You hold a revolution, and here's the price you pay! Thank goodness for the gossip that gets us through the day!
Beck scoffed as he saw the headlines being touted by the vendors in their stalls that morning: 'A City on the Rise'. If you believed what you read in the papers, you'd think they were on the cusp of some great economic breakthrough. He wondered if the rest of the country actually believed this bullshit. Certainly everyone who actually lived and worked in Petersburg – sorry, Leningrad – knew that it couldn't be further from the truth.
The propaganda machine was kicked up a notch this year as they were 'celebrating' ten years of the New Order. It was laughable really. As far as Beck could tell there was nothing particularly 'new' about the New Order. New name, same empty stomachs. As far as he could tell, nothing much had changed in St Petersburg. The people in power were still about as far removed from the general populace as it was possible to be. People were still starving on the streets. If anything they were poorer than they used to be.
Beck had only been a kid when the royals were killed – old enough to be aware of what had happened but not yet old enough to understand what it meant for the future. It seemed that what it meant was that things had gone from bad to worse. Immediately following their assassination it was chaos. People rioted. It seemed that though many people weren't happy with the way things were under the royal family, they weren't happy with the way the problem had been solved either. Beck sort of got it. Nobody wanted to be seen supporting the murder of an entire family, but on the other hand there wasn't really any other way to stop an absolute monarchy if they weren't willing to step down. Rebellions were messy but they were sometimes necessary to build a better world. The problem was that the world hadn't gotten any better. People were just as unhappy as they had ever been. Living conditions were cramped, food was scarce, jobs were all but impossible to find. And then once you had a job you were worked to the bone just to keep it.
That wasn't a life Beck wanted. His parents had been killed in the riots immediately after the royal family had been overthrown. Since then, he'd been living on the streets, making what he could from selling stolen goods and picking pockets. There wasn't much to pick from though. In the old days at least, there were the rich as well as the poor, and while the poor didn't have any more then than they had now, they could at least take from the rich.
He would never voice these thoughts out loud, of course. That was another thing that was different nowadays - the walls had ears.
'Did you hear about Van Cleef?' his partner in crime, Andre, asked him now.
Andre's family had worked in the palace – his father was a footman and his mother was a kitchen maid, nowadays no one had any need for servants, so most of the breadwinning was down to Andre. His parents and brothers and sisters weren't technically aware of how Andre 'earned' his money, but Beck suspected they knew. They turned the other way, though, as long as the money kept coming and Andre didn't get caught.
'No. What happened to him?' Even as he asked the question, Beck suspected he knew the answer. Van Cleef was something of an eccentric man, a near permanent fixture on the street corners of St Petersburg, talking nonsense. Last week, though, he'd decided to broach an altogether more dangerous topic. It seemed that the Bolsheviks had taken possession of his dental practice that had been in his family for generations. He'd been ranting and railing to anyone who would listen about how life was worse than it had been before, that the Bolsheviks were ruining Russia. They were dangerous things to say in the 'privacy' of one's own home, never mind shouting it out in the streets.
'Apparently after we went home last week he was approached by a Red. No one's seen him since. You figure out the rest,' Andre replied grimly. It was a shame. Sure, the guy was crazy, but he was harmless, he didn't deserve that. Beck had never really spoken to him, and he didn't think Andre had either, but he was a familiar face in the ever-changing sea of people in Petersburg, they would miss him. To be honest, Beck had expected it for a long time. Even before he had started criticising the New Order, he'd been one of the most outspoken perpetuators of the rumours about Princess Jadelyn. Though, he supposed if the Reds arrested everyone who whispered about Jadelyn, the city's population would be reduced by about sixty percent.
Times were bleak and people needed something to believe in. The idea that one of the royals survived, that one day she'd return and save them all from this never-ending nightmare, was all that got many of them through the days. Rumours had circulated about Jadelyn for as long as Beck could remember. They'd never found her body when they cleared out the palace, though she'd never been found alive, either. He didn't know where it had started, but the story went that on the night her family were murdered, she had somehow managed to get away, and she'd been living here in Russia ever since. They said her grandmother in Paris was offering riches beyond your wildest dreams to anyone who reunited her with the Grand Duchess safe and sound.
It was a tantalising possibility, one that he'd been mulling over for a while now. The news about Van Cleef was just confirming what Beck had long believed – it was time to get out of Russia. The problem was that the borders were closed, though there were ways around that – if you knew who to talk to and were willing to pay.
'Andre,' Beck began tentatively. 'I've been thinking about the Princess Jadelyn.'
Andre groaned. 'Is it not enough that I have to listen to stories about her from every one of my customers? Now I have to hear it from you, too!'
Their primary business was selling wares from the old palace. Or at least that's where they said they came from. People would buy anything if they thought it used to belong to royalty. Just the other day they'd traded four ration tickets for a pair of pyjamas they'd said used to belong to some Count or other. Princess Jadelyn was such an alluring figure that people would give nearly everything they had if they thought the thing they were trading for had once belonged to her.
'Imagine it, Dre. We find a girl who looks a bit like her. We use your father's journal to teach her about Jadelyn's childhood. We take her to Paris to meet the Duchess and claim the reward,' he outlined his plan to Andre. The time to strike was now. They were closing borders all over the place, this was going to be their last chance to get out of Russia. They'd be rich, they'd be out of Russia, and they'd be famous. They'd go down in history as either the people who reunited the Russian royal family or who pulled off the biggest con in history, depending on what kind of people you asked.
