ANATHEMA—THÁNA—ATHAMÉ

      She had walked to the Stillwater, that raven-black omen — just like that damned bird had prophetized; she had walked to the Stillwater. She was standing in the door, her elongated, pale visage carved on each side by concave cheeks. Her grey eyes drilled two inescapable wells under the dry bushes of her eyebrows. Her face looked like the untouched head of a match, her body the carbonated stick that still stood, stiff and strong. 

      “I have come to see the Kains’ guest. Bachelor Dankovsky.”

Burakh’s jaw worked painfully as he gritted his teeth. 

      “He cannot be seen.”
      “Why not?”
      The words climbed out of him like a tolling bell: “He is sick.”

Her stoic face seemed to powder and crumble. The tight-lipped line of the impassive, sardonic ersatz of her smile fell from her, and fear pooled in the wells of her eyes. She pulled herself together (an almost-invisible twitch of the eye, a slip of the mask promptly held back to the face; something that Burakh wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t spent the past days watching it on Dankovsky) and asked: 

      “Why isn’t this place under quarantine, then?”
      “It is. And I will make sure the quarantine is followed by asking you to leave, and to stay away.” 

She took a step back. She held her head high, the force of her piercing, silver-ash-thunderclouds gaze carving confidence out of Burakh’s voice and spitting it out. Worry still danced in her eyes like candle flames. 

      “... What are his chances?” Her voice was low.
      “The same as anyone else’s.” (That was a bold, shameless lie. Burakh was going to wrestle the good doctor out of the jaws of death if that meant he had to lose a hand. Because they needed his expertise, as insufferable and unswallowable as it was. 
Yes. Because they needed his expertise.)

Her lips thinned. Her mouth and eyes became sour. Burakh knew that look: I’m too late. 

      “... If he makes it, send him to the Cathedral.”

On that, she walked away, first facing the building as if she expected it to come alive and eat her whole, grinding her into black plague dust. Then, once she was far enough, she turned on her heels and disappeared. 

Yeah. Well, if he even makes it, he’ll decide himself if he wants to go to the damn Cathedral. 
No—no—no—no—no
                 , when he makes it, he’ll decide himself if he wants to go to the damn Cathedral. 

Burakh climbed the stairs back up.

      Something choked Dankovsky awake; Burakh was there to see it: something seemed to course through him like an electric shock and he jerked up, he was pushed upright, he curled on himself as he sat and coughed. Burakh bolted from the desk to the bedside. When he tried to approach him, Dankovsky fell back down. His neck strained as he pushed his head against the pillow. His clavicles protruded as he dug his shoulder blades and elbows into the mattress. 

      “Oynon?” Burakh called. “Oynon?”

Dankovsky’s arms flailed; they almost struck Burakh square in the gut. His hand — his grey, strained, wiry hand — grabbed something from somewhere Burakh didn’t focus enough to see. Then, he grabbed the hem of Burakh’s smock, and pulled. He was incredibly weak; yet, Burakh stumbled forward, gripping the iron frame of the bed for balance. 

      “Oy—”

Dankovsky shoved whatever-that-was he had grabbed into the leather pouch on Burakh’s thorax. He felt it slide down — something square, hard, cold, maybe steel or silver. 
Silver. The cigarette case. When he attempted to fish it out, Dankovsky’s arm flailed again; the veins on him were a flowery mauve. He pointed at something in the bag left unattended on the desk. His finger was crooked like a crow’s claw. 

      “In the bag,” he heaved — oh, he heaved. His voice was torn to shreds as it clawed through his lungs, throat and mouth. It was scraping, grey — so, so sick. “In the bag. The vials… Take them. To the Theater. Take them.”

Burakh slowly picked Dankovsky’s fist off his smock, feeling how it fell limp at the touch, and rummaged through the bag. 
He found two vials; they were all labeled serum, followed by a few barely-decipherable lines describing what Burakh could read were comments on their effectiveness. 

      “… You made those?” he asked. It was starting to dawn on him — the Bachelor had been busy, too. (He had been busy even as Burakh was scrambling for a cure.)
      “Not alone.” His voice was wet now. When Burakh turned to him, he saw how he wiped something — sweat, or spit, or blood — off his face by rubbing his cheek against the pillow. The hair on his neck was placated to his nape with the wetness of his skin. “I couldn't have made them alone. But yes, I did.”

He coughed, and the sound tore through him like sandpaper. 

      “You need them. Take them. To the Theater. Take them.”

Another sudden shock ran through him. He made a dazed, low-pitched sound as if his voice was pulled out of him like a piece of wool out of an unraveling sweater. He fell back. He didn’t move. 
(Until he did again, and Burakh was not more reassured.)

