Chapter 13
Lesson 4: One That Looks Good At First Sight Is No Good At All
May 9, 1930
Isola, Milàn, Kingdom of Ildoa
Silvio was a man with a problem. A few problems, if you wanted to count each potential indictment as a discrete item.
Yes, maybe he hadn't paid his taxes in full. On the other hand, since he hadn't paid his personal ones at all, it was possible he'd only forgotten. An unintentional oversight. The result of an over-complicated system. Who could say otherwise?
Yes, he'd made some donations to the bank accounts of a number of judges. He was a friendly man. A true Ildoan to his core when it came to generosity. And anyway, it was his job to fight for the best outcome for his companies or his constituents. The judges were the ones who were supposed to give rulings according to no one's interest but the law's. So who was really the guilty party here?
Yes, there was a possibility he'd mixed up money belonging to his businesses with money belonging to him. Every entrepreneur could tell a similar story. It got confusing when your name was on everything. Besides, didn't everyone go into business to make money? His investors knew he wasn't running a charity.
Yes, there was some truth to the accusation he had links to the Mafia and their drug trafficking. He was an important man. He had his fingers in many pots. So did they. How was he supposed to avoid crossing paths with them? Or even know that the man he was dealing with was a camorrista? He wouldn't have any friends if he began questioning everyone's backgrounds from the moment he met them.
And yes, he had a fondness for women. He wouldn't deny that. What man didn't? That was a crime he was proud to declare himself guilty of. If she so happened to be a relative of a fellow politician, what was the harm in a few backroom connections? They were the women he saw the most of, dressed in finery for whichever evening event they were all attending.
Some nerve, Silvio thought darkly at his peers, as he picked up his napkin to dab his lips clean. He pushed the rest of his meal away. His stomach was too full of worry to fill it with food.
What cause did Signore Manneonni have to treat him like this, threaten to expose him and end his career in ignomy? So he'd taken a liking to his oldest girl. She was twenty-three and already married, not a vestal virgin. The man needed to learn to take a compliment.
"Madò," his mother muttered with a shake of her head, summoned from the kitchen by the sound of his plate scraping across the table, dish towel in hand and looking ready to snap it in his direction. "I spend two hours cooking, and what, for this? You didn't even eat the marrow."
"Mamma. I'm not a young man anymore. I can't eat like I used to," he complained.
In spite of his words, Silvio reached guiltily for the plate of osso buco to pull it back towards him. He'd at least eat the marrow. He owed her that after he'd come running home from Ruma to clear his head. Even if he'd offered to pay for a cook so many times he'd lost count. The old woman was too set in her ways to eat someone else's dinners.
After his mother took his plate back to the kitchen, mumbling to herself under her breath all the while, Silvio stood up to make a visit to the liquor cabinet. She had made some changes. She wasn't shy about stocking a little Rossi d'Angera with the money he sent instead of buying her grappa as cheaply as it came.
He shook the bottle and cursed. There was barely a single drink left in it. It was much too late in the evening to remedy that, so he poured the remnants into a glass and returned to his chair to sip away at it.
Doesn't our country have more newsworthy issues than my life? he lamented, wondering what good it would do anyone to pursue personal grudges at a time like the present. Ildoa was a country with a problem. A few problems, if you wanted to count each grievance driving people into the streets as a discrete item.
Unemployment was high. Unemployment was always high, but since the war ended it had only grown worse. All the factories of Europa had returned to producing goods for export. Ildoa's could barely compete.
Because unemployment was high, labor conditions were bad. Because labor conditions were bad, the socialists were trying to stir up the population. Because the socialists were trying to stir up the population, the other side had to try even harder to do the same. And that didn't count the people who were still stirred up from mobilizing for war, losing a few battles their enemy had barely cared about, and then coming home empty-handed.
The train schedule could only be described as a suggestion. The Eternal City was falling into disrepair. If the cost of bread kept going up, the entire mezzogiorno would revolt en masse. Nobody paid their taxes, including the ones who remembered. None of the other nations trusted them. Even the Pope was busy trying to make sure he wasn't associated with Ildoa.
All this, and Manneonni wanted to talk about Silvio like he was one of the country's problems.
"Mamma, un caffè," Silvio called, an idea forming in his mind. Perhaps he could help his country. All he asked was that it do the same for him in return.
He tipped the last of his grappa into the coffee when it came. The time had come to start taking his politics seriously.
All he'd wanted was to make life easy for himself. When the money had started coming, he'd gotten greedy. He'd admit it. He'd gone into politics to protect his businesses. There was no reason he couldn't do more if he put his mind to it. Now he had something much more vital to protect: himself. And what he'd earned through his hard work. A man could find something to be passionate about in that.
He was already a major player in the newspapers. He knew his way around radio broadcasts. A few more smart acquisitions and Manneonni wouldn't find anywhere to make his accusations known. His oversight had been in not thinking big enough. Bribing a few judges had been a mistake. It left open a far larger field of unfriendly ones, possibly jealous of their wealthier colleagues. If he was going to do that, he should have realized he needed to own all of them. And you didn't have to pay your taxes to the state when you were the state.
What the Ildoan people needed was a leader. Someone who shouted just as loudly as they about what ailed them instead of advising them to remain calm. Someone who knew how to fix everything instead of crying that it was complicated. Or at least someone who seemed like he knew. The problem with today was the amount of information everyone had. It made them realize the world was full of troubles. People were much happier if they read good things in the news. Especially when it wasn't true.
If the people needed jobs, Silvio had gotten his start in construction. Once they gave him the votes, he knew exactly the company that would hire them to restore their capital city to glory. He had no need to personally profit. He was a wealthy man. But a little profit would make sure his company's interest stayed in line with that of the common citizen.
For all the men whose blood was still running hot, he had just the thing. Before the country could march into territory that rightly belonged to them, they needed to have control of their own country first. A second reunification of sorts. Of course, actually trying to make good on any claims the Ildoans had on foreign lands would only bring trouble. Any fool could see that. The trick was to never run out of problems within your own borders. After political enemies were dealt with, all those aspiring soldiers could get to work on forcing the rail systems to run with the same efficiency as the famed Imperial ones. And after that, there'd be something else. People felt better when they had a goal they were striving for than when they reached it.
Silvio's head tipped back so he could finish his coffee. He looked down at his watch. Not too late yet. It was time to make a call to a certain Neapolitan after his own heart - the type who was politically well-connected and didn't waste time trying to pretend he was a man who couldn't be bought.
"Listen, chiatton," Silvio said, after the men had greeted each other. "You want to make some money off me?"
The other man chuckled, and with that, Silvio began to explain the details of what he needed. Nothing too extravagant yet. Someone to help smooth things over with Manneoni, at least for now. Someone to reassure the political class he wasn't a threat until it was too late. It wouldn't do to let someone in on his plans, especially not someone who would sell his secrets to the highest bidder.
Invented enemies and exaggerated prosperity wasn't a game anyone could keep up forever. Long enough to make the people think of him as a beneficent godfather was all he needed. After that, he'd slip quietly away and blame his successor for not filling his shoes. No matter that some parliamentarians knew the truth, the average person would never forget his reign as one of pride and progress. That was the sort of power that sent politicians into well-funded retirement on an island instead of whichever jail he'd be sent to if Manneonni got his way.
Silvio wouldn't mind exile from Ruma. Actually, he'd prefer it. It smelled. There was too much work. He couldn't indulge himself as much as he'd like. He could already taste the salt on the breeze blowing across the balcony of a villa on Capre. Or Sardignia. He wasn't picky.
May 26, 1930
General Staff Office, Imperial Capital Berun
Brigadier General von Lehrgen paused before he knocked, fist in the air. He was on the verge of violating the sacrosanct silence of an office before eight. And doing so on that most holy of mornings - a Monday.
He knew Tanya got in nearly as early as he did. They'd accidentally crossed paths a handful of times in the six months she'd been working. In strict accordance with the laws governing such meetings, they'd proceeded to ignore each other's existence beyond the barest of nods so as to provide no opportunity for the work day to begin earlier than scheduled.
With a word of apology to the god of small satisfactions, Lehrgen rapped twice on the wood, firm and commanding. A tentative attempt could reasonably go unheard. Or more likely, heard but unacknowledged under the pretense of being unheard.
It didn't prompt an immediate opening. Nearly on the brink of raising his fist again, the knob turned and the door jerked backwards with wrathful force so that he could be greeted by the beatific sight of Degurechaff's death stare. Truly, the way he wanted to start every morning.
He doubted if she'd finished her second sip of coffee yet, if the steam rising off of it was any indication. He wouldn't bother with exchanging pleasantries. There was little point in doing so with someone wholly incapable of acting pleasant prior to finishing a cup and a half. Preferably two.
"I have some good news," he told her, before she could grumble sullenly at the intrusion. Despite her surly attitude, he was unable to keep a slight smile from tugging at one corner of his mouth.
She didn't betray any inquisitiveness over it, did nothing more than raise her eyebrows in a way that suggested he should get on with whatever it was he wanted to say and leave her in peace.
"The Ispagnan ambassador will be here this week. They've agreed to help mediate with the Federation over releasing our prisoners of war."
On its own, that was cause enough for happiness. It wasn't why he'd come to tell her.
He wasn't sure if she realized that she did it. The way she talked when she said "Serebryakov" this or "Serebryakov" that, how her tone morphed from a lifeless recitation of fact into one with subtle animation. It was the same with a handful of other names, though they were spoken with less frequency.
Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe it was a complete lack of understanding over what drove her. Regardless, it represented a chance. A hope that the right person could influence her. And if that was true, he didn't doubt that Viktoriya would exert a positive force over her ill-tempered friend.
Tanya wasn't an especially excitable person, so he didn't expect her to start jumping up and down upon hearing the good tidings he'd brought. Nevertheless, it did garner a reaction of sorts, so long as he was willing to count the look of extreme annoyance clearing off of her face as a sign the news was welcome.
"That's good to hear," she said, the ghost of a smile making itself known. "I was wondering how long it was going to take. I wasn't under the impression it was normally this difficult of a process."
Lehrgen shook his head. "Usually the other side isn't falsely accusing us of failing to release our own prisoners."
The Empire had been perfectly within its rights to jail communist revolutionaries on its own territory. Territory that was no longer theirs, true, but it had been at the time. The men had been arrested for violating law and order, not taken as prisoners of war. They shouldn't be subject to those conventions. Everyone knew that. Even the Federation. Nonetheless, Moskva had acted the part of champion on behalf of Polaska, refusing to release the last of the Imperial prisoners until the Empire released the citizens that were no longer theirs.
"Still, two years to reach an agreement?" Tanya scoffed.
