24

The sight of the Quarantine Fort fallen into enemy hands just like that had the immediate effect of paralyzing the Russian army; even Katyusha, whose ability to keep her cool even in the most dreadful situations was becoming the stuff of legend, clearly showed her disappointment, grinding her teeth and punching the rail.

Then, disbelief turned to terror as the fort's guns roared all together, although thankfully most shots missed; the French likely weren't accostumed to handling such antiques, guns some fifty years old, but it wouldn't last.

However, the small Chelyabinsk, already in bad shape because of the previous engagement, came up at the wrong place in the wrong time; it was difficult to say how many shots had hit, but everyone saw it go up in flames like an enormous firework, before thousands of astonished Russians.

"General, we have to retreat!" yelled Nachimov.

Too bad that Katyusha was of another mind altogether.

"Hold the formation! The most damaged ships tack and redeploy behind the others!"

"Sir, it's madness! If even just one of the fort protecting the canal falls, we'll be cut off from the city! We have to get back in till we can, or we'll be sitting ducks!"

Katyusha reacted by simply drawing her pistol, shooting twice in the air and shutting everyone up at once.

"I said, hold formation! And I won't repeat it!"

Before such an eloquent intimation, the officers had no other choice, and Dundas almost couldn't believe his eyes when he saw, with the fort still bellowing against them, the Russian ships move away from the canal, bearing west.

"Have they lost their minds?" he said under his spyglass. "Their main fort has fallen and they don't withdraw?"

But if Raglan considered such a behavior worthy of being committed, Raglan thought otherwise.

"Whatever they are doing, it's time to end this. Signal the fleet, close rang engagement. We'll deal with those poor excuses of seamen in one blow!"

"No, wait! Belay that order!"

Hearing such a thing on a ship of Her Majesty, everyone gaped at Raglan, whose eyes were full of apprehension.

"We have the upper hand right now. If we go and meet them, we'll be vulnerable. We should remain here within the fort's range and stay on the defensive."

"General..." began Dundas, partly annoyed (who dared countermand an order on his ship?), partly wavering.

"She's got something on her mind! It's not much since I first knew of her, but I do know that the normal tactics won't work against her! The best thing is to hold the position and fight at a distance!"

"But by doing so they might still withdraw. It's a huge chance to wipe out the enemy fleet."

"I already underestimated that witch once, when I believed I had her against the ropes!" screamed an enraged Raglan. "And I'm still counting the corpses! And if we have to swallow our pride to win and act like chickens, so be it! Anything's better than falling into one of the traps laid by that demon who looks like a small girl!"

Dundas stalled, unable to recognize in that scared and timid man his longtime friend, and, also out of annoyance at being questioned on the quarterdeck of his flagship, considered ignoring him; after all, the Somerset Command still didn't give him any power over the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet.

But then, he remembered the nightmares and the sleepless nights that the General had had since his return from Balaklava, and the thought of what could have traumatized him in such a way, a person who wouldn't have hesitated to cut off his arm at once for the Crown, bade him change his mind, and take a decision that he himself could hardly believe.

"Belay that order." he almost whispered. "Signal the fleet. Redeploy off the fort, and form a defensive line there, right off the reef. This way we won't be in range of the batteries near the canal."

"Aye aye, sir."

"And remind everyone, keep an eye on those shoals."

Nachimov and the other Russian commanders were all but waiting for the Allied fleet to make straight for them, to devour them like hungry sharks around a dying whale.

Instead, their jaws went to the deck as they saw the fleet move away, to redeploy in a thick line very close to the fort and the southern shore, near the fort's range, British and French ships alike.

"What in the world are the doing?" someone asked. "Why don't they attack?"

"I don't understand." said Nachimov. "With the fort supporting them, they could take us out once at a time with ease."

A suspicion ran among everybody; perhaps, the enemy wished to use the fort's position to strike at the forts protecting the canal, so to facilitate a ground attack. This way, they would have kept control over the harbor, but they would have trapped the Russian fleet outside, forcing it to choose between surrender or defeat.

"Admiral." said a seemingly completely recovered and cool Katyusha. "Signal the fleet, close range engagement."

"What?" shrieked Nachimov, any discipline left way behind them. "You want to engage them?"

"That's what I said. Straight for them, so to avoid as much damage as possible while we close, bearing south-south west. At the signal, we'll tack on our starboard side and we'll close in."

