Through a thick cloud of steam she could see the bright red engine roll into the station, and over the scream of its brakes a station master called out the arrival of the limited express to Ishval. Years before, Resembool had been the final, dusty station on the line, but the General's reconstruction efforts had made Resembool the next to last stop, just before the burgeoning region of Ishval where supplies and people could transfer to a desert line that ran all the way to Xing. At least, the desert line had run all the way to Xing. Trains had stopped moving of late.
"I heard the South has almost entirely converted to diesel," Edward said next to her as he pushed his hair back from his face. It did little good, and strands of gold fell back into place and clung to his forehead. According to the radio, the heatwave was breaking, not that Riza could tell.
"I've heard too." Rebecca always kept Riza abreast of oil baron Leopold Minter's latest business expansions, his more recent investments, and his plan to buy a third—a third!—holiday flat, this one on the Aerugan coast. "You have to let Leo and me take you to the beach, Riza," Rebecca had said during her last telephone call. "The ocean is spectacular. You can't imagine. You simply can't." Riza glanced at Edward as he watched passengers pour from the doors of the carriages. So many years had passed, and she was still surprised every time she had to look up to meet his eyes. "Have you heard about the underground train they're building in Central?"
Edward snorted, a sound that recalled the boy he used to be. "Think about who I married, Riza. It's all I hear about." Then he grinned at her. "Progress."
She smiled.
"You'll come visit us when the baby is born, right?"
Somehow, even with all her careful watching, he had grown into a man. He had a family and a life and hope. All of the children had grown, unburdened by the same choices she had been forced to make. "Of course. Tell Winry 'hello' for me."
Edward scratched the back of his head and looked away again, toward the eastern wall and the towering windows that cast a white grid across the concrete and brick platforms. "Yeah." He puffed his cheeks. "She's really excited, you know. We both are. We were planning to ask Al to be the godfather again, but…"
She waited before saying, "You don't know when he'll be back."
He nodded. "Have you heard from him lately?"
"No." Alphonse had last left for Xing seven months earlier, after his wedding to the Chang princess. Since then, she had spoken to him once. "Has he said anything?"
Edward cracked his knuckles, one at a time, before answering. "He hasn't said anything. Nothing." He looked at her. "No telephone calls. No telegrams." He shrugged. "It's not totally unusual. Neither one of us is great at communicating."
She smiled and hummed. Edward had always had a bad habit of forgetting to check in during his travels, even when he had been on military payroll and reporting had been expected. She and the General had often learned of new Elric-caused disasters in newspapers. Alphonse, it seemed, had learned from his older brother.
"But it's been a while," Edward continued, "and we're getting—Well, Winry is. I told her it's probably just long distance prices and the whole…desert thing."
She nodded. The General had been stressed about the campaign, but it was the developments in the unclaimed desert to the East that had been keeping him up at night. She remembered bringing him the newspaper the day the story had broken, the day the world woke up to discover that Drachma, Menimras, and Hinyanda had made a play for the region and had divided the land amongst the three countries. She remembered another day, not one month later, when they had both learned from Fuery's radio that Xing had retaliated by claiming the land the railroad lay on as their sovereign territory. Then Menimras had sent an army of tanks and soldiers to block any trains from passing. "There's going to be a war, Hawkeye," the General had predicted. "And for once, we didn't start it."
The Amestrian ambassador to Xing had quit in fear, but Alphonse had been in the Imperial Palace and had been willing to take up certain liason duties until the Führer and his Minister of State could name an official replacement. It was meant to be a temporary fix.
"The Emperor hasn't said anything to you?"
Edward shook his head.
The train whistled and passengers flooded the platform. Travelers called farewells to their family and friends, men pushed past with cases and trunks on carts, and women bustled by with hat boxes and carpet bags.
"How long?" she asked. A few weeks passing without word could mean Alphonse had been busy or that he had not registered the length of time that had elapsed.
"Since the appointment."
Cold pierced her chest. "Edward, that's six months!"
A young child ran between them, and his mother chased after him and called for him to slow down and stay away from the tracks.
She stepped closer to Edward and took his arm. "Why didn't you say anything sooner?"
"All aboard!" the conductor cried. "Next stop, Tostol!"
"We agreed that if something were wrong, Mustang would have told us." Edward brushed his hair back, but it fell into his face again. "He appointed him—"
"He recommended him," she corrected as she released him. "The General isn't read in on all international affairs."
He switched his case to his other hand and looked at the train and then back at her. "But someone would have said something, right?" He lowered his voice and leaned down. "If something were wrong, they'd tell us. And Ling would have let us know somehow. We would have heard from Mei, and…" He took a deep, shaky breath. "Even if communication has been more closed recently, Central would know. They'd tell his family, right?"
