Chapter 261 - Chapter 261: The Recognition of Old Men

By the afternoon of that same day, following the extraordinary scenes at Wilhelmshaven, Germany had begun to learn what had happened in the Mid-Atlantic.

Telegraph offices struggled beneath an avalanche of messages while newspaper presses across the Empire ran without pause. Special editions spread from railway stations and cafés into factories, mines, barracks and homes until scarcely a town remained untouched by the news.

What they reported seemed almost impossible.

Over several hours of fighting, nine German battlecruisers supported by submarines had shattered a major British naval force. Seven dreadnoughts and three battlecruisers had been lost, together with cruisers, destroyers and merchantmen, while British dead, wounded and missing were estimated at nearly ten thousand.

Germany, by comparison, had lost only four submarines and fewer than four hundred men killed, wounded or missing. Most astonishing of all, every German capital ship committed to the battle had survived. Several were badly damaged and would require months of repair, but all nine battlecruisers had returned.

At first there was disbelief. Then Germany erupted. By afternoon, crowds filled streets and public squares beneath black, white and red flags. Strangers embraced, newspapers were read aloud and every fresh detail produced another cheer. When word spread that Admiral Jellicoe himself had been captured alive, entire squares roared as though another victory had just been won.

Workers leaving factories found celebrations already waiting for them. Miners emerged blackened with coal dust to newspapers pressed into their hands, soldiers on leave were surrounded by cheering civilians and children ran through the crowds waving Imperial flags. By evening, taverns, beer halls and cafés were overflowing.

For a country that had entered the war surrounded by enemies, the victory carried an intoxicating message.

Germany was not merely surviving, it was shaping the war.

The Royal Navy, long regarded as almost untouchable, had been beaten catastrophically. Suddenly possibilities that had once seemed absurd no longer appeared entirely impossible.

The victory also belonged, in some measure, to ordinary Germans. Miners had dug the ore. Steelworkers had smelted it. Krupp and German Works had forged the guns, armour and machinery. Engineers had designed the ships, dockworkers had built them, railwaymen had carried their components and taxpayers throughout the Empire had helped finance a fleet whose cost had often seemed excessive. Now those sacrifices appeared justified.

Yet almost as remarkable as the victory itself was what the Kaiser announced would follow.

That evening, the Royal Palace in Potsdam would host a great celebration—not only for admirals, officers, ministers and nobles, but for the sailors themselves and their immediate families.

For many Germans, the announcement was nearly as difficult to believe as the battle report.

Imperial palaces did not ordinarily open their gates to thousands of sailors, mechanics, dockworkers' sons, wives and children. They were places glimpsed behind walls or seen in newspapers.

But tonight, the gates would open.

And by evening, the Royal District had been transformed. Guests passed first through its outer gates and security posts before continuing toward the palace proper, where the great black iron gates and fortified walls formed the final barrier around the Imperial residence and its gardens. A second inspection waited there, but beyond it the palace grounds had been opened for a celebration unlike any the household had hosted before.

The numbers quickly reached into the tens of thousands.

Crews from nine battlecruisers and more than twenty submarines arrived alongside their families, joined by senior officers, wounded sailors, dockyard representatives, government officials, industrialists, foreign delegations and other invited guests.

Under ordinary circumstances, such numbers might have overwhelmed a royal residence.

Potsdam, however, had changed greatly during the previous decade.

Under Oskar's influence and wealth, roads had been widened, service areas reorganised and large sections of the grounds redesigned to accommodate immense gatherings. Conservative courtiers had once complained that the estate increasingly resembled a strange combination of palace, military headquarters, public park and festival ground.

Tonight, Oskar's foresight proved useful.

The sailors arrived in waves, many still in uniform. Some walked beside wives or sweethearts in their finest clothes; others came with children staring wide-eyed at everything around them. Elderly parents followed sons they had feared dead only days earlier.

Reunions occurred everywhere.

Men stopped in the middle of avenues to embrace old shipmates, while sailors returning from battle were surrounded by relatives demanding to hear once again exactly what had happened in the Atlantic.

The wealthier guests arrived in polished Muscle Motors automobiles, while others came by motorcycle, bicycle or on foot. Officers, businessmen, workers and families all passed through the same gates, even if German society had hardly forgotten the distinctions between them.

Inside the grounds, however, those distinctions became less rigid.

The great lawns and gardens belonged largely to sailors, workers and their families. Braziers burned against the evening chill, while throughout the grounds stood broad roofed pergolas and garden pavilions designed almost like outdoor drawing rooms. Beneath their shelter were fireplaces, deep sofas, upholstered armchairs and polished tables arranged so that entire families could gather together in comfort, protected from rain while remaining open to the gardens and the evening air.

Some groups settled there for hours, grandparents and children gathered around the same fire while sailors spoke with parents, wives and siblings they had not known whether they would ever see again. Elsewhere, electric lamps glowed beneath the covered walkways and terraces, lending the gardens a warmth and luxury more commonly associated with the palace interior.

Servants moved constantly through the crowds carrying food and drink, but Oskar had refused to allow the celebration to become another stiff aristocratic reception.

Large grilling areas had therefore been established throughout the gardens.

Sailors who had spent weeks eating shipboard meals now stood laughing around smoking grills with their sleeves rolled up, arguing over seasoning with the seriousness of admirals discussing battle plans. Families claimed tables and sheltered seating areas, children ran between adults, and beer flowed in quantities that increasingly concerned the palace stewards.

Before long, the Imperial grounds resembled less a royal reception than the largest and most luxurious festival Germany had ever seen.

Even the palace horses eventually joined it.

The noise drew Shadowmane and several of his enormous offspring from the northern stables. Conversations faltered as the great black stallion wandered calmly among the guests, followed by horses whose immense size made ordinary cavalry mounts seem small by comparison.

The nervousness lasted only until Shadowmane lowered his head toward a child holding half an apple.

Within minutes, the horses were surrounded.

Children offered carrots and apples while sailors who had faced British gunfire approached the animals with considerably less confidence. Eventually Shadowmane tired of the attention and wandered toward the eastern lake, where several of the younger horses followed him into the water.

Soon children crowded the shore watching the enormous animals swim while their parents laughed behind them.

Inside the palace, however, the atmosphere was very different.

The great ballroom had filled with the upper ranks of Imperial Germany. Admirals and generals moved beneath chandeliers alongside ministers, nobles and industrial magnates, while conversations drifted quietly from the naval victory toward contracts, reconstruction, politics and whatever opportunities Britain's humiliation might create.

Deals were not formally negotiated there of course. They merely began there.

Foreign diplomats watched with particular attention. Representatives of neutral states moved through the ballroom already composing reports for their governments, while delegations from Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria received a noticeably warmer welcome.

No one needed to announce that the balance of power had shifted. The Atlantic had done that for them.

What surrounded the diplomats no longer resembled an Imperial court frozen beneath centuries of ceremony. It felt instead like the centre of a nation accelerating into something new, with monarchy, industry, military power and religion increasingly gathered beneath the same chandeliers.

Near one edge of the ballroom, the Italian delegation had found itself cornered by one of the evening's more difficult men to ignore.

Grand Priest Arnold stood among them in ceremonial white and gold, broad-shouldered beneath robes embroidered with radiant crosses and the sacred symbols of the New Dawn. In one gloved hand he carried a tall golden staff crowned by a great cross encircling a glowing heart, giving him the appearance of some warrior-prelate stepped from legend.

Six Sisters of the New Dawn accompanied him, modestly dressed in white-and-gold habits, veils and devotional ornaments. One carried the enormous Holy Book of Mankind against her chest, its gilded cover and heavy clasps making it appear more sacred relic than ordinary scripture.

Several of the Sisters were visibly pregnant as well, evidence of the domestic teachings Arnold practised as enthusiastically as he preached them, following the example established by his Prince.

At present, however, Arnold's attention belonged entirely to the Italian ambassador.

He clasped the diplomat's hand with enough enthusiasm to shift the man's shoulder, smiling as warmly as though salvation itself might be achieved before dinner.

The Italians endured his attempts at conversion with the polished patience of men whose careers had taught them to smile through almost anything—including a new faith proclaiming itself an elevated and renewed true form of Christianity under the guidance of God's reborn messenger.

The Sisters appeared considerably more amused. Their husband's tireless enthusiasm for spreading the faith had evidently become a familiar spectacle.

Above the ballroom, the royal household occupied a broad elevated gallery reached by a sweeping marble staircase. Guards stood discreetly at either end, while two great tables overlooked the festivities below.

One belonged to the children.

Over this smaller kingdom, nine-year-old Imperiel presently presided with his two fair-haired personal maids, Lina and Leila, seated faithfully at either side.

Anna's three eldest daughters and several of the older children had made a determined effort to preserve order.

Then the enormous chocolate cake arrived.

The moment servants placed it at the centre of the table, fierce negotiations began over who deserved the largest slice.

Imperiel took it upon himself to settle the matter.

His young voice carried remarkably well above the complaints of his siblings and cousins as he assigned portions one by one, treating the distribution with such solemn authority that one might have imagined the fate of provinces depended upon it.

Every ruling produced either triumph or indignant protest.

Lina watched him with shining eyes, plainly convinced there had never been a more impressive boy alive.

Leila was considerably less demonstrative.

She sat beside him with the long-suffering expression of someone who considered the entire proceeding ridiculous—right up until Imperiel casually ordered her to give him another grape.

