Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

‘Papa!’

She crouched down and clutched his hand. Their fingers entwined for a fleeting moment, the way they had in the snow so many years ago. She whispered, ‘My dear Papa,’ before she pushed herself to her feet, seized the wood and tried to yank it off his back. Her lack of strength shocked her. Her vision filled with bright stars and she had no idea whether they were the real night sky opening up above or whether they were inside her head. Jens touched her ankle and she knelt down quickly beside his head.

‘ Lydia,’ he said hoarsely, ‘get out of here. Now.’ He pushed at her but the gesture was so weak she barely felt it. ‘Don’t cry,’ he murmured. ‘Just go.’

She didn’t know she was crying. She kissed his white hair and it stank of oil and smoke. Blood was oozing from his ear. ‘Papa,’ she gasped and tucked her leg under the edge of the slab that was crushing him, taking the weight of it. She forced herself to push upright with the other leg. The wood shifted a fraction, enough for Jens to drag out his other arm and attempt to crawl forward on his elbows. But he was caught, his legs pinned.

‘ Leave, Lydia.’

‘Not without you.’

‘We’ll both die.’

In response Lydia seized a fallen piece of timber, heedless of the flames devouring it, and jammed it under the polished slab, freeing her leg. Then she bent down, gripped both Jens’ hands and pulled with all her strength until her lungs seemed to rip apart inside her. For a moment nothing happened except the fire leaping several paces closer, but suddenly something yielded. There was a loud crack and Jens started to slide forward. He made no sound. Lydia could see in his green eyes what this was doing to her father, yet she didn’t stop until he was clear of the wood. Relief surged through her until she looked at his legs. Bones were sticking out in all directions through the flesh. Even in the billowing black air she couldn’t miss the white of them, and the red of the blood. One kneecap had been torn off.

‘ Lydia, I beg you to go.’ His face was robbed of all colour, his lips ash-grey. ‘Don’t let… me kill my daughter too.’

Lydia crouched beside him, bent low and draped one of his arms over her shoulder. ‘You did this? This fire?’

He smiled and she loved his smile.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

He struggled to release himself from her grip but she refused to let him go. Instead she half lifted herself, raising him with her, holding him on her bent back. Still he made no sound as his shattered legs dragged behind him, but he didn’t breathe either. A sudden furious squall of sparks and fiery debris showered on their heads and she felt something burning her ear, then the back of her neck, but her father knocked whatever it was from her hair. She swayed, her lungs screaming for oxygen, and took one laboured step forward. Both of them knew the only way out of this inferno was to run but she couldn’t run. Not with her father on her back. She took another step.

‘Put me down, Lydia,’ he ordered in her ear. ‘I love you for coming for me. Now put me down.’

‘Alexei came.’ Another step. ‘He stopped the…’ three more steps but each one smaller than the last, ‘stopped the truck.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re…’ she gasped, dragging in smoke, ‘his father.’

A wall of flames rose before her. This was it. She had to walk through it. She twisted her head sideways. ‘Ready?’

He kissed her cheek. ‘ Lydia, I am not Alexei’s father.’

Chang would not give up. He’d find her. Or die. There was no middle path. He called her name without ceasing but the flames swallowed his words. The smoke suffocated life. He could feel it dying in his own lungs and his fear for Lydia tore his heart into pieces.

The gods had warned him. They’d sent him the omen but he had refused to listen to any words but hers. He’d let her come over the wall with him and now he was paying for not heeding the murmur of the gods, for not keeping a balance of desires. He could live – or die – with that, but he could not bear that she should die for it too.

He called out. He roared her name into the fire and the flames roared back at him, their laughter in every crackle and explosion that they spat in his face. He could see nothing beyond the inferno towering around him, whichever direction he turned, and quite suddenly he realised he was looking with the wrong sense. Eyes could lie and confuse and panic. So he closed them. He stood totally still and exhaled the poisons from his lungs.

He listened for her again. But this time he listened with his heart.

Lydia knew her hair was on fire. Jens was no longer moving on her back. As she stepped forward, one painfully slow foot after the other, she refused to let her knees buckle even though, for all she knew, Jens could be ablaze too. Her mind no longer functioned properly. Control of her limbs had ceased and her lungs were shutting down. She couldn’t scream if she wanted to. How she was still on her feet and pushing through a tunnel of flame and smoke that never seemed to end, she had no idea. It occurred to her briefly that she was dead and that this was hell.

Chang, my love, I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t say I love you. The thought expanded and filled her whole mind, so that when she heard his voice she didn’t know whether it came from inside or outside her head. But hands were lifting her father from her back and a strong familiar arm encircled her waist, supporting her. Even if she were dead and in hell’s torment for the whole of eternity, she didn’t care because Chang An Lo was at her side.

The final moments became a blur and she felt herself trembling uncontrollably. Big paws were knocking her head from side to side and the burning on her scalp stopped. Dimly she caught a glimpse of an eyepatch and heard someone laugh. Laugh? How could they laugh if they were dead?

‘You were supposed to stay on the other side of the wall,’ Chang said to someone. ‘You’re sick.’

‘I was bored. You can’t have all the fun.’

It was Popkov’s booming voice and the filthy smell of his overcoat covering her. She saw him drape Jens over his great shoulder like a doll and, without knowing how, she found herself on Chang’s back. She laid her head against his and tried to inhale but all she got was thick, choking smoke. She coughed, vomited, and felt herself slide down into a black hole so deep and so suffocating, she knew she would never claw her way back up.

Alexei watched the hangar turn into a fireball. It transformed the compound into shrieking, screaming chaos. The darkness was gripped by writhing shadows as the flames tore loose and the noise was deafening.

Figures hurtled towards the burning building, black and jerky in their panic, while others were racing away from it as though a pack of wolves was at their heels. Alexei threw the NAMI-1 into gear and drove at full speed straight for the hangar. To hell with anyone in his way. The heat hit him from twenty metres out and it struck so hard it was like driving into a wall.

He saw them coming, Chang and Popkov. Bursting out of the side of the hangar where half the wall was gone. What the hell were they doing here? Wasn’t Popkov wounded? Then he saw something on Chang’s back and realised with a shock that it was Lydia. Another figure with white hair lay across the big Cossack’s shoulder. It had to be Jens. He slewed the car round and gunned it towards the blackened figures, fully visible to all in the glare of the flames, but afterwards Alexei could not recall which came first: the shot or the explosion. They seemed to occur at the same moment, yet in his mind it was the shot that lingered, the sharp crack of a rifle ringing for ever in his ears.

They were still more than five metres from him. Silhouetted and defenceless. The shot came from the side, from a soldier whose adrenalin was running high, too high for him to keep a steady hand on his rifle. He’d aimed at Chang who was several paces ahead of Popkov, but he hit Lydia. Alexei saw her body jerk on Chang’s back, then hang lifeless, her hands flapping loose as he ran.