"There's more politics involved than usual," Lehrgen shrugged. "The Federation doesn't trust the Commonwealth or the States will mediate fairly on behalf of communists. Quite rightly, in all honesty. The current Ispagnan government has leanings more acceptable to Moskva. And not so far in that direction that we can't trust them ourselves."
With a sigh, Tanya nodded. "How long until…?"
"A few months until anyone's released, I'm sure," Lehrgen replied. "And it will likely be a piecemeal process. But at least there's finally progress being made."
"And how are prisoners prioritized?"
"I've already submitted Serebryakov's name as a high priority. She's one of our most talented mages. Trouble is, the Federation almost certainly knows that. In the interest of coming to an agreement quickly on the bulk of the soldiers, our mediator may very well suggest we leave her and the other mages for later."
Degurechaff scowled at that. "Is there any way the ambassador could be persuaded to make sure that doesn't happen? At least not with her?"
"I have heard…" he began in haste, encouraged by Tanya's reaction, the sentence petering out upon realizing he wasn't sure what good it would do to tell her.
The ambassador was known to be weak to certain types of charm, the types that were missing from groups of middle-aged men. The problem was, Degurechaff had none of the naïve charm of a young girl. She defined absolute zero on that scale. She'd be equally as useless, if not more so. At least most gentlemen had learned how to be diplomatic when it came to asking for favors. If it came down to it, Sauer would be several times better at making wide, innocent eyes that tugged on heartstrings as they pled for help. What would really make a difference would be if Elya were in town. She could apply a far more effective sort of charm to the request.
"...never mind," he finished.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Is it something that could help?"
Lehrgen cleared his throat. "I've heard the ambassador has a soft spot where women and girls are concerned."
Degurechaff's face began to transform from one of mild interest back into the glare she'd had when she'd opened the door.
"You could talk to one of the typists," he clarified quickly.
"I'll do it," she spat.
Did I...offend her? he wondered. There was nothing she could do about being young, but that wasn't stopping her from fixing her personality.
On that count, she could only rely on one thing. She had a charisma that was as magnetic in its pull as it was in its ability to repel, the assuredness of a prophet who had seen the truth of the world announcing her revelations. It forced everyone to acknowledge her, one way or the other. So long as she didn't stray from advocating on behalf of her friend, the likely reaction from the Ispagnan was the former one.
"What's his name?" Tanya asked eventually.
"Fernando Quevedo. And I should warn you he can be a bit overly…friendly," Lehrgen replied, choosing his words carefully. "If you think that will offend you, you ought to steer clear."
It was all too easy to imagine Degurechaff knocking someone's teeth out for daring to refer to her with a term like "darling," which seemed like the sort of thing the ambassador might do. She did have a penchant for causing international incidents.
"And don't say a word about politics unless you can be respectful," he reminded her. "I know you aren't favorably inclined to socialists, but their country is doing ours a favor."
"I won't," she said, taking a long sip of her coffee. "Assuming it devolves into a civil war, there's no chance we'll involve ourselves, is there?"
Don't impose civil wars like it's a hobby, he thought, with a mental roll of his eyes. If she was right about that being Europa's next conflagration, he'd be delighted to inform her that it had no chance of involving her personally.
"You think it likely to get that bad?"
She gave a small shrug. "There are no powerful moderate parties. It's not what I'd call a promising situation."
"That's true enough," he nodded. "Still not enough reason to try our luck with a proxy war. They're nowhere close to any border of ours. Nor are our economies especially well-linked."
She blinked a couple times, like she hadn't been expecting that answer, then stared down into her cup for a few seconds in dejected silence.
"And if it was a country on our border? One of our own former territories?" she asked, still looking down.
He sighed. She could never leave well enough alone. A political revolution in the Ostrian Empire would be different and she knew it. Their southern neighbor was suffering the effects of separation comparatively worse.
"I can't say we wouldn't feel the need to declare for one side or the other," Lehrgen sighed, rubbing at one of his temples. "Though right now, the looming disagreement looks to be the Ostrian nationalists and the Ostrians waiting to rejoin our empires. No matter what anyone would like, that's not a debate we're allowed to have an opinion on."
"Right," was all she said back, before finally looking up. There was only one way to interpret the look on her face: Leave and let me finish my coffee in silence. He took that as his cue to go call Elya to report the same news. Undoubtedly, that conversation was going to be a far more pleasant one to have.
xXx
Feminine charm.
It was a difficult thing to put a finger on. Was it a matter of having a good figure? No one could say that Tanya didn't cut a fine silhouette. She dressed as impeccably as her coworkers, with the exception of wearing a belt instead of suspenders: trousers and a button-down that left room to move. It didn't make for a womanly figure, true. But an agreeable-looking one.
Did it have to do with a pretty face? Now that her skin had cleared back up, Tanya's wasn't bad. There weren't any obvious issues she needed to cover up with makeup or a distracting hairstyle. If you looked, she even had nice eyelashes.
If part of charm had to do with making those eyelashes flutter, that was where she would admit defeat. She'd tried in the mirror last night. Just to see if being born with two X chromosomes had magically gifted her the ability. It hadn't. Suffice to say, having a gnat fly into her eye while staring directly at the sun may have produced better results.
Was it looking coy? What did that even mean? Descriptions that subjective were useless.
Aghh, Tanya thought, placing her hands on the bathroom counter and hanging her head. It's impossible. I can't do it.
Her impression of the past had always been that creating and fulfilling unscientific stereotypes had been something of a recreational sport. Men were men and women were women. That's what her one grandfather had ranted on about that time her older cousin had gone through that phase where she used boku and sprinkled da everywhere. It went without saying that in that outdated model, men only wanted women and only wanted them to be ladylike. Tanya wasn't anyone's idea of a perfect lady. It wasn't something she had a mind to become, especially not for the sole purpose of attracting attention. Admittedly, in this one instance, it might be useful.
I have to do it, she told herself, looking back up. The other women in the office didn't know Visha. Nobody in their right mind would agree to go bat their eyelashes at some old man over a problem that didn't involve them.
She didn't need to be best friends with any of the typists. That didn't mean she wanted them to hate her. A colleague at her old job had jilted one of the admins. After that, he'd lived in one of the outer circles of hell. His lunch orders were always wrong. His mail came late. Documents sent to the printer went mysteriously missing. It had taken him a year to get his broken chair replaced. A year.
Being insulted when someone came by to say show a little leg to close the deal wasn't a matter of being male or female. It was a matter of self-respect. It was anyone's right to use that method of persuasion if they wanted to. Making it an obligation was, among other things, an HR nightmare. It was good she'd stopped Lehrgen's train of thought. She might have saved him from some nasty pranks.
Regardless, he was right about one thing: she couldn't compete as a woman. She'd have to do it as a girl. A child from before the era where children were told they could do anything they set their mind to. What a bullshit piece of advice. Helpless it would have to be.
There was no question that someone had to make an appeal for Visha. Lehrgen wouldn't have interrupted her morning two days ago if he could guarantee her swift return himself, so it would look bad if she refused to help. And let it never be said that she shirked her responsibilities.
If it weren't for Tanya, Visha never would have ended up imprisoned. That was a simple fact. She'd been stuck as the unlucky adjutant to the girl responsible for giving Zettour the idea for a quick-strike battalion. She was the only member of the 203rd who hadn't endured it voluntarily. Her choice had been forced, but technically, Tanya had picked the assignment.
Beyond that, Visha had been conscripted. That meant, like Tanya, she was a rational person without a death wish. A war maniac languishing in prison didn't deserve her effort. A victim of the Empire's policies had to be treated the same way Tanya would want for herself.
Lazy excuses like fair and unfair aside, keeping prisoners as a supplemental labor force guaranteed they weren't being used to their full potential. A prisoner would do the bare minimum required. Any talents or innovative ideas would go completely to waste. It was impossible to get anything but a substandard effort from people whose freedom had been taken from them.
Well, it's not like I can expect communists to understand the beauty of the free market, Tanya reminded herself, giving a firm nod to her reflection and leaving to go in search of the ambassador.
If logic couldn't convince the Federation to let go of all its prisoners, the next best objective was to have the most valuable ones released first. Compared to the average person, Visha had much more promise. Letting her human capital go to waste any longer was a travesty. If that could be corrected by acting the part of a teary-eyed little girl for a few minutes, any decision-making strategy would tell her it was a worthwhile tradeoff.
Tanya spotted the ambassador in the hall. With a deep breath, she fixed her goal in her mind and marched over.
"Mister Quevedo?" she asked, forcing her voice to sound bright and cheery.
"Yes, my dear?" he responded, turning around to face her.
Don't react, Tanya reminded herself. Undeniably, a willingness to introduce himself to a stranger that way while in a professional setting did not bode well for the rest of the conversation.
The man did a double-take when he turned around fully and saw her. Tanya did one of her own. She had to fight the urge to slap a hand over her face. Finding a willing member of the female staff to do this for her would not have been troublesome. Speaking strictly objectively, Quevedo was a handsome man. At this point, it would be awkward for her to back out.
"What's a girl as lovely as yourself doing in that outfit?" he mourned.
Tanya glanced down. Problematic would be the kindest thing to say about that statement. It would be equally problematic if she failed to hide her reaction. She'd hope that looking away came off as shy.
"They made me fight in the war," she said, curling in on herself like she was a tragic heroine scarred by the memories. She remained staring at the floor. Putting on this act with a straight face was impossible. "Now this is the only job I can get. I have to obey the military dress code as best I can."
"You poor thing," Quevedo crooned. Tanya winced at the tone. "I always knew Imperial men were clueless on how to treat a woman right."
Tanya took another deep breath. Maintaining the meek posture required more determination than flying into gunfire.
"I heard you might be able to help me make sure my friend gets back home soon," she said, finally lifting her head and smiling hopefully up at him.
"Your favorite handsome soldier was captured?" he asked, eyebrows dancing suggestively.
Tanya's eyes immediately went back to the floor. Do. Not. Hit. Him, she repeated to herself a few times, concentrating on a small stain in the rug. By nature, she wasn't a violent person. Still, she could only be asked to suffer through so many breaches of office etiquette in a row. And she'd thought concealing her feelings when particularly useless employees had broken down and cried in her office instead of waiting until they got home had been difficult. She'd handled restructuring, but it was quite evident that the man in front of her would end up with her colleague who dealt with sexual harassment lawsuits.
It was imperative that she kept her calm. He was basically just a harmless flirt. It would be years and years until that wasn't acceptable in a work environment anymore. He didn't realize he was doing anything wrong.
"She's my best friend," Tanya replied, keeping the innocent smile plastered on her face, the same one that was flushed with anger that might come off as an embarrassed blush if she was lucky. "Her name is Viktoriya Serebryakov. A girl as pretty as her would never have joined the Army if she weren't conscripted. It's cruel to let her remain in the Federation any longer."
