The figure on the ridge did not move. It was a black slash against a sky the color of a bruise, still and patient. The first light of dawn was a cold, weak thing, offering no warmth, only visibility. Sineus felt the exhaustion in his bones, a deep, grinding ache that had become a part of him. Beside him, Alessandro Volpe was a study in coiled tension, his hand never straying far from the pistol tucked into his belt. They had run all night, and the world had shrunk to this muddy field and the silhouette watching them from two kilometers away.
— It’s him, — Sineus said, his voice a dry rasp. He did not need his sight for this, not the true sight that was now a roar of static in his head. He knew the shape of that stooped posture, the familiar outline of the man who had taught him the difference between a clean cut and a clumsy tear in the world’s fabric. It was Pyotr Orlov, his mentor.
— It’s a trap, — Alessandro stated. It was not a guess; it was a law of their new universe. Hope was a currency they could no longer afford. — Kurov’s hounds couldn’t catch us, so the Lodge sends an old man? They are herding us.
Sineus knew the logic was sound. He could feel the cold mathematics of their position, the shrinking corridor of blighted land they were being funneled into. But this was Pyotr. The man who had argued for him in the Memory Duma. The man to whom he had left his final, defiant message. The hope was a splinter under his nail, painful and impossible to ignore. To turn away was to accept that every bond he ever had was a lie. To go forward was to risk everything on a memory. He made the choice, and the price was plain. He was betting both their lives on the ghost of his past.
— We approach, — Sineus said. — From the west. We use the ruins for cover.
Alessandro stared at him for a long moment, his dark eyes searching Sineus’s face for some sign of madness. He saw only a desperate, bone-deep weariness. He gave a sharp, angry nod. — If he offers you tea, I shoot him.
They moved. The monastery was a skeletal ruin on the hill, its stone walls crumbling like old teeth. They kept low, using the folds in the land and the husks of burned-out farmhouses as cover. The air smelled of wet earth and the faint, metallic tang of old sorrow. Every step was a conscious effort. Sineus’s body was a machine running on its last reserves, his thoughts narrowed to the simple mechanics of movement and observation. He tried to reach out again with his perception, to read the script of the land ahead, but the effort sent a spike of pain behind his eyes. It was like listening for a whisper in a foundry.
Pyotr had not moved. He stood in the monastery’s main courtyard, a wide, cobbled space littered with fallen stones and overgrown with weeds. He looked older than Sineus remembered, and thinner. The simple brown cassock he wore, the uniform of a Lodge archivist, seemed to hang on his frail frame. His grey beard was unkempt, and his face was a mask of profound exhaustion. He looked like a man who had been broken by a long journey.
They stopped at the edge of the courtyard, fifty meters away, behind the remnants of a collapsed wall. Alessandro raised his rifle, the barrel resting steady on the stone. Sineus watched his mentor, his heart a cold, heavy knot in his chest. Pyotr’s hands were empty. He stood alone.
— Pyotr! — Sineus called out, his voice carrying in the still morning air.
The old man turned, and a flicker of something—relief, grief—crossed his face. He took a half-step forward, then stopped. — Sineus. Thank God. I was not sure you would come.
— Stay there, old man! — Alessandro’s voice was a sharp crack. — One more step and you will learn if your God answers prayers.
Pyotr looked at the Italian, his expression one of weary sadness, not fear. — I am not here to arrest you, Sineus. I am here to save you.
The words hung in the air. Sineus felt Alessandro’s disbelief beside him, a palpable force. He stepped out from behind the wall, his own rifle held low. He walked into the open courtyard, the wet cobblestones slick under his worn boots. The risk felt absolute, a physical weight on his shoulders. He stopped ten meters from his mentor.
— Save me? — Sineus asked.
— The Lodge is tearing itself apart, — Pyotr said, his voice low and urgent. — Levin’s faction has taken control. They have branded you a traitor of the highest order. Kurov is not just hunting you; he has been given a kill order. This is not about bringing you back for judgment. This is extermination.
Every word felt true. It fit the pattern of the last weeks, the relentless pursuit, the coordination with the French.
— I came to offer you a way out, — Pyotr continued. He looked past Sineus to where Alessandro was still watching, his rifle aimed. — For both of you. There is a ship waiting in a neutral port to the north. It is captained by a man who owes me a debt from long ago. He will take you across the sea. New names, a new life. An end to this.
Exile. The offer was a clean, sharp temptation. An end to the running, the hunger, the cold. An end to being hunted. It was a return to the isolation he had always known, but it was an isolation of safety, not of duty. He could almost feel the warmth of a fire, the weight of a clean blanket. He could let the war grind on without him. He had done enough. He had tried.
— There are no clean exits in this war, — Alessandro said, walking up to stand beside Sineus. His voice was quiet now, but laced with a cold certainty. — Every favor has a price. Every ship has a manifest.
— This is a matter of loyalty, not commerce, — Pyotr said, his gaze fixed on Sineus. — A bond between a teacher and his student. Something your kind would not understand.
The old man’s words were a subtle attack, an attempt to drive a wedge between them, to appeal to a history Alessandro did not share. Sineus felt the pull of it. He remembered Pyotr’s study, the smell of beeswax and old vellum, the quiet lessons on the ethics of their craft. He remembered the kindness in the old man’s eyes.
— He is offering us a ghost ship, Sineus, — Alessandro insisted, his voice a low growl. — A story to lure us into the open.
— Why? — Sineus asked Pyotr, his own voice sounding distant. — Why would you do this?
— Because you were my finest student, — Pyotr said, and for the first time, his voice broke with genuine emotion. — Because you are like a son to me. And I will not stand by and watch the Lodge, in its blindness, destroy the best thing it ever made. This war will eat you alive. Take the ship. Live. Let the world forget Sineus Bielski.
The plea was heartfelt. The pain in Pyotr’s eyes was real. Sineus could feel it, a raw, unfiltered broadcast of grief and fear. He looked at his mentor, this frail, desperate man offering him a final escape. It was everything he wanted. An end. Peace. He took a step forward, ready to accept, ready to lay down the impossible weight he carried.
And then he felt it.
It was not a vision. It was a discordance, a single wrong note in the symphony of the world. Through the roar of static in his head, a tiny, clear signal pierced the noise. His gaze shifted from Pyotr’s face to the air around him. The memory-script of the monastery was a ruin, a tangle of frayed and broken histories. But the threads attached to Pyotr himself… one of them was wrong.
It was a thread of intent, a luminous strand that connected a man to his purpose. But this one was unnaturally taut. It stretched away from Pyotr, pulled tight by some unseen, distant anchor. It vibrated with a low, insistent hum, the vibration of a puppet string. Sineus glanced down at his own worn coat, at a loose piece of thread hanging from his cuff, severed and frayed. He looked back at the thread on Pyotr. His was a natural break. Pyotr’s was a leash.
The world snapped into a new, terrible focus. Pyotr’s exhaustion was real. His fear was real. His love for Sineus was real. But he was not the author of this meeting. He was the bait. The offer of exile, of a return to a safe and comfortable isolation, was the lure. It was a trap designed by a man who had studied his history, who knew his weaknesses. A trap for an aristocrat who was tired of the mud and the blood. A trap laid by Lucien Lacroix.
The air grew impossibly cold. The scent of wet stone was replaced by the faint, sharp smell of ozone.
— It’s a trap, — Sineus whispered, not to Pyotr, but to Alessandro.
His mentor’s face crumpled in confusion. — Sineus, what are you talking about?
But Sineus was no longer looking at him. He was looking at the empty archway behind him, at the place where the shadows were deepest.
The shadows in the archway moved.
