Leaving the City

December 488 I.C., Odin

The apartment Evangeline Mittermeyer shared with her husband was not large or ostentatious— in fact, it was smaller and cheaper than the lodgings of probably any other rear admiral in the Imperial fleet— but it was home. The walls held photographs of friends and family, interspersed with paintings that Eva herself had made, or that she found particularly pleasing. The wooden floors were warmed by colorful woven rugs, and every afternoon she would make her rounds watering the flowering plants that hung in macrame bowls near the windows. Even though her husband was often away, she tried to make the place a haven, one where she never felt lonely . Her home was cheerful and warm, and if she ever needed, she could call on any number of friends to visit.

Most of the time, this worked. Or she pretended it worked, which would have to be enough.

But now, as December closed in on Odin, that last comfort seemed to have fallen away. It had been ebbing ever since her husband had been sent off on his most recent duty— out to an experimental starship construction facility. It was somewhere that she couldn’t locate on a map no matter how many times Wolf pointed out to her the star in the night sky that it orbited. Her sense of peace had throbbed keenly when the Kaiser died, and Hank had left the planet with only a text message of warning. Maggie departed the capital city not long after, headed for a countryside retreat.

But now none of that sense of calm remained. Eva had clung to normalcy as much as she could, but it had slipped out of her grip at last.

She stood at the window and anxiously pulled back the curtains with one hand, looking up into the night. Flakes of snow were drifting down, but even through the thin cloud cover, bright flashes of light illuminated the horizon and sky above— a battle that was raging right up to the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Odin’s surface defensive guns were shooting at Marquis Littenheim’s ships as they descended towards the city. Even at this great distance, even through the thick glass of her window, Eva could smell the harsh ozone created by the guns blasting through the air.

Her other hand clutched at her tablet, and she kept waking up the screen with her thumb every time it went dim. It was open to her messages, and one long message from her husband in particular.

The beginning half of the letter was a response to Lieutenant Kircheis, telling Eva to reassure him that the coded message she had helped pass was understood, and that he was going to act on it. The second half of the letter was personal. Although Eva tended to read his letters many times in general, this one had not left her hand since she received it, and she kept looking at it over and over, trying to divine its meaning.

Eva, I know I’ve said it a hundred million times before, but I can’t tell you how much you mean to me. If I had a way with words like Leigh does, I’d figure some way out to write it down. Maybe you’re like the stars in the sky, or I need you like I need to breathe, or something like that. I’m not a poet, and maybe that’s why I’m a soldier. Even when I’m trapped out here tinkering with machines, pretending not to be a soldier for a while, I don’t have to think too much about the heart and the things it does. That’s good, because if I think about it too much, I start missing you more than I can bear.

I know I can bear it, but I don’t want to have to. It’s hard not to know when I’ll get to see you again. I hope this little war is over quickly, and Leigh does too, but there’s no way for me to say for sure if it will be. That’s what makes it difficult— not knowing when we’ll get out the other side.

I keep thinking about this conversation I had with Reuenthal before Leigh’s wedding. We were talking about what things would be like after all of this. Back then, I told him that I didn’t know what life would look like. I couldn’t picture it, and I just wanted to be happy. But I think I’ve figured it out, what I want. It’s the kind of thing I always dream of when I’m out in space, but I think it’s worse this time because I’m by myself— it makes me see things differently.

I know if Leigh was reading this letter he’d be sighing and giving me that funny little smile he has— I’ve had this conversation with him more times than I can really count, and I don’t know how he stays patient with me. It’s what I talked about with him when I ran away to stay at his house after proposing to you— do you remember that? It felt like the right thing to do at the time, but in hindsight I know it must have made me look stupid. Mom later said it must have just been that I stomped all my nerves down so that I could go through with asking, and then as soon as the pressure stopped holding them in, they exploded, regardless of you saying yes. That wasn’t it, but it makes more sense than what it was that made me run away.

