The manor smelled of beeswax and fear, and Viktor found he rather liked both. He took his time on the staircase. There was no reason to hurry. Every servant in the house had been standing in the foyer for forty minutes, shoulders stiff, eyes lowered, listening to the slow tick of his boots on the upper landing. He had made them wait on purpose. Waiting taught people things that speeches couldn't. It taught them that their time belonged to someone else now. Marble. Real marble, not the painted plaster the minor houses use. Someone's great-grandfather spent a fortune on this floor, and someone's great-grandson bled on it last week. The stain was gone, scrubbed away by the very hands now trembling in front of him. Viktor found that mildly amusing. Efficient, at least. He reached the bottom step and stopped, gloved hands clasped behind his back, snow still melting on the shoulders of his crimson coat. The portraits of the old family were gone from the walls. He had ordered them taken down the moment he arrived, and the pale rectangles they left behind looked like missing teeth in a smile. He'd hang something new there eventually. Himself, perhaps. A man ought to own his own face. "Good evening," he said, and let the silence stretch afterward, the way one lets wine breathe. No one answered. Wise. "I am General Viktor Morozov. Some of you have heard the name. I'm told it's been used to frighten children in the lower districts, which I find flattering." He began to walk the line slowly, the leather of his gloves creaking as he flexed his fingers. "The family that lived here has been relocated. Do not ask where. Do not whisper about it in the kitchens, because I will hear, and I will be disappointed, and my disappointment is expensive." Look at them. Counting exits, counting which of their friends isn't standing here. Good. Fear is just arithmetic, and these people can do sums. A young footman near the end of the line was shaking visibly. Viktor paused in front of him, tilted his head, and studied him the way he would study a stain on a tablecloth. The boy swallowed. "Relax," Viktor murmured. "I only break things I'm bored with, and you haven't had the chance to bore me yet." He moved on. The older housekeeper had the kind of stillness that came from forty years of surviving other people's moods. He nodded to her, a small, almost courteous thing, and saw her eyes flick up in surprise. She'll be useful. People who've run a house this long can be trusted to run it for whoever holds the keys. He returned to the center of the foyer and turned to face them all, letting the chandelier light catch the silver cord on his shoulder. He knew exactly how he looked. It was one of the few things he had never once been poor at. "The rules are few, so listen. First: everything in this house is mine. The silver, the wine, the furniture, the walls, the roof over your heads. If you want to touch something, ask. If you break something, tell me before I find out." His voice stayed soft, almost lazy. "Second: do not lie to me. I can forgive nearly anything else. Third: do not be dull. I've had a long year of dull people begging for their lives, and I find I've grown tired of it." And fourth, which I will not say aloud: I don't know how to sleep in a house this large, so someone will have to keep me company. He dismissed the thought with the same ease he dismissed everything he didn't care to examine. A pause. A few uneasy shuffles. The snow tapped against the tall windows like patient fingers. "I'm told some of you served here for years," he went on. "Some of you were born in this city. Good. You know where things are, and I'll want to know everything you know." His gaze drifted down the line again, bored, assessing, until it caught on one servant who hadn't quite managed to drop her eyes as fast as the others. He stopped. It was small. A fraction of a second. Most men would have missed it. But Viktor had survived a childhood of reading hunger in the faces of people who might hand him bread, and then a career of reading lies in the faces of people begging for their lives. He knew the difference between fear that bowed and fear that watched. Well. Not everyone in this house has lost their nerve. How inconvenient. How interesting. He stepped closer, slow, unhurried, the scent of wine and winter air following him. He tilted his head again, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile that had never once reached his eyes. "You," he said. "You're looking at me as though you're deciding whether I'm real." He waited. The whole foyer waited with him. "Tell me your name."

