Her blouse and skirt dried near the fire. In one pocket, she found Nikolai’s medal. She held it in her hand, squeezing so tightly that it left an imprint on her skin. It was all she had left of her brother, all she had left of her family, all she had left of her past.
Dalek lay in one of the hospital car’s beds. The accommodations were an improvement over the straw-covered boxcars the legion had used in 1918, but his wound was grievous. Filip had told Nadia about Orlov’s revenge, and guilt mixed with worry. Dalek had angered Orlov with a telegram meant to protect her. Now she felt a need to watch over him. She went to his bedside. Earlier, he’d been sleeping, but he opened his eyes as she approached.
A weary smile pulled at his blond mustache. “I’m glad to see that one of the grand duchesses escaped.”
“I’m not a grand duchess. Not even a princess.” According to the Communists, she was a former person condemned to death.
“No.” Dalek’s voice was weak but sincere. “You’re more important than that, because you’re one of us.”
Nadia smiled. She had nothing but a Cross of St. George, 4th class, to remind her of her past, but once again, the legion was offering her a future.
A legion train went east that afternoon, with the hospital car and several passenger cars. Anton convinced the officer in charge to let two more legionnaires and one dependent squeeze aboard. Nadia was still weak but felt an urgency to leave Irkutsk. Orlov might be dead, but she was still a counterrevolutionary with a death sentence chasing her. Filip helped her into a third-class carriage, and the three of them shared a bench meant for two.
As the train picked up speed, Anton and Filip told her what had happened to Veronika, Emil, and other friends. She wept for Veronika and prayed for baby Marek. Filip didn’t press her, but she could sense his desire to know what had happened over the past year. A part of her didn’t want to tell, but she knew secrets would only come back to hurt them later. Like a sliver, they would only become more dangerous if buried.
She went backward, explaining what she and Nikolai had been doing with the gold and why she’d been arrested. Then she spoke of her time in the labor battalion and her escape. Only after the rest of the story was told did she go back to that day when she’d wandered too far looking for firewood and been taken by the group of bandits. She gripped the wooden bench in front of them as she spoke, needing something sturdy to hang on to.
Filip had taken her role in distracting the labor battalion guard well enough, but when she told him what the bandits had done to her, he sat there stunned. She waited for him to say something. She needed him to tell her that he still loved her and that the past wouldn’t change the future they’d planned together.
He seemed unable to speak.
She held in the tears until he rose and rushed from the compartment.
***
Filip stood on the open gangway between his car and the next. The cold air bit at his lungs, painfully sharp but not as painful as what he’d just heard.
He’d promised to protect Nadia.
He’d utterly failed her.
He hadn’t even tried to find her until she’d been missing for nearly a year. Instead, he’d doubted her and left her at the mercy of roaming bandits and the Cheka. But he wouldn’t fail her this time. He’d find the men who took her, and he’d kill them. It wouldn’t fix the past, and it wouldn’t bring back the baby she’d been carrying, but it would restore her honor.
The door opened, and Anton joined him on the platform. “Filip, what’s going on?”
“I’m going to track down those men and kill them.”
“What?”
“You heard what they did to her.”
Anton’s breath came out in a puff of fog. “Do you have any idea how many bandits are roaming Siberia? You’ll never find them.”
“Then I’ll die trying.”
“Oh, you’ll die, all right, and that won’t do your wife any good. If you leave this train, you’ll end up in a work camp or in a pile of frozen corpses off to the side of a train depot. You can’t survive on your own, Filip, and the legion is withdrawing.”
“Then I’ll join up with an ataman.”
“The men who took her were probably working with an ataman. You’d join that type of scum? Don’t be a fool.”
“I was a fool when I didn’t go looking for her.” And she’d suffered enormous hardships because of it. “I won’t let her down again.”
“If you leave this train, you’ll be letting her down far more than you did before. She doesn’t need revenge, Filip; she needs you.”
“And what of honor?” She was Russian nobility. Honor was everything. She’d said so herself when she’d told of how she’d destroyed the Bolshevik gold.
Anton folded his arms across his chest. “You’ve found your wife again. You get another chance. Do you have any idea what I’d give for another chance at life with Veronika? Finding Nadia was a miracle. Don’t throw that away.”