I think I need to stop doing this. I’ve tried— gods know I’ve tried— before, but I’ve never managed to do it. Maybe that’s because I’m always having this conversation with Leigh instead of with you. When I get home, when all this is over, I should talk about it with you.

I don’t think it will be too long until then. This war can’t last very long, and Leigh is going to win, and then— it can be a different world we live in. Leigh’s dreaming of something too— he wants to sue for peace with the rebels. Maybe then us soldiers will be out of a job. That might be a good thing.

Please stay safe on Odin. If Leigh’s little lieutenant tells you to do something— do it. Or Reuenthal. I know he can be difficult, but he would help you if you needed help.

I love you so much, forever and always,

Your Wolf

The letter felt like the direst possible portent. It had always seemed like bad luck, as a soldier’s wife, to ever discuss anything but the most mundane things that would happen “after” a deployment. She never wanted to make a promise that could be broken by fate, and it seemed unbelievably cruel to make her wait for whatever he wanted to talk about, to bring up the subject and leave her with the responsibility of holding its weight.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know. She knew.

At least, she knew the shape of it, off in the distance, like a shadow on the wall. She couldn’t see what was casting it, but she knew it was there. When she had become aware of it, she couldn’t quite say. Had it been since before she had been married? Yes, probably.

She had read it in his eyes the day he proposed to her. That warm, bright May day, five years ago, standing in the garden behind the house. He had been so afraid— not afraid of her, but afraid of himself. His hands shook when he held out the flowers to her, and he asked to marry her like he was asking for forgiveness.

On the night of Maggie and Hank’s wedding, having been reminded of the subject by the events of the day, she had felt bold enough to ask him about that. They had come home exhausted and a little drunk, falling onto the couch in a tangle of limbs, still in their party clothes. The rain had been beating down at the window that night.

“Did you enjoy the wedding?” Wolf asked her as she lay on his lap, looking up into his eyes. He should have tried to get her dress off, but both of them were too tired to move, yet too awake to make their way to bed. It was a strange mood that gripped her.

“I did,” she said. “I’m so happy for them.”

Wolf smiled— funny— the melancholy coming out when tiredness allowed it. “They’re a good match. It took them long enough.”

“Maybe they were right to wait until now, and you were in a rush,” she said with an answering smile. She reached up one lazy hand and brushed her fingers through his hair.

“Maybe.”

“I would have waited for you, you know,” she said. “You were so nervous that day you asked me. You didn’t have to be.”

“If I hadn’t gotten my courage up then, I’m not sure I ever would have.”

“Mmm.” She let her arm fall back down, and picked up his hand, heavy and warm. She kissed his knuckles, then held it to her chest. “I don’t understand why you were so afraid. Didn’t you know I would say yes?”

He was quiet for a long time, which was unusual for him. Only the movement of his thumb on her hand made it clear that he hadn’t fallen asleep right where he sat. “I was afraid because I knew that,” he said.

“That’s very silly, Wolf.” She kissed his hand again.

“No— I—”

She waited, squeezing his fingers gently.

“It seemed like I wasn’t giving you a real choice,” he said. “I knew you would say yes— that made me feel bad for asking.”

She splayed out his fingers and pressed his hand to her cheek. “I said yes because I love you, and wanted to marry you,” she said. “I had already made my choice, and I was glad to do it.”

That had been the end of the conversation, but it had stuck with her since, and came back to her now as she stared out at Littenheim’s ships descending through the sky.

Wolf’s secrets— she loved him enough that she was willing to ignore that lurking it in the corner of her life. It sometimes seemed like he was taking refuge in her arms from it , and there was a part of her that was pleased to feel like she could provide that, some shelter from whatever storm was chasing him.

She tried not to think about what it was, though she had her suspicions. Hank clearly knew, and so did Wolf’s friend Reuenthal. She couldn’t blame them for keeping his confidence— though Hank, especially, was apologetic whenever the subject slid sideways into their conversations. Even Reuenthal was frustrated with whatever Wolf’s secret shame was. She recalled his annoyance when they had spoken at the Solstice party the previous December: “You should tell your husband to stop keeping secrets.”