Her eyes widened.

A blush immediately coloured her cheeks, and without another word she plucked one from the bowl and obediently held it to his mouth.

Imperiel accepted it without interrupting his judgment over the cake.

Neither girl seemed particularly surprised anymore by the quiet certainty with which he expected obedience. It was the same instinct that had already made him the unquestioned ruler of his schoolyard despite every effort to provide him with something resembling an ordinary childhood.

Even seated among children with chocolate cake before him, Imperiel was becoming unmistakably his father's son.

The larger table belonged to the adults.

Kaiser Wilhelm II sat at its centre, positively radiant, his ceremonial dignity repeatedly undermined by the expression of a delighted boy who had just been told that his favourite dream had come true. Beside him, Empress Auguste Viktoria maintained rather greater composure, though every shriek of triumph or outrage from the children's table earned an amused glance in that direction.

Much of the immediate Imperial family surrounding them was female that evening. The Kaiser's sons had been scattered across the war: Eitel commanded the Fifth Army, Adalbert was somewhere in the Baltic with the Navy hunting Russian ships, August Wilhelm had somehow found himself immersed in the unglamorous world of Western Front logistics, and Joachim had disappeared into military intelligence somewhere in the west.

Their absence left their wives, children and Joachim's young fiancée filling much of the space they might otherwise have occupied. The married princesses sat with babies in their laps while younger children wandered constantly between the adult table and Imperiel's increasingly contentious little court. Joachim's fiancée, despite her youth and unmarried status, was already visibly expecting—a circumstance that had produced no small amount of embarrassed silence within the family and served as yet another reminder that wartime had a habit of pushing private matters forward faster than propriety preferred. The wedding had simply not yet taken place.

Altogether, the scene felt strangely domestic despite the uniforms, jewels, guards and immense ballroom surrounding them.

Yet one chair on the left side of the table stood conspicuously empty. Princess Louise had disappeared some time earlier. Rather suspiciously, so had Gustav Schwarzenegger.

He had returned from the front only that day and had scarcely finished exchanging greetings before Louise appeared at his side, announced that she needed to speak with him privately and dragged him away before anyone could question precisely why the matter was so urgent.

At that very moment, elsewhere in the palace, Gustav was discovering that he would not be returning to the celebration anytime soon.

Within the absurdly pink little kingdom of Louise's bedroom—all ribbons, cushions, plush animals and girlish extravagance—he had found himself eagerly wrestled onto the great bed with considerably less resistance than he might later care to admit. Months of worrying over her precious boyfriend had apparently left Louise determined to collect compensation now that he had finally returned alive and in one piece.

Most of her ballroom finery had already been abandoned upon the carpet. A crooked pair of cat ears remained perched upon her blonde head, while little more than delicate pink lace preserved what modesty she had left. Kneeling over him among the pillows, she attacked the buttons of his uniform with growing impatience, making her intentions increasingly impossible to misunderstand.

Gustav merely lay there smiling.

Russian artillery had failed to shake his composure, yet somehow the sight of this ridiculous, beautiful princess pawing determinedly at his uniform was proving rather more effective. His hands wandered lazily over her warm, fair skin as she worked, earning pleased little sounds and the occasional shameless purr.

Louise had waited long enough, and Gustav, watching her work with such determined enthusiasm, could not help smiling as she pulled open his jacket and tugged his shirt upward. The lean, hard ridges of his abdomen appeared beneath it, months at the front having sharpened him into something harder than she remembered.

Louise stopped.

For several seconds she simply stared. Then, with an appreciative little smile, she bent down and kissed his stomach. Another kiss followed, then a playful nip of her teeth and the briefest teasing brush of her tongue, more mischievous cat than dignified princess. Gustav laughed softly and ran one hand through her blonde hair, straightening one of the crooked cat ears almost absently.

"You realise," he murmured, glancing toward the locked door with the resignation of a man confronting inevitable disaster, "that if your father discovers me in here, surviving the Russians will have accomplished absolutely nothing."

Louise slowly looked up at him.

Her blue eyes were bright and hazy with desire, all the playful mischief of earlier now mixed with something considerably more serious. Gustav's smile faltered just slightly as he understood exactly where this evening was heading.

Louise smiled.

"Meow."

Her nails traced lightly across his abdomen before she continued downward and caught hold of his trousers. That finally made Gustav sink backward into the enormous mountain of pillows, plush rabbits, bears and inexplicable stuffed dinosaurs surrounding him.

"Oh, God," he muttered, closing his eyes. "Help me."

Whether God intended to intervene remained unclear.

Louise, however, plainly had no intention of doing so. Whatever remained of Gustav's uniform was rapidly becoming her next obstacle, and judging by the delighted expression on the princess's face, she intended to take their reunion considerably farther before the night was over.

Back in the ballroom, meanwhile, the orchestra continued playing, glasses touched together beneath the chandeliers, and conversation flowed as though the Kaiser's only daughter and a young Panzer officer had not vanished together at precisely the same time. There were, admittedly, considerably larger distractions.

The largest sat upon the right-hand side of the Imperial table, occupying a specially constructed chair broad and reinforced enough to accommodate something closer to a bear than an ordinary man. It looked less like dining furniture than the beginnings of a throne. Even seated, the Acting Crown Prince seemed enormous among the elegant chairs surrounding him, his broad shoulders filling a perfectly tailored black suit while pale blond hair, strangely threaded with gold and near-platinum, caught the chandelier light whenever he moved.

And he was eating.

Not impolitely, nor even hurriedly. Simply in quantities that made people occasionally pause to watch.

A great stuffed boar occupied much of the table before him, and Oskar calmly carved another thick slice from its flank with the concentration of a man who had already consumed enough to satisfy several ordinary guests and had apparently only just begun to feel properly hungry.

Wilhelm watched from farther along the table with poorly concealed amusement. Even the Empress occasionally glanced toward her enormous son as yet another portion disappeared.

Across from him, the three princesses married to his elder brothers were watching as well—Sophie Charlotte observed with quiet, almost clinical curiosity; Alexandra Victoria seemed openly entertained; Adelheid wore the faintly bewildered expression of someone still deciding whether such an appetite was entirely natural. Beside them, young Marie-Auguste stared with wide grey-blue eyes, too well mannered to comment but plainly fascinated by the spectacle.

Even beyond the royal gallery, eyes continued to drift toward Oskar. Not with the amused familiarity of his family, but with something increasingly close to reverence. The Iron Prince by now had accumulated too many victories, too many impossible stories and too much legend around his name to be regarded as merely another member of the Imperial household. Men who had once debated whether he was a genius, a fanatic or simply a dangerous eccentric now watched him as though they were looking upon someone already half claimed by history.

Oskar barely noticed. He had long since grown accustomed to being watched, and at present the magnificent roasted boar before him commanded considerably more of his attention. He carved another generous slice and took a bite large enough to draw several fresh glances from below. The meat was exceptional. Wilhelm had hunted the animal himself and, by all accounts, brought it down with a single clean shot before a prolonged chase could exhaust and toughen it. Properly dressed, seasoned and slowly roasted afterward, it had emerged rich, tender and almost absurdly good.

Yet even the boar struggled to hold his attention against the woman pressed warmly beneath his arm. Anna had dragged her chair so close to his that the generous width of the table had become almost irrelevant, settling against his side with the comfortable possessiveness of someone who had no intention of wasting a single inch of distance between them. From Oskar's considerable height, the daring neckline of her ivory gown offered an embarrassingly distracting view of her full figure, while her small, elegant hands worked carefully at her own portion of boar before lifting each bite to her red lips. Her brown eyes remained mostly upon her plate, eating with the quiet seriousness of a pregnant woman determined to nourish both herself and the child growing within her, while every slow breath subtly lifted the heavy curve of her chest against the fitted silk.

The sight of her filled Oskar with a familiar warmth. Anna looked exceptional that evening. Her gown drew inspiration from classical Rome, with golden leaves climbing across the ivory fabric like a laurel wreath and echoed by the delicate circlet woven into her brown hair. Emerald earrings framed her face, while an elaborate necklace centred upon a deep red jewel rested above the gown's low neckline. With her soft features, warm brown eyes and abundant figure, she looked less like a Prussian noblewoman than some benevolent goddess of fertility and plenty who had wandered accidentally into the Imperial court—and, judging by the way Oskar's gaze kept returning to her, one he was in no hurry to send away.

On Oskar's other side, Gundelinde had gradually surrendered whatever modest distance propriety might have suggested and drawn her chair close enough to lean against him as well. One arm curled shyly around his while she rested against his side, soft and warm, her pale-blue and silver-grey gown falling around her in layered waves of silk and lace. Pearls and sapphires matched the clear blue of her eyes and drew attention toward the low neckline of the dress, where her soft curves were framed with considerably more daring than her naturally timid manner might have suggested. Where Anna radiated maternal warmth and abundance, Gundelinde possessed something gentler—almost luminous in her sweetness, with that familiar sheepish innocence that still made Oskar want to gather her closer whenever she looked at him.

Beyond her sat Cecilie, providing an almost perfect contrast. Tall, composed and naturally regal, she wore pale silver-blue embroidered with delicate silver flowers, a jeweled circlet resting among her carefully arranged hair while matching blue stones from Greater Cameroon caught the chandelier light at her throat. Cecilie carried herself like a woman who had been raised from childhood to stand beside thrones and expected the world to recognize it. Beside Gundelinde's shy softness, her cool elegance seemed almost queenly.

