From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 160
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"What happens if these Nazis get their way?" Pretoria asked.
"Many, many people will die. They've already started on us because no-one will notice, and their experiments might yield fruit." Helga bit off the word for the sour, fetid thing it was in that context. "There could even be another war, if worse comes to worst."
Though Helga had mentioned the possibility on her last visit, something about hearing it this time, in this room with Millie and Vita present, made it feel like much more of a possibility.
But as for what to do about it, Katya was the one who bore the title of Headmistress.
"Does anyone have any questions?" she asked the room at large.
Most were too stunned to think, let alone speak.
"Then I move that this meeting be adjourned for the moment. Helga, I would like to speak with you and Vita privately, if that's all right."
The other two indicated that it was, and the rest were free to go. When the door closed again, Vita did the lock with her mind. It was a cold, permanent sound.
"Please sit down, Helga. Would you like anything?"
With her wider audience gone, Helga collapsed into the chair Millie had vacated with all the heaviness she would have the one in her dressing room following a four-hour performance. "Just an answer, Kat. I'm so sorry to spring this on you at the last moment, but I couldn't risk anything being intercepted, and you were coming anyway. However, there's more you need to know before I can ask you in good conscience."
The sun shining outside seemed a distant technicality for the chill that Vita's Manifest put in the air. It would have been refreshing but for the glint of obsidian in her eye. "Then with all due respect, be out with it, if you would."
"A fair request, Doctor. I apologise for my exhaustion. Organising this has been…" Helga laughed mirthlessly to herself. "Look who I'm talking to." Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a hard candy wrapped in wax paper. "Talking is harder on your voice than singing, believe it or not," she said, and popped it into her mouth. When she had it settled where she wanted it, she turned to Katya.
"What news have you heard from Russia?"
"Nothing good, what little I let in," Katya said.
Helga nodded. "It's worse than Angelique told you. What I've heard from some of our sisters who have been smuggled out of Poland and Czechoslovakia is that the Soviet Union may not be long for the world."
The icy pit in Katya's belly opened wider, threatening to swallow her heart for all it fell. She swallowed hard, her grip on Vita's hand tightening. "I see."
"Stalin is making enemies faster than he can purge them and his health is poor, apparently. I agree with Angelique's assessment that if there is a collapse, Germany is the next likely home for the resulting wave of disillusioned Communists."
Helga leaned forward across the table, her cool bearing abandoned for the raw authenticity that she could only ever show to a friend. "Kat, we have to fix Germany before that happens. Neither the Communists nor the Nazis can survive a happy, prosperous populous, but either will utterly consume a broken, angry one. I got involved to help my people, to make a difference, just like you said I could, but now I have to save us from ourselves as well as Versailles. And a ticking clock."
The glittering green of Helga's eyes took on a more amorphous character as the true depths of her feelings surged into them. "I'm sorry that you were the last to find out. Truly. I've no right to expect you to still come now, but we need help. Please. This is the closest we're going to get to having a Council in the foreseeable future, and EVE needs to be there."
Katya nodded not so much in thanks or even agreement, only to acknowledge that she'd heard what the German witch was saying. It was all happening so fast and all at the same time, Katya kept looking for an emergency cord to yank on so she would have time to think.
Helga looked down to find her skirt scrunched up in tight fists. She stared for a moment before looking back up, her eyes limned in pink. "I'm scared, Kat. I see what these Nazi thugs are doing, and how small the response has been. No-one takes them seriously enough. Fair enough, I was one of them. But witches should know better! The old ones… the ones that are still alive, they've forgotten Victoria's speech, the reasons the Council rescinded the Pact. They want to bury their heads in the sand again. Whatever happened to their sisters during the Great War won't happen to them. They've weathered so many storms already, what's one more? Or they don't even think there will be a storm. But I have to do something. I must."
"What is it you wish from EVE under these new circumstances?" Vita asked.
"Mostly what Kat already agreed to: advice, examples. What went right, what went wrong. Through witchcraft and deft outreach, you advanced women's rights in Britain by a century or more in a few years. Longstown is legendary, it might as well be a city in the sky paved with gold for many of the witches I speak to. You helped make it that. We need to know how. My sisters need to see that you're real, flesh and blood. It will help make your accomplishments tangible and more realistic. We're not asking for the Firebird or the Raven to swoop in and fix our problems. Just show us how to build the tools we can use to do it ourselves."
Tools Katya and the others had had to invent from whole cloth. There hadn't been an instruction book to build EVE with, or a map on how to get where they had. But she hadn't been alone. She would have given up long ago if she hadn't met people willing to aid her. And now that she was in a position to help others in need, she owed them what she had already benefited from.
Katya turned to the most important person of them all, the one who had given her the tools to rebuild herself, and found eyes of piercing blue, sharp enough to cut diamond, looking right back.
Not a word needed be said.
Whether it was EVE's original mission, their new one, or the one they had made themselves the vanguard of those years ago at the last Council, Katya would see that they fulfilled it. They would help when asked, because they had been helped, no matter the timing.
