Chapter 2 - Потускневшее Серебро

To be more accurate, an explosion had been launched at the building, and a spider web of fractures spread immediately across my window.

What part of this was another victory for Chernobog?!

I dove under the table and flipped it to shield me from the window. For once, I appreciated this hotel's spartan aesthetic, because the tables in Lungmen wouldn't have been solid steel.

I lay flat on the ground and scanned for a safer location to move to.

What was that? I hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. It was just another depressing Chernobog day before some maniac lit up the building. Was this connected to the riots on the news? And why the core city municipal government office? Why would anybody attack there? It was all urban planners and sewerage managers. No Ursine aristocrat would find themselves caught dead there, and the City Hall was just down the street!

My ears swivelled madly to hear any incoming danger, picking up only the screams from the adjacent hotel floors, before I fought off the instinct to listen and covered them with my hands. If this was a random attack and they hit the hotel too, the last thing I wanted was to rupture my eardrums. It was a miracle that the glass windows even held. Must have been whatever they used to tint them. The city only looked uglier because of that, but I was beyond caring about the view right now.

Fearfully, I prepared for another attack, but nothing happened. After a minute or so of tense waiting, I slumped onto my bottom with a ragged sigh.

If the hotel hadn't been bombed yet, then it probably wouldn't be for now. There was no rational reason to delay the next attack, save for some kind of mind game, but I wouldn't allow my judgement to be dictated by paranoia. The police would be heading here soon, and the Ursus Military Police were nothing if not brutally efficient. Whoever this culprit was, they were about to have concerns beyond which Ursine affront to architecture to firebomb.

Still lying flat on my belly, I removed my hands from my head and crawled around my makeshift shelter towards the window. My face being the closest part of me to the floor-to-ceiling window, I would be in a spot of trouble if anything caused the glass to shatter inwards, but that was a risk I was willing to take for now.

When I wormed past the empty glass on the carpet, I took the opportunity to toss it into another room. At least it would be one less loose object if a shockwave passed through here later.

Suddenly, I realised that the television was still on. Nearly drowned out by the ongoing cries of distress, the news anchor on television continued to speak.

"Breaking news. A number of arrests have been made in connection with the riots on the city outskirts in what is a rapidly concluding situation. We report that the Military Police have the situation under control and urge all citizens of Ursus to stay indoors, and…"

I tuned her out. Propaganda was a social control apparatus that all states used to some degree or other. It was something I was used to peering beneath, and I held no strong feelings about it in general. Had even posed in a corset and awful dress for propaganda, once. I would never forget Special Major Hildebrandt's hands.

Having said that, there was something unquantifiably unpleasant about being fed particularly blatant examples of it. Perhaps because it felt like they were treating me like an idiot. Perhaps because heavy-handed examples seemed to be a hallmark of communists and other tin-pot regimes, since they could only survive by obscuring the failings of their own governance. Either or.

This was as blatant as it got. My hotel was located on Central Main Street, in the wealthy core city. It was about as far from the docked outer districts as you could go. And yet…

And yet, what met my eyes when I looked out the window were armed rioters in identical masks and hooded white coats, in the process of blockading the road. They definitely hadn't been there earlier. Had they been hidden among the crowd until it was time to don their disguises? But amongst the prosperous pedestrians on Central Main, they would have stood out like a sore thumb.

Beyond the obvious rioting, there was something about them that betrayed their desperation. To be blunt, they reeked of poverty. Elafia didn't have the most incredible eyesight, but even from the fifth floor, I could tell. Some of the rioters were stick-thin. Some wore ragged clothing beneath the hoods. Some walked with an uneven, limping gait.

These were not people that belonged here in the central business district. If this huge crowd of poor people were now here in the core city, that meant that they had come at least halfway across Chernobog. Why hadn't the Ursus Military Police noticed or stopped them?

…What exactly was this riot about, exactly? I hadn't held much interest when I thought it was just a few trouble-making delinquents, but it was obvious from the moment that explosion went off that this was a bigger deal than I'd thought. Some of the masked rioters were smashing the windows of the municipal government office now, I noticed. Was this some sort of Occupy Wall Street movement? Eat the rich, and the like?

I stilled. Against my better judgement, I pressed an ear against the shattered glass.

"Down with Ursus! Down with the Tsar! Fire and vengeance, reunion's not far!"

By all accounts the current Tsar was a peaceful moderate who pushed for a number of social safety nets. I could understand the conservative war hawks chomping at the bit, but what was there not to like about him if you were poor? Were they blaming him for not fixing all their problems for them?

