Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [58]
We ate some cold bread soup, fortified with no small amount of sour cream, and started on the potatoes and fried fish.
“There has been a great deal lot of paper sent back and forth,” I said somewhat unintelligibly, since the food in my mouth interfered with the clarity of my enunciation.
“This is what politics is all about, I think,” Jack answered. “Paper. It’s a good thing you have a letter from Wong Jun—it should help us.”
I thought of how sad Wong Jun looked in his cell. “Yes, it should. But we also need to remember his advice: while we are in China, we will be judged by their laws.”
“Ignoring that is what brought on the Opium War,” Jack said, “although the Chinese call it the Unfair War—and it was. The English are . . . uninterested in behaving in any manner contrary to their own immediate benefit. It’s a national shortcoming.”
“Chiang Tse mentioned an official in Canton,” I said. “Lin, I think—Commissioner Lin. Lin Tse-Hsu. He wrote letters to your queen, and he said again and again it was wrong to smuggle opium, that profit was a poor excuse for spreading such misery. He thought that if only she knew about it, she would stop the trade on moral grounds. I thought it fascinating that someone expected others to forego self-interest for the sake of doing the right thing.”
Jack shifted uncomfortably on his bed, the plate on his bony knees tilting perilously before he steadied it. “I was not proud to be English when the war started. However, Lin and the rest of the Qing are not so innocent—just ask your Manchu friend.”
“I know about the Han people not liking the Manchu,” I said. “I know they conquered East Turkestan. But you studied philosophy, you know that this is a poor rhetorical maneuver: whatever the Chinese had done does not justify what the British did.”
Jack looked suitably chastised and continued picking at his supper in silence. I finished mine, addressed the package, and headed down the stairs to hand it to the courier.
The tavern was full for dinner, mostly with merchants and an occasional freedman. The owner and his contingent of waiters—all greasy young men in long aprons that once were white at some point in their tragic existence—hurried to and fro with dishes of borscht and heaping plates of pickled herring and boiled potatoes, sauerkraut and thick slices of bread.
“Hey, poruchik!” a loud voice came from behind me and I turned, feeling my stomach turn to ice, afraid to see the Nikolashki or Nightingale’s spies. Instead, there were three hussars sharing a table in the corner, and they all gestured at me happily.
I held up one hand indicating I had some urgent business but I would join them as soon as I could, and went to look for the courier. He—a tall thin man whose face expressed great doubt that there was anything in the world at all worthwhile—took my package.
“Request a response,” I said. “When will you return?”
“I take a train tonight,” he said. “Return tomorrow, early afternoon.” So he would be taking the same train we did; it seemed reassuring. “Any instructions in case you have to unexpectedly leave?”
I pressed a few silver coins in his palm. “Yes. Forward as fast as you can in care of the stationmaster at Nizhniy Novgorod.” The courier nodded and even managed a wan smile once he counted the coins. With that, he disappeared, leaving me with nothing else to do but talk to the hussars.
Judging by the color of their faces and the empty vodka bottle in front of them, they were sufficiently inebriated. While Eugenia enjoyed an occasional nightcap of brandy with lemon, I had never picked up the habit of distilled spirits. It occurred to me however that in my male guise I could attempt it with minimum of judgment.
“Which regiment?” the tallest and burliest of them greeted me. He also had the most impressive mustache, and I almost felt dejected over my sparse stubble. I was sure a youthful lieutenant would have felt that way.
“Semyonovskiy,” I told them. A well-rehearsed lie.
They all nodded, and the burly one offered me his