Mariya hated and loved Pietsch in equal measure: his music underscored her memories, contrapuntal melodies following her around and around from place to place, from performance to performance. Always Pietsch.
It was Pietsch she had sung while her brother Sergei played piano in the village chapel, when the Drachman captain had overheard them. It was Pietsch they had reprised at the officers' dinner later that week, when another captain had offered to send a letter to his sister at the vocal conservatory in Voiska.
She sang a Pietsch opera six years later, a silly comedy about a miserly noble cheated and destroyed by his servants. The clamours for an encore were silenced by a soldier's declaration that the opera was henceforth banned, and the announcement underscored a quieter message delivered just to her—the disquiet in Belkovia had surged to revolution, her father had been identified as a leading rebel, and they had hanged him from the rafters of the dismantled chapel. Her mother was well, as were her two younger sisters and three younger brothers, but no one had heard from Sergei, another suspected leader, in two months.
She sang Pietsch for the king not long after, that time a more appropriate piece about a just and righteous monarch, and when she had finished, Prince Vasily pulled her aside and told her she was marvellous, and would she tell him her name? A ridiculous question, for her name, Mariya Orlova Pavluochenko, covered the city, and she would have been well-vetted before entering the palace. Still, she had introduced herself by her full name, adding the patronymic "Ivanovna." Prince Vasily did not miss it, and he smiled. A wolf's smile. He enjoyed her spirit, but he would sink his teeth into her throat if she misstepped.
If the whole of the country did not know her before that night, they did after, as, over the years, she increasingly replaced Vasily's mousey wife at all but the most important events. He trained her in politics, to live in the palace amongst the royal siblings and all the nobility who passed through. Tea with Princess Katarina and Princess Olga, riding with Prince Maxim and dear, sweet Prince Pietyr, private dinners with barons and countesses. He called her Mashenka, though she had never asked him to and everyone else called her Masha.
When winter melted into the ragged seam before true spring, the king executed the Count and Countess Dozdrov and their two children. The Countess's butler reported that she had been sending funds to Belkovia, to the rebels. Princess Olga, trembling with delight, told Mariya of it that very afternoon over tea, while a servant cranked a gramophone—again, Pietsch.
"Was the Countess not your friend?" Mariya had asked. Just the week before, the Countess had sat in the same salon, sipping the same tea and eating the same biscuits.
"Oh," said Olga. "Once. But it is most awful to be betrayed by one's friends. I certainly won't mourn someone like that. Ah, Mashenka?" Olga's teeth gleamed between red-painted lips as she said it, relishing each syllable like tart cherry jam. Only Vasily called her Mashenka.
Mariya smiled. She was accomplished at smiling.
In the weeks that followed, the marquee outside the theatre and the posters changed. "Mariya Orlova," they said. No patronymic "Ivanovna," no Belkovian "Pavluochenko." It was better, according to Vasily, to be only Drachman.
The unrest had drawn international scrutiny, so King Konstantin had commissioned a new, Drachman opera. It would tour across the continent, and she would play the lead. "They will see that Drachma is a centre of art and culture, not a place of barbarism, of death," Vasily had told her. "And when you return, Mashenka, Drachma will think you a hero."
"Who has written it?" she asked.
"Ah, Mashenka, Mashenka," he said. "Your favourite. Pietsch."
The night of the ball he threw for her and their friends, the night before she would leave, he took her away from the dancing and sighed along with the orchestra as they played Pietsch. "You will be gone with the morning."
"I will be back, My Love," she said, the endearment bitter on her tongue. It would be her only international tour, and the final tour of her life. On that they were agreed.
"And what triumphant return that will be." He touched a diamond at her throat, one of many he had gifted her, one of many she would leave behind. "You've trained for this," he whispered. "You're ready. But I know you will miss Drachma."
He was right. She would miss the winter snowdrifts as tall as a man. She would miss the days in summer when the sun shone without end. She would miss the coloured lights that danced across the sky at night. "I will miss you," she said, and his lips parted around his wolf's smile.
She sang. She sang Pietsch for the governors in Creta. She sang Pietsch for the king and queen in Dolonde. She sang Pietsch for the prince in Aerugo.
And she sang Pietsch for the führer in Amestris. The old man had been so delighted by the opera he had asked her to stay, to perform more shows in all their regions, and Vasily had sent his approval by letter. "Stay as long as you must. But do not forget your place here," he had written, "in Drachma."
In East City, she had sung another opera by Pietsch, in which a captive princess sends letters to her lover by hiding them in her maid's shoe, the night she had met David. And then, before the final performance, when she bit her nails to the quick because she had delayed too long, she sent him a letter with her proposition. His answer came to her backstage as the entr'acte crescendoed.
They eloped. As Vasily had told her to do, she would stay as long as she must.
Again, seven years later, she woke up before light and went to the grand ballroom to rehearse for the Cretan ambassador and various members of the Amestrian government. Again, she would sing Pietsch.
Mariya traced her fingers over a measure while the conductor conferred with the violinist in Amestrian. It was a meandering language, longer and more verbose than it needed to be and far too governed by rules. When she had first studied the language, she had wondered how Amestrians managed to speak a full sentence without proper breathing technique (in time she had learned that spoken Amestrian was more concise than written Amestrian, but only just).
"Best du fahtig?" the conductor asked her, though the question was unnecessary. She was always ready. She was a professional.
But she smiled. "Jea." There was no time for the theatrics that stereotyped her profession. She needed to be perfect, a picture of grace and dignity, someone who could move amongst these political circles as deftly as she had moved amongst the Drachman monarchy. She needed these politicians as she had needed to leave her Belkovian village, as she had needed the conservatory and Vasily, as she had needed the ruse of the final tour.
The conductor nodded and looked across the whole orchestra. "Fom aben," he said, and everyone obediently flipped to the first measure. "Biginat." He held his hands aloft, and they came down, and the music swelled.
And, again, she sang Pietsch. Always Pietsch.
The banging yanked him from sleep, and it took Mustang a few moments of rubbing his eyes to remember where exactly he was and to realise that the incessant noise was coming from the other side of his hotel room door. Groaning, he pulled himself from bed and opened the door to see Charlie, buttoning his sleeves and frowning.
Charlie looked Mustang over and said, "Get dressed."
Mustang raked a hand through his hair. They had not planned anything for the morning. Well, he had. He had planned to sleep in. "Why?"
Charlie adjusted his suspenders. "There's a fire. Not here," he said, before Mustang could process what he had said and actually feel any alarm. "A factory caught fire. You're going to be the first one on the scene."
Mustang took a deep breath. The fire brigade would arrive before he did—they were probably already there if Charlie had managed to hear about it and tell him. The building would burn without his help, and it would be extinguished without it as well. But Charlie was still there, telling him to get up and get dressed, and he wouldn't be saying those things if he didn't have an angle. "It's a disaster, Charlie, not a campaign event."
Charlie waved a hand. "Right. How long do you need?"
Mustang shook his head. It was not his jurisdiction, and he would start some sort of fracture on the Generals' Council if he did more than turn up and offer condolences. Of course, condolences were all Charlie needed from him. "Is Hawkeye up?"
