Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  “It is time, Yasha. I am calling in the last of my chips.”

  “Why do they owe you so much, Andrei?” he asked, uncaring suddenly who was listening or why. He needed to know the truth for once. He was so weary of all the subterfuge.

  “It’s what I do for them, what is in here,” Andrei tapped his forehead. “I’ve played a long game, Yasha, always staying a step ahead, or even a half-step—or so I thought until today. Once they get everything out of me that they need, my time will be up and they will dispose of me as quietly and as quickly as they can. With Violet and what she may have told them… the hourglass is down to its last few grains. Will you take Kolya if I can get you out? Will you take my son with you?”

  “He is my son too,” Jamie said. “I would never leave him behind.” Because he had decided in that moment that he was going. They could try to kill him if they liked, but he was going.

  “I wonder,” Andrei said quietly, “if she ever loved either of us?”

  “I don’t think it matters anymore,” Jamie replied. At last he left the hut, the silence between them so enormous it was suffocating.

  Outside, he walked, wanting only the reassurance of Kolya—to know that he too wasn’t an illusion. The air was cold, the sky a heartless blue that spoke of the winter so close, the winter that would come down like an iron fist. He heard voices speak to him but they lay in some other world beyond a boundary through which he could not understand individual words. It was enough right now, to stay upright, to keep walking, to find Kolya.

  Someone touched his arm and he heard Gregor say, “Let him be.”

  Kolya was in the small hut that served as a daycare. He was asleep. The old woman who watched him took one look at Jamie’s face and left in silence. He touched Kolya’s back lightly. The baby breathed deep and even, his eyes shut tight, his face a perfect canvas of pure trust.

  I love you, Yasha. He shook his head. There was pain in him like a fire spreading beneath his skin. He ignored it and put it aside for later, maybe for never.

  Everything here was a Potemkin village, a façade, and when you looked behind it there was nothing, only a grey emptiness that stretched on forever. And more lies, and more façades. And millions and millions of people wiped out as though they had never existed. Of course, one learned to lie and lie well in such a world until perhaps one no longer knew what truth was, or if it mattered. Perhaps he was a fool for believing truth could matter in such a place. He had forgotten for a moment, a moment as lucent as dawn, that this was the Soviet Union.

  After a very long time he lay down beside Kolya, allowing the child’s even breathing to calm him. He watched the fire flicker through the slats in the potbellied stove, over the red-gold aureole of Kolya’s hair. He watched for a very long time and thought no thoughts at all.

  It was Jamie who found Nikolai, for they always breakfasted together on the bread and thin oatmeal before setting out for their day. Generally, they sat in silence, but there was a mutual warmth of companionship that Jamie enjoyed whether words were spoken or not. It was not like the old man to be absent, not even when his lungs were at their worst.

  He had seen him last evening when Nikolai had come to say goodnight to Kolya, as he always did when it could be managed. The old man had stroked his trembling hand over the fine red-gold of Kolya’s head, and before he departed to his own bed, he had done the same to Jamie. Jamie swore out loud, seeing the gesture now for what it had been.

  He had been so stupid since Violet’s departure that he had not been attuned in the way he normally would have been. He had not, he realized, been paying attention.

  He stood and walked down the bench to where Vanya sat hunched over a hot cup of water.

  “Vanya, did you see Nikolai this morning?”

  Vanya looked up with those eyes the color of amaranthine under frost, those eyes that always saw too much and understood a great deal more.

  “He left the hut in the early hours and he asked that I do not follow.”

  Jamie went straight to the common hut where the piano was. Nikolai would seek music, he knew, both as solace and as a pathway to another time, another space.

  The old man sat at the piano, fingers frozen on the keys. His head was bowed down, forehead resting against the music stand, hair a blaze of silver against the burled wood. Jamie hunkered down beside him, touching two fingers to the hollow of the old man’s neck. He did not need to do it, for there was a look of peace on Nikolai’s face that Jamie had not seen in life. He dropped to his knees and took one of Nikolai’s hands. Crabbed and now cold with death, it remained curled over Jamie’s own and he thought he could sense the final notes held fast, as gold in a vein, within the fingers.

