Warning: spoilers for potential Kaiser Lane plot details, including a particularly kooky detail we've been considering for a long time.

The power and glory of the war,

As faithless as their vain votaries, men,

Had passed to the triumphant Czar,

And Moscow's walls were safe again –

Until a day more dark and drear,

And a more memorable year,

Should give to slaughter and to shame,

A mightier host and a haughtier name…

German terms to Russia were harsh. Poland, the Ukraine, White Russia, and the Baltic were seized, warships were pressed into German Navy… and a request was made to send over a certain falmily, at least in part. There was debate among the various soviets regarding that last point especially: could they allow a future problem like claimants to the Russian throne to just… walk into German arms?

It wasn't a happy idea, but being faced with German arms right now wasn't a particularly happy thought either.

Under heavy guard, a train shot across the vast plains, crossing borders that hadn't existed a few months ago. The humble peasants had no clue that they were now Ukrainian or White Russian, just as they had no clue that the train held the family of the Tsar of All the Russias.

Who knew? Maybe the last chance at the various Russias remaining under one polity was vanishing in that train.

It didn't particularly matter. It would be a hungry, troubled year no matter where the Tsarevich and his sisters ended up. Well, it was debatable if he even was Tsarevich anymore, wasn't it?

After all, the man who stayed behind in Russia wasn't the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias. He was simply Mr. Romanov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich.

The Germans were back in Riga. Some saying came to mind – first as a tragedy, then as a farce – but Volia couldn't recall who said it. She didn't find this joke particularly funny, either. She rubbed little circles into her palm with her thumb and successfully ignored all the people staring at her.

She wondered if this technically counted as a return to the motherland. This Baltic city would have been a Russian possession once, but it didn't mean much to her. If any place was her homeland, it was the shipyard that made her in Little Russia… even then, this Riga was war-torn and battered, a shadow of the city she had once been. She wondered if she would ever get to see a town – a people – in their prime, not starved down to gaunt shades by this damned war.

Compared to the others, she had a better chance of actually seeing a town like that. Her most distinctive trait was her build, instead of the aggressive hair colors or pointed ears that her comrades – her true comrades – boasted. From what she had heard, the Kaiser was pushing heavily for a reveal, so the secret wouldn't remain as such forever, but even then she doubted they would be allowed enough autonomy to go traipsing through the countryside.

The train appeared on the horizon, a trail of smoke rising above her like the funeary pyre of an empire. She had the strangest sense of something being stolen from her, although she hadn't been alive to see what it was, exactly. She wondered if this was the sort of feeling that a peasant born just after the fall of Rome would have had, living in Odoacer's Italy. Probably not…

From what history she had managed to read so far, the death of Rome was a prolonged affair. It wasn't a rapid switch from the heights of Roman virtue to the depths of Gothic barbarism. The Empire was polluted, weakening on the inside. The efficiency of a young, strong state had been burnt away to fuel imperial expansion, the virtue of those proud ancient days replaced by imperial bloat.

Or maybe it was a mistake to think that the empire even had those early days of civic virtue. People loved to look back and say the past was better… maybe they were right, maybe they weren't. But at the very least, the past had the empire and the certainty that came with her. Now…?

Now the train came to a stop in the station. Volia adjusted the uniform she had been given, hoping the hasty adjustments for her didn't seem too evident. (What might have been a greatcoat on a smaller person was more of a… goodcoat on her. A middlingcoat.)

They exited the train a bit too rapidly, really. Maybe that was fair, considering their captivity… they made quite the set. Hadn't the Windsor boy hoped to marry the eldest? Or maybe it was the second eldest. Tatiana was a vision. (The thought of the German crown prince's boy and one of these girls cropped up in her mind. Urgh.)

The girl she thought to be Tatiana approached her. Volia gave as deep of a bow as she dared in a not-completely-safe city. "Welcome to Riga, your Imperial Majesties."

"Oh, there's no need to use such a title…"

Because there was no more Russian Empire, no Emperor at her head. Regardless, Volia would escort them the rest of the way. Russian enough to greet the royalty, but thoroughly in the admiralty's pockets…

(Even the royalty had some edge over here there. The princesses had sewn jewelry into their fine clothing, even if they'd probably trade away the whole lot for a few loaves of bread if left to their lonesome. Volia, meanwhile, had some sort of sense of the real world but not so much as a pfenning to live off of.)

