MAY 4, 2016 ATB
STADTFELD MANOR, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1730

Lady Alicia Stadtfeld, née Maplethorpe, narrowed her eyes as she watched the vermin scuttle across the foyer below. The vermin, the Number, wore the same long black dress and white apron as the other female domestics, but to Lady Alicia's trained eye that single surface level commonality was as far as the civilizing touch of Britannia extended.

Though you know that the touch of one Britannian in particular went quite a bit deeper than a mere superficial touch…

With a sneer, Alicia pushed that errant thought to the back of her mind. She had a great deal of practice in that; she'd shoved many similar thoughts back into the darkness over the course of her four year long joke of a marriage.

When her brothers had informed Alicia that they had somehow found a second husband for her, she had been torn by overwhelming relief and gnawing suspicion. Relief that someone, anyone, finally wanted her, and suspicion over why, exactly, he wanted an empty, broken, useless vessel like herself.

Her condition was sadly no secret; her first husband, Justin, had made its existence all but public knowledge when he'd divorced her on the grounds that "their union was not blessed by God, as evident by its unfruitfulness." As a result, she had endured five long years of humiliation as a prematurely dried up old hag at the age of twenty three. Her life was functionally over before it had even begun.

Alicia had spent those years in utter misery. She was useless to her family, because how could they form a marriage alliance using her if she couldn't produce heirs to seal it? Nobody would take her. Nobody wanted her. Not even the commoner magnates her older brother Franklin had approached were interested in taking her, noble blood not outweighing an empty womb. The only thing that had made that long half-decade bearable had been the bottle she'd crawled into.

But then, Franklin had somehow found Baron Alvin of New Leicester, head of House Stadtfeld.

At forty-four when they'd met, Baron Alvin was sixteen years her senior. An unmarried man at that age holding title raised all sorts of questions, but Franklin and Alicia had both been desperate, and so neither asked anything remotely uncomfortable. If Baron Alvin had undignified tastes, they had reasoned, he had done a good enough job concealing them for there to be no whisper of scandal dogging his name.

Yes, you didn't ask a thing, you just praised God for his blessings, the snide voice murmured, returning from its exile. You didn't even bother to ask yourself why a baron without a recognized heir would marry a barren woman from a middling family. You didn't want to risk it all being a dream, did you?

She had not, Alicia could admit to herself. Looking back on it, she probably still would have committed to the marriage even if she had known what role her husband to be had in mind for her. She just would have appreciated some sort of warning. She wished he had bothered to ask. Instead, he'd whisked her off to Area Eleven, to the newly built Stadtfeld Manor.

It had been like her girlhood dreams. Marriage to an older lord, being swept away to a palatial estate in an exotic land, a whole team of servants bowing in unison to greet the new mistress of the house…

Yes, that had been the moment when things had started to go awry, when the servants had been introduced to her. Well, started to go awry in a way she couldn't ignore – Alicia hadn't pushed her new husband when he declined to consummate their marriage, after all, reasoning that it would have been unladylike, even if it had been a very long, very lonely five years.

I could have handled it! She thought furiously as she turned away from the insect dusting the windowsills and retreated to her suite and her liquor cabinet. I could have handled a loveless, sexless marriage! I wouldn't have cared if I had to beard for a sodomite! If he had the discretion to keep it out of my sight, I would have smiled and played the role I was born to! The role I was meant to play!

But no, Baron Alvin hadn't been kind or considerate enough to keep his disgraces out of her sight. Indeed, immediately after she'd been introduced to the servants as the mistress of the house, she'd been introduced to a snot-nosed little brat as her new mother. A brat that Alicia had never so much as heard of, a brat Baron Alvin had never mentioned to Franklin when negotiating the union.

From their first meeting, young Kallen had obviously hated Alicia and had displayed no hesitation in letting her feelings be known. The little bitch had shouted and screamed in both honest Britannian and in her heathen tongue, and to Alicia's astonishment Baron Alvin had replied likewise in both tongues, patiently doting on his rotten brat and allowing her to beat her fists against his shoulders as he wrapped her in an embrace.

And that was when he had offhandedly informed Alicia that she would be listed on Kallen's official documents as her birth mother. The Baron hadn't even looked at her when he'd said this; all of his attention had been focused on his sobbing daughter. He hadn't asked if she was willing to pretend to be the mangy little halfbreed's mother, he'd just informed her that her name had already been appended to the documents.

Never mind that the only way she could have had the girl was if she had cheated on Justin! Never mind that Baron Alvin hadn't even bothered to apologize for springing a bastard he'd whelped with a Number on her! No, she was expected to just stand there and take it and, presumably, to be thankful that the Baron had found a use for something as useless and unwanted as her.