"Does she need to be?" Charlie asked.
Mustang drummed his fingers on the doorpost. Of course she needed to be. It was her job to watch his back at all times, and he wasn't about to run headlong into any sort of potentially dangerous situation without her, even if he was only going to be making a speech and then leaving.
Charlie looked up at the ceiling, and then back at Mustang. "Fine. Do what you need to do, but hurry up." He trotted down the hall and turned back to point and say, "First on scene!"
Mustang closed the door and, after putting on the first shirt he found and his uniform trousers, left again for Hawkeye's room.
He pounded his fist on the door. "Hawkeye!"
He did not have to wait long, and she opened the door while rubbing sleep out of one eye.
She brushed tangles of hair away from her face, and said, "Sir?"
"There's a fire in a factory somewhere," he said, and he refused to look at how the imprint of the pillow accentuated the softness of her cheek, how the popped lapel on her pyjamas revealed a sliver of her collarbone, how she brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. "You're driving."
She blinked hard and nodded. "Yes, Sir."
When she had closed the door again, he went back to his room and finished dressing into his uniform. He looked in the mirror, deemed himself acceptable for a public appearance, and left for the hotel lobby.
Charlie and Roth waved him over when he stepped off the lift, and while Roth busied himself with scribbling in a notebook, Charlie said, "Where have you been?" He jerked his thumb toward the main entrance. "She's already having the valet pull your automobile around."
Mustang looked toward the glass doors and saw Hawkeye on the other side, defying laws of time and logic by looking immaculate in her pressed uniform. She gave the keys to a young man in a green uniform, and the boy ran back towards whatever garage the hotel had constructed for its guests "How?" Mustang asked.
Charlie continued, "We're grabbing a cab."
Mustang rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're not coming with us?" There was more than enough space in the back of the automobile for the campaign manager and press secretary.
Roth looked up. "It can't look like a campaign event."
"Exactly," Charlie agreed.
Mustang felt his shoulders tighten. "You just told me this is a campaign event."
"It doesn't matter what it is," Charlie said. "It only matters what it looks like." Then he nodded again toward the door, where the valet pulled up in the rented automobile and passed the keys to Hawkeye. "Go. You have to be there first."
Mustang did go, and he slid into the passenger's seat while Hawkeye turned the engine over. The tires screeched on the road as she tore away from the hotel and into the street.
In all the rush to get him ready and out the door, no one had bothered to tell him where exactly the fire was. "Do you know where we're going?"
Hawkeye nodded as she cut off another driver to take a sharp corner. "Charlie told me, Sir."
He scoffed and looked out the window as the city sped by. A horn blared while Hawkeye changed lanes. He trusted her-combat driving was a particular skill, and one she excelled at-but he thought the pace a little too fast. They were headed to a photograph and a speech about failing infrastructure, or something of that nature, and they would certainly not be outstripped by Charlie and Roth. "You don't need to drive like this."
She shot him a hard look and turned her attention back to the road. "Sir?"
"Like this," he said as she passed another automobile and switched lanes. "Like our lives depend on it. It's not necessary."
She furrowed her brow and took a deep breath. "Sir, do you—"
A packing truck plowed through the intersection ahead of them, and rather than slam on the brakes, Hawkeye threw her arm in front of Mustang and jerked the automobile into a sharp left turn. She looked into the mirror and leaned forward to peer through the windscreen at passing street signs. "Shit." She pulled her arm back, gripped the wheel, and whispered, "I'm sorry."
He tugged at his jacket in an attempt to straighten it. He remembered his own combat driving courses from the academy: the drill sergeant screaming that if he braked, the vehicle behind him would collide with his, screaming that there was no room for error; the sergeant telling him he was hopeless when he failed, again, to make turning an instinct; Hughes laughing and hollering in the back seat. Naturally, Hawkeye had received full marks in the same course. She had graduated in the top percent of her class, all while working under him full-time. He had once asked her how she had done it. "Discipline," she had said, before dropping a mountain of paperwork on his desk and leaving.
Discipline had always come more easily to her than it did to him. She was an expert at checking her emotions, committing to standards and obligations, and fulfilling them to the letter.
He cracked his knuckles as she took a right at the next block. "About the other night," he said.
She took a second turn. "Sir, you don't have to—"
"It was a celebratory drink," he said.
Hawkeye frowned and turned left to put them back on route.
"Drinks," he amended. "With Roth and Charlie. The filming went well." She couldn't be upset about that, at least.
Her grip on the wheel tightened. "You still can't—"
"I know," he said. She had made her stance on their agreement more than clear. There was no flexibility in her interpretation of the terms, no room for error. "So disciplined," he murmured.
"Sir?" she said.
He ignored the question and stared ahead through the windscreen. He knew the area they were in well—he had grown up not too far from that very street—and he could recognise the crumbling façades of buildings they passed on the way to the industrial wards.
A traffic controller held up her hand, and the two automobiles in front of theirs slowed to a stop. Hawkeye braked, sighed and flexed her fingers, and leaned forward to rest her forehead on the wheel.
He could see a black plume of smoke rising over the tops of row houses and clock towers, and he said, "Where exactly are we going?"
Hawkeye sat up and looked at him. "The…Sir." That little crease formed between her eyebrows as she said, "The Pichler Textile Mill."
His pulse quickened and he clenched his jaw. "Pichler," he said.
She nodded. "Yes, Sir."
He took one breath, then another. "Gracia." She worked at Pichler; she and her boyfriend both worked in accounts.
She did not answer, but the traffic controller allowed their lane to move again, and she switched gears and accelerated. Finally, "You didn't know."
He watched the plume of smoke as it drew near, the curling clouds of black against the blue of the autumn morning sky. Accounting offices were usually located far from machinery, often in a separate building from the main factory. It was a regulation that kept flammable paper far from the sparking machinery. Gracia would have been evacuated early and with little trouble. She would be fine. "Can you go faster?"
The hum of the engine rose, and he watched the smoke grow larger as they drew nearer, until he could hear the flames crackling and onlookers shouting, until he could see the fire curling and flowing in waves out of shattered windows, until Hawkeye brought the automobile to a screeching halt and he jumped out and onto the pavement.
The factory was red brick, glowing orange against the skyline. Fire brigade members in their black uniforms struggled with giant hoses aimed at the flames, but the heat boiled the water before it could touch the fire.
A beam inside crashed, sending sparks into the sky, and someone screamed.
And the smell…The acrid scent of burning machinery and stone mixed with musky wood smoke and something like meat and charcoal and sulphur—
"Sir!" Hawkeye cried as she ran around the automobile.
"There are people inside," he said, his voice sounding hollow in his own ears. There were people trapped inside, some of them already dead and burning. He could hear desperate cries from within, could see the panic in the faces of the workers who ran from the burning factory.
"Sir!"
He felt a sinking in his chest. The too familiar fumes recalled memories from another place, and orders to burn and burn and burn-
"Sir!" Hawkeye said again.
His eyes followed to where she pointed, and he saw Gracia standing far from the fire and with her boyfriend. Anthony. She was alright. But the people trapped inside were not.
