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the members of the private guard. Beyond them, in the more farther-flung wings, were the true
servants. The sort who washed and cleaned and cooked and carried.
Even after more than two years within its walls, Tatiana could not claim to understand entirely
how the palace protocol worked. For example, she and Filip both were servants and had servants, a
concept which she still found a bit hard to grasp. This morning her porridge and his eggs had come as
they always did, on a high-domed tray which presumably had been prepared in some kitchen
somewhere, another place she would most likely never see. Their clothing was carried away dirty
and carried back clean. Things appeared. Flowers on a table, apples in a bowl. Fires were laid in
the winter and damped down in the spring.
The first morning, shortly after her marriage, that Tatiana had awakened in the Winter Palace
had been very telling. She had risen and, through the most instinctive of habits, made her bed. The
maid had entered minutes later, inquiring what she might like for breakfast. When the woman – twice
the age of Tatiana, who had been no more than twenty at the time – spied the neatened bed, her mouth
had closed into a hard, tight line and Tatiana understood that her error had been grave indeed. The
maid had bustled forward and most resolutely mussed the bed, throwing pillows to the floor and
crumpling the coverlet in her hands. And then she had made it again.
Tatiana had simply curled up on her chaise and watched. The woman’s gestures could have
been interpreted as a slap in the face or were perhaps kindly meant, a silent illustration of how life in
the royal palace was intended to work. Tatiana had never made that mistake again. In fact,
understanding this new reality in ways she could not have begun to articulate, she often made a point
of leaving a bit of a deliberate mess: a napkin dropped to the floor, a bar of soap sent skidding into a
corner, a dress with a button dangling, an overturned glass. To create no work for her staff would
have been rude, even cruel. It might have cost someone their position and thus left them with no roof
over their head or no way to feed their children. Over time Tatiana had slowly but steadily acquired
the sort of exaggerated helplessness that always seemed to come with privilege. When she
approached a closed door she would simply stand still and wait for someone to open it.
As she now walked through the Palace, navigating from the private wings into the public, the
effort gradually calmed her and forced her thoughts into more linear patterns. The dancers who had
allegedly killed themselves… Filip had said they were in the ballet, and the ballet troupe was a
different entity entirely from the cadre of royal dance masters. Konstantin was in no danger. It was
unlikely he had been anywhere near the scene at all. There was no need for her to visit the theater on
her own, especially at this hour when there was no logical explanation she might give for why she
was there. And yet she walked, hall after hall, room after room, staircase after staircase, passing