The Midnight Land: Part Two: The Gift (The Zemnian Trilogy Book 2)

by E. P. Clark

  “They’ve heard you!” Dunya whispered back, as the soldiers did, in fact, turn from their searching in order to shut the gate. A loud groan rose from the crowd in protest. Soldiers started fanning out from the gate, whether to quell the crowd or search it, Slava couldn’t tell. Probably both. Probably it would be very, very bad if they were to come across the two of them, because probably someone among them would recognize them for who they were, and not just take them for some aunty and her niece out for an evening stroll.

  “Quick!” whispered Dunya. “Malaya Vostochnaya! The other gate!” She pulled Slava after her in a half-jog away from the main road and down a little alley onto Malaya Vostochnaya. As soon as they were off the main street, she glanced both ways and, not seeing anyone, pulled Slava after her at a dead run towards the end of the alley and the little gate she said was there.

  To Slava’s intense surprise, they encountered no one as they raced the few yards down the alley and up to what looked like a blank corner where the two walls met.

  “Left!” hissed Dunya. “There, to the left!”

  Slava turned to her left, and saw a little alcove, barely large enough for her to fit into and too dark to see anything more. She threw herself into it, and collided with what was undeniably a man’s body.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Oh!” they both cried.

  “I’m sorry!” Slava said instinctively. “We were…”

  “Tsarinovna?!?” said the man’s voice incredulously.

  “Oh!” cried Slava again, forgetting in her panic even the name of the man she had just crashed into, the man she saw every day in the kremlin, how could she have forgotten his name, oh, by all the gods, this was worse than anything she could have possibly imagined, oh, they were done for, it was all over now, if only Dunya would have the presence of mind to turn and run while he was still standing there in shock, run Dunya run, oh, it was all over now…

  “Tsarinovna!” repeated the man, grabbing her arm and pulling her out of Dunya’s grasp—Dunya had also gone limp with shock, it seemed, oh, how unlucky, how unlucky, how unlucky—and into the alcove where he had been standing. “What are you doing?”

  “We…” said Slava, and stopped, unable to think of anything else to say.

  “This is all the escort you have?” he demanded. “All the protection you have?”

  “Well…” said Slava, not sure whether it would be better to confirm or deny it. There was a sound of metal sliding over metal behind her.

  “Let her go if you want to keep your blood in your body,” said Dunya. The edge of a very long and sharp-looking knife appeared uncomfortably close in Slava’s field of vision.

  “You’re running, aren’t you?” the man demanded. “Out of Krasnograd.” He paused, apparently in thought. “And I don’t blame you,” he said, now speaking slowly. “The Tsarina is not…not in her right mind. Anyone could see it by the commands she’s been issuing today. Treason! You! It’s impossible. But then to let you escape from the kremlin…and to refuse to close the gates until just now…Honestly, I thought you might have left the city already. I even…I even hoped it was so. If only, I said to myself, she has the presence of mind to flee to her mother’s protection! That would solve all her problems. I was just stepping out to see what was happening beyond the walls, before assigning someone to guard here. Lucky for me. Lucky for both of us. Tell me true, Tsarinovna: are you a traitor?”

  “No!” said Slava. “Of course not! But I…when I was with the Tsarina earlier…she is not in her right mind, as you said, and I…I began to fear for my own life, and…and rightly so, it seems!”

  “Rightly so,” agreed Boleslav Vlasiyevich. “And what shall we do about it now?”

  “Oh! Ah, well…”

  “What should I do, Tsarinovna?” he asked thoughtfully. Dunya’s knife was really very, very close to Slava’s neck. Slava wondered if it came down to it, who would win in a straight fight: Dunya or Boleslav Vlasiyevich. Dunya had acquitted herself handsomely against the bandits in Severnolesnoye, while Slava had never seen Boleslav Vlasiyevich raise his hand against anyone more threatening than a bound prisoner, but she knew that he had won his post for conspicuous bravery, and that his men still considered him one of the finest swords in Zem’. Plus, he was wearing chainmail, and Slava did not like her own chances if it came to fight between him and Dunya, being that she herself was unarmed, unarmored, and standing between them. She decided that it might be best to try cunning and charm before resorting to cold steel.

