Turning my gaze ahead, I watched as several of the train-car doors slid open. Out marched even rows of men and women, some in the coats and caped gray dresses of medics, others in the sage-green greatcoats of the Fraktsiya, and among them, even a few garbed in the crimson sashes and robes of Troika priestesses.

“Excuse me,” Vanya said, going to a nearby conductor. “When is the next train to Eyry?”

“Only military transport trains are being routed through that area,” he said, nodding toward the hospital train. “If you want to get to Eyry, you’ll have to take the long way around and travel south, then up through the Granary, and loop around.”

“Are you sure about that?” I interrupted. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Look, I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” the man said, grumbling in annoyance. “If you’re really that desperate, join the Fraktsiya and get your legs blown off by a bogatyr. Then they’ll take you there free of charge.”

As the conductor strolled away, I turned to the others. “If that’s a Fraktsiya train, then the men who took Galina must be on there, too. We’ll have to sneak on.”

“In case you didn’t realize, that train is filled with soldiers,” Mikhail said tightly. “It’s the equivalent of walking into a bear’s den. And chances are, it’s not just wounded soldiers on that train. It is armed battalions as well.”

“Why would a medic train be transporting troops?”

“Because I know that train. It’s a Yezmirskiy Ö-59, and one of the few in the Kosa Empire. We would use the same kind of train to transport emissaries and ambassadors from their residences to the palace or airfields. Trust me, the Fraktsiya have painted it up like a hospital train, but it will be built like a vault in there. It might...”

“Might what?” Vanya asked.

“Even contain high-ranking Fraktsiya officials,” he said quietly.

“You think Koschei could be in there?” I asked as Mikhail tugged down the brim of his cap, averting his eyes from a passing soldier.

Mikhail didn’t answer, but the flash of anger in his gaze said all I needed to know. He gritted his teeth and drew up his collar. “We need to get inside somehow.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked.

A dark silence fell over us, and then Vanya’s gaze shifted to something over my shoulder, and he smiled. “I have a plan, but first, Toma, give Mikhail your rushnyk.”

25

“‘A plan,’ he says,” Mikhail said spitefully as Vanya strolled down the platform. “The last time Vanya had a plan, it ended up with me nearly being drowned by a vodyanoy. And the time before that, I had to run through a burning village while being shot at. I wonder what delights he will subject us to this time.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said, then paused as a realization occurred to me. Lightly nudging Mikhail in the shoulder, I grinned. “What did you just call him?”