She nodded. "Notify next of kin. Yes." Then she squeezed her eyes shut. She had not meant to recite part of the protocol for reporting a fallen soldier, had not meant the weight of it. Alphonse was sick. Telephone lines were not working. Mail was not arriving by train. Something else, something logical and possible, had to be the reason.
"Last call!" the conductor cried, and Riza opened her eyes again. "Last call for Ishval!"
Edward gave a jerky nod. "I have to go." He swallowed and did not move. "It's probably nothing, but Winry wanted me to ask if Mustang—"
The engine whistled, loud and long, and both of them winced.
"I know he has the contacts to do it, so can he just get a message to Al?" He looked at the train and it hissed, letting out a burst of steam. "Tell him to call us or Winry will probably kill him the next time she sees him."
The train lurched forward and began to chug down the track.
"I'll talk to him," she said.
"Yeah," Edward said. "Thanks." Then he spun around, his golden ponytail whipping through the air, and he jogged toward the moving carriages. He looked back at her and called over his shoulder, "Bye, Riza!"
She raised a hand to wave and said, "Take care," though not loud enough that he could hear.
He grabbed a bar on the side of one carriage and jumped onto a little step. He smiled and waved at her before pushing open the collapsing door with his shoulder and letting himself onto the whole scene was nostalgic and made her want to laugh, but the memories of watching the boys run after trains in just that way felt wrong. Alphonse was fine. Of course he was fine. The General would know more, so she turned and walked away from the platforms, under the wrought iron clock at the station's entrance entrance and toward the street spot where she had parked the General's automobile.
If the General did not know, he would be able to find out. Then again, Edward knew his brother better than anyone else did. If he did not suppose it too worrisome, then she was overthinking. If Edward has been more concerned than he had presented, he would have brought it up to the General himself, instead of to her.
Edward was not very concerned. She had no need to be concerned either. She rationalized these things, repeated them in her mind as she unlocked the driver's side door, yet something churned in her chest and stomach. Something like a slithering shadow, watching her from the darkness and laughing at her humanity and futile attempts to protect those she loved.
The interior of the General's automobile was stifling, and she cranked down the driver's side window and shrugged her jacket off her shoulders before turning the engine over.
She wiped her forehead with a handkerchief while she drove, as if she could wipe away the anxiety that beleaguered her mind. East City was teeming with lunchtime crowds, and the streets were packed with automobiles. It seemed everyone owned one, a consequence of booming rubber, oil, and steel industries, and made affordable by the hire purchase offered by most manufacturers. There was a surplus of food in the markets, and the people ate well. A healthy economy meant confidence in credit, confidence in the government, confidence in the people who had designed the very trade systems that opened the country's doors to foreign wealth.
So much affluence in the region boded well for the campaign, Charlie would say. The General would be able to capitalize on his successes when economic policy became the topic of a debate. There would be debates, hours and hours of debates and interviews and coffees and dinners and meetings with donors and events that would pull him out of the office and drive her mad with overtime. She did not resent him for it, of course. It was all necessary. For years they had worked and waited and they were so close. She would do whatever she had to do to reach their goal.
Eastern headquarters dominated the skyline, a trophy from the military revolt against the monarchy over a century before. Embellishments from the façade of the old palace had been stripped and melted down to pad the treasury during the same uprising, and the palace had been repurposed as a lasting reminder of the stratocracy's triumph over tyrannical rule.
All of it had been a fabrication, a masquerade of political progress put on so the powers in shadow could facilitate their nation-wide alchemical experiment with the carnage of rebellion.
A new, quieter revolution was underway. If they made the right choices, the country would survive it with no bloodshed.
There was a spot on the curb where no one but the General parked. No one else would dare.
She climbed the towering stairs to the main doors and walked down the hall to the General's office while returning greetings from other officers and enlisted personnel.
Havoc was outside the door when she arrived. He had a file clamped under one arm and he was struggling to open the door while balancing on his crutches. She reached around him and turned the knob.
He turned his head, ready to snap at her. "I can—" He stopped. "Oh, sorry." He cleared his throat, embarrassed by his near outburst. "I didn't…"
"Is he here?" she asked as she walked into the room. He would be more comfortable if they could both acknowledge she had been opening the door for herself, if they could both pretend that she had not noticed how he had almost spoken to her. She did not blame him for it, and she never would. Mellie, his wife and a physical therapy nurse, had once told her that one day he would stop interpreting help as pity, but that day had not come.
Havoc hobbled after her on his forearm crutches and lowered himself into his desk chair. "Disappeared into his office with a stack of papers just after you left," he said as he leaned his crutches against the wall behind him and pulled the file from under his arm. "He said he'd roast us if we disturbed him, so you're probably fine to go in."
