Chapter 7
The only seating in the study was the chair behind the desk, but Alexey declined even that. He instead opted to sit irreverently on the grand desk itself, putting him almost half a meter above eye level with Sofia. She could have stolen past him and taken the chair for herself, but she was too intimidated to try.
“So. Sofia,” said Alexey. He was choosing his words as carefully as he could, drawing upon a lifetime of diplomacy. “How much experience do you actually have with… talking to people?”
This seemed a stupid question to Sofia. “I don’t talk to myself, Alexey, and I’ve spent every day of my life talking since my first word, so yes, I do have experience, thank you.”
Alexey sighed. “Yeah. I figured that much. How much of that was with our… with Mom?”
Sofia was trying very hard to see where this was going, and failing. “Most of it, yes. Is that your point? That I don’t know how to talk to people other than Mom?”
These next words of Alexey’s had to be the most careful of all. “No. Not… quite. I… what did you talk about, with Mom? Because…”
“Stop asking questions, Alexey, and just get to the damn point! You’re not Socrates! What do you want from me?”
“I’m sorry, this is so difficult. It’s just… a lot of what I talked about with Mom was, well, her. It was about her. Because she was…”
“Suicidal? Depressed?” Sofia wasn’t trying to be accusing, but the words tasted very bitter in her mouth.
Alexey nodded. “For you too, then?”
Sophia drew out a long, slow sigh, as she very gently and slowly let her guard down. “Nearly every day. She would be stressed, from work, and from taking care of me, and from housework, and then… I don’t know, it felt like there wasn’t even a right answer.” She gained momentum as she committed to the soliloquy. “Nothing I ever did was good enough. She’d start yelling at me, about how I never helped her with housework or something, and… it’s terrible, but I actually started winning those arguments. Because, I don’t know, maybe I got better at it or she got worse at it, but she’d start bringing up my motivations, or the quality of my work, or something, and she always asked the same stupid questions like whether I want our family to die out or the house to rot or whatever, and… eventually, I…” She trailed off, eyes full of tears, voice broken.
“Eventually you just had all the answers,” Alexey finished for her. “Even if they weren’t answers you liked. Eventually you’d win by saying, ‘Yes, I want this family to die, now leave me alone.’ May I hug you?”
Sofia, face red, nodded and wiped her nose. She broke into sobs as Alexey slipped off the desk and embraced her.
“I’m sorry,” said Alexey. “I’m sorry, I went through it, too. I won those arguments, too. And I know what you wanted to say next, because you’re the one who mentioned she was suicidal, and that’s what I’ve been trying to get at this whole time: she made you regret winning, didn’t she? If you won, she just said depressive stuff.”
Sofia choked on a sob. “It…” she whispered, as Alexey released her from the hug, “It was so, so much worse. Once she had nothing left to lose. I… I-I didn’t want her to die, so I had to keep talking to her, or-or keep her talking, and it was like this new, horrible kind of argument where I couldn’t win because it all came back to how nobody loved or appreciated her and how she was worthless… I don’t know, Alexey. Did I kill her? She got so sloppy in the last few months. Going out without her drum. Then without even an idol. That last day… yesterday… she went out with nothing. She still wanted to die. I never could convince her she was loved. I tried really, really hard to love her, but—”
“Sofia, that’s not your responsibility!” exclaimed Alexey, so suddenly and loudly that Sofia reflexively jumped back. Alexey felt guilty for this, as he’d been trying his best to control his tone and volume, but he couldn’t help it. “I mean, god, did nobody tell you? Someone told you, right? When… okay, sorry, I’ll stop asking questions and just tell you what happened to me: the first time my mother tried to kill herself was when I was eight years old. Do you think an eight-year-old can… I dunno, Sofia, did you ask for this responsibility? Did you ever have a choice? Never mind that an eight-year-old should never, ever have to deal with anything like that. I said I’d stop asking questions, so let me answer for you: she never gave you a choice, and she never should have dumped her problems on a little girl. Obviously. I’m, I’m genuinely asking now, though, sorry, but, you know none of this is your fault, right? Please tell me you had, I dunno, some friend, or some… I dunno, literally anyone else, someone sane, who could tell you it’s not… Sofia?”