He wasn't sure what Charlie expected him to do in the absence of press, but as he watched the flames curling and waving along rafters, piercing through broken windows and stretching upward into the billowing smoke, he knew he had to do something.
Flame alchemy was simple at its core: a science of exothermic reactions, a science of the air. Raise the temperature of the air around a fuel source until the fuel source reaches ignition temperature and the gases volatilise, then ignite the fuel and combustion begins. The trick was in raising the temperature before ignition, directing that exothermic process, and igniting the volatile material along a thin, condensed path without igniting everything around him.
Humans, he had learned, were excellent fuel: the ignition temperature was so low, lower than that of a matchstick, and there was all that oxygen in the body….A human would burn long before room flashover began. But most humans who died in normal building fires didn't die from burning, because most humans didn't combust—not without alchemical intervention, at least. The smoke killed them, or sometimes hyperthermia did, long before the flames ever reached them.
And that meant there wasn't much time for those that might still be alive. The fire raged, and anyone inside had minutes left, if they had any time at all.
He had to do something.
So he pulled off his jacket, dropped it on the ground, and pushed his shirt sleeves over his elbows.
"What are you doing?" Hawkeye cried, and she grabbed his arm.
"Heat and oxygen!" he said.
She shook her head. Hawkeye didn't know the particulars of flame alchemy, though her father's obsession had dominated the course of her life. She had never asked, and he had never faulted her for it.
"Heat," he said again, "and oxygen." It was why water worked—usually, in cases where the flames weren't hot enough to boil water before the water could reduce heat. Heat and oxygen, because those, along with fuel, were the necessary components for combustion. He couldn't take away the fuel—the building itself—because that would do far more harm than good. And that meant heat and oxygen. Then he shook his head. "Not oxygen." He couldn't create an unconfined vacuum—it was a fundamental, inviolable law of alchemy. But he could change the heat.
The fuel needed to volatilise, and if the air was cooler, there wouldn't be enough heat for combustion to continue.
"It's alchemy," he told Hawkeye.
"What is, Sir?"
"It's alchemy," he said again. "And I'm the fucking Flame Alchemist."
When he clapped his hands together, he felt that familiar sensation of energy fizzing around him, raising the hairs on his arms and heating his fingers and palms. Then, more out of habit than necessity, he snapped.
He could feel it leave him, hear it crackle and shoot through the air until it reached a small corner of the factory building he had chosen for his experiment. He could sense the slowing of the air molecules in front of him, as if the space between him and that corner were shrinking, and he took a moment to breathe in relief as the flames there slowed and shrank.
It was short-lived. The trouble with air, he knew, was that it was far too fluid and transferred energy far too quickly, and the air in that corner was determined to reach thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. The flames raged with life again.
More screams sounded over shouts of the fire brigade and the continued roar of the fire.
It wasn't enough. Just cooling the volatile gases would never be enough.
He took a step forward, but Hawkeye grabbed his elbow.
"Sir!"
"I have to get closer," he told himself more so than he told her. "I have to lower the heat of the fuel—"
"You can do that from—"
"I can't!" He shook his arm free of her grip. To do a transmutation on a building of that size and from their present distance—It would require more energy and effort than he had in him. There were some that could have done it, but they were far away and safe in Resembool.
But he wasn't Fullmetal, and he wasn't Alphonse, and he had to get closer. So before Hawkeye could stop him again, he ran toward the terrible, pulsating heat.
Heat rippled through the air, a sweltering oppression that was too much like the desert sun, but he did not stop until he was close enough to push his way through a burning doorway.
Smoke filled his vision, and his pulse quickened in his sudden blindness, but he reminded himself that he didn't need to see to find the floor.
Cooling wasn't his speciality: he was accustomed to increasing the speed of molecular vibration and destabilising gases. But to do one, he needed to understand the theory of the other, and that's all alchemy was at the end of the day, theories made reality with the right equations.
So he clapped, dropped, and pressed his hands against the floor.
It was awful. It was stopping a moving automobile by pressing his bare hand against the tires. It was stopping the Marl River from flowing by scooping the water back with his cupped fingers. It was clawing concrete with his nails as black hands pulled him beyond the earth and into white nothingness.
Every plank, every brick, every metal gear and piston shook. Every molecule convulsed, egged on by oscillating neighbors, vibrating, forcing one another to keep moving, to stay at combustion temperature. Mustang, in the heart of it, pulled and willed them to slow. He felt his muscles weaken with the strength and energy to keep the transmutation going, and still he held on.
He held on until he could not hear the roar of flames over the sound of his own heartbeat. He held on until his own exhaustion overwhelmed the blistering heat. He held on until he could feel and count every carbon atom in the building (approximately two-hundred-million moles). He held on until something new burned his palms—not heat, but terrible, stinging cold.
He coughed, and his breath clouded as the air and bricks tried to reach thermal equilibrium. A wooden beam above him groaned and somewhere a glass window cracked—a result of a too-quick change in temperature. He sighed, leaned against the frigid brick, and contemplated rising, though he did not contemplate it very hard.
If he didn't move, though, he would fall asleep there, kneeling on the freezing stone floor with one shoulder pressed against the brick wall and his hands limp in his lap.
He heard a voice, a frantic voice that somehow soothed him, but it was so far away, so very far—
And then there were two warm palms against his cheeks, and someone was forcing his head up and talking at him. When he forced his eyes open, Hawkeye was there.
"Sir!" she cried.
"Major," he said, and he looked over her head as flakes of soot fell like snow around them. He could feel his own sweat freezing in little droplets on his forehead. "I overdid it, I think."
Her hands dropped to his shirt collar, and he missed the warmth on his cheeks.
"I'm fine," he said, though he felt far from it.
Her shoulders and chest heaved, and there was a wild look in her wide eyes.
"I'm fine."
She tightened her grip on his shirt. "Are you insane?"
He shook his head. "Just tired."
She pressed her lips together and took a breath as if she were preparing to say something more, but she let the breath go and bowed her head forward to rest her forehead against his chest.
In that quiet stillness, surrounded by falling flecks of soot and in the middle of a frozen floor, he brought one hand up to hold the back of her neck and let his stiff fingers tangle in her hair and thaw in the warmth radiating off her skin. He breathed in, relishing the soft and lovely scent of carnauba wax and lavender as it overwhelmed his senses and banished the acrid stench of burning rubber and hot metal and the familiar smells of charred meat and wood. He was tethered to that spot by his own exhaustion and her presence. The longer he held her there, the more she relaxed her grip, and the harder he prayed that no one would find them and shatter the peace between them.
But voices and footfalls did come, and Hawkeye did jerk away from him, and cold did rush back into his hand and chest. They looked at one another for a few seconds, the moment broken, and with it, something else. He had been desperate to hold onto that moment, but he couldn't—shouldn't—have. She had realized it then, but it had taken him just a little more time to understand. He understood now.
It was all over. It had to be over. Just as he had told the radio woman, they had chosen the wrong lives.
She broke the silence first. "We should go, Sir."
He agreed, and he braced himself against the wall as he stood, waving away her hand when she attempted to help him.
