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From there, events had happened exactly as planned. The stretcher, the doctors, the recovery in
an elevated suite of rooms within the Winter Palace. The news that several of his comrades had been
arrested – that some of them had talked and others had been hanged. Fortunately none of the ones who
broke under pressure had known that the shooting of Filip had been part of the overall plan, but
still…one never could never predict what details might emerge under questioning, especially the sort
of highly persuasive interrogation the private guard was known to employ. Each day in his starched
white hospital bed Filip had lain with both physical pain and a far more tormenting sense of anxiety.
Any hour could bring the sound of advancing steps, the guard coming to tell him that he had been
revealed and was thus to hang with his comrades.
The days turned into a week, then two, as contagion swept the infirmary and his recovery was
delayed. But still no such steps rang down the hall and eventually Filip relaxed.
When he eventually expressed a desire to return to his ancestral home for the remainder his
rehabilitation, this small request had been graciously granted – so graciously, in fact, that Filip had
traveled in one of the tsar’s own carriages. His mother had wept at the sight of him, although he had
never been entirely sure if it was the size of the wound or the size of the carriage that had brought
about such an uncharacteristic reaction. He announced his promotion to the elite guard casually,
while smoking in the garden with his brothers, but word spread fast, just as he knew it would. Before
he left to assume his new post, his village had bestowed upon their favored son the greatest gift such a
humble town had to offer: Tatiana.
She did not love him. He knew this, but was not offended by the fact. One might argue that,
other than the enchantment of her beauty, he did not particularly love her either, at least not at the time
of their wedding. But despite the surface differences between them, he knew that they were similar in
the core. They were pragmatists, cursed to spend their lives among people who did not think clearly,
who likely would never be able to do so. They had both noticed, at some point in their miserable
youths, that the only road out of town led to St. Petersburg, and they also shared a certain cold
ambition – he for his politics and she for a better life. Tatiana did not know about her husband’s
involvement with the Volya, nor the fact that his marriage to her was a way to accelerate his plans.
Being shot in lieu of the tsar might have moved him into the inner circle, but Filip knew that to stay
there, it would take more. A beautiful wife who proved a quick study in the ways of the court was an
asset. Yes, he was rescuing her, but she brought advantages for him as well.
That was the part that happened quickly. The rest of the plan had taken more time. For the
Volya was also, in its way, a slow moving force for change, their plans hampered by the comings and
goings of the members. A university was by design a transient place. Young men were trained at