Chapter Eighteen – The Great Fire of 1755

Silvitya was worried that the Grand Duke might somehow find out about her conversation with Protector Bulashckt, given his talent for figuring out people’s secrets. However, living two years in the castle had made her as talented at hiding her emotions and thoughts as the ruler was for discerning them. Besides, he was distracted by a secret project. He constantly wrote letters and studied mysterious architectural plans. At first she thought he was still worried about expanding the city wall, but that didn’t explain his behavior, given the entire country knew about the wall project. So, whenever she had the chance, she glanced at the drawings any time she happened to be near a work-table or desk. The drawings had nothing to do with fortified defenses; instead they were pictures of strange beautiful buildings unlike anything she had seen in the Duchy, with columns and domes and elaborate stone carvings.

The training of the foreigners went extremely well. By the end of their first six weeks as concubines, they had a working knowledge of Danubian. Three of the girls were literate in their own language, so the spokeswoman trained them to read and write in Danubian, with the understanding they would teach their illiterate companions how to read and write in the Duchy’s language. Silvitya also trained the new girls how to sexually satisfy their master, showing them the submissive postures they were expected to assume and how to massage the ruler to get him aroused after he had copulated with the first of his women for the night. Without directly saying it, she made the newcomers understand that the sooner the Duke became aroused, the sooner he would have sex with the remaining women, and the sooner they would be released for the night. Silvitya took it for granted the foreigners found dealing with the Danubian ruler unpleasant and wanted their time with him to end as quickly as possible.

During the late spring of 1755, the Grand Duke’s behavior towards his favorite concubine changed. He actually started treating her decently and with limited respect. He did not force her to kneel while he fed her treats, he made love to her in a completely normal manner, he quit threatening to sodomize her, and most importantly, he quit fondling her scalp and running his fingers through her hair. He talked to her in a conversational tone, dropping a lot of the condescending phrases he used to address his concubines. Usually he referred to her as “Servant Silvitya”, which was the name by which she was known around the castle. That was much better than being called “my favorite minx”. Silvitya hated being called a “minx”.

Another sign of the ruler’s increasing respect for his servant manifested itself when he forced her to bring the foreigners to his bed-chamber. He was as rough and demanding with the newcomers as much as he was with any of his newly-acquired women, but he did not make his favorite participate in the group sex sessions. In fact, he never had sex with her at all if any of the other women were present. Not at any time during her two years in the castle had she ever heard of any concubine, even Magdala, not being forced to have sex with the ruler while the other women were present. Apart from forcing her to remain naked at all times, he quit doing anything to her that a normal Danubian woman would consider disrespectful or humiliating.

On the first day of June, the Grand Duke gave Silvitya a set of bracelets to match her necklace. The necklace was shocking enough, but now the former peasant girl was walking around with bracelets as well. The castle staff stared at her as she wandered around in her new jewelry. Never had anyone seen a concubine wearing such items, which were among the most expensive pieces of jewelry in the Royal Family’s collection.

Silvitya forced herself to smile and act grateful, but to her the necklace felt like a criminal’s collar and the bracelets felt like metal cuffs. She dreaded to think what the jewelry might mean; that possibly the Grand Duke was falling in love with her. He certainly enjoyed having her with him as much as possible, especially at night. He spent hours with her in the bath or in his bed, massaging her shoulders and talking about his various experiences while growing up.

There were a couple of memories he inadvertently shared that gave Silvitya some important insights into his character. He talked in a detached manner, as though trying to distance himself from whatever emotion he was feeling at the time, but the experiences were real and must have been traumatic when they happened. There was one incident in particular that stuck out in his mind. His father had been making him train with both a long bow and a crossbow throughout his childhood. At age 12, like every other Danubian child, the future Grand Duke passed the farewell-to-childhood ceremony at the Great Temple in a hugely public ritual. When the cerebration was finished and everyone went home, the old Grand Duke gave his son a long lecture about what leaving childhood behind meant for a future ruler. He then took his son to the castle courtyard, where a prisoner had been tied to the execution post. The old Grand Duke handed his son a longbow and told him he had to pass his first test to prove he could become the next sovereign. The boy, at age 12, had to carry out an execution. The prisoner looked at his young executioner with a totally despondent expression, more like he felt sorry for the boy than anything else. The Royal heir, terrified of displeasing his father, did as he was told and shot five arrows into the prisoner. Unfortunately, the man was not quite dead after the fifth arrow, so the boy had to shoot him with five additional arrows. The heir was trembling and felt totally sick after the tenth arrow. His father commented:

“You shot that prisoner like you were a woman. You’ll need to learn, boy. You’ll learn to kill a man with your first shot, and if I have to bring every criminal in the country into this courtyard for the next decade, I will, until you learn archery like a man.”

The heir had to kill over 20 prisoners before his father was satisfied with his performance with the longbow.

