Chapter 3: The Same Boat

Of the five regional institutions that trained young men (and now a handful of young women each year also) to become officers, the National Academy in Central was the most prestigious. It had the highest academic standards for applicants and cadets, and where the other academies accepted letters of endorsement from any officer with a rank of captain or higher, one needed the sponsorship of a lieutenant colonel at the very least in order to be eligible for acceptance to the National Academy. Because of this, most of the cadets were the children of the wealthy: sons of officers or politicians or influential businessmen. They were young men who had lived lives of privilege and ease, and the adaptation to the rigid discipline of military life was not easy. The fourth-class cadets, especially, struggled to adjust to their new environment, where not only were they without mothers (and in some cases servants) to wait upon them, but they were expected to obey without question the orders of the faculty, the enlisted support staff, and even the more senior cadets.

For Roy Mustang, the transition to life in the Academy had been an easy one. Unlike his classmates, he had not lived a privileged life. He remembered nothing of his early childhood, but before the age of five he had run away from the State orphanage in East City, and he had survived on his own for three years before coming to the house of his sensei. He had been taken in by the Hawkeye family in a large part because Riza, who had then been three years of age, had taken a fancy to him. In the early years, he had witnessed the growing derangement of Lian Hawkeye, Riza's half-Ishbalan mother, as she descended into madness. After her death, Mordred Hawkeye had morphed slowly from a cold, indifferent man to a stringent and often abusive one. Hawkeye-sensei had imposed a strict code of discipline upon the children in his care, and the consequences for disobedience had been more than a little unpleasant. Roy had learned from an early age to keep his head down and his eyes front, and to do as he was told.

As it turned out, this was excellent training for military life. Here, however, there was the added advantage of consistency. Hawkeye-sensei had been unpredictable at best: one moment merry, the next violent. At the Academy, Roy could always predict the consequences of his actions. Disobedience was punished with verbal abuse, temporary loss of privileges, or physical exercise, such as abdominal crunches, push-ups, and laps around the parade grounds. Obedience was rewarded with curt approval and even the occasional word of praise. Exceptional performance won accolades from instructors – not flowery eulogies, but certainly sincere affirmation – and occasionally added freedoms. To avoid reprimands, Roy had only to follow the rules. It was simple, formulaic, and extraordinarily comforting.

Unfortunately, since he found the adjustment so easy and many of his compatriots struggled with it, Roy was not the most popular person in the first-year class. True, he was hardly hated, and he was certainly not tormented by the cadets as he had been by his fellow pupils in primary school. But he was an easy target for teasing, being not only dedicated but small, thin, and dark – in a group of tall, burly, fair-headed boys of solid Amestrian stock. There were rumours that he was Xingese, which Roy could scarcely deny since he knew nothing about his parents. With that gossip came the inevitable suspicions that his mother had been a prostitute, or something equally disreputable, and so while much of the teasing was good-natured, some was thoroughly mean-spirited.

He had been at the Academy for almost four months now, and still his only friend was Maes Hughes, who was two years above him. The two had been fast friends since Roy's early days at school, when the bespectacled tinker's son had defended him from the village bullies. Every summer until Maes enlisted to help in the conflict with Aerugo, the two boys had spent several weeks together before the itinerant Hugheses had moved on. They knew each other as well as any brothers, which could sometimes be inconvenient, especially when Roy was trying to keep a secret from the older cadet.

"I told you, Maes; I have to get money for the exam," Roy said, shifting his arm in the hopes that Maes could not see the bulge in his pocket where he had stuffed most of his supper.

"Yeah, but why won't you let me help with that so you can get a full night's sleep?" Hughes pressed, shuffling around another cadet to secure a place in the line for the washbasins. "You can't like working as a busboy."

"Why not?" Roy asked. "It's an interesting change from Academy life."

"You love Academy life!"

"Well, I get to have the leavings from customers' drinks," Roy pointed out. "Some of the rivermen have good taste in whiskey." Joking about liquor was socially acceptable behaviour among the cadets, but the truth was that draining the dregs from the near-empty glasses was just about the only thing that sustained him through the twenty-one-hour days, but he didn't want Maes to think he was a drunkard.

As he had hoped, Maes chuckled. "Fair enough," he said. "Listen, I'm taking a little time next week, so I was thinking I could come with you and make sure they're treating you right."

He winked amicably from behind his spectacles, but Roy bristled. "Maes, I can take care of myself!"

"I know that, and I'd like an excuse to do something other than study or get wasted at the Raven."