And I could have handled that too! Alicia told herself as she poured four fingers of the tawny brown liquor into her glass without bothering with any ice. I never really wanted children, but I could have been a mother if… if that had been possible! But, no, even that wasn't enough for the great Baron Alvin!

The freshly married Alicia had, it turned out, already had the displeasure of meeting Baron Alvin's whore by that point, not that she'd known. Oh, she'd noticed the lone Asian face in the row of bowing maids, but she'd assumed that the woman, whose graceful bow had been significantly deeper and better practiced than the rest, had been of some Britannian commoner stock, some sailor's child perhaps. Instead, she'd been horrified when Alvin had introduced her to Hitomi.

Just the thought of the wretched woman's name made Alicia's hand spasm around her glass, and she tossed the remaining scotch back in her throat before she could spill the spirit. The burn it left behind helped take her mind off the memory of that first meeting somewhat. Just a bit.

They were obviously in love, Baron Alvin and Hitomi. It had been Alicia's honeymoon, technically, but he and that Elven bitch were all but cooing over each other. The most galling part was that it was the Eleven, Hitomi, who showed a hint of contrition. Only the Eleven, the servant, had apologized for the imposition to Alicia. Baron Alvin hadn't even bothered.

"I paid her for the service," the Baron had explained to his paramore, "or at least I paid her family. They have an alliance with House Stadtfeld and will be a preferred supplier for the family's business interests in Charleston, and I took an unweddable daughter off their hands. For the role she'll be playing, I paid quite handsomely."

The worst part was that Baron Alvin had been absolutely correct in his statement, which had been delivered matter-of-factly. He hadn't tried to be cruel, nor was the arrangement particularly strange, if Alicia was being honest. Many noble families had daughters or sons just appear out of thin air, their birth certificates suspiciously shiny and new, free of any stain of bastardry.

It just hadn't been what Alicia had anticipated, hoped for.

Days later, Baron Alvin had returned to the Homeland, leaving his wife, his secret Number mistress, and his daughter and newly announced heir in Area Eleven. Four years later, he hadn't returned, nor had he summoned her to his side. Hers was a comfortable exile, but an exile it was nonetheless.

Somehow, Alicia had found that she'd exchanged the loneliness of sitting in her brother's house, once her father's house, for the loneliness of sitting in her husband's house. Her bed was just as cold, her life just as empty. All through childhood, she'd been told that her purpose was to give her husband heirs and to raise them while he tended to his family's, or the empire's, affairs. Baron Alvin might very well be doing just that, but she had nothing, would never have anything.

The vermin had fulfilled Alicia's purpose better than the lady of the house ever could. Alicia had very carefully not noticed the Eleven with red hair and her husband's jaw visiting once every few months; her lord husband's instructions on that matter had been very clear on the matter. Alicia was only thankful that he hadn't forced her to pretend that his other bastard, almost as old as she was, had also been hers.

Lonely and abandoned, Alicia had taken her first lover within her first year at Stadtfeld Manor. It had been an act of rebellion, a cry of defiance that she'd perversely hoped that Baron Alvin, her only wedded lord, would hear and heed. She'd hoped he'd fly over the Pacific, come to call her out or divorce her or to make her his own in truth, his passion heated by the flames of jealousy.

He hadn't even asked her about it during their weekly call.

At first, Alicia had wondered if the man was blind, so blind he hadn't noticed her flagrant affair. She knew that he had eyes in the house, at least one pair, because she'd slept with Vernon, the majordomo, in the second year. One night when he was still asleep, she'd checked his archive of reports, and found her indiscretions in black and white. Baron Alvin had known; he just hadn't cared.

And so, she continued her affair with the head butler. The man was happy to serve a Britannian mistress, both in bed and out, and was quite happy with the tacit encouragement she provided in regards to the other servants' treatment of the vermin. After five years of solitude and months of indifference from Alvin, Vernon's devotion to his lady, to her, was intoxicating, almost as intoxicating as the fine scotch and brandy her generous allowance afforded her.

The next two years had continued along the same general trajectory. Alicia had charmed, used, and thrown away more men than she could easily remember, only keeping a few as long-term conquests. The pain of rejection had never fully faded, but the open arms and endless bottles of strong spirits had helped the wound scar over. In a strange, sometimes empty way, Alicia had finally found a measure of happiness, the queen over her little domain.

