Hi everyone. I am fully aware that I am The Worst. I meant to update this sooner and then school got crazy, and work got crazy, and I just needed some time to decompress from all that. I also apologize that this isn't the most action-packed chapter ever and therefore not as exciting as previous chapters, but I promise it was necessary. Hopefully the next update will be much quicker than this one.


In all the years that followed, Dmitry was never sure how long he remained there in the dirt. All he remembered was listening to Alexei's screams, even long after the wagon had disappeared with the Romanov siblings.

When he did stand, his legs and ribs screamed in protest, and he very nearly let himself collapse back down onto the ground. What use was it, he asked himself, to get up? He was completely alone in a strange place, cut off from the only people he knew. But he couldn't just lie there in the street forever, so he managed to get to his feet and pick up his suitcase.

Then came the second problem. He had no idea where he could go or what he should do. But people were starting to stare, making him uncomfortable, and so he managed to put one foot in front of the other, and then again, and again. Slowly, he limped away from the train station.

As he wandered aimlessly through the town, it seemed like someone had replaced all his thoughts with cotton. His brain felt fuzzy and slow, and vision kept going unfocused. Idly he wondered if he shouldn't have Botkin check him out for head trauma before he remembered that he was cut off from Botkin too.

It wasn't until the sun was dipping lower in the sky that he realized how long he had been walking. His feet ached, and his stomach had been growling for hours. He imagined he must look bizarre, turning down streets at random and practically dragging his suitcase behind him at this point. He wasn't even sure how to get back to the train station by that point. Soon it would be night time, and he would have no shelter. He considered finding a boarding house and paying for a room, but he had precious little money. He didn't want to spend a lot of it on a room when he didn't even know how long he'd be staying in Yekaterinburg. So, he continued to wander.

As luck would have it, though, just as the sun was about to set he stumbled across a house with a large barn in the back. Both looked a bit run down and there were weeds and ivy threatening to choke the barn. But there were no lights on in the house, so Dmitry darted across the lawn, wrenched the barn door open, and slipped inside.

Later he thought it should have struck him as odd that there was nothing in the barn- no animals, no hay, no equipment. But at that moment he was so tired and emotionally drained that he only set his suitcase down in a corner and curled up next to it to sleep.


He awoke to paralyzing nausea, the likes of which he hadn't felt for almost ten years. Groaning, he curled his arms around his middle and curled in on himself even tighter, hoping that would alleviate the pain. He knew he'd have to eat soon or else risk being too tired to think straight, much less figure out where the Romanovs were, and that thought alone gave him the strength to stumble to his feet.

Dmitry stumbled from the barn, leaning heavily on its wall. There was no movement inside the house, but he propelled himself away from it anyway and ducked out of sight. He didn't wander too far away from the barn, very aware that the only things he owned in the world were sitting unguarded in the barn, but far enough that he was at least under the cover of some trees.

Disappointingly, there was no fruit to be found on any of the trees nor any wild berries around, so Dmitry had to be content with stripping some bark off a nearby tree and chewing on it. It was tough and didn't taste pleasant, but it at least too the edge off and helped him clear his thoughts. He slipped back into the barn to retrieve his suitcase and shut the door almost silently behind him.

Thankfully his suitcase laid undisturbed, and there was no one else waiting for him in the barn. He could only imagine what would happen to him if a stranger found him trespassing on their property. He intended to stick around only long enough to cut the seam in his suitcase and retrieve his money, but upon inspection of the barn there were no tools he could use. He would have even settled for a rusty nail, but he couldn't find even that. Still chewing on the bark, he felt a realization dawn on him.

With his heart pounding in his chest, he quietly crept from the barn all the way up to the house. No one burst from it to yell at him, not even when he chanced a glance through the window. There was still furniture inside, but it looked like no one had been in there for weeks. He slipped to another window and peeked inside that one to be met with a similar scene. After circling the house once, he concluded that the house must have been abandoned.

None of the doors were unlocked, so he had to resort to throwing a rock through the window to get inside. After carefully climbing through, taking great care not to cut himself on the glass, he tiptoed through the house. A thick layer of dust covered everything, reinforcing his theory that the house was abandoned. In the kitchen he found a few cans of vegetables and beans, and he took those without hesitation. He would figure out a way to open them later. Upon finding one of the bedrooms, he considered sleeping in the house rather than in the barn. But the idea of sleeping in a stranger's bed, even an abandoned one, was too unsettling for him to stand. Instead, he took some of the blankets, his cans of food, and some books he'd found and brought them back to the barn.

As he was setting up a bed for him, he wondered what could have made someone just leave everything in the house behind. He couldn't come up with an answer that wasn't gruesome, so he stopped thinking about that.

He did manage to find a decently sharp rock on the ground outside the barn, and after a few tries he managed to cut through the lining in his suitcase. Dmitry counted the money he had carefully, then slipped a small portion of it into his pocket. He'd have to find something other than tree bark to eat for the time being, until he could figure out how to get the cans of food open. And he had to figure out where the Romanovs were.

He still felt a bit weak and unbalanced as he made his way down the road. A few times he had to stop and catch his breath after walking up an incline. At first, he wasn't even sure if he was headed in the right direction, but soon the buildings became a little closer together and shops began intermingling with houses. It surprised him how close the house and barn were to the center of town, considering it felt like it had taken him hours of walking down that road to find them the night before.

Thankfully no one looked at him strangely as he made his way through town. He did manage to buy some bread at a bakery, but all they had was dense black bread that was part of soldiers' rations. Still, he ate it greedily and had to remind himself that he had to ration his money to keep himself from buying more.

