Page 10 of Captured By the Pakhan

"How long have you?"

He looks at the floor. "Four years."

Four years. So it's not the shooting. It’s past trauma.

"Oh," I say, and I let it go, because he's ten and I'm not going to strip-mine a child while I’m being held prisoner in a little cabin. "For what it's worth, you came through that one fast. Faster than most adults do."

"You were counting?"

"Counting helps, actually. It's just — your body's trying to run, and there's nowhere to go, so you give it a job to do instead. Counting's a job; it occupies your mind and tells it to do something useful." I shrug, keeping up with the nonchalance.

He looks up at that, and his whole face is bright for a second. It hits me somewhere under the ribs that I have no business being anywhere near this kid, and also that this is the first non-hostile conversation I've had in the past thirty-one hours and I am hungry for it in a genuinely embarrassing way.

"You should go," I say. "You've got about ninety seconds, if your count's accurate."

He doesn't move. "Are they going to kill you?"

I open my mouth to lie to him. Pause before I do. And then I choose not to, because I've got a rule about that sort of thing.

"I don't know," I say instead.

He takes that better than an adult would have. Kids are like that, more accepting of uncertainty. He nods once, and he's turning for the door when it opens.

Ilya Yaroslav, as I’ve now come to know him thanks to his loose-lipped brethren, fills the doorframe — completely without appearing to make any effort at it.

Sergei goes rigid.

"Sergei." His voice isn’t loud, but still firm. "Back to bed."

The boy edges past him with his shoulders up around his ears and is gone, and neither of them touches the other, which I find interesting.

Then the door closes, and it's just the two of us and my stolen dinner.

He looks at the plate. Looks at me. Then ultimately decides not to comment.

"Your mouth," he says instead. Pointing briefly at the split lip that he caused. It's scabbed and about half the size it was last night.

"What about it?"

"I can have Bogdan look at it if you require."

"Bogdan can stay exactly where he is.” I retort, my voice edgy.

He takes the chair from beside the door, turns it around, and sits. It's the same chair from last night; only this time he brings it even closer, when he sits our knees practically touch. The nearness of him makes my heart beat faster in my chest, not out of fear, out of a primal appreciation that I have absolutely no right to feel.

Tonight there's nothing behind his eyes that wants to take the room apart, and I don't yet know what's replaced that. I don't like not knowing.

“You broke into my home,” he says after clearing his throat. “My son was injured by your people.”

Son? Sergei is his son?

“So, I won’t apologize for the way I have treated you." He says this the way another man might report the weather. "But I will assure you that it will not happen again while you are in my house. Not from me. Not from anyone here."

I wait for him to say more. But after a long moment I conclude he’s done—a man of few words.

"That's it? No 'you understand my position' speech?"

"There is no position."