He led the way back out of the building, past several members of the black-suited fire brigade who almost knocked him over in their haste to search for survivors. One of them stopped him on the pavement and grabbed him by the shoulders before giving him a hard shake.
"That was incredible," the man said.
Mustang squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, and he realised it wasn't a member of the fire brigade who had stopped him. It was Charlie, and Roth was right behind him.
"Stupid," Charlie said as he released Mustang, "but incredible."
"You could have died," Roth said as if he were remarking on the weather.
Charlie nodded in agreement, excitement radiating off him in waves. "But we're going to dominate the news cycle after you make your remarks."
"Remarks?" Mustang asked. The only remarks he could consider were how remarkably cool the outside of the factory had grown in a few minutes and how remarkably disinterested he was in talking to anyone who was not about to show him to a bed.
Charlie pointed behind him, where the fire brigade had set up a makeshift fence to deter a crowd from entering. Most of the onlookers held flashing cameras or yellow notepads. "The press is showing up in droves. You need to make a state—"
"I don't—" Mustang shook his head. "I can't be bothered with that right now." He didn't even want to sleep, exactly. He just wanted to lie down somewhere and not move for a few hours.
Charlie ignored him and looked around. "Can we get him a handkerchief from somewhere? Or a goddamned towel?" He looked at Hawkeye and asked, "You don't carry an extra set of clothes for him in your pockets, do you?"
She bristled. "It must be in my other jacket."
Charlie turned to Roth. "I'm going to go deal with them. You get him ready to go and give him something to say." Then he jogged over to the fence to make his preliminary statements to the eager journalists.
Mustang, hoping for something to ground him, looked at Hawkeye, but she had turned her attention back to the smoking remains and the fire brigade who carried wounded and traumatised persons from the wreckage. "Major," he said, and when she looked at him, he jerked his head toward the rescue effort.
"Yes, Sir," she said, and then she left him because that's what she did: she helped people.
Roth dug a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and offered it to Mustang. "I don't want to contradict Charlie," he said, "but I don't think you're in a state to—"
"I'm not," Mustang agreed, and he wiped the handkerchief over the grime filling the lines in his palms.
"Yeah," Roth said. "You look…" He took a breath as he assessed Mustang. "You don't look good."
Mustang snorted. "Thanks." He gave the handkerchief back.
Roth pointed toward one of the fire brigade vans. "They're handing out these wool blankets to people who've had a shock, but they don't seem too comforting. They might do you more good than a handkerchief, though."
While they walked to the cart, Mustang mused over the manner of Roth's and Charlie's arrival and the nonchalance that had not matched the content of their greetings. "Neither of you seemed too concerned about my well-being."
Roth shrugged. "I don't think we really thought you'd die. The possibility was there, but for you, dying in a fire is too…"
"Poetic?" Mustang asked as he pulled one of the blankets from the cart. It was a thin, brown sheet, with a texture more like sandpaper than wool. "Cosmically just?"
"I wasn't thinking along those lines, exactly," Roth said.
Mustang looked at Roth, at white hair and brown skin and red eyes. "And yet," he said, "it's not wrong."
Instead of answering, Roth looked to where Hawkeye had gone. "If I were you, I'd call her back. Get her to drive you to the hotel." He looked back at Mustang and said, "You can clean up, and Neumann and I will schedule a conference for later."
Mustang looked down at the rough blanket in his hand. Roth's option was certainly more appealing to him than the one Charlie had presented. From somewhere beyond the fence, tires screeched and people started shouting. He would rather be gone when whatever storm had just arrived came his way.
"We'll get some photographs later," Roth said, "after you look less dead on your feet—"
"Mustang!" a voice hollered, and both men turned to see General Hauser, red-faced and furious, marching their way.
"Damn it," Mustang said. He looked at Roth and said, "You handle Charlie. I'll handle him." Then he squared his shoulders to mask the heaviness he felt, put on what he knew to be his most aggravating smile—according to General Armstrong, at least—and approached the other general. "General Hauser."
Hauser had to look up to meet Mustang's eyes, which was a small pleasure. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Oh,"Mustang said, and he turned to look behind him and then back at Hauser. "Is it not obvious?"
Hauser shook a finger at him. "This is my region. You do not have the authority to—"
"I think the code says," Mustang began with affected patience, "that I have authority wherever I happen to be the highest ranked officer—"
"Well, thank God you're not that now."
Mustang felt his lip curl as his smile faded into a snarl. "General," he said in a thin attempt at civility, "I stepped in and helped—"
"You froze the fucking place!" Hauser bellowed.
Mustang threw his arms out. "You're welcome." Where was the recognition for the fact that he had done the opposite of what he was known to do, or for the fact that he had stopped the fire from spreading to other buildings? A mild cold front surrounding a factory was better than the whole ward's burning to the ground, in his estimation.
"We were making a plan!" Hauser said. Then, as if Mustang were a child under his tutelage, he sighed and added in a calmer tone, "If you had any respect for how this system is set up, you would have deferred—"
"There was no one to whom I could defer." The Central fire brigade was composed of a specialised corps of enlisted personnel, but he hadn't clawed his way to the top of the military ladder to defer to a specialist or sergeant. And he hadn't done it to listen to Hauser, either. "While you were busy 'making a plan' and worrying about rank and the system, I actually did something." Then, because Hauser was his superior—if only by virtue of seniority—he added with a smile, "General."
Hauser scoffed so that his red cheeks puffed. Before he could offer any retort, he looked over toward the building and grinned. It did little for his appearance. "I see you brought your nanny."
Mustang's smile faltered.
Hauser's grin grew. "Better run along before she gets cross with you." Then he stomped away to bark at some poor corporal.
Mustang squeezed the coarse blanket in his hand, and he turned to find Hawkeye and tell her they should go, but he saw that Roth had returned to him and was taking notes in a brown leather book. "You overheard."
"Every word," Roth said without looking up. "Great stuff." He pointed the end of his pen at the crowd of press. "And they're taking photographs whether we like it or not." He capped his pen and shoved the book in his pocket. "Try to make yourself look less terrible than you do now." He hurried back to Charlie and the reporters.
Mustang sighed and let the heaviness return to his chest. He needed to find Hawkeye and get out of there, get back to his hotel room, and—
"Roy!"
He tried not to sigh as he turned to greet Gracia, who ran toward him alone. "Where's Anthony?" he said when she had reached him.
Gracia looked over her shoulder at a group of workers pulling more survivors out of the ruins alongside the fire brigade. "He's helping."
Mustang nodded. It was so like Gracia to find someone who was brave and driven by desire to help others. It was no less than she deserved.
"My," Gracia said, and she pressed her hand to her mouth. "You—" She took the blanket from him. "Let me."
He winced as she ran the wool over his face. "How bad is it?" He felt buffed out, like a piece of wood polished by a carpenter.
Gracia pulled away and hummed, then she gave him a tight smile. "Better."
He laughed. "Thank you for trying."
She nodded and looked over the remains of the place where she had once worked. He imagined she must be devastated and pondering her options, how she would pay her rent, how she would provide for Elysia.
"You'll be fine, Gracia," he said, and she met his eyes again. "I will make sure you're fine."