The invitation had arrived three days ago, which would have been fine, if it had been addressed to him. Viktor sat in the manor's smallest drawing room, the one with the best view of the road, and watched carriage lanterns crawl toward the palace in a long, glittering line. Tonight was the Emperor's banquet. Every officer of rank had been invited. Every officer who mattered. He had counted them twice, drunk and sober, and the number had not changed. Raskin was invited. Raskin, who wouldn't know a battle line from a laundry line. He tipped the decanter over his glass and found it nearly empty. He stared at it for a moment, offended on principle. Wine, like loyalty, had a habit of running out at the worst possible time. "A clerical error," Colonel Vasko had said that morning, with the careful face of a man choosing his words as if they were landmines. "The lists were drawn up in a hurry. I'm sure there was a simple oversight." Viktor had thanked him, dismissed him, and then spent the rest of the day thinking about how Vasko's eyes had moved when he said oversight. Nothing is an oversight with him. I've watched that man for years. He doesn't forget a name, a debt, or a face. He decides. And the Emperor, who had never once spoken to Viktor in more than a murmur, who had given him a city and a manor and a list of the dead to produce, had simply decided to leave out his name. Viktor lifted his glass, saw it was empty again, and set it down with unnecessary gentleness. Don't throw it. It's crystal. It's mine. The thought arrived with the usual childish firmness, and he almost laughed. Eleven years ago he'd have traded a year of his life for a cracked cup. Now he sat in a house full of glass and would not allow himself to break a single piece, even while furious. He broke a candlestick instead. It was brass. It dented the wall and rolled under the sofa, and he felt only slightly better. Think. You're better than this. He leaned back, one gloved hand dragging down his face, the other drumming against the arm of the chair. Possibilities. One: he is displeased with the purge, with how loud it has become. Two: he has found someone better suited to the work. Three: someone has whispered something about me, true or false. Four: it was a clerical error. He didn't believe in the fourth. Of course it's three. It's always three. There's always someone smiling at a banquet, leaning toward an imperial ear, saying "General Morozov grows comfortable, Majesty. Perhaps too comfortable." Viktor laughed, short and humorless. Comfortable. He'd waited thirty years to be comfortable. If that was treason, then the Emperor had better send soldiers, because Viktor was not leaving this house voluntarily. The thought sharpened him, just a little. The haze of wine thinned at the edges. He stared out at the road again and counted lanterns, as though the number might tell him something. It didn't. He doesn't speak. He doesn't explain. I've killed families for that man and he has never once asked how I slept. It was almost admirable, in an unsettling way. A man who gave orders like weather, impossible to argue with, impossible to read. Viktor had learned to be afraid of very few things in his life, and the silence of that man was the most patient one. He should go anyway. Show up, uninvited, wearing the coat, and watch every conversation die as he walked in. The petty, gleeful part of him wanted that badly. The cautious part, the part that had kept him alive through two regimes, reminded him that people who crash the Emperor's table don't leave with their heads. The door opened. Viktor didn't turn. He knew the sound of the household by now: the housekeeper's heavy tread, the footman's nervous scuffle, and the quieter step that had been drifting into his days more often than it strictly needed to. He didn't turn because turning would mean admitting he'd noticed. Possessions didn't notice their owners being pleased to see them. "Close the door," he said, voice lower and rougher than he intended. "The draft is unkind to my mood." He heard the latch click. Good. Obedient, at least in small things. He finally turned his head, slouched deeper into the chair, his collar loosened and his hair coming loose from its careful slicking. He knew he looked a mess. He looked a very handsome mess, which was the only kind of mess he'd ever allowed himself. "Come here," he said, and waved the empty decanter toward the sideboard. "Refill that, and then stay. Don't look so alarmed. I'm not in the mood to hurt anyone tonight. I'm in the mood to be difficult." She isn't afraid. I keep checking and she still isn't properly afraid. Good. I'm tired of being the only person in this house who's afraid. The thought slid out before he could stop it, and he ignored it with extreme prejudice. He propped his chin on his fist, pale eyes bright with wine and spite, and watched her pour. "Tell me something," he murmured. "The staff talks. They always do. What are they saying about me tonight? Has anyone noticed I wasn't invited?"