  “What is in your heart to do, Boleslav Vlasiyevich?” she asked, leaning a little closer to him. He was really, she thought, not so very much bigger than Dunya, or even herself. The hulking lads he had serving under him would never have been able to conceal themselves in the corner between the walls, but he fit in easily. It should have made him seem less dangerous, but somehow it made it worse. Someone that neatly made would probably be quick and agile, like a cat. Behind her, Dunya shifted uneasily, as if she were thinking the same thoughts.

  “In my heart to do?” He smiled strangely, and also, she couldn’t help but notice, sadly. “Many things, Tsarinovna. They say you see into the hearts of women; is it also true of men? Can you not see for yourself?”

  “I would hear it from your mouth,” said Slava, shifting a tiny bit closer to him and looking into his eyes. They were the same color gray as her own. She tried not to think of that. If she could just grab his hands, even for an instant, then perhaps they would have a chance… “Tell me what it is you wish, and I will do all I can to help you in it.”

  “What do I wish?” repeated Boleslav Vlasiyevich slowly. “I wish you to say…” he gazed inwards at his own desires, and continued more firmly, “I wish you to say: Help me, Boleslav, I need you. You’re the only one who stood up for me before, and you’re the only one who can save me now.”

  “Help me, Boleslav,” said Slava, stepping even closer to him and gazing into his eyes with every ounce of pleading charm she could summon up. As she was desperate, and she was telling the truth, it was quite a lot. Lyudmila Krasnoslavovna would have been envious. “I need you: you’re the only one who can save me. Help me, Boleslav.” She put her hand on his chest, and he instinctively clutched at it with both of his. Slava could feel herself go faint with relief.

  “Well…” he swallowed and shook his head. “Well.” His voice sounded rough. “Come…I can’t believe I’m going to do this…but I’ve thought that before about you. Come this way. You can slip through here.”

  He moved back, although still holding her hand, and Slava saw that there really was a gap between the old and new walls, which a thin person, such as herself or Dunya or even Boleslav Vlasiyevich if he took his chainmail off, might be able to slip through.

  “Wait!” he cried, as she moved to take her hand from his. “Where are the others? I know you have more accomplices than just your knife-girl here.”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

  “Are they escaping too?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, still honestly. After all, right now she had no idea where they were or whether they were succeeding in their escape.

  “But who are they? Don’t you have anyone to help you? Surely you’re not running off on your own! You’ll be helpless out there!”

  “It’s better if you don’t know,” she said. And that, too, was completely true: it really would be better if he didn’t know, because then he couldn’t reveal their identity to anyone else—not, Slava thought, that it was likely to remain a secret for long.

  “And where are you going?”

  “That, too, is something better for you not to know,” she told him, beginning to weary of his insistence on holding her when she needed to be running away.

  “Well…I suppose you’re right…”

  “Thank you,” she said, trying to slide past Boleslav Vlasiyevich and towards the gap.

  “The only way you can thank me is by thinking of me,” he told her, clut
ching her hand like a child clutching at its mother.

  “I will,” she said, and then she was through the gap and out on the other side the wall, her hand finally free of Boleslav Vlasiyevich’s, she couldn’t say how, and Dunya was behind her, and they were making their way as quickly as possible down the dark alley in which they had found themselves.

  They went down the alley and turned onto a larger street, which was full of torches and people. This part of outer Krasnograd was heavily built up and populated, so that it was almost the same as being inside the city proper, only here, Slava noticed, the people were much more poorly dressed, and seemed to have taken the occasion of the Tsarinovna’s treason as an excuse to celebrate, or so she assumed by all the animated groups that had gathered at every street corner, standing over bonfires and laughing loudly. Once again, Slava had to quell the urge to be annoyed at something that was in her favor. While it was undeniably a blessing, a wonderful blessing, to be able to pass through the throngs of outer Krasnograd unnoticed, if she truly had been a traitor!..

