Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [57]
I kept looking at the street signs. Moscow’s warrens depressed and confused me, and it seemed that no two streets met at the right angle. I was used to the orderly grid of St. Petersburg, streets razor-straight, wide. We got turned around a few times, but finally found the three-storied building of white sandstone decorated with a carved dragon painted red. I assumed the dragon was intended to be symbolic of the Orient.
Inside we found a roomy foyer with a marble fountain that was not working, and a dusty waiting room adjacent to the main office. It appeared to have been converted from what might previously have been an apartment for a struggling merchant family. A guard in full uniform nodded to us.
“What can I do for you, poruchik . . . ?”
“Menshov,” I said and presented the papers with a confident flourish. “Poruchik means lieutenant,” I explained to Jack’s puzzled look. “This is a friend of mine, Mr. Bartram from England. We are traveling to China, and need travel papers. This is a letter from my aunt.”
“Wait here,” the guard said. He took my papers and disappeared into the office. We sat on the narrow sofa in the waiting room.
“I do not understand Russian bureaucracy,” Jack whispered.
“No one does,” I whispered back. “Just go along with it.”
I was grateful to Eugenia for laying out the places for us to go to, and writing letters to present so we did not need to do or say much. It made me feel as if I wasn’t really on my own, alone in the strange city.
An hour or so passed. The dusty clock on the wall ticked loudly at first, but when three in the afternoon arrived, it rang out the hours while a counterweight traveled downwards until it touched the floor and the clock stopped. There was no longer any way for me to keep track of time. Jack had a pocket watch, but it seemed improper somehow to ask him to look at it—as if the empty waiting room would be offended by my rudeness.
Finally, the guard reappeared, carrying our papers. They had been properly stamped and signed, and the guard handed them to me. “The minister asks after your aunt’s health,” he said.
“She is well,” I assured him.
“He says he did not know the countess had a nephew.”
“A distant one, on her father’s side. Thrice removed.” I had that small story memorized and was ready to diagram a Menshov family tree if necessary, claiming to be one of the provincial Menshovs descended from my great-grandfather’s bastard brother.
The guard only nodded. “Good family. And the old countess takes care of her relatives.”
It was already dark when we left the building and walked back to the tavern—the sun set early here; it wasn’t even six and already the lampposts had grown hazy round halos of light, like ethereal giant dandelions. Shadows pooled by the walls of the townhouses and engulfed the river, an insatiable black mouth swallowing everything.
The tavern keeper, a man as stout as his bow-legged oak furniture, sent a kitchen boy to fetch us a courier, and Jack and I took our supper in our room while preparing the package for Eugenia. The room was furnished with two beds, a stand with a basin jug of cold water, and a couple of chamber pots. Modest but sufficient, and it allowed me an opportunity to practice washing my face while carefully avoiding my mustache.
Jack sat on his bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling. The tray with his supper stood by his feet, and he didn’t pay it much attention. “Are you not uncomfortable sharing a room with me?” he said.
I shook my head, still marveling at the sensation of breeze on my bare neck. “It’s better than being alone in a strange place. If Nightingale and her underlings catch up with us, I’d much rather you be here than behind a wall.”
“Safety in numbers,” he agreed.
I finished wrapping the letters into a silk scarf I had purchased on our way to the tavern earlier that day, and wrapped the scarf in butcher’s paper. This way, a casual inspection would present the package to be a modest gift. I even enclosed a note saying, “Dear