More than anything, Tanya didn't like implying that Visha should be liberated for such a petty reason. Quevedo seemed like the romantic type. He probably loved imagining himself rescuing a damsel in distress.
"Viktoriya," he said, tapping his temple with a finger like it was going to help him remember. "I'll see what I can do."
With that, he reached out and patted her on the head.
This motherf-Tanya stopped herself before she grabbed his hand and used it to hurl him over her shoulder. Even if she'd turned up the childish charm, she was clearly a teenager, not a toddler.
She tried to smile in thanks, and then turned on her heel and made her feet trudge back to her office instead of turning around to give him a piece of her mind. Visha owed her. Big time. She'd signed up for a little acting like she'd done in the propaganda shoot. Not total humiliation.
xXx
The next time he saw the Ispagnan ambassador, Lehrgen breathed a sigh of relief that he'd been holding in for hours. Ernst had come running to mention he'd seen Degurechaff pull the other man aside. As Quevedo was not sporting a black eye in the aftermath, he could only assume the conversation had gone passably well.
Friday was the first truly nice day of the three preceding weeks. Berun had seen so much spring rain the Spree was near to spilling over its banks and flooding the grassy plain that the Staff Office sat on. By now, every shred of cloth in his house felt slightly damp. Finally, the clouds had cleared. He was eager to open every window and let the sun and breeze clear the air.
He stopped by Tanya's office on his way out to tell her that he was leaving early and remind her that she was free to do the same.
She had that morning's newspaper sticking out of her wastebin. Without thinking, he commented on the headline.
"Do they really think the Commonwealth will grant them independence so easily?" he asked, clicking his tongue.
It wasn't that he didn't sympathize with the Hindustani protestors. Violence against unarmed resistors made that near-to-impossible for anyone besides Degurechaff. Regardless, it was difficult to understand how it would achieve much of anything beyond relaxing certain draconian laws. If governments responded amenably to peaceful requests for territorial changes, there would be little need for wars.
"I'm not sure I'd call being beaten and jailed easy," she snorted.
"I meant-,"
"Without armed insurrection," she finished, nodding. "Could turn out to be surprisingly effective."
He made a frown of disagreement.
"Well, here's to hoping," she said, lifting her cup in a mock toast.
"You shouldn't drink coffee so late in the day," he admonished, letting some inane comment come out of his mouth while he tried to reconcile the fact that Tanya, Tanya Degurechaff, had very possibly just wished success to a nonviolence movement.
"It's tea, if you must know," she sniffed, turning it towards him so he could see it was the reddish color of any popular brand of fruit tea.
"Another victim then," he grinned.
If someone didn't know what to get him as a gift, always, it was fruit tea, like they'd assessed him as being an aficionado. Wrong. Completely wrong. For the past five years, a mystery package had come through the post on his birthday with an extra-large bag. Despite the lack of sender information, he was quite sure it was his brother's doing, a form of petty revenge after hearing one too many complaints. Harmless and annoying pranks were a trademark of Otto's. You'd never know that he was the elder of the two.
Tanya had raised an eyebrow at his statement.
"I somehow end up with bags of the stuff that I have to give away. Never had much of a sweet tooth," he explained. "Guess you don't know what that's like."
"It's a curse," she said, getting up and stretching. "Honestly, it is."
"Anyway," he began, feeling mentally prepared to undertake a more serious conversation after she'd jarred his thoughts so abruptly, "you...you support the Hindustani independence movement?"
She paused what she was doing, papers halfway into the drawer she was placing them into. Looked up at him and squinted her eyes like he'd said something suspicious. Took a deep breath tinged with exasperation and looked away while she closed and locked the drawer.
"Imperial policy supported national self-determination for our neighbors a few years back," she said evenly, back turned while she folded her rain jacket over one arm. "Should the same not be extended under current political circumstances?"
That was for the purpose of weakening the Federation, he thought, confused for a moment before her motive in bringing that up occurred to him. Of course. It was a smart extension of their short-lived support for Baltic nation-states. Much of the wealth and power of Europa's other empires came from their foreign colonies. Without those, their former enemies would be weakened. For that, Degurechaff could stomach siding with a pacifist.
Scary, he thought, glad she was turned away so she didn't see him shiver. Even when she takes the moral position, she's scary. Maybe more than normal.
Normally, she made her offensive views of the world known upfront. He didn't have to worry about entrapment. He'd made the right choice in blocking her attempts to meet anyone in a legal profession. She could turn any argument on its head. The nation's laws would be a mess after she was through with them.
Disagree, and he came out the unsympathetic one in the argument. Agree unreservedly, and it ended worse. Applied to current political circumstances more globally, or more locally, as it were, staunch support for national self-determination would mean one thing: upsetting their tentative peace by demanding the Empire be given the right to reassemble via international plebiscite.
Undoubtedly, many of the Empire's former territories would vote to become Imperial again. The educated classes would want independence, most definitely, from the Empire or from other powers. The average person likely valued the wealth and safety they'd enjoyed in the years prior to the war more than the names of their countries.
If Degurechaff walked her argument to the next logical step, she'd have him agreeing with her on what was, at best, a politically volatile topic. Talking to her without being on the defensive was akin to driving heedlessly through a field of landmines.
He cleared his throat, conscious of how long it had taken him to reply. "In theory, it's a noble aim," he said slowly, stepping backwards out her door and holding it open for her. "But it's not always a practical arrangement."
"How so?"
Degurechaff made him realize, and more often than he'd like to admit, why he'd heard more than one person claim to hate arguing with him. Somewhere around ten, he'd overheard it said between a tutor and his mother. Just the other week a general in one of the regional armies had said it right before he'd hung up the phone.
Naturally, they were both inclined to a semi-Socratic form of questioning, deceptively simple queries that forced the respondent to trot out claims ripe for refutation. It was a trait he'd had to work on correcting in casual conversation. Most of the time, he didn't intend to put anyone on the defensive. Having it turned on him like so made it obvious why it got under everyone's skin. He had yet to decide whether he appreciated the challenge or not.
"Efficient use of resources," he said, with an arrogant grin that would fit better on the face of the woman descending the stairs in front of him. There were no words harder to win against than one's own. "The Commonwealth's market access goes deeper and wider than any of their territories could achieve on their own."
"Largely because of artificial barriers to trade," she countered. "It would be disruptive to have to renegotiate terms with an independent Hindustan, true. But it's very possible to replicate the status quo if all parties are willing. And besides, that only counts material resources. The vast majority of the country is impoverished from constant resource extraction. The untapped human capital could be immense if it were utilized correctly."
Human...capital? Utilize? he thought, raising his glasses so he could rub at his eyes. Her creativity in applying mechanical terms to people couldn't be denied. At the same time...he thought, reaching up to run a hand through his hair and fix a piece that had fallen instead of blowing at it in annoyance like he wanted to. At the same time, valuing people the same way you would value a piece of machinery meant there was a mechanism through which she could be persuaded to assign value to some human lives under some circumstances, if you were willing to use her own backwards logic against her. It was a baseline he could work off of.
"You're probably right about that," he agreed mildly, squinting against the sun after he pulled the door to the building open. He could feel the self-righteousness radiating off of her as surely as he felt the heat of the late afternoon under several layers of uniform. "Still, there's hardly been a worse time for disruption to the world order than now. We're still recovering from the last one."
"Meaning that now's the time to press the advantage," she said, stopping next to him on the curb while he waited for his adjutant to bring a car around.
"For Hindustan, maybe. For us-,"
He paused at the sound of a honk. A handsome red car pulled up along the curb, the interior a rich cream. Apparently, the Ispagnan ambassador was fond of driving his showpiece himself and making sure everyone saw it.
Tanya gave a low whistle of appreciation. Out of the corner of his eye, Lehrgen saw his own ride trundle up behind.
"Viktoriya, yes?" the ambassador asked, tapping his head.
"Yes, sir. Thank you," Tanya replied, ducking her head appreciatively and then resuming her inspection of the vehicle. Soon enough, Lieutenant Sauer had joined so that he could get a look himself. Eager to be home, Lehrgen headed off towards his car. Ernst wouldn't leave him waiting long.
"I'm glad you like her," Quevedo commented. Lehrgen heard him pat the side of his car. "She's almost as pretty as you are."
Lehrgen stopped dead. His head whipped around in time to catch Tanya attempting to smile. It came out as more of a grimace, if she wanted his opinion.
"If you'd ever like to have a good time, I'd be more than happy to give you a ride," Quevedo continued, winking at her in a way that made it clear the comment was not about cars.
With that, the other man drove off, leaving the rest of them frozen in place. Tasteless joke or no, that wasn't something fit for the ears of a girl. Depending on your tolerance for being slapped, it wasn't particularly fit for the ears of adult women either. Definitively, it wasn't something you'd say to one of the Devil's henchmen, no matter that it was currently possessing a human-sized doll, without expecting some consequences. Over time, that theory was seeming less likely. It had yet to be entirely ruled out.
"Give me the keys," Tanya said peremptorily to Ernst, seething with rage and pointing towards where the offending party was stopped in traffic not far ahead.
Sensing that he was dealing with an apex predator who was out for blood, his adjutant immediately obeyed her request, and Tanya was shortly in possession of the keys to a heavy, reinforced, military-issue automobile.
"You don't have a license," Lehrgen got out, too late, imagining what level of destruction she would be capable of wreaking behind the wheel if she could manage to get the car going. The excuse might have seemed trivial, but Degurechaff was loathe to actually violate laws. She'd just skirt her way around them when possible.
"You don't need a license to hit people with your car," she snapped.
If he could sum up what was wrong with her thought process in one interaction, this would be it. In a technical sense, she had a point. Becoming a legally licensed driver wasn't a prerequisite for committing vehicular homicide. But there was just something fundamentally wrong with her way of thinking about how laws worked.
"We need him alive," he sighed, motioning for her to hand over the keys.
"Getting the last word by driving away," she muttered, staring down the street with jaw and fists clenched.
Getting the last word by making sure he can't say anything more isn't exactly fair either, Lehrgen grumbled to himself. He turned to tell her the same.
"Degurechaff…?" he questioned instead, more than slightly worried that the emotional swing was a sign of a psychotic breakdown. Giggles. He was watching her fight to contain giggles. It wasn't a word that belonged with her, but it was the only way he could describe what she was doing.
She waved him off. "It's nothing," she said, still laughing, "nothing, I just remembered where I – I can't believe I – it's hard to explain."
She finished the bout of laughter and dropped the keys into his hand.
