow.”

Sticky pouted. Sticky pouted like Burakh was the weird one here, and Burakh almost fell backwards trying to shoo him out. 
(He didn’t manage to shoo him out. 
The kid rummaged through the place for scraps, and Burakh fixed the alembic he didn’t even know was broken. The tinctures would have to wait — would have to until twyrine stopped hammering at his skull like at a bell.)

He knew there was somewhere a bed; he had crept into the place many times as a kid, and many more times had his father invited him to watch him work. There was a bed — a thin, austere cot, fit for a monk (or a soldier. Burakh shook the thought out of his head). He crawled into it, cold, haunted by nothing but his own warmth. The herbs that hung, drying bouquets — were pungent, aggressive, biting, clawing. Twyrine called to its roots with a piercing chant. The drink drowned Burakh’s thoughts in a pond-like darkness, thick and heavy with the grass of twyre blades and the silt of the dense liquor. Burakh — laid down — and felt even dizzier. And Burakh — felt himself sink. And Burakh — dreamed. 

      There is a child by a door. 
There is another child by a door. 
There is another child by a door. 
There is another child by a door. 
There is — fine, now, count them, Burakh, like heads of white sheep, or newborn calves. 
There is a door. The door is locked. Burakh rummages through his pockets for a key. The door is locked. Burakh cards through his hair for a clue, and twyre spikelets fall on his shoulders. The door is locked. 
The black, dense velvet of the first dream he had back home inks a thick line between the rolling hills of the steppe and the flat fields of the sky. Burakh is tempted to pull and see if it unravels. 
Burakh kicks his feet through the dirt and unearths a sewing needle. 
He looks through the hole and velvet stares back.