Oskar allowed himself a moment simply to take them in. Anna pressed against one side, Gundelinde shyly occupying the other, Cecilie seated just beyond her with all the dignity of a born princess. For a man who had spent so much of his life thinking about war, industry and everything that could go catastrophically wrong, the sight inspired an uncomplicated little smile.

Damn, Oskar thought, looking over the table and the family gathered around him. Life really is beautiful. After everything—the war, the ships, the dead, the endless weight of decisions—he could have stayed in this moment forever: home, surrounded by the people he loved, with laughter at the children's table and warmth pressed against both sides of him.

He took another bite of boar and raised his glass of apple juice to wash it down. Halfway through the drink, Anna shifted closer. Her head came to rest against his chest while the full softness of her body pressed warmly into his side, and Oskar lowered the glass almost automatically. His eyes betrayed him at once, dropping toward the abundant curves framed by her low neckline before returning to her face. Anna was easily the fullest of all his women, knew it perfectly well, and had spent years learning exactly how effortlessly she could distract him with that fact.

This time, however, her attention was not entirely on him. Her brown eyes flicked toward the glass still in his hand, then back to his face. Oskar raised one puzzled eyebrow.

Anna smiled sweetly.

"Well?" she asked. "What do you think of it, my love? Did you like it? Tell us honestly."

Oskar understood immediately that there was probably a correct answer to that question. Fortunately, it also happened to be the truthful one.

"Yes," he replied, taking another drink. "It is very refreshing. An excellent glass of apple juice."

And it genuinely was. The juice tasted clean, cold and naturally sweet, utterly unlike much of the heavily processed bottled juice he remembered from his previous life. There was no artificial flavour and no strange concentrated aftertaste, only the simple freshness of ripe apples.

Anna's smile deepened, while Gundelinde and Cecilie exchanged knowing glances over the table.

"Good," Anna said.

She leaned closer then, lowering her voice until there was little chance of the Empress beside her overhearing what followed.

"I am glad to hear that. We picked the apples ourselves, you know. From the garden. Then we pressed them in the large wooden tub."

Oskar nodded approvingly and reached for another piece of boar. Anna's smile immediately became more mischievous.

"With our feet," she added softly. "And not only our feet, but our bodies. And it was terribly warm that afternoon. By the end of it, we were exhausted, covered in apple juice and absolutely drenched in sweat."

Oskar stopped chewing.

He glanced down at Anna, whose expression remained so perfectly innocent that it only made matters worse. His gaze briefly betrayed him, wandering over the extravagant figure pressed against his side before his imagination eagerly supplied all the details she had so carefully omitted.

He pictured Anna laughing on her knees inside the great wooden tub, dressed in some scandalously tiny bathing costume while she crushed apples beneath her hands, legs and generous weight, juice splashing across her fair skin whenever another piece of fruit burst beneath her. Cecilie, naturally, would somehow have maintained perfect dignity even while trampling apples beneath her long legs, while Gundelinde would inevitably have lost patience with some particularly stubborn piece of fruit and attacked it with both hands like an indignant rabbit attempting to defeat a mortal enemy.

The image became increasingly ridiculous from there: Gundelinde recruiting Anna's legs as additional crushing equipment, Cecilie trying unsuccessfully to maintain order, and all three eventually slipping across the ruined fruit until the work dissolved into laughter and an impromptu wrestling match that Cecilie, to Oskar's amusement, would probably have won.

From there his imagination began wandering into considerably less innocent territory.

Oskar swallowed slowly.

There was something about Anna's explanation that should, by every reasonable standard, have made the contents of his glass considerably less appealing. Questions concerning hygiene, preparation and precisely what Anna meant when she said they had used their "bodies" presented themselves immediately.

Unfortunately, the knowledge appeared to be having exactly the opposite effect.

He glanced around at the three women surrounding him. Anna watched with barely concealed triumph, Gundelinde was already struggling not to laugh, and Cecilie wore the knowing little smile of someone perfectly aware of where his imagination had just taken him.

Oskar smiled back, and then he drank again.

Whatever proportion of the supposedly organic apple juice consisted of apples, sweat or anything else acquired during its exceedingly unconventional production, he discovered that he did not particularly care.

Anna looked positively delighted by that conclusion as did the others.

Beside his plate stood the large ornamental bottle containing the remainder of the juice, fashioned rather unsubtly into the shape of a heart. Oskar reached for it, but before his fingers could close around the neck Anna smoothly took possession of the bottle herself.

Without saying a word, she filled his glass all the way to the brim.

Oskar regarded the fresh serving for a moment, then looked at her.

"Well," he murmured, raising the glass once more, "don't mind if I do."

Next to him, Gundelinde finally surrendered and began giggling, with Cecilie joining her a moment later. Anna merely settled herself more comfortably against Oskar's side, looking thoroughly satisfied as he took another long drink.

Oskar, for his part, decided that certain questions concerning food preparation were best left permanently unanswered.

Farther down the table sat Tanya, dressed in red as she almost invariably was. On her, the colour seemed less a matter of fashion than a declaration of intent. Deep crimson silk and black lace followed her petite figure closely, embroidered with curling golden vines and roses that caught the chandelier light whenever she moved. The gown was unquestionably suitable for an Imperial ballroom, although its plunging sweetheart neckline suggested that propriety had been forced to make several reluctant concessions along the way.

Her small stature only made her generous curves more striking. Anna alone surpassed her in fullness, yet upon Tanya's narrower frame the difference hardly seemed obvious. The fitted bodice drew tightly into her slender waist before opening into layered skirts of crimson and black, while long gloves, a dark lace choker set with a ruby and a small jeweled crown completed the ensemble. Her blonde hair had been arranged with deliberate care, though several softer curls had been allowed to fall around her face, and the faint smile resting upon her naturally red lips lent the whole appearance something unmistakably dangerous.

Years earlier, Tanya might still have wondered what emperors, generals and foreign dignitaries thought when they looked at her. Those days were long gone. She was Oskar's first wife, mother of his eldest son, senior woman of his household and mistress of an industrial concern employing thousands. Whatever titles the future eventually placed upon her, she already carried herself with the confidence of someone who knew precisely where she belonged. Tanya no longer merely tolerated attention; when the mood took her, she knew perfectly well how to weaponise it.

Tonight, unfortunately for Karl, the mood had very much taken her. Rather than claiming a place nearer Oskar, Tanya had deliberately seated herself farther down the table beside Karl, with Cecilie and Gundelinde nearby. The arrangement had very little to do with chance. Karl knew it, Tanya knew that he knew it, and the amused little curve of her mouth suggested that she had been looking forward to dinner for precisely that reason.

Karl therefore devoted himself to his meal with almost heroic concentration. Dressed in a finely tailored white suit, he sat squarely in his chair with a crystal glass of water beside one hand and an impressive portion of roasted boar before him. His feet hung slightly above the floor, but there was nothing slight about the rest of him. Karl was broad through the shoulders, thick through the arms and packed with the dense strength of a much larger man compressed into a dwarfish frame. At present, however, all that formidable concentration was being directed toward carving his dinner with the solemn determination of a gentleman who hoped that, if he paid sufficient attention to his knife and fork, the beautiful woman sitting far too close beside him might eventually forget that he existed.

Tanya watched him for several seconds while Karl stubbornly continued eating. The corners of her lips began to curl, and although he refused to look at her, the slight slowing of his knife betrayed that he had noticed. There were no armrests between their chairs, and Tanya took immediate advantage of the fact, shifting until crimson silk brushed firmly against his side before reaching up with one black-gloved hand and casually ruffling his neatly arranged hair as though he were some troublesome child over whom she possessed an ancient and unquestionable right of correction.

Karl went rigid. "Oh, look at him," Tanya murmured sweetly. "The great master of German industry, sitting there so properly after spending the entire week ordering the rest of us about like his own private little tyrant."

"Tanya," Karl warned without lifting his eyes from his plate.

"Yes, Herr Director?"

The title was delivered with such exaggerated innocence that he finally glanced sideways at her, which proved to be his first mistake. Tanya's smile became positively radiant. Her hand left his hair only to travel down his sleeve and settle around his upper arm, where she squeezed experimentally, as she had done many times before, and once again appeared faintly offended by how little effect her slender fingers had upon the dense muscle beneath the fabric.

"You know," she continued, "some of us established companies to make beautiful things. Dresses, perfumes, cosmetics, jewellery, fine household pieces, little coats for dogs whose owners possess considerably more money than sense."

Karl cut another piece of boar and answered with a noncommittal, "Mm."

"And then," Tanya went on, squeezing his arm a little harder, "a certain miniature dictator decided that apparently Angelworks exists for an entirely different purpose."

Karl calmly placed the meat into his mouth and began chewing. Tanya stared at him for a moment, plainly waiting for some defence that did not come, before continuing with mounting theatrical indignation. "One million grey uniforms, you said. Then ten million. Backpacks, magazine vests, covers for armour plates, helmet covers, blankets, boots, and those Moss men suits, of all things. Do you have any idea how many little ribbons and embroidered collars died so that your soldiers might crawl elegantly through bushes?"

Karl swallowed before answering with complete seriousness. "A necessary sacrifice."

