“Jump, jump, jump, and that would be game,” Mila said with a smile, moving one of her kings across the board in a spectacular series of flying leaps to murder Nadia’s last three men.
“Saw that coming,” Fatima said from the corner, before going back to her new Russian-issue phone.
“I think we all did,” Ruslan added. “It’s Nadia’s fault for letting her pieces spread out like that.”
“It’s my first game,” Nadia pointed out. “How many times have you played it, Mila?”
“I don’t know,” she said, still smiling serenely. She wasn’t smug, only cheerful. It was hard to get angry at her. “I’ve played a number of checkers variants, but Turkish Draughts is one of my favorites.”
“I don’t see why,” Nadia said, by way of salvaging her pride. “The kings are way too powerful, moving all over the board like chess rooks. It isn’t very fair.”
“What’s unfair about it?” Ruslan said. “You started with the same number of people, in the same positions. You knew the rules from the beginning; you could have gotten a king before she did. But you didn’t. Anyway, I play winner, right?”
“Right,” said Mila. She looked at Nadia as she said it, and something about the twitch of her mouth, of the way those innocent blue eyes narrowed behind her big round glasses, suggested that the two of them were sharing a joke at Ruslan’s expense. It took the sting out of losing.
Yuri peeked out of the RV’s window through the closed blinds. “Hey, I think we crossed into Turkey. The signs are different.”
“We’re making good time, then,” Hamza said from his spot on the floor. The vehicle was more than a little crowded, with the five Marshalls and their three new ‘assistants’ all crammed in together. It had been a long drive from Krasnodar where they picked it up, and it would be longer still—another two days’ travel—before they got to Ankara. But it still beat using yet another bus.
Nadia peered into the driver’s compartment. Mr. Yefimov—whose actual job was unclear, but who seemed to be in charge of them now—was in the passenger’s seat, playing navigator. The driver was another of the interchangeable security men, whose name Nadia didn’t want to know. In a few hours they would pull over and swap him out for a fresh driver from one of the other vehicles in their scattered convoy. That driver, like this, would be dressed in casual clothes appropriate for an American or Canadian on holiday, and speak good unaccented English.
In the unlikely event that they got pulled over, all their papers would be in order. If that did not work, they had a very large stack of cash lira, dollars, euros, and rubles. Familiars would be an absolute last resort until they got to their new ‘home’ and explained the situation to its former owners. Nadia didn’t think they had a single firearm on the vehicle. There would be no need.
Mila had the board set up again in short order, and was soon trouncing Ruslan as easily as she had beaten Nadia. He did not lose as gracefully as she had—she thought—but there was little satisfaction to be had in needling Ruslan. It seemed more useful to watch Mila, and wonder who she was, and what she was supposed to be. And whether Nadia even wanted to have her around.
Officially, Lyudmila—who hadn’t given her last name, and practically begged Nadia to use the diminutive of her first—was their “assistant.” Mila had to be told not to do menial chores, right down to picking up Nadia’s underwear from the hotel floor back in Tighina, less than five minutes after they met. She obeyed all requests at all hours, seemed to know every answer to every question, was unfailingly patient and polite. And she stuck to Nadia and Fatima like a second shadow.
It wasn’t hard to see part of her mission; she was a chaperon, and more than that, a barrier. If Nadia needed anything, Mila would get it, or send someone to fetch it. Wherever Nadia slept, Mila would be in the next room over. She would always be present, ready, and listening, ready to keep the normal human world at a distance. But that wasn’t all; it couldn’t be. She was too good to be a mere babysitter, or a gofer.
They all were. Noorlan, who was assigned to the younger boys, was very quiet, but obviously deeply intelligent, and somehow spoke Russian, English, Kazakh, and Uzbek with at least some proficiency. Ruslan suspected he had been a college professor at some point; Nadia thought it more likely he was some sort of diplomat. Possibly both were true. Nadia had no idea how the Russians had acquired him on such short notice. At present, he was reading a book on Kirlian phenomena, keeping half an eye on Yuri as he did.
As for Aziz, he was as obviously ex-military as any of the Lictors or Praetorians, only he gave the impression of actually giving a damn about them. He was on the carpeted floor right next to Hamza, discussing some operation he’d done with the Soviet military and how they had integrated a familiar into it. Aziz seemed to have an infinite supply of these stories.
