The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Seventy: The Dress

Ellini raised her hand to her mouth. At some point, she had got to her feet, but she didn't remember doing it. "Elisabetta walked through—?"

"It might have been all right," said Sergei. "The light-level was low—only one guard had really seen it. But she panicked when he yelled, and tried to run. I suppose it had become second nature to her. I pretended to stumble and knocked into the first guard, but there were two of them, and they both had guns."

He stretched out his legs and then drew them in again, as if he thought he could ease the pain of this memory by finding a more comfortable position to sit in.

"I remember thinking that the bullets would pass right through her—because she was panicking, and she always became insubstantial when she panicked. But they didn't. She was still alive when the guards dragged her back to Bucharest to await deportation to the colonies. One bullet wound in the thigh and one in the shoulder. I don't even know if she lived long enough to see the prison colonies. That was the last time I saw her."

"And what did they do to you?" Ellini mumbled, her hand still clamped in horror over her mouth.

Sergei shrugged. "Nothing fatal, as you see. They didn't want to let me out of the country, but I had a place at an Oxford college by then, and nobody wants a diplomatic row with Oxford, no matter how godless and demonic they consider the city to be."

"I'm sorry—"

Sergei winced. "Please don't. This is the whole point of the story. It is not your fault." He got up, looking a lot older than he had when he'd started the story, and went back to the box he had left on top of the glass case, toying thoughtfully with the ribbon.

"I know every man is supposed to think you resemble his first love, but the likeness between you and Elisabetta really is remarkable. The horrible past, the patient listening, the dark, inscrutable eyes. All I want is for your life to be different from hers. That is why I would like you to marry Jack. I never knew what Elisabetta wanted. She never gave the impression of wanting anything. It was as though she had got to the stage where everything was just currency for survival. Going to bed with a man was as prudent as locking the door at night. In a life like that, it's the frivolous things that suffer. And so I think you should have a chance to be frivolous. Wear pretty dresses—go dancing—marry handsome, thoughtless young men because you can. I am not saying you're shallow—and still less am I saying that Jack deserves you. I'm just saying that you must follow your desires at this stage, because anything else would be horrible. Do you understand?"

Ellini looked at him, forgetting to keep her eyes resolutely trained on the floor. She didn't think she had ever really seen him before. In her head, he had just been a victim of her demonic symptom—someone whose life she was sure to ruin—another reason to hate herself. She had forgotten that he had a will of his own. Maybe all the men she influenced had a will of their own.

And if they could choose what they did, despite what they felt, then maybe it wasn't her fault.

The consequences of that idea were fluttering just on the edge of her awareness, like a window that had banged open somewhere out of sight. But her mind couldn't help veering back to the story—to Elisabetta.

"You know, I think I understand why she was so nervous at the border," Ellini mumbled. "She thought it was too good to be true. She had the chance of a new life in Oxford, and a proposal from a good man—"

"And yet you have both those things, and you're still determined to die the day after tomorrow," said Sergei. "Funny how these things go."

Ellini stayed silent. But Sergei could never be angry—if you could call that anger—with anyone for long.