The screams began just before the second shot rang out. The wood panelling above the Minister of State's head splintered.
People pushed against one another in a mad dash for the one exit. Cretan soldiers hollered at one another in their language, and several pushed toward the back hall that led to the staircase.
Riza shoved her way forward against the surge of people, toward the General, who still stood at the edge of the stage, his eyes wide as he looked down at the fallen ambassador and the blood pooling around his head.
"Sir!" she cried, but he could not hear her over the shouting of the crowd. Still, she pushed against the tide of bodies. The General could be the next target. She had to reach him. She had to get him out.
A third shot cracked above the noise, above the crowd's wailing and calling for loved ones, and Riza could hear porcelain and glass breaking as staff dropped trays and ran for the service exits.
She watched as a Cretan soldier grabbed the General by his shoulder and shoved him away from the stage, away from the ambassador.
"Sir!" she said again, and she broke through the edge of the crowd. She lunged forward and grabbed his wrist.
His head snapped up. "Armstrong," he said, his voice breathless in shock.
She had tried. She had been trying to reach the Lieutenant Colonel, but she had felt something in the air shift, and then she had known. "There wasn't enough time."
He blinked, and his voice was stronger when he said, "I ordered you to—"
But a fourth shot cut him off, and that shot found its mark. The Minister of State, on his way to the exit and surrounded by harried Amestrian soldiers, fell, and Riza pulled the General to the ground.
There were droplets of blood sprayed across his collar, a smattering of deep maroon against dark blue. It wasn't his. Not yet. And there was a light in his dark eyes, the sort of light that only came before he did something dangerous and stupid. "Come on," she said, and she tugged him away from the crowd pushing toward the door with renewed vigour.
The General grabbed her wrist. "I can't!"
"I'm unarmed!" she said. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. "And so are you!"
He leaned away from her. "Why the hell are you—"
"Protocol!"
He shook his head and gestured toward the fleeing crowd, trapped as the flood of people tried to push through a single exit. "Gracia!"
For a moment, she hesitated. Gracia. Her stomach tightened.
Gracia was not her priority. The General was.
"There's no time!" she cried, and she stood and pulled him up by his arm. She didn't know who was firing or where the gunman was hiding, and that meant she couldn't fight back. The only option was running.
"I'm not leaving her!" the General said, and he tried to yank away to head into the crowd, but Riza held fast.
He looked at her, wild fury twisting his mouth and tightening his jaw, and she glanced over the crowd. It was impossible to discern individuals in the teeming waves of people.
And then she saw her: bobbed hair and a black dress. She was almost at the door and Mr Neumann was beside her, guiding her to safety. He turned his head, and Riza met his eyes. He called something she could not hear over the roar of the crowd, and Riza said, "She's fine!"
He followed her.
They couldn't go through the front door. The tide surging that way was too large, and they wouldn't get far before the gunman shot the General, if that was their aim.
But there was a back hall, and there was a service exit that led to the garden, and in the garden there was a gate. The gate was supposed to be guarded, but she doubted the guards would stop them from leaving. She doubted they were even alive.
She pulled him down that hall, over the limp body of a serving boy bleeding on the floor, and to the base of the stairs which led to the roof. Both the Amestrian soldier and the Cretan soldier were lying face-down on the floorboards. Blood pooled around their bodies and seeped into the cracks between floorboards, and she tried not to think, not to think about Captain Berger at the top of those stairs, not to think about Brosh, not to think about the people she had seen alive mere minutes earlier. She needed one thing, because the General couldn't do flame alchemy in the rain, and she wouldn't go outside into that rain if she couldn't protect him.
She bent over and shoved the Cretan soldier aside, then she grabbed her holster from the stock of checked weapons behind him, and she and the General ran back down the hall and through the service door which never should have been opened. And together they escaped into the night.
Myrtle didn't speak to Geneva on the entire train ride home to East City, aside from the requisite comments about finding their compartment and going to the dining carriage. She feigned sleep for the majority of their trip.
That suited Geneva fine; it gave her time to scan over her notes, to open to a new page in her journal and begin mapping out what she knew and what questions remained.
Roy Mustang had been born in Central, that was confirmed. And he had grown there and lived there until he hadn't anymore, until he had disappeared into stacks of paper somewhere else in the country. And that somewhere else, she suspected, was in the East, but the records which could have proved that were gone, destroyed in a library fire ten years earlier. And Roy Mustang was the Flame Alchemist, and who else would have had the means or motive to burn down the Central Library's Third Branch?
But there would be copies of the Eastern census records in East City, she knew, so she would need to go to the library and look through them before General Mustang realised anything was amiss.
But while Geneva's head buzzed with plans and ideas when they pulled into the East City train station, Myrtle stayed silent. And she stayed silent as they loaded their suitcases and themselves into a cab, and she was silent when they walked into their flat.
