Work Text:
THE MISSION BOARD
The notices were pinned beneath glass in the western administrative hall, where the tall windows looked north over a colourless city. Snezhnaya did not wake gently. Dawn came as a thinning of darkness rather than sunrise, a grey metallic light spreading slowly across slate roofs. Below the windows, workers cleared the broad Ministry steps in practised lines, their shovels striking stone with a steady scrape and clack.
Odette stood before the mission board with one glove tucked beneath her arm and a pencil balanced between two fingers.
Twelve assignments had been posted for the coming fortnight, and most could be discarded immediately. One overlapped with a full-company rehearsal. Another would keep her outside the capital for six days, which Vodyanitsa would consider grounds for murder.
She marked three possibilities in her notebook. The first was a two-day survey of Kholodny Ravine following abnormal elemental readings, departing after her Friday rehearsal and returning before the following company call. The second involved an inspection of warehouses on the western river. The third was a night operation on the old customs road.
Kholodny Ravine sounded the least tedious. More importantly, the timing was convenient. Odette had spent eleven consecutive days either in rehearsal or reviewing revisions to the choreography of the Black Snow Swan. The muscles beneath her shoulders had begun to carry a permanent ache. She had learnt years ago that the quickest way to clear her head was two days somewhere cold, unpleasant, and entirely unrelated to ballet.
She copied the assignment number into her notebook and only then read the personnel list beneath it.
Officer responsible: Major Valeriy.
Her pencil stopped.
Odette had heard enough about Major Valeriy of the Special Assignments Battalion to know that he possessed strong opinions concerning schedules, procedure, and people doing precisely what they were told. Odette possessed perfectly adequate opinions of her own concerning all three.
Still, according to the Traveler, she and Valeriy had worked remarkably well together in limbo. Odette remembered almost none of it herself, which was irritating, but the Traveler had been quite certain. More recently, when Valeriy had unexpectedly appeared at her autograph session, he had been perfectly polite. Reserved, certainly, but neither overbearing nor unpleasant.
Odette closed her notebook. The ravine still had the most convenient schedule. The elemental readings were interesting. She needed time away from rehearsal.
She turned towards the clerk's office and submitted her name.
* * * *
KHLODNY RAVINE
Kholodny Ravine was located past a long stretch of pine forest. For most of the morning the unit travelled amongst black trunks, white earth, and the rhythmic crunch of ice beneath six pairs of boots. A cicin was chiming somewhere behind them before being promptly shushed by its embarrassed handler.
The young Cryo Cicin Mage was named Anya. She had spent the first hour attempting not to look at Odette and the second pretending that she had not recognised her at all. Odette had decided not to rescue her from the difficulty.
Valeriy walked near the front. Dark fabric broke the white landscape, his armour catching a muted gleam whenever the weak daylight found it. He spoke rarely, but when he did the unit moved without hesitation.
Eventually the pines thinned and the land opened. Kholodny Ravine cut through the plateau like an old wound, dark walls falling away beneath them. The cliffs were broken by frozen waterfalls, and far below a river lay trapped beneath blue-white glass. The abandoned military transit line had once followed the eastern wall, a narrow road supported by stone arches and iron braces driven into the cliff. Half of it had collapsed, leaving twisted rails projecting into open air.
Odette stopped at the edge. Wind came up from the ravine cold enough to sting the inside of her nose.
The engineer accompanying them consulted a set of old plans and pointed towards a fracture in the rock beneath the ruined roadway. “Maintenance passage should be behind there.”
Odette glanced at him. “Should?”
“The plans are seventy years old.”
“Comforting.”
The engineer gave her the expression of a man who had not expected a prima ballerina to critique military infrastructure before lunch. Valeriy looked at the wall.
“Can you open it?”
“With explosives.”
Everyone looked up at the enormous shelf of snow hanging above the ravine.
“No,” Odette said.
The engineer sighed. “Then slowly.”
They cleared the entrance by hand. Odette assisted for approximately twenty minutes before Valeriy told her she was making the engineer nervous.
“I am holding a lamp.”
“You're asking questions.”
“They are relevant questions.”
“You asked whether the entire support wall was structurally incompetent.”
