Ten Thousand Skies Above You

I admit, I can’t help sympathizing with his eagerness to have a grandchild.

By all means, rest and take care of your health. Let me know how you’re feeling, and whether I can send you anything you might need.

This letter says far more than it first appears to.

If this world’s Marguerite remembers her night with Paul, that means she also remembers the truth about her parentage, which was the result of a brief, clandestine affair between the late tsaritsa, my mother, and the royal tutor, Henry Caine. She’s kept the secret, and she and Dad have built a relationship.

The Grand Duchess Margarita finally has a dad who loves her. I cling to this, the one thing I’ve given her after taking so much else away.

Dad clearly knows about the pregnancy, too. A grandchild, he wrote. Probably he helped devise this plan to get the grand duchess out of the tsar’s sight for a long while.

But if my father has any ideas about what happens next, they’re not in this letter.

Hearing from Katya and Peter warms me more than I could have anticipated. I’ve missed them ever since I left the Russiaverse, which was one thing none of the others ever fully understood. You only knew them for a month, Josie said once, irritated. They weren’t your siblings like I am. Come on!

They weren’t, and they were. There’s a kind of magic to seeing yourself reflected in this entirely new person. When you’re related to someone, you wind up sometimes connecting in ways that go beyond logic. I didn’t just fall in love with Paul in Russia; in some ways, I fell in love with my other family, too. All of them.

I go through all the fallen letters time and time again, searching for one from my older brother, Vladimir, heir to the throne. It breaks my heart when I don’t find one.

He’d write. He would. Vladimir’s kindness was nearly the first thing I noticed about him. Whenever I wished I had a protective, loving big brother instead of the big sister who wouldn’t let me use her skateboard, I envisioned someone exactly like Vladimir. And this Marguerite is close to her brother—that was obvious from the beginning.

They’re close enough that she would have told him about the pregnancy.

And he’s said . . . nothing.

Vladimir hardly seems like the Scarlet Letter type, but I have to remember what a different world this is. Their morality resembles that of a century back, when people thought racism was A-OK but freaked out about premarital sex. Would he hate her for that? Even if he didn’t, Vladimir might feel that he had to cut her off, possibly forever.

Did I cost this Marguerite her brother, too?

Throughout the day, I keep expecting Theo to call—not literally, as the Suite Imperial doesn’t have a phone, but by sending a message via the hotel. I check the appointment book, hoping to see more restaurant bookings, but there’s only one note, and that’s for tomorrow: Word from Cousin Karin. Though I search my memories, I can’t recall writing a note to any “Karin” when I was in this dimension in December; then again, I’m supposedly related to half the royal families in Europe, so that could be anyone.

Not one line tells me when—or if—I’ll see Theo again.

Could I ask one of the security guards to track down the chemist Theo Beck? Maybe. But I’m not sure how much they know about the grand duchess’s friendship with this world’s Theo, or how much they’ll report back to the tsar. I need to be discreet if at all possible. If only I had some idea where Theo might be, or when—

—but then I realize, I do know. Really, I should’ve been able to guess on my own, but Theo himself told me in one of his letters in December.

So when night falls, I eat an early supper in my room and have my maid fix me up to go out (this time a dress in dark red velvet, with kimono-style sleeves, subtle gold embroidery on the chest, and black fur trim at the hem). Then I call for my car.

“Where to, Your Imperial Highness?” the chauffeur asks.

It’s kind of a thrill to reply, “The Moulin Rouge.”

When we drive up, I hardly know what to look at first: the red windmill sign, the mix of hoi polloi and bohemians streaming through the doors, or—holy cow, a ginormous statue of an elephant with a pagoda on its back. I thought that was something made up for the movie. Guess not.

As I walk inside, I spot clues that I haven’t merely stepped back in time. I see several people of color—black, East Asian, Indian—and while a few are obviously entertainers, others are well-heeled guests. I bet that wasn’t as common back home; points go to this universe for not being as racist. Plus there’s a vivid poster on the wall in a kind of Art Nouveau style, featuring a beautiful woman with dark skin wearing a golden dress that glitters with a thousand lights; her hair curls around her in sinuous curves that remind me of Medusa’s snakes. The name written at the top, in flowing elaborate type, is Beyoncé. At the bottom of the poster are the dates of her next performance.

Mostly, though, the scene is pure bacchanal. The club is enormous—and hundreds of people dance on the wooden floors or cheer from the balconies. A full orchestra crashes its way through a number that it takes me a moment to recognize as a Taylor Swift song, which in this universe she apparently wrote for the cancan.

My guards don’t look thrilled to have escorted me anyplace so bawdy, but at least one of them has fetched a person in charge. I nod politely as he welcomes me, then say, “Can you show me where Mr. Theo Beck is? The chemist? I know he comes here often. Is he in tonight?”

“But of course! Let me show you to the Jardin de Paris.”

This turns out to be the back patio of the Moulin Rouge. The elephant towers over the scene while frilly-skirted dancers cavort on an outdoor stage, brightly colored feathers in their hair. Everyone around us is eating, drinking, laughing, smoking cigarettes, smoking stuff that might not be cigarettes . . .

Sitting at the end of the farthest table with nothing but bottles and a glass for company, is Theo. His ascot is askew; his hat is missing. I’d guess he’s already sampled the bottles.

I motion for my guards to step back. They’re not thrilled, but they obey. Alone, I go to Theo’s table and take the seat closest to him.

He doesn’t look at me as I approach, but he must have recognized me just from the corner of his eye. “Interesting place,” he says. “Paris.”

“If you know where to go,” I reply.

Theo points at the elephant. “For the price of one franc—just one franc!—I can go inside the elephant. It has stairs in one of its legs, you see. If you climb up there, you’re entertained by belly dancers who’ll give you all the opium you want.”

“You’ve gone up already?” The last thing I need is Theo getting high while we need to concentrate.

But he shakes his head. “Just what I’ve been told.” Then he pulls himself together, or tries to. “Can I fix you a drink?”

Instinctively, my hand covers my stomach. “No, thanks.”

“C’mon. You’ll never have another chance to drink absinthe like this. Yeah, you can get it back home, but they don’t brew it the old way, with the wormwood. So you don’t get the hallucinogenic quality.” As if he hadn’t heard my refusal, Theo slides his empty glass between us, then pours in what I assume is absinthe—a pale green liquor the exact same shade as peridot. Then he puts a strange, perforated piece of silver atop the rim, and sets a single sugar cube atop that.