1. The Liar

Beijing, 1899

There is a woman on the platform with a borrowed name. With steam in her eyes and the taste of oil on her lips. The shrill, desperate whistle of the train turns into the sobbing of a young girl nearby and the cries of the trinket vendors, hawking their flimsy amulets as protection against Wastelands sickness. She forces herself to look up, to stare at it face on, the train that looms above her, hissing and humming; waiting, vibrating with pent-up power. How huge it is, how implacably solid, three times the width of a horse-drawn carriage. It makes the station buildings look as flimsy as a child's toys.

She concentrates on her breath, on emptying her mind of any other thought. In and out, in and out. She has practiced this, day after long day these past six months, sitting at home by the window, watching the pickpockets and traders below, letting it all wash over her, letting her mind run clear as water. She holds on to the image of a river, slow-moving and gray. If she can just let it carry her to safety.

"Marya Petrovna?"

It is a moment before she realizes she is the one the porter is addressing, and she turns to him with a start. "Yes! Yes." Too loudly, to cover her confusion. Too unused to the unfamiliar syllables of her new name.

"Your cabin is ready and your luggage has been taken on board." Sweat beads his forehead and leaves a damp, darkened line around his collar.

"Thank you." She is gratified to hear that her voice does not tremble. Marya Petrovna is unafraid. Newborn. She can only go forward, following the porter as he disappears into the steam, broken by glimpses of green paint and gold lettering in English, as well as Russian and Chinese. The Trans-Siberian Express. Beijing–Moscow; Moscow–Beijing. They must have spent the last months painting and polishing. Everything shines.

"Here we are." The porter turns toward her, wiping his brow and leaving behind a dark, oily smudge. She is uncomfortably aware of her own clothes, chafing her skin in the heat, the black silk drinking up the sun. Her blouse claws at her neck and her skirt is tight around her waist, but she has no time to worry about her appearance because the porter is holding out his arm, stiffly, and she is climbing the high steps up onto the train, her hand taken by another bowing uniformed man, she is being swept along the corridor, thick carpet beneath her feet. She is on the train and it is too late to turn back now.

In front of her, a man with a beard and gold spectacles and the kind of voice that elbows all other voices out of the way, leans out of the window and shouts in English, "Where is the Station Master? Be careful with those boxes! Oh, I do beg your pardon." He squeezes himself against the window and attempts a bow as Marya approaches. She limits herself to a small smile and an incline of the head and leaves him to his hectoring. She has no wish for social niceties, nor the curious, appraising gazes of men, already observing her black mourning garb, noting her solitary state. Let them note. All she wants is to be alone in her cabin, to shut the door and close the curtains and gather a comforting silence around her.

But she is not to be allowed, not quite yet.

"Really, do stop fussing, I am perfectly capable of looking after myself." An elderly lady approaches from the other end of the carriage, dressed in dark-blue silk and followed by her maid. "Is this really First Class?" She peers at Marya, and then at the cabin door beside her. "I had been led to believe this train was the finest money could buy. I confess, I cannot see it…"

Hearing the familiar sounds of well-to-do St. Petersburg, thousands of miles away from its wide streets and tall houses, gives Marya a painful tug of homesickness.

"Your cabin, madam," says the steward, bowing to Marya but looking nervously at the elderly lady, who inquires, "Are you travelling alone?" while swatting away her maid, in her attempts to drape another shawl over her shoulders.

Marya sees a mixture of pity and reproach in her gaze, and flushes.

"My maid was unable to make the journey. It was too much of a strain on her nerves."

"Well, it is good that our nerves are made of stronger stuff. My weak-spleened nephews spent months trying to dissuade me from this journey with tales of all the terrors that may befall us, but I believe they only succeeded in scaring themselves." She gives an unexpected smile and pats Marya on the hand. "Now then, where is my cabin? If Vera here doesn't have me stuffed into an armchair with a cup of tea in my hand very quickly, I can't swear to her behavior."

"Right here, Countess." The steward gives a much deeper bow and a theatrical wave of his arm. The maid—Vera—opens the door at arm's length, as if afraid of the horrors within.

"Ah! So we are to be neighbors," says the Countess.

Marya gives a curtsey.

"Oh, we shall have none of that here. My name is Anna Mikhailovna Sorokina. And I will call you…?"