Eva had this fantasy, or nightmare, about what the secret was— trying to fit all the clues together in her mind, or perhaps just dreaming of the thing that lived exactly on the edge of desire and misery. Maybe, she thought, he didn’t tell her the secret because it would make her too sad— the one thing she desperately wanted but could not give. Perhaps Wolf, as a boy in school, had fathered a child with some other woman, one that his friends knew about.

She sometimes pictured this child in her mind— always imagining a little girl. She might be ten now, looking just like her father— blonde hair pulled by the wind’s fingers when she ran, laughing, into some woman’s arms. The image made her weep, when it came to her strongly. Not so much out of jealousy, for this piece of her husband that some other woman had, but for the ten years she, too, might have known that child and loved her. She would have loved her as her own, Eva thought. She could have. There was no vindictive bone in her body; she felt entirely suffused with love, so much so that it wounded her, having nowhere to put it and no one to give it to.

Eva was not a very religious woman, but on holidays when she might go to the temple, she’d sometimes look up at the statue of the goddess Freyja and think a silent prayer for the health of the child. That was all she did— she never mentioned it to Wolf.

She said one of those prayers now, watching the ships come down. They were through the clouds now— the first dark underbellies sinking through the sky, looking for any patch of open ground to land on. They weren’t headed towards the airfield— she could see them descending over the great park in the center of the capital city, and anywhere else that one of their bulks could fit. In hours, if not minutes, there would be soldiers in the streets.

Hours before, she had seen tanks trundle down the road, setting up blockades to protect important buildings, traps on the bridges, and barriers on the streets. Watching all this happen, Eva knew that she should have taken Lieutenant Kircheis’s advice and left the city days ago, but something had stopped her. She had told him that she would wait. She was hoping that Wolf would send her another message, but he didn’t, and now it was too late. There would likely be no more communication with anyone for a while, and Wolf was probably already on his way to Iserlohn.

She had, at least, packed her bag, so she was ready when she heard the quiet knock on her door, though it still made her jump. She reluctantly dropped the curtain back down and went to open the door. There was Lieutenant Kircheis, smiling wanly down at her— he really was so tall.

“Good evening, Frau Mittermeyer,” he said. “May I come in?”

“If you’re here to tell me it’s time to leave, I packed my bag,” she said, but she held out the door so that he could step inside her apartment. Although he had been here before, checking up on her for Hank and her husband, he still moved himself very delicately, as if aware of his size and not wanting to break anything in her space. Eva wished she could see the apartment with his eyes instead of her own— a stranger’s place, rather than a home that she did not want to leave.

“I’m afraid that we can’t leave the capital today,” Kircheis said. “The roads are all blocked.”

She half pretended not to hear him. “Can I offer you some tea?” she asked.

“No, thank you, Frau Mittermeyer. We should get moving. This won’t be easier if we wait.”

“Where are you taking me, if we can’t leave the city?”

“We can’t leave by road, but we should be able to get out on foot in a few days. I arranged for Fraulein Mariendorf to meet us with a car outside the city,” Kircheis said. “Until then, we’ll wait in one of the safehouses that the Braunschweig family had prepared— it has a basement, in case there are bombings.”

“We can drive there?”

“Partway,” Kircheis said. “We’ll probably have to leave the car somewhere when we get close to the city limits— I saw that the traffic from people trying to leave on the highways has blocked up into the main streets. Nobody can get out, but nobody can turn around either.”

“Alright.” She said that as if it was somehow alright. It wasn’t at all. Kircheis seemed calm, and she tried to be calm as well, but she wasn’t used to this. She wanted Wolf with her, not this boy, even if the boy was someone that Hank trusted.

She disappeared into her bedroom for a minute, leaving Kircheis standing in the middle of her living room with his hands behind his back. Distantly, from far off in the city, there was a bone-groaning deep boom, one that made the windows rattle in their frames. When she came back into the living room, bag in hand, she found Kircheis looking out the window, in the same posture that she had been in earlier.