“It appears to be.”
The engineer muttered something under his breath. Odette narrowed her eyes at him.
The maintenance passage beyond was narrow enough that their shoulders nearly brushed the frosty walls. Iron brackets still held the remains of lanterns installed by Fatui soldiers decades before any of them had been born. Their modern lamps cast long moving shadows ahead, the light sliding over stone and disappearing around the bend.
Beyond it, the passage widened abruptly around what had once been a service junction. The ceiling rose with it, pipes branching overhead before disappearing into three blocked conduits. Broken crates and pieces of old machinery had been pushed against the walls, leaving an open stretch of stone perhaps six metres across.
Valeriy stopped as he entered it, and Odette nearly walked into his back. His hand rose. The unit froze.
At first she heard nothing except the faint hiss of the lamp. Then came a scrape, soft and deliberate, from the darkness beyond the junction.
Weapons came free. Odette felt the familiar shift pass through her body. Balance, distance, breathing, and the precise arrangement of her feet over uneven ground.
The first rimehound came around the corner low and violently fast. Valeriy took the centre of its charge, forcing the creature's attention forward. Odette moved around its flank before it could correct, turned over one foot, and struck where the hide gave way.
Cryo burst blue-white against stone. The creature twisted, and Valeriy was already waiting where it tried to escape.
The second rimehound launched itself from the darkness. He ducked. Odette's boot touched his shoulder, Valeriy rose beneath her weight, and she launched upward.
For one suspended second, she was airborne above the creature. The movement had the clean geometry of choreography: his momentum beneath hers, her body turning through the narrow column of lamplight.
Then she drove down.
The rimehound hit the ground hard enough to shatter the stone beneath it. Odette landed on loose stone and her heel shifted, but Valeriy caught her forearm before the imbalance became a fall. His grip was firm enough to arrest her momentum and nothing more; the instant her balance returned, his hand opened.
“Thank you.”
“Hm.”
The third creature snarled from the darkness. Odette adjusted her grip. They killed it in less than ten seconds.
When the passage became quiet again, she heard Anya breathing somewhere behind them. Odette looked around. The young mage was staring.
“What?”
Anya shook her head rapidly. “Nothing, Miss Odette.”
They continued.
The abnormal reading came from much deeper underground than the surveyors had anticipated. After another two hundred metres, the passage opened into another junction chamber where three tunnels met beneath a vaulted stone ceiling. Pale growth covered the walls.
Not ice. Ley Lines.
Fine luminous roots threaded through mortar and broken pipes, gathering in a pulsing mass near the centre of the room. Their light was too unnatural to be beautiful, filling the chamber with the faint blue of moonlight beneath water.
Odette stopped in the doorway. Something shifted, not around her but inside her: a stage, darkness, murder. For one second she heard applause, or something that resembled it. Her breath caught.
A hand touched her elbow. Not gripping. Merely present.
“Miss Odette.”
Valeriy's voice was low, and the chamber came back into focus.
“I'm fine.”
His hand remained for another heartbeat before he removed it.
Across the room, something appeared: a woman, or the impression of one, in dark clothing with a pale face. It was gone before Odette could focus upon it.
“Did you see that?”
She looked at Valeriy.
“A woman?”
“Hm.”
The engineer behind them whispered a curse. Valeriy immediately ordered the others back towards the tunnel.
Odette remained where she was.
He looked at her. “You too.”
“No.”
“Miss Odette.”
“You saw it.”
“That is precisely why you're going back.”
She turned fully towards him. “You aren't staying here alone.”
“I didn't say I was.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to determine whether proximity changes the manifestation.”
“Excellent. We'll determine that together.”
For several seconds neither moved. Odette knew the expression he wore now; it was probably very similar to her own. Eventually Valeriy exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
They stepped into the chamber together.
The Ley Lines brightened, and the world moved sideways.
Odette was no longer underground. She was on a stage, where Valeriy sat on a chair, pale and unmoving. Someone spoke of death: a woman, a god, words she could almost grasp.
Then the image tore away.
She stumbled into the present with her hands fisted in the front of Valeriy's coat. His hands were steadying her shoulders. Their faces were much too close.
