I still couldn’t believe Rusakov was gone. Not just gone from this town, but no longer a threat to us. Obviously, any of the soldiers could put us in danger, but Rusakov was especially cruel. I wanted to dance with happiness, and perhaps felt a little satisfaction that I might have played a role in getting rid of him.

  Roze sighed deeply. “I’m glad you came back here. Milda said you would.”

  “Milda’s still alive?” My heart leapt with excitement and I couldn’t get my questions out fast enough. “Where is she? Is she safe? What happened to the books?”

  Roze paused. “Will you come up? I’ll tell you everything else that happened that night.”

  I climbed back up the ladder and saw Roze sitting on the floor beside the open staircase, her hands folded in her lap.

  After shutting the secret entrance, I said, “Let’s start with the books. If the Cossacks didn’t take them, then where are they?”

  Roze said, “Isn’t it obvious? Lukas got the books out. I don’t know how he did it so fast, but he did it. Then the next morning, the people whose books had been burned found Milda and begged her for more books. We gave out every single book that Lukas had saved.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “They wanted more? After all that happened to them, they wanted more books?”

  “They needed the books and would have taken more if we’d had them. So that’s what we’re doing.”

  My ears perked up. “Getting more books? Where is Milda? And Lukas and Ben?”

  Roze got to her feet and motioned for me to follow her. “Lukas has been hiding, hoping to find you before you came into town. But since you somehow made it past him, I’ll take you to him and he can answer the rest of your questions.”

  “Definitely.” I started to go with her, then said, “But first, is there anything to eat?”

  Roze grinned. “Anything left here is a little overcooked, but I’ve been bringing food to Lukas from my home since the fire. I’m sure he’ll have some to share.”

  He’d better have. I was excited to see Lukas again, though I’d never admit it to him. Nor would I ever admit that, just this once, I was a hundred times more excited to get something to eat.

  Lukas had created a shelter for himself in an old hunter’s cabin deep in the woods, though he explained that he only went there to sleep. Even then, I could tell from the dark circles beneath his eyes that he wasn’t sleeping well. How could he? If the cabin were ever searched, he’d surely be trapped.

  Still, he looked as happy and relieved to see me as I was him, and better yet, Roze added to his small stash of food with some bread she had brought from home. My mouth was already full when she hugged me goodbye and wished us luck on our next adventure. Whatever it would be, I didn’t care. I only wanted to eat and was halfway through my third piece of bread before I remembered to ask about Ben and Milda.

  “Are they far away?” I asked. “Are they safe?”

  “Yes and yes,” he answered. “But we’re not going to see them.”

  “We have to! Roze told me they need more books—”

  “Yes, they do, and we’re going to provide them. I was supposed to leave tomorrow, so your timing is excellent!” Lukas grinned when he saw my confusion. “That’s my assignment, to cross the border into Prussia and meet a printer who should be ready with an order of books. I’ve got a wagon that will take us most of the way, though we’ll have to be extra careful since we’ll have to stay on the roads. You can wait here, or—”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  He smiled like he’d already known that would be my answer. “Ben won’t be happy about this.”

  I’d already assumed that and, with a shrug, I said, “Ben doesn’t like me, I understand that. But I’ve done a good job of smuggling so far—”

  “Wait.” Lukas held up a hand to cut me off. “Audra, Ben doesn’t try to stop you from smuggling because he dislikes you. He tries to stop you because he cares. And because he thinks one day, you’ll be among the best. He wants to keep you alive until you’re old enough to prove to everyone how amazing you are.”

  “I’m almost the same age as you,” I said.

  “Yes, but Ben knows I’m going to do this whether he lets me or not. And so will you, I know that. But if anything bad happens to you, he’ll blame me.”

  My brows furrowed. “It won’t be your fault.”

  “Let’s hope not.” Lukas grinned again. “Because the true reason I’m bringing you along is so that you can make sure nothing bad happens to me!”

  For the remainder of the day and through the night, Lukas and I were so tired that we switched off keeping watch while the other slept. Lukas took longer watches than me, though he wasn’t supposed to, but I was too exhausted to fight him on it. When I awoke early the next morning, Lukas was just finishing hitching up our small wagon, and we started the long ride to the border. As we rode, he started to teach me about smuggling over the border.

  “They don’t worry too much about who leaves the country,” Lukas began. “A well-told lie, and a simple check of our papers, and then we’ll be on our way.”

  “I have no papers,” I reminded him.

  Lukas only glanced sideways at me, hesitating as he quickly composed a new plan. “Who needs papers, then? We’ll go another route, a perfect rehearsal for when we come back in with the books—something they worry about a great deal. Each of us will take as many as we can carry, and we’ll have to go on foot, the safest route.”

  “But we have this wagon!” I protested. I’d walked so much in the last few days, I wasn’t eager to do so again.

  “It’s a fine wagon, but we can only use it on the roads, where the soldiers are; even on horseback, we’re too visible. Of course, on foot, we’re still likely to look suspicious. It’s best if no one sees us at all.”

  A shiver ran through me. “Tell me about it.”