  “This way,” said Dunya, steering her by the elbow. “And by all the gods, that was impressive. How did you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” confessed Slava. “I’ve never been able to do anything like that before, and I doubt I’ll ever manage it again. But it needed to be done, and so…I guess all the charm I ever possessed was summoned up in that moment. But I feel bad for him, now. I always assumed he was too much my sister’s man, or just too lightminded, to be trustworthy. I’m sorry if he’s suffered because of it.”

  “Oh, I doubt he’s suffered half as much as he thinks he has,” said Dunya absentmindedly, looking up and down the street. “This way, I think.” They hurried down another street full of torches and people laughing the kind of laughter that only comes after several glasses of vodka. Several times parties tried to stop them and make them join in on the merrymaking, but Dunya always shook her head and moved on in a way that brooked no argument, and everyone they encountered was too drunk to care whether they stayed or went.

  Despite the need to flee, Slava spent a while worrying about the possibility that she had hurt Boleslav Vlasiyevich’s feelings, and that perhaps she should have asked him to join them…But then she remembered that he could have offered to join them and hadn’t. He had let her go, but not offered her any other aid, even though he had said she would be helpless out there. But on the other hand, he had let her go, even though he was sworn to serve her sister, and what aid could he have lent her that would not have made her even more conspicuous than she already was? And what had he meant about standing up for her before? She puzzled over that for a while, but could think of no special example. Oh, many times he had been solicitous; for years he had acted as if there were some special bond between them, but why he thought so she was no closer to guessing than she had ever been, except to note that there was some incident in his mind that was important to him, something about which she knew nothing, despite whatever he might think. She resolved to worry about it as little as possible and concentrate on her escape instead. Whatever would be with Boleslav Vlasiyevich, would be, and he was out of her control now.

  They walked farther and farther through outer Krasnograd, until the torches died away and they were passing the darkened huts of people who could hardly even be termed Krasnograders anymore, and then they were out amongst fields, and the city was nothing but a dark presence at their backs.

  “I can’t believe we escaped!” Slava whispered. Somehow she felt much more exposed on the empty road amongst the empty fields than she had in the city.

  “We haven’t gotten there yet, Zhenya,” Dunya hissed back fiercely. “I won’t say we’ve escaped until we’ve put at least a day behind us—and found the others as well. I think we’ve got at least three more versts before we reach the rendezvous point.”

  “Should we get off the road?” Slava asked.

  “There’s nowhere to hide,” Dunya pointed out. “There’s nothing but fields for versts and versts around. We’ll attract more attention if we leave the road than if we stay.”

  Slava saw the sense in that, and concentrated on keeping up with Dunya’s brisk pace as they tried to make as much time as possible without looking suspicious, in case anyone else should be about. Slava would have expected people to be out, even at this time of night, as the Vostochnaya Road was the main road connecting Krasnograd with the bulk of the country, but it seemed that no one else cared to travel on a damp spring night. After slipping and sliding her way through a verst or so of the mud pit that was the road this time of year, Slava had to say she couldn’t blame them. It started to drizzle.

  “How much farther?” Slava asked.

  “At least another verst,” Dunya told her.

  “Very well,” said Slava, trying to sound cheerful and brave. She reminded herself the road would have been much worse a week or two ago, and that they were lucky to be able to use it at all, and that wading through mud in a cold drizzle was still infinitely preferable to being locked up in a dungeon at the bottom of the kremlin. Probably preferable. It might be preferable if she had some food and better boots, not to mention a good night’s sleep under her belt…Stop whining! she told herself. You’re falling behind Dunya!

  After three or four eternities they reached the large oak that was their meeting place. It was the first tree they had encountered since they had left Krasnograd, and so it was unmissable, even in the darkness of a rainy spring night. No one else was there.

