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not once did it occur to me he was some sort of turncoat.” He took his glasses off and wiped the
lenses in a somewhat compulsive manner. “We must inform the authorities of course, but which
ones? How can we be sure that Filip is the only revolutionary within the guard? It seems that we
could easily tell the wrong person and thus turn him in to his own comrades.”
“For once I am glad that the imperial guard and the palace police are separate units,” Trevor
said. “Since he is with the guard, our best option, I suppose, is to take this news to the police.”
“They plan to do something at the Tchaikovsky ball, don’t they?” Emma asked. “The Volya, I
mean.”
Davy wiped his mouth. “No one has said it quite so plain as all that. But Vlad did ask me if I
was going to be there, and the Queen, and I can’t think of any other reason he would have made such
an inquiry. Or known there was to be a ball at all, for that matter.”
“True, true, all true enough,” Trevor said. “The very fact that a self-proclaimed revolutionary
knows the schedule of entertainments within the Winter Palace is alarming and we can only assume
that this information came to him courtesy of either Yulian Krupin or Filip Orlov.”
“We shall have to be on high alert,” Rayley said. “Starting tonight, for this evening is the dress
rehearsal, is it not, Emma?”
“High alert?” Trevor shook his head just as Emma was nodding hers. “When this news is
revealed, the ball will be canceled. I’ll see to that much at least.”
“You’ll see to it? I understand your sentiments completely, Welles, but this isn’t London.”
Rayley replaced his glasses and studied Trevor with sympathy. “We can certainly suggest that Her
Majesty and Alix send regrets and perhaps even Ella, if it comes to that. But we hardly have the
authority to cancel a ball within the Winter Palace.”
“Nor are the palace police likely to do so,” Tom said. “Such threats are apparently such a
common occurrence that everyone is quite blasé in the face of them. I suppose that if the imperial
family avoided every public event with the potential for violence, none of them would ever leave
their rooms.”
“Besides, when you think of it, the situation bears as much opportunity as crisis,” Rayley said
briskly. “The ball is our chance to flush the traitors out, to see what other Volya members may reside
unsuspected within these walls.”
“I agree,” said Tom. “They’ve had, what…less than two weeks to adapt to the sudden absence