"What do you want to bet he's talking to one of his girls?" Breda asked from his desk as he perused a report.
"No bet," Havoc said.
Riza sat at her own desk and gathered a few documents. Notes from the trade meeting the day before. A brief on the desert situation for the meeting in the afternoon. A few telegrams dropped on her desk while she had been out.
"You think he's working?" Breda asked.
Havoc snorted. "I think he's doing anything but. Cleaning windows and reorganizing his pen drawer. Something like that."
"He could be working," Fuery said as he turned down the chatter on his radio and looked up from a sizeable report he had received that morning on a regional communications update. "He's been doing that lately."
Breda guffawed while Havoc said, "Fuery the Optimist."
She glanced through the telegrams. There were a few from the North, one from the West, one from the Führer's office.
"Five hundred cenz?" Breda proposed.
"Cheap!" Havoc said. "That worked five years ago, but now that won't even buy my lunch."
"You want to double it?"
"I think he's working," Falman said. He was busy finalizing reports regarding the joint training. "But I think he's working on the campaign."
She had almost forgotten the corrected trade agreement draft. She pulled it out of a drawer and stood up.
Havoc whistled and leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning from strain. "We have a pool going. You in, Hawkeye?"
She glared at them. "No." Then she walked to the General's office, and she paused and said, "Sleeping." Then she opened the door.
He was sitting with his eyes closed at his dark wood desk, shirt sleeves rolled up, top buttons undone, head in one hand while his glasses slid down his nose and his other hand held down the pages of a soft-bound book.
"He's sleeping, isn't he?" Breda said.
She looked back into the main office and said, "You can leave the money on my desk." As she closed the door behind her, she saw Havoc throw his pen onto his desk and heard Breda groan, "Why wasn't that my first guess?"
"Sir," she called. He did not stir, but he began to softly snore, so she said again, "Sir."
He hummed and jumped a little, and his glasses fell off and hit the felt writing pad, but in a moment he was snoring again.
"General." She walked around the desk to where he sat and shook his shoulder. "General!" When he still did not move, she shook harder. "General Mustang!"
He inhaled sharply and sat up. "What?" He looked at her and the office and the book on his desk and frowned. "Oh." He ran a hand down his face and yawned. "Fullmetal gone?"
"Yes, Sir." She watched as he rubbed at his eyes before adding, "Sir, if you need to sleep, you should go home."
He shook his head and stood up. "I don't have time. This was a fluke."
She smiled and watched him close his book and place it inside a drawer. She would have to make him stay and organize his desk later. She pulled his keys out of her jacket pocket and set them on his desk with the papers she had brought.
He muttered something indiscernible and walked to the door and back, to the door and back, pacing to wake himself. "I've been drowning in economics since you left," he said as he reached his desk and leaned both hands on the top. "This problem with crops is getting out of hand."
"I'm not familiar, Sir." Newspapers heralded the surplus of food within the country as a sign of national wealth. She was unsure about how that could be a problem.
"Farmers taking out loans to afford heavy machinery to work larger areas of land to turn a profit…" He trailed off and sat down in his chair. "But exports have slowed because of the railroad nonsense."
She nodded. Everything seemed to hinge on the situation in the desert.
"And the increased amount of produce on the market means that while currency is inflating, prices are deflating." He put his glasses on, and she was surprised. His head must have been hurting. "And the surplus means they can't sell their produce, so they're not making nearly enough to pay back what they borrowed." He scanned the front page of the notes from the day before. "And these interest rates are astronomical. And no one knows how to fix it outside of getting everyone to back off the railway and accept the desert as neutral territory, but that's not going to happen any time soon. Plus, we'd lose our trade route, unless we start using those Xingese aeroplanes, which could introduce even more problems with Drachma."
She nodded. That she knew about. Drachma had spent years developing a biplane, a giant, metal flying machine with wings and enough space for someone to steer and for lighter cargo. Xing had adapted the model to carry heavier loads and to fly longer distances, which Drachma had interpreted as a sign of aggression. Bombers, the King and Council in Voiska had called them, though Riza thought they could not make that assumption unless bombing was their intent as well. Amestrian usage of the biplanes would be construed as a violation of their own non-aggression pact, and the two countries would be at war again.
He dropped the notes and looked up at the ceiling. "Maybe if we just…paid farmers to…not farm…" He sighed. "It would decrease the inflation of the food market and increase produce and farm prices." He sat up straight. "But that's crazy, isn't it? Absolutely crazy."
She waited while he worked out his hypothesis aloud like he often did. Alchemists.
