The officer raised his pistol at arm’s length and fired. An execution shot.
‘This your place?’ he said to Elena. She was standing half-undressed in the firelight, the kitchen knife in her hand, held low at her side.
‘No.’
‘Then you’re looting.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a hanging crime.’
‘Yes.’
The VKBD officer studied her for a moment.
‘How long have you been scavenging?’
‘Always.’
He nodded.
‘And you’re still alive. More than that, you’re still strong. And a good fighter.’
‘If you’re not going to shoot me,’ said Elena Cornelius, ‘I’m going to put my coat back on.’
‘Ever used a rifle?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Come with me. We’ll teach you. You’ll be more use than a roomful of these pigs.’
‘I’m better off on my own.’
‘It isn’t a choice. It’s that, or I string you up in the morning.’
Conscripts to the Forward Defence Units got a day’s firearm training and, if they were fortunate, a weapon. Elena Cornelius turned out to have an aptitude for marksmanship. The sergeant took her aside.
‘You. You will be a sniper,’ he said. ‘A woman is good for sniping. You are small. You are flexible. You stand the cold better than a man.’
She was issued with felt overboots, a thick tunic, a fur shapka, the kind with flaps for the ears. A printed booklet with tables that set out how to adjust the aiming point to take account of the ballistic effects of freezing air. And a bolt-action 7.62mm Sergei-Leon rifle with a side-mounted 3.5x Gaussler scope, the one with two turrets, one for elevation and one for windage: effective range 1,000 yards with optics. The modified Sergei-Leon was exclusive to the VKBD; the regular army never had the funds for such precision firearms.
‘You learn by doing,’ the sergeant said. ‘We send you out with someone who knows what they’re doing.’
Elena was paired with a woman called Rosa, a student of history until the Archipelago came.
‘I volunteered,’ said Rosa. ‘I was a good shot already. I used to hunt with my father on Lake Lazhka. Wildfowl are harder to hit than soldiers.’ Rosa already had seventeen confirmed kills. ‘We’ll go in the afternoon,’ she said. ‘Firing into the east, you don’t want to shoot in the morning.’
Rosa led to the way a place near a machine-gun post on the roof of a factory. The enemy were only three hundred yards away.
‘Shoot when the machine gun is shooting,’ she said. ‘They won’t even know we’re here, never mind spot us.’
They were up there for nine hours. When they had finished and returned to the barracks, Elena Cornelius packed her things into a kitbag, slung her rifle over her shoulder and walked away, back into the city to look for her girls.
74
Alone in her private carriage in the dark hours after midnight, Lavrentina Chazia lay, fully clothed and sleepless on her bunk, listening to the rumble of the train wheels on the track. She was exhausted, but she knew she would not sleep: she rarely slept any more, the ants under her skin made it impossible, with their creeping and crawling and the sting of their tiny bites. The patches of angel stuff on her arms and face itched and burned.
After a fruitless day attempting to break through the shell of the Pollandore using various mechanisms of her own devising, she had spent the evening with the Shaumian woman, and even for Chazia, who was hardened to such things, the experience had not been pleasant. Frustrated by the lack of progress, she had concluded it was time to abandon the subtle approach in favour of more direct methods. Maroussia Shaumian was stubborn to the point of stupidity, and after their last talk she had become even more recalcitrant, almost confident. Chazia sensed that something had changed, but she didn’t know what and she didn’t care: it was a matter of breaking the girl’s will, and she knew how to do that. She had decided against using the worm, for fear of doing some damage to the girl’s mind that would prevent her doing whatever needed to be done with the Pollandore, so the work had been noisy and messy.
The process was still not complete, but Chazia had grown tired and faintly disgusted, so she’d left the girl to the professional interrogators and withdrawn to her compartment. She needed to find rest: her mind lacked edge and speed, and her spirits were low. She was bored, restless and above all frustrated. The power of the Vlast was within reach, but she had not yet quite grasped it: still there was Fohn, and the feeble Khazar. The power of the Pollandore was within reach but she could not get there, she didn’t know how to use it and the Shaumian woman was giving her nothing. Chazia was coming to doubt she had anything to give. And the living angel, the greatest power of all, had never come to her again. All she heard was silence.
In her sleepless solitude Chazia began to wonder if perhaps, after all her efforts, she was going to fail. Maybe she was simply not good enough to do what she had set out to do. She felt the need for power, any power, in her belly like a hunger. She was incomplete without it. She was made for power, she was capable of it, she deserved it. She had worked so hard for so long. She had made sacrifices. She had given her life to the Vlast unstintingly. She had served. When she held her hands stretched out before her in the darkness, palms open, they felt empty, with an emptiness ready to be filled. And yet…
Chazia sat up abruptly and turned on the lamp. She swung her legs off the bunk and stood up. Her self-pity disgusted her. Such moods came upon her when she was alone with nothing to do but think. That was why she must always be working. Never be inactive. Never. Keep moving, keep trying, keep going forward. Always choose the difficult thing. Always choose to dare.
She went through to the next compartment, where she kept the suit of angel flesh that she had made. The uncanny watchfulness of the thing made her uneasy. She realised for the first time that she was frightened of it, in the way you’re frightened to get back on a horse that’s thrown you several times. But the reluctance, the fear in her stomach, that was the reason to do it. She took the headpiece from its shelf and put it on. She felt it reach out and clamp onto her, plunging invasive tendrils deep into her mind. It was eager, it was ready, and now so was she. Fresh excitement stirred in her belly. Her mind began to turn faster. It was better already. This was what she needed.
Awakening angel senses trickled information into her mind. She felt with prickling clarity the many lives on the train, the energy of the engine working, the miles and miles of passing trees and snow. The Pollandore. She felt the Pollandore by its absence. Its impossibility. It was a strange blankness. It told her nothing.
She called out to the living angel in the forest.
Where are you? Speak to me. I am here.
Again and again she called into the emptiness, as she had done a hundred times before.
And this time the angel answered.
At last it answered!
When the angel had spoken to Chazia at Vig, it had almost destroyed her. It had come roaring into her mind, a crude appalling destroying storm of sheer inhuman force, as infinite and absolute and cold as the space between the stars, pounding and pouring into her, stronger and more powerful than she could bear, until her head burst open and her lungs heaved for breath but could find none. But this time it was different. Perhaps it was because of the casket of angel flesh enclosing her head, or perhaps it was because she was stronger now, and better prepared, more equal to the encounter. It did not occur to her that the angel had learned subtlety and control.