1840. Count Kiselev appears at the home of A. H. Benckendorff, the head of the secret police. Seasoned courtiers begin a peculiar “chess game,” drawing one another into a tricky political intrigue. Half a year later, in the county town of Kurgan, at the invitation of a local landowner, a young fencing master arrives—Ivan Karlovich Falk. The young man doesn’t yet know that he has been hired to teach fencing to the estate’s serfs. The hero will have to find out what is happening in the estate, notorious for its bad reputation, and unravel the twists of high politics. How many deaths will occur before the game of the secret services of the great empire comes to an end?