Kori dreamed of a flooded Mountain.

  The pools rose to fill their chambers and springs gurgled down the corridors, hot and cold unintelligibly mixed. The rising waters lifted the Good, pressed them to the ceilings, and held them there, cool, and dark, and deep. They scratched, patiently, to be let out.

  She swung her legs off her bed and waded through her thick carpets. There was that noise again at her outer door. The inspiration of her dream? Or a reflection of it? Real drowning would not feel so serene.

  "I echo," she called as she left her bed chamber. "Who is it?"

  No voice answered, but a hand slapped against the wood. Andrei Trifonovich? But no, that sound had been made by a smaller hand than his.

  "Vlada?" Kori hurried to the door and opened it. The little girl had been leaning against it and slumped, groaning, into Kori's apartment.

  "What are you doing here?" Kori asked, kneeling beside her novitiate. "You should be asleep with the doctor in the infirmary."

  "The doctor went away," murmured Vlada. "He argued with Elder Brother."

  "What?" Kori put the back of her hand to the girl's forehead. "You're feverish again. Did you dream the doctor went away?"

  "I had a bad dream."

  "You're very feverish." Kori didn't like the way Vlada's sweat smelled, either.

  "My Maiden, I'm thirsty. Where is Doctor Andrei?"

  "Why would he be here, little sister? Why wasn't he in the infirmary with you? What did you dream?"

  "I dreamed he was here, with you. It was very romantic. My Maiden, I'm thirsty."

  What are you doing to me? Kori clicked her tongue, sending an echo to the faces carved into her ceiling: smiling woman and frowning, bearded man.

  "I'll give you some water," she told her guest. "And take care of you until he comes."

  ***

  It was a very different thing to walk down the corridors with a light. Before, with Brother Bogdan, ever step had been an exercise in trust. When he'd been alone, of courage. Now, though, instead of following, Andrei fled. The harsh, white light of his lamp cut off abruptly just short of his peripheral vision, so for every foot of progress he made, a black gullet seemed to swallow the previous one. His eyes tended to avoid the terror of that terminator between carved stone and hungry void, staring uselessly straight ahead at Nikolai's back.

  The man's shoulders hunched under Andrei's scrutiny. He half-turned, grimaced, and shielded his eyes. "Would you douse that blasphemous thing?"

  Andrei was glad to comply. The darkness was almost a comfort to him. "But now, of course," he said, "you'll have to take my hand to lead me, Nikolai Igorevich."

  "Better than to have your shadow looming over mine." Nikolai clicked at Andrei and found his hand.

  "Thank you," said Andrei. "Now, take me to the infirmary."

  Nikolai scraped his fingernails of his free hand along the wall. "You will demand nothing."

  "I have a concussed poisoner to stabilize, a feverish novitiate to check on, and—"

  "Your own skin to save."

  "As their doctor, I demand it."

  Nikolai squeezed his hand. "You are in no position to demand anything, Fool. Shut your lying mouth and follow."

  Andrei couldn't exactly disagree. Perhaps it would be better to spend his remaining time on figuring out how to make Kori play along with his lie.

  Surely, Nikolai wouldn't let Andrei get in the first word. Would it be too much to hope for a nice leading question from the priest? Something along the lines of, "My Maiden, how is your health? We'll kill Andrei if you say 'fine.'"

  Andrei wondered how fast news traveled under this mountain. Maybe the Maiden already knew about his phony vision. Maybe, having heard of it, she would fake up some illness? Would she have any reason to play along, though? He wished he knew the woman better.

  Andrei's other option was to drive an elbow into Nikolai's gut and make another run for it.

  Was the situation really so hopeless?

  If you keep failing to learn, Doctor, yes.

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  In the darkness ahead, someone groaned.

  Andrei's head came up. "Vlada?"

  The light of understanding did not dawn, but in good cave-Thracian tradition, the sound echoed off the inside of Andrei's head and created images.

  He and Nikolai stood in a corridor. The priest turned to the left to stand in front of an open door.

  Kori's voice rang out of it, "Bréma. Azét an ka?fa olástin?"

  The cave-priestess certainly didn't sound ill, but Vlada's groan came again.

  Hot guilt rushed down Andrei's face. He'd left a feverish little girl alone in the ward. He'd convinced himself that his patient didn't need him, and now here she was. And wasn't that odd? What on earth, or under it, was the feverish novitiate doing in the chambers of the Maiden?

  Saving your life, Doctor.

  "Sará Mi, tsi vu dassat?" asked Nikolai. "Azét ka?ma igán, la—"

  "Bass," Kori's voice slid through Nikolai's like a pair of pinking shears. "áida éla!"

  Andrei had been on the Balkans long enough to know that one: 'come here!'

  Andrei obeyed, pushing past Nikolai. "Who brought the girl here? Who moved her?"

  The feel and smell of the air changed and Andrei's feet sank into her carpet. His hand went to his miner's lamp even as Nikolai's spoke in French: "Andrei Trifonovich, there may be no light before the Maiden of—"

  "Then the Maiden is free to leave." Andrei flicked the lamp and flame bloomed on his forehead.

  Shadows fled from Vlada's form, lying on the floor of the Maiden's sitting room.

  Andrei knelt beside the girl. His light slid off her sweat-darkened hair. "What is she doing here?"

