Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [92]
“Thank you, rotmistr.” I leaned over the table to shake his wide, calloused hand that reminded me of a piece of leather tack more than human flesh. “I cannot thank you enough for your kindness.”
He waved his hands in the air, as if suddenly shy of gratitude and praise. “The pleasure is all mine, poruchik,” he said.
I had to admire how quickly his speech changed from educated and businesslike to lilting and folksy, as if he was so used to playing one of his hussars, all peasants in their past lives, that it took him effort to remember how to speak as an educated man, while the reverse transition came as easy as breathing. “The pleasure’s all mine. You see, it’s winter, the nights are long, the days have all but disappeared, and the road is long and snowy and difficult. There are rumors of roaming wolves and rails busted open from the freeze, but—and call me a superstitious man if you must—but I look at you and I wonder. I wonder at how you manage to slip away from those who are looking for you and how you continue—as unstoppable as an arrow—and the world turns to spread itself under your feet so that you may get to wherever it is you’re going. With you on board, I am sure our journey will go well, little hussar, so you bring whoever you need to bring with you, and may God be with you all.”
I wasn’t sure if he was serious or joking, but I could not doubt that his sharp eyes saw Kuan Yu cross himself when God was mentioned.
Chapter 14
I wondered occasionally whether I had fallen asleep and dreamed this entire journey, if I would wake up back in St. Petersburg—or even in Trubetskoye, and discover that the last year of my life was just a dream brought on by a too late and too filling meal. I could hope, couldn’t I?
Not that I was unhappy, but I felt so detached from everything I had ever known. I drifted among the strange people and occurrences, missed my mother and my aunt, and still moved inexorably east, along the narrow steel tracks that pierced the heart of my country like a shining needle piercing the thorax of a butterfly.
Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi made fast friends with the hussars. Here, without the compartments, we all shared the same living space, and it felt like a gypsy encampment where people moved from bench to bench, forming temporary alliances and knots of conversations and laughter and card games. We consumed ridiculous amounts of pickled herring and pot stickers and wine; the rotmistr made sure that we were well stocked with food and drink, since the military trains did not bother with a restaurant carriage—or many other amenities. Besides the engineer and the freedmen feeding coal to the insatiable maw of the locomotive, coal that powered its terrible blazing heart, it was just the hussars, two Chinese fur traders, and I.
Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi had fulfilled the requirements of their professed occupation, and bought a goodly portion of Trubkozub’s inventory, as well as bartered several bolts of white and blue silk. I had made a mental note not to leave China before acquiring several miles worth of this smooth, shimmering material in pale blue for my mother, and a few bolts of black for Eugenia. Both would surely enjoy it.
Krasnoyarsk used to be a frontier town, Cornet Volzhenko who seemed to consider himself my friend now, told me. It was built to guard the eastern reaches of the empire back in the seventeenth century, and now it had retained some of its old forts. “All wood,” Volzhenko said as he sipped wine from his tin mug, his legs stretched across the aisle between our benches, and his large boots propped comfortably next to me. “Nothing really modern there. There’s a garrison though, all Cossacks, I think.”
“That’s good,” I said. “What are they doing there?”
Volzhenko shrugged. “Guarding the border, I suppose.”
“They are not near the border.”
“Somewhat near.”
“Not near enough to guard it.”
Volzhenko smiled. I noticed he looked particularly young when he grinned like that—lopsided, showing a chipped canine tooth on the