Daria hated being there.
Cold through the soles of her boots. Festival crowds, paper garlands, hot cider, and a six-year-old who had spent the morning wandering wherever his curiosity took him.
When Daria had taken a position as a civilian liaison to the Imperial Household, she had imagined banquets, ministerial receptions, and private meetings where powerful people forgot that servants had ears. She would speak with great nobles, learn their schedules, overhear their plans, and report everything useful to the Revolutionary Front.
The Red Army, as the newspapers called them.
They had fed her when she was eleven and sleeping beneath a dye works in the slums. They had given her medicine when her lungs filled with factory dust. They had taught her to read, then taught her how to act.
Her position in the palace was supposed to repay those debts.
Instead, the Household Office had made her a nursemaid.
Prince Nivus Vasiliev wandered ahead of her through South Square, his dark traveling coat making him look like the pampered son of a prosperous merchant. Only his face threatened the disguise. The raised collar hid most of it.
The boy had turned six less than a month ago. His Awakening was already common gossip in the palace. The heir to the Northern Empire had received an F-rank book.
Daria's own Relic was only B-rank. It had never made her rich or important, but at least the Gods had given her something worth listing on an employment form.
An F-rank Relic belonged to chimney sweeps and field hands. Yet the boy who carried it would inherit an empire because his blood carried the correct name.
Some in the Front considered his Awakening a sign. The Vasiliev dynasty had exhausted whatever favor the Gods once held for it. The Emperor's only son had received a diary while workers' children Awakened Relics that could shatter stone and heal wounds.
The boy stopped near the edge of the public garden.
Daria nearly walked into him again.
"Your Highness," she said, keeping her voice level, "we have ten minutes before we return to the approved route."
He didn't answer.
Nivus was watching the children by the fountain.
There were six of them, all dressed in bright scarves and fur-trimmed coats. Noble children, judging by their clothes. Two attendants hovered nearby while the oldest boy balanced along the fountain's rim and the younger children threw packed snow at his boots.
For the first time that morning, Daria's irritation softened.
Whatever titles adults had piled on him, Nivus was still six. Palace children did not run through public squares or trade snowballs with strangers. Perhaps he had dragged them halfway across Severgrad because he wanted to see children his own age.
Then he moved.
He did not approach the fountain directly. He walked along the edge of the square, keeping the bare trees of the public garden between himself and the children. Every few steps, he looked toward the surrounding shops, the alleys between them, and the vehicles parked beside Gate Road.
Daria frowned.
The boy glanced back at her.
His gaze lingered on her face before moving to Corporal Yenin. There was nothing childlike in the appraisal. For an uncomfortable moment he was weighing them against one another.
Did I let something show?
She relaxed her shoulders. She had maintained her cover through three Imperial Household investigations and more loyalty interviews than she could count. A six-year-old had not uncovered it during a walk.
Nivus continued around the square.
Daria followed, increasingly certain he was trying to avoid notice. Someone might recognize him from a commemorative portrait, and this detail would not hold a crowd.
Corporal Yenin trudged behind them with his rifle across his back, occasionally looking toward the nearest cider stall.
Nivus stopped for the third time.
His attention had settled on an automobile parked along the western side of the square.
It was a dark, boxy sedan with mud frozen around its wheel wells. Nothing distinguished it from the other vehicles on Gate Road except how close it sat to the fountain, angled off the curb as though the driver had parked in a hurry.
The windows were fogged.
Nivus stared at the car for several seconds. Then he crossed to Yenin and tugged the hem of the corporal's coat.
Yenin looked down. "Something wrong, Your Highness?"
"That automobile."
The corporal followed his pointing finger. "What about it?"
"There's something inside."
Daria examined the car again. She could make out little through the cloudy windows.
"Probably the driver," Yenin said.
"No." Nivus's voice remained quiet. "In the back."
"What did you see?"
"Wires. And metal cylinders."
Daria looked at the boy.
Yenin gave a short laugh. "You saw wires through a fogged window from across the square?"
"I saw them when we passed Gate Road."
They had not passed close enough to see anything of the sort. Daria was certain of it.
Yenin looked toward her, asking without words whether he truly had to indulge this.
"Cars have wires, Your Highness," Daria said. "They also have metal parts."
