Read Online The Road of Bones by Anne Fine - Free Book Online

sleep!
And
he has spies all around.’ He snorted with contempt. ‘Oh, how the rest of them must regret easing him to power! They might have known
who
he was, but never in a thousand years could they have guessed
what
he was.’ Mischa’s voice brimmed with scorn. ‘And now it’s far too late for even that pack of jackals to change their minds. He’s polishing them off, one by one. He’s finished bothering with all those “heart attacks” and “accidents”. One word out of place now and you’re in the cells, having the stuffing kicked out of you till you “confess”.’
    Again the two of them fell silent. And it’s hard to explain, but hearing these brothers talk was stirring my heart inside me. How long had it been since I’d heard anybody speak his mind? So long, I’d forgotten. I might have been cowering in dirty sacks, covered in wheat chaff, but hearing these brothers talk to one another so candidly was like stepping out of a cage into fresh air and birdsong. I looked back at the life I’d been forced to abandon and realized it was years since anyone I knew had spoken so freely around me – even my grandmother. My parents’ gathering fears had even put a curb on that brave tongue. Oh, she might still have said a scathing wordor two from time to time about the old Czar. But dare to mention Father Trofim? Not in as long as I could remember.
    Maxim was leaning closer to his brother now and taking care to speak even more softly.
    â€˜I’ll tell you this, Mischa. I think this Glorious Leader of ours has come to think you’re the better man for showing no mercy. Either he truly believes these starveling peasants still have stockings filled with gold coins, or . . .’
    â€˜Or—?’
    â€˜Or he’s waging war on his own countrymen. Think of it! He divides their land time and again to give more and more of it to the commissariat. If they object, he sweeps them off to prison camps up north – whole families, Mischa! Down to the youngest child! He gives their farms to strangers. He’s taken their crops, their cattle – even the last of their few chickens. He’s broken the countryside – turned it into a desert – and now that there’s barely a grain of wheat growing there, he’s happy to arrest the whole lot of them out of revenge and spite.’
    The voice fell to a whisper. ‘Think back to what we learned in school. You know as well as I do that if the Czar had treated even a dozen of his serfs this way—’
    â€˜Oh, yes! The country would have boiled over! And yet this madman’s sunk his teeth so deep in us that thousands go missing and it’s as if he tips their bodies into water. Within a moment, silence closes over them. Nothing is said.’
    â€˜Even by those around him?’
    Mischa spat again. ‘Brutes.’
    â€˜
All
of them?’
    â€˜Every last one. Yesterday I heard a story. Father Trofim loses his favourite fountain pen. A few days later, one of his henchmen asks him, “Have you found it yet?” and Father Trofim answers cheerfully, “Yes. It was under the sofa.” Instantly the head of security leaps to his feet. “I’m sorry, Leader, that’s impossible! Down in my cells I already have a dozen who’ve confessed to taking it.”’ Mischa shifted uneasily. ‘Last week I heard—’
    But he broke off. There was a thud of footfalls getting closer. Before the brothers even had time to pull their crates further apart, there was a rattling and the door they’d come through slid back on its runnel.
    The soldier who pushed his head through asked, amiably enough, ‘Is some conspiracy afoot? Look at the pair of you, sitting like two old ladies at the parish pump.’
    Maxim waved an idle arm towards the open truck side. ‘Just admiring the view.’
    The newcomer glanced out.