A Midwinter Night's Dream (Part II)

The wreckage of the Zaslonow mingles with the Dame Blanche's in a frozen, molten grave, the wails of dying men lifted by the winds where fire and snow meet. I am trapped beneath a burning crossbeam when I come to, and in spite of all sense, in spite of human limits, I claw out of the rubble and reach for a gun.

And I do what I have always done: I kill. And kill. One armed survivor after another from my vantage point atop a mess of rigging.

There are no gunshots to answer me. Five minutes in there are barely any screams.

Down the scope of my rifle, half a dozen men lay in snow stained red. The ringing in my skull has not stopped and I suspect that it won't be long before I join them, face-down against the wet soil.

And then I hear a voice.

"Stop." It vibrates out from my pocket watch, and I might have mistaken the plea for Celeste's had it not belonged to a man — to a familiar voice to anyone who keeps up with enemy newscasts. "Please stop," the prince rasps. "We're both stranded in the snow."

"Tikhon, is that you?" I answer dully, taking the watch by the chain and tightening it around my collar, close enough for my stuttering breath to form crystals on its surface. "You don't have to lie. I'll gladly offer you my location: behind the wreckage of your Zaslonow's nose, near the patch of blue pine. This is not a trap; I will leave my auracast on and your communications officer can confirm it."

There is silence from the other side for a harrowing moment. "He is dead, Rue. I took his watch."

"Then you can confirm it yourself."

"Why must you fight us even now?" His words are bereft of the measured dignity that I have come to expect from him. "Do you really hate my people so terribly that you would give your own life just to kill a few more of us?"

"You were flying for Artigny on a dragon-class bomber."

"To rendezvous at a hospital in Seelesse, to treat my wounded after we ran afoul of your blockade, and what is this about bombs? You see now that we have none. Were you expecting to be vapourised when you rammed your ship into ours?" He pauses again. "I see no women here. You evacuated them and stayed behind. Have you no family to await your safe return that you can do this?"

"What family would send their daughter into war?" I smother the budding memories before they can weaken me and tighten my grip on the rifle. "I have friends and comrades. That is reason enough for me to want to stop you."

"We carried no bombs."

"I could not have known that."

"You were expecting to die today."

"What good soldier wouldn't?"

The crack of a metal case being crushed like a can resounds from the other end of the line, and the man's voice cuts through the receiver like ice. "You traded one cage for another, is what you did, graduating from an accessory of court to an accessory of war. Is this the future you envisioned for yourself, Rue?"

"And what would you have me do instead?" I snap back. "Better that I'm on this side of the bayonets than bleeding on them, no?"

"And who bleeds in your stead?"

"Your kingdom and your crown."

"If only that were true. You accomplished nothing today but add to my burdens — sacrificed my men and yours on the altar of your ambitions, and for what? We carried no bombs. You killed my men for nothing."

"Must feel nice to speak so freely about burdens to a spoiled heiress like me, hm?"

"You know nothing of them even now," he growls. "You know nothing about the expectations this war has placed upon me."

"Oh, spare me your grievances, you aristo buffoon. You had your future spelled out for you from the moment you were born, a legacy to live up to, a family that cared enough to mould you into a person. My name was known to all of four living people before I took up the rifle, and my suffering to none but God—"

"You grew up in a mansion."

"I grew up in a bedroom. Don't you dare lecture me about expectations when the world expected me to die a bloody waif until I proved it wrong. Now get up — get off your ass and kill me, or die with the rest of your men."

That seems to have done it. The line goes quiet and I press my eye again into the scope, scanning the wreckage for any signs of life, footsteps in the muddy snow, smoke and flash from a muzzle, but where I expected death to find me in the form of a ruptured lung or skull, or a hole to appear somewhere in the tree bark surrounding me, there is instead a rustle of pine needles from my left flank — and the sound of a breech snapping shut. I bring my rifle to bear just in time to get a shot off but the blood coating my lashes makes it difficult to aim, and I miss Tikhon's ear by less than an inch.

His eyes widen in horror and so do mine.

I fumble to detach my bayonet, he reaches me before I can, kicking my rifle aside and pointing his own bayonet at my chest, then at my pocket watch, with a sound like a wounded bear. I command the magiocrystal powering the device to die and toss it away with a flick of my wrist, lifting my hands in shaky surrender as he stares through me.

I expected anger. I expected grief. I find nothingness and the cold glint of steel instead. "You were expecting to die today," he states.

Through bloody airways I manage to wheeze back: "You won't get another chance. Don't waste it now."

His brow furrows into heavy lines and I notice, for the first time, how the man seems to have aged a decade in the months since our last meeting — from the stoop of his shoulders to the craters of his cheeks, to the frozen rivers of frost running from his eyes to his jaw, like pus from an untreated wound. What hesitation I glimpse in his face lasts for all of a second before he takes a step back, swings his rifle upwards at the clouds where we had been just minutes ago, and fires a shot at the encroaching storm.

When he meets my eyes again, it is with an emotion I know all too well — an emotion I would have killed him for, had I still the means: pity.

"The bastards at the College d'Armes won't pay you a cent for me," I snarl. "Taking me hostage in this weather will do you no favours."

There is another dreadful pause before he spits out the words: "They can burn."

"What?"

"My kingdom and my crown. They can all burn. If you're so eager to waste your life fighting this useless war, then do me a favour: bleed them for all they're worth before you go. Do that much for me, and I'll consider us even."

He throws his rifle at my feet and scampers away, the silhouette of his back dissolving into the shadows that swim ever thicker around the margins of my vision. The last thing I hear is Anneliese's voice, screaming something about hearing gunshots from the wreckage, as I let cold and gravity take me.