It could be worse. Or at least, that's what Dmitry kept trying to tell himself, as they were shown where they were to stay for the foreseeable future.

The governor's house was a logical option. It was the largest house in town, and it had already had a tall fence erected around it. It wasn't large enough to accommodate all the servants, so many of the "non-essential" ones had been set up in surrounding buildings. Dmitry, apparently, was considered an essential servant and was staying in the governor's house with the former imperial family.

The first thing they all noticed when they were marched into the house was that it reeked. Anastasia had actually gasped and gagged, and Alexandra had clamped a handkerchief over her nose and mouth in an attempt to block out the stench. To Dmitry, it smelled as if fifty men had gone for a hundred-mile run and then sat in the house without bathing for a year. As it turned out, his analysis wasn't too far off.

The house had apparently been used as a barracks before their arrival. Supposedly there had been attempts to clean it and make it presentable before they came, but Dmitry couldn't help but think that they could have put more effort into it. There was still trash strewn everywhere, the windows were grimy and caked with dust, and what little furniture remained was ripped to shreds.

"I know we're supposed to be grateful that they moved us safely out of the Bolsheviks' range, but I can't believe they expect us to live in this house in the state it's in," Alexei said. They were unpacking their things in the room they were to share. It was a strange situation for both of them. Alexei had always had a room to himself, though Dmitry's room was right next door in case he was needed. Dmitry had become spoiled as well, he was realizing, since he'd had a room to himself for the past nine years, too. This room they were in now was half the size his room had been in the Winter Palace, and it was supposed to accommodate two of them. They both knew better than to complain, of course.

Dmitry was just unrolling his blankets onto his hard camp bed when there was a commotion from down the hall, followed by shouting. He and Alexei exchanged a brief glance before rushing out of the room to see what the issue was. Dmitry's pulse began to race when he realized the noise was coming from the sisters' shared room. He raced in, worried that the new guards in the house were already harassing the sisters.

"Honestly," Tatiana was shouting. "I was only making a suggestion!" There were no guards in the room, just the four girls.

"A stupid suggestion," Anastasia shot back. The two sisters were standing across the room from each other, but there was a pile of books and photos thrown haphazardly on the floor, and Olga wore an expression of exasperated boredom. Maria appeared to be trying to ignore the squabbling and was still pinning photos to the wall.

"Well maybe if you would listen to reason, then it wouldn't seem so stupid." If looks could kill, Dmitry was sure that Tatiana would have dropped dead right then from Anastasia's scathing glare.

"What's happening?" Alexei asked hesitantly.

"Drama," Olga grunted.

"I was only trying to decorate a little," Anastasia spat, gesturing wildly. "Tatiana forgot she isn't the boss of me and threw a fit."

"Because you were taking up far too much room!" Tatiana cried. "We all have to share the space, Anastasia. You don't get to just put your things everywhere!"

"I was not!"

"You were! You had your books all over my space!"

"So you threw them on the floor?!"

It appeared that the sisters were having a hard time adapting to the new sleeping arrangements as well. They had shared rooms with each other before, split up into the Big Pair and the Little Pair. But all four of them had never been forced to share a single room. Dmitry supposed it was only natural that they would butt heads as they tried to adjust.

He followed Anastasia as she stormed from the room, muttering angrily under her breath about where Tatiana could put her things. He forced down a smile and instead tried to calm her down.

"Maybe you might be allowed your own room if you asked them nicely," Dmitry offered, and Anastasia snorted.

"That would never happen," she said, and he knew she was right. "Alexei doesn't even get his own room, and he's supposed to be the important one."

"Well maybe you and Maria could share the separate room."

"Yes, but we'd have to ask the guards for that," she said. "And I doubt they like us enough to grant us favors. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. I just want to go for a walk." She turned and headed toward they door they knew led to a small, fenced-in yard, but her hand was barely on the doorknob when a guard stepped in front of her.

"Apologies, miss, but we can't allow you to go in the yard," he said. To his credit, he did look and sound genuinely sorry. Anastasia planted her hands on her hips and glared at the guard, whose expression faltered briefly.

"Why?" Anastasia demanded.

"Orders from Commissar Pankratov," the guard stammered. "You'll meet him later, he's on his way here."

"And what reason does this Commissar Pankratov have for keeping us locked in this house?" she asked. "Are we to spend all our time indoors?"

"That's a question the Commissar will have to answer, miss," the guard said. He gave her another apologetic look, but it only seemed to make Anastasia even more furious. She spun on her heel and stomped away, muttering angrily under her breath once again.