After a moment, he leaned back in his chair. "But it doesn't…Parliament will take another loan from Creta to fix the issue. They will own the country by the end of the decade." He rubbed his temples, pushing his glasses above his eyebrows. "Charlie says I can't talk about it at these donor luncheons, because wealthy people don't like hearing about economic downturn. It scares them and makes them hold their checkbooks tighter. And 'money wins elections.'" He dropped his hands onto his desk and his glasses fell back into place. "The man has so many platitudes, he could sell them."
"He does sell them," she said. "He sells them to you."
He snapped and pointed at her. "That's true. Don't say it again." He picked up the brief and read the front page. "Rebecca is going to be at the announcement party next week with her husband."
Riza nodded. Rebecca and Leo Minter knew the ill-kept secret about the campaign, and they had already pledged more money than Riza made in ten years. "She told me."
"She has always impressed me," he continued. "She always wanted to find a man with ample wealth to retire on. And she did it." He shrugged. "She's very driven."
Riza looked down and laughed. Rebecca had not retired, as she had originally intended, for she served on the board of her husband's company. It was true, though, that she had always had an astonishing work ethic. It was that same quality that had made Führer Grumman ask her to work for him in Central after his appointment. There she had met oil baron Leopold Minter, she had fallen in love, and she had married him. Rebecca was happy, and Riza thought her lucky.
She raised her head, and Roy was looking at her in that way that made her feel as if she were on the edge of a cliff. If she stepped forward, she would tumble over, and she wanted to. Her breath caught in her throat and her chest tightened.
"Sir," she said as a reminder to herself and to him of who and where they were, "have you heard from Alphonse?"
He shook his head and swallowed. "No. What did Edward say?" he asked, his voice tight.
"He hasn't heard from him either," she said. The boys mattered so much more than her own problems did.
The General rubbed a hand over his jaw. "They should have pulled him months ago." He shuffled through the telegrams. "I'll call the Minister of State and tell him—Oh, great." He held up the slip from the Führer's office. "This actually works well. I can go over his head." He picked up the telephone receiver on his desk and dialed a string of numbers, then rattled off his name and security clearance code to the operator. While he waited, he covered the receiver and whispered, "You don't have to stay if you're busy."
She was not busy, but she needed to get away from the office and the cliff's edge. He would tell her if there was any news about Alphonse. So she walked back to the main office.
"Führer, Sir," she heard him say as she left. "I wanted—Oh, she's well, Sir." He laughed. "Maybe after I ask you about something else first…"
The door closed behind her and she took a deep breath. The Führer always asked about her, she knew, though the General never said anything. Grumman was the only family she had left, though even after years of knowing who he was, she still did not know him. She didn't know how to know him. The General understood and never mentioned her discomfort. That was good of him.
"Major," Havoc said from his desk, "do you have the key for that cabinet with past incident reports?"
She and the General had spent so many years in each other's company, a constant dichotomy of unity and separation. She recalled the first, and only, time he had kissed her. It had been less than a year after their return from Ishval, and the whole office had gone to a bar to celebrate Breda's birthday. The rest of the team had left, and she and Roy had both indulged in one too many drinks. She had laughed at something he had said—he always forgot himself when she laughed and she needed to stop doing it—and he had leaned in. After a moment, sobriety and reality had hit her, and she had pulled away. He had looked down, unable to meet her eyes, and had apologized. She had said, "At least we don't have to wonder anymore."
Except she had wondered. She had wondered every day, and she knew he had too. If he did not win the election, she would probably die wondering. That was a selfish thought, and she closed her eyes against it.
"Major Hawkeye?"
She looked up at Havoc, who was still waiting for an answer.
"The key?"
"Yes," she said. She fished the key from her pen drawer and passed it to him. Havoc nodded and used his crutches to stand while Riza glanced over a short list of tasks she had stuck on her desk that morning.
There were many, far more vital reasons he needed to win the election. Lasting peace in the East. Economic security, if he could solve the farming problem. The continued journey toward a true democracy and total justice. She had believed it years before, and she believed it still. The future of the country lay with him.
The sun hung low, sending an explosion of colour across the sky. Pink and orange streaked the horizon, and the light of dusk burned leaves and windows golden. He shielded his eyes against the bright light as he disembarked.
There were few buildings by the station—the town of Resembool lay a few kilometers to the west—but the distribution center was just next to the tracks. It had to be. Every day, shipments arrived by truck and were loaded into train cars for transport to Ishval and then beyond. At least they had until three months before when the track out of Amestris had been closed.
The center was quiet when he passed it, and only a few of the military workers lounged by the covered trucks, their jackets off as they waited for their shift to be over. One of them, red-haired and barely older than Edward, waved. Hennessy, at least Edward thought his name was Hennessy, had been complaining in town over the months as work had slowed. He had no problem with working less, he had claimed, but the boredom had become unbearable and he wanted either more shipments to move or fewer men to move them.