…It couldn't be that this was some sort of Commie uprising, could it?!

No, no, don't jump at shadows, Tanja. There was never even a manifesto. At least as far as I knew. I hadn't kept up with world news too rigorously beyond what was relevant to my job, unfortunately. It had been a lot of work getting to where I was. Of all times to be regretting the hyper focus on my career…

The rioters had just begun climbing onto cars and setting more trees on fire when the Military Police finally arrived. In their trucks, the MPs broke past the half-built barricades with wild abandon. I watched quietly as the team of burly Ursine Guards alighted their vehicles and crashed into the masked rioters with the force of a sledgehammer.

The masks stood no chance, as expected. Against the well-disciplined and well-equipped warriors of the Ursus Military Police, the masked rabble rousers were tossed about like so much garbage, and treated about as well. The beating was brutal and without mercy. More than one of the attackers would not be getting up again, which was about what you could expect after attacking a government building in the Empire of Ursus, of all places.

So why did I still feel so uneasy?

With time, the answer became apparent. These Guards were the only MPs coming. I didn't know where the other police were, but if they hadn't arrived after an incident like this in the centre of the city, I could only assume that they had encountered trouble elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the rioters seemed endless.

It was like a never-ending tide. When one person was beaten down, another took their place, and their replacements weren't about to run out either. Everywhere I could see were more rioters. If I looked up the road to my right, even more seemed to be streaming in. These rioters were converging on this location from all across the district.

The Military Police were going to lose.

I worried at my lower lip. In situations like these, the safest thing to do was to stay indoors. But from what I could see, the rioters would soon control the entire district. When those blockades went up, between the physical barriers and their sheer numbers, any MP reinforcements would be fighting an uphill battle to reach the people in the building across the road.

Rationally, there was a good chance the rioters would leave us alone, given that we had nothing to do with whatever their grievance was. As long as we had enough food to last, it wouldn't be too great an ordeal to simply wait for order to be restored.

But did I really want to trust myself to the type of unruly mob that thought that bombing a government building was a reasonable decision?

I agonised over my options, but soon the choice was made for me. Marching down Central Main Street was a flood of white and black. A huge group of masked rioters. But unlike the mob fighting down below, amongst the incoming crowd were people who moved like military veterans. There was something in their gait that they shared with the survivors of the Rhine Front. Worse yet, these newcomers seemed to be armed with actual military equipment. Uniform models of swords, crossbows, riot shields and what looked like Originium launchers.

I realised what that earlier explosion had been. I wasn't so familiar with the military equipment of this world, hadn't cared for twenty years. But if one of those mortars had taken out the front of that building, what could all these others do?

It was beyond worrying. Had these people raided a storehouse, or did they have stronger backing than expected?

I was beginning to realise that perhaps the waters of this city ran deeper than they seemed. To my understanding, Ursus' Third Army was stationed close by. Did these rioters simply not fear for their lives, or were they confident the Ursine military wouldn't be an issue somehow?

Whatever the case, the Military Police fighting down there were completely done for. They were completely outnumbered and couldn't win against their current opponents, let alone the more dangerous fighters coming in from the east.

This riot was nothing to do with me. I wasn't even from here. Whatever the outcome of this battle, I wanted no part of it. I'd leave before the masks finished locking down the area and make my way to wherever the bulk of the police forces were. At the very least, I wanted to keep away from the incoming soldiers whose motives I still didn't know.

I scanned the room for what I needed to take with me. I could leave all my luggage. Nothing I had here couldn't be replaced with a bit of money. Instead, I gathered up my documentation, and put on a pair of running shoes.

Only sparing a moment to lock the door behind me, I left my hotel room and made for the stairs. In the emergency stairwell, I came across others who had left their hotel rooms. I didn't know if they had made the same calculations, but I was in no mood to care.

Taking six steps at a time in a way that would have felt awkward in my second life, floors blurred by me as I bolted for the ground floor. After the final stairwell landing, I hurtled down the typically drab Ursine hallway, passing by portrait after portrait of current and previous Tsars.

I had followed the bellhop down this very hallway when I first arrived here, so I knew it led to the western exit. Around me were frightened hotel staff, and at least a few panicked guests who seemed to have the same idea as me. More third parties unlucky enough to be caught in Chernobog during all this. There wasn't much I could or wanted to do for them, so I spared them only a passing glance. The side foyer was just around the next corner. From down here, I could hear the roar of the pandemonium on the streets.

