Chapter 31 #2
She moves toward the west stair.
I catch her around the waist. Galina strikes my arm with both hands, fighting until one sleeve of her dress tears.
"Let me go."
"The stair is burning."
"Those are all we have."
Above us, part of the ceiling collapses. Sparks spill through the upper gallery, followed by a rush of heat that pushes everyone back.
Nora reaches Galina first. She takes my aunt's wet face between her hands. "Come outside with me. You can tell me what was in every box, but you have to come."
Galina looks at her.
Smoke thickens under the ceiling. Nora coughs, folding briefly over the child beside her before straightening again.
"Now," I say.
This time, Galina moves.
Dasha's daughter begins screaming when another pane fails inside the conservatory. The sound shreds what remains of the orderly evacuation. Staff look toward the children while Dasha tries to point them toward the service route, unable to carry the baby and lead everyone else.
Nora crouches despite the smoke.
She presses the purple crayon from yesterday into the older child's hand. "Inspection officer, take this to the black car and wait for your sister there. Keep the crayon dry until I get there."
The child grips the assignment with fierce seriousness. A guard takes his baby sister from Dasha, while he follows beneath his own power with the purple crayon clenched in one fist.
Dasha is free to direct the older relatives through the garage.
Nora coughs again.
I reach her in two strides, closing one arm around her waist. She resists, pointing toward a housekeeper struggling beside the conservatory threshold. "Mikhail has her."
He does. I watch him lift the woman clear before I move Nora toward the service passage.
Heat follows us down the corridor. The skin across my shoulders tightens under my sweater, and smoke roughens every breath. Nora's hair has come loose, damp from the sprinklers. Soot marks one cheek. Her eyes water as she looks back at the burning room where we married.
An iron roof rib gives way.
It falls through the glass with a violent shower of sparks, crushing the place where our vows were spoken. Citrus branches ignite below it. The white stone beneath the wedding aisle disappears under flame, and the room that held our first public promise becomes impossible to enter again.
Nora stops.
"Konstantin."
The grief in my name nearly turns me around.
I take her face in both hands. "Go with Dasha. Stay inside the protected cluster until I come for you."
"You're going back."
"Everyone gets out."
"You too."
Her hands close around my wrists. For one instant, anger and separation disappear beneath fear.
"I'll find you outside," I tell her.
Nora releases me because people behind us need the passage. A guard takes my place at her side, moving her into the garage where armored vehicles wait under flashing red lights.
I return toward the central hall.
The estate brigade holds the fire away from the east wing long enough to clear the last bedrooms. Municipal engines arrive at the outer road, delayed by the false gate fault and a barrier that locked across the approach. Their hoses join ours through the courtyard.
One older cousin receives oxygen beside the garage after breathing smoke. A footman has blood running from a cut above his ear, though he remains upright while a medic closes the wound. No resident or guest is missing when the final head check reaches me.
The children huddle inside the command vehicle beneath silver emergency blankets.
Dasha kneels between them, answering the same frightened questions while directing staff through a radio held near her shoulder.
Nora sits on the floor at their feet. She turns the evacuation sheet over and then draws a crude house with the purple crayon so both children can mark each person who reaches the vehicle.
The children mark each person who reaches safety, giving them something to do besides repeat the frightened question of who is still inside.
When Galina arrives, Nora adds my aunt to the drawing. The older child makes a purple roof above her head.
The house can't be saved.
Flame moves through dry beams concealed behind plaster, outrunning water inside walls built before modern fire breaks. The west roof collapses at seven nineteen. By seven forty, the conservatory is a black iron frame surrounding burning trees.
I stand in the snow with Galina while the windows of my father's morning room fail one after another.
She makes no sound. Water freezes along the hem of her dress, and someone has placed a blanket around her shoulders.
Fire shines through the room where his letters waited, turning the panes gold before each one breaks.
All my life, I've answered damage with a stronger replacement protected by more guards at a wider perimeter.
No replacement I build tomorrow can restore the handwritten letters burning inside.
My security chief brings the first recovered drone fragments. Both machines flew preprogrammed routes from the lakeside boundary, with no active signal to trace. The bypass that blinded our system carried valid estate authority.
The municipal incident commander takes custody of matching debris under a recorded evidence seal.
Family counsel transfers the patriarch's notice, our occupancy change, and the failed-alert logs to the arson investigators.
The first public statement confirms retaliatory arson at a private estate, with no fatalities reported.
Mikhail approaches from the mobile command vehicle. "The broker's people moved on the western cargo yard during the fire. We held the gate, but they're still testing the aviation routes."
The local cell wants me divided between a burning home and an empire under pressure. The port patriarch wants the same fire to serve as punishment. Their interests overlap without proving they share a hand.
"Keep the cargo teams in place," I tell him. "No one leaves the family perimeter to chase them."
Nora waits inside the central vehicle with Dasha's children, Galina's wet photograph album on her lap. It is the only archive box that left the house, carried down before dinner and forgotten near the assembly room.
When I open the door, she looks at me through smoke-reddened eyes.
Her phone begins ringing.
Grandma's name fills the screen.