By way of answering, Sofia only cried.
“Garlic, ginger. Sichuan pepper,” said Tosha, addressing the ingredients on the cutting board and in a small bowl in front of him. “Smashed and peeled the garlic. Peeled the ginger. Don’t have to do anything to the pepper. Now I dice.” Having already sharpened the knife, Tosha started cutting the garlic and ginger.
Artemis and Vasilisa were hanging out just behind them, for lack of anything better to do. Artemis wanted to see if she’d bought the right ingredients, and Vasilisa just didn’t want to be alone right now, not to mention that she was cut off from the study, which was the best source of books in the house. Tosha had decided to treat this development as an excuse to teach them his mapo tofu recipe.
“That’s the aromatics done,” said Tosha, once they finished the dice. “Normally there’d be red peppers too but you guys don’t like it if it’s too spicy.” They paused, trying to figure out how to present the next part of the recipe. “Uh. Guess I should toast the peppercorns. Um. How do you work this thing…?” The kitchen had a five-burner stovetop, but it was unclear how it was lit, as the knobs didn’t seem to do anything. Tosha looked in the cabinet underneath, and discovered a propane tank. “Oh.” The turn of a knob later, the gas was flowing.
“Uh. Artemis, could you get me the matches, please?” asked Tosha.
“Yeah, hold—”
“Never mind,” said Tosha, discovering four new matchbooks in a nearby drawer. “That’s convenient.”
His companions waited patiently as he obtained a large cast-iron wok from a high shelf, the standard cookware for a Keleykhsky kitchen. He turned up the heat and lit the stove, setting the match aside.
“Toast the peppercorns first. Until they leave little streaks of oil on the pan. Then… Artemis, what oils did you buy?”
“Peanut oil, sesame oil, chili oil. And that Grandma stuff.”
“Lǎogānmā. Old Godmother.”
“That.”
“Good. Now, I’ll add the peanut oil and the garlic and ginger, and fry it on a low flame. Also the Lǎogānmā. Uh, low flame, because these burn easily. Let me… just…” Having already added the aforementioned ingredients to the wok, Tosha frantically rooted around the groceries to find a bottle of rice wine. Hands shaking, they uncorked it and poured some into the bubbling oil. “Sorry, usually that bottle’s just there. Need it for deglazing. So stuff doesn’t stick. Then… did you buy dòubànjiàng?”
“What?” asked Artemis.
“The fermented fava beans.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“That comes next… oh, here it is. Good, it’s the spicy kind.”
“Should I start making rice?” asked Vasilisa. Tosha had a strange habit of forgetting the rice.
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” said Tosha. “Please do. Should have started already.”
“…and my first suicide attempt was when I was nine,” said Sofia. “Just a year later. So, yes, of course there was a connection.”
“Nine?” asked Alexey incredulously. “Goddamn. I don’t remember anything from when I was nine. How’d you do it?”
“Um,” said Sofia, not really liking this direction of inquiry.
“Sorry, insensitive question,” said Alexey. “I just… I dunno if I even knew how when I was nine.”
“Well, Mom was always warning me about sleeping with too many furs,” said Sofia wistfully. This did spark a dim memory in Alexey’s mind, but he kept quiet. “She said I’d pile too many on my face and suffocate. So… that’s what I tried.”
“Well… did it work?”
“…did I die?”
“Sure,” said Alexey. He was trying to titrate some levity back into the discussion, and hoped Sofia would pick up on it.
“Yes, Alexey,” replied Sofia, cracking a weak smile to show that she understood. “I died, and went to the Kingdom of the Dead. I just left, because it was boring there, and Mom still needed a therapist.”
“So you do know what a therapist is,” joked Alexey.
“I do. I’ve only had to be one for the past… eighteen years, at least.”
“Then, I guess, that’s my point. If you’re such a good therapist, why did you yell at Vasilisa like that?”
“Because…” Sofia was instantly frustrated again, as if the argument about the broken idol had never ended. “She broke my idol! What in the blazes was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, it’s okay, dear, you survived and I have plenty more idols?’”
“You weren’t supposed to diagnose her with narcissism.”