In line with some of Chernobog's awful aesthetics, the walls of the lobby would be almost entirely windowless, so there would be some protection from gazes outside. It was to be the last bit of relative safety that I would have for a while, before I stepped out into the chaos.

I slowed down and carefully approached the turn, hoping nobody too unfriendly waited around the corner. To my surprise, in the lobby was the man who, in another timeline, might have been my verbal sparring partner for tonight.

"Director Veselov?" I asked.

The well-dressed Ursus almost jumped out of his skin before a look of recognition passed through his eyes.

"Miss Müller!"

Müller wasn't my birth surname. Nobody was sure what it was because my mother's note only mentioned my given name. Considering the circumstances of my birth, I sure as hell didn't want to find out, either. When children at the orphanage passed a certain age without being adopted, the aunties at the orphanage would kindly assign us one. I didn't have much of a preference, so they gave me the most common one in town.

I was used to it enough that I answered to it by reflex now.

Clutching a briefcase to his chest and gaping at me was the middle-aged Ursus I was supposed to be meeting tonight: Sasha Veselov. He wasn't from Chernobog either. Arktik Oridzhinium was a centuries-old mining firm, owned by the Ursus Imperial Family. Having slept on the development of Chernobog for decades now, AO had finally decided to make a move a few weeks ago. Their negotiations with the Boris Group had ended in a major joint project based out of Chernobog itself, so the headquarters in Saint Gryphersburg had dispatched one of their directors to oversee the project.

The firm I worked for, Coopers & Harding, had a presence across most of the developed world, but due to a variety of historical factors, we didn't have much of a foothold in Ursus. The higher ups were hoping that the new mining project could be an inroad into the market, and after a lot of office politics, it was determined that this would be assigned to the Lungmen Branch due to the physical proximity to Chernobog. That was how I found myself flown into the city yesterday.

Now Sasha Veselov was standing there, wondering what he should do. I could understand the feeling. Just an hour ago, I was occupying myself with how to wheedle the man into paying for services the project didn't really need. Now, I was just desperate to get to whichever district the bulk of the Military Police were operating out of. I imagined he was much the same.

"I must admit, this was not how I thought I'd be spending this day," I said. Veselov chuckled nervously.

"No, I imagine not. Just a few minutes ago I was worrying about which vintage to have tonight."

"Oh?" I smiled. "More worried about the wine than the conversation partner?"

"You belittle yourself, Miss Müller! Imagine if I entertained a rising star like yourself with mamrać," he japed, smiling in a way that must have been vaguely charming even on a middle-aged man.

I made an exaggerated grimace. "I didn't think you could find that Kazimierzian swill within Ursine borders," I joked back, hoping to ease the nerves.

It might not have worked with a Chernobog native, but out west, in Saint Gryphersburg, they were still resentful about their dozen failures to annex the nation of horse folk. As I learned in all three of my lives, there really was nothing like a touch of casual racism for building solidarity with strangers.

"Fu! Their petty horsemen knights cannot defeat us on an open field, so they ply our poor with piss," Veselov huffed.

Privately, I didn't think mamrać was so bad. It was some kind of fortified apple wine, unique to this world as far as I knew, but was easy enough on the way down. Sylwia from accounting had gifted me some chocolate mamrać for Christmas once, being from Kazimierz herself. I remember heading back to my apartment later that night, and rather enjoying the bottle with the traditional fried chicken Christmas dinner I picked up on the way home.

And his point about open combat was not strictly true. Cyryl Nearl had bloodied Ursus so badly in the last war that Kazimierz went on to reconquer historical territory.

"The military might of Ursus is well known," I agreed instead. "I'm sure this rabble will be cleared up soon enough, but for now, shall we relocate ourselves?"

That took some of the wind out of the director. His smile faded a little, but he nodded in agreement.

"Of course, Miss Müller. Where were you headed?"

"There's a well-equipped group of rioters coming in from the east. We'd best leave before they arrive."

Veselov nodded grimly.

"Let's hope they don't make things too difficult for us," he muttered.

When we entered the foyer, I felt a little foolish. Some of the hotel staff had already begun barricading the only entrance. Young Ursi were moving desks and chairs in front of the door. Of course they were. With the explosion, and then the fighting, why would anybody on the ground floor do otherwise?

I approached the young man who seemed to be in charge.

"Excuse me. We're trying to get out. Please let us leave," I said.

The staff member shook his head.

"We have orders to barricade the doors. Please return to your rooms and wait until order has been restored."

