6. Valentin’s Fire

The turquoise sky of the past few days has turned a pale, churning gray. Empty of birds, it feels lower, heavier than it has done before, as though a thick veil is descending onto the trees below. How will she go back home after this? Marya thinks. How will she sit in upholstered parlors, speaking of the latest recitals or the fashions at the palace, when she knows that there are landscapes made of bone, that there are murmurations of birds that fill the sky? How will she bear it when tedious young men speak of their grand tours, of their churches and museums, when she has seen these cathedrals of birches?

Of course, she reminds herself, that life—for all that she did not want it—will not be possible for much longer, anyway. She will have to earn a living, and perhaps that too will be harder, after this.

"But my dear, it must have been positively spine-chilling. Were you very terrified?" A tap from the Countess's fan interrupts her thoughts. Following the incident with the birds, Marya has found herself at the center of attention, cast in the role of a gothic heroine by Guillaume and the Countess, who have been found to share a fondness for blood-curdling literature. Her position in the hierarchy of First Class, she realizes, has changed, marked at breakfast when the LaFontaines descend on the table where she and the Countess are seated. At the next table, the Leskovs and the merchant Wu Jinlu are listening carefully.

"You must tell us everything," says Guillaume.

"I imagine you must be having terrible nightmares." The Countess sips her coffee.

"No, I am sleeping quite well, thank you."

"But it is so hot, I cannot get a moment's rest. Vera has some wonderful tinctures, if you need them."

"I should never sleep again, if I had been there," says Galina Ivanovna, crossing herself. "You must be blessed with a stronger constitution than I."

Marya very much hopes so. "I assure you, it happened so fast that I cannot even really quite recall it in detail." This is a lie, of course. She wishes she could put her eye to the glass again, to feel that sense of attention. What had Rostov said? A world always just out of reach. I grasped at it only to feel it slip through my fingers.

Is this what the Cartographer feels each day?she wonders. To be so close to a sky full of impossible birds. Is he there now, in his tower, watching?

"And the Captain, where was she when this attack happened?" Galina Ivanovna clutches at her husband's hand. "I thought we had been assured that we are completely safe?"

"The gunner saw the birds in plenty of time. It was his shot that scared them away." Marya feels a sudden weariness, trapped in this same conversation which has gone round and round since the previous day.

"But what if they are not so easily scared, next time? What then?"

"Then, madam, we must hope that we all share Marya Petrovna's sang-froid." Guillaume wipes his lips delicately with his napkin, and Marya, not for the first time, admires the adherence to social niceties, despite their situation.

A steward sets down plates of cold meats and thinly sliced winter melon in front of them.

"Is there no congee, again?" demands Wu Jinlu. The steward gives his sincerest apologies, but begs a little more patience.

"There was no water for my bath this morning," says Galina Ivanovna. "I do think it's a shame that this train falls quite so short of what was promised."

"Well, it just makes it all the more exciting, does it not, my darling?" Leskov takes his wife's hand and she gives him an indulgent smile, and Marya can't stop herself from wondering what it might feel like for her own hand to be taken by Suzuki, to feel the touch of those long, slim fingers, in reassurance. She pushes the thought from her mind.

"My wife chides me for an over-indulgence in novelty and adventure," says Guillaume. "But in the face of such marvels, what other path should we take? Is it not complacent, ungrateful, even, to treat such things as commonplace?"

"You must excuse my husband," says Sophie. "He becomes poetic in the face of a captive audience."

"What I mean is that there is no need for fear." Guillaume tucks into the food with more enthusiasm than Marya feels is warranted. "Have we not seen how strong these walls and windows are?"

"I think a little fear is a healthy thing," Sophie says.

"A sentiment I share," says Marya. She notices the slight smile playing around Guillaume's lips as he regards her and his wife. And in his mind all is well, she thinks, for it is right that the women should be fearful and the men should be brave.

Before she can leave she is cornered by Henry Grey, who, like everyone else, wants to know about the birds. Can she describe them more clearly? How big, exactly, would she say their wingspan was? He had seen the murmuration from afar and, upon realizing what was happening, had raced up to the Cartographer's tower to see for himself, but was devastated to be too late. Now he has his little notebook with him and is staring at her eagerly.

She sees the looks the others pass between themselves. How deeply unfashionable his seriousness is; how amusing, to care so much.

"Mr. Suzuki said he has seen such murmurations before, but never one so large, and never so close to the train."

Grey nods and scribbles in his notebook then looks up, expectantly.

"They had yellow eyes, with large black pupils." That stared right at her, through the scope. As if one had hovered there, waiting. Watching on behalf of the many. "And their feathers looked brown, but there were other colors when they caught the light. Green and gold."

"And their behavior? Were there predators in the sky, causing them to murmurate? Or did you notice anything else?"

