Chapter 30: Elders Before Youngers

It’s only natural for a nation that has won a war to bask in the glow of victory.

Russia’s high society, already dissolute and steeped in corruption, naturally slipped the reins even further once victory came.

In Petersburg, banquets were held several times a day, and the nobles never doubted for a moment that their era would last forever.

All except one.

“What? The invitation didn’t come this time either?”

“Your Imperial Highness, there must have been some mistake.”

“Are you joking! At the banquet three days ago, I was the only one who received no invitation either!”

“I’m terribly sorry. Next time I will check thoroughly.”

Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, one of the senior elders of the imperial family, had lately noticed that the air around him was shifting in a strange way.

There had been so many incidents that it would have been strange not to notice.

He alone received no invitations to the banquets where the high nobility gathered, and he kept getting the feeling that the Grand Dukes were joining forces to freeze him out.

Even his own elder brother Sandro had put up a wall, which left him simply dumbfounded.

Still, if it had ended there, he might have written it off as some misunderstanding and let it pass.

The artillery contracts he oversaw began to be delayed one after another, and the ventures he ran jointly with the other Grand Dukes ran aground in succession.

Above all.

“What? Pressure has come in to have you pulled from the lead role?”

“…That’s what I’m telling you. It’s so absurd I can’t even….”

“So these sons of bitches really want a fight, do they.”

The blade of attack had come flying even at the woman he loved.

Not a single soul in society was unaware that Mathilde Kschessinska, the most celebrated ballerina in all of Russia, was Grand Duke Mikhailovich’s lover.

Making her a target was, in other words, an open declaration that they meant to hold him in check.

What man could suffer such humiliation before the woman he loved and simply let it pass?

Grand Duke Mikhailovich’s body trembled with rage.

“…I’ll have to see Niki and talk this over.”

Grand Duke Mikhailovich headed straight for the Alexander Palace.

At this hour, Niki would surely be in his study.

Calling on him without requesting an audience in advance was a breach of etiquette, but his rank as Grand Duke and the present circumstances allowed him to skip such minor formalities.

Guided by a chamber attendant into the audience chamber, he found the Tsar striking a grand pose with a teacup in hand.

“Oh, Mikhailovich. What brings you here so suddenly?”

“Your Majesty, I’ve come because there’s something I must say to you.”

“Oh? Have a seat.”

In his impatience, Grand Duke Mikhailovich cut straight to the heart of the matter the moment he sat down.

“Frankly, Your Majesty, I’m only human, and attacks this petty are hard to swallow. I simply cannot fathom how people who share my own blood can behave this way….”

The Tsar’s face grew heavy.

Grand Duke Mikhailovich knew that expression well.

That indecisive drift of Niki’s gaze, the look of a man who had promised to help but balked now that it came to actually stepping in.

“…Yes, they’ve certainly gone too far this time.”

“Your Majesty, you know why the Grand Dukes are doing this to me. I took your side this time, so they mean to make an example of me.”

“Hmm… one could certainly see it that way, I suppose.”

It wasn’t that one could see it that way; anyone with eyes could see it was exactly that.

Mikhailovich watched the angle at which the Tsar’s head drooped and swallowed a sigh.

He didn’t need to look to guess what was going on inside this man’s head.

He had drawn his sword boldly enough, vowing to seize the reins, but now that trouble had broken out within the family, he clearly wanted to smooth things over and move on.

“…Mikhailovich, here is what we’ll do.”

“And what is that?”

“Go and see Misha. At this hour, Section Chief Yakov should be with him as well.”

“…Misha? I did hear that Your Majesty is grooming him to lead the Okhrana, but….”

“Mm, yes. Misha and Yakov have been helping Us a great deal these days. They will be the ones to help you.”

Grand Duke Mikhailovich was lost for words for a moment.

An emperor recommending a nine-year-old boy as the person who could help him.

Did this man actually intend to see this through?

“Your Majesty, I know Misha is a bright child, but even so, he’s only just turned nine.”

“Ah, don’t worry. The boy takes after Us. He’s a genius.”

“Ah… yes.”

Having just heard the most preposterous thing in his entire life, Grand Duke Mikhailovich had no idea what to say in reply, so he nodded vaguely and rose.

He knew from before that Misha was a genius, clever beyond his years.

