I lifted the third cup with all the fingers of my right hand, dropping the coin to the railing as I did, and there it was when the soldiers saw it.

  But the first man said, “You’ll still answer our questions, girl.”

  Which I’d expected would happen. So I backed up. “One more trick first. Watch what happens when I lift this.”

  I raised the disappearing cloth. The idea was to replace one person with another while the cloth was lifted, but I didn’t have that luxury. Instead, I hooked the bar over the top of the branch of an overhanging tree, then immediately turned to run. I figured it’d give me only a few seconds’ start, but that would have to be enough.

  Except that the instant I turned, I bumped directly into a third soldier who’d come up behind me.

  Rusakov.

  He grabbed my arm and, without a word, dragged me with him through the cloth, then up the stairs into Milda’s home, dropping me on the wood floor near her fireplace. The other two officers had run in ahead of us and now looked at each other, silently asking where Milda was. Then I saw the expression exchanged between them, an unspoken agreement to say nothing to Rusakov about how an old woman escaped while they were distracted by a magic trick.

  If they would say nothing, neither would I. But I did have to defend myself.

  “It was only a little fun,” I began. “Just a few tricks.”

  “No trick can save you now.” Rusakov crouched low and said, “Everything that has happened tonight is your fault, a consequence of your crimes. Yet one question remains. Will you at least save yourself?”

  I lowered my eyes. He was right: That was the only question that mattered now. Milda was gone, Lukas was emptying out the books from beneath this very room. But would I do what was necessary to save myself?

  I was told to stand again, and when I did, Officer Rusakov walked a full circle around me. “Two days,” he said. “Were you not told to meet me in two days?”

  “Only if I had names for you,” I said, my fists clenched tight in hopes that would give me courage. “Which I didn’t.”

  Rusakov wasn’t impressed. “We both know that is a lie, and a poorly told lie at that. I can see in your face that you know a great many names. Those who hide illegal books, those who teach from them. Those who smuggle them. Aside from your own name, of course … Miss Zikaris.”

  He saw my burned arm and clutched it with his hand, then squeezed until tears flowed down my cheeks. “How will you carry books with a terrible burn like that?”

  I remained silent. I wanted to say that it didn’t matter how I carried them, only that I would continue to do so as long as I had any strength for it.

  But I didn’t say that, because it would almost certainly prompt Rusakov to guarantee I was no longer able to carry books, and I didn’t want to know what that would mean for me. Besides that, I barely could speak with the way he was twisting my burned arm.

  “Sir …” one of the officers in the room murmured.

  Rusakov released my arm but pointed outside. “I was told you’d arrested a smuggler in this home, an old woman? Perhaps one of you should go find her before I ask how this girl beside me was able to trick you both?”

  The more senior of the Cossacks immediately trotted out the door, probably hoping Rusakov would target the other man left behind for having made such a critical error.

  Or that he would target me instead.

  I clutched my arm to my chest, somehow able to breathe again, though my tears continued to fall.

  “Do you know why this was necessary?” he asked. “To punish this town as we have?”

  “Because you’re cruel and take pleasure in our pain?” That’s what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Just as I rarely said anything that I really wanted to say, and never spoke if silence was enough. I merely held the words inside me, to protect them from what others might do or think.

  I wondered if my failure to speak was like an unread book, full of ideas that ought to be read, but living out its life in silence. The book had no control over who read its pages, but I did have control of myself. I had to speak up for what I believed in.

  “The people here are innocent,” I whispered.

  “No, they’re not. You are a smuggler, child, so surely you know how extensive the crime is. A few of you carry the illegal books over the borders, others hide them, others teach from them. One crime is the same as the other, and all must be shut down.” He crouched in front of me, piercing me with his cruel eyes. I fully expected to begin wilting in the heat of his stare and looked away in hopes of preserving the little courage I had left.

  He sniffed. “You probably think that this has been a bad night, but that once morning comes, things will look brighter, and then your smuggling can continue as before. If so, then you are wrong, Miss Zikaris. Before we leave this town, we will have destroyed every illegal word and action here. And then we will move to the next town, and the next. Everywhere you smugglers go, I will follow, and I will bring fire and punishment with me. Do you believe me?”

  I didn’t answer, I couldn’t.

  “Look at me!” he demanded. I forced myself to obey him, and he repeated, “Do you believe me?”

  Slowly I nodded, and I meant it. Books were important—I understood that now. Words were important and they had power and force, but not enough to overcome the Russian Empire or the size of their armies. We were attempting to stop a raging river with a thin barrier of ink and paper. We never had any chance of winning.

  Rusakov stood again, hovering over me. As before, I felt his eyes looking down on me the way I’d feel the heat of the sun on my head. But I didn’t look up. I didn’t want him to see how afraid I was.

  Rusakov grunted. “Your criminal parents clearly failed to teach you proper manners, Miss Zikaris. Do you not respect my authority? Do you not respect the law?”

  “The law is wrong,” I said. The words had forced themselves out, unable to be contained any longer. And once unleashed, they continued to erupt from me, angry and determined. “What you’ve done here tonight is wrong, and I will not pretend to respect it.”

