Marya

Early morning was the best time to pay a visit to Alevtina Vladimirovna. The clientele of the dusty pawnshop on the edge of the Apraksin Market shifted by the hour as the day went on. Tired mothers and young men who’d tried and failed to make a fortune at the card table filled the shop by afternoon, giving way to less-savory characters looking to earn a coin off ill-gotten gains by nightfall. Marya’s weekly meeting with the pawnbroker generally wasn’t illegal in the strictest sense, but she still appreciated the quiet of the shop just before sunrise, when scattered candles cast a bronze glow over the shelves of marooned possessions and gave them the dignity of artifacts in a museum. Besides, Marya had learned through experience that Alevtina’s mood tended to sour the longer the day went on, and the price she was willing to offer dipped accordingly. The slight annoyance of waking before the sun paid double.

A bell above the door tinkled her arrival as she entered the shop. Brushing a film of snow from the shoulders of her deep-pocketed coat, Marya wove through the mess of tea tables, chiffoniers, and paintings of dubious authenticity that littered the shop-room floor. Mediocre quality, all of them. Alevtina’s wasn’t a shop for the well-to-do; it was for working-class people pawning the last of the family heirlooms for enough money to make ends meet for one more week. There was a sadness to it, the familiar illogical melancholy of lost objects, but also a kind of ragged dignity. This settee had once served a proud, capable woman, and with any luck it would do so again.

Marya crossed the shop without disturbing the merchandise and rested her elbows on the counter. Behind it, in a chaotically arranged kingdom of her own making, sat Alevtina Vladimirovna, nursing a cup of tea and swathed in so many scarves it was impossible to approximate the shape and size of her body.

“Dobroye utro,” Marya said when it became clear Alevtina would not greet her, and she began to empty her pockets onto the counter.

Alevtina didn’t look up. The pawnbroker tended to reserve visible displays of interest for large items—the kind Marya had to sling over her shoulder in a canvas bag, or recruit Isaak or Lena to help her haul across the length of the city. They both knew the rule as well as anyone, though: the size of a find had no bearing on its value.

“How much is stolen this time?” Alevtina said into her tea, which no doubt contained more than a healthy splash of spirits despite the hour.

“Not much,” Marya responded hotly. “Barely any.”

Alevtina scoffed, but Marya wasn’t lying. In truth, the only item she’d stolen that week was the savonnette pocket watch, which she laid now on the counter with not a little pride. It was lovely, with an intricate sunburst design etched into the case, and she felt a pang of regret as she set it down. This beauty had been hanging from the fob of an unobservant gentleman chatting in Nevsky Prospekt late Monday afternoon, and Marya sincerely doubted the fop had even noticed its absence.

The rest had been obtained in the usual manner: by barter, favor, or luck. The city’s aboveground economy was a harsh mistress, but Marya knew how to navigate the underground one like a harpist plying the strings. A harried mother of three would pay a packet of tobacco for someone to hold her place in line for bread while she kept an appointment. Then, a soldier itching for a smoke would offer up a pair of his lover’s silk gloves, and a ballet dancer hoping to impress a gentleman in one of the finer opera boxes would trade for the gloves, offering a fur coat another suitor had once left behind, and who in Petersburg didn’t know someone in need of a good fur? It was a quick-moving business that paid Marya’s keep, and if Alevtina Vladimirovna raised a thinly penciled eyebrow at one or two of the more brazen wares she tried to pawn, well, at least the proprietress rarely questioned an object’s provenance if she could make it turn a profit.

It was a way of evening the stakes, she told herself. Connecting the dispossessed with the resources they needed to live. And there were worse ways to make a living. The Tverskys insisted she could stay with them for free, that her contribution to the Koalitsiya’s political activities was enough, but pride was a fierce animal, and it had to be sated somehow.

“How much?” Marya said, as Alevtina turned the watch over and back in her hands.

The pawnbroker brought the watch to her ear, listening for the steady heartbeat of a tick. Marya knew it sounded regularly—the fop had taken fastidious care of his possessions, though he’d failed to keep a careful eye on them when it mattered. “I can give you a hundred for this,” Alevtina said, “and for the rest, eighty together?”

“You’ll give me two hundred and fifty for the lot, or I’ll take it elsewhere,” Marya said.

She reached for the watch, but Alevtina snatched it away like a dog guarding a bone. Marya smirked.

“I’m already giving you a better price because I like you,” the pawnbroker said. “Learn to settle for good enough.”

“I’m asking what it’s worth, and you know it,” Marya replied. “Two hundred fifty or I walk.”

Alevtina sighed, then took a long swig of her rapidly cooling tea. “Two hundred ten. It’s the best I can do.”

“Done,” Marya said. It wasn’t worth that—Alevtina was right, the original offer had been generous—but the only way you kept your head above water in this world was by knowing how to drive a hard bargain. After so long working this connection, she knew exactly how far she could afford to push.

She passed the remainder of her items across the counter, and Alevtina whisked them away as fast as a conjurer. Her hands slowed considerably in the act of counting out the money. Marya watched each banknote as Alevtina extracted them from her clip, feeling their value like a physical weight at the base of her ribs. It was good for a week’s take. Enough to make up for the slow week that had come before and to take some of the pressure off the week to come. But the deal wouldn’t be over until the door had closed behind her.

“While I have you,” Alevtina said, as she laid the last of the banknotes on the dirty counter. “There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

Marya snatched up the money and tucked it into the pocket of her coat before Alevtina could change her mind. “If Nikolai still wants someone to nick the brass globe from Baranovsky’s shop window,” she said wearily, “I’ve told you both, I’m not in that business anymore, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation.”