"There are other guests leaving through the main lobby," I argued. At least they seemed to have been heading that way. Noticing the stubborn set of his jaw, I tried a different tack. "The police outside are being beaten back, and there's a huge armed mob heading down the street. They'll be here any minute. We don't want to be trapped here when they arrive."

The young man hesitated.

"That's all the more reason to remain here. We'll be safer inside the hotel."

"I don't want to be locked in," I insisted.

"Young man, we have friends that we've promised to rendezvous with," said Veselov. I didn't know if it was true, but I wasn't about to gainsay him. "It will only take a moment to let us out, and you'll have the entrance barricaded again."

"He's right. Nobody is trying to break the door down right now," I pointed out. "This should be our decision to make."

The staff member looked between us for a moment, but eventually he nodded.

"You'll have to be quick. Iosef, Bogdan, help me shift this cupboard."

The two Ursi only took a moment to comply, having overheard our exchange. To the side, a clerk couldn't help her hands shaking with fright.

"Are you sure this is wise?" she asked. "Shouldn't we just wait until things settle down?"

"It might be best for you to do exactly that," I said. "We'll take our chances."

I wasn't sure I wanted a bigger crowd, anyhow. I was lucky enough to bump into Veselov. If nothing else, going through something like this together was sure to build a rapport. But if we were trying to leave the area without drawing too much attention to ourselves, it would be better to avoid moving as a crowd.

With the help of the three Ursi, the barricade was moved just enough to open the door a crack, and I was able to squeeze through into the alleyway beyond. Director Veselov followed behind me. It was pandemonium outside. The masked rioters had begun to vandalise the streets. Between the molotovs being thrown around and the trees ignited in the earlier mortar attack, I could smell the smoke and burning from all the way over here.

The Ursus MPs must have still been fighting rioters in the distance, but they were buried behind a sea of people. What I could see were other members of the hooded mob breaking open shop windows and looting things. That was a little chilling. I was reasonably sure that none of the thievery or vandalism they were committing had much to do with their political message. I felt bad for the shop owners, but such was the fate of inanimate storefronts when a rowdy mob really wanted to show the government that they meant business.

At least there were no such stores in the alleyway where Veselov and I stood.

"I suppose we're making a run for it," I said. The sooner we left this area the better.

"At least we've got a chance," replied Veselov. "Let's take this corner. It will take us parallel to Central Main Street."

I nodded. We began trotting down the narrower street, staying close to the wall. On a normal day, this service street was probably used by local businesses and offices for deliveries and garbage collection. Here and there along the walls were abandoned trucks, often surrounded by their cargo of crates and boxes, sometimes next to a still-open garage door. One garage was filled with boxes labelled with the only word in Cyrillic I recognised, 'coffee'. We were probably passing behind a café or coffee store.

The thought of coffee made for a strange, but familiar contrast with the smell of smoke. The combination of the two scents was oddly nostalgic.

Ah well. We continued down the shaded street mostly without trouble, save for the occasional truck we had to circle around.

The comparative differences in brightness meant that whenever we passed an intersection, we had a clear view of Central Main Street, at least where more trucks hadn't been parked at each alley's mouth. The ubiquity of these trucks was leading me to believe that this was how all these rioters had gathered here. It was simple enough to hide men in the back instead of cargo, and there was nothing strange about delivery trucks driving into the core city.

At least the number of them seemed to be decreasing as we jogged along. It was a promising sign that we were heading the right way.

The further west we ran, the more civilians we started to see, people fleeing from the chaos in the vicinity of the mortar attack. Many of them looked like office workers who had no idea what was happening. I wondered if any of them had been from that government office.

Some of the others seemed to have been pedestrians or shoppers before the attack, based on their casual clothing. The occasional glimpse of dressed up young women whenever we passed another intersection, run ragged from trying to escape. Sometimes of parents carrying their crying children, or dragging them along where they could. There were also the brawls. Here and there I saw young civilian men fighting against the rioters.

I suppose the patriots of Ursus hadn't been able to help themselves. In my opinion, if they were smart they would have avoided antagonising the rioters at all costs. Even as a disorganised mob, the rioters had far greater coordination and unity of purpose than any hypothetical ad-hoc coalition of shoppers and office workers. That hot-headed patriotism would cost them.

