Grigory's Gadget

by E. A. Hennessy

  “I need some meat,” Anya said as she stepped forward to order. “Is it salted meat?”

  “Also fresh,” Nessa replied. “We also get our meat fresh from the bazaar.” Anya's mouth watered at the thought.

  “Oh, chicken with Gouda, please,” Anya said, smiling. “And tea, of course.” Nikolai and Demyan followed Anya's lead, each getting a crepe with chicken and cheese.

  After placing their orders, the friends sat at a table in the back of the creperie, as far from the windows and door as possible.

  “I can't wait,” Zoya said. “Fresh fruit! I've never had fresh fruit before.”

  “Only the half-rotted-then-frozen stuff,” Demyan agreed.

  Nessa brought them their cups of tea, and a few minutes later their crepes.

  “So where are you all from that you've never had the pleasure of eating crepes before?” she asked.

  “Lodninsk, Morozhia” Lilia replied.

  “You don't say,” Nessa said. “Don't see many people from Morozhia here. I figured I'd see even less since the war started. Unless, are you refugees?” Nessa's face turned as red as her hair as she realized the rude directness of her question.

  “No, not refugees,” Anya answered, unperturbed. “We're moving to Mirgorod.” Nessa bit her lip and thought for a moment.

  “I see,” she said. “Anyway, I hope you enjoy your crepes.”

  Zoya ravaged her crepe, which was filled with more flavor than anything she had ever eaten before. For the first time she could remember, she actually enjoyed food. This was not bland salted meat, or stale bread, or watered-down stew. This was tart, sweet, tender, and juicy. Once the friends finished eating, they leaned back with a satisfied sigh.

  The bell above the door chimed as the door open. Zoya sat up straight and glanced nervously at the door, expecting to see one of the pirates. Instead, she saw a short, bearded man. His skin was rough and appeared to be covered in ash. Or was the skin itself gray?

  “Good day, Czibor,” Nessa said to the man with a smile. Czibor nodded in greeting and sat at a table by the windows. Nessa poured him a cup of tea and walked behind the counter to prepare his order.

  Lilia, despite herself, stared at Czibor as he sipped his tea.

  “No,” she muttered slowly. “It can't be.”

  “What?” Zoya asked, doing her best not to look directly at the stranger. “Why are you staring?”

  Lilia gestured for Demyan and Nikolai to look. Red-faced, they followed her gaze.

  “That isn't…” Lilia started. “Is it?”

  “I don't think so,” Demyan said, turning back to his cup of tea.

  “No way,” Nikolai uttered. He stared, slack-jawed, at the man.

  “What?” Zoya asked again.

  “Do we have a problem?” Czibor asked, glaring at Lilia. Lilia glanced down, her face turning red.

  “No, sir,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Nessa walked over to Czibor and whispered something in his ear. The man huffed and glared at the friends more intensely.

  “Morozhian pigs!” he spat. “Figures.” Nessa glanced warily between her customers, wringing her hands.

  “Hey,” Nikolai objected. “Who are you calling pigs?”

  “Now, let's all be civil,” Nessa said. “We all are here for a bit of peace and quiet, a cup of tea, a nice crepe.” Czibor shook his head and turned back to his table.

  “You're all the same,” he grumbled, sipping his tea. “I'm sure me and my folk are so amusing to you.”

  “Not amusing,” Lilia defended. “Just…well, I thought you were mythical.” Czibor guffawed then shook his head.

  “What do they teach you people in Morozhia?” he asked. “Maybe you're too young to remember anything before the Segregation Mandate. But did they truly erase us from your history books?”

  “I don't understand,” Anya interrupted.

  “So you are a Skarbnik,” Nikolai said to Czibor. The man nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “As real as any of you, and just as deserving of rights and freedom and dignity! Chereplazh is a good, modern nation, best get used to it! We don't need backward-thinking imbeciles mucking it all up!”

  “Czibor,” Nessa said, raising a hand. “They aren't trying to start any trouble.”

  “Vestnik give me strength,” Czibor mumbled, glancing up.

  “The Segregation Mandate,” Nikolai said to his friends. “It sounds familiar. I think they must have glossed over it in school.”

