Heart of Iron

Chapter 10

Jack and I tried not to panic as we threw everything we had unpacked the day before back into our satchels — at least, I tried not to panic. Jack seemed composed, but I felt certain it was playacting. Who could stay calm considering the terror of facing Dame Nightingale? I was afraid of her even before her letters had shown me a true depth of her passion — and I now knew of how much love and, conversely, hatred she was capable. Now I was mad with fear.

“Sasha,” Jack called me. “You must control your emotion. You are as pale as a ghost and look guiltier than sin. Appear casual, walk easy. They are looking for a girl, not a hussar.”

It felt like a bad dream, listening for footsteps and voices. Finally, the sense of fear and helplessness solidified into a piercing realization the people who were looking for us would not stop, and they would unlikely have any reservations about killing us. I forced these thoughts out of my mind and pulled the straps on the satchel closed. Jack stood by the window, eyeing the snow outside.

“We could jump out of the window,” he said. “I mean, I could jump. You won’t be recognized.”

“You think so?” I said, uncomfortable with the idea of going near the spies all by myself.

“Unless you want me to carry you as I jump,” he said. “I have never tried it before, with a person.”

I did a quick calculation in my mind. “If you jump out of this window carrying me, the impact will either kill me or break some bones at the least.”

“There’s the answer then.” He smiled, encouraging. “You can do it. Besides, someone has to pay the bill.”

I picked up my satchel and sighed. “I’ll meet you at the bridge. Then we can go to the station, meet the train from St. Petersburg, and see if Eugenia sent any messages.”

Jack nodded and opened the window. Cold wind lifted the thin white curtains and a few snowflakes danced into the room, melting the instant warm air touched them. Jack stood a moment with his foot on the windowsill, looking at the street below. The next second, he leaned out of the window as if estimating the distance, and then he was gone in a swirl and a flap of his long coat.

I fought the temptation to rush to the window and see but there were voices outside. I shut the window with nary a look and swiftly exited our room. In the hallway I saw three men in tweed jackets that were much too light for the weather, and it took great effort to not speed my steps or otherwise betray my distress. I nodded to them as I passed with my newly developed swagger, and they nodded back, showing no signs of recognition.

I thundered down the stairs, forgetting decorum, and felt like I drew a breath for the first time in years when I entered the downstairs dining room. Warm smells of cabbage and fish washed over me. I found the owner, let him know we were leaving earlier than anticipated, and paid for our lodging.

The rotmistr and his two cornets sat at the same table as before — in fact, in my panic and confusion I thought for a moment that they were always there, not real people but mere decorations. The rotmistr raised his gigantic hand and waved at me; I had the presence of mind to wave back. The cornets saluted without getting up, and I returned the salute. Just as I turned to leave the tavern, there was a commotion outside, a ringing of hooves and terrified whinnying of horses, and a woman’s scream.

The usual din in the tavern died down; but only my friends the hussars and myself were foolish enough to bolt outside. The picture we discovered made my heart feel like it was frozen to my ribs by a sudden gust of especially cold wind.

Dame Nightingale herself, dressed in furs, screamed and pointed, as several men in civilian clothes — but with military bearing — circumvented an upset carriage, under the wreckage of which two heavily dressed figures struggled weakly. I assumed Jack had spooked the horses with his leaping, and it was he Dame Nightingale directed her pursuit after.

Passersby gathered around the wreckage and helped the passengers out; one of the horses thrashed on the ground with a broken leg. Discussion started among a merchant and two bureaucrats about whether it should be put down and by who. Freedmen, factory workers, waiters from the tavern as well as a few diners with their napkins still around their necks appeared, and a sizeable knot of people assembled, clogging Balchug Street. The English had to wrestle through the crowd, and their progress was slow and reluctant.

Dame Nightingale turned and saw me; her eyes tore through my disguise as if it were mere smoke, flimsy enough to be dispelled with a single breath, and gave a slow smile. “Sasha,” she said. “How good to see you.” With a flick of her wrist she directed the attention of the men in civilian clothing to me. The immediately moved toward me.

