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and easy are the steps that change our lives. I didn’t know the habits of the Empress then—the changing bedrooms, the eager lovers who awaited her midnight summons. Luck had brought the Chancellor of Russia here, I believed, into this forgotten part of the palace. Luck had made him talk to a clumsy seamstress of the Imperial Wardrobe. And luck would take me to the Empress’s side.
    There were more such nights in the months that followed. Nights wide-eyed and hopeful, nights of easy laughter and confessions I offered the Chancellor willingly, grateful for the luxury of his attention.
    Madame Kluge kept a bottle in her drawer. She said it was eau de cologne, but I saw her and the Mistress of the Wardrobe take sips from it. Many sips.
    Anton, the Grand Duke’s footman, said he wished to crack the Blackamoor’s skull against the wall.
    Countess Golovina kept a serf girl under her bed at night to tell her stories when she could not sleep.
    It wasn’t hard to learn which of my stories pleased the Chancellor.
    “Can a palace girl keep a secret?” the Chancellor asked me once.
    “Yes,” I told him.
    “There is more to this palace, Varvara, than the Imperial Wardrobe.”
    I nodded.
    “And there are more important stories. Only you must know where to look.”
    The Chancellor of Russia put his hand on mine.
    I lowered my eyes, fixing them on the silver buckles of his shoes. They were square, encrusted with gems.
    I listened.
    He told me of godless people who plotted against our Empress, who wouldn’t hesitate to raise their hands against her. Cunning and shrewd, they knew how to hide their thoughts, to bury them in false professions of friendship and loyalty.
    They were everywhere, but they were hiding. The Empress had to know who they were and what evil they were trying to do.
    There was no laughter in his voice. His eyes did not leave me when he spoke.
    The righteous had to be rewarded, the evil punished. The wheat had to be separated from the chaff. My father had brought me here to the Imperial Palace for a reason. My father had trusted his Empress. His daughter could learn to be more important than he had ever thought possible—she could become the eyes and ears of the Empress.
    Her tongue.
    Her gazette.
    The teller of the most important of stories.
    “Someone the Empress can trust, Varvara,” the Chancellor said. “And someone I can trust, too.”
    I was sixteen years old. I still believed in the common fantasy of the powerless that rulers would rule differently if only they knew what was concealed from them. I believed that eternal stuff of teary narratives in which kings or queens, sultans or emperors, change their hearts after learning the joys and sorrows of the common man.
    “Look at me, Varvara,” the Chancellor said. The hand that covered mine was heavy but warm and soft on my skin.
    I raised my eyes, high enough to take in his clean-shaven face, the dimples at the corners of his mouth.
    He had been watching me long enough, he told me. I was clever with languages. My Russian was impeccable. He had heard me speak German to one of the Grand Duke’s footmen. I knew French, too. And Polish.
    “Do you want to learn what I can teach you?”
    I moved closer toward him, close enough to see tiny shapes of my own pale face reflected in his eyes.
    I nodded.
    Excitement rose in me like my mother’s sweet raisin dough. I thought it easy, childishly simple. All I had to do was to learn from him and my life would take a turn for the better.
    I didn’t know yet how dangerous stories could be—that Chevalier Duval was already paying for the favors of stable boys with the secrets of the French king or that Anton would soon be interrogated and dismissed from the Grand Duke’s service. But even if I had known, I wouldn’t have stopped telling the tales that made the Chancellor of Russia see me.
    Not then.
    Not yet.
    The white nights had barely ended when my lessons with the Chancellor began.
    The first one was