  Zoya lowered her voice. “So he's a Skarbnik? Like, one of those cave-dwelling fairies or whatever?” Her voice wasn't lowered enough.

  “Fairies!” Czibor protested, standing. “Bah! We're people, same as anyone else! A little shorter, but a lot tougher.” Czibor flexed his arms in demonstration. The friends assumed he had impressive muscles, but his loose jacket hid them. “You don't remember what the Segregation Mandate was? I'll tell you. I had a cousin who lived in Morozhia all those years ago. Good, hardworking miner. Had a wife and three kids. That Segregation Mandate? It drove them all underground, into the caves. They weren't allowed on the surface under any circumstances or else they'd be arrested, given some sorry excuse of a trial, and executed. So, he and his family lived underground, feeding off scraps they could find in the tunnels under cities. Few years later, they all died in the Great Skarbnik Riot in the mines near Lodninsk.”

  “When was that?” Anya asked.

  “About seven years ago,” Czibor replied. “Now, you must remember that?”

  “That was the year of the cave-in,” Demyan said, his eyes wide. He and Anya stared at the Skarbnik, moisture building in their eyes.

  “They caused the cave-in?” Anya asked through clenched teeth. “Do you have any idea how many people were killed in that cave-in?”

  “Do you?” Czibor asked coolly. Anya's face turned red as she stood, slamming her fist on the table.

  “My father and brother were killed in your so-called riot!” she shouted. “And both of Demyan's parents!”

  Nessa scurried behind her counter, making up more cups of tea.

  “And my cousin and his family,” Czibor said to Anya. “Reports here said hundreds of humans died in that riot. And thousands of Skarbniki. The Skarbniki didn't cause that cave-in; your military did. That was how they quelled the riot.”

  Anya sunk back into her seat, her gaze a thousand yards away.

  “Tea,” Nessa insisted, placing fresh cups in front of all her customers. “Please, no need to relive those awful times.”

  “You know,” Czibor said, “I've always heard Morozhians had restrictions on what they were allowed to know, allowed to learn. But this is ridiculous. I feel sorry for you kids. At least you're out of there now. Maybe there's hope for you.” He turned back to his table and took the new cup of tea with a nod to Nessa. Nessa breathed a sigh of relief as the conversation calmed down.

  The friends looked thoughtfully into their own cups of tea.

  “Where do we even begin?” Zoya wondered. “If they told us such blatant lies about things happening right in our city, who knows how much we have wrong?”

  “I have a great idea!” Nessa declared. “Valoselo has a fantastic public library just a few blocks from here. It's the biggest in the country. Not just books, though it has plenty of those. It also has newspapers going back at least two decades, probably more. I hear they can save them using tiny photographs.”

  “Microfilm,” Czibor said

  “Anyway, they're closed by now, but they'll be open all day tomorrow.”

  After finishing his tea, Czibor stood and walked toward the exit. He nodded a goodnight to Nessa and somewhat begrudgingly to the five friends. Nessa busied herself cleaning up his dishes.

  “That sounds great!” Lilia said. “A library is much more my speed, especially compared to a pir—” She cut herself short, her face turning red.

  “We don't have a place to stay,” Zoya said. She looked at Anya. “You don't happen to have enough money for a hotel room,
do you?”

  “You need a place to stay?” Nessa asked, setting Czibor's dishes behind the counter. “I've got a back room to this place I keep for guests, visiting family, and such. You help me clean and close for the night, you can stay free of charge. Assuming you'll have breakfast here in the morning.” Nessa winked and smiled.

  “That's very kind of you,” Anya agreed. “Thank you very much!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Yeremiy stumbled out onto the cobblestone path, glancing hopelessly at the edge of the town of Valoselo. He bent over, trying to catch his breath as he straightened his glasses, leaning heavily on his crutch. Gotfrid, Igor, Adam, and Pyotr emerged from the trees, red-faced and out of breath. Adam grabbed Yeremiy by the collar and swung him against a tree.

  “You had one job!” he yelled. “How could you let them escape?”

  “The other one, Alexi,” Yeremiy stammered. “He said he would help watch, but he let them go. I couldn't run fast enough to catch them.”