“What was that?” she asked.

“A ship went down,” Kirchesis said. He pointed to the horizon, where there was the glow of a fire burning in unnatural greens and purples, and the beginnings of a pillar of black smoke beginning to form. She looked at it, and Kircheis must have seen her tremble, or give some other sign of fear, because he said, “It’s alright, Frau Mittermeyer. I’ve got you. But we should go.”

“Yes, right.” She pulled on her coat. “Is there anything—” She looked around the apartment in despair, turning in a circle and looking at it all like she would never see it again. Her hands twitched out towards things, as if to grab them, but there was nothing else she could bring. The plants in their macrame bowls would wilt and die when she left.

“If you need something later, I can get it for you,” Kircheis said.

“Alright,” she said. “Alright.”

She took her keys from the side of the fridge, and shut off all the lights and locked the doors. When they were in the hallway, there was another boom, louder, closer, but they couldn’t see it. Kircheis took her elbow and steered her out of the apartment, down towards the parking garage.

They took her car, but Kircheis drove. He seemed to have knowledge of what streets were blocked and which were passable, because he took a circuitous route, weaving down side streets and moving in a great circle around the edge of the city. As they passed beneath the highway overpass which headed towards the river bridge, Eva could see above them the stalled line of car headlights, tracing the line of the bridge even though the decorative lights it usually bore were off. Some dark shadows walked along the edge of the bridge, both directions, fleeing for safety or changing their minds. In the center of the city, the roads had been almost deserted, and no lights were on in the windows, but as they got further towards the edge, Kircheis was right that the roads filled more and more, people disobeying any traffic laws and going wherever their cars would take them.

Kircheis was headed in a northerly direction. North— there were smaller bridge crossings many kilometers away, ones that might not be blocked with cars. But the highway there was inaccessible, and eventually Kircheis gave up on driving. He pulled her car to a park— a little place Eva had never been before, with the children’s swingset off in the distance, and the bare trees huddled against the snow. He hopped the curb, which made her yelp, and parked her car in a drift of snow beneath an old barren oak.

“Maybe no one will hit it, if it’s not on the street,” he said, and then handed her the keys.

“Alright.” It seemed like the only thing that she could say.

“It’s about four kilometers from here. Can you make it that far?”

“Yes.” She had put on boots, at least, and that made the going on the slick road easier. She walked pressed to the buildings, and Kircheis stood between her and the road, where the barely illuminated forms of car drivers menaced the few pedestrians who hurried through the line of barely moving cars.

Behind them, the sounds of the fighting had grown fiercer, and now a fine ash was mingling in with the snow that fell. Kircheis gave her his scarf, to pull over her nose when he noticed it accumulating as a crust on the freshly fallen snow on railings and the tops of garbage cans. She thought of protesting, and saying that he should have it, but she knew he wouldn’t allow her to do so.

“You aren’t afraid,” she said as they walked. Maybe conversation would keep her mind off the terror at the back of her head.

“I’ve done this before, Frau Mittermeyer,” Kircheis said.

“When?”

“When Commodore Leigh rescued Count Mariendorf from Lord Castrop. When the Imperial fleet landed on Castrop’s planet, it was—” He cut himself off and said nothing more.

Above them, a ship that had been hit by planetary fire and was half destroyed but still somehow fighting for a place in the air, came close enough to them that if the buildings around them had been any taller, it would have knocked their tips off. Its engines lit the scene with a devil’s furnace glow, casting wild shadows in its bright orange light for the moment that it was overhead, before it disappeared over the buildings. They could still hear it after it was out of sight, a creaking and keening sound of its structure fighting the wind and gravity.

“Does your family live in the capital?” Eva asked.

“No,” Kircheis said. “A couple districts away.They’ll be safe. Littenheim doesn’t have enough of an army to occupy much other than this city.”

“That’s good.”