Gracia shook her head. "I couldn't possibly let you do more than—"
"We're building an office here for the campaign," he said before she could finish. He had brought it up to Charlie once after Rebecca had first mentioned the idea. It was not decided, but he would push until it was. "It's not charity," he added. "It's a job."
Gracia took a shaky breath. "Thank you." She reached out and squeezed his arm. "Thank you."
As the silence stretched, he could hear Roth's voice carrying.
"What we all saw here was General Mustang literally rolling up his sleeves and accomplishing the impossible. While the man in charge of this city's protection was 'planning,' General Mustang was here getting something done. General Hauser may tout his authority here, but that is nothing compared to saving actual human lives…."
"I ought to find Major Hawkeye," he said. He should get to a bathroom and take a shower and make himself look half as good and Roth was busy claiming him to be.
"Of course," Gracia said, and she squeezed his arm. "I'll see you this weekend." Then she left him to return to Anthony's side.
The weekend. Of course, the weekend and the Cretan Ambassador's party and all the posturing that would entail. Mustang shook his head. He didn't want to think about that. He wanted to find Hawkeye and go.
He saw her speaking with a member of the fire brigade near the rented automobile, then she stepped back and brushed her fringe from her face, smearing soot across her forehead in the process. There were other streaks of black on her arms and trousers, and he took another blanket from the wagon and brought it to her.
"You're a mess," he said as he held the blanket out.
She looked at him for a moment before taking it and saying, "So are you, Sir."
He shrugged. He would need a proper mirror or a shower to look anything close to presentable. Probably both. But until then, his dishevelment aligned with the narrative Roth peddled, that of a man willing to roll up his sleeves for the people. "It works in my favour."
She nodded once. "Yes, Sir." She made no move to wipe the soot from her face or arms, but she plucked at a slipped stitch in the wool while she scanned the scene before them.
He turned his head and looked out over the charred remains of the factory, a blackened skeleton of what had once held jobs and opportunity. What would become of those who had relied on it for income? Gracia would be fine; he would ensure that. Government aid would cover medical bills for those injured. But what of the rest of them?
"Richard Kaufman's daughter is living in East City," Hawkeye said.
He looked at her and frowned. It was odd to him that her thoughts had gone in a different direction from his. He had grown accustomed to predictability and synchronisation.
She mistook his surprise for interest and continued, "She's studying law."
He rolled his shoulders back and shoved his hands in his pockets. Whether their thoughts were aligned as usual or not, she had instigated a conversation that was four days overdue.
"I met him and his wife the other day," Hawkeye explained.
"I heard."
Her expression was a mask, but her eyes widened so slightly it was nearly imperceptible—but not to him, never to him.
"It's why I came by your room." He had meant to ask her about it, among other things. There had also been the letter from Grumman, and there had been a desire to just see her. "Partly," he admitted.
Her gaze dropped, and he remembered that she was at fault for the miscommunication that night too.
"You should have told me before now," he said. She should have. It was her job. It was the whole reason—He trusted her. He had always trusted her.
Hawkeye took a breath, as if he was in the wrong and in need of a patient explanation. "You were clearly intoxicated," she said, "and I didn't think—"
"That's irrelevant," he said.
"It's not."
His shoulders tightened as he looked at her, and then he felt the first spasm in his hand. "And have I been drunk for four days, Hawkeye?"
She looked down at his hand, never missing anything, and back up at him. Her answer was soft. "No, Sir."
"You should have told me immediately." He grabbed his hand to start rubbing, from the palm to the tips of his fingers, before it could get worse. It was unthinkable, really, that she would keep any sort of information from him, regardless of how he had been behaving. And if that information had any bearing on his campaign—No. "There shouldn't have even been anything to tell!" he said. In spite of how he tried to work at the muscles, his fingers tensed and locked and he tried to steady his breathing as he uncurled them one at a time. "You're not allowed to be involved."
He anticipated a quiet "Yes, Sir," or even a silent nod.
Instead, she said, "It was unplanned, Sir."
"That's also irrelevant." He knew her to be competent enough to get herself out of unwanted situations. "I need you to be better than this."
She did nod then, and she did say, "Yes, Sir."
"There is so much at stake," he went on. "I know I've been…" He gritted his teeth because the twitching and pain in his hand would not stop, and he wanted her to reach out and take his hand in her own.
That would have broken everything upon which they had agreed, and she knew that. He looked at her, and her shoulders were back, her chin high, her own gaze forward and steady and not on him. Disciplined. She was a model soldier.
"I'm going to follow the rules," he said, and her eyes darted to him. "All of them," he insisted. "You're right. We need to get in line and stay there."
She looked away again, but her posture remained still.
"But there are other rules that you need to follow." He swallowed. He couldn't take any risks that might jeopardise all he had worked toward over the past twenty years. She had been right, but he was also right. "And I need to know that you're behind me all the way."
She took a moment, and then she said with a small crack in her voice, "After all this time, you have to ask?"
"Yes," he said, and his own gut twisted at the answer and the way her expression shifted. "I do." Finally, his muscles relaxed, and he was able to flex and curl his fingers without much strain. He shook his hand out. When he looked at her, she was blinking rapidly, so he looked down at the blanket in her tight fist. "I need to go clean up."
"Yes, Sir," she said, and she pulled a set of keys from her pocket and turned toward the automobile.
He followed her. It would be a miserable, silent ride, almost unbearable, but they had endured far worse together, and he knew they would endure more before the end.
The city was shrouded in an early autumn haze, and as David walked, buildings and street lamps jutted through the mist, all sharp edges that pressed in on the cobbled streets. He wandered until he came to a place where time had aged the lines of buildings to soft bends, the roofs to a tired concavity, and the cobbles to a smooth pavement.
He marvelled as he passed crooked doorways that he should seek out a place so worn, as he had spent the day surrounded by colleagues who wrinkled and buckled like the cracked, plaster-sealed walls on either side of him. Even the youngest of his colleagues had spouses and children and grandchildren and a desire to speak of them. At the same time, they were twice his age and committed to the routine of tenure. They fancied themselves revolutionaries, though their idea of revolution was to haunt the stylish, popular spaces that surrounded the university.
David had no children or grandchildren—if all went well, he never would—so he had excused himself from the campus and the academics and the dancing, and he wandered.
That new style of dancing music—the one Mariya had once called "jazz"—poured from the doorways of clubs and bars, but he wanted a place where dancing was not expected. Somewhere he could be alone without feeling lonely.
After the better part of an hour, he found it: a narrow room with a single bar, full of patrons but not suited to communal activity. There was no sign above the door—it appeared to have been removed from the hooks—but the light from within was yellow and warm, so he entered, sat on an empty stool, and asked for a whisky.
The barkeeper was an enormous woman, dressed in wine-coloured velvet and with her black but greying hair done up in curls. There was something about her face—her eyes, perhaps—that struck him as familiar, but he would never have met her before. He supposed most barkeepers must have something familiar and inviting about their faces, as their whole occupation relied on familiarity and invitation.
She nodded at him, and as she turned away, she snapped her fingers once.
A young woman, thin and with her blonde hair waved away from her face, materialised at his side. "Long day?" she said, her voice low and sweet.