  “Snezhana is dealing with that little brat,” Gotfrid stated. He walked up to Yeremiy, grabbing his arm and pulling him close.

  “You can fix this,” Gotfrid told him. “If you ever want to get home to your fiancée, you need to help us find them.” Gotfrid turned to the other men. “We'll split up, comb this town. The highest priority is that we find Zoya. Start with the port. They'll be looking for a way to Mirgorod, I'm sure.”

  As the men headed into the town, Gotfrid pulled Yeremiy aside again. He pulled a sack of coins out of his pocket, then unfastened one of his holsters and handed it and the pistol within it to Yeremiy.

  “Don't make me regret this,” Gotfrid told him. Yeremiy nodded and strapped the holster to his hip.

  Lilia scrubbed down a table in Agnessa's Creperie and Tea Shop, eying Nikolai, who was mopping the floor across the room. She looked down at the table, scrunched her eyebrows, and looked back up. Fidgeting with Pavel's necklace with one hand, she walked toward Nikolai.

  “Nikolai,” Lilia said softly. “Can we talk?”

  Nikolai stopped sweeping and looked up then glanced toward their friends. Zoya was washing dishes as Demyan and Anya cleaned the counter top and griddles.

  “Um, sure,” he said.

  Lilia kept her voice low. “I just wanted to talk about when you tried to kiss me.” Nikolai sniffed and began to sweep again.

  “It's not a big deal,” he said. “Forget about it. It's fine.”

  “No, it's not fine,” Lilia said, grabbing the handle of the broom. Nikolai looked at her with hurt in his eyes.

  “I didn't mean,” he started, “I, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.”

  “That's not what I mean,” Lilia replied. “I wasn't offended. I mean, what isn't fine is that you're upset.”

  “I'm not upset.”

  Lilia tilted her head.

  “You tried to kiss me, I pushed you away, and you ran away to the other side of the ship,” Lilia recalled. “It's safe to assume you're upset.”

  “It doesn't matter.” Nikolai pulled the broom from Lilia's grasp and walked toward the dustpan, which hung on the wall.

  “Of course it matters,” Lilia said, following him and lowering her whisper even more. “You're my friend. Just because I don't have other types of feelings for you, that hasn't changed. I care about you. There's too much going on right now, Nikolai, for either of us to lose a friend.”

  Nikolai grabbed the dustpan and stood silently, his back to Lilia. He took a deep breath and turned back around.

  “You're right,” he said. “I am upset. But you're also right that neither of us wants to lose a friend.” He walked over to the small pile of dust and dirt he'd swept and began pushing it into the dustpan.

  “How can I help?” Lilia asked. Nikolai gave a weak smile.

  “Just be my friend,” he said. Lilia nodded, deciding not to push the issue any further.

  The Valoselo Library was a grand building, surrounded on all sides by stone steps that gave it the semblance of a pyramid. The building itself was stone as well, with two large columns bordering its main entrance. Each of the library's windows was made of stained glass, depicting scenes from history and fiction alike.

  “Let's hide in the single most conspicuous building in town,” Nikolai said with disdain.

  “No one will be looking for us in a library,” Anya replied, matching his tone.

  “Plus, I bet it's huge inside,” Lilia added, her eyes wide with wonder. She’d never seen a library so magnificent.

  “Let's hurry,” Zoya insisted. “This sunlight makes my hair even brighter than usual. If any of the pirates are around, they'll spot me in an instant.”

  “I told you, you should have stolen Nessa's hat,” Anya said. “If you pinned up your hair, it would have hidden it almost completely.”

  “And I told you I'm not stealing from a perfectly nice woman who gave us food and shelter!” Zoya replied. “We've been spending way too much time with pirates.”

  “Alright, alright,” Nikolai interrupted. “Let's go!”

  The friends scurried up the steps to the library, surrounding Zoya, who kept her head low.

  “It took me so long to get over being self-conscious about my hair,” Zoya grumbled as they climbed. “Back to square one.”

  The friends opened the library's massive door with a collective huff, then froze in awe.