The carriage is listening, the clink of cutlery and conversation has stilled.

The feeling of intent. Of a mind, thinking.

"No," she says. "The sky was empty, otherwise. But it all happened quickly. I wish I could tell you more, I am a sorry excuse for a naturalist."

"No, no, under the circumstances it is quite understandable." Though he clearly agrees with her.

She is about to say more when the Countess exclaims, "Goodness, what is that?"

They follow her gaze through the window. Pale flames, bluish-white, flicker over the ground, tumbling and turning like blown leaves, before dancing up into the air and vanishing.

A clatter of crockery as the steward drops his tray rather hard onto the table.

"I have read about this. Valentin's Fire, it is called," says Grey. "It is very rare, I believe, only occurring under particular atmospheric conditions."

The flames seem to ripple around the train and over the tracks.

Marya has read about it too, in Rostov's guide. Named for the rage of a peasant boy whose village was burned by the Tsar. The boy wept at the loss of his home and fields, and his tears turned to fire when they fell on the ground. After this, when the Tsar harmed the land, the fire would return, presaging disaster.

"A warning, according to Rostov," she says.

Grey shakes his head, dismissively. "It is caused by gases from the ground and the conditions of the air. I assure you it contains no warning."

But the steward has gone very white, she notices, and his hands shake as he tidies up the table.

After breakfast she accompanies the Countess to the observation car. Vera refuses to enter, and no amount of entreaties can persuade her that the blue flames will not harm them.

"Yuri Petrovich, curse his eyes, told her that it was the fires of Hell, reaching up from below," says the Countess, once Vera has vanished, "and she insists that she'll not risk her soul by getting too close to them."

Anna Mikhailovna herself has no such worries about her soul,thinks Marya, as the Countess holds forth from her armchair on the annoyances of clerics filling servants' heads with nonsense, before her eyes close and her breathing slows. Marya, though, is wide awake. It is too much to hold in her head—the Cartographer, the birds. Did she really see that great eye? It is like trying to grasp at the remnants of a dream that is both vivid and vanishing rapidly. And what must Suzuki think of her, appearing unaccompanied at his door? Too bold, she chides herself.

"You know, my dear, there may be questions about what you were doing there, alone." The Countess, as if she has just been woken by Marya's thoughts, fixes her with a keen stare. "And while I have no desire to bow to trivial social mores, I do not wish to see you…" she pauses, thoughtfully, "… compromised." She closes her eyes again. "It is just a notion."

Marya sits very still. The Countess is right, of course. But how then is she to find out what she needs?

"Contrary, that's what your daughter is," her mother used to complain to her father. "To do a thing simply because she's been told not to, it's just too provoking." But she had never meant to provoke, she just couldn't help wanting to see what happened, so that later she could scribble it down in her diary, fix it in place and try to make sense of it in the privacy of her room.

No. Demureness will not get her the answers she wants.

She waits until the Countess has fallen asleep, and then, stopping first to choose a novel from the library carriage, she walks through Third Class, her head held high, until she reaches the infirmary carriage.

She knocks on the doctor's door, and is greeted by a small, neat man with an unnerving smile. He regards her with an intensity that makes her feel as though he would like to trap her under his microscope, peel away her skin layer by layer, exclaiming at what lies beneath.

"I can allow a short visit, but you must not tire my patient out," the doctor says. "And forgive me, but reading is not the best medicine for him… He must try to avoid over-exerting his mind, you understand." He takes the book she has brought and places it on the table, giving the cover a little pat.

He leads her to an adjoining door, unlocking it with a key he takes from his pocket. "Just a precaution," he says, seeing her frown.

The man—the Professor, as Weiwei called him—sits propped up on a narrow bed, a blanket pulled to his waist, though the cabin is very warm.

"Just a few minutes," says the doctor. "I will be right next door." She hears the key turn in the lock and feels a tightening in her chest. The cabin is windowless, the walls padded.

"I hope you don't mind me visiting," Marya begins, and introduces herself, awkward beneath the man's scrutiny. She wishes the doctor hadn't taken away the novel. At least that would have given her a more plausible reason for being here, a topic of conversation.

"Of course not, my dear. I am pleased to meet you again, after our previous conversation was brought to an unfortunate halt. And I feel quite well, I have been assured that I am not suffering from…" he hesitates, "from any sickness that would pose a danger to you. Despite appearances." He gestures to the padded walls. Those afflicted have been known to become violent, when they cannot reach the outside. She can't imagine that this man could hurt her, but she has read that victims can find uncommon strength in the throes of their mania.

"Just a precaution," she says, and the Professor nods. But he is wary, she thinks. He is wary, as well he should be, of her borrowed name and clothes, and she feels a stab of distaste for what she is doing. No—what the Company has forced her to do.