"Ah…" he said. He really hadn't wanted company, but her abrupt appearance had him searching for words. "Yeah."
The barkeeper slid the whisky to him, and he murmured a thanks and took a first sip as the door behind him jingled. The alcohol burned the back of his throat.
The two women shared a look, and the younger one tried again. "You wanna talk about it?"
David looked around the bar because surely there were dozens of more friendly men with whom the girl could converse—but, no. There were plenty of men of all ages, but each was accompanied by one or two well-dressed young women who refilled their glasses from bottles at their tables.
He sighed, and heat rose up the back of his neck as he realised what sort of place he had stumbled into. He had to pay, and he would finish the drink he ordered, but he would leave and find a new place to drink. "I actually—"
Another woman, tall and with her black curls bobbed, dropped into the seat on his other side. It was the friend—Riza's friend. The pretty one he had last seen having an argument with her husband in the hotel lobby, which was none of David's business.
"And what'll you have?" the barkeeper asked in a gruff voice.
The friend sighed. "Whatever is strong enough to make me forget today."
He looked down at his glass and saw the young woman's manicured hand next to his glass. "I'd prefer to finish this alone," he said.
The barkeeper made a small noise, and the young woman sighed. "Alright," she said, and she left him.
The barkeeper slid Riza's friend a glass and a tall, unlabelled bottle of red liquor.
"Oh, Madame," she said as she pulled the bottle close as she would a lost companion. "You're a saint."
"No," said the barkeeper.
"Madame, it's been awful," Riza's friend continued as if the barkeeper had not spoken. "He's just not listening." She poured herself a tall glass of the red liquid and slammed it down in one draught.
The barkeeper pulled a rag from under the counter and polished a pair of glasses. "Then leave."
The friend scoffed, and David studied the bottom of his glass. It wasn't his business.
The barkeeper shrugged. "You're not paying me for advice."
"You're making me pay for this?" said the friend.
David took a deep breath, pulled out his wallet, and looked up. "Can I close out now?"
He shouldn't have said anything because the friend squinted at him and then widened her eyes. "Oh, god," she said. "You're that guy. The one from the bar."
Heat climbed from the base of his neck to his ears. He had hoped to avoid being recognised. Then again, she was in the same establishment he was in and on very familiar terms with the barkeeper, and he had asked to remain undisturbed by the female employees, so perhaps he had no reason to feel ashamed.
She continued, "The one I tried to set up with—"
"Yeah," he said. It was a memory as uncomfortable for him as he was sure it was for Riza.
"But you left the telephone number," the friend said.
"Yeah," he said again.
"Whose telephone number?" the barkeeper asked as if she were scolding a child.
The friend waved it away. "Oh, you know." She took a sip of her drink before she said, "Riza's." Then she put her glass down and added in a rush, "Please don't say anything. I don't want to die."
The barkeeper pursed her lips and grunted, but the friend looked pleased with the response.
She looked back at David. "I'm so sorry. I'm not usually like that."
"Rebecca," the barkeeper said, and David took a large gulp of whisky, which stung the back of his throat and rushed to his head. "Leave the man be. He's drinking alone, he said."
Rebecca—he knew her name now—leaned her chin in her hand and said, "You know you're in the wrong place for that."
He nodded. "That one, I figured—" He shook his head. It was bad enough knowing more about her marital life and her social circle than a perfect stranger should. To make everything worse—or better, he had not yet decided—he knew her name. "I figured that one out."
"Madame," said Rebecca—he knew her name—and she pointed to David. "Can you get him another?"
"I'm fine," he said. He had asked to pay already. He hadn't done so yet, he hadn't even received a bill, but he would leave the largest bill he had on the counter if it would get him out the door and away from the lovely and lively woman whose name he had just learned and who was a very, very bad idea. "I'm getting ready to pay, and—"
"I'll cover it," she said. "It's the least I can do for all that nonsense I pulled."
Before he could protest again, the barkeeper, who clearly valued profit over his comfort, refilled his glass. He supposed staying to finish one more drink wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but then he would go, and he would put as much distance between himself and Rebecca as he could. Riza Hawkeye hated him (he was sure of that), and her dry warning of "she's married" rang in his mind every time he looked at Rebecca.
"What was I saying?" Rebecca asked the barkeeper.
"You're scared of my son," the older woman said.
"No," Rebecca said, and she drummed her fingers on the bar top. Then she smacked her palm on the wood and said, "Leo. He's not listening to me. And this is something we discussed before getting married, so he doesn't get to just change his mind like that. That's not allowed. Right?" When the barkeeper shrugged and returned to wiping down glasses, Rebecca turned to David. "Right?"
He looked behind him and, finding no one else close enough to engage in the conversation, turned back to her and pointed to his chest. "Me?"
"Do you have kids?" Rebecca asked.
David opened his mouth and searched for an answer before arriving on the very dignified and eloquent, "No?" Rebecca nodded at him, and he added, "I have two nieces, and…" He shrugged. "I like them."
Rebecca frowned.
"I mean that I like being an uncle," he said, "someone who can teach them bad words and doesn't have to deal with the ramifications when they repeat them at school." It was an odd thing—a terribly inappropriate thing—to hope for the approval of a lovely married woman, even if she were having marital troubles. Especially if she were having marital troubles. "They're brilliant. But I wouldn't want them living in my flat."
Rebecca turned back to Madame. "See?" she said as she pointed at David. "He gets it."
"Rebecca," Madame said as if she were Rebecca's mother. "Leave him alone."
"Well, I can't talk to you about it, Madame." Rebecca reached across the bar and grabbed an olive out of a jar before the barkeeper could stop her. "You've raised a son."
The barkeeper—Madame, a comically appropriate form of address for the proprietress of the establishment—put down her cleaning rag. "I'm still not sure he was worth the trouble."
"And you've never been married," Rebecca said. "So there's all that. And it's not like I can talk to…" She looked at David and then back at Madame. "I can't talk to Elizabeth about it, because she's in the most stable…" She shook her head. "I don't even know what to call it, but it's been twenty-five years, apparently!" She pointed at Madame. "And you knew about that, too. Why am I the last to learn things?"
"I wouldn't say you were the last," Madame said.
Rebecca rolled her eyes and looked at David. "See? I can't talk to her about this either."
He didn't have any response to that, and although she was very pretty and vivacious he didn't know her and therefore couldn't offer any sort of advice or support. So he settled on "Yeah," and he committed himself to finishing that second drink and going back to the hotel for the night.
"So what brings you to Central?" Rebecca asked.
David looked back at her, and his heart beat a little faster in his chest because she was still there and asking questions about him. "There's an academic conference," he said. "At the university."
She wrinkled her nose and asked. "The psychology one?"
"Right."
She nodded in understanding. "You're a doctor."
He knew from experience what she was thinking. "I don't have a practice—"
She smiled. "So you're perfect!" Then she scooted her stool toward him.
It always happened that way. People heard what he studied and assumed that he was able and willing to give advice, never minding that there were branches of psychology—such as the study of radicalisation and groupthink—which were quite removed from the practice of talk therapy. "I don't really do that kind of—"
"I've been married for six years, right?" she said.
