by Chris Paton
Hari drew his kukri and tapped the bottom of the pommel. “Now you do.”
“Thanks.” Luise tugged her skirt to cover her leg and took the kukri from Hari. “What are the glyphs?” she said and waited as Abraxas took a ragged breath and began to describe them.
Hari stood up and walked to the door as Luise placed the copper plate on the floor and began hammering the first glyph – an hourglass with wings – onto the base of the plate. He held out his hand to the boy and introduced himself, releasing the boy's hand as the fighting in the street grew louder.
“Well, my young friend,” Hari said and opened the door an inch for a better look. “How good are you at running?”
Chapter 33
Arkhangelsk
Arkhangelsk Oblast
July, 1851
The man with the strange knife, Nikolas remembered, was called Hari. He couldn't remember the name of the woman who kneeled by the side of Abraxas, and used the knife to tap strange drawings into a copper plate, but he did know there was nothing more he could do for Abraxas. And I have a friend who needs me, he thought as he edged closer to the door. Hari said something to him, but Nikolas only smiled, nodded, and hoped that it wasn't anything important. The woman called Hari over to her and Nikolas saw his chance. Without a word, he slipped through the open door and into the street.
If he hadn't been preoccupied with thoughts of freeing Molotok from the slow vortex he was trapped inside, Nikolas might have been impressed by the devastation the two combatants had wreaked on the street. The street itself was pockmarked with impact craters, and the facades of the buildings, stores and some homes, hung from the roofs, while the space immediately in front of each building was littered with glass and splinters. The sounds of battle rumbled out onto the street and Nikolas ran to escape it as the djinni shot out of a roof, shedding tiles and timbers, as the demon cast great fireballs of demonlight after it.
Nikolas ignored the battle and the crackle of blistering energy and ran, his chest tightening upon his lungs, towards the familiar figure of an emissary crouched over a girl in the mouth of an alleyway. Nikolas wheezed to a stop and stared at the emissary. Like Molotok, this one moved in a casual manner, and Nikolas knew it shared some affinity with his own emissary.
Nikolas pulled his gaze from the emissary as the girl spoke. Her voice was lighter than the woman's but her words were no less difficult to understand. Nikolas shrugged and pointed to the emissary instead.
“I need his help,” he said. “I have a friend who is trapped in time and I want your emissary to try and pull him free.” Nikolas flinched at the sound of a building crumpling behind him, but he didn't move. He held out his hand towards the emissary and waited for it to take his.
The girl spoke again as she crept out from beneath the emissary's protective stance. Nikolas heard the word Kettlepot and he noticed how the emissary reacted to the word. The girl said the word again, and Nikolas realised it was the emissary's name.
“Kettlepot,” he said. “Will you help me?”
The emissary lifted its hand and wrapped it around Nikolas'. It swivelled its cylindrical head from the girl and then back to Nikolas and nodded slowly. The lodestone behind the grille faceplate glowed, and Nikolas recognised it as a yes, something he had seen Molotok do a hundred times or more. But before the emissary released his hand, it turned him to face the girl and Nikolas let go of the emissary to introduce himself.
“Emilia,” said the girl and Nikolas smiled. His chest tightened again but it felt different to when he was short of breath from running. Sort of the same, but different – the girl, with tangled locks of hair framing her face, caused Nikolas to catch his breath and he wondered if she was a demon. Certainly, the power she had over him felt unnatural, but not altogether unpleasant. She smiled and said something, tapping his hand as she did so. Nikolas realised he had not let go, and he pulled his hand free quickly and remembered what he needed.
“My friend is in trouble,” he said. “I need your help.” Emilia nodded as if she understood, and Nikolas pointed towards the river. “This way,” he said and began to run, as fast as his lungs would let him, away from the battle. There was a moment when he thought they weren't going to come, but the clank of the emissary confirmed that the girl had decided to follow him. And where she goes, thought Nikolas, the emissary will follow. Just like mine.
Nikolas led the girl and her emissary back onto the street outside the administrator's building. It wasn't far and he managed to control his breathing, although the sight of Molotok slow-wrestling inside the vortex hurt in another way altogether.