It couldn’t be coincidence that they’d picked out people of their own or similar ethnicities; Russia couldn’t have that many Central Asians they trusted with a job like this. It seemed particularly important that they spoke their native languages; Mila only knew a smattering of Pashto or Dari, but wheedled new vocabulary out of Fatima every chance she got, while Noorlan switched between Russian and Uzbek to speak with his two charges. Was the idea to isolate them, by talking to each separately? Nadia didn’t see the point. It wasn’t like Yuri and Ruslan were best friends.
Further meditations were cut short by Ruslan forfeiting halfway through the match, right after Mila got her second king. Mila packed up the board without comment, while Ruslan went over to discuss with Noorlan how the game could be improved. The scholarly middle-aged man listened to the fifteen-year-old boy’s ideas with a serious expression, commenting now and then.
Predictably, Mila took the opportunity to come over and sit next to Nadia. “Thank you for playing, Nadezhda. It’s been a while.”
“It doesn’t seem to have made you rusty.”
“Would you want me to take it easy on you so you could win?”
“Of course not, I’m not six,” Nadia said, with more heat than she intended.
“No, you’re not,” Mila affirmed. “Is everything all right?”
Nadia looked out the window for a minute while she pondered how to answer the question. The drab, rolling brown hills, devoid of landmark or feature, gave her no insights, and she eventually decided on honesty. “I am not looking forward to the end of this trip.”
“What exactly troubles you about it?”
She looked so earnest, so sincere, this little blonde woman in her skinny blue jeans and her oversize, cream-colored, cable-knit sweater. Like she honestly didn’t know. Well, what was the harm in saying the obvious? This woman was not Papa Titus. And Nadia could not stay silent forever, she would go mad if she tried. Provided she did not raise her voice …
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“Why should I not be troubled, Mila? I will not turn thirteen for a couple of months yet, and you are using me as a weapon. A weapon to take over a city full of people who have done nothing to me, for a country I have never been a part of, for a war that has nothing to do with me. And you are a part of that!”
Mila did nothing more than blink; her face remained calm. “I see. Then why are you in this vehicle with us?”
“Are you serious?” The question came out as a strangled half of a laugh. “I know your Snowdrop must be in another car, not far away. Where am I supposed to go? Do you expect me to force the truck over, and go running off into nowhere? To leave my family behind? I am a hostage, Lyudmila. A captive. A prisoner. Stop pretending I’m not.” Fatima looked up from her phone at the words, lifting an eyebrow; Nadia glowered at her, and she went back to the phone with a shrug.
“I understand.” Mila pressed the tips of her fingers together, frowning in thought. “You’re in a difficult situation, to put it mildly—”
“So very, very mildly.”
“But it’s not as uncommon as you think. In a way, you are unfortunate. In another way, you are very fortunate.”
“Oh. Really.” She crossed her arms so she would not slap those big stupid glasses off her face. “Do explain. Tell me how very lucky I am, to be your puppet.”
“I wouldn’t call you a puppet, Nadezhda. Do you know what I did, before I met you? I worked with displaced children. That is the official name for them. You might call them orphans, or refugees. Children like your Metics, before your Papa Titus found them.”
“And used them.”
“I know that his intentions toward them were not innocent or good. And I can’t blame you for thinking the same of us, given your experiences with him. I won’t expect you to trust us based on my word. But these children I was speaking of … they had been ‘displaced’ by violence, in the wars along the border. All of them had lost parents, as you had. Some had lost limbs, or eyes, as well. They were malnourished, diseased, scarred.”
“And I am physically healthy. Is that why I am lucky?”
“No. We both know there are other kinds of injury, and many of those children were uninjured. You are lucky because you differ from them in another way. Those children were powerless. They had nothing left, and were forced to rely on the mercy of a foreign country for their survival. You are not powerless, Nadezhda. Very far from it. It is possible that you are the single most powerful twelve-year-old girl who has ever lived.”
“Because of Ézarine, you mean. But if I did not have Ézarine, I would be in St. Petersburg with the other Metics right now, worrying about how to style my hair for my first day in school. My life would be normal and happy. So what is my so-called power good for?”
The corners of Mila’s mouth twitched up, very slightly. “I think very few girls your age describe their lives as happy, whether they are normal or not. But in order to answer your question honestly, I am going to have to say something that might offend you. Is that all right?”
Nadia dismissed the concern with a benedictory wave of her hand. “I am already offended. My whole life is offensive. I absolve you of your rudeness in advance, my child.”