On the other hand, at least the young Ursi men were a good distraction, in case any of the masks felt like harassing perfectly uninvolved bystanders. It did make me wonder how on earth there were so many of them. I had been running for two or three minutes now, and these hooded mask wearers still seemed to be everywhere. They were even ahead of us. Were more of those empty trucks parked further up? I hoped we weren't still in the epicentre of all this, or else moving west would just run us into more reinforcements. If the better choice turned out to be holing up in the hotel, I was going to kick myself. At least we hadn't met any of them on this street yet.

"So where are you meeting those friends of yours?" I asked without looking back at Veselov.

"A little white lie," he said between puffs. "I wanted to make the choice easier on the boy."

Honestly, if they had refused, I was planning to just jump out from the second floor. I wasn't in great shape, but humans seemed a lot tougher in this world.

As we hurried past an intersection we heard a shrill scream in the distance. I paused only for a moment before I continued running.

"Shouldn't we see what that was?" Veselov hesitantly. What was it about screaming women that made burly men so irrational?

"If you want to assist your countrymen, we can offer what aid we can when we reach an evacuation point," I said. Whatever that sound was, did he really think we'd be of any help there? I doubted either of us were medical arts practitioners, and if it was a fight we'd be running into we'd stand even less of a chance. "For now it's most important that we help ourselves—"

I was rounding another large truck when something barrelled into me from the side. I felt myself being rammed painfully into the wall before my vision swam. While one side of me burned, a large hand gripped my shoulder on the other side and slammed my back against the concrete.

"Helping yourselves, huh? Looks like we've found us a rat and his little soderzhanka," said the blurry woman who attacked me.

A… A mistress?! Even through the pain I could feel my indignation rising. Did this little tart have any idea how hard I worked for my money?

I tried to muster a response when two more thugs darted towards me and pinned me on either side. To my indignation, the woman began rifling through my pockets.

Nearby, a small crowd of their friends were pulling Veselov by the hair and belting him in the face.

"What do we have here?" One of them was looking through Veselov's wallet.

"He with the government?" asked the one holding his hair.

"I-I'm not, I'm just a director for a mining company," Veselov hacked out.

For some reason the air gained a dangerous edge.

"Oh? A director! We humble peasants are honoured by your presence, Gospoda Veselov," the thug laughed, pulling Veselov's head back.

"And it looks like he's from Sankt Grypherburg too," added the one holding the wallet.

"This one's from Lungmen." One of my own captors gestured to me.

"That's right," I said. "I'm just here to work out a business deal with Director Veselov. I have nothing to do with whatever you're protesting."

Why were they looking at me like that?

"Nothing to do with us…" the woman from earlier muttered. "This is a very nice blazer. Maynis & Linda?"

I immediately understood.

"You can have it of course," I offered with an ingratiating smile. Trying to butter her up, I added, "I think it would look better on you than me."

The masked thugs laughed, but it was a malicious, bitter thing.

I laughed along nervously.

"Of course, you can also have everything in my wallet," I said, before thinking better of it. "But I would much appreciate it if you left me with my ID."

The punch to my face was as unexpected to me as it was unreasonable. What the hell?! There was no need to resort to violence!

My vision swam, again, as I felt a tooth loosen.

"You hear that, my friends?" The woman began throwing hooks into my stomach. "A high! And mighty! Businesswoman from Lungmen! Thinks we want the scraps off her table! All while she and this Veselov get rich from sucking every last drop of blood from us Infected and sending us to die in the mines."

Infected? As I gasped for breath through watering eyes, I gave them a closer look. It was hard to tell through all the clothing, but a few had their sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms speckled with black crystals.

"I don't know anything about that," I said weakly. I completely objected to this blame. It was their government! What did Ursine policies on Oripathy sufferers have to do with me? Nobody had ever approached me with such a job offer!

In the background, the masked Infected were stomping on Director Veselov now. Hey, he's going to die at this rate. I still need that man, you lunatics!

"Please let us go," I tried. Or at least let me go. I had never been good at begging, but I gave it my best shot.

I swallowed thickly. I couldn't see their expressions through the masks, but judging by their body language, it didn't seem to be working.

"Her expression seems to be saying that it has nothing to do with her," said the thug to my right.

Somehow, I could tell the woman was sneering through her mask.

"That's all right. We'll make it something to do with you," she said.

The next hook to my stomach struck me so hard in the gut that I doubled over, even with both my arms restrained. I gagged, and then hacked, and was about to try pleading again when I noticed all the blood.

My blouse was turning red with it, and jutting out through a jagged tear was a luminescent shard of black crystal.

"Welcome to our brotherhood, sister," she laughed.

When I came back to my senses, I was standing in inch-deep blood, and my attackers were steaming corpses.