Chapter Text
The castle’s single parapet wasn’t much, but it held an impressive view of the glacier. It was a barren wasteland out there, no trees or plants of any kind, and no animals to speak of, natural or fabricated. The moonlight glinted across the snow, which would have been an unusual sight in August were it not for the fact that they were high in the Swiss Alps. After weeks of running and constantly looking over his shoulder, Alek found the emptiness reassuring.
But being reassuring didn’t mean it wasn’t cold. The wind managed to find its way into the seams of his riding jacket, stealing away his warmth that was already hard to come by.
“Alright, Volger,” Alek said, trying to stomp some feeling back into his feet. “What's so important that you couldn't tell me until now?”
Volger let out a slow breath and waited until the small cloud dissipated before speaking. “In the years before he died, as part of your father’s preparations for this place, he saw fit to acquire a loris.”
Alek blinked, surprised. Fabricated lorises were notoriously tricky– each one could take years to make, and they didn't have much practical use outside of a coronation ceremony. The creatures were designed to bond with true members of the royal family, identifying certain patterns in their life threads that proved they were fit to rule. It was a symbol, more than anything, of divine right; the most recent royal portrait of Franz Joseph depicted him with a piebald fabricated loris on his shoulder. However, the creatures were better known for their ability to detect bastards of the royal family, sniffing out traces of the bloodline in common children who had been the result of an indiscretion.
“Why on earth would he do that?” Alek asked. Father would never have been unfaithful to Sophie, never in a million years. Why would he need a loris to prove that?
“To make a point,” Volger said. “The emperor may have refused to let you inherit anything, but even he cannot change the fact that you have Hapsburg blood running through your veins.”
“Yes, but not enough,” Alek said. “Mother was common, you know this.”
“Enough to bond with a loris, I should think.”
Alek blinked, not quite believing the words coming out of the man’s mouth. “The loris is for me?”
“When Franz Joseph dies, the next heir will need to get a loris of their own to prove their legitimacy. That will take time,” Volger explained. “If you arrive in Vienna already bonded to one, you would have the upper hand. A living claim to your father's inheritance that could not be denied.”
Alek turned out to the glacier, leaning hard against the parapet to keep his knees from going too weak. He’d always known that he would never be able to inherit the throne, that his mother's common life threads had kept him from it. His extended family hadn't viewed him as much better than a bastard child muddying the waters. And now, just one creature had the ability to change all that. Alek could barely breathe. The fate of an empire, of fifty million people, all of it rested on his ability to hatch an egg while in this frozen wasteland.
“And if it doesn't bond with me?” He asked quietly. “What then? Will all my father’s plans have been for nothing?”
Volger shook his head. “Not for nothing. You are still alive, after all,” he said. “You saw how the Germans hunted us. If it weren't for your father's plans, I doubt you would have survived the week.”
Alek blinked away the vision of German soldiers sneaking into his room at night and gutting him like a fish while he slept. Surely they wouldn't have been so brash as to break into his home, would they?
“But we should wait until the creature hatches before we start making further plans,” Volger said. “For now, we’ll rest and get our strength back.”
It felt impossible to think of anything but what would happen after the loris hatched. He felt dizzy from the weight of it in his chest. His entire life had been upended the night his parents died, and just when he thought things were finally settling, he'd been thrown into a new whirlwind. How could he be expected to sit and wait, when his world was just going to dramatically change again?
“Do you hear that?” Volger asked.
Alek blinked. “I don't hear-” he started, but the man shushed him, holding a hand up for silence. Alek strained his ears, listening for whatever it was that set Volger on edge again.
There was a muffled thrumming in the air, as if someone a mile away was getting chased by a swarm of bees. The noise grew louder and louder, but it didn't sound like any German creatures that he knew.
Then, glinting in the moonlight, he saw it-- a British biplane, its engine rattling like rocks in a can. The aircraft trailed thick, black smoke behind it as it desperately tried to stay aloft.
Alek's jaw dropped. They were nowhere near England, or any of her allies for that matter. And besides, he didn't think airplanes could fly this high up in the mountains. "What's a British aeroplane doing all the way up here?"
Volger narrowed his eyes. "It's a scout,” he said. “Most likely, the pilot got lost and flew a little too close to those German direwolves we passed along the border."
