Golden Paradise

Epilogue

Their son, Zekki, was born that spring soon after the peace was signed. And when Stefan resigned his commission shortly after, to the Tsar in person, Alexander II understood.

"Life is too short," Stefan said. "I've tempted fate too long."

As have we all," Alexander II replied. His words came prophetically to pass when an assassin's bomb claimed his life three years later.

By then Zekki had a sister to share the nursery with, and Stefan and Lisaveta thanked the shamans and benevolent gods for their own good fortune.

Stefan had taken active steps to insure that good fortune, though. Immediately after they'd come back to Tiflis from the Tsar's funeral, he'd begun construction to add more rooms to his mountain lodge.

Alexander Ill was going to be a reactionary emperor, Stefan said. "We may prefer the mountains more in the years to come," he declared.

Lisaveta understood. "For when the troubles come," she posed, in question and statement both.

"For that," he said.

And in the following years the White General, the Savior of Mirum, the Victor of Kokand and Kars, tended his vineyards and his polo ponies and his growing family.

He may have missed on occasion the inexplicable exhilaration of the charge or the intoxication of victory gained against enormous odds, but he'd seen his father die a useless death after numberless victories for the Empire and Tsar, and life had taught him in the end to hold dear the precious minutes of each day. And he intended now-with that particular strength of purpose that had taken him victorious across the battlefields of Russia-to defend not the borders of the Empire but the sanctity of his content.