He was too dumbfounded to care about an explanation. It was hardly the first strange reaction he'd seen out of her. Aimlessly, like the gravity beneath his feet was no longer trustworthy, he walked to the car and climbed in.
Cautiously, Ernst got in the driver's seat a second behind him. Neither spoke for a few minutes. Near to exiting central Berun, the other man cleared his throat.
"Do you...need a drink?" he ventured.
"More than anything," Lehrgen replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. What if there were more of her? echoed continually through his mind. Doomed. Ten years from now, the world was doomed.
"Me too," Ernst laughed, leaning his head down onto the steering wheel while they were stopped. There were days when Lehrgen felt bad about poisoning the younger man's mind with the same fears that infected his own. "Any preference?"
"Somewhere too loud to hear myself think," he replied promptly.
"It's early," Ernst said, looking down at his watch. "But it is a Friday. There's a good biergarten not so much further up past Hallesches Tor. It's on the canal."
"Do you know every bar in the city?"
"I'm sure I've missed one or two."
Lehrgen was self-conscious entering the establishment. He tugged at his collar. It marked him, singled him out from every other man in uniform so that he could never blend in with the crowd.
Already, the tables were near to being half-full. Anyone in the city who could find the time to spare had turned out. The seating along the canal was mostly taken in spite of the marshy ground underneath it. There were benefits to the advertisement his jacket made of his rank. Every group they passed huddled closer to indicate they could free up space if necessary.
Halfway through their perusal, Ernst stopped and crossed his arms. He looked up and down the waterfront. Glanced back up at the central patio every other second. Lehrgen gave an indulgent sigh. The tables sitting in the grass were conspicuously lacking the fairer half of the human population. The mud near the river wasn't kind to anyone not wearing sturdy boots.
And not so kind to those of us with them either, he remarked to himself, looking at his own pair. He could mistake them for their worn-out predecessors dragged through the ever-damp fields of Flanderin. He'd have to hand them off for polishing tomorrow.
He gestured to one of the less-crowded tables and the three men occupying it, working-class sorts who were themselves no stranger to dirt, shuffled to one end. The next few minutes he spent alone, while Ernst retrieved beer and food. A handy method of separating out foreign spies with perfect Germanian accents from citizens born-and-raised Imperial was a willingness to join the conversations of nearby strangers. As a member of the latter group, Lehrgen fiddled with his watch in the interim, putting it back ten minutes so that for once it was slow. It had only been ahead by eight.
Ernst returned with a double serving of maibock for each of them and half a roast chicken. The first order of business was accomplished as soon as the other man took his seat - downing one drink as fast as humanly possible. Finishing an entire beer in one long draft was a skill Lehrgen had never managed to learn, no matter how often older relatives, friends, or Rudersdorf had attempted to teach it to him. Ernst was done in a third of the time. Still, it was barely fifteen seconds later that his glass was turned over and the second one was in his hand.
"So," Lehrgen said, knocking a fist against his chest twice to release some excess carbonation, "you think Hindustan has any chance of gaining independence the way things are going?"
Ernst paused in the middle of separating the chicken to look up and pay back the indulgent sigh.
"Sir…" he said, resuming his knifework, "...can't we talk about something more interesting?"
Lehrgen raised an eyebrow. It hardly got more interesting than questions as expansive as this one. Political impact, emotional impact, philosophical considerations of rights and just governance, all with enough distance from their daily lives for academic debate.
"I'm not Degurechaff," Ernst objected.
Lehrgen felt a muscle in his forehead twitch. He put his beer down firmly. Before he could take issue with the implications of that statement, Ernst was waving his hands in front of himself apologetically.
"I only meant I can't say anything besides what's already been said in the papers. It won't be much of a debate. If you want to give a lecture, I don't mind, though," he said, with a smile and a shrug as he divided the food between them.
Lehrgen took out a cigarette. Lit it. Puffed a few times before throwing the pack and lighter across the table. He did not lecture. And he was quite sure he'd never mentioned to his adjutant that a few times it had run across his mind that in another life he might have made a good professor.
"You see the police got that killer in Dusseldorf?" Ernst asked, after taking a draw.
Lehrgen nodded.
"You think it's true? All the stories? Some of them seem…" he shuddered. "I don't know. Too extreme to be real."
Gruesome details and food did not a happy digestive system make. Unless you were a nurse or most men between the ages of nineteen and fifty, in which case there was little that could shock and appall enough to ruin a meal anymore. Instead of pushing his plate away like he might have done years past, Lehrgen shrugged, swung a leg over the side of the bench so he could watch the brisk flow of the river better, and continued eating.
"I don't know," he said, itching the side of his nose to prevent the inappropriate, if humorless, smile from being obvious. "Any time I read about the worse ways they executed people more than two, three hundred years ago, it seems a wonder we mostly stick to killing each other so cleanly."
Ernst gave a bark of laughter. With nothing more than a glance and a shrug between them, a decision was made. They drained their second drinks.
The ambassador's car, how and why the Americans had chosen to survive the last ten years without alcohol, the merits of the television set the office had purchased, those conversations devolved into which country made the next best beer, since the best was undoubtedly theirs, which country had the best girls, since it undoubtedly wasn't theirs, and on that note, which of their cities held the title in each category. Minna won handily on the first matter. Either Praga or Kopenhaven won out on the second, depending on if you counted only current Imperial territory or also included former.
Between each topic was a new glass of beer, and more often than not a new face. Ernst had a tendency to collect friends as the evening wore on. Partway through, when a smuggled-in bottle of liquor made its presence known, Lehrgen removed his jacket. Stuffed it under a leg. In a crowd of civilians, there were too many expectations attached to it. Expectations that he couldn't meet in the case that he ended the night respectably drunk. He deserved it, every once in a while.
Well on his way towards achieving a stupor capable of stealing the mind's ability to remember that such things as the future existed, let alone agonize over them, he felt a hand on him. It snuck up unsuspecting, took him by surprise, as much for the unexpected intrusion as for the maternal care in it. His reflexes were too slow. He had no chance to bat it away before it was combing errant strands of hair back into place.
His head tilted back further so he could see behind him, and the world spun for a moment. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking the culprit, the short, dark hair, the serious gaze in contrast to the mischievous smile. It fit better on her face now than it did twenty years ago, though he'd still hesitate to call it attractive.
"Marian," he greeted, trying to make room next to him.
She remained standing, peering down at him with her arms crossed. She was only two years his senior, and yet he couldn't remember a time when she hadn't treated him as a much, much younger brother.
"Your shoes are going to be an awful mess, you know," he told her, laughter coming easily to him.
"That's what a maid is for, dear," she replied, clucking her tongue like a mother hen at finding him in such a state. "I'm surprised to see you here."
"I could say a same."
"The same," she corrected him. "Work isn't far. Most of the big newspapers are a few streets up."
"You aren't in the city often."
"That is the point of being a traveling correspondent, you know," she said, finally sitting down. Without asking, she took his glass from him and finished it.
"Here long?"
She shook her head.
"No, no, off to Ostria in a few days. Should be back for Christmas, though. Then I'll write my final word on the harm the unification parties are doing to both our countries. I hope you aren't voting for them."
Adamantly, he shook his own head. "I always keep up with your articles," he mentioned.
"I should hope so," she drawled. "I am rather famous for them. Anyway, how's your brother?"
"Fine, fine," he began, turning inwards. "His youngest is - God, almost two by now. I'm glad you reminded me. I might've forgotten to write."
Silently, someone exchanged his empty glass for a full one while he lost himself in catching up with an old friend. Did it a second time half an hour later. She drank most of both. It cleared his head enough to make real conversation, which was a problem he'd have to rectify once she left.
"I do believe you're being summoned," she interrupted eventually, jerking her head towards the patio.
He turned to see Ernst waving at him. Near to shooing him off to have the evening to himself, Lehrgen recognized the woman standing next to him. She'd been a nurse stationed on the western front. One with a habit of sneaking off to find somewhere quiet to eat, same as he had. Given the dearth of options on a battlefield, they'd found solace in the same locations a handful of times.
He stole his drink back from Marian and took a long draft. In the end, everyone always preferred Ernst.
When he glanced back up, the younger man was still waving at him. Motioning him over, more like. He looked back at Marian, for all the world acting as though he needed her permission to leave his seat. Old habits weren't easy to break.
She shook her head like she was too disappointed for words. For all the ways in which she was forward-looking, she could be surprisingly old-fashioned. One way or another, he was only trying to make sure that he wasn't stuck trying to count sheep hopping the fence in order to fall asleep. The women who'd been with them deserved that reprieve as much as the men. And the year's most inopportune comment meant he'd more likely be seeing visions of blonde children stepping over bodies. Probably, Marian would tell the both of them to get their heads checked.
"Well, it's not like you're interested," he huffed.
She made a great show of rolling her eyes, then pushed one of his shoulders.
"Go," she said, with a forbearing smile. "I'll see you over Christmas."
xXx
A third drink is almost always a mistake, Tanya reminded herself, halfway through her fourth and regretting the decision. The third drink itself wasn't the problem. It was the all the ones that often followed once you'd failed to hold your ground at two. Allowing her anger to get the better of her and then accidentally letting slip a line quoted from the guiltiest of her former guilty pleasures didn't mean she intended on becoming one of the barely-employed, dysfunctional excuses for human beings that infested that manga. Ahh, Gintama, she thought, with a shake of her head. There were certain memories she would have been happier leaving in her first world.
She'd spaced her beers out properly. The first one might have gone more quickly than was wise, but whiling away time on a barstool wasn't a hobby of hers. Instead of going straight home, she'd wandered the extensive public gardens east of the General Staff Office. After that, it had only been occasional sips while she made dinner, tidied up her apartment, took a bath, finished a book.
And still, she was feeling the effects. There was no other explanation for the impractical ruminations that kept interrupting her effort to write a letter to Weiss now that she finally had something more worthwhile to bother him with than daily trivialities: Visha might be coming back to Berun.
Would she stay? Would she pick back up where she'd left off before the war like everyone else had? Would she keep as far away as she could from anything that reminded her of the worst years of her life? Frankly, Tanya wouldn't blame her. They weren't questions she could answer for her former adjutant. And really, the answers didn't matter. How someone else wanted to live their life wasn't any business of hers. Tanya had discharged her final duty as commanding officer. More than adequately, in fact. If there was any reason to hope that Visha stuck around, it was so that she could compensate for that by proving she had the knack for baking she'd made it sound like she did.
With a grunt of annoyance, Tanya poured the remainder of her beer down the sink. She'd had enough, and had spent enough time focusing on irrelevant details. She was going to finish her letter, go to bed, then check it in the morning to make sure her diction didn't show the same obvious signs of inebriation as her thought processes.
