His squint functioned more smoothly this time and he beheld a small man dressed completely in black whose shaved head seemed to gleam. The bright grin under even brighter eyes gave the man an elfin cast.
“No, wait. Let’s try him first and then decide whether to waste the cost of a meal on a condemned man. Bring him along.”
The man turned and walked away. The strong hands dragged Grisha along in the man’s wake and he idly wondered where they were taking him. He knew there would be more pain.
Through a doorway and suddenly the concrete floor yielded to wood and then carpet. Other people formed on the periphery but none moved to his aid. Abruptly he realized he was whimpering and he forced himself to stop.
To be frightened was to care. No reason to care, not anymore. He didn’t even pity himself, he just moved further away.
Movement had stopped for some time and it took him long moments to focus on the words enough to comprehend.
“… do you understand me?” a large man in black said in a calm voice.
Grisha tried to form the words but his scabbed lips, dry throat and aching jaw could only elicit, “Hnnn?”
“You are in the high court of His Majesty, Czar Nicholas IV, and accused of murdering one of his servants. How do you plead?”
Grisha again tried to speak; this time he did care. He hadn’t killed anyone, he was guilty only of silence.
“Wad’r,” he croaked.
“Give the prisoner some water,” the big man said in his soothing voice.
The hands didn’t slacken on his arms and a cup pressed against his lips and he gulped avidly as water poured down the front of him.
“How do you plead?” the calm man asked again.
“Not guilty,” Grisha rasped. He couldn’t tell if the man felt a flicker of disdain or mirth, but the corners of his mouth slightly twitched.
“Call the witness,” the calm man said.
Grisha fell into the silence of waiting and his mind wandered far and fast. Noise turned into words.
“… the man who cudgeled your superior officer, Kommander Nicholas Karpov of the Imperial Cavalry, to death on the Charter Vessel Pravda four days ago?”
“Yes, your honor, that is the man.”
The sound of Valari’s voice suddenly made him care, and hate suffused him, canceling all pain.
“She lies!” he rasped, willing his voice stronger. “She hit him in the back of the head with a halibut club while he was choking me on the deck.”
The calm voice rolled over them again. “Lieutenant Kominskiya has a sterling record in the Imperial Cavalry. She was also prescient enough to predict your charge against her, even though she was also your victim.”
“What?” Grisha croaked. “Victim? Of what?”
“Rape. Even the most casual examination of your berthing space condemns you.”
“She—”
“The prisoner will maintain his silence while judgment is passed.” His voice remained as calm as when he began the farce.
“Grigoriy Grigorievich, the High Court of His Majesty, Czar Nicholas IV, hereby condemns you to death for the murder of Kommander Nicholas Karpov, and the rape of Lieutenant Valari Kominskiya.”
Grisha wilted and the hands struggled to keep him upright.
“However,” the soothing voice revived the flickering flame of hope in Grisha’s core, “His Imperial Majesty has decreed that in honor of the new Openness Treaty, for the period of one month, all capital sentences are commuted to thirty years at hard labor on the Russia-Canada Highway.”
Grisha wilted again; it was still a death sentence. He glared at the impassive face of Valari Kominskiya as the guards pulled him from the courtroom and back into hell.
5
They beat him in his cell. Hours later they revived him by dumping cold water on his naked body and told him to dress; he had been deloused. The thin cotton prison uniform crawled with vermin but he pulled it on as quickly as he could.
Nothing of his former life remained, not even his boots. He pulled on shoes made of felt and the guards threw him into the back of a truck. Ten minutes later he was shackled to a long chain, the last in a coffle of twenty prisoners.
Different guards herded them up a ramp and into the cold, steel bowels of a transport ship. Grisha felt grateful for the straw on which they were allowed to sleep. After what must have been thirty hours, long past the fouling of the straw by all present, they were herded back into open air.
One glance of the Chilkat Range told Grisha they were on their way to Klukwan and the Czar’s prison camp. They were all beaten upon arrival. Grisha thought he really might die, and the lassitude of surrender enveloped him once again.
When he woke the next morning, his hands were free of iron and one of the guards kicked his foot again.
“Get up, or you’ll miss breakfast.”
Grisha’s stomach groaned loudly. He hadn’t eaten since his last day on
He staggered behind them, willing himself to take each step and not fall, knowing if he did he would never rise again. The aroma of hot, cooked food enveloped him and he dropped onto a bench where a steaming wooden bowl of gruel waited. Between burning his fingers, face, and lips, and the already raw condition of same, it took him almost ten minutes to empty the bowl.
He still felt ravenous.
He looked up at the guard.
“We’ll feed you again in four hours. If you eat more now you’ll just spew it all over the floor and have to clean it up.”
For the first time since his trial he had the strength to look at the other prisoners. Men and women both were dressed in the same flimsy uniform. No attempt was made to segregate the sexes.
He pulled away from the women in gender hatred. First Kazina and then Valari had violated his trust. After supervising his anguished metamorphosis from cashiered officer to charter captain, his wife made him a cuckold.
Valari used him as a scapegoat for murder and exacerbated her infamy by claiming rape. Everything he attempted in his life had started with great promise, then ended in the most humiliating manner possible. And except for being cashiered, there had been a woman involved.
He noticed there were at least two men older than himself, and with the women there was no way of telling. Nobody talked except for one twitchy fellow who constantly murmured in conversation with something over his right shoulder.
The midday meal had flesh mixed in with potatoes and carrots. Grisha ate all they gave him. For a week they were fed and allowed to regain their strength. Toward the end of July Grisha and nineteen others were chained together in two coffles and herded into two army lorries.
The trucks growled north and east until they hit the Russia-Canada Highway and turned northwest.
The Russia-Canada enjoyed the term “highway” only by consent. Broken rock in fist-sized chunks formed the surface as well as the roadbed. In many places the top sank into the muskeg deep enough for narrow streams to traverse the roadway.
Leaving Klukwan and regular meals made all of them apprehensive.
“I don’t think they are going to kill us,” the oldest man said. “Else they wouldn’t have wasted food on
