For the months to follow, the cycle of getting down to Surmene to buy food and then back up every other week by carpet continues, along with flashbacks from her days fighting iltizam and muafiyet abuses. To protect the cabin from the cold, Nurcan also engraved letterism-borne insulation talismans into the roof’s ridge beam.

  However, on December 30 by nightfall, snow is everywhere in the forest around them, and, until then, can live comfortably thanks to the talisman in use. Yet, when night falls around the cabin, the temperature drops sharply as the zemheri (great cold) infiltrates the wooden cabin.

  All occupants of the cabin start wondering if Nurcan’s talisman is failing and must be redone as they shiver due to the sudden drop in temperature.

  “I don’t think this is a talisman failure… some dark creature is afoot! If that’s what I think it is, include kara in your answers if asked!” Nurcan warns her family.

  “Mom, what do you think it is?” Yusuf asks her, while trembling with cold.

  “A karakoncolos. It might be a little advanced for you, but you usually learn about that in third year of combat magic!”

  Speaking of which, a hairy creature, a cross-breed between a demon and a bogeyman covered in thick, black hair, materializes in front of the whole family.

  “The black iron is waking up to the north! Adam’s sons will feed the frozen soil!” the creature speaks, imitating Selim’s voice as it echoes in the cabin.

  While that creature has Selim’s voice, it doesn’t speak like him at all. But if that’s what I think it is, it can only mean one thing: Muggles will, once again, kill indiscriminately. And that means… war! Nurcan’s mind runs as fast as it possibly could in this freezing cold.

  The karakoncolos then asks the question. “Is war breaking out soon?”

  “Yes; kara iron waking up to the north means war is upon us!” Nurcan answers the creature, feeling like answering its question is the only way to make it disappear from the cabin.

  Everyone else in the cabin starts panicking, even though this answer spared them death by hypothermia, or frozen claws.

  However, as the creature vanishes, and the temperature goes back up to normal, the other occupants run around the cabin like headless chickens, to the extent it’s feasible with beds taking up so much space in it.

  “Russia? They’re going to kill us!” Jannat screams aloud, but confined to the cabin by the sheer amount of snow outside.

  “Muggles are usually the ones who fire first at war. Don’t panic, however; they’re not going to climb up these mountains for a while…” Nurcan sighs, drawing upon her knowledge of military logistics gained as defterdar.

  “Sometimes, honey, I feel like you know too much for your own good!”

  “You seemed to appreciate me for what I am, more than simply seeing past your family’s dark misdeeds!”

  “By now you know that you’d appear suspect to almost anyone outside of this forest if you do so much as speak a little bit!” Vincent points out to her.

  While the temperature is slowly climbing back up, Nurcan returns to writing this Risale-I Nizam-I Cedid, this time, focusing on the section about why she believed selling mahlul timars would have resulted in lower entropy compared to Ahmed having overused musadere on them. Especially since, in her mind, auctioning off mahlul timars meant creating a class of gentry loyal to the Nizam-I Cedid, although she didn’t articulate it as such in March 1789.

  When that section ends, filled with strategic use of arithmancy terms, it’s well into the night. She then stows the manuscript into the horse pocket to take out the dream catcher she used for years, ever since she walked the halls of Salem back in 1793.

  While everyone else is asleep, she installs the dream catcher while ensuring that it doesn’t overlap with a talisman on the ridge beam.

  Here we go: I know I could absorb knowledge I might not want by doing this, and the same holds in reverse, but if that’s the price to pay to safeguard magical peace and plead for war to remain strictly muggle, that both Vaidi and I know secrets about each other because of it, so be it, Nurcan then takes a deep breath, before casting the dream walk spell, looking up at the dream catcher to do so.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Once the mental connection is made:

  Vilnius University Astronomical Observatory. Vaidi found Nurcan near the hidden entrance to the offices of the Magical Guberniya of Vilnius. Whose jurisdiction covers the muggle guberniyas of Vilnius, Grodno and Kaunas.

  But, before Vaidi could even think about what Nurcan even have to say, the pair crossed the magical door and found themselves in a chamber with an aukuras (stone altar) in the middle, and a sacred fire lit in it.

  Vaidi’s white robe, and rue crown, contrasted with the purple kaftan Nurcan wore while she was still the Irad-I Cedid’s defterdar.

  “State your business… Nurcan?” Vaidi recognized Nurcan’s traits that matured somewhat since they last met at Ilvermorny thirteen years ago.

  “I come here to deliver a warning. Magical secrecy is threatened to the south; Russia has declared war against the Ottoman Empire in the muggle world!” Nurcan’s voice seemed to ooze panic. “As tempting as it could be for Russia to deploy dragons over the Black Sea, or use magic on the Danube, doing so will shatter the Statute!”