“Now now,” the rotmistr said. (I was so terrified of Nightingale I’d forgotten he was there.) “Leave the young man alone.”

The cornets drew closer to me, their hands on the hilts of their sabers, and I remembered that I wore one as well.

My dead Uncle Pavel had a larger, broader hand than I — the hilt of his saber felt too wide and too heavy, but its curve fitted into my palm snugly enough.

The English, all moving at once, as if their movements were mutually articulated by invisible strings, put their hands in the pockets of their coats. I assumed their attire concealed weapons, pistols or knives.

The rotmistr moved to my left, his shoulder almost brushing mine, and advanced half a step in front of me, as if to shield me from the English. Thankfully, his broad back obscured the sight of Dame Nightingale’s snakelike stare, freeing me from her hypnotic influence.

“Stand down, rotmistr,” I whispered in Russian. “They won’t dare do anything here, in the middle of the street, with all these people around them.”

“Right you are, little hussar,” the rotmistr said. He turned to glance at me, his grin flashing a full foot over my head. “They’ll wait till you’re all by your lonesome somewhere secluded. You better run along and find your friend. We’ll keep them entertained here, if that is acceptable?”

“Thank you,” I whispered, and stepped back until his large frame concealed me from the English view entirely. I had left the sidewalk, and struggled through the bushes fringing the side of the tavern. I turned and ran, Nightingale’s voice echoing faintly behind me, my boots sloshing through the snow.

I dashed across the street and ducked between two buildings. The yards behind them connected and I ran through them until I was well clear of the crowded scene on Balchug Street. The yards, surrounded by tall townhouses with dark windows, had accumulated veritable mountains of snow. The din of the street was extinguished by its softness, and — stumbling through knee-deep drifts — it felt as if I were miles away.

The rotmistr and the cornets had done a wonderful thing for us, even though they had met us only the night before. I was lucky, I supposed, that the rotmistr was so kind, and didn’t take my behavior as an affront — he seemed rather amused by it, truth be told. I smiled when I remembered the way he grinned and winked, like a conspiratorial child.

I found an exit back onto the street, and stumbled out of the snow, stomping my feet on the pavement. The crowd thronged far behind me, and I could just make out the rotmistr’s head above the crush. I could discern some shuffling and pushing where he and the cornets were, and could hear a shrill rising female voice, but could not understand what she was saying, or even who it was with any certainty. However, there didn’t seem to be any Englishmen emerging from the crowd, so I sheathed my saber, changed the satchel from my left hand to my right, and ran toward the bridge. As I crossed it, the icy air pricked my chest from the inside with a million stinging needles.

I stopped to rest only when I reached the embankment on the opposite side. It seemed quieter there in the deep blue shadow of the Kremlin, and I walked slowly, looking for Jack. He wouldn’t have gone far.

I found him sitting on the frozen, snow-covered steps leading from the foot of the bridge down to the water, black and sluicing over the fringe of ice that was forming on the embankment’s stone walls. “Are you well?” he called to me.

“Yes,” I said. “But they are after us — they’ll get here soon if the rotmistr fails to hold them off.”

“The rotmistr?”

“Come on — we have to hurry.”

Jack leapt up the steps and I had trouble keeping up with his pace. We decided to walk to the next bridge and cross back into Zamoskvorechye, and head for the train station. We would meet the St. Petersburg train and intercept the courier returning with a message from my aunt. We planned to then hire a coach to take us north, to the Eastern Station where we could catch the train heading to Nizhniy Novgorod and further east, all the way to Turkestan and China. I hoped we would confound our pursuers enough to lose them — there were five train stations in Moscow, and they had no way of knowing which one we would head to, even if they guessed that we were leaving the city.

There was a thundering of hooves behind us, and a small group of hussars rounded the Kremlin wall and headed toward the embankment. They wore the same colors as the rotmistr — blue and red with white pelisses. I waved at them and called out, “Are you with the Muscovy Regiment?”

“Yes, lad,” one of them replied. “Semionovsky?”

“Indeed,” I answered. “Listen, if you’re heading down Balchug, there are some Englishmen who started fisticuffs with three hussars just a little while back. Rotmistr Ivankov was there.”

