Elena sat up to tell Nina her new plan.
But Nina’s bedclothes were thrown back. Her bunk was empty.
Elena pulled on her hat, shrugged into her coat, stormed out of the boxcar. She hurried towards the raised road through the marshes.
She scrutinized every lump of snow-laden grass, the dark maw of every puddle, her heart racing beneath her woolen coat, wondering where Nina could have possibly gone. She hoped Nina hadn’t ventured out to try to find papers and a passport herself. She hoped her sister hadn’t done anything foolish. She hoped she would return and the two of them could strike out across the snowy plains, run far away from the blackened gold tower of the house behind the hill, far away from bullet holes in necks and the demented dark firebird inside Elena.
She crossed the thick ice of the frozen river that ringed the city on the west side, and slipped and slid halfway up the bluff on the river’s far bank. She peered over the bluff at the kremlin’s squat black guard towers and the plains around the city. Long black coats flapped around the base of the towers: guards, bayonets glinting.
Elena waited behind the bluff as the sun rose and descended in a small arc on the horizon.
As the gloaming fell on the kremlin, two figures detached from the cadre of guards by the tower and hurried along the southern road. Elena trudged down the river, tripping over lumps in the thick ice. She reached the southern road and hid in the rustling frozen reeds of the marshes, waiting for the two figures.
As they drew near, their faces resolved from shadow. One of them was the soldier who had saved them from the guards on the gate.
The other was Nina.
Elena forced dry cold air into her lungs and began to put the puzzle pieces together: Nina’s disappearance the night before. Her endless requests to go to the city. The fact that she had known his name.
Elena leapt out of the marsh. Nina shrank back, and the soldier drew his gun.
“No, stop, that’s my sister,” Nina said, as Elena whipped the gun-cuff out of her pocket.
“I know.” Aleksandr pointed the gun at her, and she raised the gun-cuff.
Nina’s head swiveled between Aleksandr and Elena. “Lena, listen to me. Aleksandr has obtained false passports, papers, train tickets to Berlin, for us.”
Nina, in the arms of a Red Army soldier. Elena felt her feathers spreading. “How long have you been sneaking around with him?”
“No, no, no, don’t become stubborn and contrary. I love him.” Nina cocked her head towards Aleksandr as though his reaction was all that mattered anymore, as though she spoke and breathed only for him.
Elena didn’t doubt that Nina believed she loved this soldier. But she swiveled towards Aleksandr, who lowered his gun slightly but tightened his jaw beneath his plough and hammer cap.
“How do I know these passports and papers are valid?” she said. If Aleksandr wanted a pretext to lure both Nina and Elena into the hands of border guards, this was the perfect opportunity.
“He loves me, Lena.”
Elena flared her frozen nostrils and thought of their chances. Nina may love him, but life’s not a novel where a soldier falls in love with you and puts you on a train to a new life. He might be plotting to betray us. “Why did you join the Red Army? Were you conscripted?”
“I volunteered,” Aleksandr raised his chin. “I never knew my father. He was shot by Cossacks on Bloody Sunday when I was a boy, and they sent me to an orphanage. I wanted to destroy the people that did that to me.”
So he hated nobles for the same reason that she hated peasants. “In that case, how am I supposed to trust—”
“Nina is an innocent, and you are her sister.” Aleksandr squeezed Nina’s hand. “They’re hunting you. You must leave as soon as possible. Tonight.”
Elena looked away from Nina’s reproachful pout. She thought of a nation of created monsters, destroying each other, and reminded herself of her resolution to flee.
“Very well,” she said, not taking her eyes off Aleksandr. “We’ll go with you.”
Her boots crunched through the snow as she followed Nina and Aleksandr towards the boxcar. The burned tower rose before them on the other side of the hill, silhouetted against the moon’s glow.
“I don’t like you sneaking around behind my back,” Elena said. “Has this been happening since autumn? How did you even meet him?”
“In the market, when you were sick, I—”
“Shh.” Aleksandr held up a hand, frowning. “What’s that sound?”
The whine of an engine, the roar of a muffler, and yellow headlights arced over the marshes.
Aleksandr leapt around Nina and stepped in front of Elena.
An automobile roared around the bend in the road, tires skidding on the snow. Before it even stopped, doors swung open and three figures with guns swarmed around them, hands yanking up Nina’s coat-sleeves to expose her wrists, snatching at Elena’s coat, twisting her arm so the revolver-cuff flew into the snow.
“The noble sisters,” wheezed the man who had seized Elena. It was Gleb, the guard from the gate, wearing the uniform of one of the special forces troops from Petrograd. Elena snarled, twisting, and her scalp screamed as Gleb seized her bun and twisted her hair.
“What is the meaning of this?” Aleksandr said, low and cold.
“What is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of you taking one of these sisters out of the city without turning her over to the border guards?”
Aleksandr jerked Nina away from the two soldiers who held her, wrapped his hand around her forearm as though he might protect her forever with that simple gesture.
Something fell inside Elena. She had been wrong. The love this man felt for her sister had nothing to do with passports or aristocracy or power.
Am I so broken that I can’t even believe in love anymore?
“I’ll handle this,” Aleksandr was shouting.
“You think so, do you?” Gleb said.
“I’m ordering—”
“You don’t give orders anymore. I report to Petrograd now. So who orders who?”
Silence. Elena raked her feathers through the air, hoping to slice Gleb’s leg with them.
Then Gleb flung her aside. The snow rushed towards her and she rolled onto her back.
Gleb faced Aleksandr, drawing his revolver, as Elena snatched the revolver-cuff out of the snow.
“You’ve been fucking this noble girl and your head’s gone up your ass,” Gleb said. The two men who had grabbed Nina straightened their revolvers.
“I just said, I will handle—” Aleksandr said.
“You’re a traitor, to the Revolution.”
Elena locked her finger around the revolver-cuff’s trigger and aimed it at Gleb. The recoil hit her in the chest—
But Gleb spun, roaring, positioning his revolver, and she realized she had missed—the revolver-cuff never works as well when it’s not on your wrist—and she ducked into the frozen marsh-grass. I will spit on his boots as he shoots me.
An explosion, and Gleb stumbled, dropping his gun, and Elena gasped breath. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aleksandr shove Nina towards Elena. Nina’s ringlets flew, and her nostrils flared, and her stained blue coat billowed behind her.
More gunshots rocked the raised road.
Screams, and heavy footfalls, and someone gathered her up, seized her beneath the elbows and began to drag her away.
Aleksandr’s face, sweat dripping from his hairline, eyes wild, loomed next to her. He was dragging her down the road towards the boxcar.