The Grand Duke treated the incident as a legitimate right of passage, but Silvitya wondered how much it really affected him, deep down. It was interesting that the Grand Duke, for all the women he had taken as concubines, had not yet married. He had as many illegitimate sons scattered around the country as daughters but, apart from sending their mothers a silver coin each month, he never interacted with them. The concubine vaguely wondered if subconsciously the ruler was afraid of having to raise a son and having to decide whether to repeat his father’s harsh system of “tests of character” to for the heir to claim the right to assume the throne.

———-

At the beginning of June the Grand Duke decided to offer his favorite concubine a second wish. Since she couldn’t expect release from her servitude, she pondered what she could ask for that would be useful in her life. She decided to ingratiate herself with her “sisters” by requesting that all of the concubines have access to the garden, if she escorted them. The ruler surprised her by granting that wish. For the rest of the summer the concubines could enjoy being outdoors, as long as their spokeswoman kept watch over them.

When Silvitya announced that she had obtained permission for all of the “sisters” to enjoy the garden, they were thrilled. However, their spokeswoman used the privilege to re-assert her authority over the others. Since she decided who could go out with her and who would have to stay behind, she re-instituted the regimen of reading and learning. The girls from the Kingdom of the Moon would have to participate as well, reading books with simpler texts and discussing them in Danubian.

In the garden, Silvitya established a regimen of exercise which included relay races and ball-catch games. The guards and male servants spent their afternoons watching the 12 naked young women as they ran around the garden, but the concubines were enjoying themselves too much to really worry about their audience. The Grand Duke noted with satisfaction that the girls had the chance to truly enjoy the summer and that their mood as a group had improved.

———-

At the end of June, Antonia gave birth to a son. Silvitya was relieved the child was not a daughter and that the ruler would not seize her offspring in 10 years. Antonia was distressed that Silvitya still showed no signs of being pregnant, since she had been hoping that perhaps they could reunite, share a house, and raise their children together. Silvitya sadly responded:

“My Path in Life brings misery to those I most love. So, I ask you to forget about me. You’ll be free soon, in your own house and making your own decisions and happily eating from His Majesty’s coin. You’ll have a pleasant life, if you choose to be happy.”

“But, my happiness was when I was with you, Sister Silvitya.”

“Then you were deceived by the Destroyer. You don’t want to be with me. I don’t bring happiness into peoples’ lives. The Profane One looks over my shoulder and has cursed everyone I ever loved. I want you to be the first person who escapes my curse. Leave this castle, don’t look back, and banish me from your thoughts. That is the only way you can spare yourself from the curse I carry with me.”

Silvitya handed the baby to Antonia and squeezed her hand. It would be the last time they would ever see each other.

Antonia left the castle, but did not receive her own house. Instead, she went to the estate of one of the Grand Duke’s foreign emissaries. He was about to become the Grand Duke’s ambassador to Montenegro and needed a translator. Antonia accepted the assignment, since she really had no reason to stay in the Duchy.

Antonia spent the rest of her life in Montenegro, living within sight of the Adriatic Sea. She married the ambassador’s nephew and bore him a son and a daughter. She raised three children and spent her free time writing stories about her former lover, making up several adventures that were totally fictitious. She wrote from the perspective of a heartbroken lover, so her future readers assumed the stories had been written by a man. Like the others before her, Antonia never mentioned Silvitya by name, preferring to leave her heroine more mysterious. Years later, when the Grand Duke’s son returned to visit Danubikt Moskt with his stepfather and half-brother, he took his mother’s writings with him to see if they could be published. The strangely-written fantasy stories about a girl with no name quickly became popular reading in the Duchy.

———-

It was fortunate that the concubines were able to spend the summer outdoors in the Royal garden, because the middle of 1755 was unusually hot for the Duchy. Temperatures everywhere were unbearable, especially in the upper floors of the castle where the concubines’ quarters were located. The women were outside sitting in the shade during the long hot days, reading and practicing penmanship and embroidery.

Silvitya had to keep the others within her sight, but she often wandered away from them to be alone with her thoughts. Often she stood looking out at the East Danube River and the steep cliffs along the western shore, wondering what life would be like in Austria, Prussia, and some of the other kingdoms of Europe that were nothing more to her than drawings on maps.

Less frequently she walked around to the east side of the garden and studied Danubikt Moskt. The tall wooden buildings and their dilapidated rooftops were not an attractive sight at all. The only improvement was that the smoke had mostly cleared, because the majority of the city’s population had departed to work in the fields or spend time relaxing along the river. The Danubian capitol was most unpleasant during the summer, so summertime was when most residents tried to get out for a while. The summer of 1755 was particularly hot and dry, which made the residents even more desperate to go somewhere else and the city even more deserted than during a typical year.

The view of the capitol and the countryside beyond reminded Silvitya of the outside world, a world that was both threatening and alluring. Another reminder of that world was Protector Bulashckt, who occasionally showed up in the garden to maintain or clean weapons. He wanted to see her and to talk, so he often took spare weapons from the armory and cleaned them to provide himself with justification to be in the garden when the concubines were out. The friends chatted, usually in places where others could overhear their conversations so that no one suspected them of having a romantic relationship.