"All together?" somebody else let out. "Under the fort's fire all the time? We barely pulled it off before, but now would be a suicide!"

"General, we followed you till now, but this is the time to acknowledge the facts! We lost! I won't lead my ships and my man to be slaughtered in a senseless attack!"

The few that didn't dare to voice what they thought held their breath, waiting for the General to do to Nachimov what she had done to Prince Menshikov, or so it was said.

Instead, she turned towards them, leaving them speechless; there was no rage in her eyes, but mere determination, together with a desperate request for trust. Like a daughter begging her parents to trust her and let her free to live her life.

"Please." she said calmly, almost pleading. "Trust me. I know I'm asking much out of you. I promised you we would relieve Sevastopol. Then, I say, it's not over yet. We can still win; but you have to believe in me."

That said, Katyusha drew her pistol again; but, instead of aiming it, she offered it to Nachimov, who gaped at her.

"If you don't agree with me, then shoot me now. There will be no consequences for you. But I'll do what I think it's best. You'll have to kill me to stop me."

"G-General..."

The admiral and his officers exchanged glances, and then looked again at the Grand Duchess, blue as the sea all around them; for a single moment, somebody asked himself what Russia could have been, if the Almighty had made that small girl a boy instead, and heir to the throne.

"For the Motherland." she concluded, almost in a prayer, putting down the weapon.

"For the Motherland..." Nachimov eventually murmured back, and then he let out a cry for all the others, if not for the whole fleet, that was joined by countless others. "FOR THE MOTHERLAND!"

"Spread everything we've got! This will be the final blow!"

"Have they lost their minds once and for all?" Dundas wondered, as the Russian fleet, spreading all the sails it could, began to move, clearly showing that it wished to repeat the same maneuver it had executed before.

Raglan didn't await for him to decide.

"Prepare to fire!"

Finding themselves a few yards' away from the shoals, with reefs and shallow waters all around them, the Allied fleet had been forced to slow down, in some cases lowering almost everything.

It was hardly a problem, though, with the fort protecting them and the reef hiding them from the fire of the other Russian forts, but if another engagement was on the plate, such a static formation might have become less than optimal.

"Wait until they're close!" Dundas ordered.

Everyone awaited for the fort to start raining fire and decimate the opponents, or at the very least disrupt its formation and allowing for them to pick them off one by one.

But from high above, nothing came. The fort was silent.

"What are they doing?" Raglan growled. "We should signal those idiots to open fire."

Flags were hoisted, even rockets went up, but nothing changed.

Dundas and Raglan pointed their spyglasses respectively towards the fort and towards the enemy flagship, and both saw things that they wished never to; because Dundas saw that the gunners inside the fort were sensibly changing the elevation of the guns, while Raglan, after sweeping over all the other officers, saw Katyusha's face twist into a smirk worthy of the Devil himself.

"Oh, God, no..."

The guns fired.

And not just them.

Mortars, grenades and even rifles blasted away. Everything within the fort was fired... against the Allied fleet.

At that range, several British and French ships were almost immediately disabled, peppered with shots without even being able to take notice of what was going on, and Dundas himself saw a bullet rip his cap off his head.

"It was a trick!" he roared, as the French flag over the fort went down, replaced once more by the Imperial one. "Let's get away from here!"

Too late.

The Allied ships were almost stopped, and in the time that it took to spread some decent sails or open up the engines once more, five of them had already gone to Davy Jones' locker, with most of their crews.

And thus the scene that had played before unfolded once more, with the men-of-war that managed only to get into each other's way, and some even coming up and grounding themselves on the shoals.

When Dundas had managed to regain a bit of control over the situation, the Russian fleet was right on top of them.

"Fire!"

"Goddamn!"

Between gunfire, grenades, and those infernal torpedoes, ten were the ships disabled by that single broadside; and when the rest of the fleet had managed to disentangle itself and get out of that crossfire, the numerical difference between the fleets had all but disappeared.

"And now the playing field has been evened out, you bastards!" yelled Katyusha, climbing onto the rail and pointing a finger at the British flagship.

The trick had been supremely effective in dealing yet another blow to the beleaguered opponents.

Unfortunately, as Katyusha had predicted as soon as she had opted to use it, it aroused a series of outraged gasps among the admiral and his men.

She turned to look at Nachimov's face, pale out of surprise and fury.

At first unable to even speak, eventually he was able to point at the fort.

"That fort... pretended to surrender."

