A Final Temptation; The Night on the Mount; Judas's Confession; Peter and the Cock's Crow; & The Preparation of a Grave

March 489 I.C., Odin

On one of the warmer days in early March, Kircheis and Hilde were out collecting water from the trucks that Littenheim sent around the city. Water was one of the few bare necessities that Littenheim managed to get together for the embattled civilians who remained in the capital. In theory, food was also being distributed, but in practice it went only to those loyal to Littenheim, and anyone without connections had no hope of getting any unless they began stealing it, as Martin’s group had. Hilde and Kircheis’s trip to the water truck served two purposes. First, they needed water to live. But while Kircheis filled their big plastic jugs at the tap, Hilde performed mental calculus about how much they would need to empty from the huge tank’s reservoir, in order to put in enough zephyr gas to make a powerful explosion. It might take too long to empty it to be worth sabotaging one or more of these trucks for their plans.

While Kircheis held his plastic jugs one by one beneath the gushing spigot, watched like a hawk by the soldier guarding the truck, Hilde walked around to the other side and leaned against the tank. She pretended to be nonchalant, but she had her ear pressed to the side of the tank. Though she rapped her knuckles against the metal in some approximation of a rhythm, pretending to amuse herself with the musical noises it made, she was estimating how much water was left in the tank at the beginning and end of its daily run, and trying to take guesses at the gauge of steel that made up the pressure vessel.

When Kircheis had filled all his containers and loaded them into their rickety shopping cart, they began making their way back to his apartment. Although they would have preferred to walk on the sidewalk and have at least one side covered by the buildings, the shopping cart forced them into the street. The sidewalks were piled so high with garbage— months worth— that it was impossible for anyone to walk on them except in single file, stepping on debris. The centers of the roads were clearer. There were few cars that went by, but whenever one came roaring past, Kircheis and Hilde both shoved the cart hastily to the side of the road to avoid getting hit.

As they walked, Kircheis became aware that there was someone on the other side of the street, barely visible on the sidewalk behind the pile of garbage, matching them step for step.

“We have company,” he said to Hilde very quietly, in the Alliance language— an extra layer of security in case their pursuer had particularly good ears. Leigh had encouraged them both to learn it, but neither of them had much occasion to use it. “Don’t look, but on the other side of the street, on your eight.”

“Dangerous?” Hilde asked. From the stiff way she moved, she was clearly itching to turn and look, but obeyed Kircheis’s command to keep the pursuer from noticing.

“He’s been following us since the water station. I don’t know.”

“Turn towards the garage on Kingfisher Street,” Hilde said. “Let’s see if he follows.”

“And if he does?”

Hilde didn’t answer the question, but Kircheis became increasingly aware of the gun holstered beneath his jacket, its weight on his hip.

They turned the next corner and walked towards the underground garage. The silver gate that once drew down over the entrance had been forced up, and now the gate dangled half open, rattling when the wind blew. Kirchies and Hilde ducked inside, then carefully controlled their heavy shopping cart as they descended the ramp.

The garage was full of garbage, too, and without the wind to take the smell away, the rot was almost overpowering. Nevertheless, Hilde and Kircheis waited in the deep gloom at the bottom of the ramp, taking up positions on opposite sides of the wall and watching the entrance, hands on their guns. The pursuer appeared at the top of the ramp, silhouetted against the weak daylight.

“I know you have your guns out,” Bronner called as he took the first steps down into the darkness. “I’d appreciate you putting them away, unless one of you actually plans to shoot me.”

Hilde stepped out of the shadows. “I thought you preferred coming to visit us at home.”

“I told you, that’s too troublesome to do often.”

“I was hoping you wouldn't bother at all,” Kircheis said. Reluctantly, he tucked his gun back into his holster and moved into the light so he could see Bronner better as he descended the ramp. He was wearing a long and rather dirty coat, and a green woolen hat that he pulled down over his ears. Although it was still chill outside, the outfit was overly warm for the weather, and he was only wearing it because it completely disguised his frame and gait, and obscured part of his face. “What do you want?”

“As always, I’m hoping that one of you has changed your minds. Do you have any information for me?”

“No,” Kircheis said. “And don’t ask again.”

“I’m not that easily dissuaded. As I said— if you tell me where your friend is going to be, I can make sure that he, at least, makes it through alright. It’s a generous offer, and one I highly recommend that you consider.” It was the same overture he had given every time they had spoken in the past— a rote line that he had to say to get through to the rest of the scene.

“I think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the kind of person that Martin is, sir,” Kircheis said.

“Oh, no, I haven’t misunderstood him. I’m well aware that he would consider living on after his comrades have died to be a kind of hell.” His teeth caught the light when he smiled. “But, fortunately, it’s not his opinion that matters.”

“And I think you’ve misunderstood me, as well,” Kircheis said.

“Well, as they say, hope springs eternal. You might have changed your mind and decided to be useful to me.”

“How is your work going in Littenheim’s offices?” Hilde asked.

Bronner made a derisive noise. “It would be straining the truth to its utmost limits to even say that ‘it’s going.’ You should count yourself lucky that Leigh has such a poorly organized opponent.”

“Leigh, and not Duke Braunschweig?” Hilde asked.

“And Duke Braunschweig should consider himself even more blessed that he and Leigh share an enemy.” Bronner’s nose wrinkled, like he was just now noticing the objectionable smell in the garage. “Well, if you’re certain that you can’t bring yourself to tell me a thing—”

“I don’t even know anything to tell you,” Kircheis said. “I don’t speak with Martin.”

“You could. Do you want his current address?”

“No,” Kircheis said.

“Well, if we have nothing else to say to each other beyond continued pleasantries—” Bronner nodded at Hilde, and began to turn away.

Hilde glanced over at Kircheis, a strange expression on her face, and then said, “Rear Admiral— can I ask you a favor?”

“Only because it’s so nice to be called that instead of lieutenant.”

“I thought you enjoyed playing your various roles,” Kircheis said.

“I’m not a method actor,” Bronner sniffed. “I enjoy taking off the costume when the play is over for the night. But what is it that you wanted?”

“Since you’re planning on warning the Military Police of disruptions anyway, you might want them, after sunset on March fifteenth, to heavily fortify the place where Littenheim keeps his ships.”

Bronner was silent for a second. “And now why would I want to do that?”

“Because the more of his staff we can kill while we attack it, the better it will be,” Hilde said, annoyed.

Bronner laughed. “Of course. An excellent reason to make life more difficult for yourself.”

“You should know better than to ask questions.”

“And are there any other soft targets you want me to make harder for you to get to?” Bronner asked.

“The power plant outside the city,” Kircheis lied. “We’re blowing that up, too.”

“And we’re bombing the tanks of the northern water treatment facility,” Hilde added.

“And the last highway bridge, on the west end,” Kircheis tacked on.

“My, you are busy people.” He pulled a small notebook and pen out from the pocket of his coat and wrote down what they said. “May I ask what you’re trying to distract all of Littenheim’s forces from exactly?”