Tanya narrowed her eyes. "And then came the undergarments."

That earned the faintest movement at the corner of Karl's mouth, which only encouraged her. "Oh yes. Mountains of them. Shirts, drawers, socks, undershirts. My 'brave ladies,' as you so charmingly called them, sewing until their fingers ache so the German Army may march with comfortable feet and properly covered backsides."

"The men appreciate them," Karl replied. "Nylon, better stitching, lighter material. They are considerably more comfortable than the standard issue."

Tanya gave him a pointed look. "Comfortable or not, we do not have ten million soldiers, and undergarments hardly wear out overnight. What exactly is the rush?"

Karl lifted his crystal glass and took a measured drink of water before answering with maddening calm. "We do not have ten million soldiers yet."

Tanya stared at him as he lowered the glass, the implication apparently offending her on several philosophical levels at once. "And the chemicals," she continued. "Do not think I have forgotten those either. Apparently, because Angelworks knows how to make powders, dyes, creams and perfumes, that means we are perfectly qualified to turn half our factories over to industrial compounds for the war."

"You are."

"That is not the point."

"It generally is."

Tanya made a small sound of outrage and leaned even farther into him. Some of the irritation in her voice was genuine, but nowhere near enough to disguise how thoroughly she was enjoying herself.

Angelworks had adapted remarkably well to wartime production, and she understood perfectly well why Karl had redirected factories away from luxuries. Germany needed uniforms, chemicals, blankets and ordinary clothing far more urgently than it needed embroidered dog coats and jeweled accessories. That, however, did not mean Tanya intended to forgive him for possessing the authority to give those orders, particularly when complaining about it provided such an excellent excuse to torment him.

By then she had invaded almost all the personal space available between their chairs. One gloved finger pressed lightly against Karl's cheek, and when he refused to react she moved upward and poked his forehead instead. His eye twitched. Tanya rewarded this tiny victory by poking his arm next, at which point Karl finally raised one hand and attempted to swat her away. Tanya slipped neatly aside before his hand reached her, only to return a moment later and land another perfectly placed poke against his cheek.

Karl glared at her. Tanya answered with a smile of such angelic innocence that it only made the provocation worse. He tried once more to catch her hand, but her reflexes were considerably faster than his, and she withdrew it before returning from a different angle. By then the exchange had begun to resemble a particularly nimble cat amusing itself by tormenting an extremely compact and increasingly irritable bear.

"So tell me, Karl," Tanya murmured at last, leaning close enough that the amusement beneath her complaint was impossible to miss, "when exactly will it be enough? Or does your appetite simply grow with every factory you command?"

This time Karl was ready. When Tanya's left hand came toward his face again, his own closed abruptly around her slender wrist and stopped it halfway there. She went still, more from surprise than alarm, and for the first time since beginning her campaign of harassment found herself with his complete attention. Far from discouraged, however, Tanya merely looked down at the powerful hand encircling her wrist and smiled even more broadly.

"And what are you and Oskar actually planning?" she asked. "All this secrecy is becoming almost insulting."

Her free hand slipped beneath the edge of the table in one final act of provocation. Whatever Tanya had expected to find there, the reality caught her sufficiently off guard that her expression changed at once. Karl's entire posture snapped rigid, while Tanya's eyes widened before surprise gave way to dangerously delighted amusement.

Karl released her wrist immediately and pushed her firmly back toward her own chair.

"Behave yourself, woman," he snapped. In the hurried movement, the back of his hand accidentally slapped her square across the tits, the soft weight of them visibly jiggling beneath the low-cut bodice as Tanya gave a startled little yelp and fell back into her seat. "And stop asking questions that do not concern you. What I do is for the greater good."

Tanya recoiled more from surprise than pain, both hands instinctively rising toward her chest as she stared at him through wide blue eyes. Karl shot her a sharp look, his gaze dropping for the briefest instant toward where he had accidentally struck her before he forced his attention back to her face. The expression she returned—startled, indignant and somehow still filled with mischief—very nearly cracked his resolve.

He held firm.

"And after last time," Karl added, "I trust you with secrets about as far as I can throw you."

Tanya did not even bother pretending to be offended. She knew perfectly well that she weighed very little and that Karl, despite his stature, could probably throw her an alarming distance. If anything, the comparison suggested there remained considerable room for negotiation.

Her smile returned almost immediately.

"Oh, I am terribly sorry, my little master," she said sweetly. "Truly. I suppose I should never have mentioned to the others how, as a favour, I persuaded you to massage my feet... and my bare back... more than once."

She sighed softly, as though burdened by a particularly pleasant memory.

"I did try to keep it to myself, you know. But I enjoyed it far too much."

Karl went absolutely rigid.

Beside him, Heddy—who until that moment had apparently decided that ignoring Tanya was the safest possible course—snapped her head around.

She looked particularly lovely that evening, her petite, slender figure wrapped in pale silver-blue silk embroidered with delicate flowers and vines. The fitted bodice and broad layered skirt gave her a graceful, feminine silhouette without the deliberate provocation of Tanya's crimson gown, while her dark-brown hair had been swept into an elegant arrangement softened by a few loose curls around her finely shaped face. Small silver ornaments and a blue gemstone at her throat completed the effect.

Marriage and motherhood had long since replaced much of the bashful uncertainty Karl had first encountered in Augsburg with warm, composed confidence, though she could still blush spectacularly when caught unprepared.

Tanya knew this perfectly well.

"So, yes, all right," she continued, with absolutely no sign of genuine repentance, "I apologise for questioning your grand designs... and for perhaps suggesting to the others that they too might request the services of those very capable dwarfish hands of yours."

Karl slowly turned toward her.

Tanya smiled and pinched his cheek.

"Such thick, skilful little fingers," she added thoughtfully. "One does wonder how someone so small manages to be so stubborn, so energetic and so annoyingly good with his hands."

Then her eyes slid toward Heddy.

"What exactly are you feeding him at home?"

Colour rose into Heddy's face almost immediately. For a moment she seemed caught between embarrassment and indignation, until instinct won. She reached for Karl, drew him firmly against herself and wrapped both arms around him with such unmistakable possessiveness that no one watching could have misunderstood the gesture.

"That is not for you to know," she replied, managing remarkable calm despite the colour still warming her cheeks. "And he is my husband, Tanya. Not some toy for you to torment whenever you become bored."

Her eyes narrowed.

"And you know better than to question him like that."

Tanya laughed softly, entirely unrepentant.

"Oh, I know enough," she said. "I know you dote on him as though he were something precious. I know you sit him on your lap whenever you think no one is watching..."

Heddy's eyes narrowed further, though embarrassment was already beginning to compete with suspicion.

Karl had gone very still.

Tanya allowed the silence to linger just long enough to become uncomfortable. Her gaze drifted briefly over Heddy before returning to her face with exaggerated innocence.

"And I know you don't stop there."

Heddy's composure finally cracked.

"…What?"

Tanya's smile sharpened into something perilously close to predatory amusement.

"If you would rather I not explain certain things to the rest of the table," she said lazily, giving Karl's cheek one final and thoroughly unnecessary pinch, "then perhaps you should allow me the occasional pleasure. He is far too cute to keep entirely to yourself."

Heddy stared at her for several seconds, apparently considering whether taking Oskar's first wife across her knee in the middle of an Imperial banquet and spanking her would technically constitute treason. "Are you blackmailing me?"

"Of course not," Tanya replied, wearing the expression of a woman who unquestionably was.

A moment later she attempted to pull Karl toward her side. Heddy immediately tightened both arms around him, and Karl, possessing considerably more strength than either woman seemed inclined to remember, caught the edge of the table and anchored himself firmly between them. For several ridiculous seconds the two women tugged at opposite sides of his compact body while he refused to move at all. Having apparently exhausted every diplomatic alternative available to him, Karl finally turned toward Oskar with a silent appeal for salvation.

Unfortunately, Oskar had troubles of his own. The apple juice had apparently been only the beginning.

Several small plates now occupied the space before him. The first held a large, soft round of pale cheese that gave the faintest wobble whenever the table moved. Anna, Gundelinde and Cecilie proudly informed him that it had been prepared jointly with Tanya and Bertha. Against his better judgment, Oskar tasted it and discovered that it was excellent, which somehow made the entire situation considerably worse.

Then came the individual entries. One after another, smaller cheeses appeared in slightly different shades of cream and gold, varying in richness, firmness and presentation, each woman displaying hers with an enthusiasm better suited to an agricultural exhibition. Anna's was noticeably the largest and richest-looking. Gundelinde's had been carefully shaped and delicately decorated, while Cecilie's possessed such perfect symmetry that it might have come from a professional cheesemaker rather than a royal kitchen.

Tanya, temporarily abandoning Karl to Heddy, contributed a little heart-shaped cheese of her own, delivered by an embarrassed young maid who seemed determined not to make eye contact with anyone as she placed it before Oskar.

Oskar looked at the cheeses, then at the bottle of warm milk standing beside them. Before allowing his suspicions to develop any further, he glanced toward his parents. Fortunately, Wilhelm and Auguste Viktoria were occupied with a lengthy letter of congratulations from the Austrian Imperial household and appeared to have noticed nothing.

His gaze returned slowly to the food.

There were no dairy cows maintained anywhere within the immediate royal household.

If Anna had been truthful when she said everything had been produced entirely within the palace, then there were only so many possible sources.

