Thankfully, the ambassador made his appearance before the hand of the clock over the mantle had crawled too many painful degrees about its face. He was a bit of a peculiar specimen, being both short and gaunt at the same time—I had in my mind a sort of notion that members of the gentry of a shorter stature somehow naturally acquired girth in inverse proportion to their height. He did seem to have a disposition towards perspiration, though, and frequently mopped his brow with a delicately embroidered handkerchief.

Once the initial greetings were dispensed with, the prince dismissing the excessive formality with his usual speed, he got directly to the business at hand.

“What of the Imperial high nobility are present in the city, and how soon may they be gathered?” He asked. “I’ve a few royal duties to carry out on behalf of my mother and announcements to make, so much the better for the attendance of everyone we can gather—under the circumstances.”

The Lord von Kreisrette started on a list of names, and despite my desire to remain attentive, my focus drifted. His Highness had requested I teach him to fight. Shooting was well and good; it was easy enough to load and fire an arquebus, and then learning to hit the target was in my estimation a combined product of natural aptitude and firing enough rounds. I, of course, was not especially blessed with the aptitude, and so was probably not the greatest teacher. The other readily available tutor—Kaczmarek, with the gorgeous flintlock and aim to match—was blessed with all the aptitude I lacked and then some, which probably made her equally unsuitable.

In any event, the gun was a crude weapon whose training I felt confident could be distilled to loading and firing drills, furnished with a suitable target. The more interesting conundrum was the sword. The Jarenese smallsword, as they were calling it, was the current fashion, but I wasn’t enamoured of it—the light blade was fine for duelling, but obviously the current state of the nation called for something a little more robust. I pondered whether a war-rapier could still be had easily, or whether it had been fully superseded by smallswords among the peerage and sabres among the peasants. The challenge presented by the sabre, of course, is that most examples tended to weigh more heavily, and I worried that the prince wouldn’t have the strength to maintain proper form with one—at least, to begin with. Naturally, the sabre could be introduced later…

I was knocked from my contemplation by His Highness repeating my name. “I must apologise, your Highness, sir,” I said, flinching, “But I’m afraid that completely passed me by, sir, begging your pardon, sir.”

He smiled wryly. “Asleep on the job, Schreiner?”

“Not at all, sir,” I hastily demurred. “I was considering the matter we discussed before entering the city, as you recall, sir. I’m afraid the delicacies of politics are rather above my fireplace.”

“I suppose I can’t fault you for that, gefreiter. I asked whether you’re aware of any reason the concluding of your duty cannot wait until tomorrow.”

I went to respond, but hesitated. Noticing, his Highness made a small wave. “Go on,” he said.

“I should have thought your Highness would like to have it done as soon as possible.”

“I would, and doubtless you would too, but there are some circumstances about it that mean I think it best if we delay it a little. I discussed the matter briefly with the Magus Alemayehu, and he cautioned me that the effects of releasing an oath can be disconcerting. As I’m afraid I’ll be needing you for the gathering tomorrow, it seemed expedient that the matter be dispatched after that.”

I blinked. That was a substantial quantity of new information. Nevertheless, it didn’t change anything. “Of course, your Highness. I apologise if I seemed to be objecting, sir.”

“Not at all.” He paused for a moment. “Lord von Kreisrette, would you appoint quarters near mine for the gefreiter and the jäger? I suppose if I am not safe here I am not safe anywhere, and there is no need to continue to wear on them with our business.”

“Of course, your Highness,” the ambassador answered, with only the slightest hesitation. He turned a little and made a motion to the steward, who hurried out. Meanwhile, the prince stood and offered us the shadow of a bow.

“I don’t mean to chase you away, of course, but I’m sure there are places you’d rather be. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done.”

Caught off guard, my hands escaped their parade rest to wave in front of me as though his compliment were a troublesome bee to be warded off with vigorous but careful swatting.

“The honour has been all ours, sir, quite ours. Then by your leave, your Highness, your Honour.” I bowed, kicked Kaczmarek’s ankle until she did the same, and left by the door the steward held open for us—having just reappeared through it himself.