“The rotmistr?” the man sat straighter in his saddle. His breath clouded the air and left a thin patina on the silver tack of his bay gelding. The horse snorted, breathing out great plumes of dense white vapor, and I could see hairs on its muzzle rimed with hoarfrost. “We better go see if he needs help. Thanks for telling us, lad.”

“What was that about?” Jack asked as the hussars departed.

“You don’t understand any Russian?” We had always spoken in English, but I was taken aback to realize he never understood a word I said in Russian, as infrequently as that happened.

He shook his head. “I know, very lacking on my part. Maybe you can teach me on the train… after you explain about the rotmistr and the hussars.”

“Only if you finish telling me about your life,” I said.

“It’s a deal,” he answered. “We better hurry, though, to avoid Nightingale’s men catching up with us.”

“No need,” I said happily. “Those hussars will detain them and perhaps incapacitate them altogether.”

It was so cold that the inside of my nose felt frozen solid, and my lips split and chapped with every breath I took. Jack loped ahead of me, intent on arriving at the train station before the St. Petersburg train, his boots moving through blackened slush with aggravating ease as I struggled after, wondering if I would ever restore the shine to my boots.

We made it to the station just in time. As Jack forged fearlessly ahead, I looked around, dreading I might catch a glimpse of the Englishmen or Nightingale. It did not matter that, rationally, there was no possibility of finding us so quickly, especially waylaid by the hussars — Dame Nightingale had become a creature of a nightmare to me, omnipotent, omniscient, and unstoppable in her malice.

Jack turned around and waved to me. I hurried after him, pushing through the dense crowd with my shoulder. Say what you will, but I took a certain relish and satisfaction in behaving in such an unladylike way. I now understood why Eugenia walked as she did, why her strides were always so long and unrestrained and mannish.

The courier had returned, and he had a letter. A wave of relief washed over me — I did not allow myself to think about everything that could go wrong up until this moment. I tore into the envelope as Jack paid the courier — who looked tired with his stubbly cheeks and red-rimmed eyes.

“Dearest Sasha,” Eugenia wrote.

“Thank you for your thoughtful gift — it was received as well as the notes from your friends. Give them my thanks for housing you for the time of your vacation, even though you do have to miss the season. Your mother was quite distraught about that, but she came to share my view that the warm climes are beneficial for a young lady of your fragile constitution. I hope Sochi is nice, and you are having a good time with your friends.

“Regarding your question — I should be able to take care of your request soon. Unfortunately, the parties involved are both stubborn and inaccessible, but I am certain a small payment will ease my attempts to gain their company. As for our mutual friend who is in the care of Captain Mishkin, he is well and sends his regards. I have started a correspondence with him via the captain, who has been quite kind about it. Your friend expressed his hope for your success, and I join my wishes to his.”

“What does she say?” Jack interrupted my reading. I looked up only to see that the crowd had dispersed considerably, and was probably boarding the outbound train. Jack and I stood nearly alone in the middle of the waiting hall.

“Let’s sit down,” I said.

We found an available bench where I hunkered down and derived a small measure of comfort from being somewhat hidden. “Everything is well,” I said. “She received the documents, and started correspondence with Wong Jun. If we need to find something out from him, we can write to her.”

Jack kicked out his long legs and stuffed his hands into his pockets, sighing impatiently. “Everything takes forever.”

“You’re welcome to leap all the way to St. Petersburg if you want.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course not. So now you have to obey the same limitations as the rest of us mere mortals. Come on, we need to get to Nizhniy Novgorod.”

We walked out into the cold, and hailed a coach cab.

“Eugenia will get those documents before Constantine, I’m sure,” I said as we settled snugly into the dark interior smelling of leather and horse sweat. “I just hope that Wong Jun’s letter will be sufficient when we reach China.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Jack responded. “But the Chinese do not trust foreigners and they know very little about them… us, I mean.”

“And?”

“Sometimes, they think you’re the devil and want you away from them. I can’t tell you how many times I was shot at for no reason.”

“Well, you are English.”

