"Hey!" Dimitri hollered again, gripping the banister as he watched a bedraggled female turn and bolt for the opposite stairs.

"Dammit..."

He easily took the wide steps three or four at a time as he bounded onto the ballroom floor after her. Vladimir waddled down behind him in pursuit.

Dimitri was possessive. He had no problem admitting it. No matter how merciless the memories that gnawed at him, all of the formative moments in his life - the lonely nights, the brief, shattering joy of a royal smile meant only for him - all happened here. This palace was his personal shrine to his past. It was neglected, in ruins. But it was his to wallow in for as long as he saw fit.

It was because of this that he hated for the undesirable elements of the city to seep in, disturbing the calm with their loud rummaging and bodies that smelled of urine and stale sweat. The cold threat of his knife usually took care of an infestation.

When he discovered the girl, however, she had been dancing to a mute melody in the ballroom, her face relaxed and dreamy, completely alone save for the shadows that mimicked her movements on the walls. It would be ridiculous to suggest Dimitri was comfortable with pulling his knife on a woman, let alone one so obviously mentally ill. But one way or another, she had to go.

He'd just very politely escort her out.

As a man who made a living off his silver tongue, his lungs burned by the time he stumbled to a halt at the base of the second staircase, now more closely resembling a carpeted mountain. She was already at the peak and headed for the nearest hallway.

Dimitri had had enough. It would have been easier to just let her leave, but he wanted to make absolutely certain she wouldn't return or reveal his grand hideout to the authorities.

"Hey, stop! Stop! Hold on a minute - hold on!"

She stopped, her back to him.

His words came like arrows once he caught his breath, punishing her for daring to breach these walls. "How did you get in here?"

No response.

Dimitri took several threatening steps toward her, up the stairs. "Did you hear what I said? Who the hell are you?"

This time, he observed through narrowed eyes as she pivoted slowly in her worn out boots. Her chest heaved. Her mouth was slack as her eyes met his, a mix of fear and humiliation stamped onto her features.

Dimitri blinked.

Holy shit.

The drifter was looking down her nose at him, and from his perspective she appeared to be cheek to cheek with the image of his Anastasia, forever imprisoned inside of her family's portrait.

Anastasia was smiling. This ragged girl was not.

But hell if Dimitri could tell the difference between them.

He stared and stared for what could have been days, analyzing, comparing, searching for holes in the plan that was already knitting itself together inside of his head. A winded Vladimir hustled up to his side.

"Excuse me, child," he wheezed politely at the intruder, ever the gentleman, but Dimitri's sudden grip on his arm brought him up short.

"Vlad, in the name of all that's holy, please tell me you see what I see," he whispered. He couldn't take the chance that desperation was making him hallucinate. His wide eyes still hadn't left her face.

She was glaring at them now. Her shoulders lifted and dropped as if to say, what the hell are you looking at?

Vladimir quickly removed his spectacles from their perch atop his balding head and adjusted them on the bridge of his nose. His sharp intake of breath was all the confirmation Dimitri needed.

"My God," Vladimir breathed in awe, his hand clasping Dimitri's shoulder and squeezing. "She is perfect. She is the one."

And she was, more so than Dimitri had ever dared to hope.

She wasn't exactly pretty, not with the deep hollows in her cheeks and hair like russet-colored straw and dingy shadows smudged under her eyes. But that didn't matter at all. Not when those eyes were the color of salvation.

A clear, deep, striking, perfect Romanov blue.

It was as if the God Dimitri felt had been absent his entire life suddenly reached down from on high with a slap on the back for a job well done.

All three heads turned at the displaced sound of barking. A small ball of mottled gray fur shot up the steps between Vladimir and Dimitri, headed straight for the astonishing girl with eyes like jewels. She calmly scooped the pup up into her arms and held him against her heart.

"Are you Dimitri?" She sounded exasperated, if not a bit confused. Her voice was mellow and sweet and had a husky quality that made Dimitri think of smoked honey.

He raised an eyebrow and shrank the wide gap of space between them, moving to stand right in front of her on the landing. "Perhaps. That all depends on whose looking for him."
"My name is Anya," she proclaimed in an official tone, raising her stubborn little chin into the air. "I need travel papers."

Dimitri smirked. That hard glint in her eye told him she was far too coherent to be crazy. Strange, yes, but definitely not crazy.

She leaned toward him, adding in a conspiratorial undertone, "They say you're the man to see..."

Her rambling continued as she whispered something about not being able to tell him who supplied that information, but Dimitri barely heard her. He was too busy trying to fit his new project into Anastasia's gilded mold. This girl's hair wasn't long enough - and much too shabby and dull. He caught sight of her fingernails. They were broken and dirty. Her lips were dry and cracked and - Jesus, was that blood?

"Hey, what - why are you circling me? What, were you a vulture in another life?" Her forehead had wrung itself into a frown. She gave him a black look and put her hands on her hips - at least, where hips should be. It was difficult to tell what was what under the patched sack of a coat she was wearing.

