5. Birds of Ill-Omen

Marya is hunting for Crows. She walks the train, trailing her fingers over night-blooming flowers and delicate, dripping fronds. The lights outside seem to cast moonlight through the carriages. She sees the Professor among the crowd in the Third Class dining car, scribbling on pieces of paper that are already dappled with soil. He is changed from the frail figure she had seen in the infirmary, as if the weight of the years has fallen away. There is an odd asymmetry to their situations, she thinks—by putting on the guise of Artemis, he has become more himself; he has stepped into the person he really was, all along, while she has shaken off her borrowed skin, stepped back into her real self. But no, she thinks, that's wrong. She has lost the old Marya along the way, and here, in this suspended time, she is someone altogether new.

"Ah, my dear, my years have been long, but yours…" The Professor trails off.

What would she have done with all the years she should have had? Seen the sun rise and fall along the Neva; opened her windows to the smell of the sea, walked and walked among endless birches, a hand entwined with hers; yes, this could have been a life—for her, and for a man with no nation. Its loss overwhelms her.

"Here," the Professor goes on. "The last testament of Artemis. When the train is finally unsealed, it will be read. People will know your name, and your father's. They will know us all."

And in how many years might that be? she thinks. Not until what is left of them has long turned to dust. But she says, instead, "Through glass we see the truth," looking around at the vines winding themselves around the iron piping; at the clusters of bright-yellow flowers bursting from the floor beneath the table.

"The truth!" He bangs the table, causing a cloud of pollen and dust to rise up around them. Someone gives a cheer, and she thinks, Do they really know? Do they truly understand what is happening, or are they trying not to see? Not this truth, not when it is so painful.

"Thank you," she says, squeezing the Professor's hand. But there are still things for this new Marya to do, in what little time is left.

In the whispering, moving wildness, the old order is falling apart; the lines between Third and First, passengers and crew, are blurring. Shadows up ahead. There—Birds of ill-omen, she thinks. They move with a sense of purpose missing among the rest of the passengers and crew, and she wonders where they are flying to. She could almost swear that under their coats she catches a glimpse of dark feathers. Through the Third Class sleeping carriages and toward the crew carriages, and they are secretive, furtive. They look over their shoulders, and she presses herself into the shadows. She has grown furtive too. She has learned to keep secrets.

As she follows them, the carriages lose their definition. The blooms of mold and webs of pale-white threads block the light from the windows in the crew mess. There are rustles and sighs from the leaves in the silence. She takes off her shoes and places them tucked into an alcove made by two intertwining saplings. After a moment's thought she takes off her stockings too. There is cool moss beneath her feet, and she splashes at times through what seems to be a stream.

It is not until she has followed them into the service carriage and watched them stop beside one of the doors to the outside that she realizes what the Crows are going to do.

They are going to leave the train.

Crouching unseen among the ferns, she feels as if she is watching them from very far away. They seem to be waiting for a signal of some kind, she thinks. They have opened the first of the two doors to the outside, and they are staring intently out of the window. One of them takes a pocket watch out of his coat, tapping the case and frowning. Of course—of course they have thought to bribe their way out. They have taken all they can from the train, and now they have given themselves a way out. "Move," she tells herself, but she can't seem to force herself out from the shelter of the ferns. Is this really how it will happen? All their money and power, protecting them still.

Without really thinking about it, she has been running her fingers through the water that is bubbling up from the floor like a spring, glad of its coolness. When she looks down there is something in her hand, something slim and pointed, as if water has turned to glass; strong, and hard, and sharp. She raises it to the light. It is beautiful; as clear as the water itself, catching the greens and golds around it.

She steps out toward the Crows. The blade feels solid in her hand.

The two men spin around.

"Where are you going?" she asks, pleasantly.

She remembers that evening in Beijing, the way they spoke to her father, the dispassionate sympathies they conveyed to her mother. They look behind her, to see that she is alone, and Petrov says, in a desperate attempt at authority, "As Company representatives we have special dispensation to leave the train early. We will of course be waiting at the end of the Vigil, but we must ask that you return to the infirmary, madam, for your own health." He tries to pull himself up to his full height, but he is more stooped than she remembers—smaller.

"You will be waiting?" she says. "How long your patience must be, to wait for a train that is to be sealed up."

"There will be time to—"

"To what? There is no time left, my father knew that. Anton Ivanovich Fyodorov warned you. He warned you this would happen, yet you did nothing."

For the first time, they notice the glass blade in her hand, and she sees them step backward.

She steps closer.

"Madam, we must ask you to stay back—"

The glass blade seems to sing beneath her touch. How easy it will be. How powerful she feels. An instrument of justice. But she feels herself waver. Among the creeping tendrils and ferns, the growing wilderness, there are still decisions she can make.

And she opens her hand and watches the glass blade turn back to water, spilling out onto the floor.

A voice beside her says, "I think it will make you happy, to know that they were afraid."

Elena isn't wearing her veil of moths anymore, though she has a dusting of fine golden pollen over her shoulders, and trickles of water are running from the ends of her hair. She looks, thinks Marya, as if she is shining. Behind her, in the shadows, Marya can see Weiwei and the young engineer.

"I already knew," says Marya, and glancing down, sees pale tendrils appearing from the floor, snaking toward them, pausing for a moment, as if they are sniffing the air, then moving again. Hyphae, thinks Marya. That's what Suzuki had called them. Connecting everything.

The Crows try to speak again, but no words come out. They can't see the tendrils because they're clutching at their necks, but the pale threads have reached their feet, they are winding up their legs, and the noises the men are making are bird-like, inhuman; their fingers are cracking, compressing, twigs breaking out from where their nails should be. Marya wants to look away, but she can't. She watches as their throats spasm, and the smooth shapes of eggs form beneath the skin, emerging from their mouths, bluish-green and hollow, shattering into fragments of shell between their teeth. She watches as they come apart, piece by piece, and she doesn't move until there is nothing left of the Company men but a little collection of feathers and bones, of shining coins, of bright black stones, of the detritus that might be found in a long-abandoned nest.

She takes a long look. Then she turns back to Elena. "You did this."

Elena shrugs, in a way that reminds Marya exactly of Weiwei, and she sees the train girl hovering in the shadows, her eyes fixed on what remains of the Crows.

"I did nothing, Marya Antonovna," says Elena. "I did not need to." She pauses. "And neither did you."

A sound from outside makes them both turn. It has been so long that it takes Marya a moment to understand what it is. Rain.

Elena looks out, an odd expression on her face, and Marya thinks, There is no mimicry now. This is her real face—happy and sad at the same time. The girl is pressing herself to the glass, as if she can feel the rain through it, as if she could drink it down.

"Glass is controlled," Marya's father had said; "it is time, suspended." But she imagines it all turning to water—unstoppable. She imagines the Wall tumbling down, the Wastelands pouring out. She feels it filling her up with unimaginable joy.