  "I don't know," said Kori. "I woke up to a noise, and there she was at my door."

  Andrei glanced at the door behind him, and Nikolai scowling out of the darkness. "Someone brought her to you? Why?"

  "I asked her, but she wasn't very coherent. I think she sleep-walked here."

  "A dream led her here?" asked Nikolai. Hairs rippled on Andrei's arms, but Kori did not answer.

  Instead, she asked, "How is she?"

  Andrei laid the inside of his wrist to her throat and hissed. "Much too high. She needs antipyretics. Damn me for a selfish idiot!"

  I left her! I thought the crisis was over. I grabbed the chance to escape and let go of my oath. By Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, damn me!

  "What did you say?" asked Kori in French.

  Andrei peered into Vlada's eyes. He did not like the look of the sclerae. "Febrifuges," he said in French. "Something to bring her temperature down. Salicylic acid." He looked around at Nikolai and switched back to Russian. "Or peppermint. Elderflower. Meadowsweet?"

  But city-bred Nikolai had never heard of meadowsweet. He didn't seem to be entirely sure what elderflower was, either.

  Andrei caught himself trying to describe what an umbel was and shook his head. Shadows danced. "I don't want you to go out and collect anything, man. You must have stores here. Why don't you have stocks of these things? You must have them."

  "Our old surgeon died in the plague and we never replaced him," said Kori.

  Andrei shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead. The lamp on his head was uncomfortably warm. "On my way up this mountain I was nearly poisoned by an old shepherdess. She knew her herbs, certainly. You have master poisoner here…and I just sent him to my infirmary with a concussion."

  "Your infirmary?" said Nikolai.

  "Concussion?" said Kori.

  Andrei cursed again.

  "Quiet." Nikolai's voice shook and rose like an escaping kite. "Do not use such language. Do not speak outside tongues. And put out your light!"

  Andrei considered saying. No, we will not have another discussion about your ridiculous religious prescriptions. That would just put Nikolai's back up. Start some useless argument between him and Kori while another patient slipped further from him. Better to simply train the man to follow orders.

  "Gurskalin, go get me a bucket of cold water and a towel. And some socks and vodka or other spirit."

  "Of course we have none!" said Nikolai, mortified.

  Andrei's head-lamp flickered. "And get me more fuel-oil. I'll take Vlada back to the infirmary."

  "But—"

  Kori clicked her tongue. "Fetch Sister Dragomira from the kitchens, Elder Brother."

  Nikolai stiffened, but said, "Néi, Sará Mi."

  He padded away as Andrei slid his hands under Vlada's shoulders and knees. He prepared to lift, but Kori's voice stopped him.

  "Doctor Voropayevski," said Kori. "Why is Nikolai wearing assassination slippers?"

  Andrei looked at her. "Well," he said, and stopped.

  He was looking at her!

  Kori stood next to the cast-iron stove in the center of the room, wearing a pale gray robe. She was just as tall as he'd thought, with the straight dark hair that he might have predicted. Andrei hadn't thought of how strands of it would curve around her ears, though. Those ears stuck out, framing a narrow, high-cheeked face. A long, straight nose over a firm mouth. Bold brows over eyes like cherry wood. Dark, warm, and very hard.

  "He tried to kill you, didn't he?" asked the Maiden. "How did you stop him?"

  Andrei stared. "I told him I dreamed of you."

  She slitted her eyes like a satisfied cat and raised her chin. "Clever, Doctor. And very fortunate. But don't depend on fortune again."

  "I won't," Andrei promised, watching the veins in her satiny throat.

  "My position is precarious, as well, and you can't depend on me to protect you."

  Andrei tried to listen, but eyes kept sliding down. Those hips had been nowhere in Andrei's expectations. They went out and down and out again. That robe stretched tight.

  "Put out your light," she murmured and Andrei obeyed.

  ***

  The darkness was a great relief.

  After six months under the mountain, Kori had forgotten the way it laid things bare.

  She blinked, but still the image swam. The girl lying on the floor, the man crouched over her. Those large hands, those broad shoulders. The black stubble that covered his jaw. The eyes under their heavy black brows, burning more intensely than his lamp. Andrei Trifonovich had looked as if he wanted nothing more than to spring up from the Earth and seize her.

  Could the eavesdroppers hear Kori's heartbeat? It still pounded, resounding with the echoes of that first thunderclap when their eyes had met. A bell might ring so if struck by a cannon ball. Armies might feel this way when the signal to attack finally came.

  Kori felt trapped. Squeezed between the undeniable fact that the Good could not go on as they had, and the rising realization that Nikolai's plan wouldn't work, either.

  The Good had always believed in a three-part world. Earth, sky, and underworld. Madness, logic, and the cool depths. The two impossible choices and the third.

  "What should we do?" she asked. A dangerous question. The darkness knew.

  A grunt from the floor and a small noise from Vlada. "I'll carry the patient. You guide me back to the infirmary. Oh, and tell Nikolai Igorevich to deliver those drugs to me there. Um, My Maiden."

  "I will guide you back to the infirmary," she said. "You will…can you carry Vlada?"

  She swallowed. "Call me Kori."

  "How splendid. And I'm Andrei." Another muffled oof. "Would you open the door, Kori?"

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