No matter the outcome.
They had to try.
"Tell us when and where, and we will be there."
One building over and two stories higher, Millie couldn't stop fidgeting. Witchscale or not, she felt compelled to pick up every knick-knack in her flat just to have something in her hands. Elise never allowed dust to build up on anything, so Millie couldn't even excuse her behaviour with a desire to clean.
She was doing it to keep her mind from eating itself.
Whatever Kat and Vickie were discussing with Helga, the outcome was in no doubt: EVE was going to Germany, and regardless of what combination of members ended up in the delegation, Millie was going to be part of it.
Right back to where she'd found Lucie, where Millie had been driven to choose Elise over Niamh for good. After all that had happened since, returning to a place filled with the same people with the same intent as the ones who had cut Lucie's eyes out of her head just to see what would happen felt like a reversion. Ending up there again was unthinkable for a lot of reasons, but the scariest, the one Millie tried to keep from leaking into the Bond, was that part of her might like it.
The part of her that had been nurtured and sculpted by Niamh. The part of her that had saved Lucie and punished those responsible with her own two hands, making sure they faced the consequences they deserved for once.
Or any at all.
For too many of their sisters, Millie and Niamh were all the justice they could hope for; swift and merciless, meted out right before their eyes. Millie had spent ten years closing the circle, and there was a twisted satisfaction to be found in that. It wasn't for the accolades, the thanks or the considerable reputation she had built into the almost mythical-sounding Red Knight, but the grim confirmation that the job was done. Finished.
Certain. Dead was dead, there was no coming back.
But Millie had seen first-hand what that thinking did to someone. Niamh was vengeance incarnate, coming at the cost of ever starting another family. No matter how much they dressed it up in righteousness, or how often the final consequences were truly justified, in the end she was an assassin.
And she, who had laid the split path of 'defender' or 'avenger' at Millie's feet on the first day they'd met, was out there right now—likely in Germany already, according to Selene's letter to Kat—living out her choice to be the latter.
Through Elise, Millie had chosen the former. The idea that she could be dragged back down the path of vengeance again set off all kinds of blaring alarms in the domesticated part of her that Elise was responsible for.
A defender, not an avenger, Millie had to tell herself over and over again as she took in some fresh air at the window.
Four stories below, the triumvirate of Emma, Clara and Sophia was sprawled across a blanket miming holding the sun in their hands, but from this distance, Millie couldn't hear what advice they were giving one another or why.
The most important thing was that they were happy. They didn't worry, they didn't want, they were just three friends enjoying a brilliant summer day together. The way it should be. They didn't know what discussions their mistresses were having, nor the import of them. They didn't need to, and if everything went right, they never would.
The knock that sounded on the front door heralded Millie finding out for herself. "Come in," she said without turning away from the window.
The sunlight streaming in turned into a growing glare as a witch dressed all in white with snow-white hair approached to stand beside her.
Down below, every student Millie could see sat bolt upright and arrowed straight for the door to the main building.
"Vita is presenting Helga to the girls. She'll be off again right afterwards," Kat said.
"Quite the travel schedule."
With nothing left to see but the same airfield they'd been looking at for over a decade, Kat turned to Millie. "You've probably guessed what we told her."
"Aye."
"And why I came up here first."
In direct sun, Millie's hair shone like coils of elemental copper, the light bouncing around her jungle of curls enough to put a reddish vignette around the woman she turned to. "To give me a choice you know I don't have?"
Kat's eyes remained resolutely ice blue. "That's unfair and, quite frankly, hurtful. Of course I'm going to ask you to go. It would be grossly irresponsible of me not to. Your answer is your own." She nodded to the Millie and Elise smiling impossibly large smiles from a photo taken the day after the wedding. "No-one will question it."
"Is Vickie going now, too?"
Neither of them were surprised it was the first real question to come out of Millie's mouth.
"No. Regardless of any changes in Germany, she still needs to stay and run the school," Kat said.
The tension Millie had been holding lessened slightly, in that her knuckles weren't about to be split open by the tightness of her tendons. "Who else?"
"From here, just me. Sveta is needed more in Paris, and there is no question of Alex going. The girls need Pretoria and the elders more than Helga does. On the reinforcement front, I understand Selene will very likely be there. If she does appear, then so will Niamh. You have a choice, Millie."
"If."
Kat blew out a breath and turned back to the window. "I know you have mixed feelings about that place."
"About all of it. I made my choice." Millie's fingers unconsciously went to her heart stone at the tug of Elise's agreement. "But that doesn't mean I don't feel guilty about it. Part of me feels like I abandoned Niamh."
"She's acted alone a long time. She might think of it as a return to form," Kat said.
"Aye, maybe. She said she approved of me staying."
By confessing that she loved me like the secret daughter she lost four-hundred years ago, Millie couldn't add. Selene was the only other living soul who knew about Aisling, and it was going to stay that way.
"But?"