“You should know better than to ask questions,” Hilde repeated.

“I have never enjoyed the feeling that life is a series of unanswered questions,” Bronner said. “I, unfortunately, am cursed with a desire to know things.”

“I’m sure you’ll know by the sixteenth,” Hilde said. “It’s not that far away.”

Bronner laughed. “Of course— I’ll try to wait patiently for the denouement.” He snapped his notebook shut and put it back in his pocket. “But I make you no promises. After all, I wouldn’t want your plans to be derailed by having too much opposition. And I would find it difficult to get all these warnings into the right ears without completely blowing my own cover, which you may understand that I have no desire to do.”

“Of course not,” Hilde said.

“And I think it would just be a shame if two of Leigh’s favorite pupils got themselves killed in petty little acts of terrorism. But they’re your lives to live or lose,” he said with a smile. “I’ll see you on the fifteenth, then.”

“Don’t go anywhere near—” Hilde said, then cut herself off.

“So kind of you to care and almost tell me your real target. Fortunately for you, I’m very good at lying to my superior officers that I have somewhere else urgent to be. Always running back and forth between the offices of the Military Police and Neue Sanssouci.”

“Do you even have an actual superior at either place?” Hilde asked.

Bronner just smiled and walked away, whistling some piece by Wagner, as he headed up the ramp out of the parking garage. The notes of his song echoed down the tunnel until he was gone, out into the street.

March 10, 489 I.C., Odin

A little past midnight on March tenth, Kircheis and Hilde returned from one of their nighttime jaunts to sabotage Lichtenlade’s trucks. The mood as they walked back to his apartment was, as usual, mixed. For both of them, the excitement and release of tension was a powerful agent on their nervous systems. After the high stakes of scaring off those who had attacked the truck in the first place, then the necessary quick application of the patch to the truck’s automatic driving system, and then getting away without being caught, they were both filled with energy. He was still jittery, clenching and unclenching his hands in his pockets as they walked, and Hilde took peculiar hops on her toes every couple of steps, just trying to burn it out of her system.

If it had been their success alone that they were coming down from, they might have been legitimately happy, but it was tempered, as always, by the sight of bodies strewn across the road near the trucks. The bodies were mostly those of Littenheim’s soldiers, but today when they approached the trucks, Kircheis ran past a figure on the ground and locked eyes with the wide-eyed corpse of a teenage girl, her blood pooling in the street beneath her. This was not the first time he had seen something like that, and it wouldn’t be the last, if they kept finding trucks to suit their plan up until the final moment.

As they walked through the streets, they occasionally ducked down behind the piles of garbage whenever a car’s headlights swept over the road. They didn’t have much to say to each other, but Kircheis was very grateful for Hilde’s presence. By the time they reached the apartment, a tense six kilometer walk, both of their energies had flagged to the point where Hilde leaned against the wall while Kircheis fumbled with the outer door.

They walked silently up the stairs out of habit, though at this point there was no need for stealth. It seemed that the people who had once lived in the apartments below Kircheis— other students of ONU— had finally left the building. He hoped that they had managed to escape into the countryside, to get back to wherever their families were, and he didn’t want to think about it beyond holding that measure of hope. It left the whole building even more ghostly than it had been.

When Kircheis reached the top, and slipped his key into his own door’s lock, he discovered, very unpleasantly, that the door was already unlocked. He held up his hand to signal to Hilde, letting her know that there was someone inside.

“Bronner?” she mouthed.

“I hope so,” he replied in kind. He made hand signals to indicate that she should go back down the stairs, outside, and then come up the fire escape onto the balcony. She nodded. He pointed to his watch— Kircheis would enter the front door in five minutes. She would need to already be silently in the building by then, to help him with whatever the intruder was. Hilde slipped down the stairs, gun already out and in her hand. Kircheis heard the front door click open and shut down below.

He kept one hand on the doorhandle, looking at his watch for the prescribed time, while the other held his gun. The moments moved agonizingly slowly. He didn’t hear a sound from inside the apartment, which was good— it at least meant that Hilde hadn’t been caught getting in. As the second hand on his watch finally ticked around the last minute, Kircheis silently turned the doorhandle and stepped into his apartment.

He could see directly through the small entryway into the kitchen. At the kitchen table, slumped over in a deep sleep, his breath fluttering the feathery hair on his forehead, was Martin. Sitting before him on the table was a slightly battered looking silk rose, an even more tattered volume of poetry, Kircheis’s stolen handgun, and the spare key to the apartment— the one Kircheis had left in the mailbox just for this. He had not expected this moment to ever come, and he felt like he had stepped into some kind of dream. The only illumination came from the battery operated lamp on the counter, which Martin had left turned on. It cast a bright enough red light to see by, but it left the edges of the scene in deep shadow.

Kircheis was frozen where he stood, and only out of the corner of his eye did he see Hilde silently peek her head around the doorframe that went into the living room, gun held in both hands before her.

Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw who was at the table. “Martin?” she exclaimed.

The noise woke him up with a startle, and as he jerked into a sitting position, he scraped the legs of his chair along the floor, making a horrible sound. This scared him so much that he blindly reached for his gun. Only then did he wake up enough to notice Kircheis standing before him.

Kircheis could do nothing but drop his own gun to the ground and raise his hands.

Fully awake now, Martin relaxed and smiled sheepishly. “I meant to be awake when you got back,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Gods above,” Hilde said, walking into the kitchen and putting her own gun down on the counter. “We thought you were somebody else.”

“Did you come in through the fire escape?” Martin asked, leaning backwards in his chair to peer into the living room.

“Yeah,” Hilde said. She picked up the key from the table. “But I see you came in from the door.” She held up the spare key, and Martin gently pulled it out of her hand, slipping it into his pocket.

“For luck,” he said, when she raised her eyebrows.

“What are you doing here?” Kircheis asked, finally managing to get himself under control enough to form words. He picked up his gun and put it down on the table.

Martin stood up. When he did, it was apparent how skinny he had become, his sweater hanging loose around his shoulders, and the bones in his wrist protruding when he extended his hand towards Kircheis. “I came to say goodbye,” he said.

Martin’s voice was assured, but oddly peaceful. If Kircheis had any misgivings about Martin’s absence in his life for almost a year, he forgot them all, and instead took Martin’s hand in both of his, enfolding it like something precious and delicate.

There were a hundred thousand things that he should have said to Martin, but none of them mattered anymore, and his tongue felt clumsy in his mouth. The only thing he could do was look into Martin’s glittering eyes and ask, “Why?”

“I would have regretted it if I didn’t,” Martin said. “And I don’t want to regret anything anymore.”

Hilde let the two of them have their moment, and she stood by the counter and started the hotpot, dumping in some cans of soup to warm up to eat. Kircheis smelled the moment when she performed the single cooking innovation she knew: wholesale adding a tin of fish to the tomato soup. The oil would be a greasy slick on the top of the bowls, but the caloric value of the meal would be greatly improved. This was certainly for Martin’s sake.