  There was a flask on the floor, fallen sideways. Jamie picked it up and sniffed at the opening—vodka and something more that he recognized. He put it back down.

  Another link in the chain which bound him broken now, struck off with purpose. A gift from the man who had not been his father, given to him who was not a son. Now, now he could leave and not look back with regret.

  Vanya stood in the doorway, red hair a blaze in the morning light. It reminded Jamie of the copper glow of Violet’s hair. He put the thought aside, into a room that he had built swiftly in her absence, the door of which he hoped to seal shut one day soon.

  Vanya gazed at Nikolai, his face impassive. “It is what he wished for, Jamie. It is best. You would have found it very hard to leave him. This he knew.”

  Jamie looked at him sharply, wondering if Vanya was making a guess or if he knew more than he should.

  “When you go, Yasha,” Vanya said softly, “I am coming with you. You cannot expect to manage alone with Kolya in the wilderness, so I come.” His voice was modulated so that he might have been speaking of which sort of tea he preferred. Jamie looked into the exotic cat eyes of the man across from him.

  “Why are you so certain I am going?”

  “Because you have to,” Vanya said simply. “Or you will be a dead man.”

  “Then come,” he said, for it was not in him to deny any man a chance of freedom. And now it was clear he could not risk leaving Vanya behind.

  Chapter Eighty-five

  Dasvidania is Russian for Goodbye…

  “I will leave it to you what you wish to tell him. It may be best to let him believe you are his real father, it will be…” Andrei’s voice failed him for a minute, “simpler for him.”

  They were sitting in the hut Jamie had once shared with Violet and Kolya, the stove glowing with heat and a storm blowing up outside that had skirls of leaves dancing past the windows. Kolya was sitting on Andrei’s knee, chewing happily on his own fist, blue eyes wide and curious on the face of his father.

  All was in readiness, or as much readiness as could be fashioned in desperation and at speed. It had been Gregor who told him, quietly and quickly one evening, that there was a tunnel under the bell tower. A very old tunnel, long forgotten. How Gregor knew about it Jamie was not told.

  “I do not know where it goes. I think it is likely that it comes out in the bor somewhere. I was never able to explore it fully, so it is a great risk, but perhaps the only one that gives the four of you a chance of getting out before the guards realize you are gone.”

  “Four?” Jamie said, quirking a golden brow at the man in front of him.

  “Ah, my harlequin,” Gregor grinned, “do not look so hopeful. I do not speak of myself but of the dwarf. He will go with you and Vanya. He is useful and trustworthy. Besides, you will need the milk goat for the boy, and you will need the dwarf for the goat.”

  Jamie felt there was no adequate reply to this bit of logic, so made his arrangements with Shura, who showed no surprise at the plans. Jamie was starting to wonder if there was anyone in the camp who didn’t know about the escape plot. Not that, as plots went, it was terribly sophisti
cated, a thing both he and Andrei had admitted as they sat here together for the last time.

  “He is beautiful,” Andrei said simply, not even looking up from the baby’s face.

  “He is,” Jamie agreed. For it was true. Though Kolya was not quite a year old, it was clear already that he had inherited his mother’s copper hair and his father’s imperious face.

  “Yasha, I—I…” Andrei’s words halted. “I don’t know what to say. All these years and now I am mute… now when it matters most, there is nothing to say. Except for this—raise my son well. Love him as I would have, had I the choice.”

  “Andrei?”

  “Things are in motion over which I no longer have control.” Andrei scratched his neck, two fingers flicking quickly at his ear. Two days then.

  He saw suddenly the age in Andrei, not by the normal measures of such things but by the shadows in his eyes, by the ghosts that were bound to him by memory and history, by the terrible yearning in his face for the son he would not see grow to manhood.