Sofia exploded. “Oh, like you never heard that from Mom! Like it wasn’t… like it wasn’t on the table! Big important Ryzhaya heiress, with a house full of disease spirits, what else would she use to insult you if she didn’t like something you did? If she… if she spotted even an inkling of similarity to an idol she had? Good grief, Alexey, I don’t… kn-know how else to say it. I don’t know what else I could have said.”
Alexey sighed, massaging his face slowly, trying to decide how best to unpack what he just heard. Eventually, he spoke: “Sofia… I dunno if this is news to you, but, our mother isn’t exactly an example to be followed.”
Sofia crossed her arms and glared. “You think I don’t know that?”
“So then—”
“But,” insisted Sofia, “Who else do you expect me to become?”
“Now we can add it to the wok,” said Tosha, gesturing at a mound of tofu he’d just cut into large cubes while the aromatics and dòubànjiàng fried. “You’re supposed to blanch the tofu first, to firm it up and get rid of the aftertaste, but, at the matchbox house we only had one stove, and I kind of like the aftertaste anyway, so I don’t do that part.”
They carefully loaded the tofu on the blade of the knife and slid it into the wok, in batches. “Gypsum tofu like this will break easily if you push it around too hard. So, I have to be really gentle here.”
Artemis and Vasilisa’s attention was now waning desperately, but they knew this was almost the end. This wasn’t the first time they’d seen Tosha make mapo tofu, although it may have been the first time they paid more than passing attention.
“And now…” Tosha filled a pot most of the way with cold water. “We turn it into soup.” He dumped the water into the wok.
Vasilisa let out a sigh of relief. “So, that’s it then, right? Now you just let the soup simmer?”
“Almost,” said Tosha. “I’ve still gotta add some spices and stuff. And the leeks. But yeah.” They obtained salt, white pepper, soy sauce, Hungarian hot paste, and some leeks from the grocery bags, nearly depleting them entirely. They sprinkled the seasonings in, opened up the tube of paste and gave it a good squeeze over the wok, stirred a bit, and then began washing the leeks and cutting them into rings.
Artemis sat down at the kitchen table, relieved to be able to focus on something else. “Hey, so, Vasilisa, what are you gonna read next, after that Ryzhaya book? Metaphors or whatever?”
“Metamorphoses,” corrected Vasilisa, “And, there was this bookshelf full of what looked like school textbooks that I wanted to go through. I mean, first I’m gonna read that textbook on transformations, because that’s the coolest thing ever and I wanna be a fox like right now forever. But like, after I read through that, there’s those other textbooks that I bet are pretty interesting. Also, there was this thing on the desk…” She frowned. “There was this packet of papers on the desk that looked really interesting. I think… I think it might be the last thing Alexey’s mom read before she died. It was called The Division… The Division of something and the Sun, or something, and the weird part is the author was called ‘Yaminya.’”
This did not ring a bell for Artemis, and she let Vasilisa know with a polite stare of incomprehension.
“Yaminya is the hero of the Nenets epics,” supplied Vasilisa. “She was some great shaman or something. I dunno if she’s, like, the actual author of the packet or just someone’s pen name or what, but if anyone has something written by the historical Yaminya, it’s gotta be the Ryzhayas.”
Tosha chose this moment to join Artemis at the table. “Everything is done,” they said. “Just gotta wait until it reduces. Maybe add starch.”
“And until the rice is done,” reminded Vasilisa.
“And until the rice is done,” agreed Tosha.
“It should never be your first resort.” Alexey was presently formulating a lecture on the subject of hurtful speech, and struggling to phrase it in a way that Sofia might understand. “It was for Mom. But she was wrong, understand? She didn’t achieve anything good by belittling you and making up fake diseases. She just hurt you, and she hurt me, and now she’s dead and we both have awful memories of her. That isn’t… she didn’t achieve her goals.”
Sofia, who thought of herself as a fairly nice person, was still a little miffed that Alexey was trying to convince her that she wasn’t being nice enough. “‘Not a first resort?’” she quoted sourly.
“Nor your second, nor your third, nor really any resort when it comes to your friends,” agreed Alexey. “I mean, come on, this is Vasilisa we’re talking about. You don’t know her very well, yet, but she’s, like, the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet. She’s got nothing but love and enthusiasm, and it’s really, really easy to break her heart if she trusts you. And like, forget that it’s cruel and heartless, it’s unproductive! If you abuse her—”
“Excuse me, abuse? I didn’t abuse her, Alexey.”
