“You must not let her move,” Captain Janlav said, and then, without waiting for further acknowledgement, he pried little Alina’s lids up, one at a time.
Only the whites of her eyes showed. His lips pressed into a tight line. I don’t know what he’d expected to see. Us using our little sister as a ruse? Could he really think that ill of us?
Alina spasmed again, so forcefully I feared her back would snap. It was at that horrifying moment that two more guards stormed into our carriage. One was the big burly man with a protruding belly. We don’t know his name, but I’ve named him Belly. The other was gnarly and narrow, even younger than Captain Janlav. Him, I’ve named Boy.
“What are they up to this time around?” Belly brandished a rifle as if he’d had it in his mind to teach us a lesson.
“Can’t you see?” Captain Janlav shouted back at him. He pressed Alina’s shoulders, to keep her down. A wet spot appeared on her lap. My poor sister had lost control of her bladder.
Belly and Boy glanced at each other. Boy looked as if he were about to snigger or make a distasteful remark.
“Close the door,” Captain Janlav growled at them. “Wait outside. That’s a direct order from me, and thus from the gagargi himself.”
Belly and Boy paled. Belly fumbled with his rifle as if guns could solve anything, least of all heal my sister. Boy grabbed his arm and led the older man out. But even as the door clicked shut, Alina kept on spasming.
“Is there anyone with medical skills aboard?” Celestia asked. The Moon bless us that she’s the empress-to-be, rational even in the most distressing of situations!
Captain Janlav shook his head, worry etching chasms on his forehead. “No.”
It was then that the full meaning of the words he’d said to Belly and Boy dawned upon me. He’s in charge of this operation and, it seems, also of our safety. If anything were to happen to us, Gagargi Prataslav would hold him accountable for that.
“We must…” Elise paused to swallow a sob. Her gray eyes were doe-wide, pleading. “We must get her help.”
But just as suddenly as Alina had started spasming, she stilled. No, that’s not the right word. She collapsed onto the sofa as if she had not a single strand of strength left in her body. Her narrow chest sank with a shuddering exhale. Then her breathing resumed a shallow rhythm. Her eyes remained closed.
“We will get her help,” Captain Janlav said. He squeezed Elise’s shoulder in a way that might have been just a reflex or then meant something much more. Then he left without as much as looking over his shoulder.
Scribs, it was truly terrible. Almost the most terrible thing I’ve ever witnessed! The scriptures, yes you know it, I’ve been reading them because there isn’t anything else to read here. And though I might have once claimed so to dear Notes, I don’t know them by heart. I hardly ever bothered to read a full chapter before. But there’s one sentence that brought me comfort as I repeated it in my mind.
After all the wrong, there will be right.
After all the wrong, there will be right.
After all the wrong, there will be right.
The day passed slowly as my sisters and I patted Alina’s forehead with a cold, wet cloth and massaged her arms and legs. The nameless servant woman came to clean, but she couldn’t quite scrub off the yellow stain on the sofa. She helped us change Alina’s dress. She eyed our little sister, radiating pity, and then spoke the first words we’d ever heard from her, or any of the other servants, for that matter. She offered to spoon honeyed tea into Alina’s mouth. We told her not to bother, since Alina would spit it out. And then we tried that ourselves, in the hopes that it might revive her.
It didn’t, and the servant left soon after, no doubt to report this turn of events to Captain Janlav.
Eventually, when the day turned blue, the train’s speed decelerated. I felt tempted to run to the door and bang on it with my bare fists. Though we’ve stopped at numerous stations during the journey, we’ve never been let out. Celestia said early on that we shouldn’t let people know our identity. Mama’s empire is still infested with unrests, and many vehemently hate anyone with noble blood in their veins. There are people out there who are ready to harm us just for who we are, in ways that I don’t want to think about (though sometimes when I lie alone in my cabin, I do, and then I feel cold inside and can’t sleep for hours), even if we’ve played no part in what has so angered them. Curious as it is, as long as we remain in the train, we’re safe.
But now Alina… my poor little sister was ill. She needed help, and that help wasn’t available in the train.
The train halted in a small town, or it might have been a village—Elise peeked through the crack between the curtains to report this. We listened to the sounds of the train being fueled and watered. And then, after what felt like ages, rather than hearing the train rattle into motion, we heard the key turn in the lock of the cloakroom’s door. The servant entered without as much as a knock. Boy tramped in after her, without as much as a greeting. They strode through the carriage, to the door leading to our cabins, and out.
“I wonder what that was about,” Merile muttered.
I was too tired to even think about it.
It didn’t take long for us to find out. The servant and Boy returned with the blankets that barely kept us warm during the nights. Captain Janlav entered the carriage almost at the exact same moment.
“Wrap into the blankets,” Captain Janlav ordered. Then he marched to the sofa, where Alina still lay wrapped in Merile’s fur cloak. He lifted her up as if she weighed nothing at all. Celestia hastened to tug the cloak better around our sister. He shrugged her aside. “Follow me. Say not a word. Run not a step.”
Those were the conditions we had to agree to. It wasn’t a hard choice for us. We wanted to help Alina more than anything else in the world.
We donned the blankets as cloaks and rushed after him like animals released from a cage. Our freedom was short-lived, however. As soon as we stepped out of the train, the four remaining guards, the ones that always stink of liquor and cigarettes, formed lines on both our sides. Boy held the back.
I didn’t care. I was ecstatic to walk under the open sky once more. The day was just about to yield to the night, and everything was of that particular shade of blue that not even the most talented artists can quite capture. The clouds, the snowfields, the shadows bore the blue veil proudly. The freezing cold air stung my nostrils, tickled my lungs. Yet I puffed white clouds in excitement. For at that moment I remembered what it felt like to be free.
The town was small. A dozen or so two-story log buildings loomed over the main street. There was just enough space for my sisters and me on the path that the townspeople had trampled during the day. Fresh snow crunched under the guards’ boots—they had to walk through the snow banks. We must have made a strange sight: Captain Janlav carrying my sister, four girls wrapped in gray blankets, akin to ghosts in the falling darkness, guarded by soldiers who might pass as our shadows.
We neither saw nor encountered anyone as we walked to the end of the main street. There, we took a lane to the right and continued a bit farther. At first, I didn’t see the cottage. The town had no streetlights, which wasn’t that surprising, since we hadn’t sped through a city in a week.
I wanted to ask if this was where the doctor lived, but then I remembered Captain Janlav’s instructions (which had sounded more like a warning to me) and bit my tongue instead. The same thought must have crossed Merile’s mind, for she and her rats trod on my hem. When I glared at her from over my shoulder, the question was writ across her brown face.