"Don't rub all the bluing off, just pick up the piece and snap it in with authority," Haimish said.
Grisha stifled a curse behind his blindfold and tried to remember where the piece fit in the automatic rifle; it had been a long time since he had done this.
"It 'as its place, just like a person in any society. The weapon needs all of its parts to work. If just one piece is missing, the weapon doesn't function."
"And I suppose you're going to tell me that societies won't function if one person is missing?" Grisha felt waspish. The dimly familiar pieces under his fingers eluded him. The scent of gun oil brought back memories, and beckoned with a promise of strength and a precarious future.
"Human societies aren't nearly as perfect as the weapon in your hands. There are pieces beyond count that are interchangeable in our societies, and each piece slightly alters the direction, affects the warp and the weave of human enterprise."
"Y'know, Haimish," Nik said from across the small room, "you're the first person I've seen who could wear a man out from three directions at once. Do you ever stop talking long enough to give a body time to think?"
"Don't be cocky with me, Nikolai. You may be ahead of Grigoriy in field-stripping weapons, but yer jist as lackin' in political science."
"It all boils down to power," Nik said. "Those that don't have it, want it. Those that have it, want to keep it. What's not understood?"
"How to share it, that's what's elusive," Haimish said with authority. "In Russia the Czar rules with the advice of the Duma—which means he rules as he wishes. But he really isn't the power, he's only the figurehead."
Grisha pulled off the blindfold in exasperation and threw it on the table. He quickly reassembled the weapon and pulled the trigger. The hollow clack filled the small room.
"Who rules in Russia if not the Czar or the Duma?"
"The bureaucracy, the system itself, is the power in Russia. The Russian Amerika Company, the army, the navy, the foreign service, cultural affairs, even the cossacks, are all part of this huge mechanism continually fighting itself for dominance and it grinds up people like us to feed itself. Other countries have the same sort of mechanisms but wi' different names."
"What would be different about this 'Dená Republic' you keep nattering about?" Nik asked.
"Nattering, is it? The Dená Republic would borrow from every other republic in North America. But it would borrow only the best parts from each. Secret ballots, representational governments, an elected congress, absolute limits to elected terms, a separate, powerful judicial system, I could go on and on."
"We know!" Grisha and Nik said together.
"But who decides which parts to borrow, to keep?" Grisha asked.
"We all do," Haimish said with a wide grin, "by consensus."
"Everybody just works together with no strife," Nik asked.
"It's not quite that simple. There will be political parties, and factions within those also."
"Then why do we need to learn about weapons and bombs?"
"Because a lot of people don't agree with Haimish," Nik said dryly.
"Now you're catching on."
"But, Haimish," Grisha said. "Have you seen Tetlin Redoubt? Or St. Nicholas? Or even Akku Redoubt? How can a handful of escaped convicts, deserters, and Indians beat that?"
"I wish you'd stop calling me that," Nik said.
"To answer your first question, yes. I haven't personally seen the fortresses in Russian Amerika, but I have seen photographs of them. Very detailed photographs, I might add."
"So—"
"Wait, let me finish. We don't necessarily attack them frontally, nor do we attack them all. We pick a number of weak targets, go in, destroy them, and be gone before they know we're there."
"Just—"
"I'm still not finished. We pick targets that have high international visibility. Odious targets, like slave camps, or prisons. We make sure there are foreign journalists in every location."
"They don't let foreign journalists into the country." Grisha felt smug.
Nik shook his head. "You haven't witnessed the 'New Freedom' proclaimed by international treaty. In Alexandr Archipelago alone there are nearly a dozen foreign journalists. The Russian Amerika Company wishes to make riches off our southern neighbors in the form of tourism."
Haimish waved his arms around when agitated or excited. Now he appeared to be trying to fly. His face reflected an inner fire.
"They call this the 'last frontier,' wilderness unspoiled by man. That appeals to those in the North American Treaty Organization. They are crowded down there compared to the vastness of Alaska."
"We're going to attack prisons for tourists?" Grisha felt baffled.
"We are going to attack prisons because they are used to subjugate the people of the Dená Republic. If visitors are close and see the event, it will be widely talked about. If some of the prisoners escape, we have new recruits. Either way, the press will report it to their readers, and their governments. We will build international consensus to create a new republic."
"So you believe the Czar will give up the Dená Republic just so tourists will spend rubles in what's left of Russian Amerika?" Nik asked. His tone reeked with hostility.
"Nik, what's wrong?" Grisha asked. "It really doesn't sound all that far-fetched if you think about it."
"They'll send the cossacks and promyshlenniks into your villages to live. They'll rape your wives and daughters and make slaves of your brothers and sons. When they finally catch you they'll use torture for amusement before they release you to death. This is a madman's dream." He stalked out and slammed the door behind him.
Grisha gave Haimish a beseeching look. "What brought that on?"
"I don't know. But he's right. They will do that, you know, if they can. We have to pick our targets carefully and hit them all at the same time. The Russians can't be everywhere at once with a large army."
"Fragment them!" Grisha said. "Take bites and chew them up."
"Yes," said Haimish. "Now it's time to master the bow."
"Bows and arrows?"
