by H J Peterson
Oh, dear heaven!
“Good luck, Friedrich,” Chayim said quietly as Friedrich prepared himself. “Just be yourself around these people: I think they’ll appreciate that a little more than they would a façade, even if you do tend to be a little… awkward.”
Friedrich smiled, sheepish. “Thanks, Chayim.”
“Are you coming?” Eltz called from the top of the staircase. “I don’t think your future in-laws would really appreciate you making them wait any longer.”
“Go on, then,” Chayim said.
Nodding, Friedrich went up the stairs. Time to face Katalin’s family.
Sure enough, the house seemed to be absolutely filled to the brim with people. From the second Friedrich walked through those doors, he was surrounded by members of House von Thurzó. They all had that same chocolate brown hair, the same olive skin, and most of them even had the same brown eyes as Katalin and her father. Of course, though, none of them dressed quite like Katalin and her parents: these members of House von Thurzó were very much Magyaran: bright skirts with floral patterns along the hems, white blouses with more red flowers at the hems, sashes, hair scarves for the women, glasses of what looked like some sort of vodka cocktail; Friedrich felt like he’d stepped into Magyar.
Oh, dear heaven. He was going to need all those prayers from his father and from Chayim, wasn’t he?
“Friedrich! Lord Eltz!” Friedrich looked to the side to see Katalin, standing with a girl that looked to be around her age: that must have been one of her cousins. She walked over and gave Friedrich a hug, holding her drink out from them. “Oh, I’m so glad that both of you were able to make it.” She turned to look at Eltz, a sheepish look on her face. “I don’t suppose that we’re quite on familiar terms, are we?”
“Oh, I don’t quite feel comfortable hugging a woman in public, especially if it isn’t the woman I’m married to: I’m not sure that it would be proper,” Eltz said with a slight bow. It was progress, Friedrich guessed. “Now, I hate to jump right to business, but would you happen to know where your father is?”
“Of course, of course,” Katalin said as she looked around. “I think he went to his study to get away from the family.”
“I see,” Eltz said. “Well, I’ll leave you and Friedrich with your family.”
With that, Eltz left for von Thurzó’s study, leaving Friedrich and Katalin in a crowd of von Thurzós.
Katalin sighed, rubbing her temples. “Oh, your father still doesn’t like me, does he? I’d kind of hoped that he would’ve warmed up to me a little, by now.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Friedrich told her as he wrapped an arm around her. “I’d kind of hoped that he would have warmed up to me at this point, too.”
“I guess it kind of explains why we’re perfect for each other,” Katalin said. She took a sip of her drink, then offered it to him. “Would you like a drink, honey? Some liquid courage to get you through the evening?”
Friedrich looked down at the cocktail. “Is that why you’re drinking it?”
“Of course: do you think I enjoy this many people in the house?”
He took it and began to sip at it. It was strong, but dear heaven, did he need it if he was going to deal with this family for the entire night. He could barely deal with his own extended family for that long.
“So, is there a plan in place for the evening?” Friedrich asked.
“Other than the fact that we’re going to have a big dinner and my family’s probably going to interrogate you all through it?” Katalin asked. “Nothing much, really. My family enjoys being a little more spontaneous.”
Of course, they did.
Before the two of them could say anything else, Terézia came into the parlor, looking a little frazzled: her hair was starting to fall out of her bun, and she had on a messy apron. Had she actually cooked dinner that night? With the servants?
“Alright, everybody,” Terézia said as she tapped on her class of vodka cocktail. Everybody turned to face her. “Dinner’s ready, so please make your way to the dining hall so we can get eating.”
That gained an almost instantaneous reaction. They all began to head into the dining room. Friedrich followed them, with Katalin on his arm. Maybe dinner would help settle his nerves.
“Do I need to avoid sitting next to anybody?” Friedrich asked quietly as they walked over to the dining room. “Anybody that might try to kill me or anything like that?”