May 9, 1930
Isola, Milàn, Kingdom of Ildoa
Silvio was a man with a problem. A few problems, if you wanted to count each potential indictment as a discrete item.
Yes, maybe he hadn't paid his taxes in full. On the other hand, since he hadn't paid his personal ones at all, it was possible he'd only forgotten. An unintentional oversight. The result of an over-complicated system. Who could say otherwise?
Yes, he'd made some donations to the bank accounts of a number of judges. He was a friendly man. A true Ildoan to his core when it came to generosity. And anyway, it was his job to fight for the best outcome for his companies or his constituents. The judges were the ones who were supposed to give rulings according to no one's interest but the law's. So who was really the guilty party here?
Yes, there was a possibility he'd mixed up money belonging to his businesses with money belonging to him. Every entrepreneur could tell a similar story. It got confusing when your name was on everything. Besides, didn't everyone go into business to make money? His investors knew he wasn't running a charity.
Yes, there was some truth to the accusation he had links to the Mafia and their drug trafficking. He was an important man. He had his fingers in many pots. So did they. How was he supposed to avoid crossing paths with them? Or even know that the man he was dealing with was a camorrista? He wouldn't have any friends if he began questioning everyone's backgrounds from the moment he met them.
And yes, he had a fondness for women. He wouldn't deny that. What man didn't? That was a crime he was proud to declare himself guilty of. If she so happened to be a relative of a fellow politician, what was the harm in a few backroom connections? They were the women he saw the most of, dressed in finery for whichever evening event they were all attending.
Some nerve, Silvio thought darkly at his peers, as he picked up his napkin to dab his lips clean. He pushed the rest of his meal away. His stomach was too full of worry to fill it with food.
What cause did Signore Manneonni have to treat him like this, threaten to expose him and end his career in ignomy? So he'd taken a liking to his oldest girl. She was twenty-three and already married, not a vestal virgin. The man needed to learn to take a compliment.
"Madò," his mother muttered with a shake of her head, summoned from the kitchen by the sound of his plate scraping across the table, dish towel in hand and looking ready to snap it in his direction. "I spend two hours cooking, and what, for this? You didn't even eat the marrow."
"Mamma. I'm not a young man anymore. I can't eat like I used to," he complained.
In spite of his words, Silvio reached guiltily for the plate of osso buco to pull it back towards him. He'd at least eat the marrow. He owed her that after he'd come running home from Ruma to clear his head. Even if he'd offered to pay for a cook so many times he'd lost count. The old woman was too set in her ways to eat someone else's dinners.
After his mother took his plate back to the kitchen, mumbling to herself under her breath all the while, Silvio stood up to make a visit to the liquor cabinet. She had made some changes. She wasn't shy about stocking a little Rossi d'Angera with the money he sent instead of buying her grappa as cheaply as it came.
He shook the bottle and cursed. There was barely a single drink left in it. It was much too late in the evening to remedy that, so he poured the remnants into a glass and returned to his chair to sip away at it.
Doesn't our country have more newsworthy issues than my life? he lamented, wondering what good it would do anyone to pursue personal grudges at a time like the present. Ildoa was a country with a problem. A few problems, if you wanted to count each grievance driving people into the streets as a discrete item.
Unemployment was high. Unemployment was always high, but since the war ended it had only grown worse. All the factories of Europa had returned to producing goods for export. Ildoa's could barely compete.
Because unemployment was high, labor conditions were bad. Because labor conditions were bad, the socialists were trying to stir up the population. Because the socialists were trying to stir up the population, the other side had to try even harder to do the same. And that didn't count the people who were still stirred up from mobilizing for war, losing a few battles their enemy had barely cared about, and then coming home empty-handed.
The train schedule could only be described as a suggestion. The Eternal City was falling into disrepair. If the cost of bread kept going up, the entire mezzogiorno would revolt en masse. Nobody paid their taxes, including the ones who remembered. None of the other nations trusted them. Even the Pope was busy trying to make sure he wasn't associated with Ildoa.
All this, and Manneonni wanted to talk about Silvio like he was one of the country's problems.
"Mamma, un caffè," Silvio called, an idea forming in his mind. Perhaps he could help his country. All he asked was that it do the same for him in return.
He tipped the last of his grappa into the coffee when it came. The time had come to start taking his politics seriously.
All he'd wanted was to make life easy for himself. When the money had started coming, he'd gotten greedy. He'd admit it. He'd gone into politics to protect his businesses. There was no reason he couldn't do more if he put his mind to it. Now he had something much more vital to protect: himself. And what he'd earned through his hard work. A man could find something to be passionate about in that.
He was already a major player in the newspapers. He knew his way around radio broadcasts. A few more smart acquisitions and Manneonni wouldn't find anywhere to make his accusations known. His oversight had been in not thinking big enough. Bribing a few judges had been a mistake. It left open a far larger field of unfriendly ones, possibly jealous of their wealthier colleagues. If he was going to do that, he should have realized he needed to own all of them. And you didn't have to pay your taxes to the state when you were the state.
What the Ildoan people needed was a leader. Someone who shouted just as loudly as they about what ailed them instead of advising them to remain calm. Someone who knew how to fix everything instead of crying that it was complicated. Or at least someone who seemed like he knew. The problem with today was the amount of information everyone had. It made them realize the world was full of troubles. People were much happier if they read good things in the news. Especially when it wasn't true.
If the people needed jobs, Silvio had gotten his start in construction. Once they gave him the votes, he knew exactly the company that would hire them to restore their capital city to glory. He had no need to personally profit. He was a wealthy man. But a little profit would make sure his company's interest stayed in line with that of the common citizen.
For all the men whose blood was still running hot, he had just the thing. Before the country could march into territory that rightly belonged to them, they needed to have control of their own country first. A second reunification of sorts. Of course, actually trying to make good on any claims the Ildoans had on foreign lands would only bring trouble. Any fool could see that. The trick was to never run out of problems within your own borders. After political enemies were dealt with, all those aspiring soldiers could get to work on forcing the rail systems to run with the same efficiency as the famed Imperial ones. And after that, there'd be something else. People felt better when they had a goal they were striving for than when they reached it.
Silvio's head tipped back so he could finish his coffee. He looked down at his watch. Not too late yet. It was time to make a call to a certain Neapolitan after his own heart - the type who was politically well-connected and didn't waste time trying to pretend he was a man who couldn't be bought.
"Listen, chiatton," Silvio said, after the men had greeted each other. "You want to make some money off me?"
The other man chuckled, and with that, Silvio began to explain the details of what he needed. Nothing too extravagant yet. Someone to help smooth things over with Manneoni, at least for now. Someone to reassure the political class he wasn't a threat until it was too late. It wouldn't do to let someone in on his plans, especially not someone who would sell his secrets to the highest bidder.
Invented enemies and exaggerated prosperity wasn't a game anyone could keep up forever. Long enough to make the people think of him as a beneficent godfather was all he needed. After that, he'd slip quietly away and blame his successor for not filling his shoes. No matter that some parliamentarians knew the truth, the average person would never forget his reign as one of pride and progress. That was the sort of power that sent politicians into well-funded retirement on an island instead of whichever jail he'd be sent to if Manneonni got his way.
Silvio wouldn't mind exile from Ruma. Actually, he'd prefer it. It smelled. There was too much work. He couldn't indulge himself as much as he'd like. He could already taste the salt on the breeze blowing across the balcony of a villa on Capre. Or Sardignia. He wasn't picky.
May 26, 1930
General Staff Office, Imperial Capital Berun
Brigadier General von Lehrgen paused before he knocked, fist in the air. He was on the verge of violating the sacrosanct silence of an office before eight. And doing so on that most holy of mornings - a Monday.
He knew Tanya got in nearly as early as he did. They'd accidentally crossed paths a handful of times in the six months she'd been working. In strict accordance with the laws governing such meetings, they'd proceeded to ignore each other's existence beyond the barest of nods so as to provide no opportunity for the work day to begin earlier than scheduled.
With a word of apology to the god of small satisfactions, Lehrgen rapped twice on the wood, firm and commanding. A tentative attempt could reasonably go unheard. Or more likely, heard but unacknowledged under the pretense of being unheard.
It didn't prompt an immediate opening. Nearly on the brink of raising his fist again, the knob turned and the door jerked backwards with wrathful force so that he could be greeted by the beatific sight of Degurechaff's death stare. Truly, the way he wanted to start every morning.
He doubted if she'd finished her second sip of coffee yet, if the steam rising off of it was any indication. He wouldn't bother with exchanging pleasantries. There was little point in doing so with someone wholly incapable of acting pleasant prior to finishing a cup and a half. Preferably two.
"I have some good news," he told her, before she could grumble sullenly at the intrusion. Despite her surly attitude, he was unable to keep a slight smile from tugging at one corner of his mouth.
She didn't betray any inquisitiveness over it, did nothing more than raise her eyebrows in a way that suggested he should get on with whatever it was he wanted to say and leave her in peace.
"The Ispagnan ambassador will be here this week. They've agreed to help mediate with the Federation over releasing our prisoners of war."
On its own, that was cause enough for happiness. It wasn't why he'd come to tell her.
He wasn't sure if she realized that she did it. The way she talked when she said "Serebryakov" this or "Serebryakov" that, how her tone morphed from a lifeless recitation of fact into one with subtle animation. It was the same with a handful of other names, though they were spoken with less frequency.
Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe it was a complete lack of understanding over what drove her. Regardless, it represented a chance. A hope that the right person could influence her. And if that was true, he didn't doubt that Viktoriya would exert a positive force over her ill-tempered friend.
Tanya wasn't an especially excitable person, so he didn't expect her to start jumping up and down upon hearing the good tidings he'd brought. Nevertheless, it did garner a reaction of sorts, so long as he was willing to count the look of extreme annoyance clearing off of her face as a sign the news was welcome.
"That's good to hear," she said, the ghost of a smile making itself known. "I was wondering how long it was going to take. I wasn't under the impression it was normally this difficult of a process."
Lehrgen shook his head. "Usually the other side isn't falsely accusing us of failing to release our own prisoners."
The Empire had been perfectly within its rights to jail communist revolutionaries on its own territory. Territory that was no longer theirs, true, but it had been at the time. The men had been arrested for violating law and order, not taken as prisoners of war. They shouldn't be subject to those conventions. Everyone knew that. Even the Federation. Nonetheless, Moskva had acted the part of champion on behalf of Polaska, refusing to release the last of the Imperial prisoners until the Empire released the citizens that were no longer theirs.
"Still, two years to reach an agreement?" Tanya scoffed.
