Anya lived in the warlords court. She was treated very well. She didn’t even have to show up that often. She was left to her own for long time periods and sometimes attended events and dinners. He liked to confide in her which she thought was dangerous. She was a captured or political prisoner that Kaderov saw as a pearl. But she got lost in the shuffle too. He would give her body slave / guard money to take her out sometimes too. He didn’t seem to understand how much things cost or what they were worth. It was usually way too much. Sometimes she was living in the capital with the countries leader in his court. And also very treated well. Was more of a prize they liked having around. Kaderov anyway. Like a weird pearl to show off. She was shown off or brought to meals cause she was fun but generally left to her devices. Though she had to watch the cruelty around her. She could help sometimes but sometimes it was out of her hands. Sometimes she would be summing to the Soviet capital by train usually. The kremlin leader just couldn’t let her be free and enjoyed her company occasionally. But didn’t see her as a threat. But it was a weird life. Kaderov was base and brutal. He captured local tribes and made pows fight each other in his blood sport ring. People travel from all over to watch and bet and elites would be hosted there and enjoy the brutality. Sometimes she would play at bring a food guest and the warlord found her free spirit easy quirky and fun. She had one body slave / man servant. He stoically followed her and did what she said in public. Behind closed doors they were friends of a sort. Really he took care of her. Making sure she ate and took care of herself. Sometimes she slept in his arms. They had both been through a lot together. They talked and laughed and then played the part in public. He was large and dagistani and tough. They both had accents to each other. He was sweet and kind but never crossed any sexual boundaries. But would kiss her forehead or comfort her if something crazy happened. Which it usually did. And in public he would play a stoic servant who knew his place. She was exhausted from the charade of everything. She wasn’t really trying to escape. It wasn’t so dramatic as that. She was fairly firmly stuck in this system. The times in the palace in the capital worse better and worse than when she was in the oblast with the warlord. Opulence was all around.

Chapter 1: The Velvet Pouch and the Bloodstained Floor

The air in the anteroom was a solid thing, thick with cigar smoke and the sweet, cloying reek of cheap brandy. It caught in Anya’s throat, a familiar poison. She stood near a marble pillar, a silent ornament in a gown of sapphire silk, her fingers tracing the cool stone. Around her, the elite of Kaderov’s empire murmured and laughed, their jewels flashing under the low lights, their polished boots scuffing against Persian rugs stained with something darker than wine.

On the other side of the arched doorway, the roar of the crowd swelled, a wave of sound that crashed and then broke into sharper, hungrier cries. Another fight had ended. A pair of guards walked past her, their uniforms spattered with fresh, wet gore that looked black in the red light. One of them wiped a smear from his cheek with a detached swipe, laughing at something his companion said.

Anya took a long, slow sip of champagne. The bubbles were a minor agony on her tongue, a tiny, precise counterpoint to the generalized brutality of the room.

“Little dove,” a voice murmured beside her.

She turned, her face arranging itself into the expected pleasant vacancy. The two sheiks from the Gulf stood there, their robes immaculate, their eyes tired and kind. She knew them. They came every few months, hated these events, and always found a moment to speak to her.

“You look pale,” the older one said, his voice barely audible over the din. “This place is a butcher’s shop.”

“It is what it is,” Anya said, the words a script. She allowed a flicker of something real to show in her eyes—gratitude for the acknowledgment, a shred of shared understanding.

The younger sheik glanced over his shoulder, then back. His hand moved, swift and smooth, and a heavy leather pouch appeared, aimed not at her, but past her shoulder. “For your giant,” he said, as Rustam’s looming presence at her back shifted slightly. “Take her to the sea. Let her see the horizon for an afternoon. Buy her fruit that isn’t canned.”

The pouch, full of gold coins, disappeared into Rustam’s massive hand without a sound. Anya didn’t look at it. Women didn’t handle money here. The sheiks knew the rule was absurd, a petty control, but they played the game, directing the kindness through the approved channel. It was a quiet, clever rebellion.

“We resent seeing you here,” the older man said, his lips barely moving. “It makes doing business with him… soiled.”

Before she could offer another rehearsed line, Kaderov’s voice boomed across the room, cutting through the chatter. “Anya! My little magpie! Come here, come meet a friend!”

The sheiks’ faces shut down, empathy replaced by neutral politeness. They melted back into the crowd. Anya set her glass on a passing tray, the movement smooth, automatic. She glided towards the sound of his voice, a smile touching her lips that didn’t reach her eyes.

Kaderov was holding court near a bar laden with bottles, his stocky frame wrapped in a poorly-tailored military tunic. The scar on his cheek pulled his grin into a grimace. He threw a heavy arm around her shoulders, pulling her into the smell of his sweat and cologne. “This is her! My living good luck charm. Sharp as a tack, this one. Pretty, too, eh?”