"Myrtle," Geneva said, "please, talk to me."
"I'm tired," Myrtle said, and she dropped her suitcase in the hall and went to the kitchen, where she turned on the radio.
Geneva sighed, picked up Myrtle's suitcase, and carried both of their luggage into the bedroom. Then she brushed her hands on her skirt and walked into the kitchen, where Myrtle hovered over the countertop while a broadcaster talked at a harried speed.
"Myrtle," Geneva said. "This is ridiculous."
Myrtle didn't move, so Geneva walked to her and leaned against a cupboard.
"Myrtle—" Geneva began again, but she stopped when she saw her girlfriend's face, eyes wide and staring at the radio as if she could see the inner wires moving and passing signals to one another.
"We're getting reports now," the broadcaster said, "that the Minister of State is also dead. All efforts are focused on evacuation at the moment…"
"What happened?" Geneva asked.
"Someone shot the ambassador," Myrtle breathed, and it was the longest sentence Geneva had heard her speak in days.
Geneva's skin chilled. Murdered ambassadors were not good things, she knew. Something like that meant decimated international relations, possibly war. And the Minister of State was dead as well. Had someone decided to use the Cretan Ambassador's party as an opportunity to pick off government officials? But, more than that: "Wasn't your dad there?"
Myrtle lunged for the telephone hung on the wall, she turned the dial with jerking movements, and she pressed the receiver against her ear and closed her eyes while moving her lips in a silent prayer. Then her eyes flew open and she gasped, "Daddy?"
Geneva turned down the volume on the radio while Myrtle spoke on the telephone, and then she turned it off altogether when Myrtle hung the receiver back up.
"Is he alright?" Geneva asked.
"He didn't go," Myrtle said, and she sank to the linoleum floor and leaned against the cupboards. "He decided at the last minute he wouldn't go." And then she covered her mouth as her relief bubbled over into a sob.
Geneva sat next to her on the floor and held her close, and Myrtle let her. It was good to touch her again, to brush her hair as she cried, to believe that Myrtle might forgive her for forgetting about the dinner when they were to tell the Kaufmans about their relationship.
Still, there were questions she had which needed answers. Mr Kaufman had made a very fortunate, if not prescient, decision to stay at home rather than attend the ultimately deadly event. And surely General Mustang had been there. Had he managed to get out? Had he been involved?
And as she held Myrtle and let her cry against her chest, her attention drifted to her journal, to the questions and theories turning in her mind.
Her heels clacked against the pavement, and rain pattered against the same cobblestones, dissonant tempos against the trumpeting of automobile horns.
Mariya ran.
She ran toward the hotel, toward David and safety, and as she ran, her hair stuck to her neck and forehead and her dress clung to her legs as the rain soaked her through. The wet leather of her shoes rubbed against stinging skin, and she knew she was beginning to blister. Two men smoking against a shop window glanced at her, and a waiter stacking chairs outside a café tried calling to her in Amestrian. A woman running through the rain in a satin ball gown was an unusual sight, but she would not tarry. Those onlookers would learn what had happened in time, whether from other fleeing party guests who would follow her or from the radio.
And when the hotel was within sight, she heard a cacophony of laughter and conversation, fortunate guests who were unaware of a political crisis developing blocks from where they were.
She pushed through the main doors and into the glittering lobby.
A concierge stepped forward, his face pointed like a bird's and painted with the haughty smile of one telling someone they did not belong. "Min Frouwan—"
She was sure her kohl and mascara trailed down her cheeks, that her lipstick stained around her mouth, but there were more important things to consider, and no time to argue with the concierge and convince him that she was precisely where she was meant to be.
She tore past him, through the lobby, and onto the lift. She said, "Dri."
The operator held for one measure, two, then he pressed the turned the lever and brought her to the third floor, and let her out the doors.
She flew down the hall, the beat of her shoes muffled this time by plush carpet.
When Mariya had reached the correct door, she pounded a steady rhythm on the wood until it opened and she fell into the room. "Somebody shot the ambassador," she said.
"Langdrüsa—" began David.
"They shot him," she said. "Right on stage, and—"
"Masha!" David grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look into his eyes. "Slow down!" he said again, in Drachman that time.
He held her gaze for a moment and gave her a small nod. She took a breath, letting the air fill her lungs and steady her body. She began again, "The ambassador is dead."
David let her go, and his normal frown deepened. "Wäs?" he said in Amestrian.
"Someone shot him," she said, and the scene played in her mind. The sharp crack of the gunshot, the wet splatter of blood striking against the paneling behind the stage, the ambassador lying on the floor as blood flowed from a wound and pooled on green carpet, staining it brown, his eyes still open and his lips still parted for his speech no one would ever hear.
