‘I know the paluba was looking for you,’ said Chazia, ‘and it found you. It brought you the key to the Pollandore. I think this is it. This is the key. It is, isn’t it?’
Maroussia shook her head. The movement made her dizzy. Acidic bile rose up in the back of her throat. She turned her head aside to vomit.
‘I’m not going to help you,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘Not ever. Not with anything.’
‘You need to understand your position, Maroussia darling,’ said Chazia. ‘You really do. You are in my world now. There is no hope and no protection for you here; there is only me. I can turn you inside out. It’s not a metaphor, sweetness. I can dig around in you. I can pull the guts from your belly and hold them up for you to see. I can do anything I want. And afterwards I can give you to Bez Nichevoi.’ Chazia knelt in front of her and took her hand. Her gaze was warm and bright, compassionate and mad. ‘I can do this to you, Maroussia,’ she said. ‘You do believe me, darling, don’t you?’
Maroussia stared at Chazia dumbly. Her head hurt. She could find nothing to say. Whatever the foul creature that abducted her had done to her, it was still in her veins. All the energy had been flushed out of her. She felt as if she was watching herself from a distance, listening to voices at the far end of an echoing corridor. The floor beneath her was tipping sickeningly sideways.
‘You’ve imagined people doing cruel things to you, darling, haven’t you?’ said Chazia. ‘Everyone has. In dark moments. But the reality is much more terrible, and lasts much longer. It continues. Not just for hours or days but for weeks. Months. It gets messy. It’s not good to see parts of yourself being removed. It’s not good to have someone else rummaging about inside your body. Will I be brave? we ask ourselves, but of course nobody is brave, not in the end. Courage only takes you so far.’
Chazia shifted her position. Sat down beside her on the wooden floor, making herself comfortable. Shoulder to shoulder, intimate and companionable.
‘But I don’t want that to happen to you,’ she said.
‘You tried to kill me,’ said Maroussia, ‘You killed my mother.’
‘Oh. That.’ Chazia waved the memory away with a dismissive gesture. ‘That was just a favour for a friend. Before I knew you. I didn’t know then how important you were. And you escaped anyway, didn’t you. That was resourceful of you, though I think you had help. From Investigator Lom, I think. I’ve been underestimating him too. I saw the mess he made in the gendarme station at Levrovskaya Square. Who would have thought that of him?’
‘It wasn’t—’ Maroussia began, but Chazia cut her off.
‘What became of Major Safran by the way?’ she said. ‘I’ve been wondering. Just curious. Did Lom—’
‘I cut his head off. With a spade.’
Chazia giggled like a girl. Her eyes shone.
‘Did you?’ she said. ‘Well done you.’
Maroussia became aware of a prickling edginess in the air around her. A smell of ozone, like the sea. She realised that Chazia was still talking.
‘Ever since the Vlast confiscated the Pollandore from Lezarye,’ she was saying, ‘people in the Lodka have been trying to find out its secrets and use its power, but they never could. Only now there’s me, and now there’s you. The Shaumian woman. That’s what the paluba called you. You have the key and you are the key. Those are the words, or something like them. So. I know, you see. I know it all. And now you can show me how to use the Pollandore. You can give me these secrets.’
Chazia’s face was so close to hers, Maroussia could feel her breath. It was cool, and smelled like damp moss and stone, like the mouth of a deep well, with a taint of meat. Her hair was darkly reddish, cropped short and sparse. The rims of her pale blue eyes were pink, her teeth were small and even and pretty. There was a patch of slate-coloured angel flesh stretching from her left cheekbone almost to her ear.
No! Maroussia was screaming inside. No! She closed her eyes and turned her head away.
‘I’m the one to have the power of the Pollandore,’ said Chazia. ‘It is my destiny. I have a great purpose.’
Maroussia pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them defensively. Her naked feet were cold against the rough plank floor of the freight car. She felt the vibration of its wheels on the rails below.
‘The Pollandore isn’t a power,’ she said.
‘Of course it’s power, darling,’ said Chazia. She rested her hand on Maroussia’s bare knee, and stroked her comfortingly. Their shoulders were touching. ‘And you’re going to show me how to use it.’
Chazia slipped her arm round Maroussia’s shoulder and leaned her head against Maroussia’s head. Maroussia could smell her hair. Clean, with a faint trace of scented soap. The hand on Maroussia’s shoulder gripped gently but firmly. Maroussia felt a numbness there, as if her flesh was disappearing, as if the shoulder were merging with the hand that touched it.
Chazia’s body was starting to join with hers. Melt into her. Maroussia wanted to shake it off. Push her away. But she could not. The feeling was relaxing. Reassuring. There was something intimate about it. She felt they had known each other for ever. Chazia’s presence was so completely familiar. Solid and trustworthy. Two thoughts, one thought. Like oldest friends. Like sisters.
‘After all,’ said Chazia quietly, gently in her ear, ‘what were you going to do with it yourself?’
‘Destroy the angel in the forest.’
‘There you are, you see, sweetness,’ whispered Chazia triumphantly. ‘And you said it wasn’t power.’ Chazia nuzzled her nose against Maroussia’s neck. ‘Have a little sleep now, darling. You need to build your strength. There’s no hurry at all. We’ll have plenty more time to talk before we reach Novaya Zima.’
64
The engine note slowed and deepened. Lom became aware that the Kotik was descending, its nose dipping slightly, the line of the artificial horizon creeping up the face of the dial. He looked at the clock on the instrument panel. It was coming up to eleven. He glanced across at Gretskaya.
‘Going down to have a look,’ she said. ‘See where we are.’
The endless shining oceans of cloud rose to meet them and resolved into detaiclass="underline" rolling vaporous hillscapes, valleys and canyons. Lom braced himself, though he knew it was pointless. The floats under the wings ploughed into the thickening mist, tearing it up like cotton wool. Then fog closed round the machine, so thick the wing tips were lost in it. The Kotik did not appear to be moving forward. Nor did it seem to get any lower, although the altimeter needle was swinging leftwards all the time and the light was fading into subaqueous gloom.
The muffled roar of the engine died as Gretskaya throttled right back. The nose sank lower and the seaplane began to glide. The only sound was the hum of air passing through the slowly turning propeller and over the surface of the machine. The cockpit became suddenly fragile, cosy and close. A den to hide in. Heavy droplets of rain splashed against the windscreen and spread in trembling threads and trails. From north to south, straight across their path, lay a dark uniform green and purple wall. Not a wall. A mouth. Lom noticed that the wing at his shoulder was flexing and bouncing. Agitated water beads danced back across the lacquered surface towards the trailing edge and disappeared into grey fog.
Gretskaya sat quite still, her eyes glued to the altimeter. Lom watched the pointer creep backwards: 4,000–3,000–2,000. The machine plunged on through a mist of drenching, driving rain. 1,000–500. Lom sensed beneath them, blotted out by the foggy gloom, the heaving, queasy belly of the sea.