He could see Andre was interested. Why wouldn't he be? The risks were big, but the rewards would be unimaginable. It was a tantalising possibility. 'If we can't pull it off, no one can.'
Tori's breath puffed out in clouds in front of her as she walked briskly down her patrol route that morning. She was moving through the ranks slowly but surely. Patrols like this were a thing of her past, and it wasn't like recruits to the police were falling, if anything they were picking up. So why she'd been asked to fill in while one of the rookies was being reviewed was beyond her.
Still, she knew her duty. She was a Bolshevik officer and her job was to do whatever her country required of her. At least it was almost over. There were only two more streets left before her replacement took over from her.
Her main job on patrols was to be vigilant and observant, so she noticed the young woman even before she screamed. Tori wasn't sure what it was about the woman that made her stand out. She was hurrying along the busy street same as everyone else. Her head was ducked down against the wind and the first flutterings of snow. She held her dark coat tightly around her body to guard against the cold. There really wasn't anything particularly remarkable about her at all. Yet Tori found her eyes following her as she approached.
She had also noticed the delivery man leaving the newsagent store and getting back into his truck, so when he turned the key and the truck backfired, it wasn't such a surprise. The woman, however, screamed. She ducked to the ground and put her hands up to cover her head. Tori, alarmed, broke into a jog to reach the woman.
When she got there, the woman was shaking, but no one around her seemed to notice or care. They continued along the street, and continued with their lives. Who was she to them? But it was Tori's duty to take care of Russian citizens. She reached her hand out tentatively and placed it on the woman's back.
'It's alright, comrade. It was just a truck backfiring. The days of fighting in the streets are over. You're safe now.' Her attempts to comfort her didn't seem to help much, but the woman did regain control of her breathing. Tori stayed crouched with her until the woman felt she could stand. 'There's a coffee shop just around the corner. Let me buy you a drink,' Tori offered as she helped her to her feet.
'No.' The woman said rather abruptly. Then, seeming to realise who she was speaking to, hastened to explain. 'No, thank you. I can't lose this job, there aren't many to go around.' Her lips quirked upward into a brief, grateful smile. 'But thank you.' She nodded once at Tori, and continued past her down the street.
'I'm here every day, if you need anything!' Tori called after the woman's retreating figure.
The woman turned and flashed her a wicked grin. 'And what if I don't?' she challenged, but she didn't wait around long enough for Tori to come up with a retort.
Having sold everything they could scavenge for the day, Beck and Andre gathered their meagre possessions, and strolled through the other stalls that made up the market. They were far from the only vendors claiming to sell artefacts from the royal era. There were at least three other stands claiming the same as they did. It was always worth a look in case, by some miracle, someone actually had come across something of note.
'Why are we doing this? The last thing I want to do after work is hang around the workplace,' Andre complained as his friend dragged him from stall to stall. 'I want to find some back-alley bar and have a nice, strong drink.'
'We're going to need something to convince the old lady that we really have Jadelyn. I want to see if anyone's got anything interesting.'
Most of the items were typical, the kind of generic things they sold every day. Some paintings they swore they'd found in the palace, a pair of pyjamas they said belonged to some member of the nobility, hairbrushes or mirrors with the letter J painted or engraved on them that they claimed could have belonged to Jadelyn.
Finally, sitting at the very back of the very last stand, something caught Beck's eye. It was a small box with a little golden crank at the side. It was made of a rich, polished wood, and the lid was inlaid with a green stone cut into an oval.
'How much for the music box?' he asked the man behind the table.
'Oh, I could never sell that!' the man exclaimed, his eyes lighting up greedily. 'It came all the way from Yekaterinburg, it belonged to the royals.'
Yeah, Beck thought, likely story. Still, the man was clearly going in for the hard sell. 'Two cans of beans, comrade?' he suggested.
'Done.'
They shook hands, and Beck departed with his new possession, looking rather pleased with himself. Andre shook his head.
'So, do you mind telling me what exactly you plan to eat for the next two days?' he asked.
Beck waved a hand dismissively, 'I'll figure something out.'
They parted ways at the junction that separated their buildings, but hadn't gone more than a few steps when Beck turned and called out, 'By the way, I've got auditions for Jadelyn set up for tomorrow morning at the old abandoned theatre. Be there by eight.'
'Tomorrow? Wow, thanks for waiting for my go ahead with this plan.'
'Why should I when I know what you'll say?' Beck grinned, raising his hand in farewell.
That night, he sat up in bed, turning the music box over in his hands. He'd tried opening it when he got home to no avail. The lid was stuck shut. He'd tried just about everything he could think of to get it off, but he was unsuccessful. He tried looking for trick levers or buttons, but in the pale moonlight from the window he struggled to see.
He was going to have to accept it: he'd been ripped off. The old bastard at the stall had traded him a dodgy box, and now he was going to go hungry for two days for nothing. Setting the music box under his bed with a huff, he rolled over and closed his eyes.
A/N: By the way, I thoroughly encourage listening to the Broadway cast recording of Anastasia, it's amazing, and it might explain the context of the lyrics at the beginning of each chapter. Reviews inspire me to write faster!