Edward waved back and continued down the road toward town. Farms dotted the landscape, fields plowed and ready for winter wheat planting. A few had tried avoiding the spring harvest competition by planting earlier in the year and harvesting in the fall, and those light green stalks waved in the wind.
More than one landowner was worried about not making a profit due to the desert railroad blockade. He had overheard talks about needing to lay off hands if the situation had not improved by winter. He knew Mustang was worried. Wealth still pooled and flowed through cities as luxury good production increased and investors reaped the benefits, but farming towns like Resembool were beginning to hurt in spite of it, and for all his bravado and selfishness, Mustang cared about the country.
He passed a hill where flowers and vines had reclaimed a charred foundation. He crossed a stone bridge from which Al had once pushed him when they were boys. The river had been higher then. Beyond the bridge and up a path was the cemetery. His parents lay there, Winry's parents lay there, and Granny Pinako had joined them after living long enough to meet her first great-grandson.
It was dark when he reached the little lane that led to his home, and he smiled. It was a white house with green trim, common in the countryside, but this house was special. He had spent years in the kitchen, sitting around the table with the people he loved most. Winry had promised a berry pie upon his return. His mouth watered as he thought of raspberries and a flaky crust, and he almost didn't notice the man shuffling away from the house with his head down.
Edward greeted him, and the man, a farmer named Gerhold, nodded and grunted and continued on his way. Edward frowned and walked up the short set of stairs and pushed open the front door. "I'm home."
Winry straightened up from her position bent over her workbench and wiped her hands on a towel. She smiled when he kissed her cheek. "Welcome back."
"Gerhold looked upset," he said as he set his case on the floor.
She sighed and dropped her towel and pulled the ribbon out of her hair, letting it fall free. "He's just stressed about the harvest. His appointment went well. He's doing well. His recovery is going…" Her eyes darted to the desk where the accounts ledger still lay open, and he knew what it would say. "He's been working," she finished.
"Good," he said, though he felt his shoulders tensing. Not again.
"Pie!" she said with a too-bright grin, and she disappeared into the kitchen.
He walked to the ledger and ran his finger down the page until he found Gerhold's name, the amount owed listed next to it, and the tiny, black "c" next to that. "Winry."
"We had some cans of peaches left," she said as she waddled back into the front room with a pie tin, a server, a small plate, and a fork balanced on her heavy belly. The pie smelled sweet and warm, but she was trying to distract him. She set the tin down on the page he had been reading and cut into the woven crust. "So I thought peaches and blueberries—"
"Winry, stop."
She pushed a slice of pie onto the plate and jammed the fork into the fruit filling. "I've been waiting on you to try it, though. Be honest—"
He put one hand on hers before she could lift the fork from the plate. "You can't keep doing this."
She abandoned the fork and smoothed the front of her blouse. "I know."
The savings he had accumulated during his time in the military were dwindling. She knew that. "The account is drying up, and we're in the red."
She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. "They can't pay, Ed."
"And we can't feed two kids on credit!" Winry would never turn away a patient for their finances, he knew, and he hated the idea himself, but they had their family to consider.
"Actually, we can," she said, and she dug through a small stack of papers on the corner of the desk until she pulled out the town newsletter. "Byerson's just started taking store credit. It'll be fine."
He picked up the page and read. There was a meeting in the old church for the concerned farmers, a wanted advertisement for a replacement teacher, and a picture from the grocer declaring that at long last they were operating on faith-based payment.
"It'll be fine," she repeated, and she put a hand on his arm. "The rail blockade will end, and money will start coming in again. It'll be fine."
He set the letter down and nodded. "Yeah," he said, though he was not convinced. They could return to the conversation later, but he did not want an argument when he had just arrived home.
Winry rubbed her neck and yawned.
"You alright?"
She shrugged and lowered herself into the desk chair. "Just tired. I got Yuriy down for a nap just before Gerhold came. And now I'm going to take one myself, so he's your problem when he wakes up."
He picked up the plate as she let her head fall back. "You're just going to sleep there?"
"Hmm." She nudged his leg with her toe. "You still haven't told me how it went. What did he say about your…gravity thing?"
"Oh, that." He took a bite of the pie. It was no longer warm, but it was sweet and tart balanced in a way only she could accomplish. "It's really good," he told her. "He told me he's going to get back to me after he makes his announcement."
She opened her eyes and raised one eyebrow.
He took another bite. "It's definitely political. He needs to look like he still keeps in touch with the little people."
"And Al?" she asked.
