LATER THAT EVENING, AFTER MY MAIDS (I HAVE THREE) have dressed me in a loose nightgown and settled me into my bed, I lay the pieces of my Firebird on my embroidered coverlet. This enormous bed of carved wood is high above the floor, every blanket and sheet pristinely white, so it feels a bit as though I’m considering my options while resting on a cloud.
With a sigh, I flop onto the soft pillows piled at the head of my bed. The room surrounding me isn’t that large, nor is the decor gaudy, and yet there’s no mistaking the wealth and elegance that created it. The walls and high ceiling are painted the cool, soft green of aged copper. A writing desk in the corner is scrolled with vines of inlaid wood, as if it were being reclaimed by the forest leaf by leaf. Across from my bed, a broad fireplace set with enameled tiles glows with the fire that warms my room.
My jewels are back in their velvet boxes, along with all the others.
At least this version of me has books, several of which are strewn around me right now. Many of them are in Russian . . . but I can read that here, and speak it too. Apparently that kind of memory is hardwired into the mind differently than emotions and experiences.
From what I can tell from the books I’ve scanned, just as technology had developed slightly faster in the London dimension, here it has developed far more slowly. My surroundings seem to belong in the year 1900 more than in the twenty-first century. Although some elements of this world are more or less advanced than my dimension was at this point, the overall feel is like stepping back a century in time. In this world, the twenty-first century simply looks very different. People travel by railroad or steamship, or even sometimes on horseback or in sleighs. Telephones exist but are so new we only have a few in the palace, and they’re only for official use; nobody has even thought of telephoning a friend merely to chat. The internet hasn’t even been dreamed of. Instead, people write letters. I can see a stack of creamy stationery waiting on my desk.
The United States of America exists but is thought of as remote and provincial. (I have no idea whether that’s true or not, but everyone here in St. Petersburg would agree.) Royalty still reigns throughout Europe, including of course the House of Romanov. The man everyone thinks is my father is Tsar Alexander V, emperor and autocrat of all the Russias. So far as I can tell, this dimension doesn’t yet contain the equivalent of a Lenin or a Trotsky. This is good, as I have zero interest in pulling an Anastasia—getting shot to death in a basement and then having every crazy woman in Europe pretending to be me for the next fifty years.
A set of leatherbound encyclopedias on a lower shelf has an entry about the House of Romanov. There, in plain text stark on the page, I learn that Tsar Alexander married a young noblewoman named Sophia Kovalenka. With her he had four children: the Tsarevich Vladimir, Grand Duchess Margarita (i.e., yours truly), Grand Duchess Yekaterina (a very fancy name for the brat who stuck her tongue out at me), and finally Grand Duke Piotr.
My mother died giving birth to her fourth child.
Mom and Dad always said pregnancy was “difficult” for her; I never realized that meant “dangerous.” They stopped after me and Josie, for the sake of her health. Here, I realize, the Tsar never stopped demanding more children, pressuring her into pregnancy after pregnancy until, finally, she died while in labor with her younger son.
They cut him out of her after she died. I wish I hadn’t read that.
My mother is a scientist. She’s a genius. She’s strong and she’s fierce and, okay, she can be a little obtuse about ordinary life, plus she doesn’t understand art at all, but still, she’s Mom. She has more to give the world than almost anyone else I can imagine.
Tsar Alexander thought all she had to offer were heirs to the throne, so he . . . bred her to death.
I pick up a silver photo frame from my bedside table. The oval portrait there, in slightly fuzzy black and white, shows my mother with younger versions of me, Vladimir, and Katya; she’s dressed in an elaborate long-sleeved gown, but the way her arms are curved protectively around me and Vladimir, the way she smiles down at the toddler Katya in her lap—something in her, too, remained the same in this universe.
But not enough. Here, my mother never had the chance to study science. What interested her here? How did she occupy her brilliant, restless mind? Did she ever look at Tsar Alexander with anything like the love and trust she always had with my dad?
And here, Josie was never even born. Dad must have been a fleeting presence in her life, which is almost impossible for me to imagine.
With a shaky hand I put the photograph back where it belongs; even the thought of what happened to my mother is too much to bear right now. I slump back on the piled feather pillows and take slow, deep breaths.
My eyes go to the sliver of light visible beneath my bedroom door. Until a few minutes ago, that light was broken by two dark lines—the shadows of Paul’s feet as he stood guard outside. But apparently even the personal guard of one of the grand duchesses is allowed to sleep. The encyclopedia informed me that I live in St. Petersburg, currently in the Winter Palace.
What about Theo? If he exists in this dimension, he probably would be in the United States, or maybe in the Netherlands, where his grandparents were from. My heart sinks as I realize that, in a world where the swiftest travel possible is by train, there’s no way Theo could reach me today, or tomorrow, or even within a few weeks. Given the famous savagery of the Russian winters, it’s entirely possible he couldn’t get here before spring. Even if he did manage to travel to St. Petersburg, how would he ever win an audience with one of the grand duchesses?
It’s all right, I tell myself. You’ll find Colonel Azarenko tomorrow. Anyway, Paul’s here. You don’t need anyone else.
My mind fills with thoughts of Paul. How could I have completely failed to understand him?