“Did you see?”
“What?”
The Ley Line mass flared. Odette saw movement over his shoulder.
“Down.”
Valeriy dropped, and a spear of corrupted ice crossed the space where his head had been. The chamber erupted.
Afterward, Odette remembered the fight mostly through fragments: Ley Line roots moving like living things, Valeriy's voice somewhere behind her. A creature drove him against the wall and she crossed the chamber before she had consciously decided to move. Later still, something struck for her blind side and his blade severed it before she saw him approach.
There was no elegance to most of it, only competence. By the time the central growth ruptured, Odette no longer needed to look to know where Valeriy stood.
The chamber filled with white light. Stone and ice came down.
When the dust settled, he was kneeling behind a broken pillar three paces away. Odette had one hand braced against the floor. Their eyes met.
“Hurt?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
They stood at the same time.
* * * *
The report took longer than the fight. By the time the final statement had been copied and signed, most of the western administrative building had emptied.
Odette sat opposite Valeriy at a narrow desk. He had made tea at some point without asking whether she wanted any. The cup had simply appeared beside her elbow, positioned just far enough from the papers that an accidental movement could not destroy two hours of bureaucracy.
She read the final paragraph. “You changed Anya's recommendation. I thought it was quite clear. ‘Burn it, seal it, and place a sign telling future operatives not to be idiots.’”
Valeriy continued reviewing an equipment form. “The Directorate prefers ‘restrict access pending remediation.’”
“Less clear.”
“Mm.”
Odette signed the form and stood to leave. Valeriy rose as well.
At the doorway he said, “Miss Odette.”
She looked back.
“You fought well today.”
“So did you.”
He inclined his head, receiving the answer with the same seriousness with which he might have accepted a formal salute.
Odette went home.
* * * *
THE BOOKSHOP
Three weeks later, neither of them intended to meet. That, later, was the detail Odette found most irritating.
The bookshop stood in an old quarter on Odette's route home from the theatre. Stone columns framed two crowded windows, and brass letters above the door had been polished so many times that they were beginning to lose their edges. Odette had passed it for years without entering. The National Library had forced her hand.
Three texts concerning Ley Lines had disappeared entirely from the catalogue between one evening and the next. When Odette asked about it, the librarian had the serene expression of someone being extraordinarily unhelpful while technically lying about nothing.
Odette disliked that expression, so she began looking elsewhere.
The bell above the shop door gave a small metallic complaint when she entered. Inside, everything smelled of leather, paper, and dust. Shelves climbed almost to the ceiling, with narrow ladders running along brass rails beneath the upper tiers.
Handwritten labels divided the sections: HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, ACADEMIC TEXTS, PRIVATE PRINTINGS.
The last category seemed promising.
Odette was standing on the third rung of a ladder, reaching towards a faded blue spine, when a familiar voice below said, “That one is inaccurate.”
She looked down.
Valeriy stood in the aisle with a book open in one hand. Instead of a uniform, he wore a dark wool overcoat fastened high at the throat, with simple gloves tucked into one pocket. Without the severe geometry of Fatui armour and insignia he ought to have looked ordinary.
He did not. He remained too straight-backed, too self-contained, and far too observant of the room around him.
Odette's first thought was that she had never seen him in a bookshop. Her second was that this was ridiculous; he was obviously capable of reading. Her third was that the dark coat suited him.
She discarded that thought immediately.
“What is inaccurate?”
“The translation of the funerary inscription you're reaching for.”
“You've read it?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“The author decided a disputed verb meant ‘return.’”
“What do you think it means?”
“‘Be gathered.’”
Odette considered this, then pulled the book from the shelf anyway.
“An incorrect conclusion does not make the entire book useless.”
A pause.
“Fair.”
She descended. The aisle was narrow enough that on stepping from the ladder she found herself much closer to him than expected. Valeriy moved back immediately.
Odette held up the book. “What are you looking for?”
“Nothing specific.”
“That is obviously untrue.”
His gaze flicked towards the front counter, where the proprietor had fallen asleep behind a newspaper. Valeriy turned the cover of his book towards her.
On the Passage of Mortal Memory: Ley Lines, Death, and the Persistence of the Self.
