A rich crystal chandelier hung overhead; all but one of the candles it bore had burned out. A tall young woman in an evening dress of pale blue satin stood beneath it in the flickering light, bare inches away from her image in the mirror. She turned sharply at the sound of Yehuda Leib’s arrival, her eyes staring, bloodshot, just like the man’s below.

“Is it enough?” she said. Her voice was tight with panic. “I don’t think it’s enough.”

She was wearing fine white gloves, and there was at least one ring on each of her fingers. Bangles and bracelets of gold and silver lined her arms up to the elbow, and her neck was laden with layer upon layer of pearls and pendants, beads and lockets, ribbons and chains. Her face was caked with rouge, and the rivulets of black that dripped from her eyes showed that she had been crying.

“Do you think it’s enough?”

Her eyes were locked frantically on Yehuda Leib’s. Three different tiaras were plaited into her hair.

Yehuda Leib swallowed hard and gestured over her shoulder with his chin. “Look again.”

This did the trick. With a swift shushing of satin, the young woman turned back, surveyed herself in the mirror, and resumed her soft sobbing. Yehuda Leib was forgotten.

Quietly, Yehuda Leib pushed his way through the front door of the apartment and into the well-appointed sitting room.

There was a fire crackling in the hearth. Someone was seated in a high-backed armchair, staring into the flames.

Slowly, Yehuda Leib made his way around the edge of the room, keeping his distance, until he could see the little man.

Yehuda Leib’s stomach dropped. His heart began to race. The spectacles were cracked, and the face was covered in a spray of splotchy red burns, but he had been right.

It was definitely him.

Yehuda Leib cleared his throat softly. “My lord,” he said.

The beady black eyes flashed with reflected fire as they turned toward Yehuda Leib.

“You,” said Mammon.

—

It was long before and far away that Private Yankev Pasternak of the Tenth Division of the Imperial Army, Tomsky Regiment, met his end.

It happened on an early November morning in a foggy ravine outside Sevastopol. Having been garrisoned in the city, the Tomsky men set out before dawn, taking up their positions under cover of darkness. Pasternak was nervous, but he was always nervous before an engagement—it was a kind of preparation, like laying a fuse.

The ravine was narrow—so narrow that Pasternak wondered if there would be room to maneuver—and the combined nerves of the six thousand or so men filled it to its brim like a tin cup with acrid sweat.

Pasternak checked and double-checked: musket primed and loaded, bayonet firmly fixed. Some men chattered, whispering about everything and nothing to tamp down their fear, but Pasternak didn’t say a word; Pasternak checked and double-checked.