“I don’t believe in prophecies.”
“I don’t either, but a lot of people do, and that’s what gives them power. An old crone, honored for her predictions, pointed to the three of us brothers at a party soon after Kiro was born. She said that we brothers together were unbeatable. ‘You boys. Together you rule…you boys, you three boys.’ Aleksio thinks it was part of why Lazarus and Mira’s father went after us.”
Out the corner of my eye I catch her focusing on the box where the rest of the cake still waits. Two more pieces.
I try not to smile. “There’s more.”
“I do not think I want it.”
I wave my hand. “Feed it to the gulls, then.”
She folds her hands in her lap. Oh, she wants the cake. “Your enemies want to keep you from reuniting?”
The old Tanechka would not ask such an obvious question.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s why we have to find Kiro before anybody else can—especially Bloody Lazarus. He needs to prevent the brothers from being together.”
“He believes in the prophecy?”
“I don’t know. But within…our community, it would be an immense psychological advantage for us to bring Kiro back. The three brothers united would command the hearts and minds of people because of that prophecy. But if he kills one of us, it’ll make him stronger. People will more readily follow him. It’s not so easy to kill me or Aleksio. But Kiro is out there unaware. Lost.”
I sit up and put another piece on her plate, then I gaze out at a distant freighter, allowing her privacy. She very much wants that cake.
I tell her about Kiro, how he might be a wild boy. I tell her about the joy I felt when Aleksio showed up at a garage in Moscow. Tanechka would have been every bit as happy for me as Yuri was, seeing that I had a brother. She would’ve jumped into my arms, and the three of us would have gone out and torn up the town.
Now she just listens.
She reaches out and pulls a bit of spongy cake from the edge. My heart lifts. But then she throws it. Gulls fly over. One takes it and flies off. She throws out the rest, bit by bit, feeding the gulls. This, too, is so Tanechka. She will not be managed.
Chapter Ten
Tanechka
The gulls finally leave. I lie back, staring at the sky that is such a beautiful blue. “Just the color is so beautiful, it makes me feel dizzy. As if the color is alive,” I say.
He says nothing. I can’t tell whether he’s happy or sad. So often he seems to have both emotions flowing through him. Never have I met a man so volatile. Then again, I have not met so many men.
That I remember, anyway.
He stares at the lake, arms planted behind him, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms wild with sinew and muscle.
If he is to be believed, I once loved him. We had sex together.
Thick, thick fingers spread out on the picnic blanket.
If he is to be believed, it means he once touched me everywhere with those fingers. I can’t imagine what it would be like, to allow him to touch me with those thick fingers. To have him put himself inside me.
Sometimes his gaze is invasive, seeing too much. Other times it has weight and warmth. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with such a gaze upon my naked body.
He turns to me as if he senses the direction of my thoughts. “What are you thinking, Tanechka?”
“Many things.”
“I wish I could take all of the pain you felt. I would die ten times over to spare you from what you went through. The pain. The fear. I would do anything—”
“I wouldn’t want you to take it away. What happened was a gift,” I say. “The best thing.”
He grits his teeth and looks away. He doesn’t agree that it was a gift.
He has four guards following us, keeping watch on me. I saw two when we got out of the car. Two more later. Three are on the road behind us. One lingers near the shuttered snack stand some distance away. I am just one woman.
Perhaps he’s right to have four on me. I get many ideas about escaping, seemingly out of nowhere, like a hidden helper passing me a note. I often picture the floor plan of the flat he has me trapped in as a diagram in my mind. The idea of the roof has come to me several times. The row of homes is so tightly packed, the roof will be like a highway. This way of thinking feels like a well-worn path.
He wants to read the poetry to me.
I tell him I don’t want to hear it.
This upsets him—he’s gets upset very easily, this one—but I don’t like the way he knows things about me that I don’t know. Like the honey cake. The orehi. The fizzy water—favorites of mine from the past. This is not a fair playing field.
He wants to play music instead, but I will not have it—not after what he told me about my love of American rock and roll.
He reaches into the basket and pulls out a block with squares of color on it. He hands it to me, and instinctively I begin to turn the parts this way and that, knowing it is wrong and that it must be made right.