Odette stared at it, then looked down at her own.
The Returning Dead: Northern Accounts of Souls, Snow, and the Earth.
For several seconds neither spoke.
“You too?” she asked.
“Hm.”
They moved towards the rear of the shop by silent agreement. A tiny reading alcove occupied the space beside a cast-iron stove, with two old chairs facing each other across a table scarred by decades of cups and ink. Snow feathered the high window.
Odette sat. Valeriy remained standing until she glanced at the second chair.
“You can sit.”
He did.
The stove ticked quietly as the metal expanded.
“What do you remember?” Odette asked.
Valeriy looked down at the gloves he had folded beside his book. “Snow.”
“That narrows it down.”
“And a door.”
Something moved at the back of her mind. Not a memory, but the outline left behind by one. Odette frowned.
“What?” Valeriy asked.
“I don't know.”
He waited. There was no suggestion, no leading question, no attempt to persuade her that she remembered something merely because he wanted an answer. Odette appreciated that.
“I remember being angry.”
“That also narrows it down.”
Her head came up. Valeriy's expression remained perfectly composed.
“You made a joke.”
“Possibly.”
“You did.”
“Then perhaps the incident changed me.”
A huff escaped her, small and barely more than breath. Something in his face softened.
Then they read.
Twenty minutes became forty and then more than an hour. Pages turned. Odette's pencil scratched across the margin of her notebook. The stove gave its occasional soft metallic click, while outside carriage wheels moved over packed snow with a distant crunch.
They exchanged books twice. Valeriy found a reference to an old northern belief that the dead did not disappear but entered a current beneath the roots of the world. Odette found a suppressed Akademiya lecture suggesting that violent disturbances in the Ley Lines might temporarily reconstruct impressions of people who no longer existed.
Neither explained Ronova or limbo. Neither explained why the Traveler remembered experiences that seemed to belong more properly to Odette and Valeriy than to the person recounting them.
At length Odette closed one volume. “The Traveler said we kept watch overnight.”
Valeriy's page stopped turning. “Yes.”
“Together.”
“So I was told.”
“And apparently you told me I was trustworthy.”
He looked at her. “Apparently.”
“You don't remember saying it.”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
The knowledge had an unpleasant texture, like being told about one's own dream by someone who had remained awake. Odette looked down at the paragraph before her and found, strangely, that the discomfort was less sharp than it had been. Perhaps because, for once, she was not the only person sitting with the same empty space inside her memory.
Eventually Valeriy shut his book, placed it down, and contemplated the cover for far longer than its plain brown shade deserved.
“Do you have plans next week?”
“What?”
“We have a mission.”
Odette looked up. For the first time since they sat down, he appeared almost nervous.
“An abandoned observatory north of Zapolyarny,” he continued. “Suspected elemental contamination. The lower structure may be unstable.”
Odette waited.
“Saturday. Fourteen hundred.”
Her rehearsal ended at noon. “Who else?”
“Mikhail. A technician from the northern survey office.”
“And you.”
“Yes.”
Odette studied him. “Are you asking me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
A pause.
“You were effective at Kholodny Ravine.”
“I'll consider it.”
He nodded once. “Of course.”
At closing time the windows had turned dark blue and snow had been falling for hours. At the counter, Valeriy placed three books beside the register and Odette placed four. The bookseller named a price suggesting that he had waited his entire career for two Fatui officers to become anxious about metaphysics.
Odette reached for her purse. Valeriy had already placed mora on the counter.
She stared at him. “No.”
“It is fine.”
“I am buying my own books.”
“You found two of mine.”
“That is irrelevant.”
“It seemed efficient.”
“You are not paying for my research.”
The bookseller looked from one to the other. Valeriy considered Odette for a moment, then removed exactly the amount corresponding to her four books.
Odette paid. “Thank you.”
“You're welcome.”
The bookseller looked faintly disappointed.
Outside, the storm had thickened. Valeriy opened the door and stood aside. Odette passed him, and wind immediately caught the loose end of her scarf.
She reached for it. So did he.
His gloved fingers closed around the fabric just below her throat, and for one instant Odette became acutely aware of the small distance between his knuckles and her jaw.
