What is a modern person, thrown into the harsh era of Ivan the Terrible, supposed to do? How to live—how to earn bread? To drink the people into submission by building the first distillery apparatus on Rus’? To “cover” merchants by guarding their trade caravans from robbers? To defend border cities from Tatar raids? To earn the tsar’s favor by exposing the traitor Kurbsky? But the truth people say is this: the closer you are to the throne, the closer you are to death. Instead of a reward for the “transplanted person,” torture awaits— the merciless oprichniki are on his trail. And all hope now rests on his unique gift and a faithful sabre…