by Ruth Lauren
“I thought she was—I thought—” I break off, sobbing. My legs buckle, and I lean back against the door.
“You know that girl?” Dr. Lenina searches my face, her eyes as kind and concerned as before. I sob harder. I can’t meet the doctor’s eyes when I choke out, “She’s my sister.” More than that. She’s more myself than I am.
The doctor starts saying something, but I’m hobbling over to Sasha’s bedside. She follows me and adjusts the heap of furs that covers Sasha right up to her chin. A tear drips off my jaw onto the bed. I wipe it away, and my fingers creep up to brush Sasha’s cheek.
“She’s so cold.” A spiderweb of tiny blue veins runs across her eyelids.
Dr. Lenina presses her lips together. “She hasn’t woken up yet. We just have to keep her warm and hope.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She smiles. “The best thing you can do for your sister is to let me treat you. You don’t want to be ill in bed if—when she wakes up, do you?”
I shake my head and let her lead me to the room where she treated me before. She makes me take off my boots and coat, gives me clean clothes, and then rebandages my hands. The noise of the ward fades as I sit on the bed, and when the doctor is called away, I slump onto the fresh, white sheets. My hope is burned to the ground, and my heart is ash.
When I wake up, it’s still dark. The ward is silent. I slip off the bed and find my furs and boots next to it in a neat pile. Someone has cleaned and dried them. How long have I been asleep? I drink huge gulps of water from the sink, wiping my mouth on the back of my bandages. The sky above the high windows in the infirmary is deep blue, filled with tiny pinpricks of light. There are a couple of oil lamps still burning in the ward, but the room is dim.
Only four of the beds are in use now. Three boys and a girl lie in them, their sleep-heavy breathing the only sound. I pad over to Sasha’s bed. Her face is so still. I put my cheek under her nose to check that she’s breathing and stay there for some minutes, praying that she keeps on breathing.
“Go back to bed, Valor. There’s nothing you can do now.” I jump at the sound of Dr. Lenina’s voice and spin around to face her. I nod, mute and sad and aching all over, and do what she says.
When I wake again, the door to my room is closed. I blink, knowing that something made me wake, but I don’t know what. I flex my fingers. They feel sore, but better. My stomach growls.
“I still need to speak with her. The matter of her interrogation and punishment is still outstanding.”
I tense. It’s Warden Kirov, and she’s right outside the door.
“I understand,” says Dr. Lenina in a clipped tone. “But she hasn’t regained consciousness yet. And neither has her sister. You can see for yourself.”
“I would like to see for myself,” says the warden, and she swings the door open. The draft it creates ruffles my unbraided hair, but I keep my eyes shut and force my breathing into an even pattern.
“When do you expect her to wake up?” the warden asks, making no attempt to keep her voice down.
“It’s impossible to tell with either of them,” says the doctor smoothly. “The princess herself has sent an inquiry about the same thing. I can only tell you what I told her. The girls will wake up if and when their bodies allow it. And when they are well enough, I will release them into the cellblocks.”
There’s a pause. “You told Princess Anastasia that?”
“I told Princess Anastasia exactly that,” says Dr. Lenina. “As I’m sure you know, I’m bound by oath to safeguard these prisoners and report to our current and future queens, just as you are. She was most concerned about both the possibility that the prince could have been in the tower when the fire started and the welfare of Valor and her sister. It seems she’s taking a very personal interest.”
The doctor sounds so innocent as she says this that I’m dying to open my eyes a crack to see the look on the warden’s face. I don’t know if the doctor can stop the warden from punishing me again, but warmth floods through me to think that she would try.
“Yes, it was a blessing that His Royal Highness wasn’t present. I shall look forward to having the girls back under my care in the cellblock as soon as possible.”
I almost shiver at the warden’s icy tone. So the prince wasn’t hurt. I’m surprised that I feel relief.
Footsteps sound, and the door clicks shut.
“You can stop pretending now, Valor,” says Dr. Lenina.