"You ran away?" David asked.
Mariya snorted and pushed past him and into the room. She dropped onto the bed and, fingers trembling, unbuckled her shoes. "Of course I ran away, David."
"Was anyone else hurt?" he asked, and he closed the door. "Who did it?"
"I don't know!" she cried, and she tossed her shoes into a corner of the room, where they thudded against the wall and clattered on the wooden floor. "I ran!"
David paced the length of the hotel room, step, step, step, turn. His quickening steps reverberated through her chest. Her nerves tightened like a piano wire.
Mariya shifted on the bed, the coverlet already sodden below her. She had thought—had almost hoped, even—that she had finished with watching men die, that she had finished with running, always running.
"They're going to investigate you," he said.
The threat stole into her chest and lodged in the back of her throat. She shook her head. "I had no part in—"
"You weren't supposed to be there!" David stopped pacing and stared at her, his eyes wide with fear and desperation. He continued, ticking his points on his fingers, "You're an immigrant, your presence was a change of plans, you've had—" He stopped and closed his eyes while he searched for the correct words. "You've met Cretan government people before…." He knelt before her and took her cold hands in his own warm ones. "Masha, They're going to look at you."
She closed her eyes and considered. He was right: the assassination would spark an investigation, and the investigators would watch her closely. There would be questions and examinations, and David had every right to be afraid of the wrong questions and examinations. Neither of them could predict what an investigation might uncover.
The bed creaked and sank as David sat next to her. "This was a bad idea," he said.
"Yes, thank you," she snapped as she opened her eyes. She was tired of being afraid, tired of running, yet she knew she still would if she had to. "Should we go home?"
He shook his head. "No." He rubbed his hand over his mouth in thought and said again, "No. We need to act like we have nothing to hide. I finish my conference, we check out of the hotel when we're supposed to, we answer any questions anyone asks of us, then we go home."
She nodded, though it did not loosen the tension in her chest.
However, she had made an acquaintance, possibly an alliance, at the party (if, indeed, he had managed to crawl out of the chaos). How far might General Mustang's protection reach?
She decided she must not mention that to David.
"No one will find out," she said. Then she reached over and put her hand on his knee. "Davidik, no one will know."
Mustang stumbled as Hawkeye pulled at him, her fingers digging into his wrist so hard the tips of his fingers began to go numb.
He could still hear screaming and the shattering of glass coming from the open doorway behind them. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, hammering out of time with his footfalls.
He could feel the rain—how he hated the rain—coating his cheeks and snaking under his collar and down his spine.
Hawkeye pulled him through a tall gate at the edge of the garden, over the collapsed forms of two people whose faces and deaths he couldn't make out in the dark, and onto an upper class residential street behind the embassy. It was empty, except for a few automobiles parked along the pavement and glistening under dull street lamps.
Hawkeye released her grip on him, and he shook out his hand. "Where did you park?" she said.
He shook his head. He didn't know where the automobile was, and even if he did, it wouldn't matter. He didn't have the keys. "There was a valet."
Hawkeye swore, the word starting in the back of her throat and squeezing between her teeth. She turned her head from side to side, as if by looking hard enough she could will the automobile into existence.
He looked back at the two dead soldiers in separate heaps at the garden gate, and it occurred to him that people he knew might face a similar fate.
He had let Hughes down once before; he wouldn't do it again.
"You're sure Gracia made it out?" he said. When Hawkeye didn't answer, he looked back at her and said, "You saw her get out?"
"Yes," Hawkeye said, but she had already hesitated, and the lie—if indeed it was a lie—burned at his neck. Before he could say anything else, though, she said, "She was at the door. She was with Mr Neumann."
"Neumann?" he said, the name like bile on his tongue. "She was with him?"
"Really?" Hawkeye said as she looked at him. "Now?"
Mustang clenched his hands into fists. "I don't trust him to get her out! I don't trust him!"
Hawkeye grabbed the front of his jacket before he could turn, and she cried, "You're not suspicious of him! You're jealous!"
He wanted to throw her accusation back, to tell her that he wasn't jealous, that he had no reason to be jealous, that she was wrong. But he choked on the words. So instead he wiped rainwater out of his eyes and said, "Regardless, you had an order, and you have a job—"
"You are my job!"
He took a breath. There was something between them, some acrid, nameless thing festering and bubbling, and he didn't know how to smother it. He didn't know how to do anything but grind his teeth while that nameless thing seeped into his chest like black tar, look away while it roiled in his gut, feel his temperature rise while it clawed at the back of his neck.
Hawkeye went to the automobile nearest them and tugged at the driver's door handle. When it didn't budge, she looked at Mustang and said, "Open it."