"Not arranged like that."
"Like what?"
Nivus looked back at the car. The six noble children were less than twenty paces from it.
"Like explosives."
Yenin stared at him.
Daria did the same.
Around them, Zimavek continued without concern. A woman at the nearest stall was haggling over painted wooden animals. Two factory workers laughed as they passed a bottle between them. The children by the fountain shrieked when the oldest slipped from the rim and landed knee-deep in snow.
"Explosives," Yenin repeated.
"Yes."
"Your Highness, have you ever seen explosives?"
Nivus hesitated for a fraction too long. "In a book."
Daria almost laughed. The celebrated child prodigy had found something unfamiliar and invented a crisis around it. She left the Listening Glass idle.
"We need to clear the square," Nivus said.
"No, we don't," Yenin replied. "We need to return you to the approved route."
"Check the car."
"Your Highness—"
"Check it."
The order came out sharper than anything Daria had heard from him that morning.
Yenin's expression hardened. He was an adult soldier being commanded by a child who barely reached his belt. Several people nearby had begun to notice.
The boy stamped one boot against the cobblestones.
"I know what I saw."
There it was. The imperial blood beneath the merchant's coat. Six years old and already convinced that a square full of adults should move because he spoke.
The Imperial family dressed its whims and expected everyone else to suffer the consequences. Now their son saw a shadow through a window and expected a soldier to search a stranger's property.
Yenin looked to Daria again.
She flicked two fingers toward the car.
Better to humor the boy than return to the palace with a report that they had refused a direct request. If Yenin found nothing, perhaps embarrassment would keep the prince on the approved route for the rest of the outing.
"Take a look," she said. "Quickly."
Yenin muttered something under his breath and started across the square.
Nivus watched him go.
His earlier petulance disappeared so completely she no longer trusted it had been genuine.
"Daria," he said.
She disliked hearing her name in that tone. "Your Highness?"
"Move the children away from the fountain."
"No."
His head snapped toward her.
"We are not creating a panic because you saw machinery inside an automobile," she said. "Corporal Yenin is checking it. Stay here."
Nivus looked ready to argue. Instead, he turned his attention back to the car.
Yenin approached from the rear, one hand resting near the pistol at his hip. He circled along the street side, leaned toward the back window, then wiped a patch of fogged glass with his glove.
He went still.
Daria straightened.
The corporal shifted closer to the front door. His hand left his pistol and reached for the handle, but the door did not open.
He knocked on the glass.
"Imperial Guard," he called. "Step out of the vehicle."
Movement stirred inside.
A man rose from behind the steering wheel. Daria had not seen him through the fogged windshield. He turned his head slowly toward Yenin.
Even at a distance, she saw the shine of sweat on his face.
The driver's door opened.
The man emerged awkwardly, one boot catching on the frame. He was thin, perhaps forty, dressed in a brown worker's coat. Snow landed in his dark hair and melted at once.
Yenin stepped back to give him room.
The man's eyes moved across the square. He reached inside his coat.
Yenin's hand dropped for his pistol.
Two shots cracked across the square.
The first struck Yenin high in the chest. His body jerked backward, one hand clawing at his coat.
The second struck beneath his chin.
Blood burst from the back of his head. He collapsed beside the car, his rifle trapped beneath him.
For one instant, nobody in South Square moved.
Then a woman screamed.
The crowd broke in every direction. People overturned a chestnut cart in their rush to escape. Hot coals scattered across the snow. The youngest girl stood frozen beside the fountain, staring at Yenin's body. Then one attendant seized her beneath the arms; the other shoved three children ahead of him as the two oldest ran.
Daria's hand went to her satchel.
She had no weapon. Household security searched civilian personnel before every assignment, and carrying a pistol inside the palace meant execution if it was found.
The gunman turned toward the automobile.
He reached through the open driver's door.
"Get away from the car!" Nivus screamed.
His voice cut through the panic.
"Bomb! Everyone, move!"
Daria bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood.
The cylinders. The wires. A sweating man reaching back into the car.
Hell.
Daria looked at the gunman, then at the Emperor's son crouched behind the stone planter.
It had to be the Red Army.
But no one had told her.
Of all the squares in Severgrad, he had insisted on this one.