309828-0830-3333

of how limited his past education had been, but he suspected she would say yes.
“What is the meeting about today?” he further ventured, since Vlad appeared to be in good
humor.
“A licking of wounds,” Vlad said. “We had a great plan which fell through when one of our
comrades was killed.”
“The ballet dancer.”
Vlad sighed. “What are they saying of the matter inside the palace?”
“That it was a double suicide.”
“They would call it that, wouldn’t they?”
“I take it you don’t agree.”
“Of course not. Yulian Krupin was not the sort to kill himself. In fact, he was disgustingly
happy.”
Davy raised an eyebrow.
“Oh you know, happy,” Vlad elaborated, flapping his hands about like wounded birds. “He had
a girl in his bed, food in his belly, a ticket to Paris in his pocket. Besides, even if his life hadn’t been
such a plum, Yulian didn’t have the bollocks to do himself in, especially not with a knife to the throat.
My guess is that someone within the palace did the deed for him. Someone who had figured out who
and what he was.”
“And do you have any notion as to who that might have been?”
Vlad hesitated. “You know the members of the Queen’s private guard?”
“We all traveled over together, of course.”
“What do they think of security within the Palace?”
Now it was Davy’s turn to hesitate. But after running through several alternatives, he decided
that the most appropriate response was also the most truthful. “They don’t hold it in high regard. The
place is so big and spread out that it seems the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
The tsar’s private guard is a different group entirely from the palace police and the two entities don’t
share information. That sort of thing.”