Nikola closed on Miles, black beard bristling, oppressive by the virtue of his size.

The physician shivered. "M-many medicines, including mine own, when administered by an ignoramus—"

Even to my inexperienced eyes, Miles' pallor and shifting gaze appeared suspicious.

"I'm only interested in the ones you have in stock. Or..." Nikola paused—and I could have sworn it was for dramatic effect. "In Giovanni's stock? Did he supply poisons to the Tsarina Maria's court regularly?"

Oh, how subtle!

"It now occurs to me that Giovanni indeed provided the kremlin with a kill-fly caps' tincture. But!"

He had to scream this last but, because Nikola nodded as if to say that he'd heard all he needed to hear.

"But it was to ward off cockroaches and flies in the royal kitchens, not medicine! And... and Giovanni spent an hour explaining to the serving girl how it should be mixed with the bait using a stick and kept away from the cooks and dogs."

"An hour? You don't say! Just how pretty was this girl?" Nikola howled with laughter at his own witticism.

Irritation flickered in Miles' green eyes, since he was hardly in a mood for japes, even at someone else's expense.

"I think they might have been familiar," he said cautiously and glanced at Besson to make sure he was writing his testimony down. "Giovanni gave precise instructions to avoid accidental harm. If someone willfully misused this pest control remedy, it was without his knowledge or insinuation, let alone mine."

"Is that so?" Nikola asked with a sly smile I didn't think he was capable of. "But if misused, could the Italian poison cause an illness such as I've described?"

Miles sighed in resignation. "Yes."

There was something admirable about his candor.

A grin so broad that even his beard couldn't hide it, stretched Nikola's face. "That would be all."

Wait, what? Ask how this serving girl looked like. Besson! I squirmed, sending flares his way, but my only friend hyper-focused on sanding his record, then packing away his spare quills, inkwell and a sharpening knife. Argh!

The other Englishmen caught onto the finality in Nikola's words and called out to Miles with soaring inflections. Before he could interpret their pleas, Nikola sketched a bow with a flourish to the foreigners. It looked about as graceful as a tutu on a bear.

"Farewell, Sirs," he said. "Take yourself off to Moscow or wherever the devil needs you."

Miles didn't include the stuff after the leave into his interpretation, it seemed, because the Englishmen broke into the exclamations of delight. Save for Miles, whose long face remained pensive.

I could understand his anxiety: Miles was minus two masters, and both of them met a violent end in Russia's unpredictable politics. With nobody else to take the fall, he could be next.

What I didn't understand was the abrupt conclusion of the interview, just as it was getting interesting, until my two so-called detectives turned to leave. Then I spotted the likely reason: thirty paces down the street stood Matvei in his resplendent coat. Half-a-dozen of musketeers tagged along with the clerk. Despite their bright-red attire and much more respectable stature, they looked like his shadows.

Dammit, Besson, I bet donuts to dollars that this 'serving girl' was Osip's witch. Why didn't you ask?

Don't cuss.

Really? With no legs, I couldn't kick anything, so I huffed as loud as I could.

You don't understand, Grisha. It's like I'm under a spell. Besson's confusion trickled to me, growing stronger as he opened up.

Goodness gracious! He was uncomfortably hot, afraid, wanting to know if this was the same girl Osip saw, and he was adamant that it wasn't—all of it at the same time. Above all, he yearned to protect this stranger whose face eluded and teased him from the sidelines of his memories. Those black eyes! Shame and guilt resurfaced when he remembered her eyes.

Spell was the right word for the thousand and one thoughts threading his cracking mind. Just not a magical kind, rather a mundane one, a plain vanilla infatuation.

I staggered back from the cauldron of someone else's raging teenage hormones, for I had my own to wrestle, despite their source being less anatomically defined. Dammit, it's hard to be you!

Please, no cussing!

However, he had more important things than my potty mouth to worry about.

As soon as Nikola, Besson and Matvei reunited, Nikola boasted, "We got it all down, Matvei. Everything. Nagoy family had conspired to cast black magic spells against Tsar Fedor, Tsarina Irina and Regent Godunov with the Italian poisoner and neglected the Prince."

Besson's jaw hung. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, under Matvei's gaze. A solicitous gaze... and something else; something cold. I thought Besson wouldn't speak out, but the words finally came out. "That... that wasn't what the Englishmen said."

Nikola narrowed his eyes. If his voice wasn't so quiet, I would have thought he was talking to someone hard of hearing, so slow and deliberate it was. "The Englishmen were mumbling and their interpreter did a piss-poor job. Make sure you clean up all of his errors before you hand the record to Prince Shuiskii."

"Prince Shuiskii, your uncle, Sire and benefactor, who staunchly held you blameless in the face of Tsarina Maria's accusations," Matvei added with a twinkle in his eyes. "Serious accusations."

Besson gaped.

