“I would do no such thing,” Vanya said, clearly offended. “It’s not as if I spoil everything I touch.”

“The telegram from your village suggests otherwise.”

“So, in the legends, the runes were never used to bring someone back to full health?” I persisted, and her steely blue eyes returned to me.

“No. During the time these runes were used, the Strazhniki would have considered healing to either be a gift bestowed by the Goddess or an act of witchcraft, depending on the circumstance. These are the exact opposite.”

“What do you mean?”

“These symbols are meant to be wards against magic and human violence alike. They date to the uprising.”

I frowned. If my mother’s rushnyk hadn’t been responsible for healing Mikhail, then what had? Could it have been something Galina had done?

“Here,” Inga said, handing my rushnyk back to me. “If you happen to remember anything else, consider paying me another visit. Ancient textiles are a passion of mine.”

“I will.” I cradled the rushnyk in my arms, troubled by the empty spaces in my memory. They didn’t just feel like holes anymore; they felt like wounds, like someone had torn pieces of my past from me.

Inga uncapped her fountain pen. On the margin of a pamphlet, she wrote a sentence in neat, efficient script. She flicked the paper across the desktop. “This is the address of a warehouse in the waterfront district. Drop by there after dark. The documents should be ready by then.”

Vanya picked up the pamphlet, folded it, and slipped it into his coat pocket. “Thank you.”

“Be careful,” Inga said.

“We will.”

“One day when this is over, we’ll discuss how you’ll repay me for the chair. I expect you to come back here, do you understand? I don’t want to stand guard for you, Vanya.”

“As tempting as it is, I’ll try not to die on you, ma’am.” As Vanya walked to the door, he brushed the remnants of leaves and bark from his clothes. “Come on, Toma.”

“One more thing,” Inga said.

Vanya turned around. “Yes, ma’am?”

Inga’s blue eyes turned hard and icy. “You say that my business is part of the problem. That I’ve abandoned our people for greed and ambition. But what does that make you, when you possess the same weapon as the enemy?”

Vanya smiled. “The revolution.”

20

The moon trembled on the water. Sour fog rolled down from the factories upstream. The Vesna River carried other evidence of the industrial processes at work behind those citadel-like brick walls—animal bones, chunks of vulcanized rubber, scraps of cloth and paper. It was nothing like the pristine waterways back home.

It was decided that Vanya would go to the dockside warehouse alone, since the wharfs abutted a Strannik neighbourhood and if he was stopped, he could simply claim to be on his way home. Besides, according to Mikhail, a group of three stood out more than a pair.

While we waited for Vanya to return, Mikhail and I milled around a small market set up by the riverfront. Fishermen sold their catches straight from their boats—writhing black river-shrimp, smelt and baby glass eels ready to be fried, entire jarfuls of pearlescent eggs harvested from the Vesna funnelfish.