I open one eye. “You knew I was awake?”
She smiles. “Well, I am a doctor.”
I slide my legs over the side of the bed and sit up.
Her smile fades. “Valor, I can’t protect you in the cellblock. That’s the warden’s territory, and I have no power out there.”
I swallow. “I know. Thank you for what you’ve done for me. And for Sasha.”
“Thank me by staying here for now,” she says. “Eat something. Sit with your sister.”
The next day, I step out of the infirmary, blinking in the dazzling brightness of the grounds. Peacekeeper Rurik has been sent to fetch me, and I have no choice but to leave Sasha in Dr. Lenina’s care. I feel it, though—like an invisible thread running between the two of us is pulled tight when I walk out of the building and into the snow.
A group of thirty or so prisoners is working on the site where the tower stood. The inner wall is half rebuilt already. Warden Kirov must have had teams working day and night. The rubble has been carted away, and the uneven ground is covered in a thick blanket of snow.
It’s as though the tower was never there. The tunnel is buried under the stone, which has sunk into the lower level. I turn away. I wanted to stay with Sasha, but how can I tell her that we’ll both spend the rest of our lives in prison? Another grim thought pushes into my head—that the rest of our lives might not even be a very long time. I can’t hold Warden Kirov or Prince Anatol at bay with the threat of Princess Anastasia forever. And what use will her royal mercy be if we’re both dead?
Peacekeeper Rurik unlocks the cellblock door and barely waits for me to enter before locking it again. Below me, long tables like those in the ice hall have been set up. All the cell doors are rolled open, and the girls who aren’t working are gathered in various spots around the building.
“Valor!” Katia rushes over. “Are you okay? Is Sasha? What happened?”
I take her hand, trying to think of a few words of explanation. Over her shoulder, I see Natalia, who was sitting at one of the tables but is now making her way toward us.
I pull Katia forward and rush up the steps to our cell. I throw myself on my bunk, facing the wall.
Footsteps follow us. “What’s the matter, Valor? That’s no way to greet your sister’s new cellmate.”
I scramble up on the bed. Katia twists her hands together.
“Since when?” I ask.
“Since yesterday,” says Natalia. “But don’t worry—we’re going to get along just fine. I’ll look after her when she gets out of the infirmary. Back to more important things. Do you have a new plan?” She’s leaning on the rolled-back door of my cell with her arms folded. Her ankles are crossed, the toe of her boot resting on the smooth stone of the floor.
I don’t answer. This is worse than when Sasha was with the Black Hands. At least she was in a solitary cell up there. Not even my sister can charm Natalia.
Natalia leans forward. “No new plan? Well, you’d better make one.”
“We’re not going anywhere without Sasha.” As soon as I say it, I realize I’m not defeated. I’m not going to let Natalia know how it will eat at me to know she’s in a cell at night with my sister. I’m not going to tell Sasha she’ll never get out of here. I can’t do that to her, or to the others. Feliks and Katia are my friends. And I can’t let everything they’ve done to help me be for nothing. Katia sits on the bed and puts her arm around me.
“I’ll find another way, I promise,” I say to Natalia. “But I’m not going anywhere without Sasha
.”
On the third day of our confinement in the cellblock, Warden Kirov announces that the wall is rebuilt and work detail will start again the next day. Every time a Peacekeeper has entered the cellblock in the last two days, I’ve been worried, expecting Warden Kirov to have sent for me. But she hasn’t yet.
We’re taken to the ice hall for breakfast. We work in the mines and eat our evening meal in the ice hall again, and I go back to my cell tired and worried about Sasha coming back and finding she’s stuck with Natalia as a cellmate.
As the Peacekeeper calls for us to step into the cellblock on the sixth day, I have to shove my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out in surprise. There, already inside, is Sasha. I fill to the brim with emotion, like the bubbling wine that fills Mother’s glass on her birthday.
She smiles and steps forward awkwardly. I run in, pushing past the other girls filing toward their cells, and throw my arms around her. We hug each other tight.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” The words burst out of me. They’re all I’ve been thinking and feeling for days.