      This, he will never admit to Dankovsky—if he lives, he thinks, and then shakes the thought out of him with a violent shiver as if he could puke bad luck out—but feels it more with every passing hour: Dankovsky feels like a test. Like each of his coughs and heaves and violent spasms are ways for Burakh to prove himself. To prove his worth. To prove his name. He is at Dankovsky’s bedside and hoists him up when he chokes, turns him on his side when he threatens to throw up (he never does), wipes the blood from his mouth when it pools from the depths of his black lungs to the corner of his pale, thin, bark-dry lips. He is tempted, as Dankovsky thrashes and shakes, to check his stitches — seeing no blood seep, he never does. Burakh’s face cracks up in a wrung-out, nervous bout of laughter when he imagines Dankovsky tending to his dead like Burakh tends to (not his, he will not phrase it like that) Dankovsky, not-quite-dead (rings in his head: yet.)
Burakh feels tested. 

Here’s the exam paper: the Bachelor’s paper-pale skin, easily crumpled and torn just the same, shapes cut out of him (around his sunken eyes, into his hollowed cheeks) by the silver scissors of the evading plague; here’s the ink: the blood that dries on his chin, the liquid black of his eyes that spills out of him with hacking fits; here’s what has never left: time, ticking. 

Burakh leaves Dankovsky’s bedside only to crash headfirst into dreams, or when Rubin (who’s here “ in hiding”, he said; he said — that idiot! where everybody was gathering to witness the poor doctor’s fate) or the twins — those weird, amicable leeches leaning over the Bachelor’s bed like fairies over a cradle, like vampires over an offered neck (Burakh dislikes the image, Burakh really dislikes the image — he had to undo the Bachelor’s cravat and shirt, only the first few buttons, to allow easy exit for his lung-tearing coughing fits–the open lapel–the wound of bloodletting.), the edges of their shadows hanging over him like the beaks of meadowlarks — or sometimes even Sticky, his insistent blonde head butting against Burakh’s refusal, offer to keep watch. 

Burakh keeps-ticks-clicks–he paces when Dankovsky seems to be deep asleep. His thoughts swallow themselves as each passing hour swallows a bit more of the light. Burakh is inside of his mind the way his nerves are inside of his hands—right on the edge, tipping outside. Bursting out-forth-forwards, grazed by the weight of the air-time-tick-tock with an unspeakable pain. His hands are trapped birds flailing violently under the cloak of his skin. If he were to peel it, he’d reveal, he thinks, he hopes, a knowledge and confidence you find only in the bones. 
In thinly-ground salt-white bones.

The Bachelor’s face is so fucking dry, and so fucking pale. And Burakh only touches it with his ground-bound-salt bones when nobody's looking.

      He (Dankovsky, who Burakh cannot hear, and can barely see) is within illness like (in) a tangle of thorns. He is grasping with full, bloody hands at coils of brier and furze like other men grapple with hellfires. It’s within reach—if he outstretched his arm he could thrust the spine-spike-shiv of the amorphous-monostichous-spiral P/plague through his bare palm, and then he would crawl out, victorious, imbrued, capital-S-like-snake-sophia/σοφία-Stigmatized, out of the earth. He would hold it against his chest, into the hollow where he’s expected to have a heart. It would tear through the flesh of his hands like lighting, and yet, he would hold it still. He would bind and bend and break it. He would snap it in half like it does the soul (like it did his). 

He is within illness like (in) a tangle of thorns. 

His breathing swirls through his raw lungs like a scalpel-sharp maelström. It tears through him. Burakh haunts his bedside, stitch-making thread-clinging twyrine-and-clay-smelling ghost trying to mend him together. To hold it together. Something about making whole. About using (his) hands. Apologizing to Dankovsky, who cannot hear, about having to use his red cravat to wipe the blood off his lips. 

He is within illness like (in) a tangle of thorns.

He had had the creeping thought that it was of those esoteric, unknowable maladies that one has to surrender to, has to let themselves be devoured by, if they sought to, if they ought to understand it — and he was, and he would. And he would! He would burst from it: a splinter of hawthorn bark like a spear through its flank. He would!

It’s his twelfth hour. He is in the crushing throat of the Pest like a hook through its palate. He is overcome with spasms and coughing fits. He tenses like a cello string and his neck strains, bulging with the nervures of his ligaments that crawl up his exerting throat. His whole body shakes, and he collapses into his pillow. 

_____________

      The sun was high, and curtained by battering rain.

The Bachelor’s face is still so fucking dry, and still so fucking pale, and Burakh still only touches it with his ground-bound-salt bones when nobody's looking — which is becoming more and more difficult.

Comes often that nobody around, more often than the rest; but, word having spread, the Stillwater gets visitors, most of which Burakh shoos away. A few linger. 

            The twins, who stand by the attic door, tall, taut, terribly still like they could slowly incrust themselves into the walls. They berate Burakh for sitting on the floor—no, not berate. They urge him to at least take a chair like these floorboards could swallow him. 

