Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick Page A

home. There might be something in those papers.”
    â€œNonsense,” Wolff growled, and lowered his gaze at Sig again.
    â€œNo!” cried Anna. “It’s true. They’re on the ice. His
papers. Don’t you want to go and look at least? Then we can give you the gold and you can leave.”
    Wolff’s gun hovered like a cobra waiting to strike. The tip of the barrel made circles in the air as Wolff tried to think straight.
    â€œMaybe,” he said eventually. “Maybe you’re right. Where are these papers now? On the ice where you found him?”
    â€œWe left them. We didn’t think they mattered. We just wanted to get Father back to the hut. We threw everything else off the sledge and got the dogs to get us back as fast as we could.”
    â€œYou left them?”
    â€œI swear we did,” Sig cried. “I swear on my life.”
    â€œSo they’re out there?”
    â€œIn the snow, on the ice. There’s a leather bag, and a lot of papers. We could go and get them.”
    Wolff went to the window. He stared into the dark.
    â€œYes,” he said. “We could go and get them. But not now. At first light. And if you’re lying to me, boy …”
    â€œI swear it. I swear I’m not lying. On my life.”
    â€œNot on your life,” Wolff said, and now he wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked at Anna where she sat, and once again his eyes devoured the beauty in front of him.
    â€œOn hers.”

32
    Moon Day, dawn
    W ith the passing of the night, there came time. A long, aching, hurting time, cursed and forlorn, in which there was nothing to do but think.
    They spent the night sitting on the unforgiving wooden chairs, till their muscles ached and their backs were in agony, yet Wolff had stayed almost motionless on his chair, across the cabin from them. His eyes were slits in the half light from the oil lamp, almost shut, and Sig and Anna had no idea if he could see them, or whether he was asleep. Then, desperate to stretch his aching legs, Sig tried to stand and found the revolver pointing straight at him again.
    He sat down hurriedly.
    Sig’s mind drifted back, from the day trapped in the cabin with Wolff, to finding Einar on the ice and then farther still, until, unbidden, he found himself looking at the whole of his short life and wondering what any of it
meant. All he felt was that same feeling he’d always had, that he was looking for something, whose name he didn’t even know, and yet now, in the dark of the night, and with his father gone to wherever his mother had gone before, with Anna sitting beside him, he suddenly knew its name.
    Home.
    They tried to whisper to each other a couple of times, trying to say things that it couldn’t hurt for Wolff to hear.
    Sig wanted to know about Nadya.
    â€œHas she really gone? Why?”
    â€œI’m so sorry, Sig,” Anna whispered back. “I’m sorry. Listen, Sig. Remember. I’ll never leave you.”
    But there was an awful implication in what she said, in the presence of the gun that lay on Wolff’s lap across the room.
    They fell silent, and though it came hard, at some point Sig knew he must have slept, even sitting in that chair, for he woke to see Wolff judging the light from the window.
    â€œIt’s time to go,” he said.
    Anna and Sig looked at each other and stiffly got to their feet, their legs and backs aching.
    â€œNot you,” Wolff said, looking at Anna.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” she said.
    â€œI’m not going to take both of you out on the ice. I
don’t like those odds. You’re going to stay here while I take the boy. And I’m sure you can be trusted to stay here. Can’t you?”
    Anna nodded dumbly.
    â€œLying bitch,” Wolff snarled. “How stupid do you think I am? Boy, you got some rope in that storeroom of yours?”
    Sig knew they had. Lots of it. It hung on a hook underneath the shelf where