Ida had lived in Avlandia for a very long time. Her husband, Harry, had been an employee of the Breton Parliament, one of the many advisors they sent to help the backward country industrialize so it could stand up to the loathsome Doytch. She went with him when his job took him to Avla, which was a rather charming city in some parts. While he worked in the Embassy or traveled the country arranging for meeting between Avlandian counts and dukes and vozhds and khans and Breton industrialists, she walked along the river with its arched and painted bridges or had tea in the quaint little shops, each one decorated with the images of long-dead men and women who had been canonized by their queer church or attended the opera or the ballet. There were quite a few women in similar positions, and of course there were Avlandian ones as well, (Even if they had grating accents, she would never be so boorish as to say so) so she never lacked for engaging company.
Her routine hadn't changed much, even with the war beginning. She had oohed and ahhed at the martial splendor of the regiments marching down, begun arranging charity balls and knitting drives with the other ladies, and read the occasional report in the dispatches about the gallantry displayed by various soldiers. Other than that, she hadn't thought much about it. The Doytch and their filthy allies would never be able to stand up against the mightiest empire in the world. But she had noticed growing tensions.
Harry had complained about ungrateful Avlandians, about workers who had downed their tools in protest of the littlest thing, about needing more and more police to see to it that the soldiers got what they needed. The dispatches and papers from home were full of mentions of bombings and rationing, and she even heard hushed whispers of mutinies. Prices rose on everything, to the point where she had to dismiss two of the servants.
But the papers were also full of victories, of the turning back of a grand Doytch attack at the Sonte River and the entrance of Italia into the war tearing apart the Lustena-Maygari Empire. The Ottomi were collapsing as Lawrence the White led a rebellion of their restive subjects that tore apart their rotting, decadent empire. And it seemed the long night had passed as the papers wrote of the surrender of the Doytch, of the treaty that carved up their lands and granted compensation to those who had suffered, and there was jubilation.
But then prices kept rising, and she heard more whispers of mutiny. And then one day she heard an endless fusillade of warcasters, of magic unleashed to kill and slaughter in the very streets of the capital. For two days she and Harry had sheltered in their basement, before cautiously emerging, to find red banners flying high.
He had taken his personal caster, readying it for when the maddened hordes came, but instead there were a dozen hard-eyed young men with casters of their own. They patrolled down the streets, and no one dared move against them. After that, they were mostly left alone, surviving off savings and charity, fearful of every strange sound - the Kammanists were being careful for now, but who knew when they would begin guillotining the wealthy or burning money and forcing them to walk through the flames or stripping them of every piece of property from their house to the clothes on their...but for the moment none of that happened, so they stayed close to home and gathered in quiet meetings to find ways out. Some simply fled, some paid criminals to smuggle them out, some tried to organize a defense group. Most decided to wait, confident the Kammanists would fall apart any day now, confident the armies of the Emperor or the nobles or someone would march in to restore order...
But no one came.
Ida saw their self-defense group, and she couldn't tell if she should laugh or cry. There weren't more than twenty of them, including her Harry. Two of them were beardless boys, twelve of them were old and gray, one was missing a leg. And for all their talk, they seemed to realize it.
Eventually, the inevitable came: men and women escorted by Red Guards came to speak to them, asking questions about what they owned and where it came from. They wanted to know about everything, about all her jewels and gold and silver, about the paintings and the good porcelain and the fine ebony piano she played for guests sometimes. Then they left, and didn't come back.
Their savings ran out, forcing them to travel down to one of the kitchens set up and eat some of the plain, barely tolerable stews they served there. They stood in line with workers like the ones Harry once managed, shivering in the cold, forced to listen to the ranting and haranguing of some bomb-throwing madman proclaiming how this insanity was superior to the old way of doing things...
But sometimes, what that madman said rang all too true.
This was just something I decided to start writing. It's canon status is currently...ambigious, which is why I put it in sidestory. Voting will remain open for the rest of the weekend.