The man he addressed was an arms dealer, thin and wiry, with the cold eyes of a spreadsheet. He nodded at Anya, his appraisal purely mercantile. She inclined her head, the picture of demure charm.

“She remembers everything,” Kaderov confided, his breath hot on her temple. “Every price, every shipment date. Don’t you, magpie? Like a beautiful little computer.” He laughed, a sound like gravel in a drum. He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a wad of local currency, crumpled and thick, and shoved it at Rustam, who had followed at a respectful distance. “Here. Take her for sweets tomorrow. Buy the whole damn stall.”

The money was an obscene amount for sweets. It was a performance of carelessness, of power. Kaderov had no concept of value, only possession. Rustam took the money with a deep nod, his face a mask of stoic obedience.

Kaderov turned back to the arms dealer, lowering his voice but not enough. “The tribes in the eastern passes are getting restless again. Time for another harvest, I think. Fresh stock for the ring. Nothing like new blood to stir the bets, yes?”

Anya kept her smile fixed. Inside, she cataloged the statement, filed it away with all the other dangerous confidences he dripped into her ear. She was a beautiful, clever receptacle. He never suspected the weight of what she held.

Another roar erupted from the arena, followed by a collective, shuddering groan. Something had been decisive. Final. The night was tipping from grim entertainment into something more raw, more openly bloodthirsty. The energy in the anteroom sharpened, became edged with a frantic greed.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur of introductions, of hollow laughter, of sipped drinks that she left mostly full. She was a reflection in a gilded mirror, showing whatever face was required. Her mind, however, was elsewhere. It was planning. With the sheiks’ gold and Kaderov’s absurd handful of cash, she and Rustam could get proper coffee. Real cheese. They could maybe even bribe a driver to take them to the bluffs for a whole hour.

She counted the minutes.

She used to just collapse on her own. After nights like this, she would stumble back to her rooms, a wired and hollow puppet, and fall in a pile on the floor or the bed if she was lucky. Sleep for sixteen hours. The whole performance was fine—she could do it in her sleep—but it taxed her nervous system, scraped it raw. Sometimes she wouldn’t talk for a full day after.

That was before Rustam.

Finally, finally, Kaderov grew bored, his attention snagged by a new guest boasting about diamond shipments. He dismissed her with a wave. She moved through the crowd, Rustam a shadow at her back, a wall between her and the grasping hands and leering eyes.

The walk back to her wing was long, through silent, marbled corridors. Only when the heavy door to her suite closed behind them, only when she heard the bolt slide home, did the performance end. The smile vanished. Her shoulders slumped.

She didn’t make it to the chair. Her legs gave out halfway across the room, the adrenaline abandoning her all at once. She slid down the wall to sit on the floor, her silk gown pooling around her.

Rustam was there. He didn’t speak. He crouched, his movements deliberate and slow, and pried the ridiculous jeweled pins from her hair. Then his hands, those huge, scarred hands that could crush a man’s windpipe, were infinitely gentle as they cupped her face. He smoothed her temples with his thumbs.

“Long night,” he murmured, his Dagistani accent a soft rumble.

She leaned her forehead against his, closing her eyes, just breathing him in—soap, leather, him. “The eastern passes,” she whispered, the words barely sound. “He’s planning a ‘harvest.’”

Rustam went very still for a second. Then he nodded, a minute movement. “We will listen.”

He helped her up, led her to the bathroom. He ran cool water on a cloth and washed the makeup from her face, wiping away the mask along with the smog of the anteroom. He brought her one of his own shirts, a simple, worn cotton thing that swallowed her whole. She pulled it on, the fabric smelling of sun and his skin.

There was no passion in it, no tension. It was something purer. A brotherly love, deep and committed. She admired him so much—his strength, his quiet humor, the brightness he shielded from their captors. She sometimes felt guilty for leaning on him, for being another weight he carried. But they helped each other survive. And on the good days, with secret coffee and stolen horizon, they helped each other thrive.

She climbed into the large bed. He sat on the floor beside it, his back against the frame, a solid presence.

“We could get those pastries with the orange glaze,” she said into the darkness, her voice slurred with exhaustion. “And real newspapers. Maybe even lemons.”

“We will get lemons,” he promised, his voice a low vibration. “A whole bag of them.”

Anya smiled in the dark. She focused on the sound of his breathing, on the safety of his proximity, and let her shattered nervous system finally, fully collapse into the peace he guarded. She counted down the last few seconds until sleep, not in minutes, but in breaths. His breaths.