The drip in Katerina Svanidze's cell had picked up a new companion. Water on stone, steady and small. Footsteps now answered it — soft, shuffling, like dry leaves across a grave.
His name was Orlov. He was the ghost of what she might become.
Once, Orlov had been a legend in the Tbilisi underground: a fierce speaker, a tireless organizer. Now he was the Trubetskoy Bastion's Judas goat, the broken man sent to hand out the prisoners' thin soup and black bread. He moved like someone who had forgotten how to stand straight. He set the bowl down without meeting her eyes.
"Orlov?" she whispered. Hope and accusation tangled in the name.
He flinched. "Don't," he rasped. His voice was a dry rustle. "That man is gone."
His visits became their own kind of torture. He did not need to threaten. His emptiness did the work. The sight of him proved what the fortress could do: strip a person layer by layer until nothing human remained.
"They don't need whips here," he told her once, staring at a crack in the wall. "Silence and time do the job. They find the small cracks in you and make them wide. Then the rest falls."
Kato fought it. She clung to memory. Poems in her head. Lermontov. Lines Soso had once written. A photo of a picnic, his smile worn like a talisman. Still, Orlov's despair seeped in, drop by drop.
"No one leaves this bastion," he said another day, flat and certain. "Either you walk to the gallows or you sign a confession. There is no third way. I looked for it."
He was Stolypin's unspoken poison, spoken into her ear.
Then the Prime Minister visited. His footsteps in the corridor made her stomach tighten. The door opened. Stolypin stood there, immaculate, calm. Two guards flanked him; between them Orlov shuffled, head bowed.
"Good afternoon, Katerina," Stolypin said. Polite. Cold. He had the tone of a doctor delivering bad news. He motioned the guards to move Orlov into the cell. The old revolutionary trembled as he stood before her.
"Orlov," Stolypin said casually, "refresh my memory. The plan in Sevastopol in '06. Whose idea was it to use the agitator from the sailors' union?"
Orlov answered like a machine. Names, dates, safe houses — everything spilled out in a flat, terrible recital. He gave them up as if reading from a ledger. Stolypin nodded, satisfied. This was not interrogation. This was demonstration. He showed Kato the finished product: a man rebuilt to confess.
"Excellent," Stolypin said. The guards took Orlov away. The cell felt emptier than before.
Stolypin turned to Kato. His expression was not triumph. It was a strange, patronizing sorrow.
"Your Koba," he said, "is a man of passion. He loves fiercely. That is his strength and his flaw." He paused. "For example, he hates a certain agitator from Odessa. Yasha, I think. The man involved in your arrest."
Kato went still. Stolypin knew the details of her capture. He knew about Koba's private vendetta. His knowledge was not a net. It was a blanket that smothered everything.
"He is tearing Europe apart to reach you," Stolypin continued, shaking his head as if lamenting a waste. "All this chaos for one life. It is destructive."
He stepped closer. Not an interrogator now, but a tempter.
"I am not unreasonable, Katerina," he murmured. "I do not want more blood. I want order. I will give him what he wants."
He produced two small things: a sheet of cream paper and a black fountain pen. He placed them on the stone ledge inside her cell.
"Write to him," Stolypin said. "In your hand. He will know it. Tell him the man he seeks, Yasha, is here in St. Petersburg. Tell him I will deliver Yasha in exchange for the ledger."
He let the offer settle. The promise gleamed: Koba's revenge on a silver plate.
"Tell him to meet at the old mill at Tsarskoye Selo," Stolypin said. "He gets his revenge. You get your freedom. New papers. Money. Disappear to America, Argentina — anywhere. Leave the violence behind."
His eyes held hers. Not a liar's look. A strategist's. From his view it was simple trade: one document for two lives.
"All I want," he finished, "is the paper that threatens the state. A small price for your lives and happiness, yes?"
He stepped back. No threats. Only the whisper of hope.
The door closed. Kato sat with the drip, Orlov's echo, and the two objects on the ledge: a pen and a sheet of paper. The choice felt heavier than any chain.
Betray Koba to save him. Lure him into a trap for the chance to flee. Write and be free, or keep silence and die where she stood. The pen weighed like a shackle in her hand.