When Kircheis opened his mouth to say something else, Martin smiled. “Don’t tell me not to say goodbye— it took all my courage to get here in the first place, and I don’t want you to ruin it.”

“All your courage?” Kircheis asked.

“Well, conviction is a different thing,” Martin said. “But I came a few days early so that I’d have time to recover my store of whatever type of strength I needed.”

“When are you—” Kircheis asked, his throat closing up.

“It’s a nice auspicious date,” Martin said, glancing over at Hilde, who was steadfastly stirring the soup. “ Sic semper tyrannis , as it were.” At Kircheis’s incomprehending stare, he added, “The Ides— March fifteenth.”

The coincidence of overlapping dates for their plans almost didn’t register— it was more painful than he had expected to be given a date, a countdown clock. To be given a time when the sun would go out seemed worse than knowing his own hour of death.

Martin could read the pain on Kircheis’s face, and he smiled. “But don’t worry about that,” he said. “Here, I brought you something.” He gently extracted his hand from Kircheis’s, and gestured at the table. They both sat down and he slid the tattered poetry book over. The cover was decorated with a grapevine motif.

Kircheis opened it and flipped through it. He was familiar with the book, at least in its physical sense— the slender pulp volume had always adorned the top of their bookshelves, until Martin had left and taken it with him. It was a compilation of poetry from the very youth of Ancient Earth, with the original texts on the verso and two translations of each poem on the recto. The conceit, Kircheis remembered, was that the book was mostly love poems, and the two translators were husband and wife. The margins often held Martin’s spidery handwriting in pencil. In the front cover, Martin had written, “Page 275. Even if it’s only you to remember, that’s more than enough for me. Love, Your Anactoria.”

Kircheis flipped to the chosen poem, the last in the book, and read the tiny fragment there. The light of the lamp, as Hilde moved around the counter, flickered on the pages and made the unfamiliar script of the original dance. He stared at it silently for quite some time, then let the thin paperback close back up, and rubbed at his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said.

Martin tried to lighten the mood, picking up the crumpled silk flower and reaching over to tuck it in Kircheis’s curly hair. “I would have gotten you a real rose, but the weather has made that impossible for the moment. Unfortunately, I couldn’t sneak out of the city to steal from your father’s greenhouse.”

“It will be summer soon,” Kircheis said. “We can go pick whatever flowers you want.”

“I’d like that,” Martin said.

“Here,” Hilde said. She put down a bowl of soup in front of Martin, and then one in front of Kircheis, and gave them both glasses of water. Her own, she stood to eat, leaning against the counter.

“Thanks,” Martin said. “You can sit, too, you know.”

There were four chairs at the kitchen table. It seemed like Hilde had just been waiting on an invitation, because she sat down next to Martin. With her part of the conversation, it became a little easier.

“Too bad there’s no wine,” she said. “Seems like the occasion calls for it.”

“We’ll live,” Martin said. He raised his glass of water, knocking it against first Kircheis’s, then hers. “Prosit!”

“Prosit!” she and Kircheis replied in unison.

“Have you been well?” Kircheis asked.

“I’ve been alright,” Martin said. “Busy— but it’s good to be busy. How have you been?”

“Good,” Hilde said. “I was staying with my cousin, Heinrich, earlier in the winter, along with Maggie— Baroness Westpfale— ah, Countess Leigh; and Rear Admiral Mittermeyer’s wife, Evangeline; and Rear Admiral Reuenthal’s, uh, girlfriend, Elfriede. We were out in the countryside.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“I needed to be busy, too,” Hilde admitted. “I was going a little crazy out there. You’d like my cousin, though.”

“Have you been keeping up with your studies?”

“Yes, Professor Bufholtz,” she said dryly. But then she sighed. “I’ve been trying, anyway.”

“I miss ONU,” Martin said. “I walk by the campus sometimes. It still looks alright from the outside. Though I was there at noon a few weeks ago— I don’t know why I was surprised that the clock tower didn’t play the school song.” He hummed a few bars: Here’s to those olden days, here’s to those golden days, here’s to the friends we made—

“I saw someone broke all the windows on the chemistry building,” Hilde said.

“You’ve been back to look at it?”

“I’ve been all around the city. Well, I guess I haven’t been back home. I don’t want to know if anything’s happened there.”

“May I ask how your father is?”

“I don’t know. He’s supposed to be out at the frontier, gathering support for Braunschweig, helping his supply lines and things like that. But there’s no way for me to contact him, so I don’t know…”

“I like your father,” Martin said. “I hope he’s well.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate that.”

“Do you remember that picnic we had at your father’s house?”

“Of course I remember.”

They talked about nothings, slowly eating their cooling bowls of soup. Reminiscences leading into one another, switching to a new subject as soon as any grew too painful. They talked for long after their bowls were empty. When they ran out of soup, Hilde got up and found a can of olives, and a box of crackers, and they split those, too. They talked until those had been exhausted, and long after they should have all gone to sleep. When Hilde was unable to hide her yawning, despite her desire to stay awake, she got up and took their dishes, then went to perform her nightly routine, leaving Martin and Kircheis by themselves.

They wandered out through the living room to the balcony. Martin touched every piece of furniture he passed, and he looked at the pictures on the walls and the books on the coffee table with what was now an open expression of pained longing.

Kircheis leaned on the cold wrought iron railing of the balcony, looking out over the dark city. There were so few lights on the ground that the stars were clearer than they had ever been in his life, the whole galaxy splayed out overhead.

“Thank you for coming,” Kircheis said.

“Don’t thank me. It’s for my sake, more than anything else. I told you— I didn’t want to regret anything.”

“Martin—”

“Mm?” He leaned on the balcony railing next to Kircheis, their elbows touching.

“It feels like a gift, you being here.”

“It answers my question, I guess.”

“What was your question?”

“Do you forgive me for leaving?”

Kircheis closed his eyes in pain. What he wanted to tell Martin was that he would have traded anything to have had the past year of their lives still together, to get that time back. But even though the sentiment rang through his mind like a drum, it would have been a lie to say. There had been a price, and Kircheis had chosen not to pay it. And now it was too late. “Do you forgive me for not coming with you?”

“Yes,” Martin said. “I do.”

“I love you. I never stopped loving you.”

Martin took his hand, linking their fingers together. “I know.”

They were silent for a long time, shoulder to shoulder on the balcony, looking at the stars. It was cold enough that their breaths rose around their faces, but not so cold that either of them wanted to go inside.

“I went by Triangle Street the other day,” Martin said.

“Why?”

“I just go there to think sometimes. Remind myself of what I’m doing.”

Kircheis nodded.

“Your graffiti is still there. It’ll probably stay there for a while. That was what made me make up my mind to come here. I had been thinking about it for a long time, but I hadn’t worked up the strength.”

“Oh.”

