Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [97]
I wished I could offer words of comfort, but at the time my mind was preoccupied with Jack’s whereabouts as well as those of Dame Nightingale and her contingent of agents. Anything that did not get me closer to the answer grated on my nerves .
“You have to know where they might have gone,” I blurted out half way through the dinner, interrupting the soothing speech Rotmistr Ivankov had been delivering. “I mean, there are not that many places here, are there?”
Captain Kurashov gave me a mournful, lingering look. “It is a small town,” he said. “There’s a Buryat village nearby, but in this cold the horses won’t get far, even if they are well cared for. I do not know if the man who took them, or the rest of the English, would know how to handle such fragile animals in the Siberian winter. They are not locals.”
I supposed I should’ve felt bad for the horses, but my focus allowed no distractions. “So they couldn’t have gotten far. When can your men go after them?”
The captain’s face folded into an accordion of surprise and concern. “Should we go after them?”
“Of course,” I said. “If you don’t, rumors will spread. You don’t want to become known as a cowardly garrison, do you? Word does get around.”
He scowled at me. “Don’t talk nonsense, young man. I am forty-two, and your stupid challenges are not going to work. If you want to go and look and bring our horses back, then please be my guest; we will appreciate it. We, however, need to assess the damage and investigate how that man got over the fence.”
“You said he jumped.”
He scratched his chin, thoughtful. “A few of my soldiers swear that this is exactly what happened. And yet, he must have used some device—a trampoline, or a spring of some sort, or spring-loaded stilts . . . ” His forehead furrowed, and I could see the brain of the poor captain working as hard as his jaws, grinding down a piece of rye bread. “He would’ve used something like that, wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure he was quite ready for the Spring Heeled Jack exposition. “But I thank you—tomorrow morning we’ll look for your horses . . . I hope it doesn’t snow tonight.”
There was a loud pounding on the door, and the Cossack batman let in a small, shivering boy of perhaps fourteen, in a uniform that was criminally large for him. He was black-haired and his eyes had a curious almond shape, as if he had more than a small portion of Chinese or Buryat blood in him. Whatever the mix of his blood, it was not keeping him warm enough as he stood in the middle of the dining room, squinting and blinking at the light of the kerosene lamps, apparently oblivious to our presence.
“Well?” Kurashov nudged.
The boy startled, then fell back into a military stance and saluted his captain. “Sir,” he said. “You better come and look. They found something in the stables.”
The something the young man was referring to turned out to be a piece of paper, folded over so many times it was ready to fall apart at the seams. The paper was also soaked with melted slush, and bore a distinct hoof print. Still, I recognized Jack’s handwriting.
“It’s addressed to Sasha Menshov,” the young man said.
Kurashov yielded the missive without argument, and he and the rotmistr watched me intently as I read, as if they expected the contents to appear, by some literary osmosis, on my forehead.
“My dearest friend,” Jack wrote.
“I hope this letter reaches you. I hope my appearance has created enough of a stir to circulate rumors and to attract your perspicacious attention. I also hope that the commander here will be good enough to pass this letter along, and that my pursuers will not intercept it: it is quite a bit of hope.
“For the fear that it might never reach you, I will be brief and remind you of the night we first met. I certainly hope you would