Sophia could have forbidden her younger brother's exercises, but did not. Such a ban would only have rallied everyone dissatisfied with the regency around Peter. Instead she placed the exercises under supervision. Powder, cloth and pay were issued through people loyal to her. Every drum, every musket and every new instructor depended on her signature.
Peter accepted these terms. In his first life he too had begun with play troops, but then he had counted men only in formation. Now he decided to examine not the detachment's appearance on parade, but who served in it and why.
Luka brought two lists to the exercises. The complete one recorded surnames, debts, illnesses, ability to read and reasons for absence. The convenient one retained only fit men and money properly accounted for. By the convenient list, the formation always looked better. The complete one showed whose family was starving, whose father had vanished after the May revolt and who had come only because there was nothing to eat at home.
At first Peter hated the complete list for every delay it caused. Then it became the one he asked for.
Fedot Lapin helped Luka check the names of the streltsy. He did not join Peter's circle or become a grateful servant. It was simply that beside the junior tsar his paper was at least read aloud. For now, that was enough.
The exercises continued year after year. Peter hauled logs, fired muskets, built earthworks and demanded that the others work beside him. He spotted mistakes sooner than anyone and had less patience than anyone for the slow work of correcting them. Gradually the men stopped making decisions for themselves and waited for Peter whenever anything went wrong. He recognised that obedience: in his first life it had cost him men and time more than once.
To break the habit, Peter began moving men from one post to another. The best shot became a loader. A boyar's son hauled a basket of earth beside the son of a streltsy soldier. Yesterday's commander now obeyed the orders of a man junior to him in rank. Resentment flared whenever a training reassignment touched a man's actual standing. But those were the moments that revealed who could serve the common purpose and who guarded only his own post. In war, a cannonball did not ask the pedigree of the man who had forgotten to bring the powder.
Once Fedot refused to take his place in formation until the list called him the son of a serviceman rather than a household boy. Ivan Naryshkin ordered the obstinate fellow replaced, but Peter made Luka read out both entries. The convenient list described Fedot as a low-born assistant; the complete one gave his father's name and the pay still owed him. After the reading, Fedot took his place, but thanked no one.
Trust rose by one point. But it was not the number Peter remembered. Fedot stepped into the rank of his own accord, and the senior serviceman moved aside to make room for him in his rightful place.
One day Peter led the detachment to a narrow passage between earthworks, gave the signal to begin changing formation and deliberately vanished behind an embankment. Without his voice, the first rank stopped. The second ran into it. The commanders searched for the tsar instead of watching their men.
Peter did not come out.
Then the junior corporal, the same one who had once repeated the drum signal, swore, opened out the rear rank and took the detachment through the passage two abreast. He departed from the sequence Peter had devised, but preserved order.
When Peter returned, the senior men expected punishment. Ivan Naryshkin was already explaining that taking matters into one's own hands in the sovereign's presence was more dangerous than an error in training.
Peter made the corporal repeat his decision before everyone. Then he ordered the others through the passage without him.
The Book added to Might. The detachment had managed without the tsar and had even changed his unsuccessful procedure.
The uncles Peter had saved also watched the exercises. Ivan Naryshkin already saw the play troops as the family's future guard and was drawing up his own list of supporters. He promised the fathers posts at court, the sons protection from their old commanders, and all of them safety under the Naryshkin name. Afanasy, by contrast, remembered those who had not fled the Kremlin porch steps on the day of the revolt. Ivan wanted to turn Peter's detachment into a force belonging to his family. Afanasy remembered how many people had already been killed in the name of saving that family.
Sophia was compiling a third list. Her people noted who received pay from Peter, who trained under foreigners and who spoke to Fedot. Luka proposed that they not wait for a search but show the regent the complete schedule themselves. Afanasy agreed: a hidden circle looked like a conspiracy, even if all it did was learn to beat a drum. Ivan demanded that they hand over the convenient copy and conceal the debts, illnesses and disputes over pay. The margins of his own list already held sums, family connections and promises Peter had never made.
The two books lay before Peter for a long time.
In his first life he had prevailed through speed and secrecy. If he handed over the complete schedule, Sophia would learn the names of his men, the sources of their money and every weakness in the detachment. If he handed over the convenient one, she would still learn of the exercises, while Peter's men would understand that their debts and names could be erased for the sake of a respectable report.
Peter sent Sophia the complete book.
The regent read it closely. She noticed Fedot at once. The blank line beside his father's name linked the May revolt to the men now training under Peter. Sophia could have accused her brother of buying the loyalty of the streltsy. Instead she ordered part of the proven arrears paid through the general chancery, so that the gratitude would not go to one tsar alone.
Peter lost the chance to claim the solution as his own. But the families received bread.
Thus began a struggle that lasted seven years. Sophia did not stop the exercises while they remained useful, but channelled all supplies and payments through her own chanceries. Peter taught junior commanders to make decisions without him and gradually freed the detachment from dependence on a single supplier. Every success made him stronger. Every inspection reminded him that the regent could still see through his men. They neither made peace nor began an open war. Each waited for the other to make a mistake.
By sixteen eighty-nine Peter was already tall, strong and far too conspicuous for his exercises to be called a child's game. One night in August a rumour arrived: the streltsy were marching on Preobrazhenskoye, and the junior tsar's men would be seized before dawn.
Peter remembered that night. In his first life he had leapt onto a horse and fled to the Trinity Monastery of St Sergius, leaving his mother and young wife to follow later. He had hidden that shame even from himself.
This time he demanded that every report be gathered. Only one terrified messenger had reported the approach of the streltsy. Nobody had seen the whole detachment, nobody could name its commander, yet men around Peter were already reaching for their weapons and demanding that they strike first. The Book did not name a conspirator. The page said only: "The cause is familiar. The course of events is close to the former one."
Peter went to the Trinity Monastery all the same: if the rumour was true, he might be seized at Preobrazhenskoye before dawn. But this time he did not abandon the others without orders. He instructed Afanasy to take the family out in advance and arrest no one on the strength of a rumour alone. He entrusted command of the detachment to a junior officer who had already learnt to act without the tsar.
Boyars, officers and clergy gathered at the monastery gates. Each wanted to swear allegiance to the victor, but no one yet knew who would win. Ivan Naryshkin proposed demanding loyalty to Peter alone and declaring Sophia's supporters traitors.
Afanasy objected: such an oath would end the regency in the same fear with which it had begun.
The dispute could not be resolved without the man both sides had grown accustomed to considering weak. They needed the signature of the elder brother, Tsar Ivan V.
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