“I wouldn’t say that anybody is more or less dangerous than anybody else,” Katalin said. “Maybe just avoid Grandpa von Thurzó; he thinks the same way about Vorbereichers as your father thinks about Magyarans.”
Friedrich looked forward, sighing. That was just perfect. Hopefully, they would be able to keep Grandpa and Eltz as far away from each other as they possibly could.
And, luckily, Friedrich didn’t end up all that close to Grandpa von Thurzó, either. Instead, he ended up sitting between Katalin and her cousin, Vili von Thurzó. The heir to House von Thurzó over in Magyar. He seemed like a nice enough man, though Friedrich got the feeling he would be able to snap him like a toothpick if he wanted to.
Once everybody was seated, Grandpa von Thurzó stood up and held up a wine glass. Everybody else followed suite, including a somewhat reluctant Friedrich.
Here we go, he thought to himself as Grandpa von Thurzó cleared his throat. Another racist rant. And this time, it’s about me.
“I’d like to make a toast,” he announced in Magyaran. “Now, when my son told me that Katalin would be marrying a young man she met over here in Vorbereich, I told him that it was mad. I told him that there was no way that some uppity noble from this country could be good enough for his daughter.”
Of course, that’s what he said. How many times had his father said the very same thing about Katalin? Practically to her face?
“I asked what house this boy was from, and when he told me that it was the heir to House Eltz, I was, understandably, shocked,” Grandpa von Thurzó continued as he scanned the faces of his relatives and his future grandson-in-law. “I was under the impression that House Eltz didn’t associate themselves with anybody that wasn’t from their own country: something about the fact that they’re under the wrong impression that Vorbereichers are superior to Magyarans.”
Friedrich looked over at Katalin, unsure of how he should feel about all this. She looked mortified by what her grandfather had said so far: her face was bright red, and she looked like she was just barely restraining herself from running and hiding under a rock for the rest of the night.
“And then, Tamas began to tell me about this young man,” Grandpa von Thurzó said as he looked over at Friedrich. “About how he’d never seen anybody treat his daughter with such honest kindness, before, and about how he’d defended her to his father time and time again.” He looked over the faces of his family again. “He even told me that when Eltz manor was attacked during Bleeding Midnight that he braved rain and wind to help our Katalin, and was even stabbed in the back by a would-be assassin in an attempt to defend his new fiancée. And that he went ahead and hired a guard accused of cowardice right afterwards.”
He looked over at Friedrich a serious look on his face. “Friedrich Eltz, though I would much prefer her to marry another Magyaran, I can’t think of any Vorbereicher more worthy of Katalin’s hand in marriage.”
Friedrich nodded his thanks. He wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, but he would take it: he had the feeling that it would be the nicest thing Grandpa von Thurzó would ever say to him.
Grandpa von Thurzó held his glass up a little higher. “To Friedrich and Katalin: may they have a long, happy, loving marriage.”
“To Friedrich and Katalin,” the rest of the family repeated.
They all downed their drinks and began to eat the first course of dinner that night (a white soup Friedrich was pretty certain was called borleves), while the servants rushed around in a mad panic to refill everybody’s drinks.
“You
should feel honored by that,” Vili said as Friedrich set his napkin in his lap, preparing to eat. “He doesn’t usually praise Vorbereichers like that.”
“Thanks.” Friedrich took a bite of soup as the rest of the family began to eat.
Now, he could only hope that he would be able to impress the other members of Katalin’s family as much as he had, apparently, impressed Grandpa von Thurzó.
XLI. HIRO
“So, the two of you want to get in on this?”
Hiro and Adelric had sat at that bar for about twenty minutes, drinking ginger beer on the house, when Bator finally walked in. The man was pretty unassuming to Hiro: he didn’t exactly look like a vicious mob boss to her. He was a big Magyaran man, with a mechanical leg that wasn’t in too good of shape. He had a pretty good-sized gut that hung over his belt, and wore ratty clothes that looked like they’d been picked out of a dumpster: a shirt, a pair of pants, a cap, some shoes and a coat. All of it was soot-stained, as if he’d just spent the afternoon sweeping a chimney. He looked like every other factory worker she’d ever met.