  “For the past three months, I had my hands full with Napoleon; Prussia has fallen, and France is turning to Poland!” Vaidi began sweating.

  “Remember, Vaidi, if Russia deploys magic against Qajar Persia, the Ottoman Empire will launch magical strikes on positions in the Caucasus and the Danube! And then Russia will be magically overstretched!”

  “I’m afraid that, for the theaters you just mentioned, I’m not the right person to act upon the southern theaters!”

  “Whoever that is, I never dealt with that person; you’re the only contact I have in Russia!”

  The Czar counts on me, but at the same time, as the head of the Magical Guberniya of Vilnius, I might have one of the most merciless magical jobs in Russia. Between Korsakov, who’s too preoccupied with protocol and ball hosting, and his predecessor, von Benningsen on the muggle side, under whom I was appointed to this office, the fractured populace on the magical side, and Napoleon’s threat looming large, I’m torn in all directions. Vaidi ruminated while Nurcan’s statement froze her in place, while visions emerge from the holy fire. Do too much to appease one party, someone else will be displeased…

  “I don’t blame you… Miss Irad-I Cedid!” Vaidi then showed her a vision borne from the holy fire. Of the devastation a magical theater could wreak in various cities, such as Vilnius, Istanbul and Kyiv if Russia is careless.

  “If Russia uses too much magic on any given theater, be it Caucasus, Danube or Lithuania, keep in mind that London could cut the Czar’s financial lifeline! And then you’re going to be in deep trouble on both sides!”

  “As much as it would be in the best interest of Russia’s magical community to stay out of the muggle fight against Napoleon, don’t go around thinking that Kutuzov in Kyiv would be the same as von Buxhoeveden in Riga, or even Korsakov or von Benningsen, with whom I both dealt!”

  Nurcan rolled her eyes. “Who are those men you mentioned?”

  “Muggle Russian generals, the top brass. Von Buxhoeveden has been a thorn on both me, at the head of the Magical Guberniya of Vilnius, and on the Kurzeme border!”

  “Kurzeme border? Come again?” Nurcan rolled her eyes.

  “Kurzeme is a region on the northern border of the Vilnius Guberniya!”

  As if I wasn’t already reminded of why most wizards disliked statecraft through my own experiences as defterdar of the Irad-I Cedid! I won’t pretend to know what issues von Buxhoeveden cause Vaidi, but they sure make her life harder, Nurcan tries to interpret the vision from the holy fire.

  “Since I have no diplomatic standing to do more than deliver a warning about the threat to magical secrecy, who should the Bab-I Humayun contact?”

  “Let’s say that Pankratiev in Kyiv is the contact point most relevant to you… he might have been an obviator, but his magical authority extends to where the risks are greatest! He also controls Kyiv’s muggle civil service, too!”

  I really hope the Czar won’t treat the Ottomans as he had the Qajars as risks for magical secrecy… Vaidi sighed, while reminded about obviators. And one of them under her jurisdiction was Ludwik, a muggle-born wizard who headed Vilnius’ Conscience Court and, on the muggle side, heard, among other things, cases related to breaches of magical secrecy.

  “So what’s next?”

  “For me, the next step is to send a courier to Pankratiev so that he could arrange a session about the Ottoman magical threat, and another one to the Collegium in St. Petersburg!”

  “For now, however, know that, regardless of theater, large-scale use of combat magic might curse a river and carry consequences that the magical world may not want!” Nurcan’s oneiric self was dissolving.

  At this point, the dream walk ends. Thank God this dream walk didn’t last that long: if this walk lasted any longer, there would be no telling how much knowledge we could absorb from each other, without wanting it. I know she’s smart enough for it to be dangerous to her, just as it could be dangerous to me. However, as smart as I am, one doesn’t necessarily know what one could have absorbed from a dream walk until years later. Just like Geneviève’s memories of Alejandra, absorbed from me in 1789, only resurfaced in her mind in 1792, and I learned about these only when I first met her in person, in Washington.

  Nurcan starts sweating as her worries get all over the place: first by wondering in what condition Vaidi would awaken from her bed in Vilnius, and secondly about how to go around notifying the Bab-I Humayun that she sent a diplomatic warning to Russia about the consequences of a magical escalation of the war that just broke out on the Danube theater.

  And, finally, whether she could give a copy of the Risale-I Nizam-I Cedid as part of the 9 gifts the Bab-I Humayun usually send to delegations when attempting to make magical peace when Muggle wars break out. Because her mind still runs hot from her brain still working, her sleep doesn’t seem to be as good as it could be.