“Is that a good enough reason?”

I thought for a moment. “If there is a war? Of course. You can’t expect people to extend the courtesy you’re not willing to give. I bet the English did not stop to see whether they were shooting at peaceful Chinese civilians or soldiers.”

“How do you know?”

“That is how wars are.” I wiggled my fingers, trying to find a suitable way of explaining this phenomenon. “They are fought in a very general way. Chinese shoot at English, English shoot at Chinese, and no one stops to verify credentials. I just hope that with the war over they at least look at your papers before shooting.”

“Of course,” Jack said. “At least, for the Europeans. I hear that the Manchus and the Taipings happily shoot each other on sight these days. Some of the Taipings have defied the Manchus by wearing their hair long and loose rather than in a braided pigtail as the law requires.”

“I am not surprised if you consider how the Manchus enforced their hairstyles.”

Jack gave me a long look and laughed. “You know quite a bit about Chinese politics, don’t you?”

“No, just what Chiang Tse told me.” I peered out of the window of the cab, to avoid meeting Jack’s gaze. “I hope he is well.”

We caught the train to Nizhniy Novgorod with no trouble, and as soon as we settled in our couchette compartment, I stretched on one of the seats and slept, exhausted. Even the whistles of the train could not rouse me.

They could not rouse me, but they colored my dreams — I dreamt about being on the train, swaying, clanging, sparks flying from the chugging iron wheels. I stood by the glass door at the tail end of the last carriage, watching the tracks recede in a dazzling flash — shining metal, hoarfrosted ties. And I saw a dark figure cutting through the brilliance. My heart jumped to my throat as nameless unreasoned dread enveloped me and the figure approached, fast, faster than the train could travel.

It was Dame Nightingale, running in a strange, simian gait, her impossibly long thick arms with giant hands dragging on the ground aiding her. She ran almost on all fours although remained upright. Nightingale thrust her massive arms forward, grabbing onto the crossties, and pulling the rest of her behind; her neck had elongated and her eyes, unblinking, fixed me with their hypnotic stare.

I sat upright before I even realized I was awake, and came to awareness gasping for air, my arms outstretched, reaching or pleading. My eyes snapped open a split second later.

Jack who was reading on the seat opposite of mine carefully considered me, his eyes especially pale and gray that day. “Bad dream?”

“Not just a dream,” I said, and rubbed my eyes. “The waking reality is altogether lacking in cheer as well.”

He laughed. “We’re safe here, at least for now. Rest, sleep, read.”

I stared out of the window instead. Dazzling white all around us, with black dots of crows and the blue smudge of forest on the horizon. We passed an occasional small station, where the locomotive did not deign to stop, and the village women, wrapped in woolen shawls, holding chickens and geese plump and ready for Christmas, watched the train as it sped by, momentarily locking eyes with me and losing this contact as our carriage flew by. It seemed fitting, such great speed so contradictory to making more than fleeting human connection. I thought of it for a while, as villages and their wooden cottages half-buried in white appeared outside of the train and melted back into brilliantine mist of snow and cold; the faster we went the less time there was to simply look. Then again, I couldn’t really complain — because of this speed, we would be in Nizhny Novgorod in a few hours, and then the train would take us all the way to Kazan, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Omsk, Novonikolaevsk, Irkutsk, Ulan Ude, and finally… Beijing.

“Have you ever been to Siberia?” I asked. “I wonder what Irkutsk is like.”

“It’s a trading town,” Jack answered. “Trading with China — there’s gold and silk and tea. Lots of mosquitoes in the summer, but now everything is frozen solid. Even Yenisey is frozen, I reckon, and it is such a grand river.”

“What else?”

He shrugged. “As I understand it, the town not that large, really. There’re traders, a lot of Chinese, and the railroad business. Some furriers go through every now and again. There are some local tribes, herding caribou or whatever it is they herd, but I’ve been told that ever since the Russian Empire took a foothold there, they’ve declined. A price of progress, I suppose.”

“What about Ulan Ude?” I asked. In my anxiety, I was eager for any information about new places, however vague or incomplete. I wished I had a book of some sort — only there were no travel guides for Siberia, because who would go there voluntarily, on their leisure?

