idiosyncratic—and sloppy—dresser.
—Yuri Danylevich, Sebastien said in Russian.—Of all the pleasures I did not anticipate in this palace, your presence is chiefest among them.
“Sebastien,” the man answered, in nearly-impeccable English. “As soon as I heard you and the ladies had survived the war in England, I knew I could not wait to greet you.”
He came across the little distance between them; Sebastien held out his arms. Dyachenko thumped his back with surprising strength—or perhaps not so surprising, for a man who had survived the death of the Tsar he served, a people’s uprising, Prussian conquest of half of Russia, and the pogroms that followed the Tsar’s daughter’s return to power and the crushing of the Prussian invasion in the aftermath of the Chancellor’s death.
“How did you wind up here?” Sebastien asked, gesturing Dyachenko to a chair while he, himself went to fix his old friend a drink. There was no vodka on the sideboard: they would have to make do with cognac. In Sebastien’s experience, Russians excelled at making do.
“Rankest cowardice,” Dyachenko said. “When Tsar Aleksandr fell, I was sent to serve a prison sentence in the military. But the Prussians invaded, and those of us serving our labor there were told that if we fought willingly, at the end of the war we would be pardoned.”
He shrugged and sipped his cognac. “But by the end of the war, the Undying Tsarina had seized command of the government. So I was pardoned out anyway and stayed on as military police, with the rank of Major-General. Eventually, I found myself in the political corps.”
“And here you are.” Sebastien resettled himself in the less comfortable chair opposite. His bones would not mind the stiffness as Dyachenko’s would. “You were a good detective.”
Dyachenko swatted Sebastien’s arm with the spotted back of his hand. “I still am.” He frowned at the fluid in his glass as if it were a scrying pool, twisting the garnet-set ring on his left hand in evident discomfort. “You have heard, of course, that Irina Stephanova did not survive the war.”
“I had not heard,” Sebastien said. “But I am not surprised.” She, too, had been of his court in Moscow. She had been a revolutionary and an artist and the lover of Jack Priest, his then-protégé.
“She died of tuberculosis,” Dyachenko said. “It is ironic, because she was one of snipyeri zhenshin—the women snipers—and she had been sent to Pavelgrad, where the siege was worst. But she died of something a little sorcery or antibiotic could have cured.” He drank, tossing his head back. “I am sorry you must hear it from me.”
“It is a pity.” Sebastien reached out and laid a hand on Dyachenko’s knobby wrist. His pulse fluttered under Sebastien’s fingertips like a trapped and frantic animal. “But I am glad to see you again. So tell me, Yuri—the Undying Tsarina. Is it true what they say of her? Or do you serve her out of love?”
“Which part?” Dyachenko shook his head. “That she was a sickly child, inbred and haemophiliac? That is true. That she has worked some sorcery for a cure, and seems forever twenty-one and inhumanly lovely? That, too, is true. That she has hidden her heart in a needle, in an egg, in a duck?” He smiled, for the cognac more than for Sebastien. “You would have to ask the duck. But yes, she is a sorceress. And not a tame one like your Abby Irene.”
Dyachenko set his glass aside with his free hand, then reached out and placed the palm against Sebastien’s throat. The fingers curved to embrace his neck, thumb stroking the corner of his mouth. “I thought it would be hard,” he said. “Getting older while you stayed young.”
Sebastien leaned forward to kiss him. The man was old, but his heart beat strongly under the skin. Their lips brushed, and Sebastien smelled the cognac on him, the sweetness of blood beneath. When he leaned back again, Dyachenko’s eyes were closed, his breath caught with his lip between his teeth.
“Oh,” he said, when that breath came out of him.
“And is it?” Sebastien asked.
Dyachenko shook his head. “What amazes me is that any of you survive beyond a hundred years. So much room for mistakes in a life so long. So much room for mistakes, and the pain of living with mistakes. How do you have time for anything else?”
Sebastien could not miss the flush of embarrassment and distress that colored Dyachenko’s features.
“You were never a mistake,” Sebastien said, and stood to latch the