“Everything about today seems to hurt,” he said and beckoned for the girl to follow him. He stopped when he could feel the effects of the vortex lapping at his skin and smoothing the errant hairs beneath his cap. He held out his arm to stop the girl going any closer. Nikolas imagined her to be the curious type, and he knew how dangerous that could be. The emissary began to fidget and Nikolas interpreted its movements to be some form of distress and concern for one of its own kind.
“It's the Şteamƙin,” Emilia said in a hesitant and heavily accented Russian. Nikolas didn't understand the last word she said, but he raised his eyebrows at her sudden ability to speak his language, however badly. “Cossacks,” she said and pointed in the direction of the gates.
“I know all about Cossacks,” Nikolas said. “My father fought them in the skirmish war. They are bloodthirsty and cruel, and he said they treat their horses better than their children, or something like that.” Nikolas paused as he noticed the blank look on Emilia's face. He pointed instead at Molotok. “Can your emissary pull him out?” he said and mimicked the action of reaching into the vortex and dragging something out. The skin on his hands prickled and he drew them back to his sides.
The emissary moved and Nikolas heard the girl say something like be careful before it clanked closer to the vortex, its steps growing longer and slower the closer it got. Nikolas held his breath as the emissary pushed its arms inside the spinning vortex. The emissary's arms started to shimmer, and, after what seemed an age, Molotok appeared to notice and move its hands towards Kettlepot's. Nikolas' lungs demanded air and he breathed, ignoring the tears beginning to well in his eyes. He shivered at the light electric touch of the girl's hand as she closed her fingers around his.
“It's all right,” she said. “It's going to all right.”
Nikolas' body reeled with anxiety for his friend and the strange emotions he encountered the closer he stood to the girl. He scolded himself with thoughts that he should only be thinking of Molotok, but he allowed himself a smile as the girl's emissary took its first step backwards, away from the vortex. It took another step and Nikolas saw that its elbows were free, while its forearms shimmered in Molotok's grip. The emissary took another slow step backwards and step by step it dragged Molotok into the street. Nikolas slipped his hand out of Emilia's and ran to embrace his emissary, running his hands across the blistered blue paint and the deep scars scored in Molotok's armour. The lodestone in Molotok's head glowed as it made deliberate movements, shaking off the cloak of slow time as it looked at Emilia, her emissary and then Nikolas.
Nikolas let go of Molotok and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He turned to Emilia and her emissary and opened his mouth to speak, but the words caught in his chest and the effort squeezed another round of tears out of his eyes.
“You are welcome,” Emilia said and she hugged him.
Nikolas' thoughts whirled and he fought hard to focus, but the smell of the girl's hair tickling his nose and the closeness of her body sent his own trembling.
“Are you all right?” she said and stepped back.
“Yes,” he managed to say, but the sound of soldiers arriving from the docks by the river prevented him from saying another word. He took Emilia's hand and pulled her towards a wall. The emissaries clanked behind them and hid as best they could while Nikolas and Emilia crouched in hiding.
“Germans?” said Emili
a and Nikolas nodded. She looked at his hand grasping hers and he moved to let go but she held him tight.
“Yes,” he said and looked at her for a moment before turning his attention back to the soldiers. They were heading for the administrator's building, Nikolas realised and his heart faltered as the familiar figure of Rutger Venzke stepped out of the doorway, flanked by heavily armed soldiers, but no emissaries. Venzke barked commands in German as the soldiers approached, and it was then that Nikolas realised they had prisoners cuffed between them.
“Uncle Vlad,” he said and gasped as he recognized Vladimir's face, the Poruchik's head and shoulders towering above the Germans.
“Who?” said Emilia.
“My uncle. He works with my father. He's not my real uncle, but I like to call him that...” Nikolas paused as he recognised a shorter man walking alongside a woman who looked like a Cossack. Nikolas let go of Emilia's hand and ran into the street. “Papa,” he called and stumbled. Nikolas picked himself up and ran towards the soldiers. “Papa. It's me. Papa.”
“Nikolas,” said Stepan.