“Verbally and emotionally abuse, yes, you did,” countered Alexey. “You hurt her in a way where you intentionally made it hard for her to deal with it. How easy is it to refute a diagnosis by a Ryzhaya? You abused your authority to hurt her.”
Sofia had nothing to say to that.
“Don’t you want Vasilisa to be happy?” continued Alexey. “Even if you just want her to work, people work a lot better when they’re happy.”
“How exactly,” said Sofia through gritted teeth, “Am I supposed to keep her ‘happy’ when she makes a mistake that both weakens us and nearly kills both her and Artemis?”
“By reassuring her that you aren’t mad at her! And that you’re glad she made it out okay!” Alexey wasn’t angry or trying to yell; if anything, he was enthusiastic that Sofia was finally asking the right questions. “You can be firm when you warn her to never make that mistake again, sure. That’s a normal thing to do. Just don’t try to make her feel bad about it. You can help her not make the mistake again by, I dunno, explaining to her why it was a mistake, or reminding her next time she might make it, or, I dunno, any number of things! But for god’s sake, Sofia, don’t hurt her over it. She’s hurt enough as it is. Save that for… Pyotr Lykov, or something. For your enemies.”
“What if,” said Sofia slowly, “I feel bad about it? And I want her to understand how badly she hurt me?”
“…well, then,” said Alexey, somewhat nonplussed, “Tell her that. Directly. ‘You hurt me and I expect an apology.’ Or something. There are many words in the Russian language to express such a thing.”
“…and if I want to just hurt her instead? As payback?”
“Then,” said Alexey menacingly, “Suck it the hell up. Or lose a friend.”
The twins were silent for a while, uneasy.
“Okay,” said Sofia, “Fine. I get it. I promise I’ll… not be mean. Or abusive. I won’t diagnose people with things if I’m angry at them, and I’ll, um, I’ll apologize to Vasilisa. I promise, Alexey, I really promise I’m trying to be a friend. I’m… sorry I’m not as good at it as I thought I was. I promise I’ll do better.”
“You know,” said Alexey, “Mom would never have said any of that.”
The silence stretched longer.
Sofia replied, “Good.”
Alexey and Sofia entered the kitchen to find their friends seated around the kitchen table. Tosha was resting their head on it, nestled in their arms, while Artemis and Vasilisa were having some incomprehensible argument.
“…and that means it’s worth 20!” insisted Vasilisa.
“That’s bullshit,” countered Artemis. “Red doubles the value, not quadruples it. It’s worth 10. You’re confusing it with an Open Betli. That’s worth 20.”
“Then explain how an Open Marchthrough is worth 12? Betlis don’t behave the same way as other bids. Red isn’t even the trump suit in a Rebetli.”
“It isn’t 12! It’s 24! Red Marchthroughs are 12!”
“Hey, guys,” said Alexey. “Is Tosha okay?”
“‘M fine,” replied Tosha, without moving. “Just tired.”
“What the hell are the girls arguing about?”
“Card game.”
“Vasilisa wanted to play Ulti, but couldn’t remember how bids are scored,” explained Artemis.
“What no you don’t remember how they’re scored—” began Vasilisa in outrage.
“Okay, okay, fine. What the hell is Ulti?” asked Alexey.
“A Hungarian card game,” said Vasilisa. “I got reminded of it after seeing some books written in Hungarian. And Tosha’s hot paste.”
“Okay,” said Alexey. “Why do you both know how to play it?”
“Saffron taught me,” said Artemis, “And Vasilisa’s just a nerd.”
“So, go down to the train station and call Saffron, then,” said Alexey.
“Um,” interrupted Sofia, “Who’s Saffron?”
“A friend of ours who lives in Surkhant,” explained Artemis. “She’s Hungarian.”
“And she has a working phone line…?”
“Sofia, practically everyone has a working phone line,” said Alexey. “It’s just Shtchavel House that’s stuck in the Age of Steam.”
“Oh, yeah, that reminds me,” said Artemis, “I bought a rice cooker at Eurosmak. I think it’s a Japanese import they couldn’t sell, because it cost literally just one ruble.”