Alek couldn't take his eyes off the plane, dark smoke and glowing sparks spewing from the engine as it trailed across the sky like a furious shooting star. The plane miraculously caught one little bit of updraft, ascending again for a brief, precarious moment before it continued its descent towards the icy glacier below. It dropped below the rocky edge of the valley, beyond what Alek could see from the parapet. He scrambled to get a better view of the valley, but even from this vantage point it was impossible to see anything but the smoke slowly rising above the mountains.
Several long seconds later, the valley was filled with the horrible, inhuman shriek of metal tearing and shredding against the rock.
Alek whirled around to face Volger. "We have to help him."
"We can't," Volger said simply. "That is not the sort of crash that someone can walk away from. There's nothing that we can do for him now."
"But shouldn't we at least try?"
"Something took down that airplane, Alek. It could still be out there, prowling for anyone out on the ice. We barely escaped the direwolves ourselves.”
The thought of direwolves scavenging the wreck like vultures over carrion made him nauseous. "So we need to find him before they do!"
"Just because the Germans are our enemies, that does not make the British our friends," Volger said.
“Britain isn't at war with Austria!” Alek insisted.
"Listen, Alek. We would help him if we could. But you are heir to the Austrian Empire, and you cannot take risks like this. If something happened to you, after everything we've been through-" His voice caught, snagging on a scrap of emotion that had gotten trapped in his throat.
It had been easy to forget while they were on the run that Volger had also left everything behind– his home, his title, any chance to return to Austria as anything but a criminal and a fugitive. Alek might be without his father now, but Volger had lost a close friend. Now that they weren't running for their lives, the full force of his grief had the space to settle hard around his shoulders. It was a miracle he'd held himself together for this long.
Alek swallowed hard, looking at the place over the cliffs where the plane disappeared, and nodded slowly. "I understand," he said quietly.
"Thank you," Volger said carefully, to prevent another break. He cleared his throat.
"I think..." Alek started, running the words over in his mind half a dozen times before saying them out loud. "I think I need a moment alone to come to terms with… all of this.”
"Of course," Volger said with a bow. "Take your time. We'll have plenty of it now."
It wouldn't have been unusual for Alek to spend time with the warhorses back home in Konopiste, so none of the men reacted when they saw him making his way towards the stables. No one followed him in, no one stopped him to ask for help unloading, which also meant that no one saw him walk right past the warhorses and slip into the adjacent store room to start gathering supplies for a rescue mission. Alek ignored the more specialized medical equipment and instead grabbed a single first aid kit and a wool blanket that he kept wrapped around his shoulders like a shawl. He hesitated for just a moment before grabbing a pistol as well. Volger was right about one thing– whatever shot down that airplane was no friend of Alek’s, and he didn’t want to be caught unarmed if he came across any German fabrications. It wasn’t much against a direwolf, but it was something, and it might just buy him enough time to get away.
Time was of the essence– he needed to travel light.
The smart thing for him to have done would have been to wait until everyone else was asleep, to be sure that none of his men could stop him before he could get to the fallen British soldier. But it was bitterly cold here in the mountains, and he didn't have much time before the poor man would freeze to death.
That is, if he isn't dead already. He could still hear the horrifying crunch of metal ringing in his ears.
If Alek was going to be any help at all, it had to be now. He couldn't wait for the men to go to sleep, he couldn't wait for the Germans to have given up their search, and he definitely couldn't wait for a loris to tell him whether or not he should be taking risks at all.
Near the stable door, thick fur coats hung on pegs on the wall, left there for the men who would be coming and going into the snowy expanse beyond. Alek quickly shed his riding jacket and replaced it with a much warmer fur coat. As he reached to hang up his jacket, his eyes landed on several sets of wooden snowshoes on a rack. They were old enough to have been woven together with reeds instead of properly grown into shape like the tennis rackets back home.
He didn't know what they were for, exactly, but Klopp had been excited to see them, mentioning how useful they had been on previous endeavors. Alek grabbed a pair. He could use all the help he could get.
No one saw him leave.
Smoke continued to billow from the wreck, which made it easier for Alek to locate the downed plane. Hopefully no one else was looking for it. His mind replayed the howls from the direwolves as they'd been chased across the border, the way the sound had built until it was so loud and discordant that it stripped every thought from his mind except for the primal fear of being hunted.
He shook his head to clear the memory. If he was spotted, he was done for. So all he had to do was not get spotted. Should be easy enough. He’d made it away from the castle without any of his men spotting him, after all.