"Indeed it has." was her cool reply.

With a glare that had at least a part of Katyusha fear that he would regret his choice to refuse the pistol proffered him before, the admiral ground out: "That is perfidy. It's explicitly forbidden by any nation that considers itself civilized!"

"Should they?"

The General's almost morose answer almost made Nachimov explode, but he forced himself to keep his calm, even as he stepped up to her.

"General, using strange tactics is one thing, but doing something of this sort... means that now everything is pointless. Any victory we can get today, won't matter one thing as soon as people know how we obtained it."

"Pointless?" was Katyusha's rebuke, sharp as a lance. "Reputations may be soiled, honor may be sullied, but tell me, admiral, is this..." And she made a wide gesture, as she pointed to the burning hulk that was once the HMS Queen, proud first-rate of the Royal Navy. "Really pointless?"

"A honorable defeat may be accepted by our enemies, and by their public opinion. A dishonorable one will only strengthen their resolve, and add to our enemies' ranks." argued Nachimov, visibly struggling to keep his cool.

Katyusha shrugged. "Some might be enraged by this. But others don't think like that; others care only about their gold and their markets, and their voices are powerful. If a defeat, perfidious as it may be, convinces them to lobby for the war's end eventually, it matters not."

"General, I cannot be an accomplice of this! I am a soldier in His Majesty's service, not some kind of thug willing to do anything!"

At the admiral's outburst, Katyusha finally lost her cool a bit, as she stepped down and looked up at his purple face, a sight that would have been comical in another situation.

"I'll take upon myself all the responsibility and the blame..."

"Rubbish!" spat Nachimov, his left hand squeezing his sword's hilt. "Even with no official consequences, you have still destroyed the reputation and careers of every high-ranking officer around here. Do you realize that?!"

Katyusha opened her mouth to reply, but nothing happened. The brief silence on the quarterdeck of the Konstantin was pierced by a thunderous boom, as the Jena (a French two-rate) blew up all of a sudden.

Both of them stared at the doomed ship for a few moments, then the Admiral's gaze flickered over the deck, where the crew had let out a mighty yell at the sight of yet another enemy ship going into the abyss.

"I want you to ask you something, Admiral." Katyusha said, her voice thick. "You said you are a soldier in the service of my father the Tsar. Then tell me, are you ready to do anything for him and for our country?"

Nachimov stared at her, taken aback by such an insulting question.

"Are you also willing," she continued, in the same tone. "to sacrifice career and reputation for the sake of the Motherland?"

The admiral paled once more, but it was a different pallor now. The other officers glanced at each other, understanding dawning into their eyes.

Now they were getting what was being asked for them.

A lifetime in a strictly organized society, and a long career into an organization where the code of honour was everything, spurred them all to protest, to object, to refuse.

But none of them was able to do it.

Because they had recognized, in the voice that had made such a request, the wholehearted willingness to sacrifice everything for a greater good, even what their society deemed untouchable.

They all looked at Nachimov.

The struggle within him lasted for long seconds, and nobody said anything.

Once more, he looked down, at his men, who didn't care for honor, for perfidy or for tricks; whose cheer had saluted the end of an enemy who would have doomed them in a straight-up, honorable fight.

Then he let out a breath and sagged.

Lifting his head to look at the battle-damaged ensign flying behind him, he smirked.

"If this is to be our last battle," he stated, turning towards the General, "then let it be the greatest victory our forces can obtain."

Katyusha's smile towards him was the epitome of gratitude.

The chronometer was a masterpiece, no questions asked.

According to how it was used, it could be much more than an instruments to get the position while at sea or keep the time.

For example, by using two of them once could coordinate attacks on different places, even very distant ones.

Although they could hear the noises of the battle, except for the batteries on the hill the ground forces still besieging Sevastopol had no idea of how the engagement between the fleets was going, because of the fog and the terrain.

They were so distracted, that almost nobody thought of looking in the opposite direction.

At eight o'clock in the morning, two hours on the spot from the beginning of the battle, the Russian forces, or rather what was left of them after Balaklava, appeared from behind the hills, to the enormous cheer of their companions within the forts.

There was no artillery nor supporting units, and not even pack trains; by the General's orders, anything that could slow down the forced match had been sacrificed, and that, together with the simultaneous, merciless sweep of any guard post or patrol between Balaklava and the city by raiding units, had ensured that the enemies hadn't been warned of the advance.