"Exactly. They are deadly and quiet." Out of a rubberized bag Haimish pulled a common recurve bow. "This is our most efficient weapon. It's light, accurate at long distance in the hands of an expert, and absolutely silent."
"We never used these in the Troika Guard," Grisha said, running his hands over the smooth wood. "But we used pretty much everything else."
Haimish stared at him. "You were in the Troika Guard?"
"Ten years and a few months. Didn't Nathan tell you?"
"Nathan never tells me anything, him and his 'shaman of mystery' crap."
"Okay, let's go play with this and I'll tell you about my military career."
Haimish glanced at his wrist watch. "Too close to lunch. Let's go eat first."
The main hall swarmed with people. The rich aroma of salmon stew and baked bread filled the air. Nik and Cora sat at a small table in one corner, talking intently.
Wing's return seemed to trigger a realization in Cora. She and Nik now spent a great deal of time together, their mutual attraction obvious to all. Yet Nik appeared to be more tense than ever.
At first Grisha escaped their notice, and he wondered if he should impose on their conversation. Then Cora glanced up and saw him. She energetically waved him to their table.
Nik glanced up at him and then resumed talking. Grisha could tell by the way Nik hunched over that his friend was in a serious mood. Feeling reluctant, Grisha went to the table.
". . . the thing is either important or it's not," Nik said to Cora. "That's all I have to say."
Cora looked up. "Would you sit with us for a minute, Grisha?"
He sat down and smiled at her. "How are you?"
"I feel really good," she said. "I got good friends, and I'm attracted to a good man, despite the fact that he doesn't want to live with me."
"I do want to live with you," Nik said, "as man and wife."
"What do you think, Grisha?" she asked. "Should a man and woman have to marry to share their lives?"
He shielded his chest with his hands. "You're talking to someone whose wife left him for another man, and whose new companion got him thirty years hard labor for something she did. I think maybe you're talking to the wrong Ivan."
"I accept your reservations," she said. "Now answer the question."
Nik hid behind a flat stare and tightly crossed arms over his chest.
"Okay. After pointing out you two haven't known each other very long, I guess the first question would be, how long do these two plan to share their lives?"
"Exactly!" Nik said with a fierce grin.
"I don't see what that has to do with it," Cora said at the same time.
Grisha pursed his lips and nodded sagely.
"I think I see where the discussion has foundered."
"He says—" "She says—" they blurted together.
Grisha held up his hand.
"Nik, you go first."
"She says marriage is of no importance. If I love her I'll be happy to just live with her, no threads, no ties."
"You don't agree?"
"No! I want to marry her. I want to formalize what we feel for each other, I want to have a wife and someday have children. If we just lived together we'd be no better than the cossacks and their whores."
Cora's cheek turned red, and her smile went completely flat.
Grisha nodded to her. "Cora?"
"If a man and a woman love one another, why do they have to formalize it? We're both soldiers in a rapidly changing world, in a revolution. Who has time for sewing, cooking, babies, and warm goat's milk at night when there's a war to be fought?"
Her eyes shone and Grisha realized she was about to cry.
"This is our lives! Right now." A tear coursed down her cheek and dripped off her chin. "All of us could be dead tomorrow, or the day after, or. . . ." She turned to Nik. "There are no oaths or ceremonies that will stop death. I know. We must seize the time we have and live it to the fullest."
"Will you marry me?" Nik asked.
"Not until the Dená Republic is a fact. Then I will marry you. I'll marry you twice."
Grisha felt caught in their emotional energy. Once, as a young man, he crewed on a boat that lost power and ended up on the rocks. At this moment he felt very much the same way he had before the boat actually ground into the teeth of that North Pacific island—completely alive and scared, and knowing things were going to change drastically.
"Okay," Nik said. "When the Dená Republic becomes fact, we will be married."
"You witnessed this, Grisha," she said, glancing at him then back to Nik. "So when the time comes he can't get out of it."
"I'm done being a deserter," Nik said with a smile for her.
Suppressing his envy as best he could, Grisha pushed away and ambled toward the kitchen. Neither of them noticed.
"Snagging usually doesn't start until the ice goes out on the Yukon," Wing said, coming up beside him.
"Snagging? What's that?"
She laughed. "Mating season. You know, like the birds, go out and snag yourself a mate."
"I always thought snagging was an unfair way of catching a fish." Grisha liked looking at Wing and tonight she seemed more radiant than the last time he saw her.
"And your point is what?" They both started laughing at the same time.
"I haven't had a chance to ask since you got back. How was your trip?"
"Good," she said. Her eyes lost some of their sparkle. "There's just so much to do and so little time."
"So spread the work around, stop trying to do it all yourself."
"Don't worry, Grisha, there's plenty for you, too. We realize how fortunate we were when you decided to join us."
"Not as fortunate as I was when you saved my life. I'll do anything I can to further the movement. I'm collecting old debts, too."
"We know. Well, I have to meet with Chandalar before I can go to bed, so I'll say good night." She turned and went through the door.
"Good night," he mumbled, feeling bereft. He assessed his feelings and didn't like what he found. "Not good," he said, his voice barely audible. "You'll just get hurt again."
He pulled back into his mind where he sheltered his vulnerability. There was no time to waste being giddy and weak-kneed, he decided. Perhaps after the revolution.
Perhaps never again.