The silence stretches out, and she says, for want of anything better, "Have you enough food? Or is there anything I can fetch for you? I know when I have been ill that all I want is some familiar food, and I am happy to ask in the kitchens for—"

"Why are you really here?" the Professor interrupts her, and behind his frail, scholarly exterior she sees a flash of steel.

She begins to stutter a reply but he goes on: "Because if you have been sent by the Company, then they have wasted their time, I don't know anything." He folds his arms, a challenge in his eyes.

"What? No, nobody has sent me here, please believe me."

"But you are not simply here out of a concern for my health," he says.

If she is honest with him then perhaps he will do her the same favor in return. She takes a deep breath, and in a voice that she hopes is low enough for the doctor not to hear, if he happens to be listening on the other side of the door, says, "I am looking for answers, about what happened on the last crossing."

The Professor's face is carefully blank. "Go on," he says.

"I had hoped to find someone, anyone, who might remember. Who might know if it was really the glass that was at fault."

"The Company says it was."

"Yes," she says, holding his gaze. "That's what they say. But I believe that the glassmaker—" How honest should she be? "That he was planning to write to Artemis, that perhaps he did write, to reveal what he couldn't say elsewhere."

Again, that flicker across his face.

"The glassmaker's name is discredited—"

"And yet Artemis would listen, wouldn't he? If there was a truth to be uncovered—isn't this what the Society does? It looks, even when the Company doesn't want it to."

The Professor is silent. "Verum per vitrum videmus," he says, eventually.

"Through glass we see the truth," echoes Marya. The motto of the St. Petersburg glassmakers' guild. In Latin—looking west, as the city so often did.

The Professor nods at her and she feels she has passed a test. "You knew him," he says.

"Only by reputation," replies Marya, in the words she has rehearsed. "I am from St. Petersburg, you see, and my family too has worked in the glass trade."

He pushes his glasses up his nose. "I see," he says. And then, "But it is not always possible to see, however hard we look. And sometimes, perhaps, it is best not to." He gives her a look that reminds her a little bit of the Countess, as if he is scrying out all her secrets. "Do you know how powerful the Company is?" he says.

"Of course. The world knows how powerful they are."

"But do you really understand it? I think most people don't." A flush is growing on his cheeks. "Do you know how many tons of tea are transported on the rail? How much cloth, how much porcelain? The value of all the ideas and information it carries? And while the train has sat idle in its yard all these months, do you know how much they lost, how unthinkable this is for a corporation so entangled with parliaments and ministers and courts? The train must run. That is the only truth that matters. Not who is destroyed along the way."

The only truth that matters.

He beckons her closer. "Go to the window where we first met. Look closely."

She opens her mouth to ask more but before she can speak there is the sound of a key in the lock. The Professor sits back and closes his eyes and Marya rises from her chair as the door to the cabin opens and black coats fill the threshold. As if they have appeared at the sound of the Company's name.

"Madam." They enter the cabin and bow to her, eerily twinned, making the cabin far too small, the walls too close.

"We have come to check on the patient, but find that he has a visitor already." The Russian speaks a clipped, perfect English, much better than her own. "Perhaps you were acquainted already?"

"No, I was simply concerned—"

"We have mutual friends in Petersburg," the Professor interrupts, not looking at her. "Please pass on my best wishes."

Marya hesitates. "Of course." She is aware of the appraising gaze of the Crows. "I was about to leave, the Professor is feeling tired."

"Your concern is laudable. We will not take up too much of his time." They usher her out of the door, and though she tries to look back at the Professor he is hidden from view by dark cloth.

Slowly, she walks back through the crew quarters and stops in the vestibule before Third Class. More boxes have been piled up in front of the window where she had first met the Professor. She heaves them away, praying that no crew members come past to demand what she is doing. Eventually, she makes a space big enough to squeeze into, where she can look closely at the window, as the Professor instructed. She can't see anything at first. Then there it is—tucked into the bottom right-hand corner of the window, so faint that it would escape the gaze of anyone not pressed right against the glass. It could easily be taken for nothing more than a scratch but to her it is unmistakable—a weather vane in the shape of a ship; a symbol of St. Petersburg—and the mark of her father's glassworks.

She freezes, then runs her fingers over the little ship. It is as if she is seeing his signature. After everything, after all they had said, after the blame and the scandal, they are using the same glass that they claimed had been flawed—that they claimed had let the Wastelands into the train.

Here, though, is proof that the Company lied about her father, or proof that they are dangerously careless—either way, surely it is enough to damage them, enough to help clear her father's name… But the Professor's words echo in her head: "Do you know how powerful the Company is? That is the only truth that matters."

She stares at the ship. Outside, blue fire crackles along the ground and over the rocks. In the distance, the sky is darkening.