She continued to work on her narrative of the battle of Horkustk Ris, so he brought updates on what was going on in the region. The ruler considered the province the most important project for securing the Duchy’s future. The region was more secure than it had been in decades, but the Grand Duke was not satisfied. His biggest worry was that, even with the resettlement of the civilians from the city itself and the forced repatriation of the refugees living around the capitol, the number of Danubians remained inadequate. After going on about some details concerning the re-settlement of various villages, the Royal Guard got to the point:

“The Grand Duke had no way of knowing how long the respite will last and when the House of Moon or the Ottoman empire will again turn their attention towards the Duchy. The only solution is to populate Horkustk Ris province with loyal Danubians as quickly as possible. Now there are 110,000 Danubians in the southern region, but everyone knows that’s not nearly enough. The Grand Duke thinks that the province will not be secure unless at least 200,000 people from the Duchy live there. So, the Duke’s dilemma is from where he will recruit those additional 90,000 loyal citizens. If we didn’t have to worry about our enemies, over time we could convince landless peasants and debtors to move, but we can’t wait for a gradual re-settlement. The Duke needs to move a bunch of people there quickly, and I am very fearful thinking about where he will find them and how he plans to force them to move. I’ve seen what he’s capable of, things I never could imagine him, or us, doing. And yet we did them. As an army, we lost our honor after the defense of the city, and often it seems I’m the only one who can see that. And now, something terrible, and I don’t yet know what it is, must happen to our people, so the Duke’s plans for Horkustk Ris can be fulfilled. And the worst part is that His Majesty is right. We do have to secure that province.”

———-

Love is the strangest of human phenomenon. It strikes when a person neither expects nor wants it. It is truly blind and forces even the smartest man to see what is not there. So often a man will do things to make himself irresistible to the object of his desire, only for the actions to have the exact opposite effect.

The illusion of love struck the Grand Duke in the late summer of 1755. He showered his favorite concubine with gifts such as exotic food treats and more jewelry to match the items she already had. By August the “favorite concubine” was walking around the castle wearing the sapphire necklace and bracelets, along with sapphire anklets, rings, and a waist chain. Everyone thought the jewelry was truly stunning, which it was. However, to Silvitya the items felt like additional chains and shackles, each item signaling that she was less and less likely to ever recover her freedom. However, she was patient. Just like her friend Protector Bulashckt, she’d have to keep the ruler happy while waiting for the opportunity to escape.

The Grand Duke never realized that every additional piece of jewelry made Silvitya more determined to get away from him. Precisely because he was so enamored, he became foolish around her and placed confidence in her that he never would have placed with anyone else. He left military maps lying around when she was in his chamber, held secret conferences with his advisors with her hidden under his desk, and allowed her to overhear schemes he had against various rivals within the Duchy. Had Silvitya been a foreign agent or in the pay of the vice-Duke of Rika Chorna, she could have done some real damage to the Grand Duke and his ambitions. However, she didn’t care about most of the things the ruler carelessly shared with her. She did not want to harm the Royal Household nor the Duchy. The only thing that interested her was picking up information that would aid her plans, or Protector Bulashckt’s plans, to escape his reach.

In the middle of August she was in the Duke’s study when she noticed a large map of Danubikt Moskt laid out on his desk. The map was strange, because it clearly portrayed the city wall and the area surrounding it, but the layout of the city’s interior was totally different from the way it was in real life. Instead of the narrow, winding streets of the real capitol, the map showed wide boulevards, large parks, and rows of elegant symmetrical ministry buildings with domes and columns. The buildings were very nice, but they did not look like anything Silvitya had seen anywhere in the Duchy. However, there was no question the map was of Danubkt Mostk because a few existing buildings, such as the cathedral, the Duke’s castle, and the Temple of the Ancients were included. The old city walls also appeared in the city plans, but several large openings were added to accommodate some of the boulevards. It was clear the city walls were not going to be expanded, nor the old walls further fortified for defense.

There were a lot of other documents scattered around the Duke’s study, such as correspondence with foreign architects and city planners. Most of the documents were in German. The Grand Duke did not know that his servant could read German: that was one of the few secrets she was able to keep from him. So, he allowed her to mill around the table and glance at the letters, not realizing she was able to understand them. The letters focused on a massive building project, but not one that had anything to do with fortifying the capitol’s defenses. No, instead it was apparent the Grand Duke was in the final phases of planning the complete rebuilding of the Danubian capitol.

That night, after the foreign girls had performed their duties with the ruler and were sent back to their quarters, Silvitya remained behind to comfort her master. She carefully observed his mood, making sure he was talkative enough to give up information. She smiled and massaged his chest as she absent-mindedly commented:

“Your Majesty, your humble serving girl was wondering about all those drawings, of the buildings.”