“I shouldn’t have been so cruel, that day on the beach.” His voice broke a little. “I think about it a lot. I know— you were only trying to tell me that you loved me.”

“Martin—”

“What?”

“Forget it, please. I forgive you— don’t think about it.”

Martin pulled Kircheis’s hand up off the balcony railing, raising his hand to his lips. “I know,” he said. He kissed Kircheis’s knuckles. “I know.”

Kircheis wanted to fall to his knees at Martin’s feet and beg him not to die, to do anything except for die, but it wouldn’t have done any good. Martin already knew whatever Kircheis wanted to say, and it was a test of Kircheis’s love to not say it. Instead Kircheis traced his thumb against Martin’s cheek, and Martin smiled.

“Can I kiss you goodbye?” Martin asked.

“Stay until morning,” Kircheis said. “Please.”

“Hilde’s here.”

“She’d want you to stay, too.”

“I don’t know if I have the courage,” Martin said quietly.

“You’ll regret it if you don’t,” Kircheis replied, which was cruel of him, but true. “ I’ll regret it if you don’t.” That was even crueler.

Martin leaned forward and pressed his head against the center of Kircheis’s chest. He enfolded him in his arms, stroked his hand down his back, pressed his nose into Martin’s unwashed hair.

“Alright,” Martin said. “I’ll stay.”

“Thank you.”

Martin shivered— the wind had picked up, and it was too cold to stay on the balcony, so they came back inside. Hilde was in the kitchen, washing the dishes. Martin and Kircheis headed into the bedroom, where Kircheis pulled open the curtains of the makeshift canopy bed and switched on the lantern that was hanging inside. He started getting undressed.

Martin looked at the whole assembly with some amused approval. “I did wonder where the bookshelves went,” he said. He sat down on the bed, looking around at the unusually (for Kircheis) unmade bedsheets. Hilde’s diary (a monogrammed black leatherbound notebook) was on one of the pillows. Martin had no reaction to this, but he noticed it.

His eyes settled on the picture of Kircheis and the von Musel siblings that was resting on the bedside table, with the curl of blond hair tucked inside the frame. Kircheis tensed when Martin picked it up, but Martin had, for once, a warm expression on his face when he looked at the picture. “You know, Sieg, it makes me happy that you’ll think of me fondly, too. I should have probably figured that out a long time ago.”

“Martin—”

“I’m sorry you always seem to be the one getting left behind,” Martin said.

Kircheis tried to think of something to say to that, but he was spared from doing so by Hilde appearing in the doorway, already wearing her pajamas.

“Sorry,” she said, wincing at the need to interrupt. “Do you mind if I grab some of the blankets for the other bed? If you’re staying, I mean.” The guest bed had been completely stripped of linens to make the heat-retaining canopy.

“I’m not going to make you freeze, Hilde,” Martin said. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Her lip trembled. “I hope so.”

“Then come here,” Martin said, and flopped back on the bed. “I don’t mind.”

Hilde looked at Kircheis for confirmation, and Kircheis nodded, though at this point he was feeling too dire to even smile. If he moved his face at all he would start crying, and might never stop. Hilde seemed much the same. But she went around to the other side of the bed and climbed in, Martin in between her and Kircheis.

Kircheis turned off the light, dropping them into total darkness. None of them spoke— there was only the sound of their breathing and the gentle rustling of the bedsheets as they settled down together. It was a tight fit in the bed, certainly not meant for three, but Martin had become so slight that it almost didn’t matter.

Kircheis pulled Martin against his chest, breathing in his human scent, clutching his bony frame so tightly that he was afraid he would break it. Hilde’s arm draped across Martin’s shoulder, and she tentatively carded her fingers through his hair.

Martin smiled against Kircheis’s neck in contentment— Kircheis could feel the movement of his face, his lips ghosting over the tender skin in the crook of Kircheis’s shoulder. Perhaps they all hoped that the comfort of being held would be an inoculant against whatever pain was coming.

He wanted to cling to him there forever. Kircheis tried to stay awake in the warm darkness, to memorize for the last time the sound of Martin’s breath and the contours of his hands. How else could he love a man about to die?

He tried to stay awake, but he fell asleep some few hours before the sun rose, and Martin was long gone by then.

The next morning at breakfast was grim and nearly silent. Kircheis heated up a can of beans and they ate them spooned over crackers, drinking the last of the metallic water from their plastic jugs.

“Did you see Martin before he left?” Kircheis asked. The book of poetry was still on the kitchen table where it had been left the night before, and Kircheis touched the cover with his fingertips, but he didn’t open the book. He just looked at it, the cover design with twined grapes, not looking up at Hilde.

“Yes,” she said. “He woke me up to get out of bed. He didn’t want to wake you.”

Kircheis nodded.

“I’m sorry if I—” Hilde began, then stopped.

“It’s fine. He wanted you there.”

She smashed a bean on her plate with her finger. “Yeah.”

“I’m glad he came.”

She nodded. “Sieg—”

“Yeah?”

She had sounded on the verge of saying something else, but instead she said, “I’ll do the water run today.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, it’s fine. I can handle it.”

“Okay.” Kircheis didn’t want to be alone, but if Hilde wanted to be, he would let her. “We have a meeting with Rear Admiral Reuenthal tonight.”

“I know. I’ll be back by then.”

“The fifteenth—” Kircheis said. “Maybe we should move our plans. We told Bronner to increase security that day… I don’t want—”

“Sieg—”

There was something so horrible in Hilde’s voice that Kircheis lifted his head to look at her. Her expression was just as pained.

“I should have told you this before,” she said. “I spoke to Martin a while ago—”

“When?”

“After Bronner gave me where he was staying,” she said. Her voice was hardly above a whisper.

“Why?”

“I gave him the date of our plans,” Hilde said. “I told him— it would be better for both of us if we were acting on the same day. Littenheim’s attention would be split. He agreed with me— that’s why they’re moving on the fifteenth.”

A cold, hard anger like Kircheis never remembered feeling before, never even thought himself capable of feeling, rose up inside his chest. His hand shook as he smoothed out the cover of the poetry book. He took a deep breath, stuffed the feeling down where it couldn’t escape, held the tension in his body like a suspension bridge, like the tension was the only thing keeping him upright, stopping him from flying into a million pieces. He was perfectly still.

“You’re using him,” he said. His voice was colder and harder than it had ever been, and he couldn’t quite hate himself for it, though he should have.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Kircheis nodded, and said nothing else.

“I’ll go get the water,” Hilde said.

When Kircheis left the house, he took very little, and left even less. He stuffed his bag full of a change of clothes and as many canned goods as he could carry. He had Leigh’s handgun in its holster at his side, and the book of poetry curled up inside his deep coat pocket.

He left a note on the table for Hilde. He was too angry to say much, but he said enough. He knew that in a few days, he would either figure out how to forgive her, or it would cease to matter to him anymore. He dropped his key in his mailbox on the way out the door.