He swallowed. He had been trying not to think about that. He put the plate down and crossed his arms. "It's probably nothing, Winry," he said more to himself. "I talked to Riza. If he knew anything he would have told her. And she wouldn't lie about—"
A loud boom like thunder cut him off. He and Winry looked toward the open door and the darkness outside.
She sat up. "Rain?"
"It couldn't be," he said. The sky had been clear of clouds. He walked onto the porch and looked down the road toward the train station. There was a small plume of smoke on the horizon, glowing a bright orange against the dark purple sky.
"Oh, god," Winry whispered behind him. "Do you think a coal cart caught a spark?"
He shook his head. Coal would not react like that. Coal dust, sure, but not lumps of coal. Coal burned slow. "Stay here," he said.
"Ed!"
"Stay here!" Past the path to the graveyard, over the stone bridge, down the road flanked by farm fields. He was at the Kipp farm when he first smelled thick wood smoke with something sweet and subtler, like burning pastries. It could have been grain or sugar or…
"And why does gelignite smell like almonds?" Mustang had asked Edward ten years earlier after an incident in Daub. The answer was simple. An explosive reaction with gelignite produced a compound that also gave almonds their scent. "And what compound is that?" Mustang had asked with a smirk, expecting Edward would not know the answer. But he had known. He did know.
"Benzaldehyde," he breathed. Then he broke into a sprint, because coal did not explode, and someone had incorrectly packed blasting jelly for transportation, and the train station was in flames, and he had to do something to help. Why would Mustang allow blasting jelly to be sent to Ishval in the first place? Unless he meant to engage with Menimras and end the blockade through force, but surely he would not be so stupid. Surely he would not allow such a shipment to sit in a train car overnight. Surely there was some reasonable explanation for everything.
He slowed when he saw the station master standing outside with a few men who worked for him and the young girl who sometimes managed the telegraph machine. They all watched the blaze, because the station was not burning at all. The distribution center was.
Flames reached upward, sending an explosion of sparks and sooty black plumes into the sky. Orange and yellow licked the walls and smoked billowed through broken windows and the hole in the second story where the wall had been blown away. Wood crackled and burned golden against the black sky.
"Water," Edward whispered. Then he said louder, "Water. Marsh, we need water!"
The station master looked at him as if to ask how they could transport water, how they could hope to put out the inferno with the little bucket the station kept for minor emergencies.
"The fire brigade is coming, Mr. Elric," said the girl. Her name was Kit, he remembered. Kit Hartman. Her father was Resembool's butcher.
A sharp, chemical odor mixed with the wood smoke and the almond smell. Something chemical was burning. Paint? Bleach and cleaning supplies? Other combustibles exploded with bright flashes, and Kit and Marsh covered their heads and ran toward the station. A sheet of flame overtook the roof and the timbers groaned while the fire cackled in delight.
Edward covered his mouth as he watched, unsure of what he could do.
"Oh, no," someone said next to him, and he looked down.
"Winry!"
She looked back at him, chest heaving and one hand pressed to her side and belly, and lifted her medical bag. "I thought someone might be hurt."
A support beam creaked and then crashed in on the burning floor, sending a spray of sparks into the air. Someone screamed.
Winry grabbed his arm. "There are people inside! Ed, there are people still inside!" She darted forward, but he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back.
"No!"
The station master told Kit to run and pull farmers from their houses to help. The other station workers darted away as well, one going for the one bucket and others running to pull people from their dinner tables and porches and beds, if necessary.
Winry pulled against his hands. "Ed, we have to do something!"
He spun her around and shook her. "Winry, you can't!" It was benzaldehyde. He knew it was benzaldehyde, and he knew that the distribution center would never keep gelignite near food and construction supplies and other necessities, which meant someone had brought jelly in. Someone had ignited it. Old safety drills and lectures ran through his mind. A second explosion would follow. She was pregnant with their child, and he did not know what he would do if she were hurt. "The building is still burning, and—"
"And if we don't, who will?" she said.
"You can't help anyone if you're dead!" He needed her to listen. He would say anything to make her listen. "Think about Yuriy and the baby. At least think about them."
The second explosion followed, a loud boom that shook the ground and sent smoke billowing. The remaining windows burst, wood splintered, and debris showered down. Edward pushed Winry down and hovered over her. Gelignite was heat-sensitive, and he had no way of knowing if a third or fourth explosion would come. She had to leave.
"Oh, god," she murmured, and then she tore away from him, running toward the trucks and leaning over a lump on the ground.
"Winry!"
"Ed, help!"
He stumbled after her, shards of glass crunching under his feet, but he tripped over something small and silvery in the debris. He bent down and picked it up. It was a metal box no bigger than his fist, and there was a winding key stuck into the side. He looked up at the burning building. Why had there been a music box in there?
