The attendants jogged in to move away the twelve ice crystal prisms, and the sunlight suddenly poured through the stained glass windows.
Arthur had a fleeting glimpse lingering on his retina — those ice mirrors sliced the entire hall into fragments at special angles, each piece reflecting the faces of different officials. Some were wiping sweat, some had their Adams' apples bobbing, and an old earl in a purple robe was tucking a cross into his collar.
Tsar Nicholas I sat in a gold-plated Byzantine-style dining chair, with his index finger's old scar pressed against the cover of "History of Little Russia."
"Whiskey from your hometown." The Tsar held up a glass, the clinking of ice causing a slight echo in the hall: "But we've added a bit of Volga River water. I've heard that drinking it this way allows you to hear the confessions of those drowned under the ice."
