Work Text:
Bachelor Dankovsky’s pistol was a peculiar thing. It was a veritable antique, courtesy of Daniel Dankowski the elder, a voenspetsy clever enough to abandon the szlachta of his youth when he scented change in the air. On the eve of revolution, disappointed in his son’s softness, he had made this one final play to make a conqueror of Daniil Daniilovich as he went off to the Capital for university.
Although Daniil thought very little of his father’s plans, he was nonetheless exacting. This pistol was immaculately kept. Dankovsky cleaned it each day the way he’d been taught every day of his youth. The frame shone, and the handle was well-polished, the grip made of some kind of hardwood, harvested by some inferior of General Major Dankowski’s in honor of his wife, from Puszcza Biała. It was perhaps the most tangible proof Daniil Daniilovich had of the love of his makers.
As it happened, Bachelor Dankovsky was not so soft after all. It was this he pondered on the eleventh day, as he sat surrounded by warm corpses in the home of an extraordinarily charitable heiress whose kindness he had abused. He wondered what General Major Dankowski would think of his son now. Perhaps it was best that he never knew. No matter what came to pass with the Focus, Death could not be defeated everywhere, and his father would be ashamed if Bachelor Dankovsky managed it anyway.