The Hopping Raven was the pub nearest the Academy campus, where most of the cadets spent a good share of their free time. Though the first-years (save of course those, like Roy, who had employment dispensations) were allowed out only one night a week, grouped according to academic major, the other years had more freedom in their schedules. Maes, as a third year, was entitled to an average of three nights a week – which meant that he could bank time, staying in for a week, and then going out every night the following week if he wanted to. Since Maes was older than the average cadet, and had eighteen months' experience as an NCO, he wasn't as interested in drinking himself into a stupor. Roy, being seventeen and longing naturally to fit in, would have loved to join his classmates... but of course, he had responsibilities that they did not.

"I don't want you underfoot when I'm trying to work," Roy said.

"Oh, right. I forgot: bussing tables is such delicate work!" Coming from anyone else, the remark would have sounded cruel and catty. From Maes, it was just a good-natured dig.

Roy smirked a little. "Yeah, and you should see the dishwashing! I use a toothbrush. Better accuracy, you see."

Maes laughed, depositing his soiled dishes into the basin of soapy water and scrubbing them quickly with the cloth provided. "I should get you to do mine, then, since you're such an expert," he said. "I can't wait 'til we're officers and don't have to do this anymore."

"Unless we get sent to the front," Roy said sagely. "Armies on the move can't pack support staff."

"They'd better pack a cook, at least!" Maes laughed. "If I have to survive on my own cooking, the Aerugan's won't have to kill me!"

His laugh was cut short as his own words struck home. Roy watched as the smile vanished from Maes' lips. His brother Ira had received a fatal wound on the southern front, and though Maes tried to be his usual buoyant self, it was obvious that the wounds of that loss were still raw.

"Hey, Maes..." the younger cadet said softly, dropping his dishes into the basin and gripping his friend's arm.

"I still... I can't believe it, you know?" Maes choked out, forcing a shaky smile. "I mean, I always figured that Ben would be the first one to go..."

"Move along, Mustang!" one of the NCOs in the kitchen barked. Roy stiffened to attention, wiping his dishes hastily. He followed Maes down to the stacks of clean china, set down his plate and his cutlery, and then moved on towards the exit of the mess hall.

"Maes, I'm sorry," Roy said impotently. The six Brothers Hughes and their father had been an inseparable band until the war in the south had drawn first Ira and then Maes into the military, and taken Eli, the third brother and a master glassgrinder, for the production of rifle sights. As far as Roy knew, Ben, Gareth and Tiath, brothers one, two and four, were still out there somewhere, travelling with their father and plying their trades, but it was obvious that the family had been badly fractured by Ira's death.

"I know, buddy," Maes said, veering to the left out of the stream of traffic that led towards the dormitories where the upperclassmen lived. He dug in his pocket for his handkerchief, and wiped his eyes before blowing his nose. "But I mean... it was bound to happen. He was a soldier. It could happen to any of us."

Roy nodded mutely. It was a possibility he had not even considered before news of Ira's death had reached him in Hamner – oddly enough, on the very day of his sensei's funeral. Any one of the young men with whom he drilled, ate, bunked and studied might be doomed to fall to an Aerugan bullet or a Credoan bayonet, or to be stabbed in the back by a rebellious Ishbalan in some dirty street scuffle. It was sobering, and terrifying.

Maes tucked away his handkerchief, adjusted his specs, and then reached out to hug Roy tightly. The tinker's son was a naturally affectionate person, but the one-time gutter rat was not. The physical contact startled Roy, and only the fact that it was Maes prevented him from struggling. He let the taller youth squeeze him and timidly patted Maes' spine, trying to hide his discomfiture. When Maes let go, Roy tried to smooth his uniform and collect his dignity.

"I have to go," he said apologetically. "If I don't hurry and get moving, I'll be late for work."

Maes nodded. He smiled genuinely, his brief melancholy faded. "Sure. I'm going to pop in on you one of these nights, Mustang. Just be warned!"

Roy rolled his eyes. "Yes, Uncle Maes," he laughed. Then he hurried off, to change out of his uniform and into his nondescript civilian rags. For his classmates, the working day was over. For him, the night's labour had only begun.

discidium

The words on Riza's back had cadence and rhyme. They were lines of verse. Yet in two places there were words that did not fit with the others. On the bottom right corner was lupus, which was "wolf". On the upper left, just below the corner of her shoulder blade, was the word latrocinium. That too was a noun, meaning either "highway robbery", or "a group of robbers". These two words were the only ones not in a proper sentence or phrase: they had been dropped seemingly randomly into the design of the tattoo.

Roy knew his sensei never did anything without some purpose. If those two words did not fit with the others, there was a reason. He just had to find it out. Wolf. A group of robbers. Or a team, he thought. Or a faction, maybe.

"Gang," whispered the cadet sitting next to him. Roy stiffened, his hand flying to cover the words that he had been scrawling in the margin of his Tactics workbook. The other cadet grinned toothily. "They're synonyms, right? Group, team, faction... gang. Working on a crossword?"