They kept walking. The ship that had flown above them crashed in the distance, though the tearing of metal as it hit the ground was audible from kilometers away. Any screaming that might have accompanied it was swallowed by the distance. Cars around them tried to turn and head the other direction, but none could go anywhere, and one by one they began to open their doors, disgorging panicked pedestrians onto the streets. Kircheis grabbed Eva’s arm, and they picked up the pace, moving quickly enough that Eva didn’t have breath for conversation, or focus for anything other than keeping her feet in front of herself. She had no idea where she was.

Kircheis held her arm gently with his right hand, but produced a gun and held it with his left. Eva almost didn’t notice— he kept his arm at his side— but when they turned a corner she saw him move his arm just enough for it to catch the light, and recognized the gleam of the metal. Was he left handed?

They came to a nondescript looking warehouse in between two different car repair places. It could have belonged to either business, but it seemed to belong to neither. Kircheis looked all around, pulled her through an alley, then opened the back door with a combination on a pad. The door buzzed open, and they entered. It smelled industrial, like old greasy metal, and all the lights were off— only what light came in through the skylights illuminated the scene. There were crates and boxes, all closed, and some vehicles— cars, though some motorbikes, too, and a truck without a trailer.

Kircheis didn’t relax, even though they had made it to their destination. He led her down a set of stairs into a basement area, which was well lit, and had people in it. There were a few that Evangeline didn’t recognize, all men with the look of soldiers, though none were in uniform. They stood around or sat on the couch against the wall. Only one face was familiar to her.

Evangeline never thought she would be happy to see Rear Admiral Reuenthal, but she couldn’t deny that the relief she felt was real. He was sitting at a table in the corner, a military radio at his elbow spitting out garbled and incomprehensible updates, while he looked at a paper map of the city. A sheet of plastic was laid on top of it, and he drew lines on that with a marker. He didn’t acknowledge her and Kircheis at all, except to look up at them briefly and then back down at the map.

“Make yourself at home,” Kircheis said. “There’s food over there, and the bathrooms, and—” He pointed over to the back corner of the basement, where there were some cots set up. Flimsy privacy curtains stood against the walls, and would need to be moved into place. “These are some of the rest of Duke Braunschweig’s staff who stayed on the planet, and some of Rear Admiral Reuenthal’s men. I’ll introduce you.”

Eva nodded mutely and let Kircheis show her around so that she could say hello. Most of the men didn’t care about her one way or the other, and they went back to their own business as soon as she took a seat on one of the cots in the back of the room. She clutched her single bag of possessions to her chest and watched the men as they talked in quiet voices and listened to the radio. Occasionally the ground rumbled as something happened outside, making her flinch each time. Kircheis occasionally glanced over at her with some concern, but she busied herself with looking at her tablet, reading the letter from Wolf over again.

Over the course of the evening, the men who had been in the place trickled out, either sent out by Reuenthal or going on their own errands and business. She didn’t know if they’d be back— none of them announced their departure. A silence interrupted only by the radio fell over their little hideout. Kircheis kept trying to make a phone call, but either the reception was too bad in the basement, or the lines were dead. He gave a short explanation that he was going out to see if he could get through, and then left.

It was then just Eva and Reuenthal. The space suddenly felt like a set on a stage— it was the lighting that did it, she thought.

“Is Fraulein Kohlraush with her family?” Eva asked, breaking the silence. Reuenthal’s marker squeaked across the map in front of him.

“No,” he said. “She’s in the same safe house you’re going to, with Countess Leigh.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

Reuenthal said nothing else, but after a minute got up and poured some coffee from the pot on the counter. He poured two mugs and brought one to her. She had to put down her tablet to take it, and he saw what she was looking at— the long message from Wolf. He couldn’t possibly have read any of the words, standing above her as he was, but he could guess at the sender.

“Lieutenant Kircheis told me that Mittermeyer is on his way to Iserlohn,” Reuenthal said. “You understood that from whatever letter he sent?”

“I did,” she said. “It was your plan for him to go?”