Kircheis didn’t know exactly where he was going. He considered turning towards the Ministry of War, the building that Littenheim’s forces had occupied to lend some legitimacy to their control of the capital. He would probably see Bronner there, and Bronner knew where Martin was staying. But without really thinking about it, Kircheis’s feet took him across the city, ending up at Triangle Street.

Martin had been right: his graffiti was still there, though as he looked at it in the daylight, he could see that the lines of the unfamiliar letters were shaky. Some of the paint had worn off the brick in one spot, where acidic rainwater dripped out of a hole in a drainpipe above and scoured the wall. Kircheis took the book of poetry from his pocket and paged through it until he found the right poem, matching up his old writing to the crisp translated lines on the page. He sat down on the ground beneath the marking on the wall and read the page over and over, just waiting.

He couldn’t have said why he was so sure that Martin would return here, but he was sure of it, and he would wait, at least until the sun began to go down.

He did wait for several hours, sitting against the cold brick with his coat wrapped around his shoulders. The street was deserted. Kircheis saw almost no one the entire time he was there. Even the sound of cars on the main road outside the square were muted, and perhaps only one went by every hour. The light changed, clouds passing back and forth across the sun, dappling the square in moments of shade and moments of warmth. He read through the entire poetry book, then flipped to the start and read it again. Not once did his hope flag— he was sure that Martin would appear.

He was looking down at the book when Martin arrived.

“Some say horses,” Martin said, standing silhouetted in the entrance to the square. “Some say soldiers. Some say a fleet of ships is the most beautiful thing in this dark world.”

Kircheis didn’t remember the next lines of the poem, nor did he care. He scrambled to his feet. “I knew you’d come back here.”

“But you?” Martin asked— though he seemed to hardly need to know the answer— the smile on his face was radiant. Perhaps he had seen the bulging bag at Kircheis’s feet and known what it meant, or perhaps he just knew that Kircheis wasn’t unkind enough to make them part a second time.

“I changed my mind,” Kircheis said.

“Why?” Martin asked. He came right up to Kircheis and took his hands. From being out in the cold for so long, his fingers were nearly numb, but Martin’s touch warmed him more than enough.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m here.”

“Should I say that I knew you would come, or just that I hoped you would come?”

“Hope is a safer thing,” Kircheis said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“Is it safer? I think some people say it’s the most dangerous thing in the world.”

Martin led Kircheis back to his headquarters, which was currently an empty elementary school, the children long gone. The school was in the middle of a tightly packed residential district, and though most of the people who lived there had fled to the countryside, Martin still waited until the cover of darkness to go in, and enforced strict light discipline even inside the building. It made the whole place extremely desolate, their shoes squeaking along the linoleum, beneath old murals of laughing children illuminated only by the starlight that came in through the windows. They could only turn on their flashlights when they were in a hallway that didn’t have windows that opened onto the streets, so Kircheis followed behind Martin blindly, trusting that he, visible only as a darker shadow against the blackness of the hallway, knew where to go.

The majority of Martin’s group, at least of those in the building, was gathered in the basement gymnasium. It was better lit than anywhere else: bright lights on stands were hooked up to a battery pack, casting stage-light down onto men and women lounging around on sleeping bags or gym mats or sitting on chairs that were far too small for them. There were about fifty people in the room, and several of them came up to Martin as soon as he came in. They glanced at Kircheis with a wary expression before saying anything, but Martin nodded at them to continue, and then when they had delivered their news he introduced Kircheis to them. He smiled and shook hands in as natural of a way as he could.

Kircheis was out of place in this milieu, not least because of the change that had come over Martin. He had always tried to stay far away from Martin’s subversive activities, for both their sakes, and had done such a good job at this that he hadn’t realized how important of a figure Martin clearly was. When Martin addressed anyone else in the room, though he called them comrade or citizen or friend interchangeably, he had an undeniable confidence in his own words.

That , Kircheis was used to— Martin had never said anything that he didn’t believe wholeheartedly— but it was the way everyone around him instantly nodded and accepted what he said that came as a surprise.

It was reminiscent of Leigh, Kircheis thought— if in a strange inversion. When Leigh called Kircheis “Lieutenant,” or even addressed Ansbach as “Commodore,” his tone always held the softness of “friend.” When someone approached Martin and called him “comrade,” it sounded quite a lot like “sir.” But even in this strange place, Martin spoke to Kircheis the same way he always had. It was almost as if the past year of absence had fallen away, and the casual and natural familiarity between them returned without any difficulty whatsoever.

Kircheis followed Martin like a shadow, up to the point where Martin stepped into the classroom he had adopted as his office, going to speak with two men and a woman, all armed, who looked at Kircheis with an even more suspicious glance than the people lounging in the gym had. Kircheis took the hint and went back to the gymnasium, sitting down on an ancient plush mat, the kind used for cushioning the falls of gymnasts. The blue fabric cover was worn thin almost everywhere, and Kircheis picked at the foam coming out of the ripped holes with his fingernails, watching everyone else in the room.

Most people were eating bowls of watery soup, which was being distributed by one teenage boy tending a camp stove on a folding table. The room smelled like the beans that had gone into it. Kircheis had given his stash of canned goods to Martin when they came in, and Martin had passed it off to someone else; Kircheis didn’t know what had become of it after that. It might very well have become the soup. He didn’t eat any, even when someone politely came over to offer him a bowl.

Most of the people in the room were in much poorer shape than he was, having not had access to a supply of food like Kircheis had, and he could afford to miss his next few meals. He was suddenly very aware of exactly how Martin had become so thin so quickly. Kircheis did drink some water, since there seemed to be plenty of that: endless gallon jugs stacked against one wall.

Everyone seemed to be in decent spirits, despite the paucity of food. People gathered in groups, mainly sitting in circles directly beneath the spotlights. Some were playing cards to pass the time, others reading or laying down to sleep. People came in and out of the school building at a steady rate. Kircheis heard many of them ask where Martin was, and they were directed to his “office” — he seemed to be quite busy answering questions or giving instructions.

After a few hours of waiting around, Kircheis thumbing through his poetry book and eavesdropping on the conversations around him, someone came up to him. It was the teen boy who had been in charge of the soup. “Hey, Comrade Red— Martin wants you in there.”

“My name’s Siegfried,” he said as he stood up from the gym mat, stretching his legs. “Is there any soup left?”

“A little— you want some?”

“No, I’m fine. I was just going to bring some to him, if he hasn’t eaten.”

The boy laughed. “Good luck with that, Comrade Red. But I’ll give you a bowl.”

Kircheis’s lips pinched in a frown, and he followed the boy to the folding table with the camp stove. He ladeled out a bowl of soup, fishing around in the bottom of the big aluminum pot for the remaining beans at the bottom, and he handed it to Kircheis.

Kircheis made his way through the dark hallway, the room that Martin was in indicated only by the pale glow of a flashlight’s beam reflected out the doorway.

