June 1812. Napoleon crosses the Neman; Bagration retreats in haste. A division of the enemy army stops for billets at the estate of the princes of Lipetskie—Privol’ye. Forced to share blood with French majors and a military surgeon, the Lipetskie keep a tense truce. But soon something terrible happens in Privol’ye, and it’s clearly not Buonaparte’s doing. An unknown killer steals the serf girls, who later are found strangled. War is going on, and official investigation is impossible; nevertheless, the young Princess Lipetskaia and a French army major decide that Christian morality matters more than conflict between European rulers, and begin their own investigation.
But how do you find the trail of a child-murderer in a district thrown into chaos by Napoleon’s invasion? Can you trust the enemy? Should you trust the neighbor? And what do you do when horror crawls into the walls of your home, turning your closest people into страшних чужаків?..