"There's more politics involved than usual," Lehrgen shrugged. "The Federation doesn't trust the Commonwealth or the States will mediate fairly on behalf of communists. Quite rightly, in all honesty. The current Ispagnan government has leanings more acceptable to Moskva. And not so far in that direction that we can't trust them ourselves."
With a sigh, Tanya nodded. "How long until…?"
"A few months until anyone's released, I'm sure," Lehrgen replied. "And it will likely be a piecemeal process. But at least there's finally progress being made."
"And how are prisoners prioritized?"
"I've already submitted Serebryakov's name as a high priority. She's one of our most talented mages. Trouble is, the Federation almost certainly knows that. In the interest of coming to an agreement quickly on the bulk of the soldiers, our mediator may very well suggest we leave her and the other mages for later."
Degurechaff scowled at that. "Is there any way the ambassador could be persuaded to make sure that doesn't happen? At least not with her?"
"I have heard…" he began in haste, encouraged by Tanya's reaction, the sentence petering out upon realizing he wasn't sure what good it would do to tell her.
The ambassador was known to be weak to certain types of charm, the types that were missing from groups of middle-aged men. The problem was, Degurechaff had none of the naïve charm of a young girl. She defined absolute zero on that scale. She'd be equally as useless, if not more so. At least most gentlemen had learned how to be diplomatic when it came to asking for favors. If it came down to it, Sauer would be several times better at making wide, innocent eyes that tugged on heartstrings as they pled for help. What would really make a difference would be if Elya were in town. She could apply a far more effective sort of charm to the request.
"...never mind," he finished.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Is it something that could help?"
Lehrgen cleared his throat. "I've heard the ambassador has a soft spot where women and girls are concerned."
Degurechaff's face began to transform from one of mild interest back into the glare she'd had when she'd opened the door.
"You could talk to one of the typists," he clarified quickly.
"I'll do it," she spat.
Did I...offend her? he wondered. There was nothing she could do about being young, but that wasn't stopping her from fixing her personality.
On that count, she could only rely on one thing. She had a charisma that was as magnetic in its pull as it was in its ability to repel, the assuredness of a prophet who had seen the truth of the world announcing her revelations. It forced everyone to acknowledge her, one way or the other. So long as she didn't stray from advocating on behalf of her friend, the likely reaction from the Ispagnan was the former one.
"What's his name?" Tanya asked eventually.
"Fernando Quevedo. And I should warn you he can be a bit overly…friendly," Lehrgen replied, choosing his words carefully. "If you think that will offend you, you ought to steer clear."
It was all too easy to imagine Degurechaff knocking someone's teeth out for daring to refer to her with a term like "darling," which seemed like the sort of thing the ambassador might do. She did have a penchant for causing international incidents.
"And don't say a word about politics unless you can be respectful," he reminded her. "I know you aren't favorably inclined to socialists, but their country is doing ours a favor."
"I won't," she said, taking a long sip of her coffee. "Assuming it devolves into a civil war, there's no chance we'll involve ourselves, is there?"
Don't impose civil wars like it's a hobby, he thought, with a mental roll of his eyes. If she was right about that being Europa's next conflagration, he'd be delighted to inform her that it had no chance of involving her personally.
"You think it likely to get that bad?"
She gave a small shrug. "There are no powerful moderate parties. It's not what I'd call a promising situation."
"That's true enough," he nodded. "Still not enough reason to try our luck with a proxy war. They're nowhere close to any border of ours. Nor are our economies especially well-linked."
She blinked a couple times, like she hadn't been expecting that answer, then stared down into her cup for a few seconds in dejected silence.
"And if it was a country on our border? One of our own former territories?" she asked, still looking down.
He sighed. She could never leave well enough alone. A political revolution in the Ostrian Empire would be different and she knew it. Their southern neighbor was suffering the effects of separation comparatively worse.
"I can't say we wouldn't feel the need to declare for one side or the other," Lehrgen sighed, rubbing at one of his temples. "Though right now, the looming disagreement looks to be the Ostrian nationalists and the Ostrians waiting to rejoin our empires. No matter what anyone would like, that's not a debate we're allowed to have an opinion on."
"Right," was all she said back, before finally looking up. There was only one way to interpret the look on her face: Leave and let me finish my coffee in silence. He took that as his cue to go call Elya to report the same news. Undoubtedly, that conversation was going to be a far more pleasant one to have.
xXx
Feminine charm.
It was a difficult thing to put a finger on. Was it a matter of having a good figure? No one could say that Tanya didn't cut a fine silhouette. She dressed as impeccably as her coworkers, with the exception of wearing a belt instead of suspenders: trousers and a button-down that left room to move. It didn't make for a womanly figure, true. But an agreeable-looking one.
Did it have to do with a pretty face? Now that her skin had cleared back up, Tanya's wasn't bad. There weren't any obvious issues she needed to cover up with makeup or a distracting hairstyle. If you looked, she even had nice eyelashes.
If part of charm had to do with making those eyelashes flutter, that was where she would admit defeat. She'd tried in the mirror last night. Just to see if being born with two X chromosomes had magically gifted her the ability. It hadn't. Suffice to say, having a gnat fly into her eye while staring directly at the sun may have produced better results.
Was it looking coy? What did that even mean? Descriptions that subjective were useless.
Aghh, Tanya thought, placing her hands on the bathroom counter and hanging her head. It's impossible. I can't do it.
Her impression of the past had always been that creating and fulfilling unscientific stereotypes had been something of a recreational sport. Men were men and women were women. That's what her one grandfather had ranted on about that time her older cousin had gone through that phase where she used boku and sprinkled da everywhere. It went without saying that in that outdated model, men only wanted women and only wanted them to be ladylike. Tanya wasn't anyone's idea of a perfect lady. It wasn't something she had a mind to become, especially not for the sole purpose of attracting attention. Admittedly, in this one instance, it might be useful.
I have to do it, she told herself, looking back up. The other women in the office didn't know Visha. Nobody in their right mind would agree to go bat their eyelashes at some old man over a problem that didn't involve them.
She didn't need to be best friends with any of the typists. That didn't mean she wanted them to hate her. A colleague at her old job had jilted one of the admins. After that, he'd lived in one of the outer circles of hell. His lunch orders were always wrong. His mail came late. Documents sent to the printer went mysteriously missing. It had taken him a year to get his broken chair replaced. A year.
Being insulted when someone came by to say show a little leg to close the deal wasn't a matter of being male or female. It was a matter of self-respect. It was anyone's right to use that method of persuasion if they wanted to. Making it an obligation was, among other things, an HR nightmare. It was good she'd stopped Lehrgen's train of thought. She might have saved him from some nasty pranks.
Regardless, he was right about one thing: she couldn't compete as a woman. She'd have to do it as a girl. A child from before the era where children were told they could do anything they set their mind to. What a bullshit piece of advice. Helpless it would have to be.
There was no question that someone had to make an appeal for Visha. Lehrgen wouldn't have interrupted her morning two days ago if he could guarantee her swift return himself, so it would look bad if she refused to help. And let it never be said that she shirked her responsibilities.
If it weren't for Tanya, Visha never would have ended up imprisoned. That was a simple fact. She'd been stuck as the unlucky adjutant to the girl responsible for giving Zettour the idea for a quick-strike battalion. She was the only member of the 203rd who hadn't endured it voluntarily. Her choice had been forced, but technically, Tanya had picked the assignment.
Beyond that, Visha had been conscripted. That meant, like Tanya, she was a rational person without a death wish. A war maniac languishing in prison didn't deserve her effort. A victim of the Empire's policies had to be treated the same way Tanya would want for herself.
Lazy excuses like fair and unfair aside, keeping prisoners as a supplemental labor force guaranteed they weren't being used to their full potential. A prisoner would do the bare minimum required. Any talents or innovative ideas would go completely to waste. It was impossible to get anything but a substandard effort from people whose freedom had been taken from them.
Well, it's not like I can expect communists to understand the beauty of the free market, Tanya reminded herself, giving a firm nod to her reflection and leaving to go in search of the ambassador.
If logic couldn't convince the Federation to let go of all its prisoners, the next best objective was to have the most valuable ones released first. Compared to the average person, Visha had much more promise. Letting her human capital go to waste any longer was a travesty. If that could be corrected by acting the part of a teary-eyed little girl for a few minutes, any decision-making strategy would tell her it was a worthwhile tradeoff.
Tanya spotted the ambassador in the hall. With a deep breath, she fixed her goal in her mind and marched over.
"Mister Quevedo?" she asked, forcing her voice to sound bright and cheery.
"Yes, my dear?" he responded, turning around to face her.
Don't react, Tanya reminded herself. Undeniably, a willingness to introduce himself to a stranger that way while in a professional setting did not bode well for the rest of the conversation.
The man did a double-take when he turned around fully and saw her. Tanya did one of her own. She had to fight the urge to slap a hand over her face. Finding a willing member of the female staff to do this for her would not have been troublesome. Speaking strictly objectively, Quevedo was a handsome man. At this point, it would be awkward for her to back out.
"What's a girl as lovely as yourself doing in that outfit?" he mourned.
Tanya glanced down. Problematic would be the kindest thing to say about that statement. It would be equally problematic if she failed to hide her reaction. She'd hope that looking away came off as shy.
"They made me fight in the war," she said, curling in on herself like she was a tragic heroine scarred by the memories. She remained staring at the floor. Putting on this act with a straight face was impossible. "Now this is the only job I can get. I have to obey the military dress code as best I can."
"You poor thing," Quevedo crooned. Tanya winced at the tone. "I always knew Imperial men were clueless on how to treat a woman right."
Tanya took another deep breath. Maintaining the meek posture required more determination than flying into gunfire.
"I heard you might be able to help me make sure my friend gets back home soon," she said, finally lifting her head and smiling hopefully up at him.
"Your favorite handsome soldier was captured?" he asked, eyebrows dancing suggestively.
Tanya's eyes immediately went back to the floor. Do. Not. Hit. Him, she repeated to herself a few times, concentrating on a small stain in the rug. By nature, she wasn't a violent person. Still, she could only be asked to suffer through so many breaches of office etiquette in a row. And she'd thought concealing her feelings when particularly useless employees had broken down and cried in her office instead of waiting until they got home had been difficult. She'd handled restructuring, but it was quite evident that the man in front of her would end up with her colleague who dealt with sexual harassment lawsuits.
It was imperative that she kept her calm. He was basically just a harmless flirt. It would be years and years until that wasn't acceptable in a work environment anymore. He didn't realize he was doing anything wrong.
"She's my best friend," Tanya replied, keeping the innocent smile plastered on her face, the same one that was flushed with anger that might come off as an embarrassed blush if she was lucky. "Her name is Viktoriya Serebryakov. A girl as pretty as her would never have joined the Army if she weren't conscripted. It's cruel to let her remain in the Federation any longer."