She supposed there was some merit in this peace if it meant these children were pried from the hands of their captors, but it was a meager sliver of silver caught up in the midst of the most terrible storm front.

"Perhaps she's the sort of nanny Alexei needs," Anastasia suggested, eyes alight with mischief. "She can pick him up, as she might a lamb, and ensure no trouble befalls him."

The Tsarevich frowned at his sister from his wheelchair. There was some sort of haemorrhage, made a terrible threat to his health by the royal disease. How tragic, to inherit that and not the crown… at the very least, it seemed the children were willing to bear the rough quarters of a ship for a while. Maybe it was how they were raised, maybe it was their time in captivity…

Alexei stared up at her for a few moments. "Your buttons are untidy, Miss."

Looking down, she saw that he spoke true. She fought the urge to use some of her sailor's vocabulary in the presence of no-longer royalty. "Thank you, your Imperial Majesty." The boy didn't seem to mind a title as much.

(While moving their things on board, she noticed something curious: an egg. Oh, but not some sort of plebian egg made of eggshell. That would be far too simple. Most of the surface was finely polished wood, but lines of gold traced her sides and formed a seam along the middle. This was one of those famed Fabergé eggs, wasn't it?)

She had survived the blooding at Texel and got two cubes for the trouble. Sevastopol had produced two cubes as well, but she wasn't capable of doing much else with them. She wasn't in much of a state for anything except turning high proof liquor into breath that could strip paint.

For what little it was worth, the number of Russian shipgirls in the world was about to bounce back up from two to six. Four destroyers of many "liberated" from Russian hands were to be cubed, and the six of them would form a sort of… package. Whether that package was destined for the Baltic Duchy or the Ukraine was still up in the air, but whatever the case it would be a while until they could get cozy in their dockyards.

The Germans were interested in the Russian situation, even if was separated from them by a thick barrier of buffer states. The new Weltpolitik saw Germany sticking her fingers in many pies, and if they wanted people in Russia… well, you'd want a Russian speaker, of course. That was obvious. Good things for a spy to have otherwise… not sticking out like a sore thumb was obvious, general intelligence and knowledge of codes and ciphers wouldn't hurt either. Male or female, – but especially female – good looks and charm wouldn't hurt…

A certain group tended to check a lot of those boxes. Volia's height might have scored some points against her in the sticking out category, but she was quite strong, independent, and had some proven capability with handling important people. Not bad.

(As to what stopped her from melting into Russia and not coming back? She couldn't guarantee the Germans would treat Sevastopol or any of these upcoming destroyers well if she…)

So these cubes weren't just producing the next generation of 'Russian' ships, they were hopefully producing a spy to accompany Volia. There was no guarantee they'd get so much as one normal looking girl out of the batch, but it was best they tried. It was the strongly held belief of the officers that aggressive multiplication of cubes had won the war. Even a wanting shipgirl was worthwhile in her capacity to produce cubes.

Even then, if given a choice between the increasingly obsolete seeming Bogatyrs and the modern Novik destroyers, the Germans preferred the later. Their need for escorts had ballooned… the Bogatyrs might find some use as training ships or bulins, but the destroyers were more attractive now. Intervention patrols for the situations in Russia, Turkey, and France needed many ships.

The first flash of light produced a slip of a girl with a big smile and hair like a highland thistle. Immediate no go, although Volia wouldn't say she didn't appreciate the hug. The second produced a girl of a similar stature, although her black hair foretold a different personality – she proved herself nearly as prickly as the thistle. At the very least, she was courteous enough to say thanks when Volia kept her from sneezing herself straight off the dock.

(Slightly more workable, loath as she was to admit it.)

Third was a nice, happy girl like the first, although that particular periwinkle blue hair ruined her prospects as anything other than a cryptographer. The last manifesting officer was starting to look a little worried, and Volia gave him a reassuring smile. If they all turned out too conspicuous for spying… that would just be too bad, wouldn't it?

R194, R195, and R196 were all anxious to see their sister as well. 196 (would just six work?) was already grinning and saying "Won't we make the greatest team?" when the wisdom cube flashed their sister into being.