            The Brides, who crowd by the Stillwater entrance, never stepping in, not quite ever leaving; Burakh sees their eyes on him when he leans out of the window. 

            “Whaddaya want, basaghan?” Burakh says out of the window, sleeplessness making his jaw slack, his words woolen. 
            “Khayaala, how fares the ailing erdem?”
            “He ain’t dead yet.”

And the Brides all nod, scattering like raven feathers across the Atrium — only to come back soon after. 

            Lara, who brings food. Not much; half a slice of bread here, what is left of a bowl of soup there. She insists Burakh tries to give some to Dankovsky; he doesn’t even stop shaking long enough for Burakh to try. 

            Stakh. When he walks in again, he has an awkward, almost nervous smile on his lips, as if he expected Burakh to curse his ass out. 

            “How fares he?”
            “I’m running low on tinctures, Stakh.” 

Rubin’s gaze falls on him. 

            “I need to keep some for the hospital. I need to keep… pills for the hospital. I cannot go there empty-handed tomorrow.”
            “Have you given him a lot?”

Burakh puts his head in his hands. 

            “Not too much.” A pause. “Ostensibly, not enough.”
            “What could you do, then? You’ve fed him pills by the spoonful, and yet: see him then? See him there?”

Burakh sees. 

            “He’s writhing — less than he writhed before. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing more you can do, but let time decide of him.”
            “Time is precisely the one thing I’m afraid I’m up against, Stakh.”
            “Not the illness?”

Burakh worries a nail with nervous teeth. 

            “I’m afraid there is no place where illness and time split into two.”

He runs fingers through his hair like he wants to tear it off his scalp. 

            “I think there’s something. I think I found something — I’m sure I found something. But it is… scarce. I need to make sure there is plenty. I need to make sure there is enough. I need to make sure…”
            “... that he is deserving of it over the rest?”
            “It’s not about deserving! ” Burakh barks, spits, so furiously even Stakh flinches.

It’s not about deserving. It’s not about judgment. It’s not about value. It’s about… balance–choice–equilibrium. Mathematical, really; statistical. 
It’s about walking the tightrope on the safe side and still toeing the potential of a grave, insurmountable mistake. 
It’s not about deserving, because Burakh knows what he thinks of it. 

      “Could you keep an eye on him while I go out and do… something potentially dangerous for my own life?”
      “What else would you do outside?”
      “Stakh, I’m serious. I think I know who to talk to to get… what I need. And when I do…”
      “You’ll save the Bachelor’s life. I had guessed.”
      “I’m healing the sick, Stakh. That’s what I do. That’s what I wake up every morning to do.”

Rubin raised his hands, non-confrontational — for once, and it surprised Burakh. 
Dankovsky’s labored, wet breaths ate away at the ceiling beams, the metal arabesques of the bedframe. Burakh knew what he had to do. Burakh knew what he wanted to do. He left. 

_____________

      “I’ll get into the Abattoir,” Burakh spoke when he got back. 

He still smelled potently of the plagued Termitary: of the humming, lung-scraping, corroding breath of the illness that clung to him even after he had stopped by his workshop to rinse himself off. (It seemed to cling to him, to the inside of him regardless, overstaying its welcome even after it had been chased away.) Of the brush of leather and rust that lingered on Oyun, too; more faintly, as their meeting was starting to fade in the back of Burakh’s mind, with only the Warden’s admission of where he could find it, finally, find it piercing through the fog that stuffed Burakh’s head like cotton.

      “I’ll get in. I’ll get enough. It can be done.”
      “... You won’t be let in.”
      “If I have to force my way in, I will. If I have to burrow Oyun’s horns into the earth and strike him, I will. With that, I can use the blood. I can make…”

He stopped himself—realizing he had never told Rubin about it. Two wide, bug-like eyes were on him. 

      “What blood?”
      “Hey, I don’t know what it is more than you do. It… ‘trickles’ from the Abattoir. And I need it.”

Rubin didn’t push, which Burakh found strange. When he looked at him, Stanislav had a pinched, taut line for lips, gaze lost; he looked wounded. He looked like he was bitterly digesting something that had been kept from him. 
Burakh didn’t know if he needed to say sorry, to say hey, I’ll take you there — he wasn’t going to do that. He feared what was in it. What was below. (What was within, but that was a whole other can of worms.)

      Burakh was so light—Burakh was so heavy. He hurried back to the lair swiftly, the wind behind pushing him, shoving him onto his path. He could barely stand. The moon was rising to a seven in the evening, pinned above the steppe like a golden coin. 
Burakh’s head spun when he walked in, the recovery from his own illness still… in progress. When he approached the alembic, Sticky got up to talk to him, and Burakh kept him away with a warning hand. 