Nikolas watched as his father tried to get free of the soldiers only to fall to the ground as one of them hit him in the stomach with the butt of his musket. Stepan dropped to his knees as Vladimir and the Cossack woman fought with the soldiers. Nikolas ignored the stab of pain in his chest as his lungs protested. He ran forwards, suddenly filled with a fierce fire that burned all the brighter as he heard not one but two emissaries as they clanked alongside him, increasing in speed as they charged towards the soldiers. The Germans standing in front of their prisoners fired their muskets and the street was filled with the crack of gunpowder igniting in the pan and the dull thwack of lead bullets as they bounced off the emissaries' armour.
Nikolas tripped as the air above his head was split with a lead bullet. He sprawled on the street, only to feel small hands pull him to his feet and she was there, again, Emilia, picking him up and pulling him behind the emissaries as they neared the soldiers.
“Stop,” bellowed a man and Nikolas paled as he saw Venzke draw the pistol from his belt and hold it against his father's head.
“Molotok, stop,” Nikolas cried and waited as the emissaries slowed and stopped as if appraising the situation, smoke licked from the smokestacks on either side of their metal heads, and their bodies rocked in anticipation. Nikolas and Emilia walked to stand between the emissaries as Venzke pulled back the hammer on his pistol with the loudest click Nikolas had ever heard.
“Nikolas Skuratov,” he said and laughed. “And this is Papa Skuratov?”
“Kapitan Skuratov,” Stepan said and spat on the ground. Venzke hit him once on the back of the head with the pistol and Nikolas cried out as his father reeled under the blow.
“When I want you to speak,” he said, “I will tell you. Until then, Russian dog, be silent.” Venzke turned his attention back to Nikolas. “Speaking of dogs, I want you to call yours off, or I will kill your father.”
“Don't listen to him, Nikolas,” Stepan said. He lurched onto the floor as Venzke raised the pistol. “Run, Nikolas. Your mother is waiting for you beyond the gates. Go now,” he said as Venzke ordered two of his men to pull Stepan onto his knees. Vladimir and Lena bristled behind him only to be dropped onto the ground with a series of sharp blows from the soldiers.
Nikolas placed his palm on Molotok's thigh and looked up at the emissary. “Go,” he whispered. The emissary shook its head, the gears in its neck grinding. “You have to go.”
“That's right, Nikolas,” said Venzke. “Call off your dog and come and join your father.”
A burst of steam piffed out of a small rupture in Molotok's armour. Nikolas could feel the energy building inside the emissary's globus tank as it prepared for action.
“No, Molotok,” he said. “You have to leave me now. Take the girl and her emissary. Run away, and, when Venzke has taken me prisoner,” Nikolas paused to stare deep into the emissary's eye, “you can come back and kill him for me.” The lodestone flashed within Molotok's head. With a grinding of gears it nodded, turned and walked away. “Go,” said Nikolas to Emilia. “Follow Molotok. He knows what to do.”
Nikolas watched as the emissaries clanked back up the street, a reluctant Emilia trailing in their wake. He wiped the last trace of tears from his face, turned towards Venzke and smiled. As he walked towards them, Nikolas whistled his father's favourite song, The March of the Common People. His heart raced at the thought of being close to him again. And if it is to be our last time together, he thought, then I will make sure it is our most memorable. Papa will be proud of me. But as he looked at his father, Nikolas knew he already was.
Chapter 34
Arkhangelsk Administrator's Building
Arkhangelsk
July, 1851
“Take your hands off my son,” said Stepan as Venzke ordered two of his soldiers to cuff Nikolas with iron shackles. He lunged forwards only to be beaten back by the soldiers on each side.
“Wait, Kapitan,” Vladimir said from where he lay on the ground. “Save your energy. Nikolas is unhurt. There will be time to fight later.”
“Oh, you think so?” said Venzke as he pushed his way through his soldiers and pressed the sole of his boot onto Vladimir's hand, grinding his fingers into the street with a twist of his heel. The Poruchik grimaced but said nothing. “I think, Oberleutnant, we will take this discussion to the roof.”
“Ja, Herr Venzke,” said the Oberleutnant. He nodded at the men and urged them inside the building with swift gestures of his hands, encouraged by the sound of horses trampling into the street from the direction of the gates.
