The very next night he kept his word.
The orphanage was located at what can only be called the bad part of this city. There decaying houses leaned against each other, leaving between them gaps so narrow that we could barely walk side by side. The lanes were aflood with mud and offal. He would have carried me the whole way, but I refused. That would have gathered too much attention.
My love had smuggled a breadbasket with him, throwaway pieces from the palace. Someone in the kitchen, a scullery maid or boy, had collected them during the week. Some pieces had a bite nibbled out, others sauce stains. I was embarrassed of that. Had I only asked I could have brought a cartful of loaves fresh out of the oven!
At the rusting gates of the orphanage a country gagargi greeted us. He didn’t recognize either one of us, disguised as we were as a working-class couple. He led us into the unlit house, there to meet the children.
The orphanage was like no other institution I have ever visited. Instead of timidly smiling children in starched black shirts and dresses, this house was full of scrawny creatures that I couldn’t tell apart from each other. With heads shaved bare to prevent vermin, with big staring eyes and hollow cheeks, with stick arms and legs poking out from the sheets and blankets they had drawn over their bent shoulders, they didn’t look like children at all, but prisoners most poorly handled. Creatures who wouldn’t live long enough to name themselves, for their souls to anchor to their bodies.
But there, in a hall with a low ceiling, at the end of a wobbly table, an equally scrawny woman stood behind a cracked ceramic pot filled with watery beetroot soup. As the children sat on the rickety benches, the country gagargi read a sermon. All who can should share. So be praised the Moon. I wondered then, had my family forgotten something along the way? Something very important? Why did we live apart from our people in a palace guarded by soldiers? Why did we waste so much when others had next to nothing?
The scrawny woman motioned my love and me to come and help her. At first I hesitated, but my love, he obeyed at once. As he revealed the contents of his basket, the children cheered and the woman cried. It was the first time in my life that I did something good. I swore then it wouldn’t be my last.
“Stop,” my love whispers.
I chastise myself for getting so lost in my thoughts. He holds his fist up, unable to shake off his military habits even when he pretends to be someone else than a man devoted to serve the empire.
I hear it then, too. Faint, regular thumps from right above us. Faded note of a horn. My heart beats faster, and the air, colder now, pinches my nostrils. We are in a tunnel much narrower than those right under the palace. How far have we come already? How far is there still left to go? When my love escorts me to the opera or theater, we can sneak out together, and all there will be is a scandal of a Daughter of the Moon embarking upon a fling. But now that we are both disguised, the guards would shoot us before asking for our names.
“Do not fear.” My love squeezes my hand and presses a kiss on my forehead. “It’s just the guard change at the gates. Now I know where everyone is.”
He continues to lead the way. I follow my love, him who opened my eyes and showed me how the people of our empire really fare. Though I step lightly, echoes follow me. Echoes always follow me. The age of my kind is running out. Soon I’ll be but an echo, too.
I refuse to feel pity for myself. It’s a terrible burden to know too much, and I have known too much for years. I was younger than Alina now is when I first realized that under the glitter the world is but a dark place. Perhaps my sister has realized this, too. Perhaps the visions that haunt her are but reality. I should talk to her and find out. I will talk to her.
The tunnel narrows even more, and I must fall behind my love. I seek comfort from the wideness of his shoulders, his steady gait. He must have sensed this, for he glances over his shoulder and smiles reassuringly. “Almost there.”
A part of me doesn’t even care where he’s leading me. I trust him, and Lily trusts him, too. And I trust her. After my visit to the orphanage, I asked her to tell me what really went on in my mother’s empire. She did so, honestly and without protecting my sensibilities. She told me that while we danced and feasted, the people worked long, hard days and starved. Starved as thanks for their servitude, and that hadn’t escaped the people either.
My love halts before an iron-reinforced door. The metal seeps coldness; I can feel it drifting past him. Though I hearken my senses, I can’t hear any sounds, hints of what awaits us.
My love pulls out a jingling key ring from inside his coat. “Ready?”
Suddenly, despite all my apparent altruism and determination, I’m not sure. My love has taken me to many desolate places. Places where sounds are harsh and loud, where there’s no escaping the stink of offal and sweat and dust and tar and crushed bone. Places where families are broken apart, to never see each other again, orphanages and workhouses. Hospitals, where wounded soldiers are out of sight, out of mind. Proud men sobbing in crammed rooms, on filthy straw mattresses, unable to serve the empire, simply waiting to die.
“Elise?” The brightness of my love’s voice brings me back, into the tunnel, before the iron-bound door. He has turned the key in the lock already. He is only waiting for me. “Are you ready?”
I tug my scarf tighter. I secure my red mittens under my coat sleeves. Wherever he is leading me, I will follow, no matter how the reality may frighten me. “Yes.”
We step through the door.
The stink of urine assaults us. It’s dim in the room, which has pale blue walls and a bare concrete floor. I blink to prevent my eyes from watering as Janlav locks the door behind us. It feels to me as if we are being watched.
Janlav secures the key ring back inside his coat. He takes hold of my hand. “Come.”
I can’t make myself move. For I can see that we aren’t actually in a room, but in a short corridor. Steep stairs lead out into the night, but even the icy wind can’t chase away the incredibly strong stink of urine. Two rooms flank the corridor. In the doorway to our right, an old woman clutches a shawl around her bony shoulders.
Janlav follows my gaze. But rather than tensing, he smiles at the woman. As he leads me past her, he nods at her. “Evening, little mother.”
The old woman smirks at us. Her cheeks are red either from the cold or liquor. “Evening, young lovers.”
I turn my gaze down as if embarrassed. She has no idea of who I am or that the door we closed hides a tunnel that goes all the way from the palace to a… public latrine. She just thinks that my love and I are a young couple embarked on mischief that might result in babies. Though that we aren’t—Celestia has yet to announce the name of her first lover.
Resisting the urge to laugh at the absurdness of it, I climb up the stairs, into the night that awaits us.
The main street stretches before us, as empty as I have ever seen it. It’s so late that not many carriages or carts brave the low temperatures. Wind swirls light snow above the wide flagstones and iron tracks of the trolleys. The air is full of pinprick flakes, and soon my cheeks and nose glow red.
“Is that the railway station?” I ask, unable to believe my eyes, that the tunnels could really lead this far.
“It is.”
The railway station stands right before us, an imposing building with an elaborate stucco facade, complete with carvings honoring my father. I glance at the sky, all too aware of how I’m betraying my sacred family. But the night is cloudy, and I can’t catch even a glimpse of my father. I pray this means that he can’t see me either.