“Your rooms are this way,” he said, disapproval only thinly colouring his voice. I sighed internally. It would probably have been simpler had the prince just let the majordomo put us up in the guards’ quarters rather than anything special.

Fortunately, it seemed that there was some provision for dignitaries to visit with common staff as well as a more noble retinue, and the rooms the majordomo led us to were not the opulent suites I had feared would be all that was to be had near the master suite, but rather small and subdued single apartments tucked just out of the way—near enough to be handy, but not so near as to be an eyesore. It suited me perfectly, although doubtless some more jumped-up valets and maidservants would have turned their noses up at it.

“You didn’t have to kick me,” Kaczmarek groused as soon as the steward left us.

“Immer, jäger, you have to remember your manners. He is still the prince.”

“We’ve been travelling with him for weeks!”

“It’s the principle of the thing. We’re not out in the woods any more, jäger,” I reminded her. “How we treat His Highness will influence how other people see him—and us, although I should be a great deal less concerned about that.”

“Well, next time you could at least kick the sole of my boot instead of my instep.”

“As you command, milady.” I gave a crisp salute before pivoting on my heel to step into my room, pushing the door to behind me. I sighed again, but this time didn’t bother to keep it to myself. As a regular gefreiter even in the Mourners I’d been happy to have a minute of time to myself, but now I found myself at a loose end in a strange setting in a foreign country, and I already hated it. There were a few chores to take care of, like finding a new uniform—or at least something that looked like it—and checking on the horses, but there was still a lot of time to fill between now and tomorrow’s ceremony, whatever the prince had planned for that.

***

The sound of the chapel bell ringing out five woke me in the morning, for the first time in a very long while. Some polite enquiries and a little flattery had earned me something that looked very much like a standard issue Queen’s Guard, 2nd Company uniform, and it was with no small measure of pride that I put it on this morning. There was something right about wearing a clean, tidy uniform with neither bullet holes nor sword cuts.

There was a burnished mirror hung on the wall in my room, and I reflected—hah—on how even the servants had those in these quarters. I supposed they were expected to look perfect for their masters. Not that the military was any less discerning; we simply had to make do with asking each other, not that I was bunking with a regiment.

It was almost a surprise to see I looked much the same as I had on the morning when all this began. Thick, dark brown hair, though it was hanging loose as I couldn’t plait it one-handed. Heavy brows looming over dark eyes and a large nose. Permanently unhappy lips, and, finally, a silver scar running down my left cheek. That one was new, and I absently brushed it with my right hand. The oath sworn to protect the prince on the rock of the Holy Mountain seemed a terribly long time ago now, but the Heavens didn’t forget. Well, today would see it completed.

I set aside my musings and Narcissus-like mirror-gazing to pull on my coat and carefully drape my bags and belts over my shoulders. It was slow and awkward one-handed, enough that I’d been skipping it when we slept rough on the road, but I’d got to figurative grips with it eventually. Once finished, I could hook my bad arm through the cross belts to support it. It’d recovered enough I didn’t need the sling all the time, somehow, but it still ached if I let it hang and using the wrist properly was out of the question. Thus properly attired, I left my room to face the near-certain humiliation awaiting me: asking Kaczmarek to plait my hair. At least I didn’t have to darken it.

Rapping at the door produced no answer, so I waited for some half a minute before trying again. It burst open almost immediately and I took two steps back as Kaczmarek appeared, clad in a shift and carrying her naked sabre. After looking about and blinking for a moment, she fixed me with a glare heavily undermined by the wild tangle of loose hair around her face. “Bleeding Heavens, Schreiner, it’s five o’clock, for the Heavens’ sake. What do you want?”

I blinked, hands raised. “I was going to ask for your assistance fixing my plait, but perhaps I should come back later.” As an afterthought, I added on “Five is the standard military rising time, though, jäger.”

“I’m on leave. The prince dismissed us.”

“I’m quite nearly certain that’s not the case. There’s still an event today to go, jäger.”