      “How is… the doctor doing?” Sticky asked. 

He had been coming to the Stillwater—against Burakh’s advice, because of course, because evidently—where Burakh had seen him take watch/had watched him take scene, and yet his voice was thin and low from a grating, gaping worry. It took Burakh by surprise. 

      “Why do you ask?” Burakh managed to say, attempting a playful, ever-so-slightly mocking tone. (He failed. He didn’t have the strength for it.)
      Sticky shrugged. He pouted with what seemed like genuine offense at being asked. “We’d like him not dead.”
      “We?” 
      “Is that shock I hear?”
      “No. I’m just asking. Earnestly.”
      “... Well. Me and the boys. The girls, too. (He shrugged again.) We see him a lot when we’re in town, because he’s in town too. He’s nice to us, even when no one has for barter what he’d like.”
      “Oh. Ah.” Burakh’s mind painted a picture—a new one. “The… paternal type?”
      “Absolutely not.” (Sticky almost laughed.) “More like… Don’t laugh at me.”
      “I won’t.”
      “More like a distant uncle you rarely see, but when you do he’s always nice to you.”
      “Ah… Uncle oynon, is it?”
      “I told you not to laugh at me!”
      “I’m not laughing! See? Not even smiling.” (Burakh was smiling a little bit.)
      “Whatever.”

The picture… struggled to fit into Burakh’s mind, he had to admit, it didn’t fit. He remembered the Bachelor dismissing the kids roaming the Soul-and-a-Half, calling some urchins “mutts”. Or at least, he thought he did. The haze was overtaking him, chipping at him slowly. 
Bachelor having gotten busy bounding with the street urchins when Burakh wasn’t looking… he didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t know what it was he felt, imagining him crouching to their level to barter.
Sticky shrugged, and shrugged, and shrugged again, the pout on him growing, like he wanted to justify himself. 

      “Whatever. We’d like him not dead because… I don’t know. He started to fit into the landscape.”
      “I understand.” (Burakh truly did.)
      “You’re still taking care of him, aren’t you?”
      “I am.”
      “Good.” Sticky observed a pause, fiddling with branches like he itched to make something helpful out of them. 

(Burakh was not going to say that he, too, would like the Bachelor not dead, but he assumed Sticky knew that. He walked to the alembic and sat to do what he knew to do. There’s still that blood, Burakh told himself, that one vial, that most precious drop. He told himself that and the weight of herbs in his hands almost sunk him through the ground — even as there was so, so little of them; their florets, spikelets and seeds scurrying in his palm as he slowly processed them. Those were the last blades. He wondered if his father would think he was wasting his breath and resources. He refused to think about whether or not his father would think he was wasting his breath and resources. He started a brew and everything felt lighter, and then all of his weight was crushed into his bed. He kicked his boots off. He burrowed into the covers.)

_____________

The dream walked in. On tall, long legs, almost careful through the door. (It took Burakh a lot not to blurt out “ Oh, not him again.” )

The pale ghost of the twin emerged from the darkness like a corpse washing ashore.
Burakh sat up swiftly.
He stood, skin translucent, coated in a thick onyx black, his right hand parting the curtains of the lapel of his coat, resting against his chest as if he was holding his heart. His fingers moved subtly, not unlike kelp in the depths of the sea. 

Peter: say, Burakh, when tomorrow you fall asleep and you dream of cutting Dankovsky open, please cover the eyes of the audience, please be mindful, cover his heart. When you cut him open and snakes slither out, please, let them climb your arms, let them wrap around your neck — they will not tighten around your throat. They have never felt warmth, not even the warmth of the sun, it feels too close to touch.
Artemy: How do you know about that?

The Architect’s silver eyes raked his face. Burakh had no idea what he was looking for.

Peter: … he’s told my brother. My brother has told me. My brother and I… we are not snakes — we crawl nonetheless.

As if on cue, he offered a sigh, an exaggerated part of the lips; a flash of fangs. (Burakh still had no idea what the hell that could be about.

Artemy: Why… would he tell you and not me?
Peter: … because few men have snakes inside their lungs, Burakh. And some who don’t, don’t love them quite.
Artemy: I’ll be careful.
Peter: be nice. Be gentle.
Artemy: It’s my job.
Peter: it isn’t for him.

(A cumbersome pause.)

Artemy: How do you know I’ll have this dream, anyways?
Peter: Burakh, if I didn’t walk the realm of dreams, this town would have split me open.

(A cumbersome pause, again. It was crawling with all manners of beasts that Burakh felt reach for his skin, and he shivered violently.)

Artemy: Why would I… dream of cutting him open?

The Architect’s head shook very slowly, like a pale sail against the ink of his hair — the seatop sky.

Peter: why wouldn’t you?

(Was implied: this is all you do. The Architect seemed to have something else to say.)