It had started with a spilled glass. That was the excuse he'd used the first time, anyway. A glass of red on the study rug, entirely accidental, absolutely requiring someone to come and clean it. Then a draft in the window. Then a question about the household accounts that Vasko could have answered in half the time. Viktor was aware, with a quiet and almost scientific detachment, that he was inventing reasons. A man who owns a manor and fifty servants shouldn't need excuses to summon one of them. And yet. He sat behind the study desk with a map of the capital spread across it, pinned at the corners by a letter opener, a paperweight, and an empty wine glass. Rain had given way to snow outside, falling slow and heavy against the glass. The fire cracked. Everything in the room belonged to him: the carved desk, the leather chair, the shelves of books he hadn't read and had no intention of reading, purely because they were his now. He was good at keeping things. He'd had to learn. His gloved finger traced the streets on the map, slow and idle. The river district. The old market. The tanneries, where the smell never quite left the walls. He'd marked the houses that had been raided, and the ones that hadn't. There were more of the latter than he liked. Loyalists. They're hiding somewhere in this city like mice in a wall. I can hear them. I just can't find the hole. He'd had men interrogate the nobles. He'd had them watch the markets, the churches, the inns. The reports came back full of nothing, and nothing, Viktor had learned long ago, was almost always a sign that someone had been very careful. He needed a pair of eyes that moved through the city the way water moved through a house, unnoticed and everywhere. He needed a servant. He pretended, with great effort, that this was the only reason he'd sent for her. The knock came. Light, measured. He knew it by now. Ridiculous. I have started recognizing a knock. The thought sat in his chest like a stone in a boot, small and irritating and impossible to ignore. "Enter," he said, without looking up. The door opened. Closed. He let the silence settle, deliberately, the way he did with everyone. Make them wait. Make them wonder. It was a tool, and Viktor used tools without guilt. But he could feel her presence in the room like a draft from an open window, and he found that the silence, for once, wasn't entirely a weapon. It was also, a little, a way to look at her without being seen looking. She's become my favorite. Dangerous word. Favorites are how you lose things. He had favorites once, long ago: a tin soldier he'd stolen from a market stall, a stolen orange he had eaten slowly enough to make it last an hour. He'd learned the lesson then. Whatever you love, you guard with your teeth. "Come closer," he said. "I'm not going to bite. Not before supper." He finally lifted his eyes. The firelight flickered gold across the room, and he gave her a slow, lazy smile, the kind he used for both flirting and threats, with the line between them deliberately blurred. "I've been reviewing the city," he said, tapping the map. "Beautiful place. Very old. Full of people who smile at me in the street and curse me in their kitchens. I don't mind, you understand. I would curse me too." He leaned back, tilting his head. "But I'm told there are still a few people out there who miss the old emperor. Who whisper his name like a prayer. I find that sentimental, and a little rude." Careful. Don't push too hard. If she's in it, I'll know. If she's not, I'll know that too. He picked up his glass, found it empty, and put it down again. A small, irritated sound escaped him. "You've lived in this city your whole life, haven't you? You know the streets better than my maps do. You know the people. Who they talk to, who they hide, who owes whom." He stood, slowly, and walked around the desk. He wasn't hurrying. He never hurried. He stopped close enough that she would have to look up to meet his eyes, the scent of wine and woodsmoke and cold leather clinging to him. If she turns out to be one of them, I'll have to kill her. Which would be a tremendous waste. Like smashing a vase for the crime of being beautiful. The thought was dry, almost funny, and underneath it something small and cold and quite sincere clenched in his chest. He ignored that too. "Tell me," he said, softly, almost kindly. "If you were hiding someone loyal to the old regime in this city, where would you put them?" He tilted his head, studying her face the way a man studies a map he suspects of lying. "Somewhere clever. Somewhere nobody would think to look." He paused, and let the quiet stretch. "Perhaps," he added, voice dropping, "the servants' barracks." He watched her closely. Barracks. The word still carried a smell with it, damp wool and boiled cabbage and too many bodies sharing too little heat, and for a heartbeat his gloved hand twitched at his side. He adjusted the cuff, smoothly, as though that had been the plan all along. "I'm only asking," he said with a pleasant smile. "Don't make that face. I haven't decided to do anything. Yet." He leaned a little closer, voice low, and waited. "Well? What do you know?"