  The library was four stories tall, and the entryway was open to all four levels. The floors were shining marble and had swirls of gold and silver spiraling down rows of bookshelves. The shelves themselves were dark, polished wood and extended from floor to ceiling on each level of the building. Gaslights dotted the shelves every six feet, adding to the natural light cast by the building's stained glass windows. A pale statue marked the end of each row of shelves, each one the image of a notable scientist or poet.

  “Forget Mirgorod,” Lilia said with a wide smile. “This is my paradise.”

  “Mine, too,” Demyan and Nikolai agreed.

  “Where do we even start?” Anya asked, turning in a half-circle, taking it all in.

  “Well, Nessa suggested reading newspapers on microfilm,” Zoya said. “I guess we can look for that first?”

  Lilia turned to the left and walked toward a large desk by the entrance. A young dandy sporting a purple brocade vest slouched miserably in his chair, obviously bored. His dark hair was short and neat, and he had a well-manicured moustache. He perked up slightly as the friends approached.

  “How may I assist you?” he asked in a practiced tone.

  “We're hoping to read some newspapers on microfilm,” Lilia said.

  “Really?” the dandy asked. “Alright, I'll go fetch my mother. She's the librarian.” The dandy stood and walked, with a complete lack of urgency, down one of the rows of shelves.

  “Ooh, mythology,” Nikolai said, reading the label of a nearby bookshelf. He walked over to it and began perusing its contents.

  “There are so many different books.” Nikolai ran his fingers along the spines of the books, eyes wide with excitement. “All different stories from all different times and places. And it just keeps going!” Lilia and Demyan joined him.

  “They've found their element,” Anya said to Zoya, who smiled.

  A few moments later, an older woman emerged from another row of shelves. Her gray hair was tucked back in a neat bun, and she wore a simple but elegant dress of brown and gold. She smiled at the friends.

  “We don't get many folks in the library on a Sunday,” she said. “Especially on such a lovely Sunday.” The woman nodded and turned, gesturing for the friends to follow her to the other side of the library. The gold in her dress shone as they passed by the stained glass windows.

  “Oh, how rude, my apologies,” the librarian said abruptly, turning to face the friends. “My name is Miss Pasternack. It's lovely to meet you.” The friends introduced themselves in turn.

  “Miss?” Anya questioned with a glance back toward her dandy son.

&
nbsp; “Divorced,” Miss Pasternack responded. “Had I waited on that another year, I'd be widowed. Oh well.”

  Lilia glanced at her friends, equal parts concerned and amused. Miss Pasternack led them to a winding iron staircase that descended below the main floor. As they walked down the stairs, Lilia was once again overcome with awe at the size of the library. The basement level was as tall as the main level, but ranged farther, mimicking the footprint of the exterior stairs.

  Once they reached the bottom, Miss Pasternack opened a door to the right, revealing a dark room with more shelves. Instead of books, these shelves contained folders of files. In the center of the room was a device that, at a glance, looked to be an open suitcase. Upon closer inspection, it was much more complex than that.

  “We have one of the first electric microfilm readers,” Miss Pasternack explained. “All of our microfilms are filed in this room geographically then chronologically then alphabetically. When you find what you're looking for, insert the sheet here.” She gestured to the back of the device in the center of the room. “Flip this switch here. You can zoom in and out with this lever, move up and down with this dial, and side to side with that dial.”

  When Miss Pasternack flipped the machine on, it projected light onto the back of the reader. She slid in a sample sheet to demonstrate how the machine worked.

  “It's electric?” Demyan asked.

  “Yes,” Miss Pasternack replied. “Much safer than using a gas lamp. We've lost precious documents due to fires in the past. Electricity is quite the novel invention.”

  “Fascinating,” Demyan said, taking a closer look at the device.

  “I'll leave you to your research,” Miss Pasternack told the friends. “If you require any assistance, I'll be on the main floor.” She nodded politely and left the room.

  With a grin, Nikolai pulled out a leather-bound book and placed it on the table. The hefty tome released a plume of dust as it landed with a thud.

  “Did you have that the whole time?” Zoya asked.

  “Yes,” Nikolai said with pride. “I took it from the mythology section. Thought it might be useful. Look at the title.”