How well Evgeni knew that feeling, even without the added threat. When he blinked, darkness bombarded him. A darkness filled with all he should be doing, all he’d failed to do. The man cloaked in shadow in France. The train, twisted and prone. The hospital, where he’d realized he’d lost everything.
Everything.
Zivon. Gone. Where had he gone? Was he alive? He had to be. He’d had his passport in his pocket, as always, so if he’d been killed, the queries Evgeni had put out would have yielded an answer.
He winced at another dark image—the expression on the face of his host. Paul was a fellow Russian, but he’d made it clear from the start that he wasn’t helping Evgeni from any real feeling of camaraderie. He was helping solely because their mutual friends expected it.
Or mutual friend, anyway. He pressed a hand to his pocket, where the telegram rested. Nadya. Just thinking of her name called to mind the riot of gold curls, the deadly flash of her dark eyes. The way her arms wrapped around him when they kissed. He ought to be sorry she was coming—that she needed to. That he’d managed to fail so spectacularly. But he couldn’t ever be sorry to see her.
He’d only known her a year, but it was enough to admire every single thing about her. She was not one of those girls who thought her sole purpose in the world was to marry and have enough babies to guarantee a few would survive the harsh Russian life. Who waited at home in a village of dirt and snow while her man fought and died on the front.
No. Nadya had been on the front too, a rifle in her hand and a look on her face that had no doubt terrified any Central Power soldier who got in the way of the First Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. They’d served alongside each other during the Kerensky Offensive near Smorgon. He’d seen firsthand her ferocity. Her strength. And yes, the beauty that peeked out beneath the mud and gunpowder.
He could think of no one in the world he’d rather fight beside.
Matushka wouldn’t have liked her. His mother had been a staunch believer in tradition, in the old ways, in the certainty that faith and family were the only things worthwhile. Zivon had gotten that from her. But Evgeni was more like Batya. He’d seen enough to know that sometimes the old ways only led to death, starvation, and the obliteration of the very way of life they were supposed to be upholding. Sometimes the czar who was supposed to be leading them went into hiding instead of trying to help his people. Sometimes the war that was supposed to end an atrocity just made a dozen new ones.
Sometimes tradition led to death—and so tradition had to die.
He settled back on the bench, eyes tracing the sidewalks. It wasn’t their Good Friday, but knowing his brother, Zivon would attend a Mass today anyway. If he was in Paris, as he surely was, then he’d be in this neighborhood, the one they’d agreed to meet up in. He’d have found a cheap little room, and a neighbor would have invited him to join him at the local parish. Zivon, always happy for a little more religious activity, would have accepted.
Evgeni had never understood it. How could his brother not see how archaic religion was? How it tried to force outdated traditions onto a humanity that had outgrown it? He’d never understood it, but he appreciated it now. It made Zivon predictable, and that was exactly what he needed in order to find him.
His eyes passed over the parishioners aimed for the church to the street corner beyond. His next stop—if he didn’t find Zivon here at the Church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais—would be the bookshop a few streets over. It would have been Evgeni’s first stop, had it not been farther from the métro. But he’d come upon the church first, and the bench had beckoned, and his ribs had been screaming, so . . . If Zivon had left him a note there, then another half hour would not change its presence. And if he could just find his brother directly, that would be better.
Find your brother. He hadn’t needed the instruction from Nadya to know that was the most important thing he could do, now that he was out of hospital. Find Zivon. Hope he had possession of Evgeni’s belongings, including the photograph the Prussian had pressed to his hand at the water stop. Keep his brother from doing anything stupid.
Why hadn’t Zivon just left on his own? Why had he stopped first to locate Evgeni and convince him to flee as well? A breeze blew, and he turned his face into it, but it couldn’t wipe away the frustration. Zivon could never just trust him, leave him to his own devices. He always had to play the big brother, telling Evgeni where to go, what to do, how to think.
Never listening. Never entertaining the notion that he could be wrong.
But it didn’t matter, did it?
The church door swung outward, a black-frocked priest pushing the massive wooden slab wide in invitation. It was a lovely spring day; it seemed he’d decided to prop it open. And just in time too. When the father looked up, it was with a hand lifted in greeting to a couple walking his way.
Parishioners, obviously, as they turned up the stairs and soon vanished into the building. A moment later, more people joined them. Evgeni sat up straighter, casting his glance down the street first one way, then the other. Watching for that familiar stride—the one Zivon would never call graceful, but which was. It came of all the running he did, or at least that was Evgeni’s theory. When one loped mile after mile like an animal of the steppe, one’s walk was even, smooth, and strong.
What hat had he been wearing on the train? Would he still have it, or would he have gotten another here in Paris? What of his coat? It had been his heavy one—too heavy for a Paris springtime, but it had still been cold in Russia when they left. Would he have exchanged that too?
Evgeni leaned forward, resting his forearms on his legs to provide a bit of reprieve to his ribs. It didn’t matter whether he’d recognize his brother’s clothes. He’d recognize his brother. Anywhere, in any crowd, from any distance.
And his brother was not among the hundreds of people who filed into the church. Evgeni let out a huff of defeat as a woman trotted briskly up the steps with a toddler in her arms, clearly thinking she was late—as she probably was.
But Zivon was never late. Never. Not to anything, but especially not to a church service. All of Matushka’s teachings over the years about showing the Lord the reverence and respect He was due guaranteed that.
Well. To the bookshop, then. It ought to be open still, since the owner was Jewish. He wouldn’t close for the Christian holiday, though it was a Friday, so Evgeni had better get back on his feet to be sure he made it there before sundown.
He pushed himself up, his mind racing ahead. He would find Zivon. See what of Evgeni’s possessions he had—hopefully the entirety of the bag he’d been clutching when the train derailed. And then he’d have to find anything that was missing. Preferably before Nadya arrived.
Mentally cursing the weeks he’d lost to the injuries, Evgeni took a deep breath. A strange noise made his every muscle freeze, tense. He was only vaguely aware of the shadow that passed him overhead. He hadn’t time to think about what it might be—too large for a bird, moving far too quickly to be an airplane—before it blasted into the church across the street.
Instinct had him diving for cover under the bench, though it did little to shield him from the dust and debris. The ground shook under him, and a blast of something swept over him, making his injured bones feel like they might rip apart. But worse—far worse—was the sound. An earsplitting pounding of noise and then a moment of utter silence that stretched into eternity.