Jack scratched his head. “In Ulan Ude, there are Buryats who look Asiatic… I only know what Nightingale told me.”

“Nightingale? How did she know that you were going to Siberia?”

Jack made a face, shook his head. “Sasha, what do I have to do for you to stop suspecting me at every turn? We talked about Siberia while discussing the possibility of land war with China, after Russia is taken care of. She thought if the south of China is already overrun by the Taipings, a strike from north would finish it. But these are idle speculations.”

I nodded. “Sorry, I did not mean to accuse you.”

“It is of no matter.” He still frowned, and unrolled the booklet detailing some adventure or another of one Dick Turpin. It didn’t seem a good time to ask him more questions, and I decided to let him be.

I remembered about my letter to my mother, and settled to write some more. I could mail it from Nizhniy Novgorod, I told myself, or any other city on our way — the stops were supposed to last anywhere from half an hour to two hours, sufficient time to mail it whenever the letter was finished. In truth, I think I just enjoyed the opportunity to write down my thoughts. The act of writing was as important as my intent to mail it to mother.

“It is difficult for me to think about that,” I continued, “and my thoughts, unless they are pinned to the paper with my pen, get away from me. I know that you fear deep in your heart I will end up like Eugenia, and you think it would be a tragedy. While I have not made up my mind, I can see many benefits to such an arrangement, at least until the emperor turns his attention to the inheritance laws. Unless I am legally allowed to possess property while being married, I will surely feel much less conflicted on this matter.

“As it is now, I would have to surrender everything that is mine by birth to the dubious care of whatever man that becomes my husband, and how am I to know that he would be wise in its dispensation? Moreover, why does the law seems to think I would not be capable of making decisions about what belongs to me? In our classes, we always hear that a woman’s or an Asian’s brain is inferior to that of a European man. Yet the Chinese and the girls get grades as good or better than any Caucasoid male, even in classes which are designed and taught by European men — as are the texts we study. It surely seems to me that women would be capable of administering an estate — Aunt Eugenia certainly is — and the Chinese are capable of taking care of their own country.

“And this brings me to another concern, dear mother. I know how indifferent to politics you are (I am not talking of the palace gossip here), but please do bear with me this one time. I fear our contempt for our own Asiatic origin has blinded us to who our allies truly are. I wonder how the world would be reshaped if Russia allied itself not with the degeneracy and false superiority of European empires, but with the might of the Orient?”

Just as I wrote these words, the train slowed down and soon stopped entirely. I looked up to peer through the window, and discovered it had completely frosted over. I scratched at the frost with my fingernails, and saw an iced over wooden platform which could not — I hoped it was not — be Nizhniy Novgorod, for its apparent lack of any interesting architecture or cathedrals.

“Why are we stopping here?” I asked Jack.

He shrugged, without looking up from his penny dreadful. “Probably picking up some passengers. Some chose to board in remote regions to avoid the crowded stations for personal reasons. More discreet that way.”

There was a small hut on the platform, as I could discern after pressing my cheek to the frozen windowpane to melt the frost. A pavilion with a flat roof on which the snow mounded like sugar in a sugar bowl, and three wooden walls. Inside it were two figures, bundled up against the cold in what looked like fur cloaks made of the skins of the entire contents of Noah’s ark — no two pelts were alike. The whole gave an impression of a moving cat-and-dog fight as they started to shamble slowly toward the train, dragging behind them two fairly large sea chests.

They came through the doors of our carriage a moment later, and even though the carriage was almost empty, took a compartment across the aisle from us. I studied their chests, covered in intricate carvings of whales and fishes and dragons, and secured by wide leather straps. The two chests occupied most of the floor of the compartment, and the passengers had to carefully arrange their feet shod in heavy boots with fur spats. I couldn’t help but feel they were overdressed for the weather, even if it was frigid outside.

It took the new arrivals a while to unburden themselves from their fur hats, fur gloves, fur everything. Their cloaks were lined with gold-colored silk, an unexpected flash of refinement.