More than anything, Tanya didn't like implying that Visha should be liberated for such a petty reason. Quevedo seemed like the romantic type. He probably loved imagining himself rescuing a damsel in distress.
"Viktoriya," he said, tapping his temple with a finger like it was going to help him remember. "I'll see what I can do."
With that, he reached out and patted her on the head.
This motherf-Tanya stopped herself before she grabbed his hand and used it to hurl him over her shoulder. Even if she'd turned up the childish charm, she was clearly a teenager, not a toddler.
She tried to smile in thanks, and then turned on her heel and made her feet trudge back to her office instead of turning around to give him a piece of her mind. Visha owed her. Big time. She'd signed up for a little acting like she'd done in the propaganda shoot. Not total humiliation.
xXx
The next time he saw the Ispagnan ambassador, Lehrgen breathed a sigh of relief that he'd been holding in for hours. Ernst had come running to mention he'd seen Degurechaff pull the other man aside. As Quevedo was not sporting a black eye in the aftermath, he could only assume the conversation had gone passably well.
Friday was the first truly nice day of the three preceding weeks. Berun had seen so much spring rain the Spree was near to spilling over its banks and flooding the grassy plain that the Staff Office sat on. By now, every shred of cloth in his house felt slightly damp. Finally, the clouds had cleared. He was eager to open every window and let the sun and breeze clear the air.
He stopped by Tanya's office on his way out to tell her that he was leaving early and remind her that she was free to do the same.
She had that morning's newspaper sticking out of her wastebin. Without thinking, he commented on the headline.
"Do they really think the Commonwealth will grant them independence so easily?" he asked, clicking his tongue.
It wasn't that he didn't sympathize with the Hindustani protestors. Violence against unarmed resistors made that near-to-impossible for anyone besides Degurechaff. Regardless, it was difficult to understand how it would achieve much of anything beyond relaxing certain draconian laws. If governments responded amenably to peaceful requests for territorial changes, there would be little need for wars.
"I'm not sure I'd call being beaten and jailed easy," she snorted.
"I meant-,"
"Without armed insurrection," she finished, nodding. "Could turn out to be surprisingly effective."
He made a frown of disagreement.
"Well, here's to hoping," she said, lifting her cup in a mock toast.
"You shouldn't drink coffee so late in the day," he admonished, letting some inane comment come out of his mouth while he tried to reconcile the fact that Tanya, Tanya Degurechaff, had very possibly just wished success to a nonviolence movement.
"It's tea, if you must know," she sniffed, turning it towards him so he could see it was the reddish color of any popular brand of fruit tea.
"Another victim then," he grinned.
If someone didn't know what to get him as a gift, always, it was fruit tea, like they'd assessed him as being an aficionado. Wrong. Completely wrong. For the past five years, a mystery package had come through the post on his birthday with an extra-large bag. Despite the lack of sender information, he was quite sure it was his brother's doing, a form of petty revenge after hearing one too many complaints. Harmless and annoying pranks were a trademark of Otto's. You'd never know that he was the elder of the two.
Tanya had raised an eyebrow at his statement.
"I somehow end up with bags of the stuff that I have to give away. Never had much of a sweet tooth," he explained. "Guess you don't know what that's like."
"It's a curse," she said, getting up and stretching. "Honestly, it is."
"Anyway," he began, feeling mentally prepared to undertake a more serious conversation after she'd jarred his thoughts so abruptly, "you...you support the Hindustani independence movement?"
She paused what she was doing, papers halfway into the drawer she was placing them into. Looked up at him and squinted her eyes like he'd said something suspicious. Took a deep breath tinged with exasperation and looked away while she closed and locked the drawer.
"Imperial policy supported national self-determination for our neighbors a few years back," she said evenly, back turned while she folded her rain jacket over one arm. "Should the same not be extended under current political circumstances?"
That was for the purpose of weakening the Federation, he thought, confused for a moment before her motive in bringing that up occurred to him. Of course. It was a smart extension of their short-lived support for Baltic nation-states. Much of the wealth and power of Europa's other empires came from their foreign colonies. Without those, their former enemies would be weakened. For that, Degurechaff could stomach siding with a pacifist.
Scary, he thought, glad she was turned away so she didn't see him shiver. Even when she takes the moral position, she's scary. Maybe more than normal.
Normally, she made her offensive views of the world known upfront. He didn't have to worry about entrapment. He'd made the right choice in blocking her attempts to meet anyone in a legal profession. She could turn any argument on its head. The nation's laws would be a mess after she was through with them.
Disagree, and he came out the unsympathetic one in the argument. Agree unreservedly, and it ended worse. Applied to current political circumstances more globally, or more locally, as it were, staunch support for national self-determination would mean one thing: upsetting their tentative peace by demanding the Empire be given the right to reassemble via international plebiscite.
Undoubtedly, many of the Empire's former territories would vote to become Imperial again. The educated classes would want independence, most definitely, from the Empire or from other powers. The average person likely valued the wealth and safety they'd enjoyed in the years prior to the war more than the names of their countries.
If Degurechaff walked her argument to the next logical step, she'd have him agreeing with her on what was, at best, a politically volatile topic. Talking to her without being on the defensive was akin to driving heedlessly through a field of landmines.
He cleared his throat, conscious of how long it had taken him to reply. "In theory, it's a noble aim," he said slowly, stepping backwards out her door and holding it open for her. "But it's not always a practical arrangement."
"How so?"
Degurechaff made him realize, and more often than he'd like to admit, why he'd heard more than one person claim to hate arguing with him. Somewhere around ten, he'd overheard it said between a tutor and his mother. Just the other week a general in one of the regional armies had said it right before he'd hung up the phone.
Naturally, they were both inclined to a semi-Socratic form of questioning, deceptively simple queries that forced the respondent to trot out claims ripe for refutation. It was a trait he'd had to work on correcting in casual conversation. Most of the time, he didn't intend to put anyone on the defensive. Having it turned on him like so made it obvious why it got under everyone's skin. He had yet to decide whether he appreciated the challenge or not.
"Efficient use of resources," he said, with an arrogant grin that would fit better on the face of the woman descending the stairs in front of him. There were no words harder to win against than one's own. "The Commonwealth's market access goes deeper and wider than any of their territories could achieve on their own."
"Largely because of artificial barriers to trade," she countered. "It would be disruptive to have to renegotiate terms with an independent Hindustan, true. But it's very possible to replicate the status quo if all parties are willing. And besides, that only counts material resources. The vast majority of the country is impoverished from constant resource extraction. The untapped human capital could be immense if it were utilized correctly."
Human...capital? Utilize? he thought, raising his glasses so he could rub at his eyes. Her creativity in applying mechanical terms to people couldn't be denied. At the same time...he thought, reaching up to run a hand through his hair and fix a piece that had fallen instead of blowing at it in annoyance like he wanted to. At the same time, valuing people the same way you would value a piece of machinery meant there was a mechanism through which she could be persuaded to assign value to some human lives under some circumstances, if you were willing to use her own backwards logic against her. It was a baseline he could work off of.
"You're probably right about that," he agreed mildly, squinting against the sun after he pulled the door to the building open. He could feel the self-righteousness radiating off of her as surely as he felt the heat of the late afternoon under several layers of uniform. "Still, there's hardly been a worse time for disruption to the world order than now. We're still recovering from the last one."
"Meaning that now's the time to press the advantage," she said, stopping next to him on the curb while he waited for his adjutant to bring a car around.
"For Hindustan, maybe. For us-,"
He paused at the sound of a honk. A handsome red car pulled up along the curb, the interior a rich cream. Apparently, the Ispagnan ambassador was fond of driving his showpiece himself and making sure everyone saw it.
Tanya gave a low whistle of appreciation. Out of the corner of his eye, Lehrgen saw his own ride trundle up behind.
"Viktoriya, yes?" the ambassador asked, tapping his head.
"Yes, sir. Thank you," Tanya replied, ducking her head appreciatively and then resuming her inspection of the vehicle. Soon enough, Lieutenant Sauer had joined so that he could get a look himself. Eager to be home, Lehrgen headed off towards his car. Ernst wouldn't leave him waiting long.
"I'm glad you like her," Quevedo commented. Lehrgen heard him pat the side of his car. "She's almost as pretty as you are."
Lehrgen stopped dead. His head whipped around in time to catch Tanya attempting to smile. It came out as more of a grimace, if she wanted his opinion.
"If you'd ever like to have a good time, I'd be more than happy to give you a ride," Quevedo continued, winking at her in a way that made it clear the comment was not about cars.
With that, the other man drove off, leaving the rest of them frozen in place. Tasteless joke or no, that wasn't something fit for the ears of a girl. Depending on your tolerance for being slapped, it wasn't particularly fit for the ears of adult women either. Definitively, it wasn't something you'd say to one of the Devil's henchmen, no matter that it was currently possessing a human-sized doll, without expecting some consequences. Over time, that theory was seeming less likely. It had yet to be entirely ruled out.
"Give me the keys," Tanya said peremptorily to Ernst, seething with rage and pointing towards where the offending party was stopped in traffic not far ahead.
Sensing that he was dealing with an apex predator who was out for blood, his adjutant immediately obeyed her request, and Tanya was shortly in possession of the keys to a heavy, reinforced, military-issue automobile.
"You don't have a license," Lehrgen got out, too late, imagining what level of destruction she would be capable of wreaking behind the wheel if she could manage to get the car going. The excuse might have seemed trivial, but Degurechaff was loathe to actually violate laws. She'd just skirt her way around them when possible.
"You don't need a license to hit people with your car," she snapped.
If he could sum up what was wrong with her thought process in one interaction, this would be it. In a technical sense, she had a point. Becoming a legally licensed driver wasn't a prerequisite for committing vehicular homicide. But there was just something fundamentally wrong with her way of thinking about how laws worked.
"We need him alive," he sighed, motioning for her to hand over the keys.
"Getting the last word by driving away," she muttered, staring down the street with jaw and fists clenched.
Getting the last word by making sure he can't say anything more isn't exactly fair either, Lehrgen grumbled to himself. He turned to tell her the same.
"Degurechaff…?" he questioned instead, more than slightly worried that the emotional swing was a sign of a psychotic breakdown. Giggles. He was watching her fight to contain giggles. It wasn't a word that belonged with her, but it was the only way he could describe what she was doing.
She waved him off. "It's nothing," she said, still laughing, "nothing, I just remembered where I – I can't believe I – it's hard to explain."
She finished the bout of laughter and dropped the keys into his hand.
He was too dumbfounded to care about an explanation. It was hardly the first strange reaction he'd seen out of her. Aimlessly, like the gravity beneath his feet was no longer trustworthy, he walked to the car and climbed in.
