Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [80]
The train was still there. I found the compartment empty of Jack but also empty of policemen or spies or any other foes; only the two Chinese gentlemen, Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi nodded and smiled at me. I settled in my seat and immediately pressed my forehead to the frozen window, to thaw out a clear patch large enough to observe the goings-on on the platform.
I worried about Jack, although I could not imagine him dead—such a little fire, such an obvious and feeble arson were designed not to kill but to scare him, to drive him away—I imagined him running, leaping tall buildings, leading the pursuit away from me . . . something he would do. Sweet old Jack.
Every passing second resonated in my mind like a heavy stroke of Grandfather’s clock that used to decorate my father’s study when I was an infant—I still remembered the heavy, weighty sound. I felt the ghostly clock hand move, slow and inexplicable, its blade shredding my heart with worry, each little step another opportunity lost.
I attempted to distract myself by checking on my ankle, but the boot would not come off because of the swelling, and I gave up soon enough.
I wished I hadn’t insisted on taking my own room—I would have known where Jack was, if he was still alive, and whether I should stay in Yekaterinburg and wait for him or continue on my way. The remorse tore at me, and yet there was no fixing it. It was the same truth I had realized only gradually after my papa had passed away, so long ago: the truth that some things could not be fixed no matter how much you turned them in your head and wished they would be otherwise. The realization often descended early in the morning, in that fuzzy domain between sleep and wakefulness, where—despite what your dreams still whispered in your head—those who were dead would remain dead. Grief was always freshest in the mornings, but I now allowed the memory of it to distract me from my current misery.
“Where is your friend?” Kuan Yu asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. In my distress, I could not even start making up a plausible lie, and so instead I told them we had been separated while in town, and now I couldn’t decide whether to continue or not.
“Of course not,” Liu Zhi said. “You don’t leave a friend behind—there will be another train tomorrow.”
“But we are in a hurry,” I said. “Besides, I worry those people you helped us push off the train will come back.”
“All the more reason to not abandon your friend,” Kuan Yu said, the confusion written on his honest, broad face that reminded me of Anastasia at that moment. “What sort of a soldier are you?”
“Not a very good one,” I said, simultaneously afraid and giddy with the thought that between them Liu Zhi and Kuan Yu were generating enough guilt to chase me off the train, and wondered how far would my shame push me. The role of embarrassment in human history was vastly underestimated. As I picked up my satchel and hobbled on my distended ankle toward the doors of the carriage, it occurred to me that many instances of heroism, acknowledged in books and history records and Jack’s beloved penny dreadfuls, were likely to have been inspired purely by embarrassment, by fear of looking foolish or cowardly in front of total strangers. So I smiled and waved at Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi. “It was nice meeting you. Have a safe and pleasant journey.”
They waved back and whispered to each other fiercely, their words obscured by their language as well as hissing of the steam—the train was getting ready to leave, and its breath, a cloud of milk in the clear water of the winter air, curdled and billowed all around me as soon as I stepped onto the platform. I thought I heard voices calling after me, but I was too fatigued and frightened and hurt to turn back and ask what they wanted.
There will be another train tomorrow, I consoled myself. If I cannot find Jack, I can go by myself—stay on the train, make friends, remain in a full carriage so there are always eyes and ears around me. There were advantages in going by myself, too: no one to argue with over giving the letter to the