He ground his teeth. "My keys are with the valet," he said, and he couldn't keep his voice from rising as he continued, "And even if they weren't, this is the wrong—"
"You're an alchemist!" she shouted.
She was right, of course, and she knew how to hot-wire an automobile. He had seen her do it multiple times. So, although he wanted to shout something clever and biting back, and although he still felt that tar, sticky in his chest, he clapped his hands and slapped the side of the automobile with one hand. He did not break their stare as atoms shifted under his fingertips and energy crackled over the automobile.
She yanked the door open when the transmutation ended, and she ducked her head and slid into the driver's seat. He followed on the passenger's side, and he sat inside the automobile and pulled the door closed, shutting out the rain.
Hawkeye rummaged under the steering wheel, pulling at various wires and looking for he knew not what, and Mustang allowed himself a moment to breathe. He patted his jacket pocket and pulled out the white gloves inside. He couldn't use them, not in the rain, but he felt better having them on.
Hawkeye stopped her search for the correct wiring and watched him pull the gloves over his hands.
He tugged on the hem and enjoyed the opportunity to tell her, "You were wrong."
Of course, they both knew she hadn't been entirely wrong in assuming they were both unarmed. He hadn't known where the gunman was any more than she had, and the risk of setting fire blindly in a crowd of innocent diplomats and socialites meant that he had been just as useless as he would have been if he hadn't had his gloves at all.
But Hawkeye accepted the dig without complaint, which annoyed him more, and she went back to work.
He folded his arms over his chest and stared out the windscreen. The streets surrounding the embassy had been closed off, and there were no automobiles driving down the road or people walking down the pavement. But there would be soon, as partygoers managed to grab their keys from the valets or escape on foot. The only sounds were the sparking of wires and the patter of rain against the automobile windows.
He flexed his fingers. There was a slight pain in his wrist; it wasn't terrible just yet, and he refused to let her see him in a place of weakness then.
He shouldn't have left Gracia. He should have gone back for her. But Hawkeye had said she was fine, and he trusted Hawkeye. He trusted what she saw and said.
He heard a light crackle to his side. Hawkeye was working on starting the automobile. They'd be on their way soon, and he would be able to find out wherever the hell Neumann had taken Gracia, and he would be able to talk to her and apologise for leaving her—
And then he saw them: four figures running down the street, away from the embassy, all without military uniforms, and one with a rifle slung over one shoulder.
His heart thudded against his ribs. "Hawkeye."
"What?" she said, but he heard the wires sparking as she rubbed them together.
They weren't Amestrian soldiers. They weren't Cretan soldiers. They certainly weren't guests, and they had no business being on that particular street, so near the embassy, unless—
He threw open the automobile door as another automobile sped past down the wet street—the first of probably dozens which would be fleeing the party.
"Sir!" Hawkeye called, but he stepped onto the pavement and slammed the door behind him.
"Stop!" he shouted, and, though they were on the opposite side of the street, the figures hesitated before they began running faster.
There was no one else around, only himself and Hawkeye, and there was no time to gather more personnel for a search: by the time they arrived, the group would have disappeared down an alley and into the darkness. He had to apprehend them now.
So he ran after them.
A second automobile blared its horn and swerved as he surged forward to avoid being hit.
"Sir!" Hawkeye screamed from behind him.
He clapped his gloved hands together and brought his fingers together for a snap when it happened: the pain shot through his wrist and down his fingers, his muscles seized, his joints locked, and he stumbled onto the pavement as he cradled his hand to his chest.
Useless. Stupid. He cursed the rain. He cursed himself for forgetting it was raining to begin with, his hands and his nerves and their tendency to spasm at the worst possible times, the sparkling wine for affecting his normal dexterity and ability to rationalise that it was raining, that he was useless in the rain, and he was useless with his damaged hands, and he was useless, useless, useless—
Another automobile horn blared.
But he had clapped, and the energy still fizzed on his skin, raising the hairs on his arms and heating his hands in spite of the cold rain. And Hawkeye had been right: he was an alchemist, and he knew more than one trick. One of the figures turned back toward him, and he readied himself. He could split the pavement or make a wall and then—
A gunshot cracked through the air, so loud and unexpected it seemed to pierce his middle.
Mustang felt a slight pressure under his ribs, and his thoughts dulled as he pressed his fingers to his side and pulled them away, covered in dark liquid that washed away in the rain.
Oh.
A second gunshot rang out—from behind him, that time—and the figure who had shot first crumpled to the pavement.
The pressure around the wound flared into a burn that made him see white, and he stumbled backwards, off the pavement.
He heard Hawkeye scream—his name, he thought. Tires screeched and another automobile horn blared. He felt something push him hard, so hard he felt weightless for a moment. And that word rang through his mind again: useless.
And then nothing.