Author's note: I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while. My grandmother Sallye Rose Hilton, born on August 6th, 1935, died in hospital on July 28th, 2021 from sepsis, and I've been embroiled in family conflict since then. Atop that and work, I'm going to school to get an avionics certificate from now to December, so expect my updates to be sparse. That said, I will continue writing this story all the while, and I damn sure will finish it. Perhaps not by December, but you know what? I'll see what I can do.

Edit: Hey there. I'm finally back on track, and will have a new chapter out tomorrow. In the meantime, I suggest re-reading the last three chapters, because I've made some significant character edits. Merry Christmas to all of you!

Herr Amadeus Prauer's ears pricked upward. He looked out his office window: yes, the rain had indeed stopped. The sky was now a dark, hazy purple-grey instead of black. 'Well then,' he thought, 'at least they won't have to trek through too much mud.' Amadeus could count the number of storms he'd seen in the past three months on one hand, each shorter than the last. It didn't bode well that this one only lasted a few minutes.

The view from his second-floor office was decent: it commanded a view of the French Legation across the street, of the small botanical garden, and of the Peking Club, a bar that catered primarily to diplomats, military officers, and bankers. Beyond that stood a small development of clean, well-maintained Chinese houses: the homes of the Legation Quarter's cooks, maids, and other support staff. Most importantly, the view gave Amadeus a clear, eastward view of Legation Street, and the office beside his own looked to the west.

He turned his eyes north, seeing the distant roof of the Forbidden Palace rise above the city. Since the Tartar and Imperial City walls blocked off the southern and northern flanks, attacks from either end of the street would be spotted instantly. The trick to holding the Legation Quarter was their section of the Tartar Wall, because that commanded the highest ground in the area. Should the rest of the Quarter be overrun, the Tartar Wall and the nearby blockhouse could serve as a final defensive redoubt. Failing that, well-

Amadeus heard a knock at his door. "Enter," he said, turning away from the window.

The door opened, and in stepped a thin, lavender-silver cat with golden eyes, that dressed in a simple tunic of green silk, with light blue silk pants. "Herr Prauer," she greeted with a languid bow.

Amadeus's eye narrowed. "Mistress Blaze," he said, "what are you doing here?" The two had known each other by sight for years, but they had only ever communicated by letter and telegram.

"Court business," the cat said, "The Qing is aware of your lack of telegraph lines, so they sent me with a letter." Approaching the desk, she produced a neatly-folded paper from her sleeve and set it gently in front of him.

Warily, Amadeus picked up the paper, and read it. He read it twice. Then a third time. "Too late," he thought aloud.

The cat tilted her head. "Is fifty-four hours not enough time to evacuate your staff and documents?"

"My own staff, yes," Amadeus said slowly. "But not the entire Quarter, surely?"

Blaze nodded. "The entire Quarter."

Amadeus chewed on that. His staff wasn't large, and his eighty-man security detachment had enough horses and wagons to get everyone in the building to safety, but if everyone else in the Legation Quarter tried to do the same thing, they would be a long, drawn-out, thinly-guarded column as the deadline closed. There was also no guarantee that the oncoming Boxer host would not simply attack the column as they left Peking.

However, if the Quarter stayed put, they would not only be attacked by the Boxers, but quite possibly by Qing soldiers as well. He weighed the odds. The local garrison held least two thousand professional soldiers. 'We already have a thousand men with far better training and weapons,' Amadeus thought, 'and we're digging in, they have to fight in the open...and none of them have artillery. Not yet.'

If his experiences against the French had taught him anything, it was that modern rifles had drastically reduced a defender's need for parity with the enemy, more so than any fortress wall ever did. Decisions, decisions. He rubbed his temples and thought about reaching for the snake liquor in his desk drawer. God, he hoped Sonic had gotten enough letters away for word-of-mouth to spread. After a long moment, he asked: "Do you think she could be persuaded to extend the deadline? We're not prepared for this at all."

"I believe that is the point, Herr Prauer," Blaze said, "at least, it may be an unfortunate byproduct of the Empress's haste to please her newest constitutents."

Amadeus's teeth ground together behind tight lips. 'The damned harpy checks my moves before I lift a piece,' he thought. Aloud, he said: "Very well. Have you shown this to the other legations?"

Blaze nodded. "My entorage is showing them even now. I personally believe that you should leave while you can, Herr Prauer: a few thousand unarmed civilians constitutes a poor garrison against a force of ninety thousand."

"What!" Amadeus shot to his feet. "You told me that fifteen-"

"That is what the Qing told me to tell you," Blaze corrected, "Those fifteen thousand Boxers are merely the vanguard of a greater host that will arrive over the next two weeks."

"Why would she leave that out?" Amadeus's mind raced. What was the Empress playing at here? Was this a double-bluff? A triple-bluff on Blaze's part? 'No,' he thought, 'Blaze has no reason to lie to me in this.' But why would the Empress lie? To conceal her true strength, perhaps? To make flight from Peking appear less hazardous, and so allow the Boxers to set up an ambush as a message to the rest of the world?