“Damn those Cossacks,” Venzke said and glared at Lena. She blew him a kiss as two soldiers dragged her to her feet and led her into the building. The two soldiers guarding Nikolas took him next while their comrades groaned with the effort of lifting Vladimir.
“Why don't you just give up, Venzke?” said Stepan as he was lifted from the ground. “You have lost your grip on the city. The Cossacks are inside the gates. It is over.”
“We'll see, Kapitan,” Venzke said. He paused for a moment and ran a hand across his chin. “Oberleutnant,” he said, “Are those Wallendorf uniforms?”
“Where?”
“On the men walking behind the front row of emissaries... Oberleutnant, those emissaries are bronze.”
Stepan looked to where Venzke was pointing. Marching behind a party of mounted Cossacks was a line of bronze-finished emissaries. The emissaries in Arkhangelsk, he remembered, were painted in a dark blue, similar to that of the Imperial Navy. Wallendorf? The name was unfamiliar to him, but he liked the fact that it put Venzke on edge.
“Not what you expected, eh, Venzke?”
“Shut your mouth, Skuratov,” Venzke said and strode to the doorway of the building. Stepan watched as the two soldiers saluted when he was finished talking to them. Venzke waited by the door and Stepan let his toes drag on the ground for one last look at the approaching party of Cossacks, emissaries and men. There were women among them, most wearing the familiar riding gear of the Cossacks, but one woman, sitting behind and holding onto Ivan Timofeyevich as he rode down the street, wore the travelling clothes of a European, the black fabric accentuating her blonde hair.
“Hannah von Ense,” Venzke said and spat on the ground. “Herr Bremen's personal assistant.”
“Your own government playing against you, Venzke? That's just one more reason to give up.”
“My orders are from the President of the German Confederation, signed and sealed on behalf of Imperial Russia by Emperor Alexander III. You want to see the documentation?” Venzke laughed and waved a dismissive hand towards the Cossacks. “Wallendorf's puppet does not frighten me.”
“No? Then why are your men preparing to bar the door?” Stepan said and nodded at the soldiers Venzke had last spoken to. They stood by the door with a heavy wooden timber resting in the crooks of their arms. Venzke sneered and flicked his hand against the should
er of one of Stepan's guards.
“Get him inside. I am tired of talking to him. We will settle this on the roof.”
Stepan decided to walk up the stairs. Whatever it was that Venzke was planning, he realised that if time was running out, he wanted to get to Nikolas as quickly as possible. The guards relaxed their grip as they climbed the stairs, spiralling around the building as they ascended from the first to the third floor, and from there up a narrow staircase and onto the roof. Stepan took a breath of fresh air and paused, his eyes adjusting to the light as he scanned the roof for Nikolas. He found him, on his knees, between Vladimir and Lena. Nikolas’ shackles had been removed and all three were bound with thick ropes that covered their wrists and snaked around their forearms. The Oberleutnant had positioned them less than two feet from the edge of the roof. A single kick to the chest, Stepan realised, would send them plummeting to the street below – even Vladimir.
“I can't let that happen,” he said as the soldiers dragged him past his son and made him kneel beside Lena.
“Kapitan,” she said as the Germans bound him in the same manner as the others. “This is not a glorious death. It is not worthy of a Cossack.”
“Shh,” Stepan said and leaned forwards to see Nikolas. “My son does not need to hear this. Nikolas,” he said in a louder voice. “There is so much you have to tell me. I want to hear it all.” Stepan worried that the Germans had made it very clear what was going to happen. From the look on Nikolas' face he had understood everything and was preparing to die. And yet, thought Stepan as Nikolas turned his face to look at him, there is some defiance in his eyes, and hope.
“Do not worry, Papa,” Nikolas said and put on a brave smile. “Molotok will save us.”
“Molotok?”
“My emissary. The one Venzke made me send away.”
“Yes?”
“That was stupid of him.”
Stepan frowned as Nikolas' smile developed into a chuckle. It stopped as Venzke stepped out of the doorway and onto the roof, but the glimmer of hope Stepan had seen in his eyes, shone still, and Stepan felt a wave of pride swell in his chest.