Dreading the thought of what might lie in wait beyond, Alek peered over the crest of the mountain.
There was no horrible red streak in the snow, no mangled pilot with limbs akimbo, no direwolves hovering over the wreck like a pack of hyenas. The plane itself was in a state, the engine wreathed in flame. But the pilot had managed to deploy his parachute, which had fallen to the earth in a crumpled heap a few hundred yards away from the flaming wreckage. The man also lay in a heap on the ground, but he blessedly looked to be in one piece. Maybe he’d gotten lucky.
Bolstered by the fact that the pilot wasn't obviously dead, Alek shuffled his way down into the valley below. The snowshoes held against the slope, though the caning creaked and groaned at this angle. He was more worried about slipping on the ice– one wrong move and his feet would slide out from under him and he'd dash his head against the rocks. It was a relief when the ground leveled out beneath him and he didn't have to worry about moving carefully towards the wreck.
The pilot was young. Just a boy, really; he couldn't have been any older than Alek. A few strands of sandy colored hair poked out from under his leather helmet. His nose had been bleeding at some point, but had since stopped– coagulated blood covered his chin and the collar of his flight suit. One lens of his amber goggles was cracked, but hadn't completely shattered. In the moonlight, it was too dark to see if the boy’s eyes were closed behind the glass, or if they were staring lifelessly out at the snow.
Alek knew he ought to check for a pulse, remembering the times the family physician had taken hold of his wrist during a checkup. But he couldn't bring himself to touch the body directly. Not after Lienz, where he'd left that soldier lying lifeless in the dirt.
Instead, Alek dug around in his first aid satchel for smelling salts, hoping that they would be enough to rouse the dead.
He wafted the bottle under the pilot's nose. At first there was no reaction, no sign that anything had happened at all. But then the pilot took in a sharp breath and started coughing, then swore profoundly in English.
Alek had never been so relieved to hear a man cough. “Are you alright?” He asked in careful English.
“I've had worse,” the pilot said, pushing himself to a sitting position. He slid the cracked goggles off his face to reveal a fresh black eye just starting to turn purple. His eyes were glassy and unfocused as scanned the glacier around them, until he saw the flaming wreckage behind Alek’s shoulder.
The pilot’s eyes grew wide, his already pale face went ashen. He let out a small, anguished cry. “My scout!”
Alek's heart dropped. Had there been another passenger in the plane? “Your navigator…?”
The pilot shook his head. “No, my plane. She's a Bristol Scout,” he said, his voice wavering. “Oh, she’s a bloody wreck. She's never going to fly again, is she?”
“I do not think so.”
The pilot put his head in his hands, and Alek silently cursed himself. He’d never been good at knowing what to say, and he was even worse at trying to find the right words in English.
Alek had always heard that the British Mechanists were heartless, choosing to work with cold steel and iron instead of cultivating life. But this pilot was devastated over the loss of his aircraft, as if he'd lost a family member or a dear friend. It was all very strange.
He awkwardly cleared his throat. “You have blood on your face,” Alek said. He pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and wet a bandage with it.
“What?” He looked at his gloved hands, swore again, and took one off to touch the skin under his nose. “Blisters. I’m not much better off than my plane, am I?”
“At least you appear to be in one piece,” he said, handing him the bandage to clean his face.
“Aye, that's true enough.” He took the cloth from Alek and wiped at the bloody streak on his face, wincing at the sting of the rubbing alcohol. It only helped a little.
“Can you stand?” Alek asked. It didn't look like any of his bones were horrifically broken, but maybe there was something he hadn't seen.
“I think so,” he said, reaching out towards Alek. “Give us a hand, will you?”
Alek grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. The pilot winced as he straightened up, favoring his left foot.
“Is it broken?” Alek asked. The boot might be holding everything in place, he didn't want to make things worse by removing it.
“Nah, not broken,” he said, then gave Alek a forced smile. “I just landed on it a bit funny. I’ll walk it off.”
The pilot shifted his weight, and Alek was struck by the feeling that there was something wrong about the way he moved. It reminded him a little too much of what Klopp had said about checking the warhorses after a battle, how even the best biologists couldn’t get rid of a prey animal’s instinct to hide an injury so they don’t look weak.
If Alek could get him to Klopp, the man could fix the pilot’s leg better than Alek could with a first aid kit and only a vague idea of how to put on a splint.
“We should get moving,” he said. “It's too cold to stay out here.”