Seeing those eighteen thousand men pop up just like that, placing his troops between a rock and a hard place, Burgoyne felt a shiver in his bones.

"At your places!"

Luckily, the General had been foreseeing enough to deploy part of his guns away from the city, thus there was no need to go and move them now.

Unfortunately, Burgoyne had no idea of what the Russians had in store for him and his men.

Even before that the mile-and-a-half battle line had charged against him, with Her Highness Olga herself leading the joint Cossack and Württemberg cavalry, from Malakoff and the other forts guns and mortars opened up against them.

In the latter's case, however, no usual grenades were falling, once more; because, as they detonated in flight, what fell upon the British and the French huddled in the trenches was not explosive or that damned burning substance, but a dark and stinking concoction, that in no time covered everything from head to toe.

"What in the blazes is this stuff?" was everybody's cry.

It took just a spark of imagination to get the answer, especially when somebody noticed, among that filth, of something slimy and dirty-white, that didn't look any good.

"It's shit! White shit!"

"Quickly, clean yourselves up!" the officers tried to order. "That stuff will get you tetanus or cholera!"

Unfortunately, that stuff had fallen everywhere; also on the casks of drinking water, that was by then contaminated and unusable.

Few things were those that a soldier, accustomed to live with the idea of dying at any moment, could truly fear; among them, however, was the fear not to die in a few moments, ran through or cut to pieces by a grenade, but to die slowly, in a filthy bed, drained of his liquids in a stinking mess.

Fear was the ultimate weapon; the one that, if handled correctly, could win a battle even before it was fought. In time, several civilizations and empires had disavowed it, condemning it as a barbarous and uncivilized form of warfare.

But Katyusha hadn't. For her, it was a tool like any other. The only one, perhaps, able to give hope even to a ragtag and improvised army like hers.

The confusion rose to alarming levels among the Allied troops, whose officers had to make superhuman efforts to keep control of their men; but by then, the relief army, as it had happened at Balaklava, was already being thrown against them like a human wave.

The outward defense lines were captured in a matter of minutes, also because it quickly became apparent that the 'contaminated' powder had been distributed all around the trenches, making lots of weapons unserviceable. Besides, the defenders of Malakoff and the other redoubts, gathering all their courage, at one stage decided to sortie and attack the enemy from behind, catching it in a deadly pincer, with no hope to escape.

The numbers were still on their favor; but between the fear, part of their weapons disabled and the feeling of having been abandoned by a fleet that, albeit unseen, perceived as struggling, the will to fight of the enemy was quickly eroded, with entire units that, here and there, began to surrender under the astonished eyes of Burgoyne, who couldn't do anything but look on from above as his army went to pieces.

If on the shore the situation was becoming worse and worse for the besiegers, on the sea instead a stalemate was quickly forming.

Even though it was wounded, struck and deceived, the British fleet was still the best of the world, and despite being caught in a crossfire, every time that a ship entered the range of another fort, once out of the pocket it had managed to reorganize itself, and, yardarm to yardarm, was engaging the Russians in a furious struggle.

The French were doing their part, holding the port side from any attempt to surround them, while also making things difficult for the ground fortifications with a continuous fire.

But it was precisely to break the back of this last, feared resistance that Katyusha had cooked up something else.

The Quarantine Fort was the only one fitted with tunnels that connected it with the center of the city, precisely because of its isolated and important position.

Through the abandoned mine and the sewers, Nonna, Tolstoj, Virginia and the other maids had managed to reach the fortress, taking with them, other than more men to shore up the defenses, a curious amount of wood pieces and canvas that, once reassembled, had taken the form of an enormous flying creature, twenty feet long and a wingspan of thirty, fitted with a triangular support below it.

It did look like one of the harebrained inventions of that Leonardo da Vinci of old, come out of his books and realized in the real world.

"But are we sure that this thing will fly?" asked Virginia, who had had the unfortunate honour of being the designated pilot.

"Don't worry, it'll work." Aina reassured her. "Her Highness has been working on it for months. She has already tested it, too, and we all saw it fly-"

"Sure, with a cat! But unlike them, I don't have nine lives!"

"You can always change your mind." Tolstoj supplied, looking at the gap from the northern walls, from where she would have to jump. "I sure wouldn't blame you."

"Change my mind? Never!" was the answer, curt but not without some hidden worry, of the girl.