When they had first met, the boy had been so bright-eyed and sharp that it was hard to believe he was seven.

‘Right, Misha is just there to learn, and Section Chief Yakov will handle all the actual work anyway. Talking with him will probably get things moving faster.’

The Grand Duke, forcing himself to look on the bright side, followed the chamber attendant deeper into the palace.

He had heard there had been extensive renovations recently, and indeed the atmosphere was entirely different from an ordinary audience chamber or a noble’s drawing room.

At the end of the corridor stood a small door, with two guardsmen posted before it.

The office of the Okhrana, reorganized into the Tsar’s personal intelligence organization.

When the door opened, Grand Duke Mikhailovich’s feet froze dead on the threshold at the sight within.

For the first thing that met his eyes was a nine-year-old boy, planted squarely at a desk several times too big for him, trading documents back and forth with Section Chief Yakov.

“Section Chief, how far along are the reports from Moscow?”

“The first round of collation was completed as of yesterday. Only cross-verification remains.”

“Then show them to me first, as soon as verification is done. There are a few things I need to sort out before they go up to His Majesty.”

“Understood, Young Master.”

What… what exactly was he looking at right now.

Section Chief Yakov was a core officer of this country’s secret police, was he not.

That man was reporting, that deferentially, to a nine-year-old, and the nine-year-old boy was going to organize the documents and submit them to the Tsar?

“Ah, Your Imperial Highness!”

Misha sprang up from his chair with a beaming smile.

The smile was so natural that it was impossible to connect him with the boy who, only moments before, had been directing the Tsar’s personal intelligence agency.

Section Chief Yakov also rose from his seat and bowed his head.

“Your Imperial Highness, welcome. As His Majesty has commanded, we will do everything in our power to assist you.”

“…Ah, yes.”

The Grand Duke perched himself on a chair, but his gaze fixed itself, inevitably, on Misha.

Among the Grand Dukes, he alone knew that this child was Nicholas II’s illegitimate son.

Section Chief Yakov probably didn’t know either.

Which, frankly, made it all the harder to understand.

Born of that Niki’s blood, of all people, how could the boy possibly be this brilliant?

Could it be that, being an illegitimate son, Niki’s blood had awakened completely in reverse?

Without entertaining even such absurd fancies, it was not easy to accept the bizarre scene unfolding before his eyes.

“Your Imperial Highness, I’m truly sorry.”

Misha sat back down and looked into the Grand Duke’s eyes as if he could hardly face him.

“I couldn’t sleep a wink, wondering if all of this happened because of the letter I sent you before. I’ve ended up repaying Your Imperial Highness’s kindness with injury….”

“No, no, why would any of this be your fault? If anything, I’m the one who should be thanking you. Don’t trouble yourself over it, Misha.”

Not long ago, this child had tipped him off that the Tsar meant to crack down on corruption, which had let him minimize his losses, and yet here the boy was, showing this much remorse.

Frankly speaking, the abnormal ones were the wretches trying to brand a kinsman a traitor for coming through unscathed; what fault could possibly lie with a child who had warned him of the danger in advance?

“I’ve already told His Majesty. My patience has reached its limit, and I have no intention whatsoever of letting this pass lightly.”

“Then, Your Imperial Highness, allow me to speak plainly.”

Misha’s eyes and tone changed completely from a moment before.

“Sabotaging Auntie Kschessinska’s performances and freezing Your Imperial Highness out of society is, in the end, no different from direct insubordination against His Majesty’s orders.”

“Certainly… that is true.”

“There isn’t a soul in the palace who doesn’t know that His Majesty trusts you, Your Imperial Highness. To pressure you this openly is nothing less than a declaration that they intend to disregard His Majesty’s will.”

Grand Duke Mikhailovich’s eyes narrowed.

Because the more he thought about it, the more preposterous and outrageous it all was.

“And touching Auntie and Your Imperial Highness must ultimately be meant to flaunt their power before His Majesty, no? We can reach His Majesty’s closest people whenever we please, and we can sway this country. Something along those lines, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it’s just as you say. If the Grand Dukes band together, paralyzing the affairs of state would be nothing at all. Before it comes to that, they pick these petty little fights, because a real war would wound both sides, and so they’re telling us to loosen our clenched fists on our own.”