Reuenthal gave a half nod— confirmation, but not asking for too much credit.

“Why didn’t you write to him?”

“I broke myself of the bad habit of putting important information in my letters years ago,” Reuenthal said. “Anything I wrote would be read far more closely than a letter from his wife.”

“Oh,” she said. “I see.”

The words seemed hard for him to get out. “I appreciate your assistance in sending the message.”

“I’m—” She wasn’t exactly happy to help send her husband into danger. “He’s glad to have some way to help Hank.”

Reuenthal turned and took a few steps away, though he didn’t leave. He held his coffee with two hands and surveyed the large basement, with its warm yellow light. “Any of us would be glad for the opportunity to do the same.”

“Are you planning something here?”

Reuenthal made a dismissive noise. “Not at the moment.”

They were both quiet for a second. Eva looked over at her tablet again, at the stark black and white text of Wolf’s letter. “May I ask you a personal question, Herr Reuenthal?”

“If you must.”

She looked down into her cup of coffee. “Has Wolf ever talked to you about children?”

Overhead, the roar of some ship flying past. “Once,” Reuenthal said. “When we were students.” His voice was painfully cold— it almost made Eva lose her courage entirely. “You aren’t pregnant, are you? This is a bad time.”

“I—” Her voice broke at how desperately she wished she was. “No.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t want to pry into— he said in his letter that he needed to talk to me about something when he gets back— and I just wanted to know—”

“May I see what he said?” Reuenthal’s voice was still very cold, but she didn’t see much reason to refuse.

“Here,” she said, and held out the tablet towards him. He turned around to take it, and his face was completely still and expressionless as he read it over. He handed it back to her when he was done.

“And you think he wants to talk to you about children? He wants that now?”

“He’s always wanted to have children with me,” she said. “But I—” Her free hand touched her stomach; Reuenthal watched her dispassionately. When she had gathered herself, she said, “But you know his secret.”

Reuenthal turned away again. “Do you hate me for that?”

“No— of course not. How could I?”

He laughed. ”It would be very easy.”

“I couldn’t hate him for having a secret. And I value the friendship that he has with you. I wouldn’t want to…” She trailed off.

“And will you ask me to tell you?”

“No.” She wondered if he would— it seemed like he might.

“Then why are you asking me about any of this? What do you think his secret is?”

“I thought he might have a child somewhere, from before he married me.”

Reuenthal laughed— a hard and miserable sound. “No. There’s no child. No other woman.”

She had been foolish. She had always known that she was, of course. But Reuenthal’s cold voice broke apart the image she had held in her heart for years— the happy, dancing girl with Wolf’s eyes. “Oh,” she said.

“Was that all, Frau Mittermeyer?”

“Do you hate me?” she asked.

They were both spared the pain of him answering— Kircheis opened the basement door and came back down. “I let Fraulein Mariendorf know you’re safe,” he said to Eva. “We’ll go to her cousin’s estate in a few days.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Kircheis,” Eva said, trying to keep the tears out of her voice.

The little blonde girl still felt real in her dreams.

Eva stayed in the underground room for several days. She heard reports come in from the soldiers that snuck in and out, and from what crackly things sounded over the radio. She occasionally looked at the careful map that Reuenthal was keeping of the movements of troops within the city, watching as Littenheim’s forces progressed inexorably towards Neue Sanssouci. She didn’t know how Reuenthal could look at them so dispassionately— every street they passed through seemed to her to be someone’s home.

But they were nowhere near this part of the city; Neue Sanssouci was in the other direction completely. No soldiers stomped down their streets, and when Eva emerged to get some air, the sounds of fighting were so far away, only the loudest canon-blasts made it through the air.

They waited until it seemed like the majority of the flight out of the city was done, and then Kircheis and Eva took one of the little electric scooters from the upstairs warehouse area, and drove it through the streets. Some of them were blocked with abandoned cars, some with hastily constructed barricades that Eva thought couldn’t stop a tank. Once on the drive, Kircheis made a rare miscalculation, and brought them right up to the side of a downed ship— its center half cratered out, that had crashed through four or five buildings on its way down. It towered above them, like a dead giant, and Eva looked up at it as Kircheis hastily reversed their bike and drove away. The air was heavy with acrid smoke that seemed to come from all directions.

