She stopped earlier the second day after her escape, while there was still enough light to build a proper naida. Then she made a shelter from branches. The ponies didn’t seem any worse for the miles they’d covered, but Nadia’s strength was failing. She felt feverish again, and whenever she had to urinate, it burned. She’d been a nurse long enough to recognize it as an infection that would likely resolve with time and rest, but in the meantime, she wasn’t sure how far she could push her body before it collapsed.
She wept that night as her memories haunted her and refused to be banished. The tears froze on her eyelashes, and their sharp edges cut at her skin. Not even prayer brought her solace. But with the new day, she asked God for strength and set out again. She kept her eyes up, in search of the telegraph lines that ran along the railroad.
Her body still ached as she rode, so she stopped and walked for a while. She mounted again when she grew dizzy. Had she even walked ten minutes? She kept at it, walking a bit, then riding a bit longer. But the dizziness was worse, and the cold had seeped into her bones. She pulled on another coat.
She ate a piece of bread at around noon, then rested. Just a short rest, she told herself. She didn’t mean to drift to sleep. She woke with a start—lucky to have woken at all. Falling asleep in the open like that was dangerous.
All was silent.
The wind had died down. No noise.
No ponies.
She stumbled to her feet. Where had they gone? She’d been foolish not to tie them to something. But they’d left hoof prints in the snow, so she could follow those to the animals, the food, the ax, and the extra coats.
Her brisk pace soon turned to a slow walk, and that became a hobble. Worse, the wind picked up. Even with all the layers she wore, she was cold, and the wind blew the snow around, covering the trail she followed.
The ponies had been traveling in a steady direction. At least she thought they had. It was hard to tell when everything was gray and the clouds kept the sun hidden. With no sun, she was in danger of wandering in circles. And what if the ponies headed back toward the men who’d abducted her?
Finding the train tracks was more important than finding the ponies. Which way was north? She searched the ground for shadows but couldn’t find a single one. She looked at the sky again. At this time of year, it would be brighter to the south, so she headed toward clouds that were a darker shade of gray.
One foot in front of the other. Were it summer, she’d tell herself to conserve her energy until she could figure out a more accurate direction, but in the winter, she had to keep moving.
Light was fading, and her head ached. She studied the sky. The clouds were thick. They would block the stars in the same way her circumstances were blocking her hope.
She trudged forward, then tripped and fell. She was so dizzy. She didn’t get up for a few moments, but eventually, she forced herself to her feet. The rail line might be on the other side of the next snowdrift. She had to keep going.
The next time she fell, it took longer to rise. In the distance, she saw a bit of gray darker than the rest of the horizon. Smoke? A storm? Or a feverish delusion? Regardless, she headed that way. Maybe a train was coming. She couldn’t hear a train, but maybe, just maybe . . .
Her head spun, and she fell into the snow again. Her body shook with exhaustion, but she prayed and found her feet. Another few steps. Another fall. She crawled. Then she collapsed. Could she get up again? Would it matter? She wasn’t going to find the ponies. She wasn’t going to find the rail line. Even if she did, finding the tracks was just the first step. She’d have to follow them to a station, and her body wouldn’t carry her that far.
She closed her eyes. General Winter was going to carry her off. The wind blew, but she didn’t feel the cold any longer. She felt nothing, but a sound met her ears. The cry of the wind and . . . voices? Didn’t General Winter know anything about stealth? Why was he so loud?
Chapter Thirty-Two
Filip felt lost without his wife. Which was ridiculous. He’d managed the twenty-seven years of his life before meeting her just fine. She’d only been his real wife for four months. But she’d left his heart—and the rest of him—in pieces.
“Did you hear about what happened there?” Dalek walked with him along the streets of Yekaterinburg. Filip couldn’t lead patrols until his shoulder was healed, so he had come east to meet up with the rest of the Sixth Regiment. Dalek had come too. He wouldn’t say why, but Filip suspected it had something to do with making sure Filip didn’t do anything stupid in his grief.
The house Dalek pointed to was two stories high, surrounded with a fence of wood that looked like a medieval palisade. It had once belonged to an engineer, but when the Bolsheviks had held the city last summer, they’d commandeered it, calling it The House of Special Purpose.
“I’ve heard a few different versions,” Filip said. “But they all agree on one thing: that’s where they killed them.” Local rumor was more interested in a good story than in accuracy, but the tsar, his wife, his son, and his four daughters had all disappeared. Most people assumed they were dead.
“I heard they bungled the execution. Some of the family had jewels sewn into their underthings. Bullets couldn’t get through, so they had to try other methods.” Dalek shook his head. “Poor things. One would think the Bolsheviks could have managed a proper execution for a tsarevich and four grand duchesses.”
Grand duchess. The title still reminded Filip of Nadia, even if her rank had been significantly lower. With the reminder came a new cascade of pain. Unlike the Romanov sisters, Nadia was alive. She’d left him without a word and run off with another man. They were probably in Shanghai now, where she was settling for amethyst and opal instead of diamond and pearl. Filip turned away, sickened by the murders, torn up by his memory of Nadia. He wanted her to be happy. But he wanted her to be happy with him.
He’d almost gone east, searching for them. That was what husbands did when their wives ran off. They found the man in question and challenged him to a duel. That was the honorable course, but Nadia and Petrov had a week’s head start, and Siberia was a very large place. He might never find them. And Dalek had insisted that the Sixth Regiment needed him. That seemed to be all Filip had left now—his duty to his brothers.
They were moving off the line, the entire legion. They weren’t going to fight someone else’s war any longer. They’d be out of the thick of it, but they couldn’t go home yet. They would guard fifteen hundred miles of rail line from Omsk to Irkutsk. To the east, Japanese and American troops would keep the rest of the railway open. To the west, the White Russians would continue their fight against the Bolsheviks. He wished them luck, but it was time for the legion to worry about Czechoslovakia. They’d been in Russia long enough.
“No one’s found the bodies.” Dalek stood on his toes, trying to see over the wall. “I assume the tsar is dead, but maybe the children survived.”
“You just said they were murdered in a sloppy execution.”
Dalek shrugged. “That’s one version. Someone else swore they saw the Grand Duchess Anastasia at the train station a few days later.”
“Nadia has the same birthday as the Grand Duchess Tatiana. They fired one hundred and one shots from the cannon at the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg to announce news of a royal birth. Nadia was born between shots eighty and eighty-one.” Why had he just said that? He hadn’t spoken her name in days, even though it was hard to go more than a minute or two without thinking of her. He had better change the subject, and fast. “I hope your source is right, and at least some of the children escaped. I feel we’re to blame. By most accounts, the Bolsheviks panicked because our brother legionnaires were closing in.”