Another catch of the breath, a lurch like the feeling of missing a step she hadn't realized was there, but the Countess seems not to notice. "My name is Marya Petrovna Markova," she says.

"Well, Marya Petrovna, I look forward to making your acquaintance further. We shall, after all, have plenty of time." And with that, the Countess allows herself to be guided into her cabin by her little maid, who has been regarding Marya from under her eyelashes.

"Will you require any more assistance?" The steward licks his lips and swallows. He's afraid, Marya thinks, and somehow this gives her more courage.

"No," she replies, more firmly than she expected. "No, I require no assistance."

Her bags have been neatly packed onto the rack above the bed, which has been made up into a couch for the day, padded with plump cushions. Everything looks new. The Company must have poured money into it, displaying its confidence in the gold embroidery on the cushions and the bright brass on the walls and the deep-blue carpet, soft beneath her feet. Everywhere there is the lettering of the Trans-Siberia Company, entwined around the flower vase and the light fittings and embossed on the porcelain teacups and saucers on the little table by the window. Her day case sits on the armchair beside it. The window is framed by blinds and blue velvet curtains. On the other side of the glass run two thick iron bars. She stares at them a moment, then walks over to the wall, where two doors are set into the polished mahogany. One opens into a wardrobe, where her dresses and shawl already hang, unpacked by unseen hands. The other opens onto a cabinet with a compact white porcelain sink, shining silver taps and a shelf holding a hairbrush and little pots of creams from Paris, and above it all a silver-edged mirror.

As a child she had been fascinated by the old gilt mirror in her mother's bedroom. Clouded with silver, she used to think it made her look like a spirit, emerging from the underworld or swimming up out of a lake. Whichever idea happened to catch her fancy, she would enjoy the feeling of being someone else, just for a while, before her mother called her down for tea with her grandmother, or her father quizzed her with mental arithmetic. She had thought that as she grew older she would grow more certain of herself and what she wanted to be. But now, this new Marya, what does she want?

She closes the cabinet door, not wanting to see. From her day bag she takes out a battered book, its cover threadbare and its pages creased with use. She knows every word, could copy every illustration from memory, but there is something comforting about its physical presence. Valentin Rostov's famous Guide to the Wastelands—her father's copy, that she would read in secret, dreaming of the train and the world outside its windows, imagining herself onboard. But not like this. Not alone. A sudden, sharp loneliness engulfs her. The train has not even departed yet and she has not followed the first piece of Rostov's advice: Above all, do not attempt the journey unless you are certain of your own evenness of mind.

Outside on the platform porters and stewards usher the final stragglers aboard and order tearful relatives back toward the gates. Mechanics with oil-streaked faces stride purposefully alongside the train. A gaggle of men with notebooks are kept back by a harassed-looking Station Master. A sudden flash of light, and she sees a man emerge from a black cloth behind his photographic equipment. It will be in all the newspapers tomorrow morning; a journey turned into a story before it has even begun.

A series of clangs proclaim the locking of doors and the dropping of iron bars. She focuses on breathing in and out, in and out. Nothing outside can get in, nothing inside can harm us. She bites her lip and tastes blood. Iron to keep us safe. The platform is empty now but for the small figure of the Station Master. She watches him raise his flag and look up at the station clock. Faces from behind the platform gates stare at faces behind the bars of the train windows. Some of them are weeping. Rostov's words swim into her mind: It is said that there is a price that every traveller through the Wastelands must pay. A price beyond the mere cost of a ticket on the train.

Rostov paid the price with his faith. With his life, some think. His Cautious Traveller's Guides had made him famous throughout Europe, directing the traveller to the most hygienic restaurants, the worthiest museums, and the cleanest beaches, noting the finest churches and enumerating their altarpieces and frescoes, their martyrs and saints, for wherever a traveller wandered in that continent, he could know that God wandered beside him. But his final book was a guide to a land which could only be seen from behind glass. No churches remain in the Wastelands of Greater Siberia; no galleries or fountains or public art to tell the familiar stories.

On the platform, a moment of quiet stretches longer than it should have done. Then the flag falls, and the Trans-Siberian Express, in a slow cacophony of steam and screeches and creaking wheels, begins to move. As the train drags itself away from the platform the photographer's flash goes off and for a moment the clouds of steam are filled with light.

Marya steps backward, blinking away the sudden brightness, and the train rolls out of Beijing Railway Station, toward the uncertain spaces ahead.