He went through to his study and sat at his desk, assembling piles of papers in front of him, but not looking at them. Ever since he had left Taganrog, he had wondered whether it might not be better to let the revolutionaries have their way. A republic might not be the best form of government for Russia, but it would be one in the eye for Zmyeevich – a way of cutting the Gordian Knot. Whatever influence Zmyeevich could then exert on subsequent generations of Romanovs, unpleasant though it might be for them, would have no bearing on the fate of Russia. If that was lost, Zmyeevich might not even bother with his revenge. Even if the revolutionaries went for the most moderate of their options – a constitutional monarchy – it could so weaken the role of the tsar that Zmyeevich would find him useless.

The problem was, not all of them were so moderate, particularly not in the south. There might not be subsequent generations of Romanovs – certainly not from the core of the family. Look what had happened to the Bourbons, those who had not got away. Aleksei had been eight years old when the French Revolution began. Four years after that marked the start of the Reign of Terror. The French themselves called it, more succinctly, la Terreur. That was when Petersburg had started to fill with émigrés fleeing for their lives. It was not their sudden poverty or their fall from grace that had terrified the young Aleksei; it was the stories they told. Tens of thousands were slaughtered by the bizarrely named Committee of Public Safety, which believed that somehow the safety of the public was an issue unconnected to the safety of individual members of that public.

They saw the guillotine as a clean, efficient, modern way of carrying out their year-long massacre, with an efficacy which only lawyers the likes of Robespierre could achieve – and take pride in. In Russia, the revolutionaries were more poets and soldiers than lawyers, but Aleksei knew what would follow them. At best, it could only mean their killing would be less well organized, but still they would massacre any they thought to be enemies of the state, and since they were the state – wasn’t it a French king who had said that? – that made them free to kill anyone they regarded as an enemy of themselves.

Perhaps the very inefficiency of the current batch of Russian revolutionaries would mean they could not kill so many with such a degree of sanitization, and that therefore the people, literally revolted, would turn against them. The French idea of death carried out by a machine was vital to the success of the whole venture. But compared to a Russia like that, being ruled by a tsar who was himself ruled by Zmyeevich seemed almost desirable – at least a sane form of tyranny.

Aleksei laughed out loud. It was a sorry state of reasoning that led him to such a conclusion. But the fault was in assuming there could only either be one outcome or another. There were two much more desirable possibilities: either to let the revolutionaries found a constitutional monarchy; or to defeat them, let Konstantin reign as tsar, and go on to defeat Zmyeevich when the time came. He’d beaten him once, when he had only just discovered what it was Zmyeevich was attempting. In future he, or whoever he chose to pass his knowledge on to, would be better prepared.

But who would that person be? It was a cruel chalice and a bitter poison to pass on to a child. Could he do that to Dmitry? He would have no desire to protect a tsar. But in any case it was not a matter that needed considering now. What mattered now was the immediate threat to Konstantin.

Aleksei pulled the papers towards him and started sorting through them, choosing which he would hand over intact to the representatives of the new regime, which he would summarize and which he would leave out. It would take all day just to do that.

‘Can you come and play?’

He turned. Tamara’s face was grinning through the door. It would be so easy to say yes, but this had to be done – and she had to learn that sometimes she couldn’t have what she wanted.

‘I’m sorry, my darling,’ he said. ‘Not just now.’

Toma ran back into the other room. Aleksei heard her voice as she went, speaking to her mother. ‘I told you he’d say no,’ she said, with an air of smugness. It looked like she wasn’t the only lady in the family who had yet to learn she couldn’t always have what she wanted. He turned back to his papers.

The one on top concerned the poet Aleksandr Sergeivich Pushkin. Aleksei moved it swiftly into a pile he would not be showing to anyone – he would burn them, most likely. Pushkin had a revolutionary spirit, but it manifested itself only in what he wrote, never in what he did. He was a better poet than Ryleev and a worse rebel – he would not have managed to kill a dozen in twenty years, with or without a guillotine, unless each one had challenged him to a duel.

Underneath that was a small paper envelope. Aleksei wondered for a moment what it was, and then remembered with a shudder. It was where he had placed the two fingers Kyesha had given him, the last time they had met in Moscow. It seemed a little crushed by the papers on top of it. Would a sensation as mild as that be transmitted to Kyesha, wherever in the world he might now be?

He picked up the envelope. It felt surprisingly light. He opened it and looked inside. There were no fingers. God forbid Tamara should have found them. But the desk had been locked all the time Aleksei had been away – and Domnikiia would not have let the little girl near it. What if Valentin Valentinovich had taken them? It was he who had allowed Aleksei the use of his desk – along with this section of the house – and had given him the keys. He might well have kept a spare set. Aleksei could only laugh at what his host might think at finding a pair of severed fingers in his desk. What if he had taken them out into the sun?

But when he looked inside the envelope once again, he saw that it was not empty. He tipped the contents out on to the desk. It was a dusty, grey powder – not a huge amount, but instantly recognizable for what it was: the final, rotted remains of a dead vampire. It had been over fifteen years since Kyesha had abandoned his humanity and become a voordalak. Now that he was dead, those years of decay had acted upon his remains in an instant. There was little left of him. It was hard to mourn his passing, but it was difficult, unlike with most of them, not to regret his becoming a vampire. Clearly Kyesha had chosen the path he had taken, but in their conversations there had been no sign of the base malice Aleksei had known in the Oprichniki. Even so, he knew Kyesha had killed, and would have killed again, and so ultimately his death had to be applauded.

There was one concern though. Aleksei could not be sure – there were a hundred ways in which he could have died, at the hands of any righteous Christian he might have chosen to attack – but Aleksei felt it in his bones. Wherever it had taken place, it had been brought about by the man for whom Kyesha had himself been searching.

It had been done by Iuda.