"Uh... yeah," Roy said. "Yeah, but it's five letters, not four and... uh... it's got a 'q' in it."

"Mustang and Walters, eyes front!" the instructor barked out. The two young men straightened instinctively, returning their focus, at least ostensibly, to what they were supposed to be doing. Roy, however, continued to turn the question over in his head.

Gang wolf, team wolf, robber wolf... wolf pack, maybe? Did the cipher have something to do with a pack of wolves? But what did wolves have to do with flame alchemy? It didn't matter, he realized. The key to the enigma might have absolutely nothing to do with alchemy at all. If that was the case, though, how was Roy, who knew nothing but alchemy, supposed to unravel it?

Riza had told him that the code was supposed to be unbreakable to the average alchemist. Her father had told her that, and Roy wondered now if that was a clue. Maybe the key did have nothing to do with alchemy. If that was the case, then what was it? It was maddening.

Wolf. Highway robbery. It made no sense.

discidium

Riza found work at the end of her fifth week in Central City. It was not employment near her lodgings, nor in a shop. She was not an apprentice to a dressmaker, nor a maid of all work for a baker, nor a nursemaid nor a junior governess nor any of the things she had expected to find work as. She was a factory worker.

The factory made, of all useless things, silk flowers. The printing, punching and sorting was all carried out by machines modified and maintained with alchemy by a practitioner who was so far inferior to either her father or to Mr. Mustang that even Riza could see the difference. The construction, however, was done by hand, by twenty-seven girls in three assembly lines. Each line made a different flower: one roses, one lilies, and one daisies.

A conveyor belt brought the materials down in a neat pile. In the rose line, the first girl took a wire from a bin by her hip, and with a piece of silk thread from a dispenser by her head bound three petals to it. The next girl attached six larger petals. The next twisted on a second wire, halfway down the first, so that two ends stuck out opposite one another. The fourth affixed a dark green leaf, and the next a light green one. Then the sixth girl wrapped the stem with green ribbon, covering the places where the silk pieces were affixed to the wire. The seventh girl took three quick stitches to hold the ribbon in place. The eighth bent the flower ever so slightly into a jaunty angle, and the ninth girl wrapped it in tissue and set it in a box. When the box had one gross of flowers, it was full, and the foreman would punch the card for the team and take the box away to be packed and shipped.

Riza only knew the workings of the rose line, for that was the one on which she worked. She was the third girl in the line, responsible for twisting the second piece of wire around the first. It seemed in theory like an easy task, but she soon discovered that it was anything but. The wires were tiny, not three inches long, and she had to twist the ends together three times, tightly and perfectly each time. The repetitive motion made her wrists and elbows ache, and the thin wire wore away at her fingertips so that by the end of the first day they were torn and bleeding. She was obliged to stand at the belt for the whole of her shift, so that her legs and her back ached, and her feet in their shoddy shoes felt ravaged as if by white-hot knives. Worst of all, the work was mind-numbingly dull. The girls were not allowed to converse while working, and Riza had nothing to occupy her mind but remembered recitation lessons from her brief years of schooling.

Still, she worked five days a week, and for ten hours a day instead of the twelve that labourers at most factories did. She was paid seventeen sens a day. It was not a great deal of money, but at least she could do something to help Mr. Mustang with the cost of her upkeep. At eighty-five sens a week, she could hardly help with the rent, but she was able to buy her own coal, and food sometimes, too.

One night, when she had been working almost a fortnight, Mr. Mustang came up to her room as usual, but looking weary and discouraged.

"It's no good, Riza," he said at last, when he had given her the food he had brought and brushed the snow from his shoulders. "I'm obviously not worthy of your father's research."

"You can't give up," Riza said softly. "Please, Mr. Mustang. Don't give up. You'll figure it out. Y—you're not an ordinary alchemist."

"I'm hardly an alchemist at all," he muttered, sitting down heavily on the battered chair. "I have no time to practice, I have no style of my own, there's nothing extraordinary about me at all."

"You're younger than most alchemists," Riza pointed out. "My... father was an apprentice until he was almost twenty." Sometimes it was hard to remember that Mr. Mustang was only a little more than four years her senior. Somehow he seemed much older. Perhaps it was because he was already in the military, training to serve his country and to protect the people of Amestris.

A sick chuckle bubbled up in the young soldier's throat. "I'm not making any progress, Riza," he confessed. "None. I'm no further ahead than I was when we started. It's been two months, and I'm no further ahead."