The highway, once they had made it out of the city proper, was in no better state. Cars that had been stuck in traffic and then abandoned littered the sides of the highway in droves, and there were places where it seemed like the road had been fired upon by ships passing overhead. Several of the bridges had been destroyed, and to cross to the other side, they had to drive many kilometers north, so far that Eva was surprised that the battery on their scooter took them that far. The roads got clearer and clearer as they went, and Eva was almost ashamed at the relief she felt about that.

It turned out that Hildegarde von Mariendorf herself was the one who came to pick Eva up— she had expected it would only be a driver. But it was the cheerful young woman in men’s clothes, whom Eva had met several times in the past, trailing after Hank at some function or another, who waited near a pickup truck in a pulloff on the highway.

Eva sat in the truck’s cab for a while as Hilde and Kircheis had a long conversation. Eva couldn’t really hear it. When Hilde climbed back in and started the truck, she looked out the rearview mirror at Kircheis driving away on the scooter, back the way he had come. Seeing him alone, he looked comically oversized on it.

“What were you talking to Lieutenant Kircheis about?” Eva asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Hilde said. She sounded almost embarrassed. “I was just wondering if I could come stay with him in the capital— I hate being out in the country.”

“Why?”

“I want to be helpful,” she said. Then she heaved a sigh as she pulled the truck out onto the road. “But Sieg says there’s nothing to do anyway, so I should wait until there is.”

“He seems like a good man.”

“Well, of course,” Hilde said, seemingly baffled by the comment.

It was a long drive, and they spoke for much of it, even if it wasn’t about anything important. Hilde talked about how, despite the interruption to her studies the civil war represented, she was trying to continue to educate herself about law, and every other subject in the universe, so that she could be helpful to Kaiserin Elizabeth. Eva was quite happy to just listen to Hilde describe the world— she had a matter-of-fact way of putting things that Eva found endearing, and it kept Eva’s mind off of her own life.

The countryside estate that they came to was shrouded in snow, and the truck had to struggle up a narrow packed-snow path to get up to the front. It was a beautiful, rich house, and it sparkled in the snow. Although at this point Eva had visited the homes of several noble families, it still seemed strange to think of herself living in such a place.

Hilde brought her inside and introduced her to her cousin— a very frail young man who rarely left his bed. The baron seemed tired, so their greetings were quite perfunctory, but there would be plenty of time to get to know each other later.

Before Eva could be shown her room, a force of nature descended upon her. Magdalena had been waiting outside Baron Kummel’s bedroom, and she pounced on Eva as soon as she stepped back out into the hallway.

“Eva! Darling!” Magdalena cried.

Hilde seemed quite used to Maggie’s fits of passion, and scooted out of the way, vanishing down the hallway as Magdalena draped herself across Eva in a hug. She kissed both Eva’s cheeks.

“Hi, Maggie,” Eva said. “You seem well.”

“Oh, as well as I can be without you, or even my husband to distract me.” She laughed, and, without taking her hands off Eva, looked her up and down. “Forgive me for being honestly sentimental, but I’m so glad you’re here. I was under the impression that you would go and stay with Wolf’s parents.”

“I— well— I would rather be here. I wouldn’t get news of how Wolf is doing if I’m not in contact with—” She wiggled her head to encompass this whole circle.

“And here I thought it might be because you missed me! How silly I am.” But Maggie was smiling, all sins forgiven.

“Of course I missed you,” Eva said. “I don’t know why you left the capital so soon.”

“Darling, the whole court has moved to the countryside, and I, sadly, am a slave to trends.”

“Ah.”

