He was surprised at Imanov's borderline congenial tone. Apparently murder made for cooperation.
He snorted as he had the thought. It was something Ilarion would have said, and meant.
Liadov caught Imanov's gaze and tossed him the book.
"There's a pen tucked in the flap, front cover. Make it legible is all I ask."
His eyes passed Andrei on his way back to the victim. The younger Isaev was looking noncommittal, arms crossed and leaning against the slanted rock wall to the side of the cave. A distance between himself and his best friend, and the sniper. They formed a too-quiet triangle that was almost palpable.
Irinarhov had all but said that Imanov hated him. Nika would have cheerfully asked him to join the club. Liadov had never been precisely sure why Ilya had such hostility toward him, but he assumed it had something to do with the company he kept.
That miasnik, he'd called Ilarion. He knew him only in passing, from casual visits when he'd gone home with Andrei to Leningrad, but he'd managed to take a sincere dislike.
Nika couldn't argue with that decision, even if he'd never truly been able to come by it himself.
He wondered how it was that someone as brash and mesomorphic as Andrei came by these adamant guardians, Ilarion notwithstanding. He certainly didn't seethe weakness or need- if anything, he exuded the nonserious irreverence of an fortunate son, who had been raised in a world without apologies and without uncertainty. By rights, his comrades should have hated him.
Not Imanov, perhaps. He'd been to the University, grown up well. But the sniper-
What friends we make in war, indeed.
Liadov had never been in the military proper, so perhaps he'd simply failed to understand the camaraderie of soliders. Perhaps when you dipped your hands in communal blood and drank from the same canteens, these social barriers dissolved.
He wondered if Irinarhov would ever figure out that the coolly efficient grey-coated man who'd come to tell them of his father's suicide in the prison camp was Andrei's father.
Or that-
He watched Rakitin's hands, as he lifted the eyelids of the man, searching for petichiae, little broken pinpoint dots of blood that hemmhoraged when someone was strangled or throttled for a long period of time.
"Anything?" he asked, to distract himself from thoughts of Lasha, which had crept back into his mind with the insistence of vines, sly tendrils curling and unfurling.
The rest of the body looked unusually pristine for a strangulation, but stranger things had happened.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-06-22 06:50 pm (UTC)He was surprised at Imanov's borderline congenial tone. Apparently murder made for cooperation.
He snorted as he had the thought. It was something Ilarion would have said, and meant.
Liadov caught Imanov's gaze and tossed him the book.
"There's a pen tucked in the flap, front cover. Make it legible is all I ask."
His eyes passed Andrei on his way back to the victim. The younger Isaev was looking noncommittal, arms crossed and leaning against the slanted rock wall to the side of the cave. A distance between himself and his best friend, and the sniper. They formed a too-quiet triangle that was almost palpable.
Irinarhov had all but said that Imanov hated him. Nika would have cheerfully asked him to join the club. Liadov had never been precisely sure why Ilya had such hostility toward him, but he assumed it had something to do with the company he kept.
That miasnik, he'd called Ilarion. He knew him only in passing, from casual visits when he'd gone home with Andrei to Leningrad, but he'd managed to take a sincere dislike.
Nika couldn't argue with that decision, even if he'd never truly been able to come by it himself.
He wondered how it was that someone as brash and mesomorphic as Andrei came by these adamant guardians, Ilarion notwithstanding. He certainly didn't seethe weakness or need- if anything, he exuded the nonserious irreverence of an fortunate son, who had been raised in a world without apologies and without uncertainty. By rights, his comrades should have hated him.
Not Imanov, perhaps. He'd been to the University, grown up well. But the sniper-
What friends we make in war, indeed.
Liadov had never been in the military proper, so perhaps he'd simply failed to understand the camaraderie of soliders. Perhaps when you dipped your hands in communal blood and drank from the same canteens, these social barriers dissolved.
He wondered if Irinarhov would ever figure out that the coolly efficient grey-coated man who'd come to tell them of his father's suicide in the prison camp was Andrei's father.
Or that-
He watched Rakitin's hands, as he lifted the eyelids of the man, searching for petichiae, little broken pinpoint dots of blood that hemmhoraged when someone was strangled or throttled for a long period of time.
"Anything?" he asked, to distract himself from thoughts of Lasha, which had crept back into his mind with the insistence of vines, sly tendrils curling and unfurling.
The rest of the body looked unusually pristine for a strangulation, but stranger things had happened.
He turned, in the pause before Polya replied.
"I need the cave spot-searched. Any takers?"