  He smirked at me, obviously amused by my boldness, but not by my message. “You are the reason for tonight’s demonstration here. I know you are the one who brought the book to that wedding tonight. Did you get it from this home?”

  “No.” I got it from a secret hiding place beneath this home, which in my mind was an entirely different place.

  “Then where did it come from?”

  “You searched this entire village for books tonight. I know how many you found, how many you burned. Why do you care about a single book given as a gift? Shut down one source and a dozen more will pop up in its place with fifty more book carriers determined to do their job.”

  He nodded. “If that is true, then we must put our boots down on the people with greater harshness than we have already done. If you refuse to tell me the source for the book you carried as a gift tonight, I may have to continue burning this village. I cannot take the chance of having missed a source.”

  I looked Rusakov in the eyes and steadied my voice enough to say, “Please don’t do that. The people here are good and are just trying to make a life for themselves.”

  “Then let them live. Where did you get that book?”

  If he thought I was incapable of telling a good lie, then he was mistaken. What else had my father devoted his life to but telling a good lie, whether as a street magician or a carrier, or even with the lies he had told me, to make me believe his life was as simple as he pretended it was? I had learned well.

  “I brought it directly over the border from Prussia,” I said to Rusakov. “I’ve hidden my stash in the forest, above the village square. The woman who lives in this home gave me a blanket to deliver to the wedding as a gift, only a blanket. I added one of my own smuggled books to the gift. She didn’t know.”

  “Go and find those books,” Rusakov ordered the Cossack who still remained in the home, then turned back to me. “And you’d better hope they find some. Otherwise I’ll know you are lying, and we’ll start again with the questions. I will not be so merciful to you the next time.”

  I sent out a silent prayer that Lukas had left the books where I’d last seen them, and more important, that he’d be far away from them before the officers arrived. I desperately hoped he would be. Because if not, they’d see the scars from where he’d been whipped and realize he’d been caught smuggling before. And this time, his punishment wouldn’t end with a simple whipping.

  Nor would mine. Rusakov took my arm and led me outside, handing me over to a soldier guarding a prison wagon. “Put her inside,” he said. “We’re not finished with her yet.” I started to move forward, but he grabbed my father’s bag and lifted it from my shoulder. “And this is surely illegal too. Put it on the burn pile.”

  “No!” I cried, clutching for it, and failing. The door to the prison wagon slammed shut in my face, and I saw my father’s bag, the last piece of him I’d ever have, being carried away.

  A wave of terror flushed through me once the prison wagon began to move. Surely they wouldn’t send a child to an actual prison!

  Did they think of me as a child? My crimes had certainly equaled even those of the adult smugglers, so they owed me no mercy.

  But I hoped they would grant it.

  Did Lukas know they were taking me away, or Milda? Were they able to get the books out of Milda’s home? Would it be burned, too, like so many others? Or perhaps the entire town would be on fire before morning.

  I cried for the first hour of the ride, until I had no more tears. Until my eyes were so swollen that they felt thick and heavy. After that, I lay on my side in the wagon, my arms wrapped tight around myself, existing in that middle place between sleep and wake where nightmares happened, until the wagon finally stopped.

  I sat up just as the door opened, and there was Rusakov again. For a brief moment, he seemed to soften as he noticed my tearstained cheeks and reddened eyes. Then his expression hardened again as he reached in and dragged me from the wagon.

  We had passed through an archway with iron doors that slammed shut behind us, and now I was in a courtyard in front of a large building constructed of massive stone blocks, with a few barred windows and Russian flags everywhere standing as a reminder of who was in charge.

  With his hand gripping my left arm, Rusakov led me through a main set of doors, though I wasn’t taken to a cell as I’d expected. Instead, I was thrown into a room near the entrance, one without a single window and with a door that was locked from the outside. There was no furniture, but I sat on the floor and tried not to let my imagination run away from me.

  Instead, I reminded myself that I had to be strong, and I was strong enough for this, wasn’t I? Back on the farm with my family, I’d been kicked once by a horse, and another time dropped a hammer on my foot while practicing one of my father’s tricks. I’d accidentally cut my arm once with a scythe—the same arm that was burned now, in fact—which I was also strong enough to endure. But if they were going to torture me for information, I didn’t know if I could withstand it. I didn’t know if I was strong enough for that.

  The problem was that I had little choice otherwise. If this was only about the books, as awful as it would be to see them destroyed, I wouldn’t give my life for them. But it wasn’t the books. I knew names of carriers, those who distributed books within the country, and those who bought them. How many people had come through Milda’s shop pretending to buy some little item so they could obtain the book they really wanted? I’d already decided I would not voluntarily turn anyone in, but could the information be forced out of me? How much torture could I stand before the names would fall from my lips, even knowing that by doing so, I would subject them to the same torment?

  Hours passed before the handle of the door in my little locked room turned and Rusakov walked in carrying a metal box. Two other soldiers accompanied him, one with a little round table and the other with a single chair. A chair for Rusakov. I wouldn’t get one. I’d never felt smaller in my life.