Hours later, Dmitry found her sitting on a ledge on the roof outside the upstairs ballroom.

"They only said I couldn't go in the yard," she said glibly when he raised an eyebrow at her. "They never said anything about climbing out a window."


The Commissar, as it turned out, was not an unreasonable man. He did not allow the Little Pair to have their own room, but not because he thought they were too spoiled. There simply wasn't enough room to allow it. Tatiana and Anastasia eventually reached an agreement to split the space between their beds evenly, and neither girl was allowed to touch the other's things without express permission from the other.

They were all also allowed outside in the yard for brief periods, and they took advantage of this small freedom. The yard was tiny, but it was better than nothing. After a few days, two swings were even set up in a corner for the girls and Alexei, though he was forbidden to go near them unless someone accompanied him.

To the family's dismay, they weren't able to recreate the vegetable garden they'd planted at the Winter Palace. The yard only had dry soil, and there wasn't enough room to plant more than a few cabbages and bean plants. There was, however, a small lean-to shed, and some chickens and pigs were brought in to live in the yard. Dmitry tried not to get too attached to the creatures; he had bad feeling that they were destined for their dinner table sooner or later.

Something else that surprised Dmitry was the guards' continued allowance of the rooftop perch outside the ballroom. When he was told of it, Pankarov had merely shrugged and deemed it an innocent enough place. He reasoned that the roof was easily twenty feet off the ground, and even if a person tried to jump from the roof, they would only be able to land inside the fenced-in yard. Soon enough, the entire household, minus Alexandra, was using the rooftop perch on a regular basis.

Anastasia used it most often to people watch, and was usually joined by one or more of her sisters or Dmitry. She loved to make up stories about the people she saw, she told him, and to watch the world go by.

"Their made-up lives are just so much more interesting than mine," she said when he asked her why one day. "Look."

She nodded to a young man they could see standing across the street from the house. They had seen him circle the block a few times, trying hard to appear casual, but still sneaking glances up at the two of them on the roof.

"Make up a story for him," she said.

Dmitry considered the man for a few moments. "Well, his clothes aren't too shabby, so he's probably got a little bit of money. And if he's got a little bit of money, then he's not starving," he said. "He keeps coming back this way, but he doesn't look like he's running errands, so he's only coming back to look at us."

Anastasia rolled her eyes and shook her head. "That's boring. I said make up a story, not tell me what you see."

"I'm not good at that sort of thing," he said.

"You're only not good at it because you tell yourself you're not good at it," she countered.

"Well if you're so great, you do it," he grumbled. Anastasia sat up a little straighter and cleared her throat.

"His name is Boris," she began. Dmitry laughed, but stopped quickly when she kicked him. "Don't make fun of his name, he doesn't like it."

"Fine," he said.

"His name is Boris," she began again. "He's lived here his entire life, a young peasant growing up on his parents' farm and taking care of animals. As a teenager, he fell madly in love with a girl who lived in town. But she came from a family with a little more money than his, and he didn't think she would ever look at him the way she looked at him.

"But little did he know that she had noticed him as well, and she was determined to marry him. They met in secret, away from their parents' eyes."

"Where's the girl then?" Dmitry smirked. "If they were so madly in love, why isn't she with him?"

"Oh, that's easy," Anastasia said. "When the Great War broke out, he felt it was his duty to enlist in the army and fight. On the day he left, she met him at the train station to see him off. She told him that she expected him to come back for her, and he promised he would. He went off to the front lines of the war and served my papa faithfully. But then his regiment was ambushed and he was taken prisoner. Most of the men he had served with were dead, and the army officially pronounced him dead as well. News got back to his parents and his town, and the girl he had fallen in love with was heartbroken.

"By the time he escaped and made his way back here, the girl had moved on and married another man. That's why he keeps staring up here at us, because we remind him of what they could have been." Anastasia finished with a little nod, then grinned at him.

"Right," Dmitry said. "He's definitely not staring because you're a Grand Duchess."

"Former Grand Duchess," she corrected him. "Anyway, we both know that's most likely not what actually happened to him. But it's certainly more fun than what you came up with."

"I suppose," he conceded. "Have you ever thought about becoming a writer?"

"A little," she said. "Not very seriously. At least, not until now. It was never a viable option until now."

"I think you'd be good at it," he said.

"Thanks," she said, her cheeks flushing with pride.

"What about those two men over on that corner?" he asked, nodding at the people in question, who appeared to be locked in a very heated discussion. Anastasia regaled him with a long, involved story of two men who got in over their heads with gambling who now had to scramble to pay back what they owed, until Olga found them and told them to come in for supper.