Sasha
The next evening, Sasha stood motionless in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, waiting for a blessing he wasn’t sure would ever come. Heavy incense filled the church, dulling his nose and the edges of his vision. The press of people standing around him on every side made the room even warmer, their voices rising and blending into the same chant. He bowed his head, unwilling to face the icons looking down on him. He’d thought the blessing of a priest would give him courage for what would come next, but instead his presence felt like a cruel joke, a hypocrite flaunting his sin in the face of God. The church wouldn’t have knowingly invited a Judas to pray among its congregation, but apparently it would allow one to stand and mouth the words, so long as no one made too many inquiries.
He’d already decided what to do. God should have blessed him for it. He was only doing what was right. But standing here beneath this grand icon of an aureole-crowned Christ, God felt impossibly far away.
The movements of the liturgy were as preordained as a military exercise. The end of one prayer transitioned seamlessly into the beginning of the next, carrying Sasha along in its current. His muscles remembered how to worship, the ache of standing for hours to praise and repent, each word as familiar as his own name. It wasn’t comfort, not the way he’d hoped it would be, but it was closer to calm than he would have found alone in the city, or in the halls of the palace.
“Monsieur,” a man whispered beside him.
Sasha flinched. The man had kept his voice low enough, but the word still felt painfully loud, and in it Sasha heard the unmistakable ring of pity.
“I’m fine,” he said, refusing to look.
At the stranger’s quiet exhale, Sasha knew his lie hadn’t been believed. “Monsieur, please, you look awful, may I—”
“It’s nothing,” Sasha said, louder than he’d meant to.
A woman standing in front of him, whose headdress indicated she’d skimmed the portion of the Sermon on the Mount extolling poverty, turned to glare at the two men behind her. Sasha bowed his head in what he hoped resembled either reverence or apology until he was certain she’d ceased glowering. The man pointedly faced the altar again, plainly regretting his impulse to offer comfort in a house of God.
The priest’s prayer was traditional for the season, but the words passed through Sasha’s ears without leaving any meaning behind, as if he’d never heard the language before. He needed God to listen to him now more than ever, but church-sanctioned prayers had no words for the kind of help he needed. Sasha kept his head low, letting his own thoughts drown out the service.
Please, God, forgive me. Forgive me for what I’ve done, and for what I’m about to do.
As his prayer blended with the soft, swaying rhythm of the cantor, the words took on the power of a refrain, blunted by the cloud of incense. Sasha felt bathed in gold, singled out and terribly seen. The icons around the church seemed to glitter with meaning as he amended the prayer with an earnestness that made him tremble.
And please God, let Felix forgive me, too.
It was late by the time Sasha left the cathedral. Not even the most dedicated soldier would have faulted him for retreating from Our Lady of Kazan to the quarters Anatoli had designated for his use at the Winter Palace. The night cut sharp this time of year, and even someone twice as dangerous as the leader of the Koalitsiya would have gone to ground long ago, secreted in whatever warm den he’d chosen to hide in until morning. Sasha could sleep and know the chase would still wait for him when he woke. But sleep was a thousand miles off tonight. Felix had given him a piece of information, and every hour in which he hadn’t used it was another hour he’d have to live with the awful, haunting doubt of whether he should. Better certainty than anticipation. Better action than thought.
The narrow Catherine Canal wasn’t far from the cathedral, and Sasha adjusted his path to follow its frozen length. He felt like a child again, so close to the water. Back then, he’d wasted endless afternoons dreaming of stowing away aboard a merchant ship and sailing as far from the city as he could get, toward whatever destiny the stars had fixed for him. And what a destiny it had turned out to be. Far into the wilds of Russia, and into the service of none other than the tsar, only to find himself almost within view of his childhood home, preparing to drive a knife into the back of the man he loved.
Preparing to save him, he told himself firmly. To serve the tsar and put an end to this, one way or another.
By the time Sasha crossed the frozen Fontanka toward Liteyny Prospekt, he had left the unease of the cathedral behind him. No time for qualms or second-guessing now. This, action, was where he thrived. Sidestepping a rushed-looking man barreling toward him in the opposite direction, Sasha ducked down an unremarkable side street, then spotted his destination ahead. He didn’t know this part of the city well, but a few pointed questions to the more loquacious members of the Semyonovsky Regiment had given him enough to feel confident in his bearings. The printer’s shop sat exactly where he’d been told it would, a narrow building that looked as if it were being squeezed by the two statelier shops on either side. Curtains had been drawn against the front window, but Sasha could see the line of golden light beneath, and now and again the shadow of someone moving behind them—fast, but not secretive. This was the last-minute flurry of activity before packing up for the day, the burst of energy that came from the knowledge that in twenty minutes you’d be sitting in front of your own stove with your feet toward your own fire.
When Sasha entered the shop, the man in the heavy leather apron set down a tray of type and scowled at him. Small wonder: this wasn’t the sort of business where a stranger often had an urgent order late at night. Sasha had borrowed civilian clothing from the Winter Palace, a bland black greatcoat that concealed his identity as a soldier, but only so much could be done to make him look approachable. Still, Sasha knew the value of putting up a convincing front. One didn’t grow up poor in Petersburg without knowing how to manipulate others to get what you wanted. As he threaded his way around the high shelves and past the ink-stained press, he took care to keep his air deferential, his shoulders hunched and his hands out of his pockets, well away from his pistol. He doubted the printer spent his time actively plotting among violent traitors. More than likely, he neither knew nor cared to know how his employee spent his time when not setting type at the shop. Even so, it never hurt to be cautious. No reason to create a scene before one was warranted.
“We’re near closed for the evening,” said the printer brusquely. “Unless your business is quick and to the point, you might do better to come back in the morning.”
