Nadia’s face seemed to turn white instead of blue. “She needs a fire.”
“Here.” Anton handed him a vacuum flask. “See if there’s anything inside.”
It must have belonged to one of the guards. Something swirled within. He opened it, felt steam, and forced small sips into his wife’s mouth. She sputtered, but the movement had to help, didn’t it?
“Nadia?” He tried her name again. She still didn’t reply, but she looked at him for a moment before her eyes closed again. Confusion was normal with cold or with injury, but it was also a sign of danger. Filip held her icy hands under his shirt, trying to warm them. They swayed and jerked in the back of the automobile as Anton sped over the uneven river.
“Can you feel your feet?” Filip grabbed them. They were blue, so he wrapped them and slipped them into a pair of men’s boots.
Her breathing was normal now, and the shakes had turned to shivers. He gathered her up and held her so he could keep her warm, and because he had wanted to pull her close to him since the moment he’d seen her again.
“Filip? How . . . how did you find me?”
Words. Maybe that meant she was out of danger. Filip kept his hands moving, hoping the friction would warm her further, and handed her the flask. She was able to hold it on her own now. “Dalek ran into Orlov. He said you’d been arrested and were to be executed. But we didn’t know where or when. We were in the wrong spot when the headlights turned on. I’m sorry.”
“The other prisoners?”
“Dead. We tried to save them, but we were too late.”
“Orlov? He didn’t come back out of the ice?”
“No.”
“And Nikolai?”
“Who’s Nikolai?”
“My brother. We found each other again. He tried to shield me when they fired. He saved my life, you know. And so did you.”
“You’re the only one we rescued.” They’d barely managed that.
Nadia shivered again, and her teeth chattered. She wasn’t out of danger yet. “What happened to his body?”
“We had to put all the bodies through the ice. Yesterday, the legion made a deal with the Bolsheviks. A truce that lets us leave. If anyone finds out we had a firefight with a Cheka officer and rescued one of his prisoners, we could put the whole legion at risk.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Had Filip known the man who’d shielded her was her brother, he would have buried him properly. Or at least he would have tried, had there been time. But between worry about Nadia freezing and concern that someone would find out what they’d done, time was something they’d had very little of that morning.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. He tightened his embrace, needing to convince himself that she was really there. He closed his eyes for a moment as relief cascaded over him. After all the hurt when he’d thought she’d betrayed him, all the worry when he’d been unsure where to find her, and all the terror as he’d fought to save her from the executioner and the river, she was alive and in his arms.
Chapter Forty-Six
Nadia sat by the hospital car’s stove for a long time, trying to warm herself. Her husband stood beside her. The plunge into the river had numbed her body but not her feelings. She had Filip again, but she’d lost Nikolai. Sokolov and Fedorov too. Relief and joy clashed with grief and horror until she wasn’t sure how to feel, wasn’t sure what to think.
A Czech doctor removed the bullet in her arm and stitched her wound. The pain lingered, but eventually, the cold went away. Her own boots and coat were gone. She wore Filip’s ushanka, one of the Cheka guards’ leather greatcoats, and trousers and gymnastyorka scrounged from somewhere. A pair of boots several sizes too big warmed her feet and stayed on thanks to multiple layers of torn blanket wrapped around her skin in place of socks.
Her blouse and skirt dried near the fire. In one pocket, she found Nikolai’s medal. She held it in her hand, squeezing so tightly that it left an imprint on her skin. It was all she had left of her brother, all she had left of her family, all she had left of her past.
Dalek lay in one of the hospital car’s beds. The accommodations were an improvement over the straw-covered boxcars the legion had used in 1918, but his wound was grievous. Filip had told Nadia about Orlov’s revenge, and guilt mixed with worry. Dalek had angered Orlov with a telegram meant to protect her. Now she felt a need to watch over him. She went to his bedside. Earlier, he’d been sleeping, but he opened his eyes as she approached.
A weary smile pulled at his blond mustache. “I’m glad to see that one of the grand duchesses escaped.”
“I’m not a grand duchess. Not even a princess.” According to the Communists, she was a former person condemned to death.
“No.” Dalek’s voice was weak but sincere. “You’re more important than that, because you’re one of us.”
Nadia smiled. She had nothing but a Cross of St. George, 4th class, to remind her of her past, but once again, the legion was offering her a future.
A legion train went east that afternoon, with the hospital car and several passenger cars. Anton convinced the officer in charge to let two more legionnaires and one dependent squeeze aboard. Nadia was still weak but felt an urgency to leave Irkutsk. Orlov might be dead, but she was still a counterrevolutionary with a death sentence chasing her. Filip helped her into a third-class carriage, and the three of them shared a bench meant for two.
As the train picked up speed, Anton and Filip told her what had happened to Veronika, Emil, and other friends. She wept for Veronika and prayed for baby Marek. Filip didn’t press her, but she could sense his desire to know what had happened over the past year. A part of her didn’t want to tell, but she knew secrets would only come back to hurt them later. Like a sliver, they would only become more dangerous if buried.
She went backward, explaining what she and Nikolai had been doing with the gold and why she’d been arrested. Then she spoke of her time in the labor battalion and her escape. Only after the rest of the story was told did she go back to that day when she’d wandered too far looking for firewood and been taken by the group of bandits. She gripped the wooden bench in front of them as she spoke, needing something sturdy to hang on to.
Filip had taken her role in distracting the labor battalion guard well enough, but when she told him what the bandits had done to her, he sat there stunned. She waited for him to say something. She needed him to tell her that he still loved her and that the past wouldn’t change the future they’d planned together.
He seemed unable to speak.
She held in the tears until he rose and rushed from the compartment.
***
Filip stood on the open gangway between his car and the next. The cold air bit at his lungs, painfully sharp but not as painful as what he’d just heard.
He’d promised to protect Nadia.
He’d utterly failed her.
He hadn’t even tried to find her until she’d been missing for nearly a year. Instead, he’d doubted her and left her at the mercy of roaming bandits and the Cheka. But he wouldn’t fail her this time. He’d find the men who took her, and he’d kill them. It wouldn’t fix the past, and it wouldn’t bring back the baby she’d been carrying, but it would restore her honor.
The door opened, and Anton joined him on the platform. “Filip, what’s going on?”
“I’m going to track down those men and kill them.”
“What?”
“You heard what they did to her.”
Anton’s breath came out in a puff of fog. “Do you have any idea how many bandits are roaming Siberia? You’ll never find them.”
“Then I’ll die trying.”
“Oh, you’ll die, all right, and that won’t do your wife any good. If you leave this train, you’ll end up in a work camp or in a pile of frozen corpses off to the side of a train depot. You can’t survive on your own, Filip, and the legion is withdrawing.”