“Ha! Inquisitive little one, aren’t you? And observant, I might add.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Well, let me ask you something. How would you like to go visit the city where those buildings are? Actually see them for yourself?”

“Your humble serving girl would be honored, Your Majesty.”

“My humble little love will be honored. Hearing that pleases me, because you will indeed be privileged to see the buildings you so admired in those pictures. They are not reality yet, but soon will be. To see them, you won’t have to go anywhere. You will see them from the garden of this very castle.”

“Your Majesty will build them here in Danube City?”

“Yes. It is the Duchy’s Path in Life to have a new capitol. Every building you see in those plans will become reality. So you will see the grandeur of the future, without ever having to travel. The Duchy will build next year.”

Silvitya wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. Next year?

“Your Majesty, your humble serving girl wishes to know about the fate of the wooden city, and the residents.”

“Wood burns, does it not?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“… and it burns even faster at the end of a very hot summer when everything has dried out. So there is your answer, my loyal one. Just two days from now we will clear all of the wooden structures once and for all. The residents are away, so they will be powerless to save their houses. It will all burn, all of it, and a new Danube City will rise from the ashes. The Danube City that is my Path in Life to create.”

Silvitya went pale, wondering if she truly understood what the Grand Duke had just told her. Was he really planning to destroy the entire capitol? She tried to remain calm as she asked her next question.

“Your Majesty, your humble serving girl wishes to know your intentions for the people here.”

“Those who can serve the Duchy’s new capitol will stay. I have already collected the building materials they will need to build new houses outside the city walls.”

The sovereign smiled mischievously, as though he was plotting a simple prank, and not the destruction of an entire city and the disruption of tens of thousands of lives. “As for the rest, they will also serve the Duchy, by going south. The province of Horkustk Ris awaits. It is crying out for help, and for people. I will send both.”

Silvitya remembered her friend’s words: “And now, something terrible, and I don’t yet know what it is, will happen to our people, so the Duke’s plans for Horkustk Ris can be fulfilled.” Protector Bulashckt was right. Indeed, something terrible was about to happen, and now Silvitya knew what it was.

———-

The next day Silvitya spent wandering the garden and even ventured into the stables looking for Protector Bulashckt. She had to find him as quickly as possible. She spent the entire day in frantic futility, but just as she was about to give up her search for the day, she saw him riding in with the ruler and a contingent of other guards. She knelt in clear sight as the entourage passed by. She exchanged glances with her friend, letting him know with a slight jerk of her head and a wide-eyed fearful expression that she needed to talk to him. He answered with a quick nod. She’d have to wait for him in the garden, but he’d try to get to her as quickly as possible.

She didn’t bother to talk to her companions. Instead, she passed her time picking a flower arrangement to present to the Grand Duke, slowly and carefully plucking the thorns off roses. Finally Protector Bulashckt showed up. Silvitya told him what she thought was about to happen. To her relief, the guard believed every word of her story.

“Very good. Now I understand the orders he’s given around the city. He took actions that to me didn’t make any sense, but now they do. For example, he took down the gates so the hinges could be replaced, all of them at once. Just a few days ago, he ordered a check of the walls, so there are ladders everywhere. And it would explain all the boats. The docks along the Rika Chorna river are full of boats.”

“What does all that have to do with a fire?”

“You don’t understand? Everything he’s done will make it easy to get out of the city. To escape the inferno, all a citizen would have to do is make it as far as the city wall and climb over. The gates are open, easy to run out. The docks are full of boats, easy to row away. Simple plan, really. Set the city on fire and evacuate it. No one dies, so the Duchy is too busy praising the Lord-Creator for sparing the people to understand what really happened. Brilliant. His Majesty may be mad, but he’s no fool.”

“So what can we do to stop it?”

“Stop it? We don’t. Tomorrow night the city will burn and that’s when we escape. You, me, my family. For us, this couldn’t possibly be any better. The Grand Duke will have no way of knowing we didn’t perish in the blaze. I’ll have my family pack up and leave tomorrow afternoon. They’ll wait on the road going south. They’ll be safe. The only problem will be getting you out of the castle. There’re several options, but they’re all risky. Some of it will depend on luck, and I hate depending on luck.”

“Protector Bulashckt, I don’t, I mean, I want you to get your family out, save your daughter, maybe I can go later.”

“You’re having second thoughts about leaving His Majesty?”

“No. I want to get away from him more than ever. But, you’re more important. It’d be a lot harder for you to worry about me, than to simply take your family and run.”

“It would be, but that doesn’t mean anything to me. You stood by me in battle, which makes you my sister. You are not any less important to me than the other members of my family. If you want to leave, tomorrow night will be your only chance, unless you want to wait another year and depart with the Duke’s baby.”

Protector Bulashckt looked hard at the concubine. She shook her head.

“Then it’s settled. Tomorrow night we leave together. There’s several secret passageways dug through the hill that we can choose from, to get out of the castle and into the city. We run through the Merchant’s Gate, get on a boat, and disappear into the crowd. That’s the plan.”