Of course, she didn’t exactly know any factory workers who had a bar’s basement that he could use for secret meetings.
“Of course, we do,” Hiro said, folding her arms over her chest. “The nobility of this country haven’t done a damned thing for me: I think it’s about time somebody did something about it.”
“You want to know how many kids I’ve heard say that since this whole Archangel thing started?” Bator asked, taking a swig of some sort of Magyaran brew. Hiro had no idea what it was: all she knew was that it definitely wasn’t vodka. “A hundred. At least. And you want to know what they all did when the going got even a little tough? They picked up and left.”
“We won’t do that,” Adelric assured him. Hiro had to admit: he was a whole lot calmer than she ever thought he would be: she’d expected him to run off the second Bator showed up. “I can assure you, we’re here until the bitter end.”
“And how do I know you ain’t lying?”
“We can prove it to you,” Hiro said. “Name your price.”
That price, as it turned out, was a robbery.
“Is this even allowed?” Adelric asked as they walked back to Medvye’s that night. The two of them were all ready for this little night out: they were all in black, with fitted clothes that covered every inch of them but their heads. Adelric had a cap on, and Hiro had a scarf around her neck that she would put over her face if need be. And, of course, she had her hair up and in a tight bun, keeping it from getting caught or grabbed during this job. “I mean, if we get arrested for this, aren’t we going to have to serve the time for it, too?”
“That depends on what we actually end up doing on this job,” Hiro said, shoving her hands into her trouser pockets. Dear heaven, did it feel good to be in pants, again. Now that she had that damned cyborg leg, skirts just made her feel so exposed. “We just have to declare anything we end up doing: from what I know, though, we’ll be pardoned for everything except for murder.”
I hope. In all honesty, she had no idea: she hadn’t gotten to that part in the book Berkowitz had given her.
“So, we just need to keep from murdering anybody?” Adelric asked as he straightened himself out. “I think I can manage that.”
We better be able to manage that, Hiro thought to herself.
It wasn’t that long after that that they reached Medvye’s. Unlike earlier that day, there was a steam car parked outside it, one that three people were standing around. Hiro recognized all three of them: it was Valtruscan sisters from earlier (what had Adelric said their names were? Francesca and Luciana) and…
Oh, hell!
The third person there was Aki.
Adelric shot her a look.
“So, these are the new people I’ve been hearing so much about?” Aki asked, scanning their faces. He looked the two of them up and down, sizing them up. Hiro, however, wasn’t fazed, and she was pretty certain that Adelric wasn’t either: considering the lives the two of them had led, the two of them were plenty used to people sizing them up, trying to decide what they were worth. “Who are you two, exactly?”
“Niels Achthoven,” Adelric said. He wrapped his arm around Hiro. “And this is my friend, Yumi Hruska.”
Aki raised an eyebrow at that name. Hiro immediately went on edge: did he already see something off with that name? “Yumi Hruska, huh? So, are you Magyaran or Hanjan?”
“Both,” Hiro said. “I guess my name was where my parents made their compromise.”
Aki nodded, then turned and opened the driver’s side door of the car. “Well, we’d better get going: the sooner we get this over with, the better.”
Every instinct Hiro had told her–screamed at her–to not get in the car, but she didn’t listen. Instead, she got into the car after Adelric and shut the door behind her.
The Valtruscan sisters got into the car, and the five of them drove off into the night.
Hiro sat back in her seat and tried to relax. She had to calm down; if these people thought that she was nervous or scared, they might start asking questions. And if they started to ask questions, they might dig deep enough to find out who she and Adelric really were.
And that was not something Hiro was going to let happen.
“So, I guess you all already know what this little job is going to entail, right?” Adelric asked, dissipating the eerie quiet that had fallen over the car.
