"Just so you know, this is all your fault."

Vladimir Vasilovich paused, a heavy forkful of a meat dumpling halfway to his open mouth. He raised one bushy eyebrow at the young man glaring at him from across the room.

"How is this my fault?" he said on a laugh. "I did my job. I got us the theater and the girls showed up. It is not my fault that some of them were nearly as old as the Empress herself." A long-suffering smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

Dimitri punched his hands deep into the pockets of his brown trousers and started to pace the room, making a little track from the low table littered with empty liquor bottles, to the ice frosted windows that stretched from ceiling to floor, to the gargantuan fireplace shimmering with heat. It had been a long time since he'd paced. It had been a long time since he felt this trapped and helpless, and it made him angry.

"Yes, it is. What did you do, post flyers at the local asylum? Every one of them was a certifiable nutjob, Vlad."

Vladimir laughed again, polishing off what was left on his plate with more enthusiasm than the greasy food deserved. After taking a long sip of the cheap red wine in his glass, he said, "That is what we need, Dimitri. She has to be just smart enough to teach, but dumb enough not to ask too many questions. How she looks is most important."

Dimitri snorted and let his long legs carry him back to the table. He plopped down in the velvet high-backed chair across from his business partner and friend, crossing his arms over his chest. "It took you two months to nail down that stupid theater. That's two months we could have been doing jobs. With things how they are, I knew you would need help, and that's why I offered to round up the girls to audition - oh, yes, I did," Dimitri interrupted himself when Vlad rolled his eyes. "Anyway," he continued, simmering with irritation, "the girls you got were useless, and now that two months of work have been in vain we're deep in the hole and don't have enough to pay off the patrol this month. So what the hell are we going to do?"

Dimitri's eyes narrowed as he watched Vladimir shrug and practically rumble with a satisfied sigh, monumentally unconcerned as usual. He stroked his thick mass of graying whiskers, his expression thoughtful. "What we always do," was his noncommittal reply.

Yes, Dimitri thought as he looked away, into the bowels of the fireplace. What we always do. Lie, cheat. Steal. Dabble in all seven of the deadly sins. At least he'd graduated from petty thievery, despite having been quite good at it. It would likely still be his occupation of choice if Vladimir hadn't thrust himself into Dimitri's path all those years ago.

With a groan he settled his crossed arms on the edge of the table and rested his forehead in the crook of his elbow. Dimitri could hear Vladimir shift his ample weight in his chair to poke at the embers behind him with the rusted poker. The heat in the room bloomed in a rush of warmth. Dimitri reminded himself again that he would gladly take the sweat trickling down his back over the aching cold of the city outside these walls.

His two front teeth had barely grown in the last time he'd called this place home, when the palace was alive and seething with light and sound, everywhere the glint of gold and the sweet smell of peppermint and pastries. He worked in the kitchen with an older girl of about fifteen and the fat cook who would smack his hand with her wooden spoon when he talked back. Every night he slept in a tiny spartan room in the servants quarters he shared with his mother, before she -

Dimitri's head jerked up as he snapped to attention. This was why he avoided stress like the plague. Visions of the city patrol pounding his skull into a bloody pulp with their heavy boots had already begun to snowball, picking up the debris of memories he had been trying desperately to forget for years. He never spoke to anyone about what had happened to her. He didn't intend to start thinking about it now.

It took years of drowning his demons in stolen vodka and lies to bury them deeply enough to lie undisturbed during his waking hours. But they were not generous. Dimitri learned he could function during the day, but in exchange the ghostly bones of the skeletons he kept so carefully hidden reigned over the kingdom of his nightmares, ruling him from dusk till dawn. He accepted this. It was his punishment for always wanting more than he had.

He shouldn't have saved her. He should have never even dared to look her in the eye before that day. But the youngest daughter of the czar, with her single winking dimple in her left cheek and her devilish grin, had him by the heart the moment she glanced his direction for the first time. They had barely spoken, but she was everything good in his life, even if she was a royal angel and he was the kitchen trash. Dimitri had thought that if he saved her, somehow she'd come back to him. But that was then.

He awoke from that endless, flaming night with a throbbing head that felt the size of a melon and a small jeweled box still grasped in his fingers. Sunlight streamed through the windows across his cheeks, its purity and warmth a sickening contrast to the horrors of blood and screams a few hours before. Crystalline blue eyes had been seared into his mind. He ran from those eyes, swearing he'd never come back to this palace of death.

Yet, here he was.

Vladimir turned back to the sulking Dimitri. He reached over to pat his arm with a meaty hand. "There was one girl who would have been passable."

Annoyed by the interruption of his self-piteous train of thought, Dimitri scowled up at him before he grabbed the wine and took a long drink straight from the bottle. "What?"

"The girl at the theater, the one with the large breasts and brown hair. What was her name?"

Dimitri grimaced more from the memory than the bitterness of the wine. "Iliana? Jesus, Vlad, she had a face like a turtle. No amount of makeup would make the Empress believe her granddaughter grew up to be that ugly."

Chuckling low in his throat, Vladimir retrieved the bottle before easing back. The chair creaked dangerously beneath him. "She was not too ugly for my bed."

Dimitri almost choked on his mouthful of alcohol. "Please, consider my virgin ears. Aren't you a little old for that?"

Vladimir merely shook his head and grinned, lacing his ham-like fingers over his burgeoning belly before replying. "I am older, yes, but not dead. You are still young, Dimitri. As the years go by, you will learn."

Dimitri laughed in spite of himself. "I hope I never have to learn to get past a face like that."

And just like that, the tension between them had eased. Vladimir had always known what to say to put things into perspective. When the moment passed into an easy silence once more, the older man's voice came quietly. "We will find her, my boy."

Dimitri's jaw tightened as his brown eyes assessed a set so much like his own. They were not related, but Vladimir was family. The unlikely pair had taken care of each other in worse times than these. "I have to get out of this city, Vlad."

Vladimir smiled, understanding more than his young friend could ever realize. "I know."

Then there was a sudden noise, a distant thump, like something large had been knocked over in the opposite wing of the palace.

Dimitri frowned. "Did you hear something?"

"No."

With a sigh, Dimitri stood and headed for the door, but not before pausing to assure himself that he had remembered to slip his hunting knife back into his boot. Vagrants could be trouble.