“In other words,” I said, “you’re trying to prove the existence of fate.”
The scene is as vivid for me now as it was on that day: Theo in a faux-weathered RC Cola T-shirt. Paul in one of the heather-gray Ts that I knew he only wore because he had no idea how much they showed off his muscles. Me tucking my hair behind my ears, trying to look and feel as grown up as they were. All of us together in the great room, surrounded by Mom’s houseplants and the summer warmth from the open doors to our deck.
I was joking when I spoke about fate, but Paul nodded slowly, like I’d said something intelligent. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”
Although I knew Theo thought the idea was silly, it intrigued me. Anytime the physics discussions around me shifted from complicated equations to concepts I could connect with, I seized on it. So I sat beside Paul at the rainbow table and said, “How does this work, then? Fate.”
He ducked his head, shy with me even after spending more than a year practically living in my house. But like any scientist, he was so fascinated by ideas that he couldn’t stay quiet about them for long. He steepled his large hands together, fingertip to fingertip, holding them in front of me, as our illustration of a mirror image. “Patterns reoccur, in dimension after dimension. Those patterns reflect certain resonances—”
“And people each have their own resonance, right?” I thought I’d picked up on that much.
He smiled, encouraged. Paul’s smiles were rare—almost out of place on someone so large and brutish and serious. “That’s right. So it looks as though the same groups of people find each other, over and over. Not invariably, but far more than mere chance would suggest.”
Theo, who was across the room settling back into his own math, made a face. “Listen, little brother, if you write your theory up like that, and you stick the numbers, you’re golden. It’s when you get into this souls-and-destiny crap that you sink your thesis. Seriously, you’re going to get up before the committee and defend that?”
“Stop knocking him,” I told Theo. At the time I’d been too enchanted by Paul’s idea to listen to even good objections. “Everybody gets to have wild theories here. Mom’s rule.”
Theo shrugged, already too absorbed in his work to protest further. Yet Paul looked over at me as though he were grateful for the defense. I realized how close we were sitting—closer than we usually did, so near that my arm nearly brushed against his—but I didn’t move away.
Instead I said, “So does destiny create the math, or does math create our destiny?”
“Insufficient data,” Paul said, but I could tell, in that moment, how much he wanted to believe in destiny. It was the first time I thought of him as someone who, all appearances to the contrary, might have some poetry in his soul.
Maybe it was the only time I ever understood him at all.
The next day, I discover what it’s like to have people get you ready in the morning.
I mean, totally. My maids appear around my bedside as I wake, serving me tea on a silver tray, running me a warm bath in an enormous tub carved of marble, even soaping my back.
(Yes, it’s completely embarrassing bathing in front of an audience, but it seems this Marguerite does it every day, so I have to roll with it. I guess they already know what I look like naked, which . . . doesn’t help that much.)
These women even put the toothpaste on my toothbrush.
They select a dress for me: a soft yellow the color of candlelight, floor length, so formal for everyday that I can hardly keep myself from laughing at it. They braid my hair back and fasten it with pins set with small white enameled roses. I stare at the mirror in disbelief as my uncontrollable, lunatic curls are tamed and settled into a style as complicated as it is beautiful.
I could almost believe that I’m beautiful, though really this is a testament to what personal stylists (or their nineteenth-century equivalents) can accomplish.
No makeup is to be seen anywhere, but they rub sweet-smelling creams into the skin of my face and throat, then dust me with lilac-scented powder. By the time they’re finished clipping on my pearl earrings, I actually feel like a grand duchess.
“Thank you, ladies,” I say. Good manners are expected of royalty, right? Feeling both ridiculous and grand, I open the door and see Paul.
Correction: Lieutenant Markov.
He stands at attention, entirely proper and correct. His clear gray eyes meet mine, almost guiltily, before he glances away. Maybe staring at royalty is forbidden. I seem to remember that megastars like Beyoncé sometimes have riders in their contracts saying that nobody can look them in the eyes; as Beyoncé is to our dimension, a grand duchess is to this one.
Paul—Lieutenant Markov, better think of him that way—doesn’t say anything. Of course. It’s probably the rule that he can’t say anything unless I speak first. “Good morning, Markov.”
“Good morning, my lady.” His voice is so deep, and yet so gentle. “I hope you feel better today.”
“I do, thank you. Tell me, Markov, where might I find Colonel Azarenko?”
He frowns at me. “My commanding officer?”
“Yes. Exactly. Him.” Paul might not have been able to retrieve Azarenko from the grand ball last night, but now he can tell me the officers’ daily routines, all of that. We’ll have his Firebird back by lunchtime, and mine fixed by tonight.
“Colonel Azarenko left for Moscow early this morning, my lady.”
Moscow? He’s not even in St. Petersburg anymore? “Did he give your—did he give anything back to you before he left?”
By now Lieutenant Markov must think I’ve gone demented. Although his forehead furrows—the only sign of the frown he’s holding back—he politely replies, “No, my lady. What would the Colonel have to give me?”
I’m not even getting into that. Instead I ask, “When is he expected back?”
“After the New Year, my lady.”
New Year’s Day? That’s almost three weeks away.
Three weeks.
How am I supposed to pretend to be a princess for three weeks?
I swallow hard and think, Guess I’ll find out.