Valeriy released it immediately. “Sorry.”
“You caught it. That is generally considered helpful.”
“I suppose.”
Odette wrapped the scarf more securely. They walked together as far as the central square, then their routes separated.
“Good night, Major.”
“Good night, Miss Odette.”
She accepted the observatory assignment the following morning.
* * * *
THE OBSERVATORY
The old observatory stood above a frozen lake, visible through the trees long before the road reached it. Wind had scoured much of the exposed ridge bare, leaving snow only in hollows between black rocks. Silver grass lay flattened beneath the sky.
The observatory itself possessed the severe beauty of an older Snezhnaya: white stone, tall arched windows, copper roofing gone green with age. The central dome was split from crown to base by a jagged crack, and carved constellations ran along the entrance portico.
Odette stopped beneath one. “That star is wrong.”
Valeriy looked up. “Which?”
“The northern point.”
“You know astronomy?”
“I know shapes.”
“Of course.”
She looked sideways at him. “Was that sarcasm?”
“No.”
“It was close.”
Mikhail made a choking noise behind them which he disguised as a cough.
Inside, their footsteps echoed. Dust lay thick enough across the floor to preserve old boot prints, and torn charts hung from the walls. In the central rotunda, an enormous brass telescope remained angled towards the fractured dome.
Odette tilted her head. “Beautiful.”
Valeriy looked at the machine. “Hm.”
The mission proved quieter than Kholodny Ravine. That should have made it easier. Instead the silence of the building magnified every small sound: boots crossing mosaic, metal touching stone, the slow turning of a loose window fitting somewhere overhead.
They discovered Abyssal residue in the lower archive, dark crystalline growth threaded between shelves and across the floor, faintly pulsing when approached.
Odette crouched beside one.
“Don't touch it.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“You were considering it.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Valeriy stood two metres away.
“You seem very comfortable telling me what I'm thinking.”
“Only when it's obvious.”
“Dangerous habit.”
The contamination was inactive. For most of the afternoon they mapped its extent, marked damaged shelves, and collected samples. Then the weather worsened.
Snow began as a translucent veil beyond the windows and thickened rapidly until the lake disappeared. The technician checked the old barometer hanging in the common room.
“We're not travelling in that.”
Valeriy crossed to the window. Outside, the world had become white.
“No.”
The old living quarters were dusty but usable. Someone found firewood. Mikhail found cards. The technician found a flask of something which, judging by the smell, could probably have removed paint from artillery. Odette declined both and settled into a chair near the hearth with an old star chart spread across her knees. Valeriy took the other, facing her across the worn rug, with a stack of records recovered from the observatory archive.
The common room warmed gradually, melting the snow on the boots beside the hearth. The air acquired the mingled smells of birch smoke, damp wool and old paper. A brass clock stood on the mantel, miraculously still functioning, its mechanism marking each second with a quiet, persistent tick.
For nearly an hour, they did not speak. Odette read; Valeriy worked steadily through the old records, turning a page every few minutes and occasionally setting one aside. No one required conversation from her, or charm, or even the appearance of being particularly pleased to be there.
At some point, the papers opposite her stopped rustling.
Odette looked up.
Valeriy's arms were folded loosely across his chest, his head tipped a little forward. A strand of dark hair had fallen over his brow. For a moment, nothing about him seemed to move.
The theatre.
Another chair.
A pale face beneath cold light, perfectly still.
Dead.
Odette's fingers tightened against the edge of the star chart. For a moment the observatory seemed very far away.
Then Valeriy's chest rose beneath the dark fabric of his uniform. His breath escaped slowly, stirring the loose hair near his forehead.
Odette looked back down.
The northern constellation had been redrawn after the winter surveys of 421. The accompanying note explained the correction in considerable detail.
She reached the end of it.
Then reached the end of it again.
On the third attempt, Odette stopped pretending that the problem was the astronomer's prose and looked across at Valeriy.
He was still asleep.
Without the habitual attention in his expression, his face seemed different. The faint crease between his brows remained, but the line of his mouth had eased. Dark hair had fallen untidily across his forehead and temple, shadowing one eye.
