Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [23]
He grumbled under his breath but did not attempt further contact. As I exited, surrounded by a cluster of uniformed men and my heart in my stomach—not because I feared them but because I worried that leaving an examination room would count as failure—I noticed Olga looking straight at me, with a brave and encouraging smile on her face. I smiled back, even though my own circulatory system felt as if it was filled with ash instead of blood.
As we headed away from the building, my thoughts took a dark turn; I suspected that Professor Ipatiev would be more than pleased to fail me for not completing the examination. Further, the news of my undignified arrest would soon spread to the palace and the emperor would be glad for an excuse to disassociate himself from our family—what my aunt’s outbursts could not accomplish, my consorting with a dangerous foreign element would. I could already think of all the things they would say about me and the Chinese students, about the hazards of admitting women and Chinamen into hallowed halls . . . my ears burned just thinking about such indignity.
We approached the Palace Bridge when a familiar swirl of a gray cloak caught my attention. There was no reason for me to expect Jack’s appearance; yet the moment I saw him, I realized I had been holding my breath, hoping he would to come to my aid. When he did, I thought he had an extraordinarily sharp nose for police—secret or uniformed—and could not help but smile.
He approached us in an easy step, his eyes curious and bright. I thought he couldn’t very well attack any of my capturers, since they were in uniform and it was broad daylight. Still, I waited for miracles. Jack did not hesitate to produce one—or rather, he pulled a sheet of paper from the inner pocket of his jacket, and handed it to the apparent officer in charge. After a few whispered words he joined our party. I kept quiet and he did not say a word to me.
We passed the Palace Square and the Decembrists Square, close to the embankment, away from the streets dedicated to the tenements of the mercantile classes and the offices of clerks and minor governmental officials. They took me to Gorokhovaya Street, to a large nice-looking building. All five stories teemed with intense activity—everywhere I could see clerks coming and going, most of them dressed in uniforms of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs. There were other policemen, too. The clerks’ uniforms differed from the officers who surrounded me, and lacked swords, but it was apparent my captors belonged to the ministry—and the ministry was overseen by Prince Nicholas. Evidently Nikolashki could lurk about in civilian clothing or wear uniforms in public: both a secret police and the uniformed gendarmes.
I was led into a roomy office, the parquet floors and tall windows looking out on the silvery gray autumn daylight. Only one of the gendarme officers, his epaulettes golden and red, followed me inside. Jack Bartram remained with us as well, although I still had no idea on whose sufferance he was there.
The officer in the bright epaulettes offered me a seat on a stiff little sofa that rested against white-and-gold striped wallpaper by the door. He himself took a seat behind a massive oak desk, and Jack stood by the door, which he had carefully closed behind him. I got the distinct feeling the two men were keeping some secret from me, and I was about to be scolded. That made me feel slightly better, because a scolding was much preferable to accusations of sedition and treason and a tribunal of some sort, or any of the other such things I had imagined on my way here. I rested my parasol across my lap, took off my gloves, and prepared to listen.
The officer and Jack traded a look, as if each