"Ed!"
He stuffed the box into his pocket and ran to his wife where she crouched over a man, who lay groaning on the ground. The skin around his neck and face was blistered and red, his arm was bent at an odd shape. His leg was black and his clothing singed, and the nauseating and sweet scent of burned flesh filled Edward's nose. Had the man been thrown from the blast?
"He can't walk," Winry said, her voice full of authority. "Help me carry him to the station steps."
Edward slipped an arm under the man's back and hauled him to a half-standing position. The man screamed and Winry whispered words of comfort. This was where she excelled, with carnage in front of her and medical supplies at the ready. Together, they dragged the man to the train station as a truck with a blaring horn screeched to a halt in the road.
Townspeople tumbled out of the truck and ran a large hose to the riverbed while two people climbed into the truck bed and unwound another hose tied to the pump.
"Dr. Maller!" Winry cried, and the older doctor jumped from the passenger side of the fire truck and trotted to them.
He looked at the man and back at Winry. "I can take care of more minor injuries and burns, but I'll defer to you on major trauma."
Winry nodded. "We can set up triage inside," she said as she jerked her head toward the train station. "Make use of the benches."
Maller took Edward's place and lifted the man to take him inside while still carrying his own medical bag. "I brought what I could, but my wife is coming with more…"
Edward watched them go and turned back to the blaze and the people running with a water hose and buckets of sand to throw on crops to keep them from catching.
There was a time when he could have done something. He could have made a wall of sand and stone to stop the fire from spreading to nearby fields. He could have redirected the river. He could have stopped the blaze within seconds of his arrival. He had lost that time, he had looked at Truth and given away his ability to help freely, and watching in horror was all he could do. No, he could help still. He could carry buckets of sand and help pump the hose. He was a person, a normal person, and even a normal person could—
"Yuriy!" Winry cried behind him, and he wheeled around. She barreled down the steps and grabbed his arms. "Yuriy is at home!" She had pulled her ribbon from her pocket and was tying her hair out of her face. "Ed, I can help here."
She had not meant that he could not, but he felt it in her words anyway. "I'll go."
"Ed."
"I'll check on him," he said, and he pulled away and left her standing in the midst of the chaos, as someone shouted they had pulled out another survivor. He watched her go where she was needed, where her unique talents could do something.
Past the fields again, because someone had to stay with Yuriy, and Winry's skills were needed at the distribution center. Across the stone bridge, away from his wife who might be injured by flying debris and uncontrollable flames. Up the dark path to their home, where he would be far from disaster but useful. Another truck rushed down the road as he opened the front door, and he watched it race toward the pillar of smoke and fire in the distance.
Someone needed to be with his son, he reminded himself. He could help by being with his son.
Yuriy was standing in his crib when Edward walked into his bedroom. He waved his chubby arms and smiled wide at his father.
Edward picked him up and patted his back. "Mommy's on her way," he told him. "You hungry?"
"Hungee!"
The house was quiet as Edward fed his son a dinner of berries and cold sliced chicken and cooked carrots. He wondered at what was happening down the road as he gave Yuriy his bath and dressed him for bed. Was Winry alright? Were the soldiers all out of the building? Had the fire been put out?
"Book!" Yuriy cried when they went back into the bedroom.
"Which one?" Edward asked as he brought Yuriy to the shelf. The boy patted a heavy one with a cloth bookmark sticking out of the top, and Edward settled them into the rocking chair near the window so he could watch for Winry. She'd be coming up the road any second. He opened the book to the marked page and scanned the text. "Alright. Let's see here…Little man spins a room full of gold from a room full of straw…" He shook his head. "Well that's just fundamentally incorrect," he said to Yuriy. "Even if you move subatomic particle around, you still cannot change the atomic mass of what's in the room. And you have to remember that gold is much more massive than carbon is, and straw is mostly carbon." He watched Yuriy chew his fingers. "Say 'mass.'"
"Mash," Yuriy replied.
"Good job." Edward looked back at the book and read, "'In the morning, the king came into the room…'" He lowered the book again. "There's also space between atoms, you know," he said, because talking about science had a soothing effect. Some things were certain, and if he could predict how elements would behave, then Winry would come home safe. It was a leap in logic, he knew, but it was all he had. "And within objects. Straw is mostly hollow, and it doesn't condense well. You can't…A block of carbon will weigh much less than a block of gold the same size. The structure of bonds is important. Atomic mass is too, and mass cannot be created or destroyed. Say 'equivalent exchange.'"
"Kibbenshange."
