Verena's Whistle: Varangian Descendants Book I by K. Panikian (essential reading txt) 📗

“You will think I am foolish.”

“No,” he said and bent his head closer to hers. I couldn’t hear what she said back. I decided Theo would get more information without me there as a third wheel. I took a few steps back and mimed going for a walk with my fingers when Theo looked up to check on me. He nodded and I turned away.

I wandered the rows some more and resisted stopping at another blini stand. There were several tents selling knives and I admired the metalwork. I started talking to one seller and he told me that his workshop was actually in Zlatoust, and that Zlatoust had a huge sword-making industrial complex. There was a factory and at least 60 smaller workshops like his.

I admired the animal motifs on his hilts and told him I’d recently come into possession of a long knife with a nightingale on the hilt. He got very excited and I promised to bring it by his workshop soon. He gave me his name, Dmitri, and a business card and told me that if I wanted to buy any steel when I was in the area, he would make me the best deal. I thanked him and moved on.

I checked my phone; no texts from Theo. I wandered back toward where I’d last seen him and Zasha and eventually saw them walking ahead of me, hand in hand again. Zasha was carrying a couple of small bags and Theo was smiling down at her. I turned to go and wander some more when Theo looked back and saw me. He waved me over cheerfully and I joined them.

“Very! I have bought you a Matryoshka doll,” Zasha called to me. She fished in the smaller bag she carried and pulled out a little nesting doll with the painted face of a peasant girl; she was holding a little dark-haired baby. “It’s a very traditional gift, yes, but oh, so sweet. I thought you would like it,” Zasha explained. “See, she has long, brown hair, like you, and blue eyes.”

“I love it,” I told her, my finger tracing the cheerful, smiling face of the doll.

“And for Theo,” she continued, “I have found him a fur trapper hat.” She pulled a hat from the other bag and flourished it. Theo obligingly bent his head and she put it on him. The ear flaps went down to his shoulders.

I burst into laughter. “It looks very warm,” I told him.

“It is,” he said firmly back.

Zasha laughed too, and said sheepishly, “I could not resist.”

We started to meander back to the entrance of the fair, chatting about the knives I’d seen and the selyodka, or pickled herring, Zasha convinced Theo to try.

When we reached the gate Zasha hugged us again and kissed Theo’s cheek. She said, “You must come to Chelyabinsk again shortly. I have no car here, but there is a train. You must say I will see you again soon.”

I gave her another hug and whispered in her ear, “I’m positive you will see us again very soon.” I turned away and let Theo say his goodbye in private. He caught up with me after a block of walking and I checked the time.

It was late afternoon and we had a two-hour drive back to Zlatoust. “We need to get to the lake before the light is gone,” I reminded Theo and we hurried back to the rental. We’d exchanged it in Zlatoust that morning with the car company, telling them vandals smashed the windows.

When we reached the parking lot, I climbed back into the driver’s seat. “How are the ribs?” I asked.

“I could use a couple more Ibuprofen,” Theo said. “I didn’t want to take them at the fair in front of Zasha, but I’ve got some in my pocket.”

He popped the pills with a sip of water and we hit the road. He talked while I drove and updated me on Zasha’s team and the crater.

“So, the scientists are definitely noticing something weird going on at the site. Their readings are showing an incredibly high level of potential energy in the center of the crater, despite the fact that the large meteorite fragment that landed there is no longer in place; it’s already at the university. That fragment is showing normal readings. But the crater and the site are acting peculiar.

“Next,” Theo continued, “two of the scientists on Zasha’s team have quit over the past three days. One vanished mid-shift; she just took off and didn’t tell anyone she was leaving. No one has heard from her at all. The second came back from a smoke break and flat-out threw her badge on the ground and demanded to be snowmobiled out of there. She won’t talk to anyone on the team and has taken the train back to Moscow and maybe, moved in with her grandmother. That’s unconfirmed.”

“Two encounters,” I mused. “The second one maybe saw something in the woods that panicked her and she left, wondering if she was going crazy. Otherwise, she would have tried to warn them.

“The first one though, I don’t like it. She vanished? I think one of the bes scouting parties found her,” I concluded.

“I agree,” Theo said. “And there’s more. The meteorite fragments that they found in the snow and stored in a crate at the site, they vanished last night. Poof. Crate and contents gone.”

“Whoa,” I said. “I have no idea what that means. What could the besy want with the fragments? Do they have power? Maybe it was just thieves. We should try and find a fragment too, see if it reacts to our magic.”

“And for my final trick,” Theo declared, pulling a small rock out of his pocket, “we have a meteorite!”

“What!?!”

“Zasha gave it to me,” Theo answered, smugly. “She said they were allowed to keep a handful of the smaller fragments out of the pile, to give away or sell if they wanted. Zasha thinks they knew people would be sneaking them