  “I thought we’d probably be the first to arrive,” Dunya told her, trying to sound confident. “The others all had to travel around Krasnograd before getting onto the Vostochnaya. Let’s just settle here and get comfortable.”

  “Of course,” said Slava, trying to sound as if Dunya’s false confidence had been transferred to her. “I’m sure they’ll be here shortly.” She and Dunya went around to the far side of the tree, in order to be less visible to any unwelcome passersby on the road, and leaned against the trunk and waited. Slava wished that the leaves had starting coming out already: it was very damp, standing there in the rain, and the bare branches offered little protection. It was that most unpleasant part of spring when winter’s beauty was truly gone, but the land was still dead and barren—and extremely muddy and wet. And cold, too. Slava suspected that one of her boots had developed a slow leak. She tried to direct her thoughts elsewhere, and found them wandering over to her back, which was pressed most uncomfortably against the cold rough bark of the tree. She wished she had some place to sit down. She wished she had some water. She wished she were almost anywhere other than under this tree, waiting anxiously to see if her friends had made it out of the city…

  “Someone’s coming,” whispered Dunya. “Stay quiet and still.”

  Slava tried to stay as still and quiet as possible, while they waited for the passersby to draw near enough for Dunya to make out who it was. Positioned as she was, Slava was unable to see the road at all, and so she had to take Dunya’s word that someone was coming, and wait for her to decide whether they were friend or foe. It was a long wait.

  Eventually she heard footsteps, the footsteps of several people. She froze even stiller than before, holding her breath.

  “Who’s there?” called Dima softly.

  “Di—Kiryusha!” called Dunya. “It’s us! Masha and Zhenya!”

  “Thanks the gods!” said Dima fervently, and he, Slanik, and Olik ran over to join them.

  “We made it out just before they closed the gates,” Dima told them once he had joined them under the tree. “No one even looked at us twice.”

  “We slipped out the side gate at Malaya Vostochnaya,” Dunya told him. “Someone was there, but…He let us through.”

  “A guard?” Dima asked incredulously.

  “I know him well,” said Slava.

  “By all the gods! That was a stroke of luck!”

  “The Ts…Zhenya sweet-talked him into letting us go,” said Dunya, still sounding impressed at S
lava’s feat.

  “Ai-da Ts…by all the gods! What a stroke of brilliance! You truly are the gods’ chosen!”

  “I suppose,” said Slava. “Although I’m not sure if or for how long he’ll keep our departure a secret.”

  “Surely he couldn’t dare reveal such a thing!” said Dima. “How could he explain letting you go?!”

  “I don’t know,” said Slava. “But I still wouldn’t count on his secrecy for too long.”

  “Well…You’re probably right, of course. Any sign of the others?”

  “Not yet,” said Dunya. “But we haven’t been waiting for long.”

  It seemed to Slava that they had already waited half the night, at least, but she supposed Dunya had some better way of marking time than her own discomfort, and also that Dunya was probably much less uncomfortable than she was anyway. She tried to resign herself to waiting a while longer.

  After another three or four eternities, during which Dima and even Dunya began to grow restless and uneasy, Grisha and Sasha joined them under the tree.

  “Thank the gods!” said Dima when he saw them. “We thought…”

  “We had to make our way through the docks and up the bluff and then come all the way around Krasnograd, once we’d gotten through the gate,” explained Sasha. “And we heard…we heard…We heard as we were coming through outer Krasnograd…”

  “We heard that some of the traitors had been captured,” said Grisha.

  There was a horrified silence.

  “It could be wrong,” said Slava. “Rumors in a crowd…Ten to one it was wrong, nothing but rumors…”

  “Olga and the little princess aren’t here yet, though,” said Dunya soberly.

  “Vladislava can’t walk as fast or as far as the rest of us,” said Slava. She knew she was only saying it because she didn’t think she could bear the alternative, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from coming up with excuses for Olga and Vladislava’s continued absence. She thought of Vladislava stumbling along, tired and cold, and her heart squeezed so painfully she thought she might be sick.