Alexey raised an eyebrow. Normally, small electric appliances cost six to ten rubles, which was a week’s worth of food for the four of them.
“Well,” he said, “Good job, but, like I said, we don’t have electricity.”
“But, aren’t we rich?” asked Artemis. “And we know Saffron, an actual electrician. We should hire them to wire the house up. We could install a phone line, maybe even get a computer—”
“Sorry, um, what’s a computer?” asked Sofia innocently.
Alexey smacked his forehead and groaned. “It’s, complicated, can we please not get into that right now?”
“It’s okay,” said Artemis, “I’ve got this.”
“No,” said Alexey, “You absolutely don’t got this. Please don’t start explaining computers to Sofia. I’d have to kill myself.”
“Do not joke about that,” shot back Artemis. “We agreed, Alyosha. We do not joke about suicide in our house.”
“Since when is it the null hypothesis that my Sump brain-worms are a joke?”
Sofia was very lost. “Wait, computers are a Sump thing?”
“No,” said both Alexey and Artemis. “Not inherently,” continued Alexey, “But they’re, like, weirdly obsessed with them. Both Artemis and I have heard way too much about computers from them.”
“Well, in that case, shouldn’t I be informed about them?” asked Sofia. “Since the Sump want to kill us and all. In fact, you two clearly have history with the Sump, so can we maybe sit down and—”
“Yes,” said Alexey, pained. “We’ll go over that, later. Can you please give us time to prepare ourselves emotionally first, though? It’s a really tragic story and we don’t like being reminded of it.”
“I’m fine with doing it now, actually,” said Artemis. Alexey looked at her, silently begging her not to betray him like this. “Alone, obviously. Alexey doesn’t have to be there for it.”
“Alright, I’ll put it on the agenda,” said Sofia. “But I already had a plan for what to do next, actually. I want to get everyone in the study, so that I can fully explain the political situation we’re in. Vasilisa, I’m sorry I got angry at you, and I’m really sorry I reacted to it like my mom would, diagnosing you with mental health issues. I sincerely appreciate your help, and it’s not your fault that you made a mistake. As the Ryzhaya, it’s my responsibility to oversee you, and I didn’t do a good enough job of preparing you. It was my fault.”
“For what it’s worth,” said Vasilisa, “I do have mental health issues. Depression and ADHD at a minimum.”
“I see,” said Sofia. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me that. Especially after before.”
Vasilisa gave a warm smile. “Thank you for apologizing. I… don’t get that a lot. Outside my friends, I mean.”
“So… yeah, can everyone please follow me to the study?” asked Sofia. “And bring a chair from the dining room. We’re never going to use that dining room, and if the study is going to be our war room in the future, I’d like for everyone to be able to sit there.”
“Oh man guys, this is it!” said Vasilisa. “We’re finally about to learn all the Ryzhaya lore! And we have a war room, goddamn.”
“Can you please stop calling it ‘Ryzhaya lore’?” grumbled Alexey. “This is me and Sofia’s lives we’re talking about.”
“Alyosha, come on, don’t ruin it for her,” said Artemis. “It’s good if she’s enthusiastic.”
“Temmie, you didn’t just go over all the worst things my mother did with Sofia,” said Alexey. “I’m sorry if I don’t feel too good about the Ryzhayas after that, but, fuck, I just can’t do it.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” said Vasilisa. “That was insensitive. But still! Call it, uh, Keleykhsky lore, then. I am so excited to learn who’s out to kill us.”
Alexey just groaned wearily.
“I don’t like the dining room chairs,” said Tosha. “I’ll bring one from the kitchen table.”
“Just bring it back, or else you’ll miss it when we eat,” said Artemis.
“Oh, right. Hm. I guess I’ll bring a dining room chair, then.”
“Also, nobody’s had their meds yet,” said Alexey. “And nobody’s eaten yet. I think let’s eat and take our meds, and then do the… uh… council of war?”
“Alright, but quickly,” said Sofia. “There’s a lot of topics to address, and I remember them right now, but I’m likely to forget them later.”
“We also need to address the chirality issue before Sofia eats,” said Artemis. “I don’t want to feed her food with the wrong handedness. I have no idea if it’s safe for her.”