“Knock knock,” Kircheis said at the door.

Martin was sitting on a chair that was far too small for him— designed for a third grader at the very largest— in a circle of other equally comically small chairs. A flashlight stood on its end in the center of the circle, at least making it bright enough to see the vague outlines of things. The classroom desks had been pushed to the side of the room, but the teacher’s desk at the front had Martin’s illuminated laptop, along with a stack of papers and several canisters of what looked like zephyr gas. Martin smiled at Kircheis when he came in.

“Shut the door, if you would. Like my circle?” he asked.

Kircheis stepped over the chairs to enter it, and then pulled one out to sit in front of Martin, though it was more comfortable by far to sit on the tiny thing backwards, his elbow resting on the chair’s back. He handed the bowl of soup to Martin, who made a face.

“Eat,” Kircheis said.

“Has everyone else had some?”

“Yes,” Kircheis said. “This was leftover.”

Martin picked up the spoon, stirred the soup, and then asked, “Have you had some?”

“Eat it,” Kircheis said.

“Let’s share, then.” He offered the spoon to Kircheis.

“I have fifty kilograms on you.”

“I’m not going to starve to death, Sieg,” Martin said. But he covered up his wry smile by taking a few spoonfuls of soup. “How are you liking my cell?”

“As schools go, this one isn’t that much like a prison,” Kircheis said.

“No, cell as in terrorist,” Martin said with a laugh. “We’ve only been in this building for a few days.”

Kircheis smiled. “You did a good job keeping this all secret from me,” he said. “I didn’t realize how central you were.”

“I didn’t used to be,” he said. “There didn’t used to be much to keep secret, especially before the war. But things changed…” The tone indicated that someone had died, probably someone Martin had been close to. Kircheis didn’t pry.

“Is this your whole group?” Kircheis asked.

“It’s most of my particular unit,” Martin said. “But we’re far from the only ones. You’ve seen the messengers from the other groups.”

“How many others are there?”

“I’m not going to tell you that , Sieg,” Martin said, kicking his leg gently. “But I don’t tell anyone anything. I don’t even meet with everyone— you saw the leader of the Hundred-Twelfth—”

“You have a hundred twelve units?”

“No, everyone picks their favorite number— it makes it harder to tell how many we are,” Martin said. “She gives instructions to three or four other groups. We try to keep things pretty decentralized— I don’t know where her groups quarter, or much else about them. I just ask her if they can do something and she tells me if they can or can’t. And I suppose I have to trust her judgment on that.”

“And what number unit is this?”

“First,” Martin said. “It’s a joke name— John picked it. As they say, the first shall be last.”

Kircheis smiled. “And you coordinate all of this.”

“I didn’t used to,” Martin said. “But for now, yes.”

They sat in silence as Martin picked at his soup. He occasionally tried to offer it to Kircheis, who refused most of it.

“Do you like being in charge?”

“I’m not in charge,” Martin said, but it was an empty protest. “Coordinating is different from ordering.”

“People here really respect you.”

Martin gave a breathy sigh. “They respected John— I’m just leftovers.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Well, if it is or isn’t, it’s what we have,” Martin said. “We’ll make the best of it.” He glanced behind him at the computer screen of his laptop. “I’m glad you’re here— I could use your help.”

“With what?”

“Some of our last minute tactical thinking,” Martin said. He got up and went over to the desk, and picked up his computer, putting the empty soup bowl down.

“You trust me with that?” Kircheis asked as Martin sat back down across from him on the circle of children’s chairs.

Martin glanced up from the computer balanced on his lap and looked in Kircheis’s eyes. “I do.”

“I don’t think your compatriots will appreciate that.” He thought of the suspicious glances from some of the other people when he had come in with Martin. He couldn’t blame them; he was a stranger.

“Sieg— I trust you.”

It was a nice thought, but a poor decision when it came to operational security, Kircheis thought. But he was warmed by Martin’s trust, and he leaned forward to look at what he was pulling up on the computer. Kircheis, after a moment of study, pieced together what he was seeing: an intricate map of Neue Sanssouci. Entrances and exits were marked, rooms were labeled, and there were arrows and cutaway diagrams indicating passageways into and out of the palace grounds. There were notes about vulnerabilities, access codes to doors, locations of staff shortcuts through different locations, what was kept in each room, more information than Kircheis could process.

“How did you get this…” Kircheis muttered, reaching over to click around the map. It was incredibly comprehensive.

“We made it,” Martin said. “John went out of his way to recruit former palace staff— landscaping and maintenance workers especially. John was working on it before, but after all this— a lot of them who were seen as being loyal to Lichtenlade fled when Littenheim invaded, and we were able to help them. Individually, they knew very little, but together— well, we can put the whole thing together.”

“And what do you need my help with?” Kircheis asked.

“You’ve been in the palace, right?”

“Yeah, a bit,” Kircheis said. “Not in any of the imperial family quarters, or any of the real nice areas. Just the areas around the colonial affairs office, and the grounds.”

“More than I’ve seen of it,” Martin said. “I’d like to walk through some of the feasibility of getting people inside. We have plans, but there’s been no way to test them against reality. Maybe you can help. The former palace staff have a good sense of where things are, but none of them are—”

“Soldiers,” Kircheis offered.

Martin glanced up at him. “Yes.”

“I went to Neue Sanssouci the most when I was a student.”

“I know,” Martin said. “I remember it.”

“It’s strange to use that now.”

“Aren’t people always trying to take apart the master’s house with the master’s tools?” Martin asked.

“Mm,” Kircheis said. He studied the map. “What are your goals?” he asked.

“You seem concerned,” Martin said, ignoring the question.

Kircheis chose his words very carefully. “I’m not concerned. It just feels strange. You once objected to everything that soldiers do.” He rotated the map on the screen. “I’m happy to be of use to you in whatever way you need.”

Martin’s brow furrowed, and he looked down at the computer between them. “It’s hard to be a pacifist in a world like this,” he said. “Impossible, maybe. Impossible to be a pacifist who gets things done, or survives even enough to keep people fed.”

Kircheis nodded.

Martin’s voice was odd. “Do you think that’s me betraying myself? The person I was a year ago, before all of this?” Unspoken: the principled version of Martin that Kircheis had loved.

“You took my gun when you left,” Kircheis pointed out. “I understood what that meant back then.”

“I don’t think I did. You must know me better than I know myself.”

This wasn’t the case, but Kircheis was familiar with the specific pain that Martin was trying to articulate: the necessary hypocrisies, the endless string of self-betrayals, large and small, that made up a life.

That had been the difference between them for so long, since the day Kircheis had become a soldier to survive. While it had been painful to feel Martin’s disdain, it had also been something Kircheis had admired about him— his refusal to cave under pressure and abandon his own values. And it had been even more painful for Kircheis to wonder about himself, exactly how much of himself he was willing to give up.

It was another thing that had been turned over in this strange world. In returning to Martin, Kircheis had found exactly where his limits lie, and he was content with the answer.

