Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [68]
“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