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have me beaten.”

    EMPIRE OF UNREASON
    The servant arrived, bearing a tray of wineglasses.
    “What is this stuff?” Elizavet asked, sniffing at the wine. “Bring me some vodka.”
    “Yes, Tsarevna.”
    Elizavet lay back, smiled, and closed her eyes. She was a fetching young creature, a tall, dark beauty. Though less than a decade younger than Adrienne
    —the tsarevna was twenty-three—somehow the gap seemed centuries. Had Adrienne ever been so carefree?
    No, she reflected, of course she hadn’t.
    “I do hope Father returns soon. I’m sure he will bring something very special from China.” She looked seriously at Adrienne. “I hope you will ask God to bring him home safe.”
    “I have little influence with God, I fear,” Adrienne replied.
    “How can that be? It is clear that God loves you. Even the patriarch says so.
    Everyone believes it. Some say you are a saint.” Her vodka came, and she took a satisfied gulp.
    “You don’t believe that,” Adrienne accused.
    “Well, to only have one lover you must suffer from some religious affliction.”
    Elizavet grinned. She finished the vodka. “Well, there.” She sighed. “If you will not dance with these poor fellows, my own duty is clear, despite my fatigue.”
    She got up and adjusted her bodice so as to dip it lower, showing her snowy bosom to better advantage.
    “But I will see you at your lesson tomorrow,” Adrienne warned.
    “Yes, of course.” She bent to place a kiss on each of Adrienne’s cheeks, and then returned to the festivities.

    EMPIRE OF UNREASON

    * * *
Adrienne rose from her bed a bit after midnight and went to the window. She parted the curtains and placed her palms and forehead against the thick glass, gazing down at the lights of Saint Petersburg.
    Under the moon, it was a fairy city, ice and luminescence, slender towers with peaks like swollen but still-closed tulips, awaiting the kiss of spring to bloom, the Neva River a lambent walkway for snow sprites to caper upon. It was beautiful, cold, and distant. It had been her home for ten years.
    The glass was thick and scientific, and yet still the chill worked through, pricked gentle goose bumps on her naked skin. Her human hand, flush against the pane, felt the cold keenly; her angel hand felt it not at all. She wondered if she stood there long enough, letting her blood slowly chill, if she might herself became a thing of snow: a crystal in woman’s form, ageless, forever watching, doing nothing, thinking nothing. She would like that.
    Bedclothes rustled behind her, but she did not turn, even when Hercule spoke, in sleep-torpid tones.
    “Adrienne?” he asked.
    “Go back to sleep, Hercule.”
    “I would that you would join me.”
    “There is more to the world than what you would have, Hercule.”
    There was a significant pause, during which the covers rustled a bit more. She did not need to turn to see him, with his thoughtful eyes and broken nose, his thick brown hair in disarray. She did not need to see, for the thousandth time, him trying to puzzle her, to understand what he had done to upset her.
    “How beautiful you look, standing there,” he said quietly, real admiration in his voice. “You are the most beautiful woman I know.”
    Adrienne wondered privately what that had to do with anything. Why did men EMPIRE OF UNREASON
    say such things?
    “Go back to sleep, Hercule,” she repeated, trying to be gentle.
    “I cannot, when you cannot. I know that something happened on your sky ship. And yet you say nothing.”
    “I have nothing to say, Hercule.”
    She heard his feet hit the floor then and held up her hand, still staring out at the city. “Please, stay there,” she said.
    “What have I done to you?” he asked. “Are you angry with me?”.
    “Hercule, this has nothing to do with you.”
    “I love you. If it has to do with you, it has to do with me.”
    She did turn, then, leaving the curtains open behind her, and brushing her thick dark hair from her face.
    “Is