  Lukas lowered his voice, which only made me more nervous, as if someone might overhear us. “There are three layers of border security. The first is the most difficult. For the first two kilometers along the entire border with Prussia, the soldiers station themselves close enough to be within sight and hearing distance of one another. Within the next five kilometers, the soldiers are still on patrol, only the line is thinner. Past that for at least three kilometers, the soldiers are on horseback, looking for anyone who somehow got through the first two lines.”

  I shook my head. “Ten kilometers of border security? Impossible! How could anyone get past all that?”

  Lukas looked over at me. “That’s our job to figure out, each time we cross, because each time, it will be different.”

  I took a deep breath, hoping a little air would help me feel up to the challenge. Then I sighed. That hadn’t helped at all. “What else do I need to know?”

  “Ben believes that if we’re spotted, it’s better to surrender immediately. If we run, they’re allowed to shoot.”

  “But if I’m caught, they’ll hang me.” Until saying the words, I hadn’t believed it could happen. I did now.

  “Then if you remember nothing else that I teach you, it’s not to be caught.” Lukas’s nervous laugh quickly turned serious. “Truly, Audra. You don’t have to do this. If you are caught—”

  “How often are book smugglers caught?” I asked.

  “More often than we would like,” Lukas said. “But we’re bringing in over a thousand different titles each year, and we hope to double that within another few years. The more we give to people, the more they want. They’re starving for information. They need us.”

  “Hmm.” I’d been thinking about my version of Rue’s story and the ideas Lukas was giving me without even realizing it.

  “What are you thinking about?” Lukas asked.

  “Nothing very interesting.”

  “I hardly believe that.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him, but he was waiting so patiently for me to say something, I finally said, “I’ve begun to write.”

  “Really? What are you writing about?”

  “I’m only practicing my letters.”

  “Milda hinted that these letters you’ve been practicing are randomly arranging themselves into a wonderful story.”

  “It’s just practice, Lukas.” Which was certainly true. My story was evolving and growing, and beginning to feel like it had a life of its own. But it was also far from perfect and almost nothing like I had first imagined it inside my head. Worst of all, I had no idea how the story should end.

  That night we slept one at a time in the back of the wagon, taking turns to be at watch for any passersby, which allowed me a better rest than I’d had when on my own. And while I was on watch, I dug into my shoulder bag to work on my story. But when I went to pull out my papers, my father’s notebook came with it.

  Now that I’d had more practice, it was becoming easier to read it. Most of his entries were descriptions of tricks I already knew how to perform, or notes he made to remind himself how to perform the tricks better. That was useful.

  Tonight, with the smallest bit of candlelight possible, I thumbed through the pages of my father’s notebook, finding words here or there that I knew and sounding my way through several more, studying his art and trying to match it to his descriptions, figuring out the meaning of his instructions as best I could. Nearer the end, I turned the page to something that wasn’t a design, but a recipe.

  My eyes widened and I sat up straight, wondering if this actually worked, or whether it was simply something my father intended to test some day. I had to know, and there was only one way to find out. I’d need to make the recipe myself.

  I didn’t tell Lukas about the recipe as we rode the next morning, but it was constantly on my mind. So I only vaguely listened when he showed me the various sites along the way, explaining how the land itself could help a smuggler move about, from the thick trunk of an oak tree to the bushy branches of a willow plant, to the steep slope leading to our many rivers—all these places could save our lives, if used properly. By the end of our third night of riding, he was only repeating what he’d already told me a hundred times already. Or so I believed.

  “Trees are good in an emergency, but only if you can remain opposite a soldier who is trying to find you, and if you don’t make a sound—nearly impossible on the forest floor. And soldiers are rarely alone anyway, so if one doesn’t see you, another will. It’s better to get flat upon the ground, preferably buried in the ferns or grasses. Then you become part of the shadows. I’ve lain there in the darkness so close to a soldier’s boot that I could describe the tread on it, and wasn’t caught.”

  Then, several kilometers later, Lukas said, “The worse the weather, the better the opportunity to smuggle. When the soldiers don’t want to go out, we do.”

  Milda had already explained that much to me, though I hardly relished the idea of smuggling through a blizzard or downpour. Which brought up another question, this one something I hadn’t considered already.

  “How do I keep the books from being ruined by the weather?”

  “You won’t carry them in the open. Ben taught me how to bury them in a canvas sack, so that if you’re crossing a wider river, such as we’ll do on this first mission, you can load them into a wood barrel while you cross. He always stores a few in the area. The barrel will help you keep your head above water, no matter how deep or wide the river is.”

  And so our conversations went until Lukas finally pulled the wagon into a barn that he described as having a “friendly owner,” then added, “We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  “How far?” I tried to sound positive, but the truth was, I was dreading this walk more than I’d dreaded anything in my life. A stiff wind had been blowing all day. As uncomfortable as it had been riding in the wagon, it would be worse on foot.

  “We’ll be there before you know it!” Lukas said cheerfully.

  “How far?”

  He shrugged. “Six or seven hours of walking, I suppose. And you’d better get used to it, because we won’t take this wagon back with us. As I said before, there’s too great a chance of us being noticed and searched.”