  Jamie went to stand by the window, unable to bear either the look on Andrei’s face or the broken Russian words that he whispered to Kolya. He knew only too well what it was to say goodbye to one’s son forever.

  “One day…” Jamie began and Andrei summoned up a ghost’s smile.

  “One day, when the guards are asleep and the sun no longer shines at midnight and we can fly like the raven… I will see you then, my Yasha.”

  Andrei passed Kolya into Jamie’s arms and the boy wrapped his arms around Jamie’s neck, laying his head on his shoulder.

  And so it was time.

  “There aren’t any words,” Jamie said, feeling a terrible pain in his chest. “other than I love you brother, and goodbye.”

  Andrei kissed both of his cheeks and then his lips, then bent his head to his son and kissed his forehead. Kolya gurgled with delight and Andrei closed his eyes in pain as he turned away. Jamie took one last look at the man with whom he had finished his youth.

  “Hurry, Yasha, and remember us from whom you part. Hurry, you that are going away.”

  It was fitting that a Russian goodbye should consist of poetry and heartbreak, for of what else was this land made?

  Holding Kolya close to his chest, Jamie left the building.

  The following night all was in readiness for their departure. They had done all they could, carefully stowing things away in corners and holes where they would not be seen by the guards, who were suspicious of the slightest variation in routine.

  He was moving from the dining hall back to the hut, wondering if he would be able to sleep, knowing it was unlikely in the extreme but at least it would provide him with several hours to worry about all the variables over which he had no control.

  He sensed rather than saw Gregor near the doorway of the hut, for the big man was well hidden in the deep autumn shadows that gathered thickly at twilight. He halted, for there were things to be said. But Gregor spoke first.

  “Smells like snow.”

  “It does,” Jamie agreed, for the air had that strange stillness to it and the fresh smell that presaged snow. It had been a warm day, with sun enough to feel it in the marrow of their bones, but the twilight had brought a raw dampness. Yes, it would snow. But he thought it wasn’t likely that Gregor had been waiting out here to discuss the impending weather.

  The big man leaned up against the side of the hut, drawing hard on his cigarette. He passed it to Jamie, who took a grateful drag, savoring the harsh edge of Russian tobacco.

  “So, tomorrow you go. Before dawn is the best time. We will say prayers that the real snow holds off a bit longer, yes? It is not a good time of year for travel,” he laughed. “Are you sure you won’t stay until spring?”

  “I thought you didn’t talk to God,” Jamie said.

  Gregor looked at him, dark eyes distant. “When I am little boy hiding in the forest, and wandering the roads of this land, I am always praying for someone to come and rescue me. Those are not the kind of prayers that a man forgets. Those I will say for you, Yasha, if you promise to say ones for me, for my black soul.”

  “Always,” Jamie said, and meant it. “You could come with us, Gregor. There is always a place in the world for a strong man.” The offer was made in sincerity, even if Jamie knew their odds of getting out of Russia alive weren’t terribly high. Still, they were higher odds than staying in the camp was going to allow.

  Gregor stubbed out his cigarette against the side of the hut, its coal eclipsed in the dim light, only a tendril of smoke to mark its passing. He took a deep breath and stretched his back, reaching his arms out wide.

  “I am thinking Russia is only country large enough for Gregor. I am thinking that a Russian soul withers up and blows away in a foreign place. So I will stay, but you, Yasha, you will go home, because this land is not yours.”

  “Gregor, if you stay—” Jamie stopped, no one knew better than Gregor what the cost of staying was.

  “It is as you said to me—a man who lives by the sword must also die by it. This is justice. This is balance. This is what the Russian soul understands. This is a good death. Now give me your hand.”