Dimitri crossed his arms over his chest, a slow grin spreading across his cheeks. So she had some personality, too.

"I'm sorry, Enya - "

"It's Anya," she corrected, poking him hard in the chest with her finger. "An - ya."

He held his hands up in surrender, all humble apologies. "Right. Anya. Sorry...it's just that you look an awful lot like..." He trailed off and gestured vaguely at Anastasia behind them. Anya looked over her shoulder at the painting, then back at him, eyes wide and blank.

Dimitri glanced back at Vladimir, who had been mute and observant during their exchange. Vladimir winked, urging him on with a silent "work your magic".

"Never mind." Dimitri recovered quickly, smooth as polished marble. "Now, you said something about travel papers?" It didn't really matter, but he wanted to begin with small talk, to take his time. He could already tell he'd need to lay it on thick to make his case. He'd promise to get her anywhere she wanted to go, even if he had to carry her there on his back - whatever it took to convince her to play the lead in the biggest con in history. His life depended on it.

She took a deep breath. "Uh, yes. I need to go to Paris."

Dimitri stared again. "What?"

Sighing, she scratched her dog's ears and looked at him like he was a first-class imbecile. "Paris. You know, France?"

She wanted to go to Paris. As in the City of Light. As in the location of the elderly Dowager Empress, the only living blood relative of a Grand Duchess he'd been planning to package and sell to the old woman for years.

He was instantly suspicious. This had to be some elaborate hoax the universe had contrived for its own amusement. He'd had to claw and sweat and toil through his entire life and now his future gets handed to him on a silver platter?

It couldn't be that easy.

"Let me ask you something - Anya, was it? Is there a last name that goes with that?"

For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, Anya's eyes shifted away from his. She stiffened and clutched her dog so tightly he let out a tiny yelp. Patting his head apologetically, she said, "I...I don't have one - I mean, I do, but I don't know what it is." She chewed her lip.

"You don't know your parents, child?" Vladimir asked at last, positioning himself on the stairs a few steps below them. The eyes behind his lenses were glassy with sympathy, but Dimitri couldn't tell if the emotion was real or not.

She looked at Vladimir then and answered, her voice like steel. "No. An old lady found me wandering around when I was eight. She took care of me for a while, but when she got sick she took me to St. Olga's. I got out a couple of days ago."

God, St. Olga's. Dimitri winced internally at the mention of the abominable orphanage situated along the edge of the city, where the neighborhood scum collected and people burned their rancid trash in the streets. Rumors caught up with him years ago about the things that went on there, many of them unspeakable. Her eyes were practically glowing with desperation. He knew exactly what that felt like.

He cleared his throat and Anya turned back to him, clearly annoyed with their exchange in general. "And before that, before you were eight - "

"I don't remember, okay?" she snapped, eyes crackling with blue flame. "I know it sounds crazy, and I know you probably think I'm a lunatic, but -" she broke off, swallowed, closed her eyes, opened them again. "Look, it doesn't matter. You don't know me, and I don't know you. Or you," she added, cutting her eyes at Vladimir. He only smiled, apparently impressed. "The only thing you need to know, Dimitri, is that I need to go to Paris. So can you help me or not?"

If the city was all she wanted, Dimitri could give her that easily enough. "Uh, we sure would like to. Oddly enough we're going to Paris ourselves."

He almost laughed out loud when her face lit up like a brand new morning. She would do anything to be on the first train out of St. Petersburg. Perfect.

Almost on cue, Vladimir slipped Dimitri three expired tickets to the Russian Circus. Dimitri was very careful to reveal only the wrong side of the paper to Anya's starving eyes as he said, "I actually have three tickets here, but unfortunately the third one is for her, Anastasia." Her gaze followed his to the painting before she rolled her eyes.

"Anastasia." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"She's dead. Or do you know something I don't?"

Vladimir chuckled, the sound like soft thunder in the silence that swirled around them. "This was never confirmed. No one truly knows what happened to her."

"Hmm." Dimitri crossed his feet at the ankle and carefully arranged his face into a mask of thoughtfulness. "You said you couldn't remember what happened to you, right?"

"So?"

"So, she was around eight years old when she disappeared."

Anya cocked an unkempt eyebrow. "Are you going somewhere with this?"

"You do kind of resemble her, you know. Around the same age, same eyes...same chin..."

"She even has the grandmother's hands," Vladimir supplied.

Anya threw her head back and erupted with laughter. "Are you serious? You think I'm her?"

"Look, all I'm saying is I've seen thousands of girls all over the country and not one of them looks as much like the Grand Duchess as you. I mean, can you honestly prove that you're not Anastasia?" It was taking a lot of effort to remain calm and nonchalant about the whole thing, but Dimitri didn't want to frighten her off. He couldn't give in to the urge to just throw her over his shoulder and be done with it.