Understanding arrived with horrifying efficiency.

Oskar's eyes dropped briefly toward Anna's considerable bust, then moved from one woman to the next. They were all smiling at him now with varying degrees of innocence, none of them convincing.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

"Of course," he murmured. "Who needs cows anyway?"

Anna's smile broadened. Cecilie covered her mouth. Gundelinde dissolved into laughter, and even Heddy, finally understanding the implication, failed to maintain her indignation. Karl merely sighed with the exhausted resignation of a man grateful that someone else had become the evening's principal victim.

Oskar reopened his eyes, regarded Anna's contribution for another moment, then simply picked up the entire cheese and ate it.

Anna actually gasped.

The absurdity of the situation should probably have disturbed him considerably more than it did. Instead, Oskar found himself laughing as he washed the cheese down with a long drink of milk and looked around the Imperial table. Only days earlier, his world had been consumed by the economics of war, endless meetings and preparations for the coming campaign in the east. Tonight, his most pressing concerns were women competing over homemade cheese, Karl desperately trying to recover what remained of his dignity, and an entire table of children arguing over chocolate cake.

This, he thought, was home.

Anna noticed the expression, along with the thin trace of milk left upon his upper lip, and leaned closer with every intention of wiping it away. Oskar misunderstood, caught her around the waist and kissed her instead. She laughed softly against his mouth and, when they separated, deliberately swept the remaining milk from his lip with her tongue before settling back against him with the satisfied expression of a woman whose experiment had produced precisely the desired result.

Down in the ballroom, Bertha Krupp's patience finally broke.

She had spent much of the evening among the senior figures of the Oskar Industrial Group, though her attention had repeatedly wandered toward the Imperial gallery. Anna leaning against Oskar had been tolerable. Anna kissing him had been irritating.

Anna licking milk from his mouth was unacceptable.

Bertha rose so abruptly that the generous weight of her breasts shifted beneath the dangerously low bodice of her gown, the steel-blue fabric straining momentarily before settling again. Without a word, she seized the small covered dish waiting before her, gathered her skirts into one hand and started across the ballroom.

People noticed, for Bertha possessed enough wealth and industrial authority to draw attention without trying, but her appearance that evening made ignoring her considerably more difficult.

Years of relentless training had shaped her into something physically distinct from the softer women surrounding Oskar. Beneath the embroidered bodice her waist remained tight and her stomach firm, while the high opening in her skirt revealed a long, powerfully shaped leg with every purposeful stride. Her hips and thighs carried the unmistakable strength of someone who treated exercise with almost the same seriousness she applied to business, yet none of that discipline had diminished her natural curves. Silver embroidery followed the steel-blue lines of the gown, while sapphires flashed at her throat and ears beneath the chandeliers.

Bertha crossed the marble like a woman advancing upon contested territory, and the guards at the ceremonial staircase made no attempt to stop her. She climbed without hesitation, skirts gathered in one hand and the covered dish held firmly in the other, carrying herself with the determined purpose of someone who had already decided exactly where she belonged.

The moment she reached the gallery, Gundelinde took one look at her expression and instinctively shifted aside. By the time Bertha had rounded the table toward Oskar, an experienced servant had already produced another chair, apparently having learned long ago that resisting the domestic movements of Oskar's household was generally pointless. Bertha settled beside him, placed the dish directly before him and lifted the lid with a small flourish.

Another cheese waited beneath it, this one carefully moulded into what Oskar could only assume was meant to resemble a tank.

He stared at it for a moment before looking back at Bertha. The fierce determination that had carried her across the ballroom softened almost immediately beneath his attention. Her calm blue eyes searched his face with a vulnerability she showed to very few people, waiting for the approval of the one man whose opinion still mattered to her far more than she ever cared to admit.

Oskar smiled.

One enormous hand disappeared beneath the table and settled warmly upon the bare portion of her thigh left exposed by the high opening of her gown. Bertha's composure faltered at once; colour rose into her cheeks as both hands closed around his massive forearm and she leaned instinctively closer against his side.

Oskar glanced once more at the little cheese tank before returning his eyes to Bertha.

"It's perfect," he said. "Powerful, yet dangerously beautiful. Rather like you."

Bertha's blush deepened.

Oskar smiled. "I like it."

Below, Bertha's children had already noticed their mother's migration and begun following her. Within minutes they vanished into the cheerful disorder surrounding Imperiel's table, joining cousins and companions whose actual relationships to one another were considerably more complicated than the official family trees suggested.

Gustav Krupp remained among the industrialists. He watched his wife settle happily against Oskar's enormous side, sighed once, and returned to his dinner. At forty-four he looked remarkably well—healthier, younger and even fuller-haired than he had years before. Gustav privately attributed much of that strange renewal to the same Light that seemed to radiate outward from the Iron Prince and transform those drawn closest to him. Whatever humiliation his marriage occasionally demanded, Oskar had also brought prosperity, renewed health, a restored hairline and a sense of purpose into Gustav's life. Thus he had long since abandoned any foolish notion of competing with the Iron Prince.

The New Dawn, however, offered another solution. A man of Gustav's position need not remain limited to one wife, and lately his attention had begun to settle upon the unmarried daughter of the man seated nearby.

Sixteen-year-old Emma Von Albrecht looked painfully uncertain amid the splendour of the ballroom. Her family had risen from a miner's tenement to become one of Germany's great new industrial houses, yet she still carried herself like a commoner afraid someone might discover she had entered through the wrong door. In her pale gown, hands held nervously together and cheeks colouring whenever important men addressed her, she seemed almost untouched by the power now attached to the Albrecht name.

Gustav watched her over the rim of his glass.

An alliance with Hans Albrecht would be useful. Marriage would bind two important industrial families together, strengthen Gustav's position within Oskar's expanding economic order and provide another branch through which to continue his family line. Emma was young, unmarried and, in Gustav's calculating estimation, eminently suitable for the future he had in mind for her. His eyes lingered on her without the slightest attempt at subtlety. Emma noticed almost immediately and hurriedly looked away, a blush spreading across her cheeks, though it was not long before her gaze sheepishly wandered back toward him.

Gustav took another drink and licked the wine from his lips, an idle gesture that nevertheless caught Emma's attention. He noticed that too. As her so called uncle, he had always possessed her trust and affection, and he knew perfectly well how much influence that gave him over the shy young woman. What he needed now, however, was her father's approval for what he intended to arrange.

With that thought settled, Gustav turned back toward Hans with considerably greater warmth than before.

At the same time, not far away, beneath the great staircase leading to the Imperial gallery, Sir John Jellicoe sat among the German admirals and watched this strange new Germany unfold around him. Men who only days earlier had existed chiefly as enemy names upon charts and intelligence reports now sat within arm's reach. Maximilian von Spee was nearby, Reinhard Scheer beyond him, their officers and families gathered around as though Jellicoe were merely an unusual guest rather than the captured commander of the Grand Fleet. No one mocked him, and somehow that made the situation worse. His uniform had been cleaned, repaired and returned, his decorations restored to their proper places, though the dark cloth still bore faint distortions left by seawater, smoke and hurried washing. His face had proved less cooperative. One eye remained badly swollen, bruising darkened the side of his head, and beneath neatly combed hair a dressing concealed the place where a German Marine had answered his declaration of rank with the butt of a rifle. At fifty-four, Jellicoe had never been physically imposing. He was short, lean and rather plain, his bright eyes and normally warm smile doing much of the work his features did not. There was no smile tonight. Somewhere beyond the North Sea waited his wife and daughters, while he sat beneath German chandeliers listening to thousands celebrate the destruction of his command.

Yet it was not the celebration itself that increasingly unsettled him. It was the society surrounding it. Germany remained hierarchical; that much was obvious. Sailors, workers and ordinary families occupied the gardens, while officers, industrialists, ministers and nobility filled the palace above them. Rank still mattered, class had certainly not vanished, and men continued to occupy positions of authority Jellicoe found familiar enough. Yet wherever he looked, the distances between those layers seemed somehow diminished. He understood the reasoning behind some of it. Fresh air, sunlight and allowing the body to breathe rather than burying it beneath unnecessary layers were hardly foolish ideas, and Jellicoe was perfectly capable of accepting that healthier habits might produce healthier people. Understanding the argument, however, did not make what surrounded him feel any less scandalous.

German fashion had become alarmingly liberal. Men appeared in a widening variety of colours and cuts rather than the endless procession of sombre black and grey he would have expected, while many of the women seemed to regard bare shoulders, exposed backs and daring necklines as perfectly ordinary. Bertha Krupp had only recently crossed the ballroom displaying more of one exceptionally athletic leg than Jellicoe considered strictly necessary, while the generous movement of her figure beneath that astonishingly low bodice had certainly not gone unnoticed.

What disturbed him most was that no one else appeared disturbed at all. There was no sense of rebellion in any of it. Men and women simply behaved as though greater freedom in dress, conversation and companionship were perfectly compatible with order. Jellicoe had spent a lifetime believing that order required clearer boundaries—between classes, between the sexes and between rulers and ruled. Ceremony created distance; distance created dignity; dignity reinforced authority. Yet Germany seemed to have loosened ceremony without weakening authority in the slightest.

