Ivan V Alexeyevich received the envoys seated. He tired quickly, spoke quietly and understood far more than those around him were accustomed to think. The Naryshkins asked him to confirm Peter's authority, while the regent's supporters demanded that he condemn the fugitive. Ivan V refused them both.
"You remember that I am tsar only when you need my signature," he said.
Peter came in person. He did not ask his brother to choose between the two families. Instead, he proposed that for the first time they set down when Sophia's regency would end, who would command the regiments until that day, and how full power would return to the two tsars.
Ivan V demanded that his honour as co-ruler be preserved. No decree was to portray him as Sophia's prisoner or Peter's ornament. His signature would remain separate. Until his death, orders affecting the dynasty or the regiments would require the consent of both brothers.
Ivan Naryshkin called it a needless delay. Sophia could exploit every hesitation. Peter had no liking for second keys either, though he had not yet thought of calling them that. But without Ivan V, victory would remain a family seizure of power.
The regiments swore allegiance neither to the Naryshkins nor to the Miloslavskys. The same text was read before every regiment: the regency would end on the appointed day, the tsars would command the troops, past service would not in itself be declared treason, and any charge would have to name a specific act.
Ivan Naryshkin nevertheless tried to exempt one regiment from the common articles with a separate promise. He guaranteed its commander that he would keep his post if his men were the first to proclaim Peter their sole protector. Several officers had already stepped towards his table when Ivan V ordered them to stop.
"Read aloud what this regiment has done to deserve more than the others."
Ivan Naryshkin could give no reason without using the word 'ours'. The commander returned to the common articles. The personal protection offered by a rescued kinsman had been defeated by a single question from the weak co-ruler.
Sophia sent counter-terms. She agreed to surrender command of the army provided Peter's men did not enter her chambers without a written charge. She demanded that her servants continue to be supported and that she retain the right to answer state papers. Ivan Naryshkin saw a future conspiracy in this: Sophia would still have a pen, a seal and people who knew how to spread words.
"A pen roused the streltsy as surely as a sabre," he reminded them.
Afanasy replied that the sabres in May had been raised by a rumour unsupported by any authenticated writing. If Sophia were deprived of every means of speaking openly, each forged order issued in her name would become more credible.
Peter did not like the argument. A living sister allowed to write was more dangerous than a tonsured prisoner. But he remembered how, in his first life, her name would return nine years later even from a convent. Prison did not destroy the cause; it merely concealed the author of the next rumour.
The terms were added to the articles. Every letter Sophia wrote was registered and kept with samples of her hand and seal. She retained a voice but lost the power to issue secret orders. This was no mercy. It meant that later her words could be distinguished from someone else's.
Some accepted the articles for Peter's sake, others for Ivan V's. Still others agreed because they had not been promised to the victors without trial. The men still did not trust one another, but they agreed to submit to the same rules.
The Book added Might for a reproducible order and Trust for the common oath. Debt did not fall. Old murders and empty lines did not disappear because the text was sound.
That same day revealed whether the articles would hold when they worked against someone's interests. One of the streltsy commanders refused to swear to the common text and demanded a personal promise from Peter. The junior tsar wanted to agree: a few words could bring the regiment over to his side at once. Ivan V stopped his brother and ordered the scribe to repeat the articles. The commander must either accept them with everyone else or publicly name the clause that wronged him.
The commander could find no such clause. The regiment swore allegiance without a separate favour. Peter gained the men, but could no longer count them as his own.
Sophia lost the right to issue orders to the regiments, but she was not secretly taken away or forced to take the veil. She was allowed to offer advice in writing, with every letter registered. She knew the terms under which she would be maintained in advance.
Ivan Naryshkin was furious: Peter's sister remained free and could gather every malcontent around her. Peter saw the danger, but did not want to answer fear with blood again.
Before her departure, Sophia asked to speak without witnesses. She stood by the window, her head unbowed.
"You set an end to my rule," Sophia said. "Who will set an end to yours?"