What Martin had said didn’t need a reply, so Kircheis just put his hand on his knee. “Tell me what you need,” he said. “I’ll see what I can help with.”

Martin smiled and focused himself, sitting up straighter in his chair. Kircheis could see the leader in him, the way he became animated when he spoke.

“Well, we have a few main goals,” Martin said. “Or, we have a few main political goals, but one strategy for getting them done. What we need to do is take the royal family hostage.”

It was not surprising, but hearing it said aloud with such confidence made Kircheis shiver. “And then?”

“We demand that they sign a declaration of their intent to abolish the feudal system, free the serfs, open a parliament, and enfranchise the whole population. More immediately, we take control of the food supply into the city, and start getting it into people’s hands.”

“Do you expect them to actually do what you ask?”

“We’re going to keep the palace occupied,” Martin said. “They won’t have a choice. And if we have the royal family in custody, their armed forces can’t risk attacking the palace— and us— without them dying.”

Kircheis was silent for a moment, but had to ask. “And when Duke Braunschweig arrives with his own claimant to the throne?”

“Duke Braunschweig destroyed Iserlohn,” Martin said.

“You knew about that?”

“I know about a lot of things. But I think he’s shot himself— I’m willing to bet that people would rather bow to Sabine than Elizabeth, since Braunschweig has demonstrated that he doesn’t care about the nation or its people, only for his own personal standing. The fleet will oppose him for us, on Sabine’s orders.”

“I hope you’re right,” Kircheis said. He was not as confident that people would respect a ruler who was being held hostage and puppeted by revolutionaries, but this was the only chance that Martin had, so he couldn’t, and didn’t, suggest an alternative.

“And someday,” Martin said, a little wistfully, “I hope that people realize that they don’t have to bow.”

“Yeah.”

“Your friend Leigh— and Hilde— they’ll understand the way the tide is turning.” He said this more to himself than Kircheis, trying to reassure himself.

Kircheis wasn’t so sure. Leigh, maybe— Leigh was a republican, and always had been, so he might be able to turn against Braunschweig without many qualms. Hilde was a far more complicated question. If nothing else, Kircheis knew that she took her offered position as Elizabeth’s future advisor very seriously. But that alone wouldn’t be enough to set her directly against both Leigh and Kircheis, her closest friends.

The fact that Kircheis had abandoned her now might be. He frowned down at the computer screen. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll understand.”

March 11, 489 I.C., Odin

When Kircheis woke up the next day, Martin was already long gone. Early in the morning, there had been a great rousing of people in the gymnasium, most needing to get out of the building before dawn, which would make a stealthy exit more difficult. Kircheis woke up when he heard the noise begin, and found that Martin had been one of the first out, the space on the blue gym mat next to him empty except for Martin’s meager bag of personal possessions.

Without Martin to tag along after, Kircheis had very little to do with his time. There was breakfast— the freckled teen who had been cooking last night made a pot of rice— but Kircheis didn’t take any. He volunteered to help clean the camp, and while at first his offers were rebuffed, someone finally handed him some rags and a mop and told him he could clean the bathrooms, if he was so enthusiastic.

For a camp without running water, occupied by a rotating cast of over fifty people, the bathrooms could have been in worse shape. They were probably only so reasonably kept because the camp had only been in use for a few days so far.

This was a girl’s school, so there were no urinals in the bathrooms, only stalls, with curiously small and low to the ground toilets and sinks for the children. The tank lids had been lifted off the toilets so that they could use their grey water left over from washing hands or dishes to flush, though someone had written reminders on each door only to flush when absolutely necessary: water was a limited resource. Kircheis doubted that the reminders were very effective, since the bathrooms would be so dark at night that no one could read the message. The light now came in from a tiny window, and it was barely enough to see by, since it had been raining since some time in the middle of the night. Perhaps the lack of light, too, disguised the mess.

Rainwater at least meant that he could mop, as people had collected it in whatever implements they could find, and brought it inside to use.

Kircheis got started cleaning, judiciously mopping up the most egregious places where people had missed the mark on the small toilets in the dark. One of the stalls was occupied as he cleaned, and although he had announced when he entered the bathroom that was what he was doing, the occupant of the stall didn’t move at all. Even when Kircheis finished cleaning all the rest, the person didn’t get out of the stall. Considering that Kircheis had been cleaning for more than half an hour, and the pair of feet he could see beneath the door hadn’t moved an inch, and nor had the person inside made a sound, he began to grow concerned.

He knocked on the stall door as gently as he could. He didn’t even know if the occupant was a man or a woman, so he could only say, “Excuse me, I hate to be a bother, but are you alright?”

There was no response from within the stall, and when Kircheis listened over the sound of rain outside, he didn’t think he could hear any breathing.

Now seriously worried (though if the person in the bathroom was truly dead, it would be far too late for him to do anything about it), Kircheis left the bathroom and tried to flag down someone around camp for help. The only person who paid him any mind was the teen boy who doled out the food. He was reading a book, but looked up at Kircheis when he came in.

“Looking for someone, Comrade Red?” he asked. “Martin’s not here.”

“I know. I think there’s a problem in the bathroom.”

“Toilet jammed?” He looked at the mop in Kircheis’s hand.

“No,” Kircheis said. He hated to lay this at the feet of a sixteen year old kid, but he seemed somehow to be the person with most authority left in camp. And, besides, he had been sixteen when he went off to military school. “There’s someone in one of the stalls who hasn’t moved at all— I think they might be dead.”

The boy’s funny smile fell away, and he nodded. “Let’s take a look.”

They returned together to the bathroom, and Kircheis pointed out the stall, though he hardly needed to. The boy knocked on the door. “It’s Fritz— you okay, Comrade?”

There was, of course, no response. Kircheis was now quite sure that whoever was in the stall was dead.

“Do you want me to get the door?” Kircheis asked.

“I’ll do it,” Fritz said. He was small, and he dropped to his knees and easily slid beneath the stall door. He had no audible reaction to what he found inside, but the door swung open a moment later, and he stepped out, face pale and serious.

Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, her upper body slumped back against the wall, was an older woman, in her late forties or early fifties. She was wearing a dress and comfortable men’s running shoes, and her straw blonde hair was dirty but neatly combed into a thin braid. Her eyes were wide open and glassy, staring at the sky, and she was quite obviously dead. Her left hand was purple and swollen, not from whatever had killed her, but from the scrap of white fabric that was wrapped so tightly through her fingers and wrist as to cut off circulation. On the closed lid of the toilet tank behind her was an empty bottle of liquor and an equally empty pill bottle.

Fritz studied her. Although he was stoic, he didn’t seem to know what to actually do.

“Do you know who this is?” Kircheis asked quietly.

“Rosa. Mark’s mom,” Fritz said. “Martin’s not going to be happy.”

“What about Mark?” Kircheis asked— that seemed like the more pertinent question.

