Astrid’s only reply was, “But you’ll have me. Isn’t that enough?”
“I wish dearly I could have both.”
“But if you have to choose, would you choose me?”
I fingered the sky captain’s wings on my collar tabs. “All my friends died fighting for the Commonwealth. I thought I was going to die fighting for the Commonwealth. I want desperately to be in your life, but it’s hard to give up something you were willing to lay down your life for.” I sighed, dropping my hand. “It doesn’t matter. The Commonwealth barely suffers me. You want me dearly. That should make the choice simple enough.” As much as I wished it to be, the choice to abandon my nation felt less simple than it appeared. It felt like I was giving up my duties to pursue personal pleasure. I knew it to be more in my mind, but my heart was unconvinced.
Astrid had little more to say to comfort me. Soon enough, I took my leave of her so she might resume her work of restoring the quadrant to peace. I meandered down to the Great Hall and drifted over to the corner bar where I spent so many of my evenings. It was a far cry from the glamorous locale I had seen my first night on this world. Craters were blasted from the crystalline walls and pillars. The floor was scarred and gouged. The bar itself had been split by a fearsome zeroblade blow, but many of the bottles behind remained miraculously intact. If only someone were there to tend it, I would have killed for a drink.
“Ingvar?” I asked.
“Yes, sir?” the hordling asked from behind me.
I smiled. “You know, I think I’ve figured out how you do that.”
“Indeed, sir?” Ingvar asked, entering my field of view.
“There’s more than one of you. Ingvar isn’t your real name, it’s the title all you Imperial servants carry. You doyourself up to all look alike, and so when I ask for Ingvar, the nearest one pops by.” I gave the hordling a pleased look. “Well, am I right?”
“I couldn’t possibly say, sir,” the hordling replied. “But it is a most amusing speculation. May I help you with something, sir?”
Pointing at the bottles, I asked, “Do you know how to tend bar?”
The hordling adopted a pained expression. “Sadly, sir, tending bar is a skill reserved for more elevated servants than myself. I do, however, know a man who does possess such capabilities.”
“Who?” I asked.
“May I be of service, Captain?”
I turned to see Wiktor behind me, dressed in his royal livery, looking as pressed as if he’d walked out of the Royal Palace itself. I tried to hide my amusement as I asked for a whiskey and ginger.
“Such a simple drink for my prodigious talents,” the royal guard complained as he strolled behind the bar.
“Then what would you recommend?” I asked, laughing.
“For a whiskey-drinker like you? I am well known for my honey-bourbon 75s.”
“Then make me one of those, as well as my whiskey and ginger. I get the feeling I’m going to need a lot of lubrication to grease the wheels of my mind,” I said.
The drinks came. I took them and sipped, looking around the ruined hall, reflecting on all that had happened since I first arrived here.
“Did I ever tell you two about the rum punch riot of seventy-eight?” I asked. The two servants answered negatively, and I launched into my story.
“It was the autumnal equinox. Astrid took a house offcampus, intending to throw the wildest romp the Academy had ever seen. Well, word got around, and soon enough, half the bloody school was invited, and we all brought our favorite poisons.
“The party was going swimmingly until about one in the morning when a campus police officer tried to force his way in. I suppose he followed another student sneaking out, but the damned fool tried to arrest all of us for violating curfew.
“Well, one thing led to another. The drunken students closed ranks against him, someone threw bottles at him, and he was unceremoniously driven off. We all had a good laugh until he came back with the whole damned police department.
“You’ve never seen such energy. The laziest students I knew became paragons of labor, fortifying the house in preparation for a siege. We sang battle songs and declared our undying loyalty to one another, and all throughout, we kept drinking.
“The comradery faded with the next morning’s hangover. We looked around and realized what we’d done, and everyone knew we were to be arrested if not expelled. We cut into the steam tunnels beneath the house and escaped to various locations around campus in time to make the morning roll call. Oh, you never saw such a furious lot as the instructors who thought they were going to catch us out of ranks, only to see us lined up, green to the gills, but present and in uniform.”
“So you got away with it?” Wiktor asked.
“We were delinquent in our duties, but it turned out the campus police were operating outside of their jurisdiction. The house was on private property, and the party was a private affair held by a commissioned officer. A few students were expelled and a few policemen fired, but the whole thing was swept under the rug. The rest of us received a few demerits on our records. Astrid and I both had enough already that two or three more didn’t matter.”
I gave the shattered hall a wistful, remembering look, seeing the balls, the dinners, the events before the coup, and how it looked then before now. “Before coming here, I thought that would be the wildest soiree I’d ever attend. This, though, this was one Fall of a party.”