"Come with me," Vladimir said kindly, taking her hand and leading her to the portrait of the Dowager Empress near the window. "We are going to reunite the Grand Duchess Anastasia with her grandmother...in Paris."

"You made that up," Anya accused.

"Why is this so hard to believe?" Dimitri pressed as he walked over to join them. "You don't know what happened to you..."

"No one knows what happened to her," Vladimir joined in, waiting for Dimitri to springboard off his comment.

"You're looking for family in Paris," said Dimitri.

"And her only family is in Paris," Vladimir finished, squeezing her hand.

Anya was still incredulous. She looked from one to the other before turning on her heel to go back down the stairs, roughly elbowing Dimitri out of the way. "Both of you are insane. I'll just see myself out, thanks."

Before his brain could process the movement, Dimitri's hand reached out to grab her arm. It was like clutching a warm bone. There couldn't be an ounce of fat on her body with arms like that... "Wait a minute, just hear us out - "

She snatched her arm out of his grasp, her temple throbbing and her lips forming a grim line before she growled, "Okay, one - you don't ever put your hands on me. Ever. Two, do I look like a fucking duchess to you?" She gestured angrily at her ragged coat, which was the color of muddy puddles. "Three, even if I decided to lose my mind and agree with all this, what guarantee do I have that you're not lying?"

The lie was out of his mouth and into the world before Dimitri realized he had spoken.

"There's no sinister ulterior motive here. Just the knowledge that we brought peace to a lonely old woman and a nice vacation in 'Gay Paree' for our trouble. I hear it's lovely this time of year."

Vladimir coughed. "Uh, Dimitri - "

"So you're telling me there's no reward? No money? Nothing?" Anya's eyes bored into Dimitri's. He could feel them burrowing for truth. They wouldn't find it.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm telling you. There might have been years ago, but not now. At least, we haven't heard differently, right Vlad?"

Though his eyebrows had nearly hit his hairline, Vladimir shook his head.

Dimitri watched Anya stroke her little dog, deep in thought. Chyort voz'mi, he cursed mentally. Make a decision. His stomach churned. He could feel the warm prickle of sweat preparing to escape the skin of his upper lip. He hadn't had to work this hard in years.

When it became apparent she was still floundering in indecision, he hit her with his best shot.

"Listen, I have no reason to lie to you. I can't even begin to tell you how bad I want to get out of this godforsaken country. You do, too. I can see it in your eyes. But what I can tell you is with this crazy government, you'll never get out on your own. We're the only ones who can help you within three hundred miles of this city, and if you want a ticket, you gotta have a little faith."

He focused his entire being on projecting the image of an earnest young man with nothing but charity in his heart. When she bit her lip and the shallow impressions in her forehead relaxed, he could tell she was softening. He was so close.

"Anya," he murmured, begging her with chocolate eyes, "we're not going to hurt you. I know you don't have faith in yourself, but we do - I do. All I'm asking is that you have faith in me."

He offered her a wan little smile before he turned away. "Let's go, Vlad."

When the pair were out of earshot, Vladimir took his protege' to task in a fierce whisper. "What are you doing? Why didn't you tell her about our brilliant plan?"

"All she wants to do is go to Paris," Dimitri replied reasonably. "Why give away a third of the reward money?"

Vladimir wagged a finger at him. "I'm telling you, we are walking away too soon..."

"Relax, old man. I've got it all under control. Alright, but - walk a little slower."

Any second and he would have her.

"Dimitri - "

"Wait for it..."

Three...two...one...

"Dimitri! Dimitri, wait!"

Hook, line and sinker.

When they turned back, Anya was flying down the steps to meet them on the ballroom floor while the dog yapped in alarm.

"Did you call me?" Dimitri asked with feigned innocence.

"Okay. I don't remember anything about my past, so there is a possibility - a really remote possibility - that I could be this woman's granddaughter, right?"

Dimitri nodded his agreement. "Mh-hmm. Go on."

"Right, so I go to Paris with you guys, and we meet her."

"That would be correct."

"And if I'm not Anastasia, she would know right away and then it's all just an honest mistake."

"And, if you are the Grand Duchess," Vladimir offered, reeling her in to be gutted, "you'll finally know who you are and have your family back!"

"He's right," Dimitri agreed. He was grinning so hard it was giving him a headache. "Either way, it gets you to Paris." He stuck out his hand.

She hesitated before she allowed their eyes to connect. The hope she must have felt made the dark sapphire shade lighten to that of a cloudless sky at twilight. Dimitri felt odd, like she could see just how black his soul was if she looked long enough.

"What the hell, right?" she said, and his bones cracked in protest when she finally shook his hand to seal their agreement. Jesus Christ, she shook hands like a man. They would definitely have to work on that.

Anya was about to bubble out of her boots with excitement. She bobbed up and down, looking expectantly from Dimitri to Vladimir and back again.

"So, now what?"

Dimitri beamed. In a few weeks, ten million rubles would be in his hands, one for every lie he had ever told.