Peter: Dankovsky… does not… invite gentleness. He may reject it firmly. He may… he will push you away. But… he does need it.
Artemy: What does this have to do with me? Can’t you offer him gentleness?
Peter: ... I can, but he will not ask it from me.
Artemy: And from me he will? Why would he? He has never asked me such things. He won’t. I barely know the guy.  This is not what this is about. He’s sick. What is this about? What do I even have to offer him?

(The dream is fading fast. Remnants of clinging fever makes your grasp on it grow tenuous. You have to hurry.)

Peter: ... this will be for him to decide.

The Architect’s gaze wandered. Burakh… looked up. He… watched it unfold.

Artemy: Why… Hey, why are you calling me by my name? My first name?
Peter: I have done no such thing. I have not called you that.
Artemy: Okay, maybe not called, but… Here. That’s my name. Artemy.
Peter: well, it wouldn’t be anything else, would it?

Burakh looked at him. He looked at Burakh. Burakh tried to pry out of him the words he kept in his mouth with a strange, sharp pout. Eventually, he spoke:

Peter: τόν γε σοφώτατον οὐχ ἁμαρτήσεται σύμβουλον ἀναμείνας: χρόνον.
Artemy: Right. Yeah. (He had not a fucking clue.)

The Architect (let’s say Peter) bent his spine subtly. He bowed. His eyes had dampened and darkened with a growing, bubbling anxiety. His shadow embraced the darkness behind and he seeped through it like ink through cloth, until he was gone.

Burakh woke up. He had slept a bare hour and a half — just enough for a dream; just enough for the twin to cut and slither through. His body was still tense, taut as a string, eaten whole and hollow by the cresting wave of exhaustion. He wondered if the Architect could lull him into sleep like a wall-walking nixie.


      He’s back at the Stillwater. Rubin offers to take watch. Burakh demands one more second before Rubin takes his seat, on the other side of the folding screen. Burakh adjusts the Bachelor’s collar that he had fiddled with, the pillow under his head, the weightless blanket over him to his neck to hide what peeks of his chest in the white wide V of his partially-undone shirt. Burakh walks away—closer to crawls, really, heavy, bent, folded, crumpled. 

     “I saw you two share that bed,” Rubin says; light-heartedness is heavy and hollow in his voice, but he is trying to lighten up the mood, he really is. Whether or not he succeeds is not important. 
      “Like hell you did,” Burakh slurs back out, words absurdly ground and wet as his bent arm digs into his cheek, holding his head above the floor where he lies.

Illness pleats them all into nothing but paper dolls. The muck of fatigue and fear makes them buckle under this crushing weight. He thinks that—and the Architect, offering to the engorged Stillwater his and his brother’s company, appears as a head in the stairs. Burakh waves him off, half “it’s under control” half “don’t you dare get into my head”. 
When sleep reaps Burakh off his feet, the Architect doesn’t, in fact, get into his head. 

_____________

For what feels like hours, it is pitch-black, indigo-tinted, cold, diaphanous. It is blissful. It’s cold. Did Burakh realize it’s cold? It’s cold, wet, hollow. 
It swallows him—his breath—his words in something chilled and pitted like a glazed clay cup. Like the inside of a peach pit. Bitter all the same.

The dream is red. It’s so red. It’s skinned all over. It’s protruding violently. It goes through Burakh’s throat like the horn of a deer. Like a smiting arrow. It goes as follow:

There's meat on the sacrificial slab.

There's a slab on the sacrificial meat.

There's sacrificial meat on the slab.

There's sacrificial slab on the meat.

There's a sacrificial slab on/in the town.

There's a town on (in) the sacrificial slab.

There's a sacrificial town on/in the slab.

There's a sacrificial town on/in the meat.

There's a town on the sacrificial meat.

There's a slab on the sacrificial town —

Hard grey rock grinding it thinly.

There's meat on the sacrificial meat.

There's meat on the meat.

Yes. That's what a human person is.

There's sacrificial meat on/in the town.

There's meat-town.

There’s[SO FUCKING HUNGRY.]

[SO FUCKING HUNGRY — YOUR MOUTH WATERS]

There's town-meat.

There's sacrifices.

Yes.

There are sacrifices.

(There's a man on the sacrificial slab.

Oh no.)

_____________

      “I need herbs,” Burakh hissed through the palms he pressed on his mouth and chin. “I need to go to the Theater, and I will have nothing left when I come back. I need to go.” He ran his hands over his face, nails scraping its exhausted surface. “I need to go gather them.”

From the corner of the Stillwater downstairs where he hid, right by the window in order to shoo away nosy passersby, Rubin watched Burakh stretch, crack his elbow joint, try to hold his own eyes open. 

