After a hectic, eventful year, Kirill Nikolaev has no desire to plunge into another adventure. The young nobleman already has plenty of plans and affairs. But who will ask him? And so, instead of building “the fortress”—the future family nest and training the recruited students—Kirill is forced once again to search for a way out of the dead end his scheming suzerain, unscrupulous in the means he uses, has led him into. Well, the former officer, boyar’s son, and townsman isn’t new to breaking other people’s plans. And his own… he can tweak them a bit as well, since circumstances have turned out this way.