vanish into the resistance. Today’s errand was far less dangerous than being hunted by the Tayemstvoy for imbuing.
At Celka’s side, Ela practically skipped, her embroidered skirts cheery next to Celka’s elephant-gray trousers and simple linen blouse. Ela must suspect that this errand was about more than window shopping, but she’d avoided learning details, instead chattering about ribbons.
No matter her cousin’s cheer, Celka couldn’t ignore the prickling in her shoulder blades as they neared a Tayemstvoy checkpoint.
Usov’s townsfolk made her feel doubly conspicuous, everyone laughing and chatting, cheerful after the circus’s matinee performance and hardly even lowering their voices as they approached the barbed wire and sandbag barricades. The sky’s oppressive gray, at least, fit the danger of a checkpoint in an unfamiliar town.
Sooty green and aquamarine paint brightened the doors around her, and Celka tried to shake her unease as a Tayemstvoy private waved the man ahead of her through the kill zone. The man scuttled down the maze of sandbags, glancing furtively at a soldier perched behind a machine gun turret.
Celka handed the private her identification folio just a beat behind Ela.
“We’re sisters,” Ela said, as sleeting cheery as everyone else. “Beauty and brawn.” The soldier didn’t need Ela to point out which she was supposed to be.
The Tayemstvoy private smiled at Ela—actually smiled. It made Celka’s skin crawl. “I can tell,” he said, and Ela giggled.
The private started to hand back Ela’s folio—at least some good would come out of Ela flirting like an idiot—but he paused, the smile dropping from his face. Celka struggled to keep her own expression bland. He’d just noticed their address. Nothing’s wrong. Stay calm.
Frowning, the private flipped to the second page of Ela’s folio, checking for a travel permit. He found it—their papers were perfectly in order, the circus’s route cleared by the Tayemstvoy months before the train set wheels on track. But that never stopped the red shoulders from being suspicious.
The private shouted for a superior and scrutinized Ela and Celka carefully, comparing them to their photographs.
“We’re with the circus,” Ela said, though the travel permit would have made that obvious. Celka didn’t understand how she still sounded so carefree. This happened at practically every checkpoint, but that made it more dangerous, not less. And if the Tayemstvoy decided to search them—which they sometimes did—Celka was terrified the picnic basket’s false bottom wouldn’t be enough to conceal the photographic plates.
“Our family does the high wire act,” Ela said as the private handed their folios to a sergeant with deep lines at the corners of her eyes that Celka would never believe came from smiling. “Are you coming to our evening show? You should—we’re thunderclap.”
The private seemed to struggle between flirting back and looking serious for his sergeant. Flirting finally won. It made Celka sick. She focused on the sergeant’s knees. At least if she drew her truncheon to beat them to the cobbles she wouldn’t smile while she did it. Unless that was where the smile lines came from. She was Tayemstvoy, after all.
Minutes crawled past and Celka grew more and more certain that the sergeant would order them searched. Finally, the woman held Celka’s folio back out and jerked her chin. Celka flinched, but the sergeant turned away.
Ela slipped her arm through Celka’s and winked at the private. She pulled Celka along, and Celka fell into step without really believing their fortune. All the way through the kill zone, she kept expecting a bullet in the back.
“What’s gotten into you?” Ela said once they were several blocks away, alone on a narrow street.
“Nothing,” Celka snapped. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Me?” Ela shook her head. “Were you trying to act suspicious?”
“Says the giraffe to the camel? No one flirts with the Tayemstvoy.”
Ela waved a dismissive hand. “He was cute.”
“Tayemstvoy aren’t—” Celka started to object.
“Don’t pretend to be so altruistic. I saw you adding extra flourishes during practice yesterday because Evzhan was watching.”