Now, the only flies in the ointment were "her" daughter and the bitch who had truly whelped the girl. Kallen had only grown worse with age, proving the old adage that blood will always out. She'd grown from a petulant child into a petulant teenager, privately disrespectful and defiant though thankfully subdued in public. What little time she spent at home these days, she spent locked in her room with… with that vermin.

The vermin herself, Kozuki Hitomi, was even more infuriating to Lady Alicia. While Kallen had the utter gall to remark on Alicia's diversions to her face, the quiet smile Hitomi wore as she went about her duties never failed to inspire fury. Up until recently, Alicia had been pleased to see that the whore of a maid's smile grew increasingly strained with each passing month, but even that simple pleasure had been denied her of late.

The scotch bottle tipped over the table and Alicia slurred a curse as it fell to the floor. Thankfully, it was already empty, leaving her fluffy white carpets unstained. A moment later, one of the servants – a good Britannian servant – slid in through her door, smoothly closing it behind him.

"My lady," the underbutler said, smoothly scooping up the fallen bottle as he bowed low, "I heard your cry. Can I assist you with anything?"

"Yes, go to the kitchen and fetch me another bottle," Lady Alicia ordered. "Oh!" She continued when he was halfway out the door, "has the mail arrived yet today? I'm expecting a letter from the Daughtrys this afternoon."

"I will ask the concierge, my lady," the servant assured her, bowing his way out, "and I will return immediately with another bottle of the Halifax '07."

"See that you do," she said dismissively with only the slightest of slurs, and reclined back in her chair. The door swung shut behind the man and Alicia was once again alone in her private lap of luxury.

After a moment, Alicia got to her feet and made her swaying way over to her secretary. It was an antique, just as exquisite as every other stick of furniture in her suite, but unlike most of the chaise lounges and loveseats scattered about, her desk bore the signs of actual use. The built-in shelves were home to a tidy row of ledgers, the household accounts for the last four years.

Those ledgers were just as much another insult in a list of insults from her lord husband as they were a private refuge.

It was, of course, a lady's place to handle the family accounts; everybody knew that while men were better at fighting, their overly emotional brains generally lacked the capacity to understand the more cerebral parts of life, such as math and physics. True, their emotional volatility inspired them to great works of art as well as war, as demonstrated by the Viceregal-Governor Prince Clovis, but science, logic, and mathematics were all inherently feminine pursuits.

And yet, when Alicia had arrived at Stadtfeld Manor, only the ledgers detailing the household accounts waited for her. Over the next four years, not a single page detailing the productivity of the Stadtfeld holdings nor the incomes of the Barony of New Leicester had arrived at the Manor. It was a clear sign that her lord husband didn't trust her to fulfill her wifely duties.

So, Alicia had buried herself in the household books. She wasn't a professional accountant by any measure, but she felt she could congratulate herself on a job well done for managing the house's expenses over the last few years.

Not that he'd ever appreciated it, she thought venomously. At least Vernon is quite appreciative of my abilities. Although, her lip curled contemptuously, he'd be willing to say anything for a few pounds. How very like the help; always willing to sell themselves for a few coins.

Then how much did Alvin spend to buy Hitomi's loyalty? The treacherous thought was like a murky bubble bursting in her consciousness. What coin did he use, and how much of it did he expend to secure her loyalty for years without meeting? Clearly whatever coin he used, he spent it all on her, and didn't save any for you.

A rap came from the door to the hallway.

"My lady?" Alicia blinked; that wasn't the voice of the underbutler she'd sent off for further refreshment. In fact, that was Vernon's voice, the majordomo himself and her lover of the last two and a half years. Unbidden, a smile spread across her pleasantly tingling face. "My lady, are you decent? There's a soldier here to see you. He has a letter for you, my lady."

All thoughts of afternoon fun shattered like spun glass at the announcement. Alicia blinked again, realizing that Vernon's tone had been quite sober – his public tone, with none of the… panache he deployed when they were alone and she had that outfit on.

Wait, she thought as the words finally registered, did he say a soldier is here? What would a soldier be doing here? Maybe… hope rose in her heart, maybe he's here to arrest that bitch Hitomi!

"Send him in, Vernon," Alicia replied as she sauntered back to the table and draped herself back over her chair. "Don't worry, I'm quite decent, I assure you."

Seconds later, a fine young man of obviously solid Britannian stock was saluting her with one hand, proffering a letter with the other. "Message for you, Lady Stadtfeld," the youngster announced, "courtesy of Major Pitt, of the Recruitment Command!"

"Major Pitt?" She repeated, turning the name over in her mouth. Her lips felt unaccountably dry, so she licked them, and then, noticing the effect on the young soldier, licked them again. "I don't believe I know of any Major Pitt, certainly not any recruiters… Vernon, dear? Do I know of any Pitts?"