He sighed and closed his eyes. People always did this. They always brushed past his protestations that he was in no way qualified to do what they wanted of him.
"Have you ever been married?" Rebecca asked.
He opened his eyes again to find her leaning towards him, as if the answers she wanted were written on his face and if she could just get a little closer...
"I...what?" What a question! What a personal, pulse-driving question!
She nodded. "It's great, right?"
He rolled his shoulders back to shrug off the crushing disappointment that her first assumption about him was that he was married. Neither he nor Mairya wore a ring regularly. It was something they had agreed upon in the beginning. "Sometimes?" Even outside his own experience, he was certain that not every person would consistently describe marriage as "great."
And so the unloading began, with her providing him with the details of the latest development in her marital life and with his interjecting "sure" and "alright" whenever she paused for affirmation. He stared at his drink, both hoping she would never ask him for any advice, which he was unqualified to give, and trying to avoid looking into her eyes, which were dark and quite lovely. She must have known that too, that she had lovely eyes, for she had set them off nicely with kohl.
He sat and listened to her as the liquor wormed its way into his mind, and he thought it might be fine if he leaned in a little closer, if he relaxed when she touched his arm. She was married, he reminded himself, although she was married unhappily.
"So now it looks like we have to find some sort of compromise, or else…" She spread her fingers wide. "Poof."
"Compromise?" he asked. Madame had left them long ago for patrons to whom she could sell more than alcohol.
Rebecca nodded and stared at him with intense, beautiful, brown eyes.
"Can I…" His tongue felt huge and heavy in his mouth, but he pressed on. "I know it's hardly my business, but I'm not sure there's a compromise to be found. Children don't come in halves. Either there is a child, or there isn't. One of you loses."
She nodded again, and then her eyes closed, she slipped to the side, and her head hit the bar.
Madame appeared in a second. "I've got her. She has friends I can call."
"No, it's—" He stopped himself. It might be odd to say that he knew where she was staying, even if he only knew because they were staying at the same hotel. Madame might think he was lying, anyhow. And even if she believed him, Rebecca would have questions when she woke in the morning. And since he had never bothered to disclose that they were staying in the same hotel, she might be put off him completely. He wasn't sure he wanted that either. "Thanks."
Madame waved him off when he tried to pay, insisting that Rebecca had said she would cover both bills, and Madame would ensure that she did.
He left and hailed a cab for a ride back, stumbled through the hotel lobby and into the dark, clean-smelling hotel room.
He wanted to fall into bed, but someone had left a note on his pillow, so he picked it up and squinted at the handwriting.
It was from Mariya. She had returned to the hotel to change, for she was spending the evening with Albert Hauser, and she might not see David until the morning. This was the General Hauser's brother, and the general would be in attendance for at least dinner and drinks, and she was trying to build their government connections, so he had better not do anything to ruin it. She had arranged a wake up call for him, and she would be in attendance at his talk the next she had signed all her love and her name along with a postscript explaining that she had accidentally stepped on his comb and broken it, but she wasn't sure he ever used a comb and that his hair would look the same without one.
"Damn it, Masha," he said to the empty room, and then he fell forward, onto the covered bed, and into sleep.
Geneva flipped through the census book, traced her finger down one page, and tapped on a name. Yes, there was Johanna Müller, and her father, and her mother, and her grandparents…All of them without siblings, biological or adopted. And that meant that Johanna Müller was not going with her second cousin. In fact, there was no second cousin—not that Geneva could imagine too many people caring.
It was an asinine assignment.
She slammed the book closed and looked for the archives librarian, but he had disappeared into the stacks. So instead, she leaned against the linoleum counter and sighed.
"Central Census, Year 1895, Mon-Muz," said the cover of the gigantic leather book. She traced her finger over the letters as she waited for the librarian to return so she could finally return to the Kaufmans' house, fall into bed, and fall asleep with plans of how to move herself up and out of writing the gossip column.
"Actually got in there, stopped it, and helped pull people out," said a man on the radio in the corner.
Geneva rested her head in her hand while she listened and waited.
"General Hauser arrived on the scene and started doling out orders," the man continued, "but witnesses on the ground said that by that point General Mustang had everything all in hand."
Her fingertip stopped on the bottom curve of the "u," and Geneva looked at the radio as if she could read ahead, skip to the page to learn more about General Mustang and what he had been doing and if it had anything at all to do with his aide—She shook the thought out of her head.
But the radio reporter continued, "Mustang's adjutant was present and helping with the rescue attempts, but she declined to comment on the General's actions. We do have a statement from his campaign's Press Secretary—"
It was a silly idea, but it nagged at her until she opened the book a second time, flipping through pages until she finally found the surname she needed.
"Christine Mustang," she whispered, and then she read the next line. "Roy Mustang." She traced along that entry, reading as she did the recorded address (in a ward she had never heard of) and his date of birth and age at the time the census was recorded. "Ten years."
She closed the book again and looked hard at the radio, as if it could answer every question she had, but the reporter just relayed more comments from campaign managers and a joke about a new führer ousting Hauser from his position.
She looked back at the cover and read the year again: 1895.
General Mustang had given her one clue, and if every suspicion she had was right, she would find it in the census that corresponded with the age he had revealed on the radio. She needed records from when he had been fifteen.
Then she squeezed her eyes shut because she was doing what Myrtle had warned her against. She was becoming obsessed. "Stupid," she muttered.
"What was that?" the archivist said as he came back to the desk.
Against every caution Myrtle had given her, against every directive from her superiors at the newspaper, and against her better judgement, she made a choice to follow her gut. "1900," she said. "Do you have the census for 1900? Same surnames." She wasn't looking for evidence to prove her suspicions correct, she told herself. She just needed something to close the case for herself, something to erase doubts so she could put it out of her mind and move forward with something substantial and real.
The archivist sighed and disappeared into the back stacks again.
Geneva drummed her fingers on the 1895 census book and took a deep breath. There would be no conspiracy hiding in the 1900 census. It was just a book, just a collection of names and addresses and public records. Still, her hands vibrated with excitement when the archivist reappeared and gave her the book, and she set it down and ran her palm over her chest, as if she could rub away the hammering of her heart.
Then she opened the cover and turned page after page until she found the right one. She found Christine Mustang, as she had expected, and below, as was predictable, Gerhold Mützel.
Geneva's breath caught. That wasn't correct—it couldn't be. But when she looked again, the name under Christine Mustang was still Gerhold Mützel.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, and she closed the book and slid it across the counter.
Roy Mustang wasn't there. Fifteen years old, just as he had said on the radio, and he wasn't there.
And he wouldn't have been there for the months it would have taken to conduct the census. For months he had been somewhere else.
It seemed so impossible to her that, with all the questioning surrounding his childhood and confessed sweetheart, she was the only one who had uncovered it. Roy Mustang hadn't been in Central at age fifteen.
But where had he been?
The possibility, the one suspicion that had carried her for weeks, hit her, and she called, "Excuse me!" When the archivist had reappeared, she said, "Do you have the records for the East? Same year. 1900."
"No," the archivist said. "None before 1915."
