Marya

A week after the protest in Palace Square that had spiraled into a riot leaving forty-three dead, an event already being called Red Monday, the streets were clear of all evidence. The very next day, bodies had been removed from the snow where they had fallen, the tracks of booted feet and shod horses smoothed over, as if the carnage had never been. Several buildings still bore the scars of the violence, their shattered windows boarded over, their jewel-toned paint smeared with ash, but these, too, would be mended before long. Petersburg was too vain to allow such a crack in its countenance to linger. Even the Winter Palace, which had sustained the worst of the damage, had begun to emerge from its own ashes. Workers toiled night and day at the restoration, awkward scaffolding rising around it like the wreck of some great ship, the sound of hammers falling at all hours. Tsar Anatoli would spare no expense, financial or human, to restore what had been taken from him, making the seat of his empire even finer than before.

In two months, in three, it would look as if the Koalitsiya had never existed at all. As if the people’s march on the Winter Palace had been some mad dream. The same imperial family would still move through the same stately rituals it always had, splendidly dressed automatons passing from state dinner to ball to council meeting, bowing and glittering in the light.

But as Marya stood at the edge of Palace Square and watched the workmen’s hammers swing and descend, she knew the effects of the Koalitsiya’s work would last long after its physical traces were gone.

She folded her arms, hugging her overcoat tighter to her. It was winter still, and would be for weeks more, but the air already carried a hint of something milder. If Marya closed her eyes, she could imagine that the evening would be dotted with fireflies, crowned by the scent of lilacs.

Isaak and Irina were both dead. So was Tsar Sergei. Neither Marya nor the new tsar in this charred, wounded palace would soon forget that.

Marya closed her eyes, and in time with the strikes and clangs of the palace in the early stages of its resurrection, she began to hum. Tsar Anatoli had been unyielding in his retribution after Red Monday, and anyone even suspected of taking part in the day’s events could expect the swiftest, severest punishment. But as she let the song that filled her mind escape into the air, it never occurred to her to be afraid. It was an old song, and a familiar one. And daring to think of it at such a time made her feel newly alive.

How glorious our Lord is on Zion, no tongue can explain.

The longer she hummed, the more she knew: this music had never belonged indoors, confined to formal state occasions and patriotic pomp. It belonged here, in the square, to the sound of hammers and the call of voices. Here it could expand until the hymn started to thrum with the power of an exhalation, a folk tune ancient as the country itself, the wild dances Marya had known in her youth. She could see it even there in the open street: the fire they’d stoke in the stove in the corner, their elderly neighbors watching and clapping from the sides of the room as Marya’s father took up his violin and whipped the crowd into a dance, and the feet of a dozen men and women kicked up clouds of dust in a flurry of laughter.

It sounded like freedom. And freedom was the kind of song that carried.

Petersburg’s memory was longer than the Komarovs gave it credit for. The tsar and the tsarina would paint over any footprint the Koalitsiya had left behind, but the indentations would be there still, just a layer of frost away. Perhaps it had not been their time now. Perhaps the ground had been too frozen for seeds to thrive. But their sacrifice was not for nothing if it tilled the soil and opened space for new roots.

Every fire left room for new growth.

It was not for nothing. It was for the future. Someone else, years from now, might remember that a group of people before them had given their lives for the question of freedom, and that thoughtful citizen with the long memory might turn from the past toward the future, and set themselves the task of finding a better answer.

The last notes of the song drifting away under the endless rhythm of the workmen, Marya sighed and turned in the direction of the harbor. A woman stood at the end of the street, watching her in return.

Frost-colored hair against a black fur-lined coat, more striking than the most expensive gown. Eyes that glittered like a promise. Eyes that had always known her, and always would, better than she would ever know herself. Lips bending into a smile that contained impossible promises of power.

Marya blinked, and the street was empty. Only milling workmen and tight-packed snow, the usual backdrop of the city.

Though more than a mile still separated her from the frozen harbor, Marya imagined she could smell the salt sea nevertheless, hear the cry of a gull. Spring whispered in the air. Soon enough, the ice would melt, and the ships would drift back to Petersburg, their masts weaving through the waves like a forest on the move. Soon, traders would wend their paths across the Gulf, weary birds perching on their broad masts. There would be room on one of those ships for a woman traveling alone.

No one would remember Marya Ivanovna’s face in Petersburg. No one would ask questions about a woman looking to leave the city in the aftermath of tragedy, searching for a quieter life somewhere to the south, in Riga. Somewhere a familiar face waited, and might be persuaded to forgive.

She would find Lena. She would try again.

Let the dead bury the dead—life was here beneath the sky, and with all the defiance she had, she would have to live it.

With one last look at the palace, Marya turned away and disappeared into the tangle of streets beyond the square. Behind her, the sound of hammers drifted like the chimes of church bells. The peal of a city both mourning and proclaiming victory. Wounded, but not finished.

Waiting.