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Feliks made no secret of the glare he leveled on Katya when she beat him to his bag, taking it from her with a bit of a yank and a warning look. He’d never been fond of people trying to do things for him - pity wasn’t something he enjoyed - but he [i]definitely[/i] didn’t like this stranger touching his things, especially considering how God damn expensive they were. 

Noticing that Katya wasn’t paying any attention to him, he turned back to the makeshift entrance. Holding his bag under one arm, he grabbed a jut-out nail with his free hand and yanked the board back up, pulling on it several times to make sure it was wedged in place. Not exactly intruder-proof, but it closed up enough that people usually didn’t bother with it. Popular opinion was that the palace had been totally looted out years ago anyway; all people used it for now was shelter from the weather. Those who didn’t think it was cursed or haunted, anyway. 

Feliks’ entrance opened into one of the smaller ballrooms of the palace, though ‘small’, of course, was a relative concept. Really it was a bigger and more lavish space than most Russians would ever see, a long rectangular expanse of white marble floors covered with large swaths of fading red and gold carpet. The carpet had been torn up and cut away in places, and rotted out in others near the windows, but there was enough of it left for one to imagine how it might have looked when it was new. The room itself was three storeys high, some light streaming in from the upper floor windows, peeking through between tall white pillars dressed at the tops in gold. Reliefs of the imperial crest were everywhere, and every exquisite detail was accented in gold -- at least, that’s how it would have looked in its heyday. Now the paint had chipped, there was water damage trailing down from every window, and everything had lost its gleam under a decade of dust. 

Paying mind to none of it, Feliks led Katya to a small, hidden side door, opening into a narrow and much more plainly constructed hallway. A servant’s hallway, the routes of which Feliks still remembered. This one led to the kitchens, and the servants’ quarters beyond that, nearer the interior of the palace. He’d chosen a spot down here so as to be away from the windows and in a small enough room that it wouldn’t be impossible to heat; of course, the fact that there were no stairs along the way was a bonus.

He lead the way without thinking, eventually ducking into a door, which he waited to close behind him until Katya was inside. The room was indeed small compared to the rest of the palace, sized to house a few servants at a time. Two bare bed frames were pushed against one wall, mattresses and sheets stripped away, while a third was against the wall nearest the fireplace, mattress old but intact and piled with mismatched sheets and blankets. On closer inspection, the room actually seemed to all be arranged in relation to the fireplace, a plush armchair with only the occasional well-repaired tear pushed up about as close to the hearth as it reasonably could be without catching fire, and a small table and chair not far off. 

Farther from the fireplace, along the opposite wall, was a larger, longer table, strewn with documents. Nearby, what looked like a window, popped out of its frame, was sat horizontally across two boards at table-height, a small assortment of kerosene lamps arranged underneath. Finally, a shelf on the same wall as the door bore books and more trappings of document-making, all carefully stored away from the fireplace. 

[color=8FA1B4]“Welcome,”[/color] Feliks grumbled unenthusiastically, pausing only long enough to put his bag on the table before making a beeline to the fireplace. He was delighted to find that while the flame had gone out, the embers were still hot, giving off a merciful heat and ready to be rekindled. Kneeling in front of the hearth with some difficulty, he reached for the poker with one hand, fishing a few chunks of coal out of a bucket with the other. He stirred the embers up, coaxing the lower, hotter ones to the surface and letting the air get to them, before tossing on the new coal.

[color=8FA1B4]“So, you don’t know your last name?”[/color] He asked, not looking up from his work. He poked and prodded at the fire a little more, arranging and rearranging the embers until the new coal finally caught. [color=8FA1B4]“I must say, that’s a new one, but I suppose we can always make one up. You’ll already be using illegal documents, what more is a false name?”[/color]

He stared into the fire a moment longer, scooting up as close as he dared on his knees and holding his hands to it, before he finally looked over to Katya. [color=8FA1B4]“But, out of sheer morbid curiosity, how do you not know your last name?”[/color]