"Exactly." Edward traced a line of text. "So when you examine this problem from an alchemical perspective, the room would hardly be full when the little man lumped all the gold together. It'd be…" He paused while he did the calculation in his head. "Less than a tenth the size of the straw pile. I can't imagine this king would be too pleased." He looked from the page to his son. "This is what Mommy has been reading you?"
Mommy, who was fighting a fire started by people who had access to military grade explosives. What was the last thing he had said to her? Why hadn't he told her he loved her? She would be home later, and it wouldn't matter anymore.
Unless she ran triage through the night. She had a tendency to absorb herself in her work, to not realize the time that had passed. She would stay up several nights in a row, forgetting to eat. She would be hungry when she arrived home. He should set something out for her. He considered going down to the scene again with something for her to eat, but she might turn him away.
If she was not back by sunrise, he would take Yuriy to the station with some coffee and breakfast.
Yuriy pointed to the picture in the book. "Man little." He reached up and tapped Edward's face. "Daddy big."
Edward nodded. "That's absolutely right." He sighed and shifted as Yuriy rested his head on his shoulder. His son was smart. He'd be an alchemist yet. "I should still buy you better books."
He read three pages of nonsense before Yuriy fell asleep in his arms, and he placed him in his crib and stole from the room. He sat down at the desk in the front room and pulled out the silver box, turning it over in his hands and studying tell-tale lines on the sides. He stayed there for hours, and it was growing light outside before the front door opened and Winry walked in, dropping her bag on the floor and slumping against the wall.
"Hey," he said, and he stood and guided her to the chair.
"Everyone is alive," she told him. "Maller is keeping a couple of them today for observation, and he'll call if anything goes wrong." She yawned and rubbed her eyes. "Where's Yuriy?"
"Sleeping still."
Winry yawned again. He was about to tell her to go to bed, but she looked at the box in his hand and said, "What's that?"
He lifted it. "It's…I found it outside, in some glass debris."
"You took it?"
He traced the lines on the side again. "I think it might be relevant. Like, evidence."
She sat up straight. "You took evidence?" Then she shook her head, because that was not the unbelievable part. "Evidence of what?"
The rest of the town would call it a tragic accident. Few would have encountered plastic explosives, and fewer still would suppose that the destruction of the distribution center would have stemmed from any malevolence. "If it's evidence," he said, "I'll tell Mustang. But…" He handed the box to her. "I've been thinking about it all night." He pointed to the sides. "There are recent transmutation lines. Why would someone transmute a music box shut?"
She raised one eyebrow at him to remind him of a certain pocket watch.
"I know," he said. "But that proves my point, doesn't it? Something is in here." Thus began his hypothesis. The evidence would follow. "I think it was thrown from the building, from a window. As far as I know, no one ships sealed music boxes in or out of the country, so someone was trying to hide something. I'd assume a spy message of some sort, but after tonight..." He looked out the window at the rising sun. "Last night," he corrected. "If it was meant to be hidden, it would have been stuffed in a box, and if it was meant to be destroyed, it would have been tied to the bomb, not placed in a window where it could fly away from the explosion with broken glass—"
"You think it was a bomb?" she whispered.
He took a deep breath. "I think based on where it fell and what it is…someone meant for us to find it."
She looked down at the box and up at him. "And you took it?"
He threw his hands in the air. "Yes, Winry! I took it! Can we focus on the real issue?"
Winry pushed herself out of the chair and walked toward her workbench. "It's steel. Good steel. Why…" She shook her head. "No one would make a music box out of this."
"They could have lined the outside," he said.
She nodded. "To keep whatever is…"
To keep whatever was inside safe. His pulse raced. He was right. He had to be right.
Winry yanked open a drawer and rummaged around.
"What are you doing?"
She straightened and held up a hacksaw. Her eyes were wide. "We have to open it."
He walked to her and accepted the mask and goggles she passed him. "Weren't you just upset about how I took it? Now you want to open it?"
She slipped the straps of her mask over her ears and put on the tinted glasses she used when performing small welding work. "Now I want to know what exactly you took." She locked the box into a clamp and started sawing.
He watched over her shoulder, something she hated on a normal day, but she said nothing until the saw passed through the music box. She loosened the clamp, and the two halves clattered onto the table, and a small roll of paper fell out. Edward picked it up and flattened it while Winry looked on.
Her breath hitched. "You have General Mustang's office number?"
He nodded. "On the cork board in the kitchen." She scurried away, and he called after her, "Riza will pick up, but she'll put you through."
Winry was right to want to call Mustang, just as Edward had been right that the explosion had been intentional. It had been a bomb. Someone had wanted the message to be found. The target made perfect sense, because someone was trying to destroy the lifeblood of the Ishvalan region, perhaps Ishval itself.
His hands shook and he held his breath as he read the single line of text again.
"An Amestrian future for an Amestrian people."