“It isn’t rudeness, exactly. I don’t imagine you’ve read any Sartre, have you?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Not what. Who. Jean-Paul Sartre was a twentieth-century philosopher who talked about something he called ‘bad faith.’ Other people use the term ‘bad faith’ to refer to many other things, but he used it to mean a way we choose to avoid responsibility for our actions by denying the truth of our own freedom.”
“Denying the truth. You mean pretending. Lying to myself. Is that what you say I am doing?”
“We all do, sometimes. Freedom can be terrifying—there are so many things we could do, at any moment, but the cost or consequences would be too high, or the risk, that it is easier to pretend that we are powerless, that we can only sit passively and wait for life to happen to us, that we are all victims of larger forces. And I think—though I don’t blame you for it—you have learned, from your experiences with Titus Marshall, to adopt this same mindset.”
Now Nadia regretted her absolution. “So I only thought I was powerless? Do you even know about Yunks?”
“Yes, I do. But Yunks is not here—because you defeated her master. Snowdrop may be close, but forget her too. There is no reason why you could not outright kill me, here and now, and the rest of the bus with me, in an instant. It would be harder, but you could spare your family and destroy the rest of us. We aren’t even armed. Snowdrop might be nearby, and she might defeat you. But she might not. You are free to take chances, to take risks, that I am not and probably will never be.”
Mila was talking too quickly, too fluidly, for Nadia to get much more than a phrase in here and there. “And if I defeat or escape Snowdrop, what then? Do I live my life on the run from the Russian government?”
“Every choice has consequences, Nadezhda. And you don’t like the probable consequences of any of your choices. So you say: I am a victim, I have been wronged, this is not my fault. And I don’t say that it is your fault. You have heavy burdens. But when you call yourself a captive or a prisoner, tell me: who are you expecting to save you? Who around you is more powerful than yourself?”
Nadia would not sully God’s name by bringing it up in front of this woman. “I. Am. Twelve.”
“Yes. You are twelve. Twelve years old, and powerful enough to wipe out a regiment. And you say you are a puppet, just because you can’t do whatever you want with that power? I have power, too. Much less than you, but some. I could get a gun, I could take things from other people, and those other people would be free to respond as they chose. I am free, within a circle of possibilities. But I am not free to escape the consequences of the choices I make. You are only different because you have more options. And because you have more options, people expect more of you. You are free to meet those expectations, or to disappoint them.”
“Is that so? Is the Russian government paying you to tell me I am free to kill their agents, Mila?”
“The government is paying me because I have helped children recover from trauma. You are definitely traumatized. But you are traumatized—in part—because you have a level of power shared by less than a thousand other people on this planet of more than seven billion. There is no way to change that fact. Mr. Sartre said we are condemned to be free; you are condemned to a terrifying amount of freedom. I am here to help you cope with that, if you will let me.”
“And what if I ‘cope’ by refusing to help you with your war?”
“What if I refuse to pay my taxes? What if I drive on the wrong side of the road? What if I steal a loaf of bread from the supermarket?”
“Not being your weapon is not the same as refusing to pay taxes.”
“No, it isn’t. The government could afford to do without my taxes much more easily than it could afford to do without your abilities. But choosing not to use the power you are given is still a choice. The consequences of inaction are still consequences. The fact that you were given Ézarine at an unreasonable age does not erase your responsibility for what you do, or don’t do, with her, now that you have her.”
Nadia felt like she was losing at draughts again, and badly—only now there were stakes on the game. “Then why should I help you? How is helping the Russian government take over Ankara making the world better than helping the Coalition, or doing nothing at all?”
“That is a very good question. If you like, we can get Aziz to help me answer it. He knows much more about our nation’s security situation than I do. Would that be all right?”
Nadia nodded, just to get Mila away and have a moment to think. Her hands were shaking, and she wanted, more than anything else, to get away from this crowded RV, to be alone in silence. The best she could do was press herself further into the cushioned seat and watch Mila graciously edge her way into Aziz’s conversation with Hamza. After a few seconds, she gestured at Nadia, and the bulky soldier glanced in her direction. It was too much. Nadia got up, and walked briskly over to the bathroom, where she used her inescapable freedom to lock herself in and sit on the toilet lid.
Several minutes passed while she looked down at her hands. Still shaking. Somebody tapped lightly on the door. She didn’t answer, and the tapping stopped. The vehicle kept shaking and shuddering on its way down the country road, towards Ankara and whatever violence they were meant to do there. Vengeance for Fatih, no doubt.
Nothing Mila had told her was wrong, exactly, but Nadia did not feel powerful at all.