They had never been especially close, but after all the years they’d known one another, to point a blade at his back like this… how desperately they must want to keep the concessions clutched in their hands.

Of course, he understood. He himself had no wish to give up a single thing he currently enjoyed.

“Your Imperial Highness, they drew their swords first. This is a fight to protect you, and at the same time a fight to protect His Majesty’s authority. Every member of the Okhrana believes so.”

“…Yes, your loyalty is most admirable.”

Grand Duke Mikhailovich nodded, but he could not hide his tangled feelings.

His entire side amounted to one Tsar, one nine-year-old boy, and the secret police.

The other side held five Grand Dukes, the Guards Corps, the Moscow Governor-Generalship, and society itself in their grip… if the fight truly escalated, did he stand a chance?

Perhaps reading that expression, Misha gently set a stack of documents down before the Grand Duke.

It was a dossier packed line after line with the concessions the Grand Dukes had unjustly pocketed.

Seeing with his own eyes every sort of graft committed across the naval budget, Guards appointment authority, the Moscow Governor-Generalship’s budget, Far East trade concessions, and the artillery procurement contracts was enough to make his head spin.

“The materials are all here. What matters is a pretext to set them off. If the stage is properly set, Your Imperial Highness will have nothing at all to worry about. This country belongs to His Majesty in the first place, and the Grand Dukes are now clearly crossing the line.”

With those words, Misha added nothing more.

He simply let the numbers on the papers speak for themselves.

Grand Duke Mikhailovich pored over the documents and slipped, quite naturally, into calculation.

If the Tsar’s power was strengthened, the Grand Dukes could no longer knead the state budget like private property as before.

They would be made to cough up most of the concessions on this list of misdeeds, too.

But if only one Grand Duke remained who held real power… wouldn’t the pie that one man could claim be far larger than before?

Besides, they were the ones who had started this fight.

“Yes, Misha… you’re right. For the Grand Dukes to dare slight the Tsar is a threat to the fundamental order of this country.”

And so Grand Duke Mikhailovich broke completely with his kinsmen.

With the perfect pretext of self-defense held out before him.

* * *

“That persuasion went far more smoothly than I expected.”

-Judging by the way his eyes lit up at the end, he seems to think that once all the Grand Dukes are cut down, his own share gets bigger?

“Not bad. Greed makes the surest motive of all.”

If we really do scrape away every diseased part of this country, there’s no reason not to hand a fitting reward to the Grand Duke who led the purge, is there?

Of course, it would be a purely material reward; his power and influence would be gelded down to nothing.

Either way, I’d gained a sturdy shield in the form of one of this country’s Grand Dukes, so now it was time to launch the operation in earnest.

Now, with the Grand Dukes clumped together and acting as one, was the perfect moment to carry out the great housecleaning, but something was still 2% short.

-The links between them are still way too loose.

Even from the reports Section Chief Yakov had compiled, the Grand Dukes were still closer to playing solo against a common enemy.

For them to become one in the true sense of the word, wouldn’t they need a stronger sense of crisis?

-Let’s string one up as an example. That’ll snap them right awake.

And as it happened, there was a suitable candidate.

Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.

Governor-General of Moscow, and blood brother of Alexei Alexandrovich, who had been blown to pieces after embezzling 30 million rubles from the naval budget.

He had the worst reputation of any man among the Grand Dukes, a talent of such character that even his fellow Grand Dukes were heard to say they couldn’t find a single redeeming quality in him.

“Big brother’s gone, so little brother should follow quickly. I know this one. It’s called ‘elders before youngers’, right?”

Gotta be quick about adopting good foreign culture.

-But to send a Grand Duke to the grave, you need a rock-solid pretext to match. Got any good angles?

“It’s not like we don’t have one. We saw it together, didn’t we? The report that came up today.”

I reached for the urgent letter from Gapon and read its contents once more.

The workers’ rage was gathering, he wrote, over why life kept getting harder and harder when the war had just been won?

As everyone knows, that isn’t because Russia is poor; it’s because this country has too many thieves.

And as it happens, the chief of those thieves is out there staging his own little demonstration, insisting he’d like to keep embezzling the nation’s budget.

Hm, no matter how I look at it, the causality is just too clear, isn’t it?

The commies stir, mass demonstrations break out, the country’s order collapses.

It’s all your fault.

~~~

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