One of the Valtruscan sisters (Francesca? Hiro was pretty sure it was Francesca) looked back at them from her seat in the front of the car. She was giving Hiro and Adelric a weird look: she looked really confused, like they’d just told her that grass was, in fact, red. “Didn’t Bator tell you?”
Hiro shook her head. “He only told us that we’re done some sort of robbery.”
“He was worried that these two would run out on us if they knew all the details of tonight,” the other sister, Luciana, explained. “He told me that we should only tell them everything when it became too late for them to back out.”
Hiro wasn’t at all surprised to hear that: every mob boss she’d ever heard of was paranoid like that. It was the only way to truly survive in the underworld.
That was one of the very reasons why she was so worried about all this: she didn’t know how they were going to convince these people that they were really there for the reasons they said they were when they were just looking for the two of them to make a fatal mistake.
“Then, I guess it’s up to us to talk to them about this,” Aki said from his spot behind the wheel. He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “How much do you know about House von Braun?”
Hiro knew a thing or two about them: it was the same house that Manfred II’s wife came from, they were a major player in the mining game over by the Vorbereicher-Magyaran border, they were allied with Houses Schmitt, von Strauss, and Drachs; however, she didn’t say any of that. She doubted that a Hanjan-Magyaran street urchin would know much about them, or care.
“That’s the same house as Manfred II’s wife, right?” Hiro asked, as if she didn’t know one way or another.
Aki nodded. “You can imagine just how much money these peoples have, I’m sure.”
“Too damned much: that’s the answer to that question,” Francesca muttered under her breath. She looked back at them, again. “That’s why we’re going to break in, steal a hell of a lot of valuables, and get out, hopefully before their guards catch any of us.”
So, it was just a simple, in-and-out job. Shouldn’t be too hard, Hiro guessed: they just had to go in, get the stuff, and get out. She could deal with that, as long as it didn’t involve killing anybody.
“Are we expecting too many guards, here?” Adelric asked. “And what are we supposed to do if we run into them?”
“There will be plenty of guards there, but since they’re having a little dinner party tonight, they’ll mostly be in and around their dining room,” Aki said. “And if you do end up running into so
mebody, you fight them off. You do things quickly and quietly, before an alarm gets sounded. And if you end up killing a guard, you hide the body where nobody will find it for a while.”
The car grew somber after Aki said that. So, that’s how this was going to be? Hiro hoped–prayed–that they wouldn’t end up running into guards: the last thing she wanted was to kill people on her side.
It wasn’t long after that that the car pulled over, a little ways down the road from a heavy, iron gate. The gate to the von Braun estate.
Aki turned the car off. “We go on foot from here. Stay quiet, and stay out of site. We’ll meet back here in an hour.”
With that, they all got out of the car and headed for the estate, disappearing into the cold, foggy night.
XLII. ADELRIC
Adelric and Hiro ran towards the von Braun mansion together, silently making their way through the suppressing fog, every fiber in his being humming. His hands were as hot as a stove, ready to melt anything that might stand in his way, and his sleeves hung heavy with coal and potassium, just in case they ran into a little trouble along the way. He felt the same way in that moment as he had on every other job he’d ever done with Bator: scared enough to force himself to keep going, but not scared enough that he couldn’t think straight.
Well, not yet, anyway: he wasn’t quite stupid enough to think that it wasn’t going to happen at some point while they were there.
He glanced over at Hiro. Of course, the police inspector was as calm and focused as ever. She just stared dead ahead, her face an emotionless mask. How could she act like she’d been doing this her entire life? Had she done anything like this, before?
“So, what’s the plan when we get to the house?” Adelric asked quietly as they continued to run. They were going up a small hill at that point, and if he was remembering correctly from the last job he did at that mansion, they would be able to see it once they crested the top.
Hiro glanced over at him. She looked kind of angry, but then again, she always seemed to be angry when she looked at him. “I kind of assumed that you would know what to do, seeing as you’re the career criminal in this group.”