"No, my lady," Vernon replied from his post by the door. "As far as your registry goes, you haven't exchanged any correspondence with anybody named Pitt, certainly not a major."

"Well then… Sergeant," Alicia hazarded, regarding the fine young man through heavily lidded eyes, "what does this Major Pitt have to say to me?"

"It's, ahh, it's private, my lady," the young man gulped nervously, and Alicia couldn't help but notice how lovely his chestnut hair looked under the soft light of her lamps.

"The message is, Sergeant?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "What, you didn't want to take a look at my… private matters?"

"Ah, no, my lady," the soldier said with a delightful blush, "I mean, my rank is private. Private Jenkins. And, no, my lady, I did not look at your letter."

"How dutiful of you," she murmured, finally accepting the letter from the boy's hand, laughing internally at the slight tremor she felt as she accidentally ghosted her fingers over his. "Well, let's see what this Major Pitt has to say…"

The adhesive paper seal, a nod to the old fashioned wax seals now used only for formal or royal correspondence, tore easily beneath her nail. The letter itself was hand-written in a fine copperplate, the handwriting inked across a fine plush paper of the highest quality. Alicia again raised an eyebrow; whoever this Major Pitt was, he was truly pushing out all the stops, doing everything in his power to make an excellent first impression.

How long has it been since someone was quite this desperate to get on my good side? Alicia wondered to herself.

The buzz of pleasure from the gesture lasted almost until the end of the first line. The first minute wrinkles spread across Alicia's forehead as she read the rest of the opening paragraph and realized the letter was about Baron Alvin's hoyden of a daughter. By the time she was through the second paragraph, the roses left on her cheeks by the scotch had blossomed as angry red spread across her face.

By the time Alicia had finished the letter, she was furious, and the drink wasn't helping. She glared balefully at the young soldier, at Private Jenkins. To his credit, the boy didn't flee immediately; in a different time and mood, she would have found that delightful. Now, it only made her angrier.

"Get out," she demanded, barely holding her composure together, "get out and tell your Major," her lip curled like it was a pejorative, "to never contact me or send postage to this house again!"

"M-my lady," Private Jenkins tried to fit a word in edgeways even as Vernon tried to usher him out of the room, "I was instructed to wait for a reply…"

"Get out!" Alicia shrieked, her temper's fragile leash snapping at last as the drink brought out what her little brother had once jokingly named Dark Alicia after a night spent in her cups. "Get out, and don't you ever dare come back, you odious little man! And Vernon, if I don't see a bottle of Halifax in front of me in the next two minutes, I will peel the hide away from your fat backside! Go!"

Half an hour and two mellowing glasses of scotch later, Alicia smoothed the crumpled letter back out on the table and reread the second and final paragraphs. Their contents were just as inadvertently cruel as they had been on the initial read.

"That damned brat," Alicia muttered to herself, sipping at her third glass of ten year old scotch. "Kallen, Kallen, Kallen! Everything is *always* about Kallen! At least when it isn't about that woman!"

It was… so infuriating, to the point that Alicia was having trouble putting it to words even inside of her mind. Although that might be the scotch. But it was only in these moments, when she'd already put a bottle of Nova Scotia's finest behind her, that she could ever find those words in the first place. Those heretical words that went against everything she'd been taught she should want.

Alicia had been raised to be a wife and a mother. She had been educated enough to fulfill her wifely duties and to entertain guests for her husband. She had been steeped in the values of post-Emblem of Blood Britannia. She had done everything right, but all of that work had been slapped aside by an accident of birth that left her dead inside, in the one place it really counted for a woman of her rank and birth.

But she'd never had the chance to go beyond that set of expectations, even when motherhood had forever been barred to her, even when Justin had sent her back to her father's house in disgrace. She'd never had a chance to decide if she wanted to be a wife or, indeed, a mother; it had simply been put on her shoulders, just like how Baron Alvin had never asked her if she would be Kallen's stepmother and the aristocratic cover for his halfbreed heir.

Alicia had never been asked for anything, because Alicia's opinion had never mattered. Not once in her thirty two years had she ever truly had a grain of independence. Even her flings with soldiers, with gardeners, with deliverymen, with Vernon had a taste of the expected, of the typical behavior of a neglected noble wife. Her minor rebellions had been just as pre-planned as every other part of her life, it seemed.

She hated Hitomi Kozuki, and she hated Kallen Stadtfeld. Partially, it was because they represented the life that she should have had, could have had if God hadn't blighted her body for some strange reason. Partially, it was because he so obviously cared about them, showering them with love in the letters she'd intercepted, a love that he'd never offered to her. Mostly, it was because both Hitomi and Kallen had tasted, at one point or another, independence.

