Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
In the depths of Siberia, in the harshest cold, an eleven-year-old girl dressed in gray overalls crossed the assembly square on the way to her prison quarters. She walked alone. She blew on her hands for warmth and left her breath behind her. It made white whirligigs through air laced with ice.
Lina neared the barbed-wire prison fence. There, she stopped. The wind played in the tufts of her sand-colored hair; her eyes glinted like varnished wood. If she’d been a fox, her ears would’ve been pricked. Voices? Out here? At this hour of dusk?
This wasn’t good. Besides her, the only other prisoners who would be lingering about now were the ruthless kind. Thugs. Robbers. The ones that would hold a blade to your throat and strip you of everything you owned, soon as look at you. Boots, overalls, and all. They’d leave you to freeze.
That’s if they didn’t do you in first.
Lina glanced around. On one side stretched the back of the barracks complex: the sleeping quarters. Half a winter’s worth of snow towered next to her on the other side. Prisoners shoveled it off the path and dumped it every morning as their first job of the day, before they set out to work in the mine. It was gray-brown at its base and peaked white at the top — the closest thing to a mountain Lina had ever seen.
Every winter of her life since she could walk, she’d trudged back and forth in its shadow. Tonight, as if things weren’t bad enough, it had voices leaking through it. Voices she now recognized.
It had to be mad Old Gleb, Alexei the Butcher — and someone else. Probably Vadim.
The thought of Vadim sent a shudder through her. At sixteen, he already had the tattoos of the criminal underworld. He had quick eyes and no patience for work — as if he felt he had somewhere else to be. Lina had seen it before, all too often. Denial. It made people hard to
predict — which also made them dangerous.
“And supplies? We’ll need more food than this, Vadim Ivanov, O great and sage leader. Much more, if we’re to —”
“Shut your mouth, Gleb.” That was Alexei’s voice: deep— and blunt as a shovel. Enormous, dark-haired Alexei, always with his eyebrows knitted and always with coldness in his pale glare. He was Vadim’s muscle—twice Vadim’s age and double his size, known to act first and let others do the thinking later.
“Quiet, both of you.” Vadim. “The kid will be here. Katya said this is the way she always comes. The best place for ‘a quiet word,’ away from the guards, she said.”
Lina gasped. Katya was her mother’s name. They were talking about her.Why would her mother tell them, of all people, where to find her? Lina was confused for a moment — but only a moment. Her mother was brave. And smart. Lina trusted her. If Mama had told this group where to find her, there must have been a very good reason.
Still, Lina hesitated. These men were dangerous. Maybe they’d only overheard her mother saying she’d be here. Maybe they were planning something . . . Lina began to back away.
“Shh. What was that?”
Heavy, crunching footsteps sounded, and Alexei loomed around the snowbank. Fear set in Lina’s bones.
Alexei reached out. To grab her. Lina sprang into action. She ducked under his arms at the last second and scrambled to get away. Too late. Alexei’s ice-cold hands clamped down in an instant. Lina was small for her age, and he lifted her up like a bundle of twigs and whisked her behind the snowbank.
Vadim narrowed his eyes when he saw her and smiled. To the other two, he said: “See. I told you the kid would come.”
“Let me go,” Lina said through clenched teeth. But Alexei held her fast. No escape. She could kick, however. She drove her heel hard into his shin. He grunted in pain, though his grip didn’t falter.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Old Gleb. “Look at him. How is he going to help us? He’s so small, he’ll barely be able to carry his own supplies! Hardly any muscle on him at all. And listen. He sounds just like a girl.”
“Idiot!” said Alexei. “She is agirl.”
Linasmirked.“I’m stronger than I look. And I have more meat on my bones than you, old man.” Hurt flashed in Old Gleb’s eyes. Lina bit her bottom lip. Starvation wasn’t something to joke about in a forced labor camp — and Old Gleb was painfully thin. Almost what people here called a goner. “And anyway,” she barked, recovering. “What do you want? Why are you looking for me? Shouldn’t you be getting your rations, quick, before someone else eats them?”
Vadim sneered. He was good-looking in a certain light. Not when he sneered, though — then he looked ugly and cruel. “Rations are exactly what we’re after, but not the measly ones served up here. Can you be trusted to keep a secret, as Katya insists? You understand there’s no going back if I tell you this, don’t you?”
Lina tried to shrug the chills out of her spine and stand tall. “I can be trusted. Can you?”
Alexei and Old Gleb glanced at each other. Old Gleb’s cheeks puffed with a barely contained laugh. “Well, Vadim Ivanov, O great and sage leader.She’ll be good entertainment on the other side of the wire, at the very least.”
Lina’s eyes grew wide and round. “You’re planning to cross the wire? To escape! Are you mad?” Hardly anyone got past the outer fence. Those who did . . . If the cold didn’t get them, or the lack of food, then the wolves would. Or, if you believed that sort of thing, the spirits.