Cautiously, Ernst got in the driver's seat a second behind him. Neither spoke for a few minutes. Near to exiting central Berun, the other man cleared his throat.
"Do you...need a drink?" he ventured.
"More than anything," Lehrgen replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. What if there were more of her? echoed continually through his mind. Doomed. Ten years from now, the world was doomed.
"Me too," Ernst laughed, leaning his head down onto the steering wheel while they were stopped. There were days when Lehrgen felt bad about poisoning the younger man's mind with the same fears that infected his own. "Any preference?"
"Somewhere too loud to hear myself think," he replied promptly.
"It's early," Ernst said, looking down at his watch. "But it is a Friday. There's a good biergarten not so much further up past Hallesches Tor. It's on the canal."
"Do you know every bar in the city?"
"I'm sure I've missed one or two."
Lehrgen was self-conscious entering the establishment. He tugged at his collar. It marked him, singled him out from every other man in uniform so that he could never blend in with the crowd.
Already, the tables were near to being half-full. Anyone in the city who could find the time to spare had turned out. The seating along the canal was mostly taken in spite of the marshy ground underneath it. There were benefits to the advertisement his jacket made of his rank. Every group they passed huddled closer to indicate they could free up space if necessary.
Halfway through their perusal, Ernst stopped and crossed his arms. He looked up and down the waterfront. Glanced back up at the central patio every other second. Lehrgen gave an indulgent sigh. The tables sitting in the grass were conspicuously lacking the fairer half of the human population. The mud near the river wasn't kind to anyone not wearing sturdy boots.
And not so kind to those of us with them either, he remarked to himself, looking at his own pair. He could mistake them for their worn-out predecessors dragged through the ever-damp fields of Flanderin. He'd have to hand them off for polishing tomorrow.
He gestured to one of the less-crowded tables and the three men occupying it, working-class sorts who were themselves no stranger to dirt, shuffled to one end. The next few minutes he spent alone, while Ernst retrieved beer and food. A handy method of separating out foreign spies with perfect Germanian accents from citizens born-and-raised Imperial was a willingness to join the conversations of nearby strangers. As a member of the latter group, Lehrgen fiddled with his watch in the interim, putting it back ten minutes so that for once it was slow. It had only been ahead by eight.
Ernst returned with a double serving of maibock for each of them and half a roast chicken. The first order of business was accomplished as soon as the other man took his seat - downing one drink as fast as humanly possible. Finishing an entire beer in one long draft was a skill Lehrgen had never managed to learn, no matter how often older relatives, friends, or Rudersdorf had attempted to teach it to him. Ernst was done in a third of the time. Still, it was barely fifteen seconds later that his glass was turned over and the second one was in his hand.
"So," Lehrgen said, knocking a fist against his chest twice to release some excess carbonation, "you think Hindustan has any chance of gaining independence the way things are going?"
Ernst paused in the middle of separating the chicken to look up and pay back the indulgent sigh.
"Sir…" he said, resuming his knifework, "...can't we talk about something more interesting?"
Lehrgen raised an eyebrow. It hardly got more interesting than questions as expansive as this one. Political impact, emotional impact, philosophical considerations of rights and just governance, all with enough distance from their daily lives for academic debate.
"I'm not Degurechaff," Ernst objected.
Lehrgen felt a muscle in his forehead twitch. He put his beer down firmly. Before he could take issue with the implications of that statement, Ernst was waving his hands in front of himself apologetically.
"I only meant I can't say anything besides what's already been said in the papers. It won't be much of a debate. If you want to give a lecture, I don't mind, though," he said, with a smile and a shrug as he divided the food between them.
Lehrgen took out a cigarette. Lit it. Puffed a few times before throwing the pack and lighter across the table. He did not lecture. And he was quite sure he'd never mentioned to his adjutant that a few times it had run across his mind that in another life he might have made a good professor.
"You see the police got that killer in Dusseldorf?" Ernst asked, after taking a draw.
Lehrgen nodded.
"You think it's true? All the stories? Some of them seem…" he shuddered. "I don't know. Too extreme to be real."
Gruesome details and food did not a happy digestive system make. Unless you were a nurse or most men between the ages of nineteen and fifty, in which case there was little that could shock and appall enough to ruin a meal anymore. Instead of pushing his plate away like he might have done years past, Lehrgen shrugged, swung a leg over the side of the bench so he could watch the brisk flow of the river better, and continued eating.
"I don't know," he said, itching the side of his nose to prevent the inappropriate, if humorless, smile from being obvious. "Any time I read about the worse ways they executed people more than two, three hundred years ago, it seems a wonder we mostly stick to killing each other so cleanly."
Ernst gave a bark of laughter. With nothing more than a glance and a shrug between them, a decision was made. They drained their second drinks.
The ambassador's car, how and why the Americans had chosen to survive the last ten years without alcohol, the merits of the television set the office had purchased, those conversations devolved into which country made the next best beer, since the best was undoubtedly theirs, which country had the best girls, since it undoubtedly wasn't theirs, and on that note, which of their cities held the title in each category. Minna won handily on the first matter. Either Praga or Kopenhaven won out on the second, depending on if you counted only current Imperial territory or also included former.
Between each topic was a new glass of beer, and more often than not a new face. Ernst had a tendency to collect friends as the evening wore on. Partway through, when a smuggled-in bottle of liquor made its presence known, Lehrgen removed his jacket. Stuffed it under a leg. In a crowd of civilians, there were too many expectations attached to it. Expectations that he couldn't meet in the case that he ended the night respectably drunk. He deserved it, every once in a while.
Well on his way towards achieving a stupor capable of stealing the mind's ability to remember that such things as the future existed, let alone agonize over them, he felt a hand on him. It snuck up unsuspecting, took him by surprise, as much for the unexpected intrusion as for the maternal care in it. His reflexes were too slow. He had no chance to bat it away before it was combing errant strands of hair back into place.
His head tilted back further so he could see behind him, and the world spun for a moment. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking the culprit, the short, dark hair, the serious gaze in contrast to the mischievous smile. It fit better on her face now than it did twenty years ago, though he'd still hesitate to call it attractive.
"Marian," he greeted, trying to make room next to him.
She remained standing, peering down at him with her arms crossed. She was only two years his senior, and yet he couldn't remember a time when she hadn't treated him as a much, much younger brother.
"Your shoes are going to be an awful mess, you know," he told her, laughter coming easily to him.
"That's what a maid is for, dear," she replied, clucking her tongue like a mother hen at finding him in such a state. "I'm surprised to see you here."
"I could say a same."
"The same," she corrected him. "Work isn't far. Most of the big newspapers are a few streets up."
"You aren't in the city often."
"That is the point of being a traveling correspondent, you know," she said, finally sitting down. Without asking, she took his glass from him and finished it.
"Here long?"
She shook her head.
"No, no, off to Ostria in a few days. Should be back for Christmas, though. Then I'll write my final word on the harm the unification parties are doing to both our countries. I hope you aren't voting for them."
Adamantly, he shook his own head. "I always keep up with your articles," he mentioned.
"I should hope so," she drawled. "I am rather famous for them. Anyway, how's your brother?"
"Fine, fine," he began, turning inwards. "His youngest is - God, almost two by now. I'm glad you reminded me. I might've forgotten to write."
Silently, someone exchanged his empty glass for a full one while he lost himself in catching up with an old friend. Did it a second time half an hour later. She drank most of both. It cleared his head enough to make real conversation, which was a problem he'd have to rectify once she left.
"I do believe you're being summoned," she interrupted eventually, jerking her head towards the patio.
He turned to see Ernst waving at him. Near to shooing him off to have the evening to himself, Lehrgen recognized the woman standing next to him. She'd been a nurse stationed on the western front. One with a habit of sneaking off to find somewhere quiet to eat, same as he had. Given the dearth of options on a battlefield, they'd found solace in the same locations a handful of times.
He stole his drink back from Marian and took a long draft. In the end, everyone always preferred Ernst.
When he glanced back up, the younger man was still waving at him. Motioning him over, more like. He looked back at Marian, for all the world acting as though he needed her permission to leave his seat. Old habits weren't easy to break.
She shook her head like she was too disappointed for words. For all the ways in which she was forward-looking, she could be surprisingly old-fashioned. One way or another, he was only trying to make sure that he wasn't stuck trying to count sheep hopping the fence in order to fall asleep. The women who'd been with them deserved that reprieve as much as the men. And the year's most inopportune comment meant he'd more likely be seeing visions of blonde children stepping over bodies. Probably, Marian would tell the both of them to get their heads checked.
"Well, it's not like you're interested," he huffed.
She made a great show of rolling her eyes, then pushed one of his shoulders.
"Go," she said, with a forbearing smile. "I'll see you over Christmas."
xXx
A third drink is almost always a mistake, Tanya reminded herself, halfway through her fourth and regretting the decision. The third drink itself wasn't the problem. It was the all the ones that often followed once you'd failed to hold your ground at two. Allowing her anger to get the better of her and then accidentally letting slip a line quoted from the guiltiest of her former guilty pleasures didn't mean she intended on becoming one of the barely-employed, dysfunctional excuses for human beings that infested that manga. Ahh, Gintama, she thought, with a shake of her head. There were certain memories she would have been happier leaving in her first world.
She'd spaced her beers out properly. The first one might have gone more quickly than was wise, but whiling away time on a barstool wasn't a hobby of hers. Instead of going straight home, she'd wandered the extensive public gardens east of the General Staff Office. After that, it had only been occasional sips while she made dinner, tidied up her apartment, took a bath, finished a book.
And still, she was feeling the effects. There was no other explanation for the impractical ruminations that kept interrupting her effort to write a letter to Weiss now that she finally had something more worthwhile to bother him with than daily trivialities: Visha might be coming back to Berun.
Would she stay? Would she pick back up where she'd left off before the war like everyone else had? Would she keep as far away as she could from anything that reminded her of the worst years of her life? Frankly, Tanya wouldn't blame her. They weren't questions she could answer for her former adjutant. And really, the answers didn't matter. How someone else wanted to live their life wasn't any business of hers. Tanya had discharged her final duty as commanding officer. More than adequately, in fact. If there was any reason to hope that Visha stuck around, it was so that she could compensate for that by proving she had the knack for baking she'd made it sound like she did.
With a grunt of annoyance, Tanya poured the remainder of her beer down the sink. She'd had enough, and had spent enough time focusing on irrelevant details. She was going to finish her letter, go to bed, then check it in the morning to make sure her diction didn't show the same obvious signs of inebriation as her thought processes.
Which maybe is annoying, but hey, it's sorta fun to get to include.