“Not that.” Alevtina clicked her tongue, then took an object from beneath the counter, wrapped in creased paper. “This.”

The object, divested of its paper, proved to be a beautiful sphere-shaped snuffbox with the imperial double eagle etched across the lid. Marya suppressed the urge to whistle. Had Alevtina found a supplier with a direct connection to the palace? Their working relationship was strong, but if a disillusioned footman had taken to pocketing odds and ends from the Winter Palace, Marya’s usefulness in Alevtina’s eyes would quickly lose its luster.

Alevtina, however, took the snuffbox back and replaced it under the counter, then pushed the wrapping paper across the counter toward Marya.

She recognized it instantly. It was one of the copies of the pamphlet they’d made at the printer’s, before the Semyonovsky Regiment sent them scrambling. It was true, what Irina said: you couldn’t count on anyone for anything in this life, but you could count on salacious news to spread, and Alevtina Vladimirovna would always be quick to lay hands on a piece of information that could benefit her. Marya read slowly and with difficulty, but they’d taken care to make this paper shout its opinions to the world, and the words leapt out at her now in the dim shop. Your work sustains this city, but you receive nothing in return. Make yourself heard. Strike, and demand what every citizen deserves. Wages. Safety. Bread. A choice.

“I don’t suppose that fancy-talking man who isn’t your husband has anything to do with this,” Alevtina said, tapping one square fingertip against the word strike.

“As Isaak isn’t my husband,” Marya said airily, “I wouldn’t know. Why? Does it interest you?”

Alevtina clicked her tongue, but her dark brown eyes glinted. “You know me, Masha. Anything with a potential for profit interests me.”

It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either, and by now Marya knew whom she could trust. Marya was one of Alevtina’s best runners. She wouldn’t hand Marya over to the soldiers, no matter what reformist tendencies she suspected her of. There was too much money to be made in looking the other way. And she wouldn’t have asked if the notion hadn’t appealed to her. A pawnbroker knew better than most the lengths working people were driven to in the city to stay alive.

“It isn’t the first I’ve heard about this striking business, either,” Alevtina added, creasing the paper neatly down the middle.

Marya’s heart didn’t stop so much as trip on its way from one beat to the next. “You know this city loves its gossip,” she said lightly. “Can’t believe half of what you hear. Some people will accuse their neighbors of anything to make themselves look loyal to the tsar.”

“At ease, Masha,” Alevtina said. “I get all sorts here. Former soldiers, mostly, and those fellows who were professors before the war shut down the university. Two groups that can’t keep secrets, as you well know.”

She sighed. Ilya, no doubt. And she’d wager fifty of her new-earned rubles that at least one of the professors had been Pyotr Stepanovich, a well-meaning middle-aged philosopher who dealt out rumors like they’d burn his palms if he held on to them too long. She’d have words with Petrushka next time he turned up at a meeting, that much was certain. Pointed words about the value of discretion.

“Enough to make you wonder why we tell men anything of importance,” Marya said. She had already begun to do up the buttons of her coat, signaling with each flick of her wrist that the conversation was drawing to a close. “But if you wanted to get a clearer picture of the situation, I’ve heard the fellow who printed up those pamphlets will be speaking on Vasilevsky Island on Friday evening. Ten o’clock. Kadetskaya Liniya, the old university hall. If you think you might see profit in what he has to say.”

Alevtina narrowed her eyes. “Do you?”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” Marya said breezily. “You’re the one with the eye for what things are worth.”

As she left the shop, the bell above the door tinged merrily. A good omen, she hoped.

The sunrise was beginning to crest the rooftops of Petersburg as Marya crossed Sadovaya Street and made her way back west toward the Neva. She rubbed her hands together, relishing the resulting warmth even through her gloves. More than two hundred rubles, and another body at Isaak’s rally on Friday to boot, plus all the people the well-connected—and, more importantly, cautious—Alevtina Vladimirovna might bring with her. It wasn’t at all bad for a morning’s work. Still, the unchecked spread of what she’d considered privileged information would have to be addressed. The Koalitsiya might have achieved its aims in a week if it really was the united coalition its name suggested, rather than a ragtag collection of people who, apparently, couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut. Passing an invitation to Alevtina was all very well, but it only took one poor judgment of character for everything to collapse.

Marya wove her way back through the increasingly crowded streets. Shopkeepers and servants were setting about the true business of the morning, and more than one messenger skidded on slick streets in their haste to pass a letter from one count or prince to the next. Illicit trysts were planned, business dealings argued over, family quarrels escalated to the point of duels at dawn. In a way, the messengers carried the lifeblood of the city in their pockets, hidden in folded and sealed letters they themselves would never read.

In another, much more real way, the lifeblood of the city hummed through Marya’s veins, and through the ink of the pamphlet now hidden beneath Alevtina Vladimirovna’s counter.

Bolstered by her success, Marya tilted her head back and admired the pale gray of the morning sky. Overhead, the clouds shifted in the wake of an easterly breeze off the harbor, alluding to snow more than threatening it. Far off, Marya could see the brilliant white of some great creature—an osprey, perhaps, or an owl, with a majestic wingspan, each feather catching the light of dawn as if they’d positioned themselves perfectly to do so. An incomparable hunter, giving the city one final salute before retreating to her darkness to wait out the day. Marya felt the urge to salute.

Instead, she jammed her hands in her pockets, feeling the reassuring crunch of banknotes against her fingers. The day was young, and there were more deals to be struck before she was through.