“Yeah and you ‘quite nearly’ died a bunch of times on the way here, but you’re still pestering me. You’re lucky I don’t have anything to throw at you that won’t get me in trouble,” she retorted, before turning around and slamming the door. “Come back in half an hour or something! Or better yet, meet me in the mess in an hour!” She shouted through it.

I sighed and ran my hand through my hair before collecting my hat and arquebus from my room, jamming the former onto my head to control my hair and slinging the latter over my shoulder, and heading out in search of some proper military discipline. If there was even any to be found in these vaunted halls of the Imperial Embassy.

No military mess was to be found, but I found the kitchen bustling with servants starting their days and collected a plate of black bread with quark and a fried egg. For the second time this trip, I sat in the servant’s quad with a plate of breakfast waiting for the day to properly start. Is this how private guards always feel? I pondered. Maybe I should consider a career change. Then I dismissed it. At least standing around waiting for something to happen in the army had a thin veneer of patriotic service over it.

Waiting was, of course, the order of the day. I’d eagerly returned to my old habits of early rising, but whatever His Highness had planned was only happening at around eleven. One of the things I’d learned from Prince Franz—rather than vice versa—in our many conversations on the road was that the nobility were never in a hurry. Yesterday had provided ample time to clean and polish my weapons, properly see to the horses, and at least start to clean the tack. All I could plan for the day was to wait for Kaczmarek to materialise to get her to fix my plait—or suffer the mild humiliation of having to ask one of the servants—and then take care of the rest of the tack. Not a lot to fill five hours.

***

When the hour finally rolled around, I was both utterly overwhelmed and baffled by the informality of it all. Rather than any kind of grand affair, it seemed His Highness was essentially hosting visitors in an expansive drawing room in the embassy. Well, I supposed it was a drawing room, since it was not the largest room in the mansion — but it was large enough to fit the entire house in which I’d grown up, with room around the edges. The floor was richly covered with many-coloured carpets from the North, the dark wood table which must have stretched fully seven metres was carved in every centimetre but its surface (and even that had not wholly escaped the sculptor’s attention, with whirling inlays decorating it in panels), hunting trophies hung on the walls with plaques below them detailing the name of the hunter and the size of the beast, and nearly the entire north wall was composed of soaring windows through which spilled all the morning sunlight.

Tables at the edges of the room held plates of delicate foods and pots of tea and coffee, constantly watched and refreshed by attentive servants as they cooled, oversteeped, or were emptied by the guests. Those had been trickling in from around half past ten; mostly the scions of the high nobility rather than the nobility themselves, from what I could gather.

I, meanwhile, stood against the wall a safe distance away from the doors, whence the flow of gentry stemmed, the tables, around which they circulated, and the windows, at which they gathered to chatter and admire the gardens. A nervous drop of sweat had been trickling down the back of my neck for some minutes, unwilling as I was to break parade rest to wipe it away. Even if these were only the children of the rulers, there were heirs to some of the most powerful players in the Empire here. I’d recognised several names from the Council of Electors, the college of the Diet that determined the Emperor or Empress, for one.

Somehow Kaczmarek had managed to evade being here (although I had at least caught her when she went for breakfast, and regained my regulation soldier’s queue), which left me suffering alone in the rarefied air up here in the upper echelons of society. I supposed this was how it must feel to be a mouse surrounded by owls. If no notice was paid to me, good! But if it was I couldn’t imagine it would end well. To my immense relief I only drew the occasional glance without much interest, allowing me to maintain my stony-faced stare forwards while I waited for the huge and ornate grandfather clock across the room from me to tick away time.

It took until half past eleven for His Highness to call the gathering to some kind of order by means of a series of relatively genteel coughs. The silence spread like a ripple across the room from where he was standing near the head of the table, Lord von Kreisrette lurking behind him like a damply perspiring ghoul of paperwork.