He was walking around town and lamenting to himself that it would probably be nearly impossible to find where the Romanovs were being held when he stumbled upon it by chance. Though he had not been able to witness Alexei and his sisters be escorted to it, it would be hard to mistake the house for anything but a prison.

Once again there was a tall fence around the outside of the house, taller even than the one in Tobolsk. Over the fence, Dmitry could just make out the tops of the upstairs windows, but even as he watched there were men on ladders painting the window panes white. Dmitry walked the perimeter of the fence, taking note where the guard posts were located. It stretched all around the house, with one small, heavily guarded gate as the only way in or out. He wondered what would happen if he walked up to the guards and informed him that he was a servant to the Tsar's family and wished to rejoin them.

Dmitry strolled down the street, so as not to raise the guards' suspicion. There were stores all around the house selling precious stones and jewelry (though Dmitry didn't have the faintest idea of who had enough money to buy them) as well as cathedrals and churches. There were a few homes as well. But there were also factories belching black smoke into the air and the machinery could be heard from the street.

Four houses down from the house the Romanovs were in was a taller, more ornate house with a brass plaque announcing it was the British Consulate. On a whim, knowing Nicholas' cousin was the king, Dmitry marched up the walkway and into the house.

"Good morning, sir, how can we help you?" A young woman greeted him in English as he walked in. Dmitry startled at being spoken to in a language other than Russian. His eyebrows knitted together as he tried to think of the words to answer back.

"Good morning," he managed to say. "I… want meet… with boss?" Though he knew his English was far from perfect, the woman seemed to understand him all the same. She nodded a few times, then led him to a pair of leather chairs.

"Wait here," she said, talking a bit slower for him. "It will only be a few minutes."

It turned out that a few minutes meant nearly twenty, but still Dmitry waited as patiently as he could. There was plenty for him to look at in the room, but it seemed like his fingers had developed a nervous twitch, and he couldn't stop bouncing his leg. He was just about to jump up and leave when a door opened and a man walked up to him and introduced himself as the British consul.

Sir Thomas Preston wasn't much older that Dmitry was, only in his early thirties, but as he swept his gaze over him Dmitry couldn't help but feel decades younger than him. He leapt to his feet and held his hand out to him, and the man shook it after only a moment's hesitation.

"Who are you?" Sir Thomas asked. "What can I do for you?"

"I am Dmitry Turov," he replied. "Speak Russian?" Sir Thomas nodded.

"My Russian is not good," he answered in Dmitry's native tongue, "but I will do my best." Dmitry nodded his thanks.

"I need to speak with you about the welfare of the Romanovs," he said plainly.

"Let's talk in my office," Sir Thomas said, sweeping his hand toward the door he had emerged from. Dmitry led the way in, and Sir Thomas closed the door firmly behind them. The space was dominated by an ornate desk in the center of the room, and the back wall was lined with bookshelves. Sir Thomas gestured for Dmitry to sit in one of the armchairs in front of the desk as he crossed to his own seat behind it.

"I would not advise you to announce that you are sympathetic to the Romanovs around here," the consul advised him, continuing to speak in Russian. "You are lucky that I am, too."

"I understand," Dmitry said. "I came in here because I wanted to know if there was anything you could do to help them."

Sir Thomas grimaced and tapped an uneven rhythm on his desk with his pen. The regret in his eyes was clear. "I've made many inquiries about the welfare of the family since the Tsar and Tsarina arrived, and especially since the Grand Duke and Duchesses arrived. So far none of them have been answered."

"But isn't there anything the British government can do?" Dmitry asked. "King George and Nicholas are family. Surely the king wouldn't want any harm to come to his own family?"

"I am afraid," Sir Thomas said gravely, "that the King's attention lies elsewhere. The war…." The older man trailed off, and Dmitry felt like screaming. Of course the war was important, but he felt the Romanovs should be more important to the king. Instead, he had to settle for clenching his fists and inhaling deeply.

"I understand where you're coming from," Sir Thomas said quickly when he saw the look on Dmitry's face. "I am concerned about these latest developments as well. Believe me, if there was a way for me to assist in any attempt to free the family without being directly accountable, I would do it." Dmitry looked up in surprise and met Sir Thomas's eye. It seemed like at least one official was willing to help.

"You would?" he asked. Sir Thomas bowed his head, then plucked a pen from his desk and quickly scribbled something onto a scrap of paper.

"Let me be very clear. The British government cannot help in any official capacity," Sir Tomas said. He slipped the scrap of paper across the desk toward Dmitry. "However, you will find that there are others around here that would be more willing to help. Mostly British merchants. If you chose to contact them, I could not stop you." Dmitry picked up the paper and scanned it, taking in the names written on it.

"You would help me?" He asked, still bewildered. "Why? No one else has."

"You took a risk, identifying yourself as a monarchist," Sir Thomas said. "Not everyone could have been that brave. Or perhaps foolish. I could have turned you in to the local soviet and had you arrested."

"I'm glad you didn't" Dmitry said sincerely. Sir Thomas nodded.

"Memorize those names, then leave the paper with me so I can dispose of it," he said. "I'll set up a meeting time and keep you in the loop. Please do not betray my trust." Dmitry stood to shake Sir Thomas's hand.

"One more thing before I go," he said. "Is there any way to communicate with the Romanovs? Anyone who could deliver messages for me?"

Sir Thomas shook his head sadly. "Unfortunately, there is not. Everyone who enters the house is thoroughly searched, even the nuns who bring the family fresh eggs and cream. I tried to deliver a note of welcome when the Tsar and Tsarina first arrived, but was turned away. There's no way to communicate with the family."