      “There are some I need to hang out to dry. Some I need to chop across the stem. Some… well, you know. You were my father’s apprentice.” 
      “I know. I was.” Stress and promiscuity with the illness had not dried up the bitter waters that pooled at the back of Rubin’s throat when Isidor’s presence was invoked. “How does it feel, putting so much… time into this? Into him?”
      “I’ve never felt this fucking alive, Stakh.”

Rubin nodded. Despite it all, he seemed, at the very least, considerate of Burakh’s resolution. 

      “When will you be done?”
      “I don’t have a clue. I need to do my shift. Need to gather. To brew…”
      “Every hour could be his last — and then, it never is. Impressive of him.”
      “He’s stubborn.”

Burakh let out a wispy, raking chuckle that Rubin didn’t follow; watching him instead. 

      “I don’t think… No, I don’t know if it has anything to do with him. Could be a particularity of the disease.” Burakh collected himself. “Or, it could be him.” He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He wouldn’t know. “Can you keep an eye while I go to the Theater?”
      “Do you want me to invite his friends to keep him company?” When Burakh looked at him with a raised eyebrow, Rubin added: “The Architects.”

It took a lot from Burakh not to say “these freaks?”. He managed — another testament to his fortitude, he bitterly laughed — and was out of the door. In his pockets, three vials that clinked mindlessly, and two halves of pills. It was going to be about judgment, about value, about balance–choice–equilibrium; about mathematics and statistics. 
And he could tell himself over and over that this was what hung over the Bachelor’s head too, plainly, measurably, indiscriminately; it felt like a lie — because it was one. Burakh wasn’t going to admit that to himself. 

(There was something else. There always was something else.)

_____________

      He didn’t stray far from the Theater when he stepped out of it. The smell of death, this putrid ghost, clung to him recklessly, hanging from his heavy arms like bodies had started from the gallows. He kicked the bloodstained dirt by the stairs and paced like it could calm him down. 
He had no idea how the Bachelor fared, who was there now to keep vigil over him. Burakh felt like death followed him, slithering between the floorboards of the Stillwater attic to settle in his footsteps, leaving the Bachelor to sink into a deep sleep when Burakh was away — or maybe he liked to think it followed him. He liked to think… Dankovsky got a few hours of repose. 
(And this meant that, when Burakh walked back to watch over him, he trawled the disease behind like a cumbersome luggage of putrid, rotten fish.)
(No, no. This isn’t right.) (Nothing was.)

As he paced, walked out of the Theater and onto the steps Immortell, joining him from stage right, announced by the beating of his cane on the stones. 

      “Still here?” Burakh asked. 
      “I can’t quite leave, can I?” the Director replied, a whistle in the voice. Burakh was going to ask him about it when he continued: “Well, I have, of course; I’ve been to the interrogations like everyone ought to have…”
      “And what did she ask you?”
      “Ah, it would be my business, wouldn’t it, Burakh?” Immortell said, and when Burakh turned to him he had a wide, forced smile, full of teeth and pink gums. 
      “Sure would be.” After a marked pause in which Immortell didn’t budge, he continued: “Aren’t you afraid of getting sick by staying here?”
      “The world is scarier outside of the Theater, Burakh. Here, a lot come in, few come out… They do not scare me. You’re the most dangerous presence around… Bar, ah, one or two. Maybe three!”
      “Keeping a list, are we?” Burakh chuckled nervously — and tried to figure out the other ‘presences’. Besides him and the sick (and the dead), who came here? The Bachelor, he remembered — and remembered his wicked good shot, too. Then, Rubin, and his… desperate, overflowing displays of violent abandon. 
      “Not much else to do in these times of end, is there, Burakh?”

Burakh didn’t answer. They looked out into the streets, into the dirt that rose in swirling grey clouds, catching the flecks of pyre fires and the ash of hastily-disposed contaminated furniture, bedding, bodies.  

      “And what do you think there will be at the end of the world, eh?” Burakh asked when the silence had become too hard to bear. “Singing and dancing?”
     “Singing, I know for sure. Don’t you hear them?”

Burakh perked an ear, and listened. They were — the Brides, in the distance, were singing indeed. This swaying, rising and falling choir that battered the evening air like waves a shore, or a breath another’s.  

     “As for dancing… I don’t care for it too much, with that bad leg of mine.” As if to insist upon this, he hit his ankle with the wood of his cane — it didn’t make a sound of metal or steel, indicating the lack of a prosthetic, and Burakh flinched, wondering what the fuck the point of that was. “I still hope there will be, so everyone else can enjoy it.”

And then, oh, he started to hum. 

Eventually, he excused himself, and walked back into the building. The doors sighed and heaved behind him, and Burakh did too — remnants of his illness taunting him with emptying lungs.

