March 30 was my birthday!
And I am celebrating it by posting the last page of chapter 9! It only lasted six pages (seven including the comic at the end of every chapter) which is really short compared to the usual 10 pages. I love to get feedback so tell me what you thought of this chapter!

Czar Nicholas I was a stoned faced, serious, unfeeling, conservative autocrat who loved the grandeur of the military! He died suddenly of a cold that he caught at a wedding. It quickly turned to pneumonia and his lung collapsed. Dr. Mandt, the Czar's personal doctor, told him that he only had a day to live. The czar took the time he had to prepare his son and heir to the throne, Alexander II.
Nicholas' sudden death sparked a rumor that, after learning he suffered several terrible defeats in battle in the Crimean war, he commit suicide by poisoning himself. Those were just rumors and have very little ground to stand on.
The czar did regret not having left Imperial Russia a stable empire for his son to inherit. The Crimean war did not end with Czar Nicholas I on March 2nd, 1855 however. It lasted from October 1853 until February 1856. So Azriel still had to work another year of taking people's lives on the battlefield!