"Why?" Geneva asked.
The archivist pulled a cigarette case and a lighter from his pocket. Geneva thought it poor wisdom to smoke around books and paper, but he clearly had no such reservations. "They were all kept in the Third Library Branch." He took a long drag and, when she did not respond, said as if he thought her incredibly stupid, "That's the one that burned down. I have nothing from before 1915."
Geneva felt all that hope sputter and die. It would be her luck that the one lead she had would have burned in a fire so many years ago.
Then the archivist said, "Your best bet is the East City archives."
"There are copies?" she said.
The archivist took another drag on his cigarette. "Obviously." He looked at the clock on the wall. "We've been closed for forty-five minutes."
Geneva grabbed her bag off the floor as heat flooded her face. "I'm sorry." She straightened and said, "Do you know where I can get a tram nearby?"
The archivist scoffed. "They've stopped running."
She huffed and said, "Thank you. Sorry." Then as she turned to go through the door to the main lobby, she said again, "Thank you."
She ran through the lobby, her heels clacking against the marble tiles and echoing off the great domed ceiling, and down the steps to the street, where she hailed the first cab she saw and directed it to the Kaufman residence.
She was worried the whole house would have gone to bed, but when the cab pulled down the drive and in front of the great stone house, she saw through the stained glass windows that Rorer, the butler was waiting up to open the door for her.
The Kaufman's had one of those grand old houses just outside the city, the sort that had proper wings and libraries and separate dining rooms for separate dinners. Mr Kaufman had inherited it from his father, who had inherited it from his father before him.
"But there's no money," Myrtle had assured her on their first visit during university. "Or land. The whole family fortune is tied up in just the house."
It was still finer than any place Geneva had ever seen, and Mr and Mrs Kaufman had been as kind as she had hoped. Over the years, she had come to imagine the house as a sort of second home to her.
After assuring Rorer that he needn't wake the undercook to prepare anything for her, she ran up the stairs in the main hall and threw open the third bedroom door.
"Myrtle!" she cried.
Myrtle sat at her vanity, pinning her curls in place, and she turned to glare at Geneva with pursed lips.
"Oh." Geneva set her bag on the floor as her chest tightened. "I forgot."
Myrtle turned away again. They were supposed to have dinner with her parents, and they were supposed to tell them that they weren't friends—not strictly, at least. And Geneva had forgotten.
"Myrtle, I'm so sorry."
Myrtle stood and went to her bed. "What kept you?" she asked, her tone low and even.
"I found something," Geneva said. She pulled her notepad out of her bag. She had scrambled to write everything down in the darkened cab, and her notes trailed off and in between the lines on the ruled pages, but it was all there. It had been real. "He wasn't here."
Myrtle took a breath and then asked, "Who wasn't here?"
"Mustang!" Geneva said. "He wasn't here."
Myrtle punched down her pillows and jerked the coverlet back from the headboard.
"In 1900, he would have been fifteen, just like he said on the radio," Geneva said. "But he wasn't here! He's in the census in 1895, but not 1900!"
Myrtle braced her hands on the mattress and looked up. "Genny," she said. "It's a clerical error."
"Or he wasn't here."
Myrtle threw her hands up. "Then where was he?"
"I don't know," Geneva said, though she had her suspicions. "Wherever his aide was. In the East."
Myrtle shook her head.
"All I have to do," Geneva said, "is get the East census from that year—"
Myrtle folded her arms across her chest. "I would have assumed with how long it took you—"
"They were destroyed in the Third Library fire." Geneva looked down at her scrawled notes and the questions she had raised, such as how he had come to be in the East and why he would have been there as a child if Christine Mustang—his aunt, according to the census, though still his legal guardian—had stayed in Central. When she looked up, though, Myrtle was looking out the dark window. "Myrtle?"
"You knew what tonight meant for me, Genny," Myrtle said, so quietly Geneva almost didn't hear. "And I wasn't about to do it without you." She looked back at Geneva and raised her voice. "But you were off doing something you're not even supposed to be doing, getting obsessed with a clerical error—"
"I'm not getting obsessed with anything!" Geneva cried. Her stomach felt hard, like a stone, and she flushed again when she thought about what Mr and Mrs Kaufman might think of her. "Are they mad?"
"Mad?" Myrtle repeated, and then she made a sound that was not quite a laugh. "No, they're not mad. My father spent the whole evening praising your work ethic and all my mother wanted to know is if they should keep up Mrs Baird to make you a sandwich for when you got back." She pressed a hand to her chest. "While I—"
"Fire!" Geneva cried as the answer came to her in the most wonderful, marvellous way. "Myrtle, it was a fire! He's the Flame Alchemist!"
Myrtle looked at her for a long moment, and then she marched around the bed, grabbed Geneva's arm, and pushed her toward the door. "I'm done."
Geneva grabbed the doorpost as Myrtle threw the door open. She had to make her see. "It's—"
"The Third Library burned down almost ten years ago," Myrtle said. "Genny, I remember it! It was down the street from my school! Are you really going to suggest that he planned this out, this interview and this—" She waved a hand through the air. "Whatever conspiracy this is—ten years ago?"
It did sound insane when Myrtle phrased it like that, but there had to be something there. He was hiding something. Even the absence of evidence told a story. "Maybe?"
Myrtle shook her head. "Tonight was important to me. And it was supposed to be important to you, too."
"Wait." Geneva pushed against the door so that Myrtle couldn't close it. "It is important to me."
"Then you would have been there!" Myrtle said.
"I messed up, alright? I know I did, and I'm sorry, but—"
"But what?" Myrtle hissed. "There's always a but!" She pulled back. "I can't talk to you right now. Maybe—" She looked down at the floor and let the silence hang heavy, until it threatened to smother Geneva as she stood in the upstairs hall. When she did look up again, she said, "Maybe you really shouldn't be working on this. It's—" She sighed. "Goodnight."
"Myrtle," Geneva said, and she pressed and pounded the door as it swung closed. "Myrtle!"
When no answer came, Geneva stepped back into the light of the wall lamps that lit the way to the guest bedroom she used on their trips. Each step echoed off walls and fell on her ears like a chant.
Lying. Hiding. Lying. Hiding.
When she had pulled herself into bed, she stared at the ceiling and made out imaginary shapes in the darkness. Faces and images of someone burning an entire building to hide a single book, histories of two people and a scandal that went deeper than she could imagine, for no one went to such lengths to hide a simple affair. Mustang was keeping something to himself.
"I'm going to find you out," she whispered to the night. "You mark my words. I am going to find you out."
So. What a fortnight, amirite? I meant to get this up last week, but then I got Covid. So. We do what we can. Life has just not been great to me lately? But dude. I also know that there are tons of comments I to which I have not yet replied. I am working through them very slowly, and I will get to all of them one day, but I want you to know I appreciate you.
Happy NaNo to those of you participating!
In light of the fact that I have now introduced three constructed languages in this fic, I have just posted on my blog about my process of actually making the languages we have so far encountered. Should be nerdy as hell. Which is pretty par for the course with me.
And therefore, I have a question of the week! What is your favourite language you speak and/or what language are you dying to learn?