———-

That night Silvitya spent what she hoped would be her last night with the Grand Duke. She put on all the jewelry that he had given her and presented herself to his study with the bouquet of flowers she had picked while waiting for Protector Bulashckt.

She could tell that the Danubian ruler was totally exhausted. He had been up for days finalizing his plans to burn the city, get as many of its residents out as possible, and then arrange to force anyone who was not a guard, an employee of the Royal House, or a mason or craftsman, to move south. She casually glanced at the pile of documents on his drafting table to see if there was anything useful among all those papers. She noticed a map of the castle, which she would try to examine more closely before leaving the Royal Chamber.

The night would be a very long one for the Duke’s favorite concubine. He wanted to relax and have a bath before settling in bed with her. She massaged him and treated him with sympathy. Oddly enough, as much as she hated him, at that moment she felt somewhat sorry for him. It was strange to think she was unlikely to ever see him again.

Finally, the sovereign went to sleep. As always, he did not gradually doze off like most men: his energy suddenly vanished and he passed out. Silvitya figured he must have gone three days with no rest and finally it caught up with him. He would not have let down his guard with any of his other concubines, but because he was so enamored with Silvitya, he had been so careless around her. Strange to think, had she wanted to, she could have assassinated him with no problem.

Instead, with her Master unconscious and being in the room with no supervision, she took advantage to have a thorough look at the huge collection of plans, drawings, and maps piled around his desk. Most of the papers were blueprints of the future Danube City, but the item that had drawn her attention was a map of the castle. The map had several pages, each showing a different level of the Royal residence. The bottom pages proved to be invaluable to Silvitya’s plans, because they contained diagrams of the passageways that Protector Bulashckt had talked about. The most important detail was discovering the access points in the castle. It turned out there was an access point in the kitchen, one in the Duke’s study, and another from one of the guard towers.

Silvitya spent a good part of the night trying to memorize the labyrinth under the Royal residence. If she knew the layout of the tunnels, that would help her plans tremendously. She knew that Protector Bulashckt had calculated that he’d have to come up into the castle and escort her out. However, Silvitya felt that no longer would be necessary. She’d be able to meet up with her friend somewhere underground. The further she could go on her own, the better. She knew that the best choice would be a tunnel that she could access from either the Duke’s study or from the kitchen, and yes, there was such a tunnel. The conspirator sketched out a rough copy of the route she planned to take, with several spots where she might meet up with Protector Bulashckt. She marked off several alternatives and would let him pick the one she thought would be best. She didn’t worry about the exit routes into the city. She took it for granted the guard would have the information he needed to make the best choice.

She looked under the rug near the fireplace. Sure enough, the rug hid an escape hatch. She checked to make sure there was no lock. There were some heavy bolts, but no lock. She slowly eased the bolts into the open position and lifted the hatch. It was heavy and creaked terribly. There was another problem; the rug. How could she get the rug back over the hatch to hide it once she passed through? That would entail trusting another person to replace the rug, and she had no such confidant in the castle. Maybe it would be better to check the kitchen.

It turned out the kitchen hatch was a better option. It was built into a wall, not the floor, so there was no rug to put back into place. Instead, it was hidden behind a tapestry. Like the Duke’s study, she slid out the bolts to save herself the worry of doing that the next day. The kitchen was the riskier of the two choices because of the cooking staff. However, it was the better choice because once she got past the tapestry, it would not be so obvious someone had just slipped through. Also, far more people had access to the kitchen than to the Duke’s study, thus when the cooks discovered the unbolted door, they’d have a much harder time guessing who went through it. So, that was settled. She’d have to go out through the kitchen without being seen by the cooking staff.

Before she went to bed, Silvitya carefully put away all of the jewelry the Grand Duke had given her. She knew better than to try to take a single piece of it. She calculated that if she took anything, the sovereign would know for sure she was still alive. Also, simply leaving the castle without permission was not really a crime, but attempting to take anything with her would be. She didn’t want to imagine what the punishment would be for stealing Royal jewelry.

However, none of that mattered to Silvitya nearly as much as her own sense of honor. She had entered the castle with nothing, and she would leave with nothing. For two years the Grand Duke had housed her in comfort, fed her the best food, and given her the education she needed to pass as a woman from the upper class. For all that she would give him nothing, not even return his love for her. The time had come for her to go, but she would try her best to respect him.

The next morning she found Protector Bulashckt near the Royal Stables, overseeing the re-shoeing of his horse. They exchanged glances and she went to the garden. A few minutes later he caught up to her and she handed him the pages of her manuscript about the war and a package containing her stash of secret alchemy ingredients. Then she showed him the rough map she made of the upper passageway.

“I figure there’s three spots we can meet up. This intersection, or maybe this turn with the pillar, but I think the drainage grid would work best, because it’s set back and whoever gets there first can hide.”