Naturally, his gaze returned to the Imperial gallery above, where Oskar sat among his family. A small child occupied one enormous thigh while another leaned against his side, and conversation flowed around him without stiffness. His wives and companions teased him freely, Bertha had wrapped herself comfortably around one of his arms, and somewhere between bites of food and interruptions from his children Oskar laughed loudly enough to draw an amused glance from the Kaiser himself, who was at that moment excitedly waving some letter in his direction.

Wilhelm remained Kaiser, unmistakably so, yet attention around the table seemed repeatedly to drift toward his son. More striking still, Wilhelm himself appeared to do the same almost without realizing it, repeatedly looking toward Oskar whenever the conversation shifted, as though instinctively waiting to see where his son would take it. Throughout the ballroom, others behaved similarly. Officers, industrialists and diplomats glanced toward the Iron Prince and his family with something that went beyond curiosity, almost as though they were looking upon a living symbol rather than merely a royal household.

And still Oskar made no visible effort to command any of it. His own family treated him with an intimacy that might have stripped a lesser ruler of mystique, yet somehow it only reinforced his presence. Children climbed onto him, women teased him, his father spoke to him as a son, and still the room seemed to orient itself around him.

Oskar did not require people to perform submission in order to appear dominant. He simply possessed authority, and Jellicoe found the conclusion increasingly difficult to avoid. Perhaps hierarchy did not always need to be imposed through ritual, distance and carefully maintained barriers. Around certain men, perhaps it simply formed of its own accord. The realization reminded him of an old saying he had heard years ago: it was not the suit that made the man, nor the crown that made the king. It was the man who gave meaning to both.

Something uncomfortably close to awe accompanied the thought, and Jellicoe resented it immediately, because he had heard enough to understand the ambitions of the man before him. Oskar spoke of one mankind, one order, one flag and one God; of humanity not merely persuaded to accept his vision, but corrected, gathered together and ultimately drawn into some greater order beneath it.

Before meeting him, Jellicoe had dismissed such declarations as the grandiose ambitions of another arrogant young prince whose success had outrun his judgment. Looking around the ballroom now, he was no longer so certain. Once noticed, the crosses of the New Dawn seemed to be everywhere—hanging from throats, tucked beneath collars, worked into bracelets, pins and decorations. Its language of the body as a temple and the divine Light within had entered ordinary speech, while industrial power, military confidence, religion and monarchy seemed increasingly to gather around the same centre.

Jellicoe's own faith recoiled from much of it. The New Dawn felt perilously close to heresy wrapped in optimism, and the reverence surrounding the Iron Prince was becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss as mere patriotism. More frightening still was the possibility that Oskar genuinely possessed the means to pursue what he preached. History had known ambitious young conquerors and idealists before, but most possessed ambition without sufficient power, or power without sufficient vision. Oskar seemed inconveniently well supplied with both. He possessed the physique of something imagined rather than born, the mind behind weapons and doctrines that had just helped shatter Jellicoe's fleet, immense wealth, industrial institutions, popular devotion and a religious movement increasingly willing to interpret his victories as providence.

Worse still, he possessed an idea broad enough to justify almost anything. If division itself was humanity's disease, then where exactly did the cure end? With the defeat of the Entente? With Europe? Or only when no independent nation remained capable of refusing the unity Oskar promised?

Jellicoe watched him in uneasy silence until the weight of those thoughts became almost physically exhausting. What he wanted more than anything at that moment was a cigarette and a strong drink, yet Germany seemed perversely determined to deny him both. Smoking was confined largely to the outdoors, cigarettes appeared almost endangered, and alcohol was treated with much the same restraint. Wine and champagne certainly existed, but in surprisingly modest quantities, and there was nothing at his table remotely approaching the whisky he would have preferred.

The Germans appeared determined to celebrate victory through food, family, health and one another rather than through intoxication. Their new faith encouraged precisely that philosophy: the body was a vessel, a temple within which the Light—soul, conscience, divine spark, whatever term one preferred—was expected to burn clearly. Pleasure was not forbidden, but it was expected to remain the servant of man rather than his master.

Jellicoe could appreciate the principle. At that particular moment, however, he would have traded a considerable amount of philosophical appreciation for a whisky and a cigarette.

Instead, salvation arrived with copper-red hair.

A gentle hand suddenly settled upon Jellicoe's shoulder, and he stiffened as a woman leaned close enough for the warmth of her breath to brush his ear.

"May I join you, Admiral?"

The English was flawless. The accent was unmistakably Irish.

Jellicoe turned—and nearly buried his face in her bosom. The maid had leaned over him with a silver tray balanced in one hand, bringing her generous figure alarmingly close. For one mortifying second his eyes remained exactly where they should not have been before climbing hastily past white lace, the little black ribbon at her throat and the slender line of her neck to find an extraordinarily pretty face above it.

That helped very little. She was young and fair, lightly freckled, with soft lips, enormous amber eyes and a mass of copper-red curls escaping beneath her white cap. The chandeliers caught in her hair until it seemed almost aflame, while the warm innocence of her expression contrasted dangerously with the figure beneath the uniform.

"Yes," Jellicoe said rather too quickly. "Of course. Please."

Spee shifted aside with suspicious readiness, and the maid settled beside Jellicoe with the quiet rustle of skirts, placing her tray of chilled drinks upon the table. Jellicoe knew perfectly well that he ought to be cautious. An attractive Irishwoman did not simply appear beside Britain's captured admiral in the middle of the German Imperial Palace by accident. Yet, strangely enough, it was Jellicoe who found himself wanting to ask the questions.

Who was she? Why was an Irishwoman here? How had she come into German service? Her appearance was distracting enough, but after so many days of having been surrounded by German voices, that familiar Irish cadence affected him even more.

Before long they were talking with the surprising ease of old acquaintances, champagne passing between them as one story encouraged another. Her name was Eleanor. She learned of his family and his daughters; he learned of her pregnancy, her longing to become a mother and the unhappy circumstances that had supposedly left her stranded in Germany.

According to Eleanor, most of the blame belonged to a man named Jack—a reckless fool who had got her pregnant, ruined her prospects and left her without money or any respectable means of supporting herself and the child her family might never accept. It was an excellent story because so much of it was true. The lies merely arranged the truth into the shape Tanya required.

Eleanor never presented herself as a spy or seductress. She presented herself as something much more dangerous to a man like Jellicoe: a frightened young woman who had been badly used and desperately needed someone decent to care what happened to her.

And Jellicoe softened.

Five daughters had been born to him. One had already been taken from him far too young, while the others remained somewhere beyond Germany's reach. As Eleanor spoke, he found himself imagining one of his own girls abandoned in enemy territory, pregnant, frightened and dependent upon strangers for protection.

When Eleanor's voice finally cracked and tears gathered in her eyes, Jellicoe placed a reassuring hand over hers.

"If you need help," he told her quietly, "then you need not think yourself entirely alone now."

Eleanor looked up at him, amber eyes shining with what appeared to be overwhelming gratitude. Then, before Jellicoe quite understood what she intended, she took his hand and pressed his palm against the bare warmth of her breast, directly over the rapid beating of her heart.

"You're too kind, Admiral," she whispered. "Kinder than I deserve. I only wish I had the courage—and the money—to go home one day. Somewhere safe. Somewhere I might begin again."

Her gaze dropped, her voice becoming smaller.

"It shames me even to say it, but you may be the only man here who could ever help me. Give me the means to leave this place... protection enough that no one can simply cast me aside again..." She hesitated, then looked back into his eyes. "And whatever you wanted from me in return, Admiral... I wouldn't refuse you. Anything."

Jellicoe went very still.

The proposition beneath all that humility required no deciphering. Money. Protection. Passage home. In exchange, Eleanor was offering herself with an openness that was difficult to misunderstand.

His fingers shifted almost experimentally against the soft fullness beneath his palm. When Eleanor neither recoiled nor removed his hand, he gave the yielding curve a slow squeeze, watching her closely. She drew a sharp breath but remained where she was, and that answer was clearer than anything she might have said.

Jellicoe swallowed. His wife was a fine woman, certainly, and some sensible part of him knew precisely how questionable this entire encounter was. Yet there was something dangerously intoxicating in the combination before him: youth, beauty, vulnerability, and the suggestion that this lovely stranger had decided he might be the man capable of giving her the security she desperately wanted.

Then Eleanor suddenly abandoned subtlety altogether and threw herself into his arms.

Her whole body pressed against him as she buried her face against his shoulder. Jellicoe hesitated only an instant before his arms closed around her in return, holding her securely against himself. Whatever game had brought Eleanor to him in the first place, he found that he rather liked having her there.

Over his shoulder, Eleanor opened her eyes and glanced across the ballroom. Tanya was watching from the Imperial gallery, and when their gazes met, the little blonde princess gave her the faintest approving smile. Everything, it seemed, was proceeding beautifully.

Not far away, however, a chair scraped against the polished floor, drawing attention toward the gathering of senior naval officers and grey-haired members of the Naval Technical Committee. Among them, Konteradmiral Ludwig von Birkenhagen, director of the Kiel Naval Academy, rose and adjusted his coat before making his way across the ballroom. He moved with the measured confidence of a man accustomed to lecture halls and officers falling silent at his approach, ascending the broad staircase toward an elevated balcony overlooking both the magnificent ballroom and the illuminated gardens beyond. Another flight of stairs descended from the balcony toward the terraces, placing him almost literally between the two halves of Germany gathered that evening: the Imperial court within and the thousands of sailors and their families celebrating outside.

