Burlington Bertie from Bow

Trains run across iron on time and with cheers and whistles in their wake.

“And to the newlyweds, a toast!”

Popped champagne and the cries of a newborn.

“No, but not tonight! Tonight we get drunk!”

Marches on the street with jubilant cries for more.

“Es braust ein Ruf wie Donnerhall,

Wie Schwertgeklirr und Wogenprall.

Zum Thein, zum Thein, Zum Lamian Thein!

Wer will des Stromes Huter sein?”

Endlessly running towards something they don’t entirely know or understand.

“Dave? What’re you thinking about?”

“Hmm?

Snapped out of his daze, Dave excused himself. His little one-on-one in the tall window of the academy had proved disorienting.

“Sorry. There was something on my mind.”

He looked down, where a hideous, stinking fly floated in his coffee, drowned.

“…and in my drink.”

“That’s what you get for not paying attention.” Dave caught the man’s grin and shot him a glare. He continued to smile. “Hey, it’s not my coffee that’s now fly broth.”

“I should throw it in your face,” Dave said.

“Come now, we were getting somewhere good.”

But really, there was all too much to do and nothing to talk about. For the past few days, Dave had been running back and forth, receiving guests and going through the wedding gifts as they came in by the train-load. Who even were “Aunt Midge” or “Uncle Zanzibar”? Everyday felt like he was receiving a new periodical with characters suddenly thrust into the narrative, making him write to them with the obligatory, and genuine, gratitude felt by his new union. He wondered if the world felt this small after his parents were married. Certainly, his father had to be concerned with worldly affairs because of his profession. To think it was all coming down on him…

Looking at Redmond’s face, however, granted him some reprieve.

“I guess we were, weren’t we?”

Dave scratched the end of his mustache.

“You know… it feels all so near, yet far. It hasn’t even been a year, but I feel like a foreigner here. Like a castaway on an island endlessly adrift.”

“Where all the girls dance wearing nothing but fig leaves.”

“That’s under your purview.”

In his colonial ceremonial scarlet, Redmond liked to say that he only lived up to his name in uniform. The pith helmet made the man, after all. But the young lieutenant looked fine in his casual wear. The usual imported garments from across the way. Hardly anyone made anything nice here anymore.

“It could have been yours too. But your skin always bronzed in an awful tawny fashion.”

“Hey,” Dave protested. “It pays to be close to home. Don’t get so high and mighty now that you are lording over some regiment of kids all the way out in the back of beyond.”

“Right, right,” Redmond said as he sipped his tea. “So where are you posted?”

“Fort Kitchener.”

“Near the border?” his eyebrow raised. “Sounds rough. You’ll steal all the glory, and there won’t be any left for us.”

“There’s plenty of glory to go around.”

Dave paused for a moment, and Redmond likewise reflected. Men entered through doors and from study halls; the students were studying the works of the greats and remembering each formation line from antiquity to 1871. Outside, the distant yell of “Company! Forward—march!” faintly vibrated through the windowpanes.

Thrum. Thrum. Bom. Bom. Bom.

“These heroes of antiquity ne’er saw a cannon ball,

Or knew the force of powder to slay their foes withal,

But our brave boys do know it—and none can compare!

With a tow—row—row—row—row—row for the Lamian Grenadiers!”

The cadets marched forward as the two stared outside. Still in their bright colors. Still waving the colors high above and never letting them fall. Their rifles raised like stakes, gleaming in the sun on this unusually hot January day. Pipe smoke and transparent chalk-dust hazed their vision.

“Class of 1900. The first of the new century.”

Redmond puffed onto his own mustache.

“Fortuitous for us ‘nintey niners. Or ominous, depending on the way things go.”

Dave nodded.

“But the New Army effort is really paying off. After our training exercises with the Dolgorukiy forces, I felt something different. A real unified force, not Havellian or Sowson, but Lamian.”

Two students crossed each other in the halls, appearing from the mundane study rooms.

“Guten tag.”

“Afternoon, chap.”

Both Redmond and Dave contemplated in cool silence.

“Maybe it will be enough. But I doubt centuries of sovereign tradition will give in to the whim of a few reformer generals,” the colonial officer concluded.

“There’s not much of a choice. Integration of the Old Guard and the Kaiserheer will happen, or the entire Lamian Republic will cease to exist.”

“Please. The new budget proposals will do the country in far before the Casingians ever could.”

And also the naval arms race, the overextension of her colonies, the ascendancy of the New World overtaking their place in the world where the sun never sets—

Dave sighed. “Just another relic. Why were we left to fix this abomination?”

At that moment, the bells of the church tolled in Northminster chime:

All through this hour.

Lord be my guide.

That by Thy power,

No foot shall slide.

“Things will come to pass, Lieutenant Parker,” Redmond rose and straightened his back. “We can only do good for ourselves and meet them.”

Bong. Bong. The long afternoon, stretching its shadow over the walls behind them.

It’s 2 o’clock.

Dave’s eyes wandered aimlessly as the past reality fell away into the abyss, and the disorienting new world built itself and walked. His hands smelled of blood.

Had it really been nearly a year since that day?