“Thank you all for joining me this morning,” he began with that unselfconscious nonchalance unique to those with enough power to issue invitations and wholly expect attendance. “There are a number of matters I’d like to call to your attention — as you know I have just arrived from Nachberg yesterday. Before we begin with those, however, the Imperial family owes a debt of gratitude.” He turned to look at me and everyone else turned with him, and I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly feeling improbably dry.

“Gefreiter Schreiner, if you would approach and lend me your scimitar.”

I took a deep breath and steeled myself. No worse than a hail of bullets or an impossible creature from beyond this world, Friedrich, I reminded myself. Immer, or a bear. I forced myself to take a confident step forward, hand shaking only imperceptibly as I fumbled to undo the buckle on my sword belt. By some miracle I had it free by the time I reached the prince, and offered it to him as I knelt.

“Thank you, gefreiter.” He clasped the scabbard at the neck , holding it otherwise normally. Despite his beginnings of a manly size, it looked absurdly large in his hands. “On behalf of Her Majesty Theresa Ann, Queen Regnant of Immerland and the Empire, it is my privilege to appoint you Ritter von Zerheim.”

He struck me a surprisingly heavy blow to the ear with the sheathed scimitar, but it was nothing compared to the blow to my mind. In fact, my mind went nearly entirely blank. I should have been better prepared for him to draw the sword and attack me.

“Of course, it is unseemly for a member of the Immerish peerage to serve in the rank and file, so it is also my pleasure to commission you as a Captain of Dragoons. You may rise, Ritter Friedrich Schreiner von Zerheim,” the prince said, smiling and offering me back my scimitar. Like a puppet, I pulled myself up to my feet and took the sword with my head lowered.

“Thank you, your Highness,” I offered limply. I supposed gratitude was appropriate? It was hard to be certain.

Lord von Kreisrette presented me with a scroll, which after a moment of confusion I managed to tuck under my bad arm.

“A copy of the letters patent,” the prince explained. He gestured and a pair of servants slipped closer to us from the walls. “I have no idea what will happen when you are released from your vow, but Alemayehu warned that it might not be pleasant,” he murmured.

The presentation of a threat, or at least something that might be considered as a threat in the correct light if seen from a certain angle, jogged something in the clockwork of my frozen psyche and my focus sharpened. I nodded firmly. “I am prepared, your Highness.”

Prince Franz spoke in a loud voice. “In the embassy with Lord von Kreisrette, surrounded by the nobility of the Empire, I am as safe as possible. Kreisrette?”

The ambassador bowed to me, a fresh upset. “As His Highness says, we are indebted to you for your service, Ritter von Zerheim. For my part I consider your vow honoured.”

“And so, loyal soldier, your duty is, for now, complete.”

I saluted. “It has been an honour and a privilege, your Highness.” I frowned slightly as the motion of saluting pulled at my side, but brushed it off.

“I don’t wish to trouble you with the rest of the gathering, as it may require something of a political grounding I don’t believe you’ve had the time to acquire. So, Captain, you are dismissed; consider yourself on leave until further notice.”

I saluted again. “Thank you, sir.” With that I pivoted sharply on my heel and marched out of the drawing room before my treacherous brain could shut down on me again. The two servants shadowed me, for some reason. After I passed the door, I was about to turn to ask why they were following me when fresh pain blossomed in my hand and side as though I had just been run through and hacked afresh. I stumbled, the servants stepping up to catch me just in time.

“Easy, sir,” one of them said. “It’s the wounds, sir, without the Heavens coverin’ you so directly, you see, it’s my belief.”

The world was swimming in front of my eyes, but in hindsight it did seem obvious that there was no way I would ordinarily expect a soldier to sustain two severe sabre cuts and then ride for another two weeks without major trouble.

“Right on,” the other agreed. “The way the jäger you came with tells it though you’re harder than nails, cap’n, you’ll be back on your feet in no time. Enjoy your time down here with us mortals while you can, eh?”

I wanted to brush off the overblown compliments, but didn’t have the wherewithal. When after what seemed an infinite distance they eased me through a doorway and onto a bed I just closed my eyes, tried to unclench my teeth and hoped I could sleep the worst of this off.