About the book: 2022 / 1609. The Moscow state becomes an arena for the struggle for power. Even those who are not power-hungry and honestly serve their homeland can suffer from this struggle, and power-hungry people can even more so. After all, they are only thinking about how to trip each other up. The Swedish king Charles sends mercenaries to help the Russians, fearing that the affairs of the Polish king Sigismund in the war for the Moscow throne will go too well. Tsar Vasily Shuisky is afraid of his younger relatives, who could take away his power. The impostor Matyushka, pretending to be Tsarevich Dimitri, suspects his faithful “boyar”, Ataman Zarutsky, of treason. These are the realities of the Time of Troubles, reflected in the historical novel by Valery Turinov. The book is a continuation of the novel “Invasion of Muscovy”, previously published in the same series.