Protector Bulashckt was more than impressed with her planning. As much as he admired her calm assistance during the battle of Horkustk Ris, he did not think she’d be capable of memorizing the underground tunnel system and thinking ahead on hiding places.

“The drainage grid it is, Silvitya. We’ll meet up there, just like you said. Whoever gets there first will wait.”

“Another question. What’ll I do about something to wear?”

“We’re both going out in caravan trader’s outfits. That’ll be our disguise, at least until we get away from the city. Don’t take any castle clothing; it’s too easy to recognize.”

“I’m not taking anything from the castle.”

“Very well. I don’t know where His Majesty is planning to be, but do I know what time he’ll set the city on fire. It’ll be when the Moon is straight overhead. He’s very predictable that way. At night he always uses the Moon as a signal, because, as he puts it: ‘the Moon never lies and the Moon never forgets where it’s supposed to be.’ What that means is we need to be in the tunnel before the Moon is directly overhead, but not too far in advance. You need to wait until your companions are asleep so you won’t be missed. Probably I’ll be at the grid first, because I fully expect you to have delays trying to sneak out of the kitchen.”

“Do you think we’ll get out before the city’s on fire?”

“No. You’ll see it burn, Silvitya. You’ll have a story to tell your grandkids.”

———-

Silvitya never saw the Grand Duke the following day. He was nowhere in the castle; his disappearance a mystery to everyone. The concubines wondered about him the most, given that he never missed an opportunity, even if it was for a few minutes, to indulge himself. No one noticed him in his study, nor in the throne room, nor in the dining hall, nor at the stables.

Silvitya had dinner with the other concubines. She tried to be extra cautious with her dinner etiquette, so her companions would have a good last memory of her. She had a final bath with the others in the bath house, and then bid good night. And, that was it. If she did manage to escape, she’d never see any of the women again, women who had been her constant companions for two years. Strange to think, she now was the member of the group with the most seniority: everyone else had changed. So many women had come and gone over the past two years. Now, she too was leaving.

She took a small oil lamp from her bed chamber, the only item that she would remove from the castle. She walked past the latrine and down a flight of stairs. She had to wait hidden for several minutes to avoid a couple of guards. She walked along another corridor, passed the Duke’s art gallery where several of her pictures were hung, and continued past the throne room. The room was deserted and completely dark. Just two doors to go: the banquet hall and the kitchen.

Protector Bulashckt had said that part of Silvitya’s escape would depend on luck. Well, that night she had it. When she entered the kitchen she heard a man’s grunts and a woman’s moans from the storage pantry. The kitchen night staff was busy, but not with their duties to the Grand Duke’s breakfast. Silvitya lifted up the tapestry. The bolts were still pushed open. She opened the heavy door. The squeaking of the hinges startled her and she heard voices from the store room. She quickly slipped through the door and pushed it shut. She edged around a corner and hid her lamp, just in time.

“What was that?”

“The door, check behind the tapestry.”

“Ha! No wonder! Someone left the bolts undone! Door’s swinging loose! Idiot!”

“Please, put ’em back! If this gets out!”

“I know, the pillory. Well, I’ll fix it, and tomorrow I’ll find out who the dishonored idiot was.”

Silvitya heard several pieces of metal sliding behind the door. She was both relieved and completely frightened. She had escaped, but with no chance to change her mind and go back. Words could not describe Silvitya’s fright as she made her way along the pitch-black corridor. The stones were cold and slimy on her bare feet and her unprotected body shivered in the clammy air. She was frightened of slipping and breaking her lamp. She realized, with her return to the kitchen now cut off, if she lost her light source or if Protector Bulashckt did not show up, it was very possible she could get lost and no one would find her until it was too late.

She passed her first two landmarks, the intersection and the turn with the pillar. An animal jumped out and scurried into the darkness, frightening Silvitya so much that her knees shook. She worked up the nerve to continue, cursing herself for being a dishonored coward. The tunnel now sloped downwards and Silvitya had trouble keeping her balance on the slick stones. It seemed to take forever to reach the drainage grid. But she did reach it, and Protector Bulashckt was there, sitting in the darkness and drinking from a wine bottle.

“Ha! You naughty girl, didn’t even give a man time to finish his wine!”

He held up the bottle, which Silvitya gratefully accepted. After the frightening descent into the dark unknown, she needed a drink. He handed her the dress and a pair of work shoes. After two years of almost always being nude, the rough fabric felt very strange on her skin. The dress was a practical worker’s outfit: short, made of thick cloth, and designed for the harsh and active lifestyle of a caravan trader’s wife. She tied her hair and he gave her a hat to hide the fact she didn’t have it braided. Finally, he handed her a short sword, “just in case”.

The two fugitives made their way down a maze of tunnels. Now that Silvitya was dressed, armed, and united with her companion, she felt totally different about her escape. She was not frightened at all. She knew that the greatest danger still lay ahead, but it is much easier to face danger when one doesn’t have to do it alone.