“Forgive me,” Sasha said. “I don’t mean to keep you. I only wanted a word with Isaak, if he’s finished for the evening.”
Sasha had only a first name to go by, but the printer’s expression—as he’d hoped it would—lost the edge of its suspicion. Still not happy, precisely, but no longer afraid. Apparently visitors who looked at least as disreputable as Sasha often came creeping through this way after dark, on the hunt for a few words with the printer’s assistant.
“Tversky!” the printer shouted. Turning back to Sasha, he shook his head, bitter and amused at once. “My God, that man. Does he send one of his friends around every night at this hour to make sure I can’t ask him to stay late?”
“I finish exactly what you ask of me, Kyril, and you know it,” said a man who could only have been Isaak, emerging from behind a towering shelf of manuscripts. “If you want more dedication from me, pay me for it.” A thin, dark man with a shadow of a beard, his eyes flashing even when defending his reputation against this petty slight. There was nothing remarkable about his face, but Sasha knew at once this was the man he was after. He’d seen agitators and turncoats at the front: the kind of men General Dokhturov had pulled from camp and shot like dogs before their dangerous words turned more of the regiment against the tsar’s cause. There’d been wildfire in those men’s eyes, too.
Isaak leaned against the shelf, sizing up Sasha with a sweep of his eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”
“No,” Sasha said. He glanced toward the door, feeling more than ever like an amateur actor. But he didn’t have to believe his own performance. All that mattered was that Isaak did. “Not yet. But we do have a mutual friend.”
“Oh?”
“Sofia told me I should talk to you.”
The name tasted like ash in his mouth, but its effect was immediate. Isaak no longer leaned lazily against the shelf. All the power of his attention was fixed firmly on Sasha, the focus of a saint or a marksman. No doubt Isaak was armed, but that didn’t worry Sasha. He was the best shot in his regiment; he was more than confident he could outdraw a printer’s assistant if it came to that.
“Right,” Isaak said, reaching for the gray overcoat he’d thrown at some point atop the shelf. “Kyril, everything should be in order in the back. If it’s not, shout at me in the morning. My friend and I have something to discuss.”
And there it was. Easy as breathing. Maybe Sasha had been wasted as a career soldier. If he’d ever taken the time to teach himself proper French, General Kutuzov could have sent him behind enemy lines to play the spy, and Sasha could have lured Napoleon himself unarmed and alone into a back alley somewhere. How much faster that might have ended it all. The bell above the shop door tinkled as he held it open for Isaak, following behind him into the street.
Over on Liteyny Prospekt, glass lamps blazed on posts at regular intervals, casting a reassuring glow on any well-to-do passerby after nightfall. But here, even one street over from the main thoroughfare, Sasha’s own shadow blended seamlessly into the darkness. He had never felt so invisible, and seldom so powerful. A few scattered candles glowed through the windows surrounding him and Isaak, but the reach of their light failed before long, leaving them isolated like pinpricks in the dark.
“Sonya didn’t tell me to expect you,” Isaak said. Not entirely off guard, then—the hand in his coat pocket almost certainly held a pistol.
“No,” Sasha said, “I don’t think she was certain I’d follow through. Another man would be offended by how little she seems to think I’m capable of.”
Isaak laughed. “As far as I can tell, Sofia’s very good at pretending to be haughty and unimpressed when it suits her. Now, what is it you wanted to ask me?”
A cold, sparkling thrill danced through Sasha as they walked. This was the energy of the hunt, the pure clarity that came at the moment of action. This was one inch closer to Sofia. To the task he had sworn himself to, and would carry out no matter what.
I’m sorry, Felix, he thought, driving the butt of his pistol into the man’s temple.
Isaak groaned and crumpled to the street. An ugly red mark already rose on his face, one that would darken to a vicious bruise within minutes. One knee on the man’s back keeping him pinned to the street, Sasha dove a hand into Isaak’s coat pockets: first one, then the next. Nothing but a few kopeks and a small metal square in the left pocket—a piece of type from the printing press, a curious trinket to steal. In the other pocket, he found the pistol he’d known would be there and confiscated it.
“Isaak Tversky,” Sasha said.
The man tried to writhe out of Sasha’s hold, but the chill pressure of Sasha’s gun against the nape of his neck was enough to still him.
“You are under arrest for your role as organizer and chief agitator of the treasonous collective known as the Koalitsiya,” Sasha went on, though against Isaak’s silence it felt as though he were delivering the charges to himself. “And you are charged with harboring two dangerous fugitives wanted by His Imperial Majesty Tsar Sergei: Sofia Azarova and Grand Duke Felix Sergeevich. You will be brought to the Trubetskoy Bastion for further questioning, at which point your sentence will be determined. Cooperation will serve you well. Stubbornness will not. Am I clear?”
Isaak said nothing. If Sasha couldn’t feel the soft rise and fall of the man’s breath under his knee, he’d have thought the rebel was dead. When Sasha pulled him to his feet, Isaak swayed a little, unbalanced from the blow to the head, but maintained his silence. Even with the trail of blood now trickling down his temple, the fire in his eyes had not faded.
Sasha gritted his teeth and steered Isaak away from the shop, one hand grasping the man’s collar, the other keeping his gun against Isaak’s spine. As he passed the nearest darkened window, he could see both of their silhouettes, cast in the golden light of a distant candle glittering behind. He watched himself shove Isaak forward, barely breathing. Perhaps the figure in the window was the real Aleksandr Nikolaevich and he the reflection, in this world where everything had been inverted and reversed.
You’re doing the right thing, he told himself, pushing Isaak northward. As if waiting for the cue, a soft snow began to fall. When his breath fogged in front of him, it hovered there like incense.