“If it helps, the mapo tofu smells good,” said Sofia.
“That helps,” agreed Artemis.
As it turned out, the caraway Artemis had bought smelled and tasted like mint to Sofia, which posed a problem. Tosha, not wanting Sofia to be left out of the food, decided to try spooning the soup over its own reflective surface and mixing it back in, creating a sort of mapo tofu racemate as the soup was exchanged with its reflection. Sofia had to help them at first, as Tosha had never reached through a mirror before, but eventually they were able to handle it on their own. “Next time, I’ll do it to the rice while I wash it, too,” they said. Initially, Artemis objected that this may not be safe to eat, but Alexey drew her away into an argument about nutritional disorders while Tosha served the food. Eventually, everyone ate some, and agreed that while it tasted a little unusual, it had a more complex flavor than the traditional enantiopure version, and most certainly didn’t seem poisonous.
Artemis and Tosha were still discussing the potential of opening a Sichuanese restaurant built around this trick when Sofia shooed everyone upstairs, and seated them around the study’s desk. She selected a three-volume set from the bookshelves titled A social history of the Basin of Aas and unfolded a map from inside the front cover of the first volume.
“This book,” began Sofia, “Was Nikolay Nikolaevitch Purtov II’s magnum opus. He spent the last fifty years of his life compiling everything he knew about this part of Siberia, from both a political and economic perspective. Every single faction in Keleykh is detailed here, all of their strengths, weaknesses, geography, and history laid bare. All published just four years ago, upon his death. Reading this book all the way through grants you practically deific comprehension of Keleykh’s power structure. You would know every string that can be pulled, every nerve that can be hit.
“It is an impenetrably boring read. Do not attempt to read it.
“I don’t know if Purtov did it on purpose, but it is very lucky that his work is soporific in even the smallest doses. This book was published very widely, and everyone in Keleykh now has a copy. If anybody had actually been able to make use of this book, the landscape he described would have changed instantly. As it stands, even the territory maps are current. And that’s what I’m about to use, because it’s basically the only legible part of the book.”
Sofia started outlining shapes on the map with her finger, encircling regions that were stained in various colors of pastel ink.
“There are basically three big factions in Keleykh: the Sump, the Tonins, and the Siberian Miners’ Industrial Union, also known as Sibgorprom. Let’s cover Sibgorprom first, because their headquarters aren’t on this map. They’re based out of Norilsk, and while they have some influence over all of Siberia, their geographic proximity to Keleykh makes them particularly relevant here.”
“Wait,” said Vasilisa. “I’ve actually heard basically the opposite. Haven’t they been trying to control Keleykh for years and failing?”
“I mean, do you see any mining being done here?” said Sofia.
“I guess not,” admitted Vasilisa.
“…the miners’ union wants to prevent mining?” asked Tosha, very confused.
“They want to prevent people from digging up abominations, yeah,” said Vasilisa.
“Although I should point out that we have plenty of abominations anyway,” said Sofia. “There are lots of theories on where abominations come from, and the most current literature claims that mining doesn’t significantly contribute to their numbers. I think Sibgorprom has some other reason they want mining outside of Norilsk to stop, and they just won’t say.”
“I dunno. From what I read, even the Siberian Traps are supposed to prevent mining, and those are older than civilization itself,” said Vasilisa, referring to the strange concrete and metallic structures encrusting Siberia. “You know those poles with the cones at the top where if you put your ear up to ‘em you can hear, like, insane ramblings about how you’re gonna die, or whatever? Those are supposed to be warning you about abominations, I’m pretty sure.”
“The Traps are much older than the abominations,” said Sofia flatly. “Nobody can agree on when the abominations arrived in Siberia, yes, but everyone agrees that they didn’t used to be here, which means they arrived at most a few hundred years ago. Personally, I believe that they were brought here by whatever it is that also brought oil machinery here.”
“Look, I get the connection,” said Vasilisa. “They both have to do with oil, and they both showed up recently. But oil machines are plants, and abominations are animals. And they have, like, nothing to do with each other. You can harvest oil from the machines. But you can’t, I dunno, milk abominations for tar.”
“I mean, have you tried?” joked Alexey. Vasilisa playfully swatted his hair.
