Maroussia struggled into consciousness. There was a foul taste in her mouth. She felt dizzy and sick. Chazia was looking down at her, smiling, her hair backlit with the glare of the single caged bulb in the wooden ceiling. Her skin was blotched with patches of smooth darkness.
‘Good,’ said Chazia. ‘You’re awake.’
Chazia was holding the solm. She held it up for Maroussia to see. The ball of twigs and wax and stuff looked tawdry and dead in her skewbald palm.
‘I know the paluba was looking for you,’ said Chazia, ‘and it found you. It brought you the key to the Pollandore. I think this is it. This is the key. It is, isn’t it?’
Maroussia shook her head. The movement made her dizzy. Acidic bile rose up in the back of her throat. She turned her head aside to vomit.
‘I’m not going to help you,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘Not ever. Not with anything.’
‘You need to understand your position, Maroussia darling,’ said Chazia. ‘You really do. You are in my world now. There is no hope and no protection for you here; there is only me. I can turn you inside out. It’s not a metaphor, sweetness. I can dig around in you. I can pull the guts from your belly and hold them up for you to see. I can do anything I want. And afterwards I can give you to Bez Nichevoi.’ Chazia knelt in front of her and took her hand. Her gaze was warm and bright, compassionate and mad. ‘I can do this to you, Maroussia,’ she said. ‘You do believe me, darling, don’t you?’
Maroussia stared at Chazia dumbly. Her head hurt. She could find nothing to say. Whatever the foul creature that abducted her had done to her, it was still in her veins. All the energy had been flushed out of her. She felt as if she was watching herself from a distance, listening to voices at the far end of an echoing corridor. The floor beneath her was tipping sickeningly sideways.
‘You’ve imagined people doing cruel things to you, darling, haven’t you?’ said Chazia. ‘Everyone has. In dark moments. But the reality is much more terrible, and lasts much longer. It continues. Not just for hours or days but for weeks. Months. It gets messy. It’s not good to see parts of yourself being removed. It’s not good to have someone else rummaging about inside your body. Will I be brave? we ask ourselves, but of course nobody is brave, not in the end. Courage only takes you so far.’
Chazia shifted her position. Sat down beside her on the wooden floor, making herself comfortable. Shoulder to shoulder, intimate and companionable.
‘But I don’t want that to happen to you,’ she said.
‘You tried to kill me,’ said Maroussia, ‘You killed my mother.’
‘Oh. That.’ Chazia waved the memory away with a dismissive gesture. ‘That was just a favour for a friend. Before I knew you. I didn’t know then how important you were. And you escaped anyway, didn’t you. That was resourceful of you, though I think you had help. From Investigator Lom, I think. I’ve been underestimating him too. I saw the mess he made in the gendarme station at Levrovskaya Square. Who would have thought that of him?’
‘It wasn’t—’ Maroussia began, but Chazia cut her off.
‘What became of Major Safran by the way?’ she said. ‘I’ve been wondering. Just curious. Did Lom—’
‘I cut his head off. With a spade.’
Chazia giggled like a girl. Her eyes shone.
‘Did you?’ she said. ‘Well done you.’
Maroussia became aware of a prickling edginess in the air around her. A smell of ozone, like the sea. She realised that Chazia was still talking.
‘Ever since the Vlast confiscated the Pollandore from Lezarye,’ she was saying, ‘people in the Lodka have been trying to find out its secrets and use its power, but they never could. Only now there’s me, and now there’s you. The Shaumian woman. That’s what the paluba called you. You have the key and you are the key. Those are the words, or something like them. So. I know, you see. I know it all. And now you can show me how to use the Pollandore. You can give me these secrets.’
Chazia’s face was so close to hers, Maroussia could feel her breath. It was cool, and smelled like damp moss and stone, like the mouth of a deep well, with a taint of meat. Her hair was darkly reddish, cropped short and sparse. The rims of her pale blue eyes were pink, her teeth were small and even and pretty. There was a patch of slate-coloured angel flesh stretching from her left cheekbone almost to her ear.
No! Maroussia was screaming inside. No! She closed her eyes and turned her head away.
‘I’m the one to have the power of the Pollandore,’ said Chazia. ‘It is my destiny. I have a great purpose.’
Maroussia pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them defensively. Her naked feet were cold against the rough plank floor of the freight car. She felt the vibration of its wheels on the rails below.
‘The Pollandore isn’t a power,’ she said.
‘Of course it’s power, darling,’ said Chazia. She rested her hand on Maroussia’s bare knee, and stroked her comfortingly. Their shoulders were touching. ‘And you’re going to show me how to use it.’
Chazia slipped her arm round Maroussia’s shoulder and leaned her head against Maroussia’s head. Maroussia could smell her hair. Clean, with a faint trace of scented soap. The hand on Maroussia’s shoulder gripped gently but firmly. Maroussia felt a numbness there, as if her flesh was disappearing, as if the shoulder were merging with the hand that touched it.
Chazia’s body was starting to join with hers. Melt into her. Maroussia wanted to shake it off. Push her away. But she could not. The feeling was relaxing. Reassuring. There was something intimate about it. She felt they had known each other for ever. Chazia’s presence was so completely familiar. Solid and trustworthy. Two thoughts, one thought. Like oldest friends. Like sisters.
‘After all,’ said Chazia quietly, gently in her ear, ‘what were you going to do with it yourself?’
‘Destroy the angel in the forest.’
‘There you are, you see, sweetness,’ whispered Chazia triumphantly. ‘And you said it wasn’t power.’ Chazia nuzzled her nose against Maroussia’s neck. ‘Have a little sleep now, darling. You need to build your strength. There’s no hurry at all. We’ll have plenty more time to talk before we reach Novaya Zima.’