“Come on, let’s sit down. You have to tell me everything that’s been going on. I’m afraid I don’t get as much news out here as I’d like. Nothing gets to me unless it goes through little Hilde, and before that, it has to go through little Siegfried, and before that, who knows where it comes from?”

“I don’t know,” Eva said. The torrent of words from Maggie, after so long without being exposed to her vivaciousness, left Eva slightly overwhelmed. Maggie dragged her down the hallway and sat her on a couch in some roomy parlor. The huge windows let in the wan wintery light, though it sparkled off the snow and cheered the scene.

Maggie listened with rapt attention to Eva describing her flight from the capital city, and the little basement room where Reuenthal and Kircheis had their headquarters. They sat side by side on the couch, knees together, Eva squinting into the outside light to see Maggie’s face.

“And how is Oskar?” Maggie asked.

“I don’t know,” Eva said. “His, er, Fraulein Kohlrausch is here, isn’t she?”

“She’s here, ” Maggie said, somewhat evasively. “She’ll be around. She’s avoiding me.”

“Why?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Maggie said. “Ancient history. We used to be friends, of a sort.”

“But you’re not anymore?”

“Darling, it’s been a long time since I was a schoolgirl ! Things have changed!”

“Alright,” Eva said, though the question didn’t exactly leave her mind.

“And is Neue Sansoucci holding out?” Maggie asked, switching the topic, though Eva thought the edge in her voice was more than just evasiveness.

“For now,” Eva said. “But Herr Reuenthal said that it was only a matter of time, and that the prime minister is already somewhere else.”

Magdalena’s face twitched, but she covered it up. “Oh, is he? And Erwin Josef?”

“I don’t know— I assume he’d be with him.”

“Right, of course you wouldn’t have any way of knowing.” Magdalena gave her a smile.

“Are you hoping Lichtenlade will win?” Eva asked. “Even though Hank works for Duke Braunschweig?”

“Oh, no, of course not! He’s an odious old man— I’ll be pleased to never see him again.”

“You seem upset.” When Maggie’s face lost its composure momentarily, Eva hastily tacked on, “I don’t want to upset you, or pry, or—”

“No, you’re not. Darling, when have I ever been anything other than honest with you?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

Maggie laughed. “You’re very kind to pretend to have forgotten my scandal,” she said. Almost hesitantly, Maggie reached across their laps and picked up Eva’s hand. Eva let her do it— even though she perhaps shouldn’t. She could continue to pretend that this was just Maggie and her usual exuberance. After all— that was a wedding ring on her finger. “We never did talk about it, you and I, did we?”

“I don’t want to bring up things that upset you.”

“It doesn’t upset me.” She pressed Eva’s hand to her chin, not her lips. “Erwin Josef’s mother was my lover— you know that.”

“Yes,” Eva said, somewhat faintly.

“I still think about her.” She tipped her head, pressing her cheek to Eva’s hand, clasped in her own. Her face was warm and soft. “I’m told she’s safe, on the other side of the galaxy somewhere. That she even knows I still think of her.”

“Oh,” Eva said.

“When Hank was on that stupid planet—”

“Castrop’s planet?”

“No, Cahokia.”

“I had forgotten about that one.”

“He sent a message to her.” Maggie laughed a little. “One of the soldiers there passed it along— he told me the story of how that all happened, but I’ve forgotten it.”

Eva nodded, and Maggie was silent for a second.

“Ingrid— I wish I could do something for her son,” Maggie said. “That’s all. He’s probably—” She couldn’t bring herself to say that he was going to die; Eva could hear it in her voice.

“I hope not.”

“Well, that’s the court, darling,” Maggie said. She abruptly released Eva’s hand and sat up straight. “But there’s nothing I can do.” Maggie craned her neck behind herself to look out the window. Her hands played with the fabric of her skirt, twisting it up. Eva looked at her and felt a rush of warmth.

Tentatively, she put her hand on Maggie’s. “It’s kind of you,” she said.

“What is?” Maggie asked. Her voice was strained, and she didn’t look away from the window.

“To feel compassion for another woman’s son,” she said.