“I’ve got a book somewhere around here by Ovsyannikov from the late 1800s where he deduces they’re not entirely animals, actually,” said Sofia. “They’re, uh… ‘demosponge holobionts’. Their bodies are made of sponges, but the way they move is that there’s a slime mold inside them that pumps itself around, or something. I don’t know. We’re getting off-topic.
“The point is, Sibgorprom is only the third most powerful faction in Keleykh. They have strong ties to the Sump, because the Sump hates abominations almost as much as they do, but they would rather the Sump not exist and control Keleykh for themselves. It goes without saying that, like pretty much everyone else in Keleykh, Sibgorprom hates us, because they think disease spirits are connected to abominations, and they don’t like the fact that we’re keeping a couple hundred of them locked up in idols around here.”
“How many of them do you have?” asked Artemis. “Is there like, a list of them?”
“There’s a few lists, yes,” said Sofia. “But I’d rather go over those later. It’s less useful to know than you’d think. As for how many, I’d guess… about 240 or so.”
Vasilisa attempted to wolf-whistle, and failed. Artemis noticed her attempt, and, out of solidarity, completed the whistle for her.
“Yes, we have maybe 10% of all idols in the entirety of Keleykh,” said Sofia. “Unlike other factions, our power doesn’t come from gods, just idols and mosquitos, for the most part.”
“Sibgorprom’s power comes from gods?” asked Tosha.
“Well, okay, I guess theirs doesn’t either,” said Sofia. “Honestly, I don’t know where Sibgorprom’s power comes from. I don’t know how they flipped Norilsk upside down or whatever it is they did to it. They’re our most opaque opponents, and that’s very bad for us. I don’t think even Purtov knew how they became powerful.”
“Sounds like a good faction to approach diplomatically,” said Artemis. “I mean, if we want to get to know them better, and we have a common enemy in the Sump.”
“They’re not outright enemies with the Sump, and they’d definitely choose the Sump over us,” said Sofia. “I think diplomacy with them would be a waste of time. But, I don’t know, maybe it’s worth sending them a letter or something.
“Anyway, that’s Sibgorprom covered. Next, the second most powerful faction in Keleykh: the Tonins. They actually used to be the first, before the Sump existed, and they’re still the scariest in terms of sheer power and diversity. They have the most shamans of any faction, and have their fingerprints on almost every business in Keleykh. The reason they hate us, apart from it being politically convenient, is that they’re direct competitors to us. They own Keleykh General Hospital, they used to own Dubrovka’s asylum before that shut down, and in general they have a near-monopoly on medicine in Keleykh.”
“So, that’s their thing? They’re Keleykh’s doctors?” asked Vasilisa, trying to demonstrate out of habit that she was still paying attention.
“Well… no,” said Sofia. “All but a few are actually fishermen. Fishing is traditionally connected to medicine in Nganasan culture, and the Tonins were fishermen-shamans before they were doctors. They are the favored faction of the Sea-Mother. They usually take the form of loons, whose beaks can snap up disease spirits out of people like they snap up fish. If you see a loon far from the seashore, that’s probably a Tonin spying on us. In fact, there’s probably a Tonin spying on us right now. There’s at least fifty of them, all of them shamans.
“The good news is, they’re a lot more self-interested than the Sump or Sibgorprom. They only really care about maintaining power, so if we can offer them a good enough deal, they’ll betray the Sump for us. Hopefully.”
“What do we have to offer them?” asked Artemis.
“Uh… not much, I guess,” said Sofia. “Our idols aren’t for sale, and nobody besides the Ryzhayas want them anyway. We might be able to pay them off, but it would deplete the Ryzhaya fortune fast. My ancestors didn’t accumulate it by paying the Tonins protection money, anyway. But if we manage to steal assets from the Sump, or something, or create new ones, we could buy the Tonins’ loyalty with those.”
Artemis nodded. She had some ideas on both of those fronts.
“The Tonins control nearly half the town. Their headquarters are located here, within Keleykh General Hospital,” said Sophia, pointing to a blue patch on the map. “We should make contact with them sooner rather than later. We don’t want the Sump striking a deal with them. Which brings me to the last big faction.
“The Sump.”