Peter answered that he would be checked by two tsars, an oath and men taught to act without him.
Sophia looked at him almost with pity.
"As long as they do what you want, they do not constrain you. They merely let you reach further."
Peter remembered the words but did not accept them. He saw the outcome differently: the regency had ended without a great slaughter, the training regiments had accepted the common text, and his elder brother had saved face. For a young man who remembered his first life, that was enough to believe himself right.
Yet this victory changed nothing about the decision Peter had made six months before the August crisis.
In the winter of sixteen eighty-nine, his mother arranged his marriage to Eudoxia Lopukhina. In his first life Peter had submitted to his mother's choice: the marriage was meant to settle the court and give the Naryshkins an heir. But the man who went to the altar knew what came next. He remembered the coldness between husband and wife, the demand that she enter a convent, the forced tonsure, and the grown Alexei who died after his father's investigation.
Peter could have refused. Eudoxia would have had another life, and the court would have weathered one more family dispute. But then the very son Peter had returned to save might never have been born.
During the wedding, heavy crowns were held above them. Wax ran down the candles, the choir drew out the words, and Eudoxia took care not to spill from the common cup. Once she looked at the bridegroom, trying to see whether he was frightened too. Peter met her eyes calmly. It made the ceremony easier to see through to the end.
The Book remained silent as they circled the lectern. It opened only after the crowns had been removed.
Account opened by Peter. Payer: Eudoxia Lopukhina. Received: a path to the birth of the known heir. Lost: the right to know that the bridegroom had already assigned her a role in someone else's future.
Debt rose. Eudoxia asked why he had gone so pale. Peter answered that the crown had proved heavier than it looked. It was the truth about the metal and a lie about everything else.
Nine years remained before the forced tonsure, and Peter did not yet know whether he would repeat his former cruelty. But the guilt began here. He had knowingly chosen the birth of the son he remembered without telling Eudoxia that he had already assigned her a place in his future.
A year after the wedding, his son was born.
Peter held the little Alexei Petrovich awkwardly and much too tightly. The exhausted Eudoxia Lopukhina lay beside him. She adjusted his hand so that he supported the child's head, and smiled for the first time that day.
As Peter looked at the infant, he saw investigators, a pen poised over a sheet of questions, and the dark door of a cell. The Alexei of his first life remained in his memory as a frightened, stubborn grown man whom his father had never managed to hear.
He clasped his son more tightly and whispered that this time he would save him.
Eudoxia heard only a promise of care. The Book recorded something else.
The Book opened an account. It named Alexei Petrovich as the payer. Loss: the right to grow up before his father assigns him a life.
Debt rose. Peter almost dropped the child.
He had taken nothing from his son yet: he had not chosen his service, appointed his tutors or forced him to love the sea. But in that moment he had already decided what Alexei must become if he was not to meet the same death. He meant to save his son in the same way he built regiments and ships: by laying out the one correct course for him in advance.
Eudoxia noticed the change in his face. She asked what exactly he was afraid of. Peter could have told her at least half the truth: he was afraid that one day he would mistake the state for a family, and his son for a defective subordinate. Instead, he answered that the boy must be prepared for service from an early age.
"What kind?" Eudoxia asked.
Peter listed languages, arithmetic, warfare, the sea. The child's eyes were scarcely open, and his father was already arranging the years of his life. Eudoxia said Alexei must first learn to hold up his head.
Peter laughed, but the Book did not close. There was more respect for his actual son in that simple maternal remark than in his grand plan to save him.
At once his memory gave him another name: Catherine. The woman who had remained at his side in his first life was, in his second, six-year-old Marta Skavronska somewhere in Livonia. Waiting for her seemed like fidelity, but for now it was merely a plan for someone else's future. Peter did not ask the Book where to find her.
Outside the window a training drum sounded. Alexei flinched and began to cry. Peter handed him to his mother, but did not renounce his oath.
He merely decided that first he must build a state in which he could fulfil it.
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