Odette's gaze travelled over the strong bridge of his nose, the edge of one cheekbone, the trace of stubble along his jaw. His head had settled slightly to one side against the worn timber. The warm room had persuaded him to leave the upper fastening of his uniform undone, exposing a narrow strip of skin at his throat.
His coat lay folded over the neighbouring chair. The fitted uniform he had worn underneath showed the breadth of his shoulders more clearly, narrowing over his waist where one forearm rested across his middle. His other arm had slipped from the chair, his hand hanging loose beside him. There were pale scars across two knuckles, another along the side of one finger, and a faint callus over his palm.
The chair was plainly too small for him. He had settled deep into it as he slept, one shoulder pressed into the faded upholstery and his long legs stretched out before him. One boot rested nearer the hearth than the other, turning his knee slightly outward. The position had drawn the dark fabric of his trousers smooth over his thighs.
Odette's gaze followed the line from his knee upward, slowly enough to notice the pull of the cloth where his legs met the edge of the chair.
Valeriy's eyes opened.
Odette's gaze snapped back to his face.
He was looking directly at her.
“How long?” he asked, his voice roughened slightly by sleep.
“Not long.”
“You could have woken me.”
“Why?”
He considered that, then leaned back again. “Fair.”
Odette returned to the star chart.
She had not turned the page.
In the morning the storm had passed, leaving the world so bright it hurt to look at. A hard sheet of ice covered the exterior stairs. Valeriy descended first, tested the railing, stepped onto the lowest landing, then turned towards Odette with an extended hand.
Odette looked at it.
“The steps are ice,” he said.
“I can see that.”
His hand remained where it was, palm upward. There was no insistence and no suggestion that she could not manage without him, only an available support.
Odette placed her gloved hand in his.
His fingers closed. He steadied her over the first three steps, and the moment her boots reached level ground he released her. He then turned immediately to help the technician with the equipment case.
Odette flexed her fingers inside her glove. The morning cold seemed to find its way through the wool more readily than it had a moment before.
The next month was occupied almost entirely by ballet. Rehearsal began before morning light and continued until the dressing rooms smelled of hair powder and exhaustion. The Black Snow Swan demanded precision through endless music, mirrors, counts, corrections, and costume fittings. Vodyanitsa began demanding that her prima ballerina should occasionally remember she possessed a human body rather than an inexhaustible mechanism.
Then, one afternoon, Odette passed Valeriy in an administrative corridor. He was speaking with two subordinates and stopped when he saw her.
“Miss Odette.”
“Major.”
She continued walking.
Someone laughed in an adjoining office. Boots crossed behind her. A clerk dropped a stack of papers and swore.
Odette glanced back.
Valeriy was already gone.
The corridor had not been this loud a moment ago.
* * * *
THE CHOICE
Winter moved gradually towards spring without becoming warm. One morning after rehearsal, Odette returned to the western administrative hall. The mission board had been changed overnight.
Odette read the assignments from top to bottom. One required five days. One coincided with a dress rehearsal. One concerned stolen shipping manifests.
She continued.
Survey of derelict communications station, northern foothills. Two days. Departure after noon. Return before her next company call.
The terrain was straightforward. No serious hostile presence was anticipated, although local wildlife had become unusually aggressive around several damaged relay towers.
Suitable. Not particularly interesting. Not particularly unpleasant.
Odette read the personnel list.
Officer responsible: Major Valeriy.
Her pencil stopped.
Odette looked at the remaining notices again. There was another assignment that fitted nearly as well: the river warehouses, shorter, easier, closer to the city.
She could take that.
Instead she found herself thinking of a ruined observatory beneath snow. A chair opposite hers beside a fire, the quiet rustle of old papers, a clock ticking on a mantel. A hand offered over an icy stair and removed the moment it was no longer required. She remembered fighting underground and discovering, without discussion, that Valeriy understood where she intended to move.
Odette lowered her pencil.
This was ridiculous. She was not choosing an assignment because Major Valeriy happened to be present. The foothill mission suited her schedule. The relay problem might prove interesting. Two days outside the capital would do her good.
All perfectly sound reasons.
She closed her notebook and submitted the form.