I noticed Jack was watching them too: his pose, while seemingly nonchalant, was wound with hidden tension — his right hand dangled between his knees, still holding the booklet, but his left was thrust into the pocket of his coat. His feet rested flatly on the floor, his leg muscles tightening under the fabric of his trousers.

The strangers were not English, as I had feared, but Chinese — there was no mistaking their facial features and soft voices that spoke in what I recognized as Cantonese. Yet, their hair was not braided into a long pigtail, but hung loosely around their faces, looking as if it had not been cut in some years. The clothing they wore under their furs was made of silk, but tattered and dirty, and I could not decide if they were Han robes. I was certain they were not Manchu.

One of them realized that I was staring. “Kuan Yu,” he introduced himself and bowed, withdrawing his hands into sleeves sporting an unintentional fringe.

“Poruchik Menshov,” I said brightly in English. “Any relation to Admiral Kuan Tien Pei?”

The man laughed then, showing small white teeth. “Not that I know of, but I do suspect the admiral honors Kuan Ti, the god of war, as do I.”

Jack listened to this exchange, visibly relaxing. It occurred to me that he did not lower his guard when he realized our new neighbors were Chinese, but only at the mention of some pagan deity I was sure Chiang Tse mentioned to me at some point. “You’re not a Christian then?” Jack interjected.

Our interlocutor and his companion traded a quick look. “No, of course not,” the one who had remained quiet so far said in fairly good English.

“You have long hair instead of shaved temples and queue,” Jack said.

“My father died,” said Kuan Yu.

“Mine too,” added his companion. “We are not Christian. You’re Christian, you’re an Englishman.”

Jack nodded.

“Funny,” said the second man. “There were other English at the station with us, and now I don’t know where they went.”

“There were?” Jack and I said in one voice.

“Yes,” the man said. “My name is Liu Zhi.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jack said, but already his gaze drifted toward the doors of the carriage.

We did not have to wait long — the door opened, and eight men, dressed in civilian clothing, tweed and fur collared-cloaks, filed in. In the narrow corridor of the couchette carriage, their numbers would be of no advantage, I thought, even if they noticed us. To prevent such recognition, I wrapped my shoulders in my pelisse and acted as if I were asleep sitting up, my head resting against the windowpane. Jack’s gray eyes flicked toward me, and he shot me a quick smile as he unrolled his Dick Turpin booklet.

The Englishmen looked at all the passengers as they passed; I could not see through the walls of the compartments, of course, but I could see their slow progress down the corridor, their heads swinging to the right and then left. I peeked out of the compartment, and wished we had chosen the sleeping carriage with closing doors; it was Jack who objected to those, on account of avoiding potential traps.

The first of the Englishmen reached us. I saw the back of his head as it swiveled to look at the Chinese. He had tiny black hairs on the back of his neck, fine as cat fur, bristling over the white scarf he wore over the ruddy pelt of his fur collar. When he turned toward us, my gaze drifted toward the letter in my lap. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Jack sink lower in his seat, slouching forward and hunching over.

The man did not move on; he remained where he was, staring at us. When the silence became uncomfortable and I looked up, reluctantly meeting the stare of his pale watery eyes. “May I help you, sir?” I said in my most masculine voice.

He smiled slowly and gave a half-turn half-nod to his accomplices. While his back was turned, Jack sprung. He lacked grace, but he made up this shortcoming in raw power. He barreled into the man and sent him stumbling backward, into the arms of his colleagues.

Someone in the front end of the carriage screamed, and there was a shuffling of steps as passengers fled the carriage. Soon, it would be just the two of us, eight Englishmen, and nowhere to run. Jack, however, was undeterred by the circumstance. He strained like a man trying to single-handedly move a heavy piano, pushing the knot of Englishmen back the way they had come in.

A shot rang out. I smelled smoke, and the acrid scent of burning sulfur and paper. I unsheathed my dead uncle’s saber and made my way into the narrow corridor.

I wanted to help Jack, but there was no getting around him to reach the struggling Englishmen. I was so intent on finding a way to circumvent him that I did not immediately notice both of the Chinese gentlemen had arisen as well, their fur cloaks donned anew.