He sat on the low wall flanking the Theater stairs; at its foot could still be guessed the silhouettes of the sick and dead that had been brought, and left there to slowly soot up shadows in their shapes on the sienna soil. Sickness crawled, sibilant, and more would come, and more was to come. Burakh fished the cigarette case out of his pocket. 
Yes, it was the one he had seen… It was a pale silver, slivers of sun snaking in its streaks. In the daylight, he could see: a snake was etched on its lid, surrounded by flowers — acanthus and daffodil, Burakh could guess — and Latin phrases Burakh couldn’t decipher. The man likes his motifs, he laughed, and a heart-pinch of appreciation escaped the cage of his ribs, surprising him with its uninvited suddenness. He pushed the lid open. He wasn’t surprised. The same cigarette he had seen — the last one, like then, lone, lonely, rolling loose in the case. This too, in the daylight he could see: the rod of white paper was obviously hand-rolled; meticulously and with great precision. The man likes his thoroughness.
Burakh took it. Burakh brought it to his mouth and poked it between his lips. The paper caved under them as he almost, out of stress, bit down on it. He plucked out his wet matchbox, bearing the stigmata of a seeped-through bloodstain. He cracked one alight, then the cigarette too. The tobacco was sweeter than what he was used to.

He smoked — then stopped himself. Something crossed his mind; something that, if he thought too hard about it (and he refused to think about it) rang longly and loudly like a prayer, like a plea. He scraped the ash of the cigarette, the half-smoked cigarette, against the stone of the wall. Then, he wetted his fingertips, and made sure it was put out properly. He straightened it back up — not that it mattered, it was already half-smoked. Then, he put it back into the case. 
For later, he told himself. He told himself that and that was a lie: he was not going to touch it again. 
(If the Bachelor lived, he’d give it back. If the Bachelor died, he’d… give it back too.)
He wiped tobacco off his lips and threw himself head-first into the steppe and prayed the Bachelor be given a few more hours — just a few more. 

_____________

      “... How long has it been?” Rubin asked.

Burakh pulled his eyes to the pocket watch, pried open like an oyster, on the desk. It was nine in the evening, and Rubin had just come back from an afternoon Theater shift. 
(Burakh had barely crossed his path as he had left in the morning; he had hoped for a distraction through work and got none. He had disappeared in the steppe for hours, hunting herbs with a vicious restlessness that the damn twyre blades seemed to hide from. At last, he had collected enough; at last, at last… He had hung them to dry; he had bundled and cut them across the stem; he had thrown them in the brew. And with his agitation, he feared the waters would turn sour. He feared the herbs would resent him for it.
He had thrown them into brews and gotten one — perfect, precious; the foundation of his own miracle, which he hoped to make again.)

      “... Fifty hours.” He brought his hands to his face and pushed his palms against his closed eyes. “I… don’t understand. It’s like the illness refuses to let him go. Like it keeps toying with him, forbidding him from healing… or passing.”
      “Or like he refuses to let go of it,” interrupted Rubin. When Burakh threw him an exhausted, dumbfounded glance, Rubin raised his hands, and curled his fingers inwards, sharply, with a subdued, ember force: the image of a clawed hand tearing fruits off a branch. “Like he’s grappling with it with all his might. Toe to toe. Like holding a bull by the horns, trying to make it bend the knee. If he downs it, he’ll understand it.”

Burakh only hummed. That seemed like something the Bachelor would do, but even then, he doubted. The bedridden Bachelor’s eyes flashed open, then close, like for a brief second he had come to the surface for air and then sunk again. 

      “Hey,” Burakh called (low, hushed, as if his voice itself could worsen Dankovsky’s state — but also because he lacked the strength to speak any other way). Rubin barely turned his head to him. “What were you… doing then back then they hunted you down?”

For a moment, Rubin didn’t speak. 
Then: 

      “I was cutting up bodies.” He marked a pause. He waited for Burakh to react. (He didn’t.) “I was desecrating them for samples. So we could make… Well, try to make…”

He fell silent. He waited still.
Burakh didn’t respond for a while; then a long, loud, surprising sigh of relief climbed out of him when he couldn’t retain it. Rubin turned to him with a shocked, bewildered gaze. 

      “If it was just that… I thought you were doing something really heinous.”
      “I was Cub,” Stakh almost indignantly insisted. “... I still am.”
      “Listen, I cannot fault you for… out of all things, cutting a body. Regardless of what the rites say.” He carefully held his words back as he pondered their weight, stopping there. He nervously scratched the stubble on his cheek. Then, low faint, in the tone of confidence, he added: “I’ve killed selfishly, Stakh. Very, very selfishly.”

He did not mention he killed for him. He did not mention he killed for the Bachelor, either. (He thought Rubin knew that first part, he must, he must have seen the corpses; and the second… was between the Bachelor and him.)