As if she had read his thoughts, Blaze continued: "Our Divine Empress is too subtle for her own good: she wished to scare you away, but not frighten you so much that you would call for military intervention. Judging from your temperament, alongside your letters to the good missionaries of Peking, it seems you have already decided to fight, yes?"

Amadeus knew that he had to tread carefully here. Regardless of the partnership he and Blaze had built over the years, she was still a court advisor, sworn to speak with complete honesty to the Qing when requested, which she often was. Blaze had a reputation to maintain, otherwise she wouldn't have her influence and access to the court.

Amadeus decided to put on what his ex-wife had termed his "lawyer's voice", a tool he'd mastered during his years in Berlin's Kammergericht, the highest law court in Prussia: "I have no quarrel with the Empress," he said dryly, "neither do these missionaries, nor their congregations. I am concerned that, in their isolation, these unruly Boxers will be more inclined to do them real harm. After all, is there not safety in numbers?"

Blaze allowed herself a little smile. "Of course, of course." Then her face turned serious again. "I'll speak to the Qing: perhaps I could persuade the Empress to give you fifty-four hours to respond, rather than evacuate." She bowed. "After all, one needs time to deliberate."

It was the following day, about three in the morning, when Sally and Amy performed the final head count: in all, a congregation of one hundred and eighty-nine men, women, and children huddled before the chapel. Getting them all to gather had proven difficult: when they had started with the news of an army of Boxers, they were met with various reactions. Most had immediately followed them; a few gave them a blank, inertial stare before they too followed; and far more than Sally would have thought said some variation of "What do I have to fear? They're after foreigners, aren't they?" before-though not unkindly-shooing them away.

"We're missing some people," Knuckles said as he clambered from the five-foot grave behind the chapel. "I could search around if-"

"There isn't time," Sally told him, "We're leaving soon."

Knuckles paled. "We're just going leave her in an open grave, with no wake?"

Sally was gentler now. "No. We'll bury her, but there isn't time for a wake."

The big echidna's face hardened. "That's wrong. We shouldn't dishonor Vanilla like that."

Sally's reply stuck in her throat. Fortunately or not, no one in the congregation had died during Sally's time in Peking, and thus she hadn't much occasion to observe the local funeral rites. From what Sally had gathered, Chinese funerals were couched in obscure animistic myth, and molded into religious custom by centuries of practice. Shame dripped onto her heart as she spoke: "We can't afford to wait a whole day. The letter-"

"I know the damn letter!" Knuckles interrupted, "It still isn't right!"

Shame steamed into anger. "Would you rather have the Boxers pay their respects, just as we move out?"

Knuckles's face fell. He looked dejectedly back at the hole behind him. "Could we plant some flowers here, at least?"

Even though he was caked with wet, yellow dirt, Sally gave Knuckles a firm, comradely hug. To her, it like holding onto a horse. "When we return," she said. 'If we return,' she thought. "When we return, we'll plant some lilies."

Knuckles returned the hug. "She'd like that," he murmured. He paused, as if he wanted to say more, but he just nodded. "Yeah, she would like that."

Knuckles, whose hands were far more proficient than his intellect, had nailed together a coffin from old wooden boards and sanded the exterior until the true creamy brown of the wood returned. Then he had placed the open coffin the grave, after which he and Sally gently laid Vanilla's body within.

The funeral went by quickly. Amy opened the ceremony with Vanilla's translation of the hymn "Wayfaring Stranger." After the first verse, however, her mind blanked, and she reverted to the original, English lyrics. Incredibly, she forged ahead without missing a beat, and the congregation never so much as coughed to interrupt her. Looking into their faces, she and Sally saw the same thing: outright grief, dumb shock, barely-restrained rage-at whom, the two Americans could only guess-, and above all, fear. Dozens of pairs of eyes shifted from the gravesite, to the surrounding buildings, to their fellow mourners, and back to the grave.

Sally had wanted to write a eulogy; an entire biography, really. She wanted to express to her congregation, yes, her congregation, how much she owed Vanilla and how she is now at peace with the Lord her God, in their own tongue. But when she sat down to write, the sad fact was that Sally-alongside most of the native population-had woeful understanding of written Mandarin. Vanilla had been teaching her an anglicized version of the language, but now...well, deprived of the time and ability to write the long, lyrical eulogy Vanilla deserved, Sally had decided to draw from Psalm 103, which Vanilla had bookmarked in her leatherbound, weatherworn King James Bible.

A coarse blanket was draped over Vanilla's blood-spattered body, leaving her head visible. In life, the forty-year old Vanilla's face had been lined and roughened into the face of a fifty-year old, a byproduct of the constant struggle to survive in northern China's desert climate. Now the lines had become barely visible creases. At peace, she looked almost thirty.

Sally had the short, English farewell in her hands, and cleared her throat. But she didn't speak. She couldn't. Sally felt herself kneel at the edge of the grave. Then she felt something else: pain, radiating everywhere between her stomach and her eyes. Her hands flew to her face, her jaw seized open, and snot flooded her nose. She bawled, like a child.