Fritz looked at him like he was stupid. “Mark’s been dead,” he said.

“Ah.” Kircheis looked at the body for a moment more. “We can’t leave her in the bathroom,” he said. “Where should we put her?”

Fritz didn’t have an answer at hand, but he didn’t stop Kircheis from going into the stall and lifting up the dead woman, carrying her beneath her knees and shoulders. She weighed very little. He led Kircheis to a classroom a few doors down, and Kircheis put her body on the long table in the back of the room. He closed her eyes, and when he unwrapped the strip of fabric from her hand, the motion felt oddly familiar, like something he had done once before, long, long ago. He laid her hands over her chest.

“Do you have a blanket to cover her with?” Kircheis asked.

“I’ll get one.”

When Fritz left, Kircheis studied her face, then the strip of cloth that was still in his own hand. He had thought it was a bandage when he had unwrapped it, but he realized that it was actually a strip of silk— quite fine in quality. Embroidered on it in tiny letters, over and over, were the word’s of the Earth Church’s mantra: EARTH IS MY MOTHER. EARTH IN MY HANDS.

He remembered why the feeling of unwrapping it from her hand felt so familiar: he had done the same for the young Erwin Josef, years ago, when he had held him for his nurse. The memory made Kircheis shiver: his investigation into why the palace’s staff was full of members of the Earth Church had later led to Martin’s friends burning down their headquarters as retaliation. The murder of Prince Ludwig had been blamed on republicans, but it seemed clear that the Earth Church had been the ones responsible, in order to secure themselves an heir to the throne who would be favorable to them. Martin had mentioned recruiting former palace staff to his efforts.

The whole thing felt dangerous— did Martin not remember, or perhaps not care, that many of the former palace staff were Earth Church members? It seemed unreasonable that even the most downtrodden members of the staff would flock in great numbers to help Martin’s revolutionary goals. From what Kircheis knew, the staff of Neue Sanssouci, especially those close to the royal family, tended to be proud of their positions. Even if Littenheim had swept through and removed them all from their posts—

Kircheis stuffed the scrap of fabric into his pocket as Fritz returned, bearing a colorful crocheted blanket. “It was hers,” he explained as he laid it down over top of her. His voice was rough now, and he blinked away the beginnings of tears. He stared at the covered form for a moment, then shoved his hands in his pockets, straightened himself up, and said, “We’ll have to ask Martin what to do about her…”

“Do you have a place you usually bury people?”

Fritz gave him another look like he was stupid— maybe he was. “People don’t die in camp.”

The bodies left on the road.

“Oh. Right.”

“I’ll send someone out to find Comrade Martin,” Fritz said. “I think Ella knows where he is today.” Fritz turned to go.

“Was she a former member of the palace staff?” Kircheis asked.

“Yeah,” Fritz said. “She worked in housekeeping. Why?”

“Just wondering,” Kircheis said. “There aren’t that many women around— I just wondered how she got here.”

“Oh, it was Mark that brought her.”

“Her son, you said?”

“Yeah. He and I were friends.” Fritz scuffed his foot on the ground for a moment. “Anyway— Martin’s not going to be happy.”

It sounded like there was something more than the obvious regret for a death. “Why?”

“He told her that she should leave the camp,” he said.

“What for?” This seemed antithetical to Martin’s usual way of operating— kicking out a woman whose son had died.

“Well—” Fritz gestured at her. “Because of this. After Mark— she was starting to get too worried about everyone else, I guess. Martin just wanted her to leave the city. Somebody said that their family could take her in, but she didn’t want to go. I don’t know…” He trailed off. “Too late now, anyway.”

Even though the sun was still out, Martin returned to camp a few hours later, hastened back by the news. It was still raining, and though he was soaking wet when he came in, he still managed to command respect, people getting out of his way immediately as he walked in to look at the body. Whoever had gone to fetch him had told him the news in full, because he didn’t ask any questions when he arrived. He pulled up one of the small children’s chairs next to the table and sat down, pulling back the blanket to look at Rosa’s face, and taking her hand in his.

Kircheis, who stood at the side of the dim room, couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he sat there for a long time in total silence. Other people in the room coughed and shuffled awkwardly, or came and went, but Martin hardly breathed.

“Can we get her out of the city tonight to bury her?” Martin asked suddenly, breaking the silence and making half the room jump. “This is a question of logistics— don’t tell me something untrue because you think I want to hear it.”

Although Kircheis had been able to sneak out of the city by himself many times, he didn’t know how difficult it would be with several people, carrying a body. There was a moment of silence as people thought about it.

“What’s the alternative if we can’t?” one of the people who had returned with Martin asked. This was a woman, wearing men’s clothing, with a rifle still slung across her back. Even inside camp, she seemed reluctant to put it down. This was the leader of one of the other groups, Kircheis remembered. She might feel safer and more comfortable elsewhere.

“There are parks in the city,” someone else suggested.

“I wouldn’t ask anyone to take that risk,” Martin said. “It takes a long time to dig a grave.”

“The alternative?” the woman asked again.

“The river,” Martin said. He still hadn’t let go of the dead woman’s hand. Although Kircheis expected there to be an immediate clamor of protest at this, people were silent, at least for long enough for Martin to say, “The living are more important than the dead. I don’t want anyone risking their lives over this.” Bitterly, he added, “She wouldn’t want that, either.”

“And if we can do it safely?” the man who had suggested a city park asked.

“Then do it,” Martin said. “Tell me before you go.”

The man nodded, and Martin stood to go, laying Rosa’s hand back on her chest and re-covering her with the blanket. He nodded at the people he had come back with, and they began to follow him out.

“Martin—” Kircheis said.

Martin stopped in his tracks and looked over at him.

“Can I talk to you about something?” he asked.

“Of course— what is it?”

“Who is this?” the woman asked.

“I told you— this is Siegfried,” Martin said. “I trust him.”

“Alone might be better,” Kircheis said.

“If it’s important, I think we’d all like to know,” the woman said. “I would hate to feel like there’s secrets being kept around here.”

“Isn’t that what we’re in the business of?” one of the men said, laughing to break the tension. It didn’t work.

“Is this something personal?” Martin asked. It obviously wasn’t— Kircheis wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t urgent.

Kircheis looked in his eyes for a moment. “I found this with her, when I found her body,” he said, and pulled the long white cloth from his pocket. He had folded it neatly, and it looked almost like a handkerchief until Martin unfolded it and ran his fingers across the embroidery. He understood what it was— recognition showed on his face.

But he lifted his eyes and handed the white cloth to the man who had offered to bury her in the park. “Then it should be buried with her,” he said. “Here— Emil.”

Be careful. I think you're being set up , was what Kircheis wanted to say, but it was clear that he wasn’t in a position to make any accusations. “Did you know she was a member of the Earth Church?” Kircheis asked.

“I knew,” Martin said. And was that the real reason he had asked her to leave camp, Kircheis wondered. “She was a good woman— I trusted her, too.”