      “Listen,” he repeated, “if this whole thing’s ever over… when this whole thing’s over… Stay under my wing, yeah? You won’t really be studying, because I have way more to learn than I can teach, but… Assist me. Y’know… like you did my father. And one day, you’ll… have the right to cut bodies. I will make sure of it.”
      “That’s a menkhu’s heir’s thing,” Rubin said. He said bitterly — Burakh heard it, no matter how hard he was trying to hold it back. “That’s your thing.”
      “Surely the Kin can make an exception for two brothers?”

Rubin brought his eyes on him — not moving his head. He took his glance back and thought.

      “... Always thought I was the better son.”

He was partially joking. (He was only partially joking.)

      “Yeah,” Burakh replied, and a stifled laugh made it past his teeth, “I got that.”

      “I’m going to Lara’s,” Rubin eventually said. “I take it that you won’t swing by to say hi.”
      “... I’d like to avoid leaving him alone. I’ll come see you if someone else comes to care for him.”
      “Right.”

He lingered by the door like he was waiting for something.

      “Have you started your… brew?”
      “I have.”
      “How long does it need?”
      “Give it three… four hours.”
      “Do you want someone to wake you up then?”
      “I do. I’ve told Sticky to watch the clock and cork the vial once it is done. Then… I’ll go get it.”

Nod here. 

Nod there. 

Cumbersome silence

as Burakh slowly feels himself wilting. 

His eyelids droop like dead leaves. 

Rubin — does that too — he leaves. 

      Time was loud and labored. It pried minutes out of itself like one bites their nails off (Burakh was biting his nails off). Dankovsky’s breathing was shrill and sharp, hook-like coal-thick as it scraped through his throat. The pocket watch hammered each of his dry, sticky, sickly blinks—one of them was the metronome, but Burakh couldn’t quite decipher which one. 

Burakh pulled the folding screen like one pulls red curtains, lining it parallelly with the bed. Not the whole way, not quite: he made sure he could still see Dankovsky’s head from the other side of the room. He sat down. He took off his smock. He folded it in four and laid his head upon it, laying down on the floor. The Bachelor’s heart could be heard through the floorboards. The Stillwater was taut-tense-taunting. It tightened its hold onto them. It mended itself in the places where Burakh had cut it, trying to pull Dankovsky out of the catacombs the haunted (haunting) house was starting to become. 
The Bachelor’s breathing was too hoarse, then too wet, then he mumbled something incomprehensible. He seemed to drift. He was shockingly calm. 
Burakh looked at him. He looked at him longly. His eyes, his mouth were wide open. Illness opened doors in him through which it then weaved. It took his pride in his labyrinthic, impassable fortress of a mind and picked it apart stone after stone, column after column. It took out the locks. It swallowed keys. Illness created passages like animal burrows. It poured into the communicating holes like mouth-to-mouth. Dankovsky was left ajar, missing hinges. 

Burakh was approaching a door.
What’s all he was fucking doing. It was starting to become old. Find - open - close - make - open - close. Doors, mouths, stitches. Burakh was growing weary. Tired. He was tired. The door was locked. (It was locked and he could feel how a hand, on the other side, pulled on the knob to keep it that way.)
There’s a way, Burakh thought. There’s a way. I’ve found a way. He was too weak to feel anything about him, but just the thought grounded him. 

A hand on his shoulder tore him out of the murky waters of half-sleep; he jolted awake. 

      “It’s me,” Rubin’s voice rang from far, far away, lost behind the layers of cloth covering his mouth and nose in the thick fog of Burakh’s exhaustion. “Lara is downstairs. She says to ask her if you need anything.”
      “... Why is she here? It’s not safe.”

Through the low clouds of sleep slowly overtaking his vision, Burakh managed to see Rubin’s face sour and tighten. 

      “... Because she’s your friend. She has come to help you.”

Burakh stayed silent. Then:

      “Tell her to stay downstairs. It’s dangerous up here.”
      “She also wanted me to give you this.”

Rubin dragged out from behind him a contraption of folded wood and canvas.

      “What…?”
      “Her father’s cot.” A pause. “She insisted you have it. The bed downstairs… well. She says it may be cold, but at least it’s empty.”
      “Where did… miss Yan go?”
      “Only two other places she could have left to,” Rubin said — and he didn’t elaborate.

Burakh dragged himself onto the cot like one hauls up a carcass. 

      “Tell Gravel thanks when you get down. And stay safe.”
      “I will. You too.” Another pause, the silence of which Burakh felt himself slither through. “At least he’s not coughing. God, I can feel his fever radiating from here.”

Burakh’s mouth jerked at Rubin’s words, but he was already faltering out, slowly slipping away. 
Yeah, radiating. He was. Like the sun, like a dying star. 
Rubin’s footsteps disappeared down the stairs. Burakh disappeared through the heavy coat of night, weaving his way into sleep.