At night the ancient city was a maze of dark alleys and golden streetlights. I couldn’t stop surveying the nearby traffic, making sure we’d not been followed. Every shadowy driver was a suspect, though we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the two intruders who’d trashed my hotel room.
“Relax. We’re okay now,” Huck told me in a low voice after I’d squinted too hard at a figure standing under a dull streetlamp. He adjusted a herringbone flat cap that was pulled down tight on his forehead, covering his mop of curls. He’d donned a long, charcoal wool coat that hung to his knees, one that I’d never seen him wear before. He looked calm, which was definitely the opposite of how I felt.
“Arewe?” I asked, grumpy and anxious. “Are we really okay?”
“Probably,” he said unconvincingly.
My thoughts circled around to the reason we were leaving Istanbul. I desperately craved more information from Huck about what had happened in Tokat. We’d barely had more than a few minutes alone, what with all the hubbub and annoying practical minutia—things like ensuring that nothing in my room was stolen and convincing the hotel manager not to summon the police after Huck reminded me of the warning in Father’s letter. Then I had to sign a hundred pieces of paperwork to settle the hotel bill on credit, which required waiting for a cable authorization from Father’s bank in New York.
And then there was Huck and what was between us. Or whatwasn’tbetween us. Whatever it was, it felt like we were sitting on opposite sides of a muddy wartime trench, and I wasn’t sure if I could trust him ever again. Not like I did before he left.
I tried not to think about it. After all, we had bigger concerns, such as my father and where he was right now and the men who’d trailed Huck to my hotel room. All of it came back to Vlad the Impaler’s ring, but I couldn’t see how everything fit together. Not yet at least. Though I’d reread my father’s letter to Huck several times, I hadn’t yet had a chance to look through the red journal. It was currently burning a proverbial hole in my travel satchel, begging me to read it. I just needed to get settled on the train, where I could open it in private.
“I wish the driver would go faster,” I mumbled.
“Patience,” Huck said. “As the proverb says, bear and four bears.”
“Forbear,” I correct. “Bear and forbear.”
“Mine’s better. What requires more restraint than four bears?”
“If we make it onto this train, tonight I’m going to pray that four bears eat you while you’re sleeping.”
“It would definitely take four, on account of my Herculean strength and great manliness.”
“Yes, I suppose it does take a massive amount of testosterone to leave your home like a dog with its tail tucked and retreat across an entire ocean to your aunt’s house when the going gets tough.”
“Ouch. I’m going to forgive that one. It’s your free insult.”
“Oh really? Going to make me pay for the next one? Feel free to take the only lira I still have out of my handbag, since my tutor stole the traveler’s checks. That would be a fitting end to today.”
He didn’t answer, but I could tell by the way he folded his arms over his chest that he was upset. Good. That made two of us.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before we pulled up to Sirkeci Railway Station, which looked more like a Byzantine palace or a mosque than a train terminal, with its domed roof and stained-glass windows. We exited the car while the driver flagged down a railway porter and arranged for our luggage to be carried to the train. Huck helped, and I surveyed approaching passengers who marched past silhouettes of palm trees.
After everything was arranged, we entered the station and headed onto Platform No. 1. A friendly man behind the lone open ticket counter provided us with our exchanged tickets. We then passed under a series of moonlike clocks protruding from columns, dodging nimble porters who wheeled teetering stacks of luggage on long racks. To our left a handful of well-dressed passengers sat at café tables strewn with pistachio shells outside the station’s restaurant, smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. And across the platform, under the soft glow of the station lights, were the peacock-blue cars of our night train.
The Orient Express.
Gold-crested cars sat along the track with the acclaimed Wagons-Lits company name above the windows. It was a short train tonight—only the engine and two sleepers sandwiched between a couple of baggage vans. There was no dining car for the evening leg of our trip; one would be added tomorrow morning, after we crossed the border into Europe, just in time for breakfast.
Clipboard in hand, a middle-aged conductor in a blue uniform stood near the steps of the second sleeper. Huck and I headed his way, and when he greeted us, Huck gave him our names: “Miss Theodora Fox and Mr. Huxley Gallagher.”
“Ah, yes, from the hotel,” the conductor said with a charmingly French accent, inspecting us over the silver rims of his eyeglasses. “Your destination is only to Bucharest?”
Many passengers would continue on to Hungary, at least, and many would ride all the way to Paris. The conductor reminded us that our journey would be broken up at the Bulgarian border, where we’d exit and take a ferry over the Danube before picking up a fresh train on the opposite riverbank in Romania to finish the final short leg of the trip to Bucharest.
“Your large trunk is stored in the baggage van, and the small valises have been placed in your compartment,” the conductor informed us, reading from his clipboard. “You have been booked into the number two compartment in the first Pullman coach here. First class, two berths.”
“And what about Mr. Gallagher’s assignment?” I asked, adjusting the fur-trimmed coat on my arm. For train travel, I’d changed into a new skirt and top, leaving my gutter-water clothing behind in the hotel, as there was no time to launder it.
The conductor blinked at me. “Why, the same,mademoiselle. It is the only open compartment left until Bucharest, I’m afraid. There is a note here from the Pera Palace...” He ran a gloved finger along a penciled note before looking up at me, expectant. “You and the gentleman are siblings,oui?”
Not again. I briefly fantasized about snatching the clipboard from the conductor and smacking it against Huck’s too-handsome face.
“Mademoiselle?” the conductor asked.
“Ah, yes,” Huck said when I didn’t answer right away, clearing his throat. “Good ol’ sis of mine.” He slapped me roughly on the back.
