Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [124]
I walked next to Chiang Tse and Kuan Yu, their flanking shoulders giving me strength and courage, with the rest of Chiang Tse’s retinue following closely behind, their swords drawn.
I was a little surprised to see Dame Nightingale—she was dressed in a long gray coat of the same cut and fabric as those of the men around her. Only her tall, laced boots with a small but noticeable heel bore any traces of femininity. I almost asked her where she had purchased them, before remembering myself.
“You,” she said in my direction. She did not sneer, exactly, but her voice was icy with contempt. The snow under her feet crunched, betraying her otherwise imperceptible shifting. “You don’t have to wear those boy’s clothes anymore—they don’t hide you that well.”
“Neither do yours.”
She smiled then. “It’s for convenience.”
“You’re just copying me.” I felt a small stirring of satisfaction warming my cheeks when I saw her flinch.
Dame Nightingale shook her head and smiled. “You can flatter yourself with whatever interesting ideas you have, but the truth is that Mr. Bartram here is a British citizen and is subject to the British crown, and your barbarian thugs can not help you.” She clucked her tongue, her long eyelashes casting a blue shadow over her porcelain-white face, spared even by the frost. “Really, Sasha—you should know better than attempt anything so foolish.”
“And yet you got off the train,” I said.
“We decided to choose less predictable mode of transportation,” she said. “Trains are nice, but the very fact that they run on schedule makes it difficult to work in an element of surprise—as you yourself must’ve noticed.”
I nodded. Despite my better judgment, I couldn’t help but feel a deep kinship with this tall woman, straight and strong as a pillar. I could even see her as a friend, should she have chosen a different occupation. “I’ve read your letters,” I said. Half-confession, half-desire to hurt, I wasn’t sure.
Her face turned scarlet—the color spread from her right cheek, as if I had slapped her. “And I’ve read yours,” she said through her teeth. “That fool”—a toss of her head indicated Jack—“had it on him. At least, now he knows that he was leaping and dancing for your amusement to little effect.” She turned away from me, to speak directly to Jack who was surrounded by a tight circle of men wearing gray coats and round hats. “How does it feel, hmm? You make a funny puppet, Jack—so long and gangly and silly looking. Surely, this girl had a good a laugh at your expense.”
It was my turn to flush deep crimson. This was not going in the direction I had hoped, and yet I found strength to meet Jack’s gaze.
He looked gaunter, longer, and his eyes had a haunted look about them, no doubt helped by the deep shadow of the stubble and the hollowed appearance of his temples. He looked back at me, his eyes dull and his face unmoving; then again, his chin was resting on top of a solid and likely frozen block of wood and his bare hands were blue from cold, so he would probably look miserable even if his heart wasn’t broken.
He licked his lips a few times, as if getting ready to speak.
“Careful,” I whispered. “If you wet your lips too much, they’ll chap.”
He smiled then, his lips cracking and blood seeping through the tiny fissures, slow as water under ice. “Too late for that,” he said. “I didn’t read your letter—I found it and I kept it to give back, and she was the one who read it and told me.”
“That was an appalling thing to do,” I told Nightingale. I’d have to explain the nonsense about letters to Chiang Tse at some point, but now was not the time for it.
She sneered in earnest then. “And what you did was right?”
“I read your letters for my country’s good and for the sake of peace, not some petty revenge,” I said. “Really, Dame Nightingale. I am disappointed in you.”
She jerked her shoulder