"Niamh says a lot of things. Her actions have always been considerably louder. I've only heard from her once since she left," Millie said.
"She doesn't strike me as a letter writer, to be honest."
Witchscale rushed silently over Millie's fingers like a river out of a dam spillway, spreading from the tips to make an armoured wall where the glass would be when the window was closed. "She got used to having this." Millie tried not to think back to the row between them that had ultimately led directly to marrying Elise. "But I'm here, happy and safe, while she's out— I just want to know she's all right."
"She's with Selene, and Selene does write often. We would know if anything happened."
The witchscale fog drew back, making Millie's fingers look for all the world like a set of straws sucking up a puddle of milk. "That's what I tell myself."
"Good, because it's true," Kat said as students began trickling back onto the lawn to resume their idle afternoon. At the sight of her charges, the headmistress came to the fore again. "If you go, you will be at my side the entire time. It won't be like before. I would ask your protection, yes, but also your company. In addition, many of our German sisters have heard of the Red Knight but never seen her. It would go a long way helping bolster their confidence to have you there in person. Now more than ever, they need to see strength in the flesh, to hear your stories." She let out a long, tired sigh. "I'm sorry to have to ask you."
"I've put off my honeymoon to be here for the girls, Kat. Are you comfortable taking me away from them?"
"No, I'm not. But heavy is the head that wears the crown and all that. I know the costs, personally and professionally, of asking this of you, Millie. Don't insult me with implications of irresponsibility." Winter's bite snapped cleanly across the summer air.
Millie nodded to the young women talking excitedly about meeting one of their heroes. "I wasn't. I was asking on their behalf. You aren't the only one responsible for them. Or to them."
"The Furies aren't going anywhere, and neither is Vita. She has agreed to stay on campus for the entirety of the trip. I will talk to the Longs about beefing up patrols on this side of the airfield, and to Vita about enlarging the fences, if you deem it necessary. But I don't want the girls thinking anything is amiss. We will only be gone a few days, nothing that warrants making this place any more of a fortress than it already is."
Far below, Clara whispered something in Emma's ear, and her laughter rang clearly all the way to the fourth floor.
If Helga was right about the possibility of another war, would Emma ever laugh like that again? Or would she be imprisoned with her mother like last time?
How was Millie supposed to weigh her well-being of today against a hypothetical catastrophe if Helga failed in the future? If she did, and it was because EVE couldn't be there for her the way it needed to be, would Millie ever forgive herself?
Would Vickie?
EVE was such a tight-knit family, it was easy to forget how big it actually was to the rest of the world.
"All right. I'll go."
The sigh that escaped from Kat could have filled one of the Long's airships. "Thank you, Millie. I'm very grateful."
"Of course. Don't worry about talking to the Longs, I'll have a chat with the head of LAC Security myself. I know the realities of the job and what we can reasonably expect from her," Millie said.
The decision made, all of her anxiety fled her at once. It was a job now, one she knew how to do better than almost anyone. Even so, as Kat took her leave, Millie remained at the window a little longer to savour what it meant to be home. That was part of the job, too.
If Katya were going on holiday, she would be less put out about having to cram in all the work that needed doing before she could go on holiday. As it was, the next few days found her cramming in all the work that needed doing before she could go work somewhere else.
At least, that's how it felt the night before her departure when she looked up from her last piece of correspondence to find that the dominant light source in her office had become witchlight. The curtains were still open to the world outside, leaving her reflection staring back wondering where the sun had gone.
"I will see these posted first thing," Alex said in Russian, setting the envelopes on top of her briefcase so she wouldn't forget. Not that she needed to; in the entire time she'd been head of the administrative section of EVE, she had never failed to deliver on a promise.
"Thank you." Katya straightened her back against her chair and glanced at her list of things to do, finding all but the personal ones scratched off.
They'd told the girls that Katya was going on a 'business trip' (not exactly untrue), but finding out Millie was going too had left them gloriously ambivalent about their week off from self-defence lessons coming at the cost of having to deal solely with Headmistress Victoria.
While Katya had little doubt Vita could handle things, it wasn't zero. She had come a long way in softening her touch with the students, but that was mostly with the Crows. Everyone else was still rubbing at the bruises her first impression had made.
In a certain way, it might be good for all involved that Katya be gone for a little while.
Well, not all involved.
"I'm sorry we have to put off meeting Patrick," Katya said. "I was looking forward to it."
"Thank you, but don't be. I think we need some more time to come to grips with what that would mean," Alex replied. Her eyes were muted, which lent an extra credibility to her contention.
"Ivy hasn't been threatening to hex him again, has she?"
Alex laughed. "No. There's no such thing, I looked it up."
"In her co-conspirator's library?"
"I went while she was asleep. Carice's cataloguing system is amazing! You would think she has the patience of a 600-year-old or something."
The to-do list fluttered onto Katya's desk. "We should all be so lucky. Are you sure it's alright? You're going to have to stay here the whole time I'm gone."