Down, down, down. Silvitya was surprised by how far they had to go. She didn’t realize that, because the castle maps did not show the descent, the tunnels would be much longer than they appeared on paper. Finally the passage leveled out. They climbed a ladder and Protector Bulashckt groped for a door handle. He tapped several metal bolts with a special tool and pushed open a concealed hatch door. They entered a stone room that was completely dark. Protector Bulashckt told Silvitya to hold her lantern near the outer door while he opened several locks. They pushed open the exit and emerged into a city that was not yet dying, but just about to. Protector Bulashckt closed the secret room and the couple snuck along a deserted alleyway. The place stunk horribly and several rats ran fled across piles of rotting vegetable debris. The garbage smell was the least of the escapees’ worries. They could smell smoke, and the smoke was rapidly getting thicker.

They emerged onto a chaotic street, where guards were desperately banging on doors and chasing residents towards the gates. Dozens of confused civilians milled around, carrying children and bundles of belongings. Protector Bulashckt shouted:

“To the gate, dishonored fools! The gate! Go to the Merchants’ Gate!”

The civilians started shuffling towards the wall and safety beyond. Silvitya took a screaming baby from a woman loaded down with another child and a bundle of clothing. Protector Bulashckt picked up an older child and the fugitives joined a stream of people being herded like cattle towards the Merchants’ Gate and the Rika Chorna river.

The path became increasingly smoky. Gusts of wind blew sparks and burning bits of debris past the fleeing crowd. Silvitya looked back, and wished she hadn’t. The street glowed orange beyond the smoke and sparks pouring in the direction of the crowd. Now some of the civilians panicked and ran. Protector Bulashckt picked up another screaming, disoriented child and hoisted the kid onto his shoulders. With three kids and dressed as caravan traders, the former guard and the former concubine walked right by several guards who knew them both, without being recognized.

Finally they pushed through the city gate, surging forward with the panicked mass of other residents. All three children were screaming and Silvitya had lost track of the baby’s mother. They ran along the docks towards boats that already were packed.

“No good! The boats are full! We’ll have to wait it out on the shore!”

The couple pushed their way off the crowded dock and ran along the river’s edge. Fortunately, the crews of the first boats to ferry passengers across were returning for a second trip. Protector Bulashckt shouted: “Kids! Kids! We’ve got kids! This way! Please!”

A small boat turned in their direction. They waded into the river, passed up the children, and then were helped out of the water by one of the rowers. More panicked residents waded into the water to pass up children and climb aboard. The rowers turned their boat southwards and slowly took the passengers to the safety of the opposite shore.

As she crossed the river, Silvitya watched the death of the Danubian capitol. The entire city was engulfed in towering flames. The roar of the fire and the sound of crashing buildings were just as bad as the battle noise from Horkustk Ris, different, but just as bad. As the fire drew closer, people continued pouring through the gate, although the crowd was starting to diminish. Along the walls people were climbing down ladders. Silvitya watched the residents clustered on the wall near each ladder, waiting and praying there would be enough time to get off before the flames engulfed them.

They got off the boat and stood on the shore, but could not take their eyes off the inferno on the other side. Silvitya muttered:

“The Duke isn’t just mad. He serves the Destroyer. No, he is the Destroyer. Now I understand, now I can see him for what he is, he’s not an Ancient trapped in a human body at all. He’s the Destroyer trapped in a human body.”

Protector Bulashckt, holding a stranger’s child in each of his arms as he watched people still trying to get across the river, had no response.

———-

Danubikt Moskt burned to the ground in four hours. By the time the sun came up the flames already had died down, leaving nothing but piles of smoldering ashes and smoking ruins. Not a single wooden structure within the city walls remained standing. Over time a new city would rise in its place, a city that would come to be considered one of the most beautiful of Europe, but that would be in the future. The reality of the moment was a pile of ashes and a mob of homeless Danubians standing on the southern shore of the Rika Chorna river, wondering what the future held for them.

Silvitya spent the morning looking for the mother of the baby she was carrying. It was mid-day before the two women found each other. Protector Bulashckt located the parents of one of the children he was carrying, but told Silvitya to hand-off the third child to a Priest. They had to cut short their efforts to find his parents because a large group of Royal Guards showed up with several wagons loaded with food from the capitol’s main garrison. With so many of his fellow Royal Guards roaming among the refugees, he and Silvitya couldn’t wait around any longer. Even with their disguises, there was the risk of someone recognizing them. The road soon would be crowded with tens of thousands of migrants, so Protector Bulashckt wanted to get out as soon as possible and stay ahead of the others. More importantly, his family was waiting.

