Zivon studied the image for another long moment. But more, he studied the people around him. The teasing, the ripples of other conversation going on, the way Lily closed the book she’d been reading to the little girl. “Perhaps . . . perhaps this image should not be offering a statement at all. But maybe, instead, asking a question? A Where do you serve? sort. Reminding the viewers that it is their duty to find a way—some way, somewhere—to help.”

Blackwell looked impressed. “Not bad, Marin. What do you think, Clarke? Something along the lines of Where Are You? or Are You in This?”

Clarke, however, had managed to slide to Miss Ivy’s side, and the two of them were laughing over something apparently unrelated to propaganda posters. The captain’s lips twitched into a smile.

The lady sighed. “I suppose that’s better. But even so, I . . . well, I maintain it isn’t good of us to manipulate our own people. Oughtn’t we to be able to trust our neighbors to do what’s right?”

A question that punched him in the gut as forcefully as Evgeni could do. He’d used to think the same. Until his neighbors had broken that trust.

“Inspiring them, darling. Inspiring them to be the best versions of themselves.”

“Shaming them, you mean.”

“Appealing to the inborn sense of duty that every good Englishman has anyway.” Blackwell gave Zivon’s shoulder a friendly thump. “I daresay the same is true in Russia, right, old boy? Though it may take painting a certain picture, the people are always ready to stand up and fight for king and country.”

The room didn’t go silent. But Zivon’s thoughts did, for a moment. His king, his czar, was currently under house arrest, on soldier’s rations. For every soldier left fighting for him, another had turned against him. And Russia itself . . .

He cleared his throat. “I am afraid that just now the Russian people cannot agree about what they ought to fight for. But I have always found it fascinating that, historically, there has been an understanding that Russia herself would do the fighting for us. We need only to lure the enemy into the interior and wait for winter.”

As he’d planned, the last observation served to soften the first, and the captain made an observation about Napoleon that soon redirected the conversation entirely. Good. That allowed him to take a step back, to smile through the belated introductions Mrs. Blackwell made to the other guests, and to revert to his favorite pastime—reading the room, finding the patterns to the people.

Heaven help him, though, he found himself mostly concerned with tracking Lily, who’d stood during her father’s joke about Napoleon, edged closer during the introductions, and now stood a step away, holding a paper-wrapped rectangle in her hands.