Grisha pursed his lips and nodded sagely.
“I think I see where the discussion has foundered.”
“He says—” “She says—” they blurted together.
Grisha held up his hand.
“Nik, you go first.”
“She says marriage is of no importance. If I love her I’ll be happy to just live with her, no threads, no ties.”
“You don’t agree?”
“No! I want to marry her. I want to formalize what we feel for each other, I want to have a wife and someday have children. If we just lived together we’d be no better than the Cossacks and their whores.”
Cora’s cheek turned red, and her smile went completely flat.
Grisha nodded to her. “Cora?”
“If a man and a woman love one another, why do they have to formalize it? We’re both soldiers in a rapidly changing world, in a revolution. Who has time for sewing, cooking, babies, and warm goat’s milk at night when there’s a war to be fought?”
Her eyes shone and Grisha realized she was about to cry.
“This is our lives! Right now.” A tear coursed down her cheek and dripped off her chin. “All of us could be dead tomorrow, or the day after, or… .” She turned to Nik. “There are no oaths or ceremonies that will stop death. I know. We must seize the time we have and live it to the fullest.”
“Will you marry me?” Nik asked.
“Not until the Dena Republic is a fact. Then I will marry you. I’ll marry you twice.”
Grisha felt caught in their emotional energy. Once, as a young man, he crewed on a boat that lost power and ended up on the rocks. At this moment he felt very much the same way he had before the boat actually ground into the teeth of that North Pacific island—completely alive and scared, and knowing things were going to change drastically.
“Okay,” Nik said. “When the Dena Republic becomes fact, we will be married.”
“You witnessed this, Grisha,” she said, glancing at him then back to Nik. “So when the time comes he can’t get out of it.”
“I’m done being a deserter,” Nik said with a smile for her.
Suppressing his envy as best he could, Grisha pushed away and ambled toward the kitchen. Neither of them noticed.
“Snagging usually doesn’t start until the ice goes out on the Yukon,” Wing said, coming up beside him.
“Snagging? What’s that?”
She laughed. “Mating season. You know, like the birds, go out and snag yourself a mate.”
“I always thought snagging was an unfair way of catching a fish.” Grisha liked looking at Wing and tonight she seemed more radiant than the last time he saw her.
“And your point is what?” They both started laughing at the same time.
“I haven’t had a chance to ask since you got back. How was your trip?”
“Good,” she said. Her eyes lost some of their sparkle. “There’s just so much to do and so little time.”
“So spread the work around, stop trying to do it all yourself.”
“Don’t worry, Grisha, there’s plenty for you, too. We realize how fortunate we were when you decided to join us.”
“Not as fortunate as I was when you saved my life. I’ll do anything I can to further the movement. I’m collecting old debts, too.”
“We know. Well, I have to meet with Chandalar before I can go to bed, so I’ll say good night.” She turned and went through the door.
“Good night,” he mumbled, feeling bereft. He assessed his feelings and didn’t like what he found. “Not good,” he said, his voice barely audible.
“You’ll just get hurt again.”
He pulled back into his mind where he sheltered his vulnerability. There was no time to waste being giddy and weak-kneed, he decided. Perhaps after the revolution.
Perhaps never again.
18
Wolverine White, his skinning knife jutting from his gory throat, slapped Bear Crepov on the shoulder and demanded, “Where is their blood? You vowed to avenge me!” He slapped Bear a second time. “Where?” his voice gurgled with blood.
Again his shoulder jerked, more from the psychic blow than the physical one. The fourth blow made him dimly aware that it wasn’t Wolverine speaking from the grave.
“Bear! There is someone for you,” Katti said, slapping his beefy shoulder again.
“’Nuf, you can stop punching around on me now,” he mumbled. “Who wants to see me?” He opened his eyes slowly, knew the vodka hangover needed only movement to explode behind his eyes and take his scalp off.
“A Cossack,” she said, and he finally heard the fear.
“A Cossack wants to see me?” He sat up in the stained bed and dumbly endured the painful hammering in his head. “What for?”
“I don’t know. But he knows you’re here.” Katti’s chubby face usually maintained a shade of pink. Now the pink mixed with apprehensive gray and her wide-eyed gaze remained nailed to his face.
“Don’t worry about it, Kat. He’s just a damned messenger boy.”
“For you, maybe. But for me he can be big trouble when you’re not around.”
Bear yawned and scratched his hairy belly before pulling on the soiled cotton trousers constituting his uniform. He carefully rose and shuffled to the cabin door and opened it. The Cossack stood outside in the minus- thirtydegree weather.
“What do you want?” The cold air invaded the mat of hair on his chest and hardened his nipples. His bare toes tried to curl away from the cold but he wouldn’t allow them to move.
“The colonel wants to see you, now.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I get dressed.” Bear shut the door in the man’s face.
Now what do they want?
He pulled on his clothes while Katti hovered, looking anxious in her ragged dressing gown. He’d taken her out of an arriving coffle two years before. She would allow him to do anything he wished to her to keep from facing the Cossacks again.
She’d gotten fat, he decided. She really looked like a peasant now. Her eyes begged for answers, but he ignored her. Keep ’em off balance, that was the way. He pulled on his heavy socks and boots.
The cold bright daylight became knives that attacked his squinted eyes. He wanted a drink of vodka to numb the pain, but he’d emptied his last bottle the night before. Maybe the colonel would have some.
Despite his heavy coat, chill permeated him by the time the heavy barracks door shut behind him. He pushed into the colonel’s office, leaving the door open, and dropped his bulk onto the wooden bench. The colonel looked up from the papers on his desk.
“What’s the big hurry? I was in bed with my woman.”
The colonel kept his face neutral and nodded toward the door. “The captain here wished to see you as soon as possible.”
The door slowly swung shut to reveal a woman of medium size, a bit too much on the thin side to suit him, but not hard to look at. Her dark blond hair molded tightly around a face composed of angles and planes.
Her mouth was too wide for her face, he thought, and the dark eyes held more intelligence than he cared to deal with in a woman. He sat up straight.
“Well,” he said, “now she’s seen me.”