By Divine Fortune the garrison had just moved to a new location outside the old city wall in anticipation of having more space when the new wall was built, so the Royal Guards and their storerooms were unaffected by the fire. That was a blessing indeed, because the Royal Army had plenty of food to pass out to the now-homeless refugees of the capitol. The meals, however, came with a price. The Royal Guards interviewed every man coming up to them to request food: anyone who was not a craftsman in a building trade or the relative of a Royal Guard would need to leave the area. But, where would all the displaced people go? South, of course. There were plenty of empty houses and vacant farms, completely free for whoever arrived to occupy them first. The Guards gave each refugee family a letter from the Grand Duke granting them title to whatever vacant land they could find and occupy, on the condition that no other Danubian family was already there. Any remaining foreigners could be evicted if Danubians needed their property.

The Royal Army set up an encampment just north of the ruins of Horkustk Ris to pass out yet more food to refugees traveling into the province and to maintain order. The promise of more food helped lure the capitol’s homeless residents towards the southern border. Several other military encampments helped move the refugees further south and prevented anyone from turning back. Within a month the massive migration of 90,000 people would be completed, in an amazingly efficient operation considering that it took place in the mid-1700s.

———-

They spent the remainder of the day walking south, trying to stay ahead of the crowd. He commented:

“You know what we are, now? Refugees. Vagrants. Wanderers. We’re no better than anyone else on this road. No different. Someday we’ll be something, but now we’re just a couple of drifters, just like all the others. So, we need to change something.”

“What’s that, Protector Bulashckt?”

“What you just called me. That’s no longer my name. Before I was known as “Protector”, my name was Alexandrekt. That’s what you’ll call me, because I have forsaken the right to use ‘Protector’.”

Silvitya was silent as she worked up the nerve to call a man who had always been Royal official by his first name. A question came to her mind, and she forced herself to address him as requested:

“Al, Alexandrekt, I was wondering if you have any regrets about any of this, what we’re doing, what you had to give up.”

“I’d have to be mad not to have any regrets. I’m full of them right now. Maybe we should have tried to stop the burning of the city. Maybe we would have succeeded and maybe not. Maybe I should have just accepted my daughter’s path in life and kept my position. I don’t know. Maybe my Path in Life was to serve the Grand Duke, and I am going against the will of the Lord-Creator by running off like a scared rat. Yes, I have my doubts. I can tell you the Duke is right about the Duchy. Most of what he’s doing has to be done. It’s just that, I don’t know, your comment about the Destroyer dwelling inside his soul is accurate. It does seem he carries the Destroyer in his soul; that he brings destruction to everything he touches. I don’t know what to think about that. Maybe he feels coerced by the times, the constant threats to our people, and maybe his conscience is just as bothered by what he must do as mine has been following his orders. I’d like to think that.”

“Then you’d be wrong, Alexandrekt. The Grand Duke’s conscience is not troubled by anything he’s done. I have never seen him reflect on what’s good and what is evil. For him, everything in his Path in Life consists of what will serve him and what won’t. That’s all that worries him; what will serve his plans and what won’t.”

They walked in silence, giving Silvitya time to think about her escape. She wondered what measures the Grand Duke would take to find her. Given that everyone in the castle had seen her talking to Alexandrekt Bulashckt, it wouldn’t be hard for the Grand Duke to connect her disappearance with that of the Royal Guard and his family. She decided to express her concern and the prospect the entire Royal Army would be looking for them. Alexandrekt did not seem overly concerned about that, which struck her as odd, given his caution and worries about everything else. When she pressed him, he provided an explanation that sounded more like a pained confession:

“My house was within the old city walls and was burnt along with everything else. It burned quite thoroughly, I can assure you. Moreover, anyone searching the ruins will soon discover that my wife, my children, and I did not escape the fire.”

“You mean, there’re bodies in your house?”

“Yes. I placed corpses there before I left.”

“But, where’d you get them?”

“I robbed graves, Silvitya. Over the past year I took note of the funerals the refugees were having. Whenever I saw a corpse whose appearance corresponded with a member of my family, I dug it up, preserved it, and concealed it. I don’t want to go into details, because the faces of those four dead children trouble me. But the Lord-Creator, or perhaps the Destroyer, mandated that I must sacrifice my own honor to preserve the honor of my daughter. I did what I needed to do, just as in war I did what I needed to do. In war I sacrificed my honor so the men around me could live and the Duchy could live. In peace I sacrificed my honor so that my family could live. It seems that, no matter what, I must sacrifice my honor so others can live. So, there’s your answer, Silvitya. We did not survive the inferno, and my companions will find the bodies to prove it.”

Silvitya wasn’t sure how to respond. Robbing graves was one of the most dishonorable things a person could do in the Duchy. She wondered what he had seen of the Grand Duke to make him take such a desperate and extreme measure to assure his step-daughter’s escape. Alexandrekt continued:

“I presume the charred corpses of my family and I will be buried with honors. Strange to think those poor souls will have to hold up their mirrors twice. As for us, you, me, my family, we’re all dead, and our names now mean nothing.”

“My name hasn’t meant anything for a long time. I don’t think it ever meant anything. I can have any name I choose; or no name at all, and it doesn’t matter.”