The first thing Volia noticed was the height. A few inches over her sisters, although that was paired with a certain gangliness, like the body hadn't quite received the memo it was supposed to be growing in directions other than up. Really, she had the look of a girl who was going to grow into her features. There was a certain charm in a woman with a strong face like that…

Well, maybe Volia shouldn't be saying things like that. There was no reason to start getting vain. Those sharp features could grow up into Volia's, the hair was similarly plain, if a bit curlier, and the eyes were exactly the same. Her stomach sank. It was almost too perfect, wasn't it? R198 could reasonably pass as Volia's daughter.

Her resting face was a bit like Volia's too: far too harsh.

Many Russians had moved for greener pastures (or at least those that seemed a little less… red) when the civil war broke out. Some returned home when the situation calmed down, even if home might have been in Poland or the Ukraine, but some had put down roots.

For example, there was the new House of Fabergé in Vienna. Rather obviously, the people's soviets had no interest in ostentatious jewelry, and even the Whites who eventually won the civil war stayed austere. Why go back to find low demand when they could instead aim for royal patronage? Royal-imperial patronage, if we're splitting hairs, but still.

Their reputation for detail proceeded them, and they attracted a certain type of clientele. So you might imagine the surprise a seasoned Fabergé jeweller felt when he was called to meet with a sour-looking teenage girl. That shock remained until she sighed and lifted a cloth-wrapped package from her lap. Layers of white cloth were peeled away to reveal…

The Fabergé jewellers had worked with many materials before, but this was novel. Perhaps more opaque than their usual fare, but with a vivid blue color. And the light! A carefully cut gem might suggest light coming from within due to reflection, but this cube actually glowed. It was small enough to fit in the girl's hand and was already cut into a cube, one they would later measure to be absolutely perfect. If there was some flaw in its dimensions, it was so small that their calipers couldn't detect it… and a flaw that small was small indeed.

He was transfixed. "You're interested?" She asked, her Russian flawless. "Consider it payment… if you can finish the Constellation."

Maybe it didn't make a tremendous amount of financial sense, considering the time they'd invest in that one mysterious gem… but how could any self-respecting jeweller say no to a specimen such as that? Even better, it would serve as the perfect finish to a project they had set aside for quite a while.

They found themselves getting lost in her sometimes. The cube was so magnificent, so unlike every gem they had ever handled before… at times, it felt like it would be an offense to mar her, not that such a thing proved easy: it was hard enough that they had to work it like a diamond, using their finest tools. Even then, they worried that she wouldn't cleave as a diamond would.

A sculptor might say that he liberated his creations from the stone. Maybe that wasn't perfectly true for a gemstone, where they were cutting for jewelry, but the cube… seemed to long for a form. The light inside her danced, shifting and flickering like fire, but when they finally moved to carve her, it calmed almost completely.

They had no issue finding the cube's bizarre planes of cleavage, not when she pointed them out. Diamond hardened tools traced perfect lines of white light, careful polish gave her a brilliance much greater than her previous, cubic form.

Even the smaller fragments that came from the cutting were magnificent. They shone beautifully, the light not leaving them but instead seeming to intensify. Each could be the focus of a necklace or a ring on their lonesome.

The greatest fragment took her place in a home formed of fine blue glass. It was an egg, the counterpart to the Karelian Birch which they had managed to finish before the revolution compelled the flight of the House of Fabergé. Most of the egg and the billowing clouds of rock crystal it sat on were already, but the original plans called for a dial around the egg, cherubs supporting it, and diamonds marking the constellations the Tsarevich had been born under.

(Tsarevich once, and possible King of Ukraine, depending on how much pressure the Germans put on the Ukrainians. Perhaps Alexei would come to rule over the Cossacks, as his predecessor Alexis did. It was no imperial crown, but it was something.)

Their commissioner had not returned, so they had no elaboration on her one request: cut the cube into something magnificent, a fitting 'surprise' for the inside of the egg. The cube seemed to desire a shape something like a ship, one that would certainly look magnificent sailing through a sea of diamond constellations.

Here's hoping those same constellations didn't read like too much of a faux pas. After all, the egg wasn't going to the Tsarevich. Her request was unambiguous, as was the person she wanted it sent to:

The president of the Republic of Russia…

Anastasia… earn this! Earn it!

When the King- sorry, when the Tsar enjoys his own again? His own being Ukraine or Belarus, if the Germans maybe strike a good deal. The house of Faberge seems to have moved to France in our timeline, but… the fabrege eggs were part of what sparked this chapter tbh.