I push him off me and plant a knee in his back. I release the trigger on the drill and the tension of the chain across his neck relaxes. The bedspread is smeared with rusty stripes of blood from his torn scalp. I wait until he draws a scraping breath.
Oleg whimpers, spitting and retching. Bright droplets of blood are welling out of his scalp. A white froth scabs his lips.
The Ukrainian is alive but confused.
Urgently, I hobble toward the door and push it open. Pausing in the doorway, I press my forehead against the cool doorframe. I can hear every ragged breath Oleg takes, as he lies in a heap on the bed.
“What are you doing, Oleg?” I ask, my voice echoing flatly against the concrete block walls. “What do you want with a relic?”
The man is crying, face pressed into the comforter.
“They are dying,” he says, voice muffled. “The long-lived ones will do anything to survive. They control everything. They know everything.”
I hear police sirens outside and look to the phone. The receiver is still lying next to the cradle. I hear the screech of brakes on pavement.
“You tried to kill me,” I say.
Oleg rolls off the bed and onto his knees. He looks up at me, hair wild, blood smeared on his face. Blue and red flashes of light from police cars outside roll off his gray skin. His hands are clasped together, as if he is praying.
“I tried to protect you,” he says. “You learned their name.”
“Whose name?” I ask.
“You should run from here. They are coming.”
“Who!? Who is coming, Oleg!?”
“Miss June,” he says, tears in his eyes. “It’s the avtomat.”
8
MOSCOW, 1713
In the darkness of Favo’s laboratory, my sister and I join each other in study. Tutors from the far reaches of the world stand beyond our locked door. We learn the languages and religions of Europe and Asia by candlelight. And as Elena and I learn more, we speak more. Every evening, our minds are filled with knowledge of the greater world.
And at dawn each day, we train our bodies.
Elena has learned to cloak herself in cosmetics and clothing, transforming her appearance nearly at will with the use of soot and pigment. I am taught the ways of warfare: saber, lance, and musket. The lessons are hard and cold. Once a week, I don my armored cuirass and crouch and crawl over the rough stone of an underground passage to the palace dungeon.
In this deep place, there is a circular room with sheer stone walls that stretch up to the bright gray, predawn sky. It is an oubliette, a nearly featureless pit with two wooden doors. On the blood-soaked stone, my growing skills are set against those of silent opponents who have been plucked from the black cells on the lowest levels. These doomed criminals shiver, breath pluming in the cold as they stalk in circles, blades glinting. Promised freedom, my opponents fight like animals.
The fights are fair, within pravda, and I am annihilation.
Months after my awakening, Favorini perfects a pliable wax substance that can be painted to look like skin. It is easier for me to move among humans with some semblance of a man’s face, my features hidden in a beard and mustache. The girl must wear a hood, claiming modesty and keeping her angelic face hidden from the probing stares of humankind. Both of us are forced to practice using our faces and voices to express emotion, to inflate our lungs to give the imitation of breath, and to exercise the empty camouflage of eating and drinking.
Even masked in faces, we are never sent to the surface in daylight.
Instead, Elena and I spend long midnights walking the ice-kissed courtyards of the Kremlin, our footsteps echoing up to the many pointed domes of the palace towers. Our presence is known only to the merchants, who open early-morning stalls in the Red Square, and the many guards who follow us at a distance. We do not speak to others, and are known only as the tall man and his daughter—a pair of moonlit shades in constant motion and discussion.
During these years, a great new city is being built—a metropolis to rival any of those in Europe. The tsar has conscripted tens of thousands of serfs to build it. Stone and timber are being hauled from all corners of the empire to an icy, disease-infested marsh at the head of the Neva River. We overhear rumors of waters choked with the bodies of fallen workers, and a new capital rising—Saint Petersburg, the city built upon bones.
Favorini has informed us that it is to be our new home.
“There have been more raids on the builders in Petersburg,” says Elena. “The tsar is gathering forces to repel them. Do you think he will conscript you into the imperial army?”
This is our last morning together in Moscow. We march for the new city in hours.
“Yes,” I say.
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” I say.
Elena peers up at me from beneath her hood. Black ringlets curl over the ceramic contours of her face. Favo has improved her appearance since I first saw her cheek, a fiery crescent in the darkness. From a distance, she looks cherubic—a little girl with smooth skin and small bright teeth. Up close, I can see her hands are still hard, tiny gauntlets made of fine china.
“What if you are hurt?” she asks. “What if you die?”
I shrug. These thoughts stir nothing inside me.
“You think only of yourself,” she says. “If you are gone, I will be alone. Who will I talk to?”
“A human, perhaps,” I respond.
“Favo? He is growing old. His wrinkles grow deeper every week. And besides, he is only a man. We are avtomat.”
I am silent. She stares defiantly up at my face, eyes challenging me.
“I have no one else,” she says. “You have no one else.”
Elena is small beside me. She is in no way a child, but she is vulnerable.
“I promise to look after you, Sister,” I say. “Always.”
“Good,” she says, crossing her arms as if she feels the cold.
We have grown used to this place, even if only under the light of the moon. It is strange to be leaving it, when it is all I have ever known.
“It must be nice to have such strength,” says Elena. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”
I think about the question, allowing this notion of fear to fall through the tumblers of my mind. Around us, morning birds call to one another from trees that trace their limbs like black veins over the morning sky.
“Dishonor,” I respond. “I fear the pain of breaking my Word.”
“Always pravda,” she says.
I put a hand on her arm.
“That is my soul you speak of.”
She shrugs off my hand, standing.
“Very well,” she says. “But I am glad to obey logicka.”
She walks away toward the palace, glancing back.
“To think, I could have ended up as irrational as you.”
I watch Elena cross the cobblestones on little buckled shoes. Her body is buried inside a fur-lined cloak, skinny legs hidden under layers of a silken silver dress. Flecks of snow glitter in her black curls and do not melt.