The Secret Office works well

Actually, very well, as long as everything is calm and there is only one or two troublemakers. This is your chance to prove your strength, skill and loyalty to the Sovereign. As soon as a rumor spread around Moscow that the Grand Prince was not present in the city, he left in an unknown direction, the work of the Secret Office was disrupted.

When Valentin came to the Secret Office, there was no one there. There was no one at the reception either. On the rack hung a prisoner forgotten there.

"Hello! Is there anybody here?" Valentine tried to find at least someone. "I need to see a detainee!"

Nobody responded and feeling remorse, Valentin took a bunch of keys off from the wall. Valentin lit a torch and went down to the basement. The steps were very steep, if you fall you could break your neck.

"Nicolas! Are you there?" Valentin called into the darkness.

"I'm here, did you bring me an excusing paper?"

"Even better, I have the keys!" Valentin began to pick up the key to the cage where Nicolas was sitting.

"How did you get here? I accidentally found out where you are!"

"Vivian invited me to the bathhouse, where her brothers later descended, at the most improper moment!" Nicolas began to look around in the office. "And where did everyone go? What is going on here?"

"Tatars in the city! Actual Crimean Tornado! They burn suburb villages! They fuck everyone in a row, no mercy neither women nor men!"

"What?! No way!" Nicolas didn't believe it.

Way!

Seven hefty Tatars burst into the hall. "Hey you two! Where is your boss?"

Valentin and Nicolas just shrugged.

"Doesn't matter! Where are papers?"

"What papers?"

"What the twerps! Papers on arrested persons, who have been brought in, who have already been hanged. Papers! Papers! We need papers!"

"Maybe there," Valentin waved towards the shelves and chests.

"Maybe there," one of them mocked him, "what kind of morons serve the Grand Prince."

The Tatars began to look over the papers, but there were simply too many.

"I. Zavgorodniy, arrears; Ivan Ass, arrears; Ivan Steppe, arrears; what the garbage! What are you doing here anyway?"

Finally, one of them stopped. "Where is Irene Fireman? We need her!"

"Irene Fireman from Istanbul? She's not here, I think," Valentin blabbed.

"What the moron," Nicolas muttered.

***

Nicolas had been strung up on a rack. "And here we are!"

"Rest here for now," Aidar told patting him on the shoulder.

Valentin had been stretched on a wheel.

"You!" Aidar approached him and lightly poked him in the stomach with a torch.

"There's some kind of misunderstanding here!" Valentin pleaded.

"And?"

"We last saw her in Kazan!"

"Wrong answer!" Aidar said and Tamerlane turned the wheel a little.

"Ay ay!" Valentin screamed.

"If you keep wind yourself up like that, you won't live to see the next morning!" Aidar told him.

***

A young Tatar burst into the hall, "They signed! They signed it!" He screamed dancing.

"Who signed? What signed? What's the rush?"

"Muscovites have signed an agreement! Moscow is now a tributary of Khan! We restored the Horde! Now we will live together like in the Great Öz days! Crimea, Kazan, Astrakhan and Moscow forever at once!"

"This shit will never be! Astrakhan will be independent!" Valentin groaned from the wheel.

"Shut up, fool!" Nicolas moaned from the rack.

"Well, you spun it all together!" Aidar frowned. "And what's next? Baby don't waste my time!"

"Khan ordered to retreat to Ryazan."

"That's the deal!" Aidar pointed to Valentin. "We'll take this fat man with us, give him to Lady Camilla, show that we tried to find that damn Irene."

They took Valentine off the wheel, put him in a bag and dragged him out into the street. Nicolas they left hanging on the rack.