The letters had made references to a different Hitomi, one from before the Conquest. A professional businesswoman and executive who had met Baron Alvin when he'd still been Alvin Stadtfeld, the unwed second son unlikely to inherit from his elder married brother. They had met when Alvin had come to negotiate some deal for the Imperial Fruit Company, his employer at the time, and the two had apparently met as equals.

All of that had come to a well-deserved end in the fires of the Conquest, thankfully, but for a time Hitomi had been free to make her own decisions, to live her own life, and Alicia would never forgive her for it.

Now, her dirty tomboy of a daughter was walking down a similar path. Keeping Kallen in the Manor and paying attention to her etiquette and mathematics tutors had never been easy; she'd always tried to run away, to escape from the Manor. Alicia knew she'd always tried to run away to the ghettos where her kind truly belonged. Alicia would have encouraged it if she didn't know that her comfortable life depended, in part, on Kallen Stadtfeld.

"Let her," Alicia said, finally breaking her silence even if there wasn't anybody else present to hear. "If she wants to spread her wings? Risk her neck? Let her. Not like I can stop her anyway… Not if her father already gave her permission…"

It was only seven and dusk had yet to even touch the spring sky, but Alicia already felt done with the day. She just wanted to sleep, to just put an end to the day and all thoughts of young girls going off to become heroes of the empire.

At least I'm not going to have any dreams tonight, she thought as she pulled on her nightgown. Not after a bottle and a half of scotch. Small mercies…

"M-my lady," Vernon's diffident voice came from the door, accompanied by a light rap. "My lady, are… Are you decent?"

"Nothing you haven't seen before," Alicia replied, just as done with formalities as she was with the rest of the day. Besides, it was only the truth, at least as long as Vernon was alone. "Come in, Vernon. What's the matter?"

"Well, my lady," Alicia grimaced in response to Vernon's pained expression as he came through the door, closing it behind him, "I've got some news that I'm not quite sure whether to call good or bad."

"Out with it, Vernon," Alicia waved impatiently. "I'm too… too tired to be patient. What's wrong?"

"My lady," the majordomo began, smoothing his mustache, "it's Hitomi. She's… She's left."

"What?" Alicia frowned at her servant, trying to make sense of his words. "My husband's whore ran away? Why? Err… Why now?"

"I haven't the haziest, my lady," Vernon said apologetically. "Marcus, the inside dogsbody, noticed her carrying a heavy bag out the door and ran to tell me. I followed her out to the street, but just as I approached her an unmarked truck of the sort used for grocery deliveries pulled up and she climbed inside. It pulled away and the driver ignored my signs to stop completely!"

"Oh…" Alicia tried to turn the thought over in her head, trying to figure out how this fit into the puzzle of the day. She found that she couldn't, and that she didn't care to try. "Well, she left of her own will, clearly. So, she's not my problem anymore. I didn't beat her away nor fire her, so my husband will have nothing to complain about, I suppose."

She smiled. "If she ran away to die in a gutter with the rest of her kind, who am I to stand in the way of Baron Alvin's chosen woman?"

"Quite so, my lady," Vernon replied with a chuckle. "Should I go ahead and order her room be cleaned out? I doubt we'll be seeing her back again, and if she does return…"

"If she does return, she won't find a job," Alicia snapped peevishly, and smiled again at Vernon. "Yes, clean the room out. Have it fumigated as well; no telling what vermin the vermin might have left behind, after all."

"As you wish, my lady," Vernon bowed and left the room. As the door closed behind him, Alicia could hear him yelling orders at some servant or another.

And then, Alicia was once again left alone. Strangely enough, she didn't feel any happier, now that her least favorite servant had exited Stadtfeld Manor. Hitomi would never darken her door again, and for that Alicia was thankful, but…

But Alvin still won't love you, Kallen still won't be the daughter you never had, especially with her running off to be a Knight, and Vernon will do anything for a few pounds, her treacherous distillate-soaked mind supplied. You are alone, just as alone as ever, and just as alone as you will ever be. Now you've even lost your whipping girl. Can't even keep a reliable victim around.

Her bed looked so inviting, so comfortable, but when Alicia crawled between the sheets they were just as cold and lonely as the rest of her luxurious suite. Just as empty as her womb. Just as abandoned as Alicia was, stuck here in a savage land far from her only wedded lord, who wanted nothing to do with her.

Just another day in the life of Lady Alicia Stadtfeld.