"B-but you've translated all the text. You know what it says," Riza protested desperately. He couldn't give up! It was a code, a perfect cipher, but it could be broken. Riza knew it could be broken. It had to be breakable, for then she could pass the information on and be done. She was tired of protecting it: the burden of bearing her father's research gnawed eternally at her heart. Until she could ensure that it had been passed on to his worthy successor, she would never be able to rest. She was weary of that responsibility, and if only Mr. Mustang could decode the array then she could be free of it.

"It's just a Latin verse," Mr. Mustang said morosely. "'When the evil are confounded and consigned to flames of woe'... and along the right side, 'day of wrath! That day will dissolve the earth in ashes'. Or between the serpents, where it says 'mournful that day when from the dust shall rise guilty Man to be judged'. And 'in thy merciful goodness grant that I burn not in everlasting fire'... they're all images of flame, all right, but there's no instructions there. None that I can see, anyway. I..."

He stopped, seeing the expression on Riza's face. When she had heard him muttering the words to himself, she had thought them lyrical and almost exotic. Dies irae, dies illa solvet saeclum in favilla. She had almost liked the sounds, and she had been glad that, if she had to have something carved into her skin, at least it was something nearly pretty. Now, listening to the snippets that he translated, she was horrified. Images of fire and darkness and all-consuming guilt. Dissolve the earth in ashes? Everlasting fire? These were the words that she carried on her slender back?

"It's... it's not all like that," Mr. Mustang choked out. "There's... 'lux perpetual luceat est', which means 'may perpetual light shine upon them", or 'dona eis requiem'. That's 'grant them rest'. And... a-and 'voca sua cum benedictis'."

He looked away, staring resolutely at the candle that he had brought with him. Riza moistened her lips with her tongue.

"W-what does that mean?" she asked quietly.

He turned back to her, and there was such pain in her eyes that Riza wished she had not said it. "'Call her among the blesséd'," he whispered.

"Call who?" The words were out before Riza could censor them.

"You, I think," breathed Mr. Mustang. He got to his feet and crossed the room – a matter of two steps. He raised his hand and pressed it against the wall just above his head, as if by doing so he could force out whatever demon was tormenting him.

"Me?" Riza trembled. Her father thought she was blessed? He had wanted her to be called among the blesséd? An unfamiliar warmth coursed through her. In the years after her mother's death, her father had distanced himself from her as if she was not worthy of his attention. He had only noticed her to criticize her, save during those weeks when he was applying the tattoo to her back. Then, it seemed, he was only interested in the preservation of his research, and in coaching her in her duties as its guardian. Now, she realized that he had taken the opportunity to mark her with a sign of his favour, too... however small. Call her among the blessed. She, Riza Hawkeye, was blessed in her father's eyes after all.

Mr. Mustang didn't seem to see it that way. His back was tense, and though she could not see his face she knew that he was suffering. Strangers they might be, now, but once they had been the closest of friends. She could read his emotions as clearly as her own.

"Sir? Mr. Mustang?" Riza ventured.

"Damn it, Riza, why do you have to call me that?" he moaned, slumping forward so that his forehead was pressed against the peeling wallpaper. "He's dead. You don't have to obey him anymore."

It was her father who had first enforced the rule, forbidding them from using one another's given names. It had been in reaction to something that Mr. Mustang – in those days Roy – had done. Riza didn't remember quite what, but she thought he had struck his sensei in the heat of an argument. In any case, it had become habit, and after Mr. Mustang had gone away and abandoned her without even saying goodbye, vanishing for two long years, it was the most natural thing to refer to him as she would any adult.

"I... I'm sorry, Mr. Mustang, but..."

He whirled around, his pale face strained. "No, I'm sorry, Riza," he choked out. "I d-didn't mean to snap at you like that. It doesn't matter what you call me; I don't mind it, really. I'm just so tired, that's all. I-I'm so tired..."

She got up from her seat on the bed, exerting a conscious effort to keep from wincing as she put her weight on her sore feet. "Come on," she said softly, plucking at his sleeve with one stiff hand. "You don't have to work tonight. Come and lie down instead."

He shook his head. "I've got to..."

"Not tonight," Riza said. "You can't concentrate properly when you're tired. I know I can't. Lie down and sleep a little."

He muttered a half-hearted protest, but let her lead him to the bed. He sat wearily down and Riza smiled encouragingly. "I'll wake you up when it's time to go back," she promised, putting a hand on his clavicle and easing him backwards onto the limp pillow.

"But..." he protested.

Riza shook her head resolutely and drew the tatty bedclothes over him. "I'm stubborn, too," she warned him.

Roy looked like he wanted to retort, but he was half asleep already. His eyes kept drifting closed, and the tension was leeching out of his shoulders. Riza sat down on the edge of the bed – just where he always perched while he studied the markings on her back. She watched with an air of propriety as he finally succumbed to slumber. He might look out for her, but she could look out for him, too. After all, they were both in this mess together.