Jellicoe, meanwhile, had not yet released Eleanor from his embrace. Indeed, when she finally began to draw away, pressing her palms against him, she found herself met by the surprisingly hard, immovable torso of a man far stronger than his age and stature suggested.

Then his arms tightened around her. One hand slipped low and closed harshly around the soft curve of her backside, drawing a startled yelp from Eleanor, while the other disappeared into her thick copper-red curls and, gently but firmly, drew her head back against his shoulder.

Eleanor stiffened immediately. Her smile faltered as fear crept suddenly through her, followed by an uncomfortable suspicion. Had the admiral finally realised what she was attempting?

The thought frightened her instinctively. Eleanor had enough experience with men to understand the difference in strength between them, and held this closely in his arms, she knew perfectly well that if Jellicoe truly meant to restrain her, she had little chance of forcing herself free. For that brief moment she was entirely at his mercy.

Then, almost as though he had merely wanted her to understand that fact, his grip eased, and his breath came to brush warmly against her ear.

"If you're so eager for my help, my dear," Jellicoe murmured, his voice dropping into a low, almost threatening whisper, "then I'm quite willing to help. But it's going to cost you... and I don't take cash."

Eleanor gasped. For one dreadful instant, she thought her entire performance had collapsed. Nevertheless, she summoned an expression of wounded outrage and tried desperately to recover.

"Admiral, no, please! I meant no offence. I swear, I only thought that, as another British subject, you might find it in you to assist me. My God, Admiral, what do you think I am?"

Jellicoe loosened his hold just enough for their eyes to meet. Eleanor remained pressed against him as he looked down at her, regarding her protest with the faintest suggestion of a smirk. Then he leaned closer, both hands settling eagerly upon her backside, and delivered his answer with such perfectly dry British seriousness that it might almost have belonged to a formal negotiation.

"I think we've already established what you are. Now we're just negotiating the price."

For a moment Eleanor simply stared at him. He had, in essence, just called her a whore, and the dreadful thing was that he was not entirely wrong.

Then the sheer dryness with which he had said it struck her, and a tiny squeak escaped before she dissolved into helpless laughter. Jellicoe merely watched, increasingly amused, while Eleanor tried and failed to compose herself, cheeks burning with embarrassment at her own reaction.

When at last she looked at him again, still smiling despite herself, his hand came to rest casually upon her leg.

"Now then," he said, as though nothing remarkable had happened, "why don't you be a sweetheart and fetch me some proper tea?"

Eleanor reddened even deeper.

"Yes, Admiral."

The answer came so naturally that she had already risen before she seemed to realise how easily he had handled her. Still blushing, she hurried away to fulfil the admiral's wishes. While Jellicoe settled comfortably back into his chair, took another glass of cold champagne, and turned his attention toward the stage above the staircase with a small, knowing smirk.

Then came the sharp tap of a microphone.

Above, Birkenhagen stood before it, testing the sound. He tapped it once more, and the faint knock carried cleanly through the ballroom and out across the terraces. Conversations gradually faded, glasses were lowered, and the attention of the assembled guests turned toward the elderly officer.

"If I may have your attention," Birkenhagen began, his voice carrying easily across the hall. "I would ask that we pause the evening's celebration for a few moments. We are gathered tonight not merely to rejoice in victory, but to honour the men of the Kaiserliche Marine whose discipline, skill, and courage made that victory possible."

He allowed the words to settle.

"And to remember that courage alone does not produce victories such as this."

His gaze rose toward the Imperial gallery.

"Behind every sailor who goes into battle stand those who prepare the weapons, the ships, the doctrines and the institutions that allow courage to matter. Germany tonight is no longer merely a challenger upon the seas. Whatever one thinks of the future, no serious nation can now dismiss what our Navy has become."

Applause swept through the ballroom and gardens. Jellicoe remained motionless.

Birkenhagen waited until the applause had ebbed away before reaching inside his coat and withdrawing a folded document.

"There is, however, one matter long overdue."

His gaze shifted toward the royal table.

"Your Highness, Prince Oskar—and Herr Karl von Jonarett—if you would both come forward."

Heads turned almost at once.

Oskar glanced toward Karl with a faintly puzzled expression, clearly no more certain than he was why they had been called forward. Still, there was little to do but obey.

He carefully disentangled himself from the children gathered around him, set the youngest back with the family, and rose from the royal table. Karl followed a moment later, considerably less enthusiastic and already wearing the suspicious expression of a man expecting some unpleasant surprise.

Together they descended the carpeted steps from the Royal Gallery.

Applause swelled around them as they reached the ballroom floor. Oskar led the way through the crowd with his usual effortless stride, acknowledging those around him as he passed, while Karl hurried along behind, struggling slightly to keep pace. They crossed the length of the ballroom beneath the chandeliers and mounted the opposite flight of stairs toward the balcony where Birkenhagen waited.

The old director watched them approach with quiet amusement.

Oskar reached him first and came to a halt. Birkenhagen looked up, and up. And for a moment, something almost nostalgic softened the old man's expression. Then the corner of his mouth curled into a smirk.

"You have grown, Your Highness."

Laughter rolled through the hall.

Oskar glanced down at himself as though only just becoming aware of the fact, then broke into a broad grin.

Birkenhagen waited for the amusement to fade, before speaking again.

"When you first stood before me in 1904, attempting to explain—in rather poor German, I might add—how you intended to avoid school, somehow purchase Germany a battleship, and then redesign naval warfare while you were at it, I reached what seemed at the time to be an entirely reasonable professional conclusion."

A pause.

"That you were completely insane."

The laughter returned, louder this time, though beneath it ran a faint edge of discomfort. The joke was amusing because nearly everyone present knew how thoroughly the Navy had dismissed Oskar in those early years.

Karl folded his arms, remembering those meetings with considerably less affection.

Oskar, by contrast, looked delighted.

"I was not alone," Birkenhagen continued. "Many within the Naval Technical Committee reached much the same conclusion. Some of your proposals appeared extravagant. Others premature. Several seemed technically impossible, and a few appeared to violate every sensible principle of naval design we thought we understood."

His expression gradually hardened.

"We were wrong."

The laughter vanished.

"The designs once dismissed as impractical have now been tested under conditions no committee room, proving ground or war game could ever reproduce. The doctrines argued over for years have been tested beneath enemy fire, against the strongest navy in the world."

He looked from Oskar to Karl.

"The ships survived. The weapons performed. The doctrine prevailed."

He raised the parchment slightly.

"It is therefore the unanimous judgment of the Naval Technical Committee that the institution which once dismissed your ideas should possess sufficient integrity to acknowledge when those ideas have proven themselves."

Oskar's amusement faded into genuine attention.

"Your Highness, you did not complete the formal course of the Naval Academy, and for that reason this recognition grants you no authority to command ships or sailors. Command at sea belongs to those trained and commissioned for it."

Several admirals nodded in agreement.

"But your mastery lies elsewhere. You have demonstrated not merely the ability to understand a navy, but the ability to shape one."

Birkenhagen extended the document.

"From this day forward, you are formally recognized as Imperial Naval Architect and Strategic Advisor to the High Command."

The applause came immediately.

Oskar accepted the parchment and stared at it for several seconds, the irony plainly not lost upon him. Then Birkenhagen turned toward Karl.

"Yet ideas do not construct themselves."

Karl's expression tightened.

"Karl von Jonarett, where others supplied ambition, you supplied order. Where plans threatened to collapse beneath their own scale, you supplied structure. Factories were organized, materials obtained, schedules maintained and resources delivered because someone possessed the discipline to turn vision into administration."

He produced a deep-blue decoration edged in gold, its centre bearing the Imperial Eagle with a gear in one talon and a scroll in the other.

"The Imperial Order of Merit for Strategic Administration."

Karl stepped forward.

"Durch Geist wird Macht geformt. Through intellect, power is shaped."

Birkenhagen pinned the decoration carefully to Karl's white coat.

"For service not upon the battlefield, but in making victory possible before the first shot was ever fired."

The applause that followed was warmer and more personal than before. Karl's composure wavered only slightly, but Tanya noticed. So did Heddy.

Birkenhagen turned back toward Oskar, but before he could continue the prince raised one hand.

"One moment."

The interruption somehow felt entirely natural.

"I appreciate this," Oskar said. "Truly. But I would rather we not correct one mistake by creating another."

The ballroom settled.

"My ideas are not sacred."

A murmur passed through the officers.

"They should be questioned, tested and challenged. If somebody has a better design, use it. If somebody has a better doctrine, prove it. If I am wrong, then the people responsible for Germany's future should tell me so."

His eyes moved across the admirals and engineers.

"But challenge ideas through reason. Not pride. Not habit. And not because you dislike the man who proposed them."

A quieter sort of agreement spread through the room.

Birkenhagen inclined his head. "A condition the Committee will gladly accept."

Then he produced the final decoration.

"The Imperial Grand Cross of Naval Innovation."

Silver rays spread around a golden core, with a black-iron eagle framed between anchor and lightning.

"Dem, der die Zukunft erschafft. To the one who shapes the future."

Oskar accepted it.

For perhaps three seconds the scene remained appropriately solemn.

Then he seized Karl.

"We did it, my little man!"

Karl vanished against his chest as laughter exploded through the ballroom. Oskar lifted him bodily and set him upon one shoulder, leaving Karl's legs dangling above the floor while he attempted to preserve what remained of his dignity.