"Maria the harlot, who ordered three of your friends killed in a fit of wanton hysteria," Matvei went on, with almost a pleasure. No, scratch that. Trapping Besson was a fun game for him. "A deed abhorrent to Prince Vasilii and every fair-minded man. Are you fair of mind?"

Besson's throat closed. The minions say these things, but the will behind is that of their master.

For a moment, he couldn't breathe. When the air reached his lungs, he gasped shallow, rapid breaths. I guessed his 'aye' more than heard it, then he lowered his eyes. He didn't want to look at the two fair-minded men with him, but Nikola tapped him on the shoulder.

"Here's more paper."

Paper doesn't blush, so Besson blushed instead, as he grasped the virgin stack. Writing exactly what people were saying was a hard task, but changing their words was harder still. Andrei wrote an honest account, while I...

Besson wasn't the first one and wouldn't be the last to suffer this agony. Neither was Andrei an exception.

Russians ever write truth in secret, burn it, rewrite it from scratch... because they're human. They lie for the same reason. Let's face it. You're doing some truth-hiding on your own initiative to protect this girl.

He bit his lip. I... It's not the same thing!

Isn't it?

Nikola and Matvei walked off, expecting him to fall in line like the musketeers. At first he did, but his steps dragged.

"I... I've dropped my pen-knife!" He bolted back toward the hut.

Neither Nikola nor Matvei called Besson out on his blatant lie. They didn't follow him either.

I was afraid they would sic one of the huge musketeers on him... it didn't happen. The men traded a philosophical shrug and settled to wait, as if they had all the time in the world.

Hmm. You're above them, if only by birth. Surprising, but true.

Besson didn't act high and mighty when he burst among the Englishmen. His chest heaved from exertion, his sides ready to split. His bulging eyes found Miles, and he came straight at the physician, waving his arms in a crazed windmill fashion.

"What... the serving girl... who took kill-fly caps, what did she look like?"

Miles' brows quirked. Right. Besson had asked after girls twice in a row. Maybe he was coming across as a tad obsessive, but Miles indulged him.

"Well-built, I'd say, if slouching too much. Shy, I guess? If not for that, I'd call her comely... or as comely as brunettes could be. She had a swarthy complexion of a Tatar."

I fist-pumped my non-existing fist too soon. Miles wasn't done. "The eyes made up for it, quite startling."

"Black eyes," Besson wheezed, remembering.

"No." Miles frowned. "Blue. A clear Nordic blue."

Besson's breath was slowing; now it hitched. "Th-thank you, Miles."

Is there a serving girl among the Nagoys' staff matching this description?

No.

It would have been so much easier if I could worm my way into Miles' mind and see if she was the same girl, her chameleon eye color notwithstanding.

Why don't you?

None of your business! Because I wasn't sure I could return to Besson after hopping heads, and he was so much more... entertaining than this English merchant.

Yes, entertaining. What else would a ghostly presence look for in his host, but a life to binge-watch? Am I right or am I right?

"I would like to go back to work if this satisfies the Commission." Impatience lurked behind Mile's polite manner. To him, Besson was just standing there, staring into space, distracting him from his affairs.

"Aye, aye," Besson said, waking to reality, including his cover story for Nikola and Matvei, the hogwash about the lost pen-knife.

He dropped into an honest-to-God ass-to-grass squat and ran his hands over the debris-strewn ground. "Ah... excuse me. I have to find something I've... uh... dropped earlier. It would only take a minute."

Miles quirked his brows. "Be my guest." An impeccable invitation, yet dripping with a dry sarcasm. God only knows what he thought of Besson.

That I'm insane, or a beggar, or worse. Besson dropped his head to elude the Englishman's gaze. It didn't hide his blush, because his ears burned red. He accidentally picked in the spot where the Englishmen discarded most of their refuse. Singed debris lay thick, so he was smearing the charcoal and muck all over his already ink-stained hands. He'd look like a chimney sweep in no time.

My Lord, please let this be over! He exclaimed in his mind, but refused to stop his scavenging until the toes of Miles' boots moved out of his field of vision.

There, I've embarrassed myself because of you. Is your heart content, Grisha?

Listen. Listen! Where I come from, it's trivial to change one's eye color, but I don't know about here. Actually, you know who's the perfect person to ask? Miles.

Besson jumped to his feet. Enough! I hope I'll never see Miles again.

It's your Tsar to save, not mine. I thought you liked Tsar Fedor.

You're such a cad!

Cad, not demon. I decided I preferred that. Unfortunately, there our progress stalled, since Besson stalked away in wide, lurching strides. His shoulders hunched from unhappy thoughts swarming his mind. Andrei, the girls, the lies... it all troubled him.

Me? I felt proud for him anyway, because if I were in his shoes, with a body and a life to protect, I probably would have asked far fewer questions... if any. Damn! Let's be honest for a minute: I would have shut up and obeyed Matvei. The mild-mannered man seriously scared me.