  It wasn’t because of the table and chair. I feared what was in the box, what might have taken them hours to pull together to elicit a confession from me.

  By now, I was exhausted. Surely it was morning or maybe even later, and I’d barely slept ten minutes together here in this room. I was famished and terrified, and I doubted the strength of my will. Rusakov didn’t need to torture me any further. Not if he knew how much he already had.

  “Leave us alone,” Rusakov ordered the two soldiers in the room with him. They obeyed, locking the door behind them. I wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was Rusakov.

  I crossed my legs and sat on the floor, completely unsure of what to expect.

  Rusakov withdrew a paper from a pocket in his uniform and unfolded it, then pretended to read it. Pretended, I knew, because obviously he would have already read it, already known what was written on the paper, but he wanted to worry me further with what it might say.

  And it was working. My heart pounded so hard against my chest that each beat had begun to hurt. I couldn’t see how it didn’t break the bones there.

  Finally, he looked up from the paper. “These are the sentencing orders for Henri and Lina Zikaris, both convicted of smuggling across our borders and within our borders.”

  Rather than making me feel afraid, which was surely his intention, I became angry at hearing my parents’ names. “Did you send them to Siberia?”

  “Their pleas for mercy weren’t for themselves—that should make you proud. They only pled for you. The last they saw of you was as you ran into a patch of woods with a dozen of my men on your heels. They begged to know if you were safe, if their punishment could wait until they had the chance to arrange for your care.”

  “Where are my parents?” I said, angrier than before.

  “How interesting that they seemed to care more about your well-being than you care for theirs. If you really loved them, you would have saved them. They would have done that for you.”

  “Where are—”

  “I signed the order myself to send them to Siberia, as I warned you I would.” My eyes closed as Rusakov confirmed the worst of my suspicions, but he wasn’t finished. “They are lucky, you know. Not many years ago, they would have walked to Siberia in chains, across ice and snow, a journey that might have taken three years, if they survived it. Most didn’t. Now we put them on trains for as far as they can take them. When the rails end, your parents’ work will begin, building more railways, extending the reach of the Russian Empire. They must work hard, for our prison guards have little tolerance for laziness. Can your mother endure a log being attached to her leg by chains for the next twenty years? How many beatings can your father survive? I hope that will not be their fate.”

  “How long is their sentence?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Once they’ve completed their term of punishment, they will almost certainly remain in Siberia … how would they ever find passage home?”

  With my head hanging down, I asked, “Am I now in the same prison where my parents were taken after their arrest?” I wondered how closely I was following in their footsteps, how long until I was given the same sentence as them, or if I had any chance at all of leaving this room.

  In answer, Officer Rusakov picked up the box from the table beside him and slid it across the floor toward me. In paint on one side was written the name H Zikaris. After some hesitation I opened the box and saw a pipe and a deck of cards, items I recognized as having belonged to my father. Below them was a rose brooch and a crocheted handkerchief, my mother’s. At the bottom was a key. I’d never seen that before.

  “Why are you showing this to me?” I asked.

  “In hopes of reminding you of how much you have lost.” Rusakov leaned lower to stare at me. “If you truly miss them, then I will send you to Siberia to join them. Yes, it’s true that you may not survive the trip, just as your parents may not have survived it—I’d hate for you to go all that way and find yourself alone there, with nothing but ice and chains and convicted criminals for company. You will be assigned the same work as the adults. If you think carrying a sack full of books is heavy, wait until you are given a railroad tie to drag by yourself for a kilometer through knee-deep snow.”

  I didn’t want that. I didn’t want any part of going to Siberia. Much as I missed my parents, I knew they wouldn’t want me to join them there either. If, as Rusakov said, they had even survived the trip.

  I glanced up. “You want the name of that boy who you think is smuggling books. Why?”

  “He is giving me a great deal of trouble, and it must stop. I believe he is working for a smuggler named Ben Kagan. Do you know that man?”

  My eyes darted and I pressed my lips together, determined not to say a word, not to reveal a single thing.

  But Rusakov leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. “Don’t think of them as people. Think of them as your pathway to freedom. When I have what I want from you, I will put you in a wagon that will take you anywhere in the Russian Empire that you wish to go, even back to your land on that little hillside if you like. You can start a new life there, an honest life, a law-abiding life, loyal to the tsar.” He shrugged. “Or I will put you on the next train to Siberia. You do not seem properly dressed for the trip. I hope that will not be a problem.”

  I closed my eyes, pouring all my strength into holding my emotions together, into keeping myself from dissolving into a thousand pieces. I genuinely did not know what to do.

  Rusakov reached into the pocket of his uniform and withdrew a single piece of paper and a pen. “Shall we begin?”

  Lukas and Ben weren’t just people to me. Nor were Milda and Roze and the priest and everyone else I’d met along the way—names Rusakov would surely demand if I cracked and gave him Lukas’s name.

  These people were my friends. And they had opened my eyes to a world I’d never known existed, a world built of letters that made words that made magic—real magic—come alive in my mind.