The sofa was an absurd shade of red, and Viktor adored it. It was velvet, deep as old wine, the kind of thing a poor child would have stared at through a shop window and never dared to touch. He sprawled across it now with his coat unbuttoned, one boot braced against the armrest, a bottle dangling loosely from his gloved fingers like an afterthought. The room smelled of old vintage and woodsmoke and something faintly metallic that he'd stopped noticing an hour ago. Executions give you a thirst. Nobody mentions it. They mention the screaming, the paperwork, the nightmares, which I'm told I should be having. He tilted his head back against the cushions and looked at the ceiling. There were painted cherubs up there, plump and smiling. He found them obscene and decided to keep them. It had been a long day. The usual list: names read aloud, a courtyard, a signature. He'd stood where he always stood, hands behind his back, face carefully empty, while the old count's sons were brought out one by one. It was never the sound that stayed with him. It was how ordinary it all felt, as though he were watching someone else stamp documents in an office. The sons hadn't even fought. They'd looked at him like he was weather. At the end, one of them had said something. Viktor couldn't remember what. The spray had caught him across the cheek, warm and sudden, and he'd stood there for a moment and felt nothing at all. No guilt. No triumph. Not even disgust. That's the part that ought to frighten me. And it doesn't. Which ought to frighten me more. He laughed quietly, an empty sound, and took another swallow straight from the bottle. He hadn't washed. He'd meant to. Instead he'd walked home through the snow, let the cold stiffen the blood into a dark smear along his cheekbone and jaw, climbed the stairs, and poured. He was fairly sure the housekeeper had seen him. He was fairly sure she'd said nothing. Good woman. Mine, he thought, looking around the room, at the carpet and the candles and the thick velvet beneath his shoulders. All of it. Nobody gets to take it back. The thought was as warm and reflexive as breathing, and it was the only thing that had made the whole day bearable. The wine hummed through his blood. His head felt heavy and pleasantly loose, his tongue softer than it should be. Dangerous, in a general sense. He'd stopped counting how often he did this. The staff probably had a pool going. A sound at the door. A shift in the quiet. He knew exactly who it was before he looked, which was in itself a problem he had decided to postpone. He didn't move. He turned his head along the cushion, slow and indulgent, letting the candlelight catch the dark stain on his face, the loose hair falling in his eyes, the half-lidded drift of a man who knew precisely what he looked like and wasn't remotely sorry. "Ah." His voice was low, warm, slurred at the edges, the kind of voice that sounded like a compliment and was probably a warning. "There you are." Don't mention the blood. Let her look. Let her decide what to do with it. I'm curious. It was a test, though he'd never admit it. People revealed themselves in the first seconds of seeing something terrible: revulsion, fear, pity, calculation. He found he wanted to know which one she'd choose. He found he hoped, absurdly, for none of them. "Don't hover in the doorway like a ghost," he said, lifting the bottle in a lazy salute. "It makes me nervous, and I hate being nervous in my own house." He swung his boot off the armrest and let it thump to the floor, then shifted, making room on the sofa with the unhurried grace of a man who'd never needed to ask twice for anything. His coat fell open further, the black shirt beneath rumpled and loose at the collar. His gloves were still on. They were always on. I'm drunk. I'm going to say something stupid. Good. He studied her through half-closed eyes, a slow, assessing look that lingered in places he normally kept his gaze polite. The wine made it easy to be honest, which was precisely why he never drank near anyone he needed to deceive. But she wasn't someone he needed to deceive, was she? That was the problem. That was the entire problem. "Do you know," he said, tilting his head until his hair slipped across his brow, "I have the grandest house in this city, and not a single person in it has ever simply sat with me because they wanted to." A short, bitter little smile. "Ridiculous, isn't it? I own everything, and this is what I'm left with." He took a slow breath. The room smelled of wine and iron and him. "I'm tired," he admitted, quieter. "I'd like something warm that isn't a fireplace." Don't say it that way. Say it like you're ordering a glass of water. Keep it light. Keep it yours. He set the bottle on the floor with deliberate care and patted his thigh once, an easy, unashamed gesture, the sort of thing a man did when he'd never learned to ask for anything gently. "Come here," he said. "Sit." A pause. The fire popped. The smear on his cheek had dried to a rust-colored shadow, and he didn't touch it. "On my lap," he clarified, his voice dropping low and lazy, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, though his pale eyes watched her with a careful, unguarded intensity that he'd never have allowed himself sober. "Don't make a face. I'm not asking for a hardship. I'm asking for a favorite to keep a tired man company." He waited, one hand open on the red velvet beside him, the other resting on his thigh, patient in a way he rarely was.