Free City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin Page A

Cheka hate me.” Anna, in the doorway of her bedroom, extended her hand. “I am Anastasia.”
    Nick got up to go and kiss it. “Your Imperial Highness.”
    “Oh, give me strength,” Esther said. This was mutual masturbation. Not merely self-delusion, it was allowing Anna to explain away the real fear that had kept her moribund in Dalldorf for two years.
    Anna walked across to the window and, keeping carefully to the edge, peered down into the road.
    “They won’t find you here, Highness,” Nick said. “Nobody won’t look for you here. This is good cover, better than a castle with a moat—”
    “Cheaper, too,” Esther said.
    “And when you make your debut, I get a troop of Chevalier Gardes that nobody can’t get past.” He rubbed his hands. “But we got lot of work to do till then. Help bring back details, make you word-perfect. And I got just the person for it, someone you’ll remember, maybe— Natalya Tchichagova.”
    If he expected a reaction, he didn’t get it. Anna stayed looking out the window.
    He turned to Esther, relapsing into Russian. “One of my own damn employees,” he said, “I tell you, Esther, this was meant. The saints know about this. I was looking among the émigrés, someone who knew the royal family, and there she was all the time, working as a dancer at the Purple Parrot.”
    “A stripper?” Esther said. All Nick’s clubs were next door to one another, though only the Green Hat had a lavish frontage. Entrances to the other two were more discreet and catered to differing clientele— the Parrot’s customers appreciated the female form, while the Pink Parasol’s preferred their entertainers to be male.
    “Exotic dancer,” Nick said.
    Natalya, it appeared, had been a maid at Czar Nicholas’s and Cza rina Alexandra’s favorite palace of Czarskoe Selo before the revolution.
    “A personal maid?” Esther asked.
    “No, no. Brass-cleaning floor sweeper—but she was born there. Born there. She can tell Her Highness everything, but completely everything . And me thinking I’d have to buy one of the fucking relatives to help coach her. It was meant, Esther, meant .”
    “She can’t know much,” Esther said. “They wouldn’t have been short of floor-sweeping brass cleaners at Czarskoe Selo.”
    “Thousands, they had thousands.” He flapped a hand. “But she knows the geography, she heard the gossip. Servants know everything. Little Anastasia falls over, wets her knickers, puts her tongue out at the king of Bulgaria, that’s big news in the servants’ hall. Stop being a doubt ing damn Thomas; you get on with your job, and Natalya’ll do hers.”
    From the window Anna spoke. “Want a dog,” she said.
    “Sure, sure, Highness. Many as you like.” He turned to Esther. “You finished those letters yet?”
    “I haven’t even started them.”
    “Holy Martyr, woman, I need they should go tomorrow. I’ve set you up in luxury so’s you can sit on your fanny all day? Get on with it.”
    He went off, Anna retired to her bedroom, and Esther sat down at her new desk to get on with it.
    She put a carbon between two pieces of paper, inserted the sheets behind the typewriter roller, realized she’d lost track of days and didn’t know what date it was, looked it up in her diary, typed it—
    It stared back at her. July 30, 1922. July 30. Yesterday had been July 29. You come back here late Saturday night, July twenty-ninth —Clara
    Peuthert’s voice was as clear as clear— you’ll see him standing in the shadows out there, waiting for his chance to kill the grand duchess.
    Oh, dear God, had he been? And followed her?
    He was taking shape again, coming up the stairs, no burglar now, but a hunting creature intent on the prey he’d been stalking for months . . . thwarted, but with every intention of hunting again in six weeks’ time.
    No. No, he wasn’t. “Damn you,” Esther said out loud, “you’re not go ing to do this to me.” She wasn’t going to be in thrall to