She pries my arms off her neck, laughing quietly. “I’m all right. Listen, Natalia already saw me on her way past. She said we don’t need to wait any longer. Do you know what she meant?”
I keep hold of Sasha’s hands, not willing to let her go.
“It means she’s been waiting for me to come up with another plan, and now that you’re here …”
“We don’t need to wait any longer.” Sasha’s eyes take on a fierce look. “Do you really still mean for us to escape?” She takes my hands and gently turns them over. They’re still pink and sore.
“Only if you want to. I can’t risk you again. You almost—” I can’t even say it.
She flicks my forehead like Katia did, right between my eyebrows.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll take it that you do.”
Two days later, Nicolai calls out the work detail as we stand behind our places in the ice hall. Despite the fact that we scrubbed the entire kitchen and everything in it yesterday, Feliks still has a dirty mark on his neck. Katia frowns at it as Nicolai says that we’re working in the laundry today. He’s been quiet since the day I saw him in the prison grounds after the tower crumbled. Today is no different. He directs us to our workstations in the laundry, giving himself and two other boys the job of collecting the mountains of dirty clothes and bringing them to us at the tubs. The Peacekeeper guarding us takes up a position at the door as usual.
The room to the left, where the laundry is gathered, is full almost to the ceiling. Warden Kirov halted all nonessential work until the repairs were complete (although Katia has muttered on several occasions that cleaning clothes is not what she considers nonessential), and we’re going to have to work hard today to clear the pile.
Natalia gives me a look as she takes off her coat. She watches me constantly, and I know she’s going to lose patience soon. She doesn’t need to tell me that Sasha will pay for it if she does; I can think of nothing else. Maybe she’s lost patience now, because she strides across the room and gets right up close to me. “Warden Kirov is going to summon Sasha before evening meal tonight.”
I stiffen. “How do you know that?”
Natalia shrugs, a smirk breaking out on her face. “I know people. I hear things.”
“What does she want with Sasha?”
“What do you think? She tried questioning you about what went on the night you got out of the cellblock. She tried punishing your sister. Now she’s going to drag it out of her.” She shrugs again. “Just thought you should know.”
She saunters off back to her workstation. I kneel at a tub, scrubbing garments with my hands plunged up to the elbows in soapy water. It’s just my body going through the motions, though. All I can think of is the numbness and the terror I felt when I thought I’d lost Sasha.
Sweat soon mixes with the steam condensing on my brow. Despite Dr. Lenina’s miracle salve, my hands are still sore.
“What did Natalia want?” asks Katia.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just the usual.” Natalia’s trying to force me into getting her out of here. It might all be a lie about Sasha. Still, I can’t stop thinking about it as I scrub.
After a while, Katia sighs. “This is making the clothes dirtier than they were before. We need clean water.”
“Nicolai!” I call to him as he carries another armful of trousers and undergarments to Sasha and Feliks, who are working on the same side of the room as we are.
He stops, trailing a grubby tunic on the floor.
“We need to change the water.” I rattle the chain anchoring the tub in place. Water slops over the side and trickles under the tub, and ideas slot into place in my head like arrows hitting a target one after another: we’re not usually allowed to change the water. It doesn’t normally need to be done, but there’s more laundry than usual today. The water must drain away to somewhere. The drains must run under the prison, like the tunnels. And they must lead somewhere—probably to the water plant outside the city.
“Valor?” Nicolai frowns at me. And, of course, Natalia has noticed. Nothing gets past her.
“I—We just need clean water,” I say. But it’s not like the Peacekeeper is going to hand me a set of keys to unlock the tubs. Nicolai chews his cheek. He’s thinking the same thing.
“I’ll ask,” he says.
Before he’s even made it to the Peacekeeper stationed at the door, Natalia is by my side. “I saw that look on your face. What is it?” She’s already looking around, trying to figure out what’s going on. “Maybe you need a reminder of who I share a cell with now. Maybe Sasha will have an accident tonight.”