  Jamie put his hand out, feeling the brutal strength of the fingers that touched his own. Gregor sliced his hand before he realized that the man held a knife. Gregor then sliced his own, a thick line of dark blood welling up instantly across the broad, hard palm. He grasped Jamie’s hand tightly, the slickness of blood, hot and viscous, binding their two hands together. His eyes were hard as onyx as they held to Jamie’s.

  “Soon, my brother, we will both be free.”

  He pulled Jamie to him and gave him a hug that would have crushed him had he not been braced for it. Then he shoved him away toward the hut, voice rough. “Go now.”

  Jamie walked away feeling slightly bruised, his hand burning like he held Greek fire in his palm.

  “Yasha!”

  Jamie turned back. Gregor stood tall, strong as an oak, giving off the illusion that he would always be so.

  “When you say those prayers, stand beside the sea.”

  Jamie nodded, for it was all Gregor needed. He knew as he walked to the hut for the final time that his freedom had been paid for in the most precious commodity of all, that of life itself.

  They escaped in the pre-dawn hours. The fires had begun in the deep of the night, set off like a chain of finely-tuned explosions. They had been ready to go, to slip, fine as sifted fog through the old chapel and down the long stairs into the bowels of the bell tower.

  They were all sleepless and strung with nerves like catgut on a violin except for Kolya, who by grace was in the deep and silent sleep of the very young. It would not last. And so they must flee without a backward glance lest they be trapped forever in the underworld of the Soviet Empire.

  Not to look back was impossible, for his eyes were drawn as he paused on the threshold of the chapel, back to where the flames shot high and gave the lie of a false dawn. There he saw Gregor, a Slavic Hephaestus, pure element, heat and forge, mercury spilling deadly and smoking into the forced channels of imprisonment.

  But in the last moment, lit scarlet and searing, a burning chiascuro of outlawry and rebellion, stood a man who bowed to no authority greater than his own.

  Soon, my brother, we will both be free.

  Chapter Eighty-six

  Beauty

  He awoke just before dawn. Shura and Vanya were still asleep, Kolya too, mummified in the skins that kept him warm through the bitter nights. Jamie took a deep breath of the chilly air and walked toward the rim of the lake, a silver scrim against the horizon.

  An angular shape hovered at the edge, taking awkward steps on legs too long for anything but flight, a lone heron picking its way through the reeds. It was in silhouette, only the tips of its feathers delineated in the vague
promise of dawn. He wondered if it was sick or wounded for it ought to have been long gone by now, flown south for the winter, not picking its way through icy water that would soon freeze at the edges. Jamie stood still, mesmerized by its alien presence.

  The trip through the long dank tunnel underneath the crumbling monastery had been fraught with anxiety at every step. There had been no way to ascertain ahead of time whether parts of the tunnel had collapsed, or been flooded and washed away over the years. At more than one point, they had been in water up to their knees, and then had to crawl through other sections digging rock and soil out with their bare hands. Agrafina, the goat, had not been overly happy about the dark nor the crawling through narrow earth-choked gaps and bleated until they thought they would either go deaf or the guards would be able to hear her through the several feet of earth.

  When they found the end of the tunnel, they had bided their time until dark would soon be falling, and emerged into the gloom of a stand of fir. It had been eerily quiet as they stood there under the great fronded boughs, drinking in the amber scent of them and working out which way to travel. They had to avoid patrols that might be out hunting for them while they kept to a northwest heading.

  They set out at once, Kolya quiet and wide-eyed, belly full of rich goat’s milk. He had proved to be an exceptional traveler considering the brutal pace they had set from the beginning, and slept at his regular times strapped to Jamie’s front or Vanya’s back.

  Last night they had stopped by the edge of this lake, mirror still and reflecting back a sunken world of crimson, scarlet and gold, the sinking sun mixing with the foliage in a dazzling display. He stood here now on its shore, uncertain what it meant to go home, particularly when you could not find any remnant of that place inside you anymore. But like this heron, he could not remain stranded here in this land for fear of being permanently frozen.