  I sighed. “Let’s get going, then.”

  His prediction was wrong, or maybe it only felt to me like we had walked twice as long as that. For the last hour, my feet seemed to be made of bricks, and I could hardly move my numb fingers. I put one hand on my stomach, wondering whether the pit inside was due to nerves or to hunger.

  “It could be worse,” Lukas observed. “The wind isn’t as bad here.”

  Which meant I could hear myself think above the sound of the wind, and all I could think about was how we were supposed to cross the Neman River as it became visible in the distance. This river marked the border of Lithuania and Prussia, but it was much wider than I’d expected. At my best, I’d have trouble throwing a rock across it, and it looked deep enough to have a powerful current.

  I didn’t care how many books were on the other side of the border. I was certain this was an impossible challenge. My stomach twisted. “I can’t cross that alone!”

  “We have to, Audra. They watch the bridges too carefully.”

  “My father used to have papers for his work as a street magician,” I said. “He used the bridge. So if we could get papers—”

  “Your father could travel because of his work. What excuse would you have? And while I’m sure he left legally, if he was bringing books back with him, I doubt he came back on the bridge, not unless he had some magical way of hiding them.”

  My shoulders fell. “So we can’t use the bridge?”

  “I could.” Lukas tilted his head toward the pack on his back. “I have forged papers that I used once when crossing with Ben. But I still wouldn’t dare return on the bridge, and you have no papers at all.”

  I groaned. If I were going to make a habit of this, I would need papers. Crossing a cold river at night just once should be enough for a lifetime.

  We were in a forested patch looking at the patrol of Cossacks ahead, with more soldiers than I could count in such low light. This must be the first layer of border security, with men standing close enough to see and hear one another. Which meant we must have already crossed the other two thinner layers, without even realizing it. That had to be good news!

  “There are many farms along the river, so the soldiers pay little attention to anyone moving westward,” Lukas said. “It’s when we try to come east again that they ask about our business.”

  From our relative safety inside the thick trees, I studied the line of soldiers. They stood in their assigned places, looking from side to side and then forward again, and occasionally calling out to one another, all while maintaining their forward stances. We’d never get past them!

  “How far ahead can they see?” I asked. In other words, at what distance inside Prussia could they see us coming?

  “Depends on the area,” Lukas replied. “But you should assume that if you can see the border, the guards can see you. It’s always better to be safer than you think you need to be.”

  “Safer?” I nearly choked on that word. “Nothing about this feels safe.”

  “Correction,” Lukas said. “Nothing about this is safe. Never forget that.”

  I surely never would. But that wasn’t enough to make me back out now, not after coming all this way. I merely looked at him and asked, “When do we go?”

  Lukas studied the movements of the soldiers a moment longer, then finally said, “It will be easier than you think, I promise. How about we cross now?”

  I didn’t understand why Lukas thought it would be easy to sneak out of Lithuania beneath the steady watch of the soldiers. It seemed incredibly difficult to me. Lukas and I crept down the slope toward the river, sneaking past the soldiers on our hands and knees, aware of the crunch of each dry autumn leaf, the crack of every fallen twig, or the scattering of a startled bird or squirrel at our approach. By the time we stopped at the bank of the river, my hands had tiny cuts on them and my knees were raw, and we hadn’t yet begun the difficult part of the journey.

  Difficult, and dangerous. After we passed the approach to the bridge, Lukas led us beneath the planks as they rose overhead. I understood it was our best place to hide, but the soldiers were directly above us. One slip, one roll of a rock beneath our feet, and they would hear us.

  Once we reached the river’s edge, Lukas silently pointed to the undergirding of the bridge. At first, I thought only wood beams were there, hardly enough to get a solid grip, but when I looked closer, I saw a rope that extended from one side of the bridge to another, directly under the feet of the soldiers.

  I shook my head, but even as I protested, Lukas took hold of the rope with his hands and legs, then began pulling himself, hand over hand, above the river.

  Overhead, one soldier shouted an order to the others to do a sweep of the area, which surely included checking the shores of the river. I had to go. Immediately, I copied what Lukas had done, wrapping my legs around the rope and moving hand over hand across the water. If I looked upward through the slats of the bridge, I saw the boots of the soldiers, heard them discussing their luck at being on duty after the cold wind had died down, and closed my eyes when their weight shifted and grit fell onto my face.

  The rope lowered with our combined weight, but we remained in the shadows of the bridge. When Lukas finished crossing, the rope bounced higher and I was closer to the soldiers than before. If they looked down, they would easily see me. I was terrified.

  Once on the other side, Lukas grabbed my arm and pulled me low, which was hardly necessary. I had no intention of standing tall and offering the soldiers a target.

  “We’re in Prussia now, so they won’t shoot,” he said. “They have no way of knowing which side of the border we belong to, so they won’t risk a war. But if they suspect we’ve crossed, they’ll be more watchful for us trying to come back.”

  My ears perked up. “Trying? Why didn’t you say we would succeed in coming back?”

  Lukas only grinned, then tilted his head in the direction he wanted me to follow him.