I clench my fingers around the rim of the tub, digging my nails into the wood. “I’m working on something. There might be drains below.”
A glint comes into her eyes. “Might be?”
Nicolai walks back across the room, giving me the barest shake of his head. But we need those keys. These tubs can’t be moved unless we can unlock the chains. I have no way of seeing the drains underneath the prison without them.
“Okay, there are drains,” I tell Natalia. “But I need to see them first. And you have to give me time to think about how we’re going to do this.”
She gives me a long, hard look and then walks away. We all get on with our work, but my thoughts are flitting around the whole time. Can I risk asking Feliks to steal another set of keys? When do they empty the water out of the tubs—after we’re finished for the day? I only register that Natalia has called for the Peacekeeper at her workstation when Katia nudges me. I keep my eyes lowered and my hands busy as he walks past. Seconds later there’s a muffled grunt and a weight hitting the floor.
I spin around. Natalia is standing over the Peacekeeper, who’s crumpled unconscious next to her washtub. She has an iron bucket in her hand.
“Don’t say I never do anything for you, Valor,” she says.
Sasha’s wide eyes meet mine from across the room. “What have you done?” she asks Natalia in a cracked whisper.
For a few seconds we all freeze, no one moving, no one speaking.
But as I’m staring at the Peacekeeper, horrified, that’s when I know there’s no going back now.
“What are you waiting for?” asks Natalia. “Get the keys. Let’s go.”
“Valor?” Nicolai’s hands are clenched at his sides.
I shake my head at him and then dart forward and detach the keys from the Peacekeeper’s belt. He’s breathing. I don’t know how long we have before he wakes up.
“Valor, what about them?” Feliks’s voice is urgent. He points up the stairs in the middle of the room. The two boys who have been helping Nicolai are on the upper level of the laundry putting endless garments on rows of lines to dry.
“We’ll just have to give them something that keeps them busy for a while,” says Sasha, her gaze already on the other tubs full of sopping-wet clothes.
I give one sharp nod at her, and then slot t
he keys into the locks on the chains until I find the right one. I have to force myself not to keep looking at the Peacekeeper, not to think about what Warden Kirov will do to us if we don’t make this work.
Katia’s face is twisted in determination. She searches my eyes, and we get to work in grim silence, pulling at the chains, unspooling them from the anchors on the tub.
The chains snake loose across the floor. I take up a stance by the tub and put my weight behind it to tip out the dirty water, but it doesn’t budge. Feliks joins me, then Katia, and eventually it tilts, and dirty water starts to slosh over the side. Once the water starts pouring, it’s easy to keep it coming in a cascade.
Nicolai hovers at my elbow, casting frantic glances at the door and at the Peacekeeper still prone on the floor. “You need to stop, Valor. This is—”
“I know. I didn’t exactly ask Natalia to do that, did I? But what happens if we stop now?”
He doesn’t have an answer.
Sasha and Feliks drag all the sopping-wet clothes they can carry from the tubs and shove them through the presses that squeeze out the water. They run relays of the piles upstairs until I hear complaints from the two boys.
“That should keep them busy for a while,” says Sasha. She’s out of breath just like the rest of us, her arms shining with water and soap suds. Her eyes are shining too, wild and hectic, anxious but hopeful, and her face is flushed, just as I imagined her when I walked down the tunnel on the night I went to the tower. It calms my nerves and steels my resolve.
Feliks nudges me with his elbow. He’s looking at Natalia. She’s almost grinning in satisfaction. I run around to the other side of the tub where she’s standing and watch the water stream down a drain with an iron grille over it. A round grille just big enough for a small person to fit through.
I reach down as the last of the water gurgles away, leaving a soapy scum on the bars. My fingers hook the iron, and my heart pounds in my ears as I pull. The grille lifts away in my hand, and I almost fall backward.
Natalia claps me on the shoulder like we’re friends. “I knew you could do it, Valor.”