"You are entirely unreasonable," Karl muttered.

"And you are entirely successful."

Oskar's grin softened.

"I'm glad you stayed with me."

Karl's irritation disappeared.

"…And I with you, Your Highness."

Oskar then caught Birkenhagen with his free arm and dragged the academy director into the embrace as well. Camera flashes erupted around them, capturing an image that would almost certainly appear across Germany by morning: the enormous Iron Prince, his dwarf administrator perched upon one shoulder, and the dignified director of the Naval Academy trapped helplessly between them.

Even Jellicoe felt the corner of his mouth threaten to move.

Oskar finally lowered Karl back onto his feet, but rather than returning to the royal table he remained at the front of the balcony and turned toward the gardens beyond the open ballroom doors.

"Since I appear to have been placed up here," he called, his voice carrying easily through the microphone, "we may as well finish this properly. I may have helped design the tools, and Karl helped make certain Germany could actually build them, but a tool is worthless without the man who knows how to use it. Whatever praise is given to us tonight, the greater honour belongs to those who sailed the ships, fought them, repaired them under fire and brought them home again."

For perhaps a heartbeat there was silence, almost as though the gathering had not expected such words from the man whose name had become inseparable from the victory. Then the gardens erupted. Thousands of sailors, wives, children and relatives answered together, applause and cheering rolling back toward the palace like surf. Oskar allowed it to wash over him before stepping aside, and servants began bringing forward the decorations prepared for the evening.

Before withdrawing, Birkenhagen extended his hand.

"Well done, Your Highness."

Oskar took it warmly. "And thank you."

The older man hesitated, studying for a moment the enormous figure that the strange, barely comprehensible boy from Kiel had somehow become.

"I am proud of you."

For once, Oskar found no joke waiting upon his tongue. Something younger showed briefly through his expression—the boy who had once walked into the Naval Academy speaking dreadful German and demanded that experienced officers take impossible promises seriously.

"And I am grateful to you," he answered quietly.

Birkenhagen gave him one final nod before descending from the platform.

Almost immediately, attendants appeared carrying velvet-lined cases filled with medals, along with an enormous rolled parchment. Oskar accepted the latter with growing suspicion and pulled it open. The scroll dropped past his hands, unrolled toward the floor, continued farther than seemed reasonable and finally escaped his grasp altogether.

Laughter swept through the hall.

Oskar stared down at the apparently endless document.

"…Right."

The laughter grew.

"This may take some time," he announced. "Please continue eating, drinking and enjoying yourselves. I shall do my part while you do yours."

He gathered the rebellious parchment back into something resembling order and began.

The admirals came first, followed by captains and senior officers, then junior officers, petty officers, engineers, specialists and ordinary sailors. Decorations recognised command under fire, exceptional gunnery, wounds endured in action, engineers who had kept shattered machinery alive and damage-control parties whose work had prevented damaged ships from becoming graves. Alongside those distinctions, every participant in the operation received the newly struck Cross of the Mid-Atlantic, a dark iron decoration edged in silver, its centre showing German ships breaking through an encirclement while shattered enemy hulls marked the sea behind them.

Yet the decoration itself was only part of the honour. Every name was spoken. Every sailor crossed the balcony as an individual. Oskar and Karl shook every hand, exchanged a few words wherever time allowed and treated deckhand and admiral with the same seriousness once each stood before them.

The ceremony therefore settled naturally into the life of the celebration rather than replacing it. Music resumed beneath the reading of names. Families returned to conversation. Children began running between tables once more, and sailors in the gardens laughed, danced and embraced relatives who had spent days wondering whether they would ever see them again. For some men the medal would become the greatest public honour of their lives. For others, simply standing beneath the palace lights with their families beside them seemed reward enough.

Above it all, Oskar continued reading.

He regarded the length of the list not as an inconvenience but as an obligation. Ships appeared on maps as symbols and casualties as numbers; tonight he wanted the men themselves remembered one by one.

The victory had pleased Germany's allies considerably more than some of its supposed friends. Austrian representatives watched the proceedings with open satisfaction, while the Bulgarian delegation appeared almost equally pleased. German ministers were already speaking quietly among themselves about what the battle might mean for the wider war.

The Italians were another matter.

Auguste Viktoria noticed their stiffness before Wilhelm did. Their ambassador smiled whenever diplomacy required it, but his attention repeatedly drifted toward the Imperial table with the expectant look of a man waiting for someone else to make the first approach.

"My love," the Empress murmured, "Italy appears displeased."

Wilhelm barely glanced in their direction.

"Then Italy may continue being displeased."

"They expected us to approach them," Auguste said. "They want to enter the war, but they do not wish to do so as supplicants."

That earned the Italian delegation a colder look.

"Then they misunderstand their position. If Italy wished to stand beside Germany, it could have done so when doing so carried risk. Instead they watched. Now that victory appears increasingly possible, they wish to negotiate the price of participation."

"And if they refuse to approach us first?"

"Then they remain outside."

The answer came without hesitation.

"If they expect territory or influence when this war is finished, they may come openly and ask for it. Germany will decide what their contribution deserves."

Auguste studied her husband carefully. "And if they attempt to bargain?"

"Then they will discover that we are perfectly capable of continuing without them."

Wilhelm's attention returned to the celebration below. "Their neutrality remains useful enough so long as Libyan oil continues reaching us through Italian arrangements. Should they interfere with that…"

He left the sentence unfinished.

Auguste understood perfectly.

Victory had not created Wilhelm's pride. It had merely given that pride considerably sharper teeth.

"And Bulgaria?"

His expression softened.

"They have already made their intentions clear. They prepare, they wait, and when the moment comes they will move."

His eyes lifted toward Oskar, who was still decorating sailors one after another beneath the lights.

"Oskar has plans for Bulgaria."

There was no irritation in the admission anymore.

"I trust his judgment."

Auguste followed his gaze, and for several moments neither spoke. Near the edge of the ballroom, the Italian ambassador continued wearing his diplomatic smile. He would not ask. Wilhelm would not offer. Between those two forms of pride, one old alliance continued quietly drifting toward irrelevance.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the ballroom, Admiral Jellicoe had executed what he privately considered a tactical retreat. He had withdrawn to a sofa in one of the quieter corners of the hall, where Eleanor—obedient to his earlier instruction—had personally brought him the proper tea he had demanded and arranged it neatly upon the low table before him.

Jellicoe now sat back in considerable comfort, enjoying both the warmth of his tea and the increasingly entertaining company of the woman beside him. Eleanor, however, had continued with the champagne. Encouraged by the admiral—and reassured whenever she hesitated that he had no objection whatsoever to her enjoying herself—she had accepted one glass after another until the careful little game with which she had first approached him had begun slipping almost entirely beyond her control.

She was supposed to charm the admiral, keep him talking and gradually coax useful information from him. Instead, despite Jellicoe being battered, defeated and old enough to be her father, Eleanor found herself becoming increasingly charmed by him. Every dry observation and unexpected little joke weakened her composure further. She would begin with an innocent giggle, snort despite herself, and then collapse into that ridiculous uncontrolled cackle of hers while sinking farther against his side. Before long she was tucked comfortably beneath his arm as though she had known him for years, while Jellicoe sat back with his tea and watched her unravel with growing amusement.

Eleanor nevertheless continued trying to flirt.

"If you were a wave, Admiral," she murmured at one point, already blushing at the stupidity of what she was about to say, "I wouldn't mind having you crash over me."

Jellicoe regarded her over the rim of his cup.

"It can be arranged."

Eleanor froze and blushed as he smiled.

Jellicoe was hardly a conventionally handsome man, yet when he smiled properly his entire face seemed to brighten, and Eleanor—quite against her better judgment—went scarlet. She immediately began rambling about Ireland, horses, dogs, dresses and whatever other subject entered her head in a desperate attempt to recover herself.

Jellicoe found the performance unexpectedly adorable.

He had, of course, understood some time ago what she was attempting. He might have lost the Grand Fleet, but he had not misplaced his intelligence along with it. Her questions were too conveniently innocent and her arrival too perfectly timed. Yet he had no intention of giving her anything useful. Whenever Eleanor steered toward Britain, the Navy or what might happen next, Jellicoe answered with another dry joke, an irrelevant story or a question of his own.

And somehow Eleanor never noticed that she was revealing considerably more about herself than he was revealing about Britain.

Her attempts at seduction were not unwelcome either. Jellicoe allowed her to remain comfortably pressed against him, his arm settling more confidently around her as the evening wore on while Eleanor became increasingly flustered by the very man she had intended to fluster. For a defeated admiral carrying the deaths of thousands of sailors and the humiliation of capture upon his shoulders, her warmth, laughter and endless chatter provided an unexpectedly effective refuge.

By the end of it, the supposed interrogator was practically clinging to her prisoner, while Jellicoe sat back with his tea, quietly entertained, entirely unmoved toward surrendering a single worthwhile secret and increasingly determined to enjoy whatever harmless comforts captivity happened to offer him.

And all the while, Gustav and Louise were still nowhere to be seen.

The two had long since abandoned any intention of returning to the celebration and, with considerably more enthusiasm than experience, appeared to have dedicated the remainder of the night to the eventual creation of the next generation of Schwarzeneggers.

Neither knew very much about the finer details of the process, but they were making an exceptionally determined effort to learn.