Burning Twilight Read Online Free PDF

Strekov’s?” I said.
    “Why?”
    “We need to wash our hands.”
    S team rose from the dyeing vats as the embers beneath them started to cool, the coals still glowing red but fading under a layer of gray dust. The dye workers emerged sweating from the steam, their sleeves soaking wet and covered with splotches of dark blue dye. They glowered at us, particularly at Kassy, as if she were trespassing on their property. Only one of them returned my gaze, another blue-eyed polyak who was probably too tired to summon the requisite hatred against us as he pulled off his heavy apron.
    “What can I do for you, Jew?” he said as I approached. He was a fairly powerful man, like the other dyers, and his thick fingernails were stained a deep blue.
    I tested the weight of his words, and they seemed to balance. Coming from such a mouth, Jew was probably more of a description than an insult.
    “We need to wash our hands.”
    He directed us to a bucket of bluish water.
    “I meant in clean water.”
    “Try the well,” he said, tossing his blue-stained apron on a cutting table.
    “You could always jump in the ocean,” one of the dyers suggested.
    “Ease off, Horshky.”
    “Hey, Wojciech! Hang that on a peg,” the master dyer said.
    “Hang it yourself,” Wojciech muttered. But he picked up the apron and hung it on a peg alongside the others.
    The dyers hung their gloves, mallets, and other tools on hooks, the wooden handles all tinted blue.
    “You don’t take the tools home with you?” I asked.
    “Ha!” said Wojciech, swatting the question aside as if it were a bothersome horsefly. “We don’t own any of this stuff.”
    “You don’t?”
    “What do you think we are? Carpenters or leather workers? Pan Strekov owns the whole works—the mill, the land, the well water, the dyeing vats, the drying racks, the benches, everything. We work from dawn to dusk, but it’s all his equipment.”
    I had never heard of such an arrangement.
    “At least you’re not tied to the land like a serf is,” I said. He looked at me skeptically. “You’re free to move about, aren’t you?”
    “Only three men in a hundred have such freedom here, Jew.”
    I shook my head at this sorry news, because the Talmud says that the rights of the workingman always take precedence over the rights of his employer. But I doubted that Lord Strekov was versed in the wisdom of the Talmud.
    I watched them putting away the fabric shears, breasting hooks, and knives of various lengths.
    “Any knives missing?” I asked, off-handedly.
    “A couple,” said the master, eyeing me suspiciously.
    T he body of Jan Barwicz lay in state in an empty room in his family’s house. Father Stefan spoke to his widow, Jelena, and she agreed to let the “three wise travelers” inside her home to examine her husband’s wounds. The windows were all shuttered and dusty gray cloth covered the mirrors.
    Kassy lifted the shroud so we wouldn’t have to come in contact with the corpse, since we didn’t want to travel all the way to Poznan in a state of ritual impurity.
    “He was such a good provider,” lamented Jelena. “And a loyal servant to His Lordship. What kind of monster would do such a thing?”
    Barwicz’s face was gray and waxy. His body was relatively unscathed, and the slice across his throat had been washed almost completely clean of blood. But the broad gashes around the wound still made it look like he had been set upon by an enraged hog butcher.
    “The kind of monster that walks on two legs,” I said, trying to reassure Jelena that no supernatural monsters roamed these hills.
    “Don’t be afraid,” Rabbi Loew said. “For we will help to protect your husband’s soul as it begins its arduous journey to the World-to-Come.”
    “Keynehore,” I said, spitting twice.
    “How can you protect his soul?” asked Jelena. “By summoning guardian spirits?”
    “No, it’s never a good idea to summon spirits,” I said. For one thing, it really annoys