“The tsar is a good man,” Lucy said. (All of a sudden, she was on fire.) “Of course he would. Eli helped keep him alive.”
I was sensing a division of opinion in the Savarov household. Not too surprising.
“Then why haven’t you told him?” I said.
There was a long moment of silence while they all looked at me like I was an armadillo—something totally out of place in their parlor, and strange-looking to boot.
“It’s not that easy to talk to the tsar,” Veronika said. “If I sent him a letter, his secretary would read it first. His secretary is sure our whole family is full of traitors. If I showed up in person, I might never get to see him.”
“Have you tried?”
“No,” she said, very short and huffy.
“If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” I said, sounding exactly like my grandmother. I was really put out. I was fed up with Eli’s mother. The Savarov women needed to get their butts out of the house and go to the palace, or whatever it was called. I stood up.
They all seemed surprised.
“You are going so soon?” Lucy said.
It had seemed like hours. “I don’t think I’m doing Eli any good here.” I left it at that.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, as if she couldn’t imagine me, a woman, doing anything that would get her brother out of jail.
“I’m working on a plan,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.” I nodded to each of them, and then I walked out. I was sure there was some big good-bye ritual we were supposed to go through, but I’d had it.
I shut the gate behind me with deep relief. I would have to call the school, or return to it, if I wanted to talk to Peter. I didn’t know if there was enough time today. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the school wouldn’t take visitors after five. I strode along the sidewalk in the direction of my faraway hotel.
When I’d unwound enough to notice, I heard footsteps behind me. I had company. I whirled around, my hand coming up with a knife.
A short black-haired man was hurrying to catch up with me. He stopped when he saw the blade. “Felix,” I said, about as excited as if I’d stepped in a mud puddle.
Felix looked better than the last time I’d seen him, somewhere on the road between Dixie and Texoma. He’d died then. Eli had brought him back.
“I’m not surprised to see you,” Felix said in that snippy way of his.
“My sister wrote me,” I said, by way of explaining.
“Felicia,” Felix said, in a sort of considering voice. “She’s a tricky one.”
“Raised tough.” I wondered how and why a full-fledged grigori like Felix had any contact with a young student like Felicia. The list of things I didn’t know was getting longer by the minute.
We started walking. We were about the same height, and our steps matched.
“How was the widow Savarov?” Felix said.
I glanced over at him. He’d changed a bit. Though Felix’s dark hair was still a tousled mess, and his beard was still cut short, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there a few months ago. There were a few more gray hairs in his beard, too.
“Sitting on her butt in her pretty house,” I said. “I thought I was going to smother from the dead air.”
“She tried to visit Eli when Peter went,” Felix said, not really defending her but pointing out the fact. “They wouldn’t let her in.”
Veronika hadn’t told me that. I would have thought better of her if she had. “But when she says she doesn’t think the tsar even knows Eli’s in jail, yet she won’t go sit on his doorstep until he sees her, I got to think she’s scared or selfish.”
Felix considered this. “You’re partly right,” he said, after we’d gone another block.
I about fell over in my tracks.
“But in Veronika’s defense,” he continued, “she’s trying to think about her girls. If Veronika got arrested, too, what would happen to Lucy and Alice? Their half brothers don’t give a damn about them. They’d broker the girls to their friends or marry them to their low-born conspiracy accomplices, thugs who want some noble blood in their family to brag about.”
Felix had actually told me something substantial.
“Those girls are both old enough to be out working and making their own lives,” I said. “Sitting in that house doing nothing when they’re grown!” I threw out my hands.
Felix stopped in his tracks. “How old were you when you began your … career?” he said.
“I was sixteen,” I said, embarrassed. My mother had been protective. “Later than most, I know.”
Felix had some big brown eyes, and he was giving me the full force of ’em. It was like he was seeing me for the first time. “All right,” he said slowly. “I can understand how the Savarovs seem useless, to you. But in our culture, the one we brought with us, families that can afford to keep their girls at home do so. Until the girls receive an offer of marriage.”
He was just stating a fact. Not bragging about it or saying that was the only right way to do things.
“That’s no favor to the girls,” I said. “Women have to learn to earn their living, and it’s better if it’s not earned on their backs.”
Felix looked real shocked. After a moment, he said, “You’re saying such a marriage is like being a prostitute?”
“ ’Course it is. But worse. ’Cause most women who are professional prostitutes, they didn’t have much choice in the matter. Have to earn some kind of living, no other skills. ’Course, some of them are just lazy. But mostly they just see it as the only trade they can ply. The men, too.”
“You’ve talked to a lot of prostitutes?” Felix looked unsettled.
“A few. I travel.”
And that kept him quiet for about one heavenly minute.
“What will you do next?” Felix said.
“I want to see Eli,” I said, before I knew those words would come out of my mouth.
Felix nodded. “But then?”
“I have to figure out a way to get him out,” I said. “Then we’ll leave. He can go to New Britannia, or up to Canada, and make his living there.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll go back to Segundo Mexia, find another crew to sign on with.” As long as Eli was out and free. That was all I wanted. I wasn’t telling myself any fairy tales. “I may not be real popular,” I confessed. “My last two crews have gotten killed.”
This time the silence lasted longer. I kind of hoped Felix would peel off and go in another direction. At the same time, I knew Felix was resourceful and quick to act, and I knew for sure he was ruthless. If he had a plan, I wanted to hear it.
CHAPTER SIX
Did your mother have two daughters?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Felix raise one dark eyebrow.
So Felix was going to make me pay for his help. Since Felicia was known to be the daughter of Oleg Karkarov, the bastard son of Grigori Rasputin, and I was Felicia’s half sister …
“What do you think?” I said.
“I think you are one of the people who should be living in the dormitory of the palace, waiting to serve the tsar by giving him a transfusion.” Only Rasputin’s blood had kept Alexei from bleeding to death as a child. Even before Rasputin died, a search had begun to find any heirs of his. He had had legitimate children and many bastards, so for now the tsar was in luck. “Or maybe,” he said even more slowly, “you should be living in the dormitory with Felicia.”