On Nonna's advice, who had been told by Katyusha, the young spy freed herself from everything that could slow her down or compromise her ability to stay airborne, beginning from her hood. Then, after placing her kukri in a special pocket, she prepared for takeoff.

"Here, take this." said Nonna, offering a leather belt with a dozen grenades tied on it. "They arm themselves as soon as you take them out, and go off after three seconds, so be careful, or you'll end up flying a bit higher than intended."

"Of course. No pressure, right?"

The glider was taken up by two soldiers by the wings, and Virginia, going under it, carried it with them up to the walls' edge, standing there for a moment with her heart jumping up and down at the sight of the nothingness below her.

"According to the Grand Duchess, the glider won't fly very long, so don't waste time trying to hit all the targets and go straight for your objective." Nonna reminded her one last time. "Keep in mind, it has to be a flagship."

"Sure I get that. But keep in mind yourself, that if I end up crashing down there I'll come from beyond the grave to haunt you and that raving lunatic that is your mistress."

With that, shelving her fears away, Virginia took a few steps back, then, with no more hesitations, jumped.

The glider went down like a rock for a few yards, and then rose back up with the same quickness thanks to a providential gust of wind, that took it and its pilot above the fort's flagpole.

"I can't believe this!" Virginia let out, shocked. "It's really working! I'm really flying!"

The battle noise below returned her to reality, though, and maneuvering just like she had been taught, the girl began gliding down, finding herself over the enemy fleet.

The seamen and Royal Marines at first couldn't believe their eyes, but when a grenade coming from that weird kind of bird fell right on the quarterdeck of the HMS Rodney, taking out in a single blow its captain and several officers, the few that weren't manning the guns took up rifles and began to fire as quickly as they could. Unfortunately, that thing was huge, but also quick as hell, and all they managed was a few holes here or there in the canvas, without taking it down, however; meanwhile, other ships suffered the same fate, losing their commanders by those precise, lethal grenades coming from above, their names written on it.

Virginia would have wished to reach the HMS Britannia, still positioned in the middle of the formation and well protected by other sails of the line; however, the damage suffered by the bullets and a change in the wind currents brought the glider away, and the girl realized that she wouldn't have managed to get back before plunging into the water.

Luckily, the change in direction took her right towards the Ville de Paris, which could be well recognized in the middle of the French ships because of her admiral's flag. As it was as good as the other, Virginia didn't hesitate further.

Seeing her coming, the French sharpshooters fired everything they got, until a lucky shot managed to cleanly cut the left wing, just as Virginia was about to drop her last grenade; the glider began to spin out of control and drop, but just as the French had thought they had taken her out, she, abandoning the contraption, came down onto the deck like the Angel of Death.

The enemies were so astonished that the girl was able to take a few out without them being able to defend themselves in the least; afterwards, fighting her way through bayonets and close calls, she reached in four leaps the quarterdeck, wrapping herself around Admiral Hamelin and placing the dagger at his throat.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you." she said, in an almost childish tone, to the soldiers and the officers that were aiming their guns at them, showing in her other hand the grenade she still had in her belt. "I'm warning you, if this toy falls down, we'll all go to have a nice little talk with the Maker. So, pretty please, could you put down your arms?"

"You're mad." said Hamelin. "Are you willing to die to fulfill your mission?"

"Don't remind me. I'm still asking myself how in blazes I got talked into this. But since I began this, I might as well finish it as well. So? I'm still waiting."

The soldiers hesitated, but in the end, also thanks to the admiral's 'encouragement0, they obeyed.

"Now, Admiral. If you'd be a dear and order your fleet to surrender, you'd be doing a most pleasant thing."

"Are you joking?" Hamelin protested, and for his trouble, he felt the blade of the kukri caress his pale and sweaty skin.

"Do I look like someone who is making a joke?" replied Virginia, with an ice-cold tone and bloodied eyes.

The admiral gritted his teeth, cursing his impotence and his attachment to life.

If he had been a man of the tales of old, he would have died to fulfill his duty to the end; instead, while he had always believed otherwise, he had never truly been such a man.

"D-do as she says." he told his astonished and powerless officers.

And thus, all of a sudden, the colors of the Ville de Paris were struck, and, among the general wonder, replaced by a signal ordering the fleet to do the same.

The surviving flag officers and captains for a moment refused to believe it, also because the flagship hadn't suffered such damages that could mean something had happened to the admiral; but in the end, forced to obey. Lowering their sails and coming to a stop, one after another they struck, under the shocked eyes of their British allies.