“Stand aside,” one of them shouted. I obeyed on instinct, falling into one of the empty couchette compartments as they pushed past me. I expected them to be stopped by the obstacle of Jack as I had, but instead — I do not quite know how to describe it, since my eyes refused to believe the sight — they leapt into the air and sailed with the slow grace of birds riding air currents, over Jack and the Englishmen he was struggling with, and landed softly on the far side of Nightingale’s agents.

Confused shouting and thrashing of limbs filled the end of the corridor, and the fur of the Chinamen’s cloaks became quite animated — I saw it rise above the commotion flapping like mangy wings.

I glimpsed a sudden flail of an arm and the piercing shine of something metallic and sharp. Even Jack stopped pushing and his Englishmen scrambled to turn around. All I could see was a blur of motion and shadow. One of the Chinese gentlemen (I think it was Kuan Yu) jumped nearly to the rail car’s ceiling, and his foot, shod in a surprisingly refined-looking satin slipper, connected with the back of the head of one of the Englishmen, sending him spinning and tumbling into the clump of his countrymen, already exceedingly cramped by Jack’s effort at our end.

Even though it was difficult to make out who was hitting whom and with what, the Chinese gentlemen and their disturbing fur cloaks seemed to be gaining an upper hand. The English were defending themselves only half-heartedly, squeezed as they were between the Chinese and Jack who, by then, had stopped pushing and only administered an occasional and judicious slap or poke, keeping the agents tightly contained. He would make a good shepherd dog, I thought, as I managed to wedge in next to him and poke and prod the men with my now-sheathed saber. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I wanted a closer look at the strange balletic species of fisticuffs our new friends were employing, and I enjoyed feeling useful.

The Chinese had beaten the agents bloody, all of them slumped or staggering in the narrow corridor, blinded by their bruises and disoriented, a few split lips bleeding and a few eyes punched bruised and shut. Jack and I herded the Englishmen toward the carriage door. Kuan Yu pushed the door open; Jack smiled and nodded to him. “Jump,” he said to the English.

The ground sloped down from the tracks, coated with a crystalline blanket of snow, and yet my heart was uneasy as the English jumped, one by one by one, and rolled down the slope, raising brief, low flurries in their wake. I hoped they would find their way to safety.

“How close is the nearest town?” I asked Jack.

He smiled, shook his head. “They’ll be fine. Unfortunately.”

Kuan Yu laughed. “Indeed. Why not kill them?”

“Diplomatic nightmare,” I said.

We returned to our compartments, but after a quick unvoiced exchange, I went across the corridor to speak to the Chinese. Kuan Yu seemed a bit more talkative, and I sat down next to him, making sure my posture was both casual and masculine: I rested my elbows on my knees, letting my hands dangle.

“So,” I said. “What do you gentlemen do?”

Kuan Yu grinned. “How do you mean, poruchik?”

“Just in general. What brings you to Russia, business or pleasure?”

The men laughed, their bright teeth twinkling in their dark beards with great mirth. “We are traders,” Kuan Yu said.

Liu Zhi laughed again, throwing back his head, and gasped for breath, overcome by too much merriment. “Yes, traders,” he confirmed once he regained his ability to speak. “Business is bad in Siberia, had to go west to sell all the silk and tea we had. Now going back home, to Beijing. Will be selling fur.” He pointed at their cloaks that were now hanging placidly on the wall of the compartment, and I determined the unnatural mix was composed of mink, fox, ermine, and otter furs.

“Us too,” I said.

“Trading fur?”

“Going to Beijing,” I said.

They nodded, expressing no further curiosity. “Long trip,” Kuan Yu said. “Rest up, young man — who knows when you will be able to sleep in such security and comfort as now. We always rest while we travel by train. We know when there’s an opportunity for danger to arrive, and when it is safe. Sleep while the wheels rattle on and wake up when they stop.”

“Thank you,” I said and rose, realizing I was being politely encouraged to leave. “And thank you for your help.”

Liu Zhi nodded, smiling. “Our pleasure,” he said.

I did not doubt his veracity.