"I can't believe this!" Dundas wheezed. "The French are surrendering!"

Hamelin was so worn out and humiliated that he would have welcomed death, and nevermore he would have imagined that he would have assisted to such a humiliating defeat, especially from such a different enemy.

"False surrenders, threats to the commanders in chief to make their men surrender, officers used as targets." he growled. "Your General is a honorless creature!"

"Old fart." was Virginia's glacial comment. "Do you really think you're living in which honor means anything? Wars must be won, no matter what."

The situation by then was crystal clear.

The French had thrown in the towel, the fleet was scattered and fired upon all around them; on the shore, there was no redoubts that wasn't feeling the pressure, attacked from both sides by a mass of excited lunatics that had decided to put before their own lives their commitment to their new goddess.

Raglan had sworn, as he was fleeing from Balaklava, that he would never take off his cap again for that little girl.

And yet, he was aware that he had been one of the main contributors to that defeat. The thought of having been deceived by that snake, who had managed to get into his mind and read his thoughts without even seeing him in person, made him feel like a puppet, who had danced all along for her without even realizing it.

On one hand, he hated her; for her unscrupulous and brutal tactics, for her determination, and for her seeming consideration for warfare as nothing more than a chess match in which she could show off her superior ability, with no regard for ethics or sportsmanship.

But yet, as much as he loathed to admit it, he admired her; she was the commander under which any soldier would have wished to serve, brilliant and straightforward, and looking at her the General couldn't help but feel that he was looking at the future of warfare. A future in which only one decision out of the box would have upturned the fate of several empires.

Dundas came up to him, deathly pale.

"General, it's over. We have to surrender, as long as we can."

"Admiral Dundas." said Raglan, his eyes still fixed on the enemy flagship. "Let us pray that that little girl never becomes queen."

"My lord?!"

"Because if, in the future, she would manage to sit on the throne of a great power... May God have mercy on us all."

A few minutes later, filling everyone, be it British or Russian, with shock, the HMS Britannia struck, and five gunshots were the signal for everybody, on the shore as well, that the battle was over.

It took a few seconds for everybody to realize that; and like the walls of Jericho, those of Sevastopol as well, after holding for months against shells and countless assaults, almost went down because of the screams that came all at once.

As they returned to port, the ships found all the inhabitants there, and for the whole day, as General Liprandi and Admiral Nachimov formally accepted the surrender of the enemy forces, Sevastopol became nothing more than the location of a huge celebration.

Dances and songs continued throughout the night, wine and vodka flowed like rivers, and all the food available was promptly destroyed.

The impossible had happened. Two mere battles had managed to turn the tide of a war whose course had looked but written.

The time for politics and decisions would come tomorrow, what mattered now was celebrating.

Nonna and Olga, surrounded by jubilant soldiers, showed off in the Cossack sword-dance in the court before the Church of St. Nicholas, with the future Queen of Württemberg demonstrating skills that nobody could have guessed.

Virginia, discarding the role of spy, dedicated herself to food and drink, but she didn't forget to toast the memory of her mentor, which she imagined watching her from above, likely with his trademark smirk on his face.

To the celebrations assisted, from the sidelines, Prince Aleksandr too, leaning from the window of his quarters in the Governor's palace, a bit worse for the wear after all those bombardments, but still standing.

There was wonder and disbelief in his gaze; he himself would have never expected to look at such a conclusion for a nightmare that had lasted months, in which he had seriously feared for his own life.

Almost resignedly, as an old soldier looking at the end of something for which he had fought, to the point of forgetting about everything else, he turned towards his desk, raising the light of his lamp a bit, before sitting down to write his usual contribution to his diary.

The door behind him squeaked a little bit, but he wasn't fazed.

"Why aren't you out there taking part in the feast, brother?" asked Katyusha, taking a few steps forwards.

"Feasts were never my forte, as you should know." he answered without taking his eyes off the diary. "Congratulations, though. As of today, you're officially the greatest heroine of this nation."

"I merely did my duty. Protecting Russia is my duty as much as it yours."

"Undoubtedly."

"And that's why there's only one thing left to do."

A sharp noise was heard, like a mechanism being set off, and it stopped cold the Prince's hand, with ink staining the white page. Turning around, what he saw was his sister Ekaterina with her loaded gun aimed towards him.

"Prince Aleksandr, as of now, you are under arrest."