The pilot narrowed his eyes at Alek. “We’re on a barking glacier. There's nothing around for miles.”
“I live near here,” Alek said, though it felt strange to say out loud. They’d been on the run for so long, he’d slept in stranger’s barns for longer than he’d stayed inside the castle walls.
“You live here?” The pilot echoed, his eyes focusing on Alek for the first time since he regained consciousness. He scanned him up and down, his gaze lingering for just a second too long on the pistol at his waist. “Hang on. You're German, aren't you? You shot me down!” He backed away from Alek, limping on his injured foot, his feet sinking into the snow up to his calves with every step.
“I’m not German, I’m Austrian,” Alek said, rolling his eyes. “And I most definitely did not shoot you down.”
“The Germans are your friends, though.”
“They are not my friends.” The words came out with more venom than he'd meant, enough to make the pilot stop his retreat. There was a strange look on his face, like the grocer’s in Lienz when Alek had run his mouth about that stupid wooden toy horse.
He'd said too much, again.
“Alright,” the pilot said carefully. “So they're not your friends.”
“They're not,” Alek repeated, trying very hard to keep his voice level. “We don't have many friends out here.”
“Aye, I can see that.” He glanced at the pistol again. “Not much of anything out here, is there?”
“No.”
The pilot gave him a curious look. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m the person who's trying to help you.”
“Don't be daft. I meant your name.”
He sighed, watching his breath form a small cloud in the frozen mountain air. “Alek,” he said, opting not to offer up his title. “My name is Alek.”
“Right. Alek.” The pilot held out his hand to shake. “I’m Dylan Sharp.”
Alek took a few steps forward and shook his hand. Dylan's fingers were freezing, he hadn't had a chance to put his gloves back on.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dylan.”
“Likewise,” Dylan said, glancing over Alek’s shoulder at the flaming plane wreck behind him. “Wish it had been in better circumstances, though.”
Alek took the blanket off from around his shoulders, wrapping it around Dylan. He immediately missed the extra layers– his body heat had seeped into the wool blanket as he'd made his way down to the wreck, and now the wind stole any extra warmth he'd had.
Dylan blinked, a little surprised, then pulled the blanket tightly around himself.
“You didn't happen to bring two pairs of those silly shoes, did you?” he asked, directing their attention towards Alek’s feet.
“Ah. No.” In all honesty, it had felt a bit like tempting fate, bringing hiking gear for someone that might very well have been dead.
“Of course you didn't.”
Alek looked Dylan over. He couldn't weigh that much, the boy was thin as a reed. “I could carry you on my back,” he offered. “Then you wouldn't need to walk at all.”
Dylan shook his head, a little more forcefully than necessary. “We don't need the weight of two people on those shoes. You’ll topple over.”
Alek frowned, more than a little insulted at the fact that Dylan thought he couldn't manage the trek. If he could make it across Austria-Hungary in secret, he could certainly carry a pilot back up to the castle. “They’ll hold the weight of us both. And you shouldn't be walking on your ankle, anyway.”
“I can manage,” Dylan said.
Alek looked skeptically at the pilot’s foot.
Dylan was much heavier than he looked. And taller, once he wasn’t sinking several inches into the snow with every step.
Between his injured ankle and the cold that had seeped into his bones, he’d completely fallen six inches off the cliff face on his first attempt, landing in an undignified heap in the snow. It might have been funny, except that it would ruin Alek’s whole mission to save his life if Dylan slipped and cracked his head open on the rocks. So he had begrudgingly accepted Alek’s offer to carry him back up.
It was exhausting. Dylan had tried to help by pointing out the best possible handholds to help them scramble up, but he had a horrible view of the terrain from Alek’s back and often was unable to see at all. By the time they reached the top of the valley wall and had made it to relatively level ground, Alek’s arms ached and his legs were burning. Only a little bit farther-
“Over there!” A familiar voice rang out across the snow.
In his relief to find Dylan alive, Alek had completely forgotten about his attempts to be stealthy. His men were gathered near the edge of the cliff face, undoubtedly planning a rescue mission to save Alek from his own sense of duty.
Although it hardly mattered now. Even if by some miracle they hadn't seen Alek bring Dylan back to the castle, he couldn't hide the boy until he recovered like he was a secret woodland pet.
“He’s alive!” Alek called out. “Help me bring him inside!”
Hoffman ran up beside them and Dylan slid off Alek’s back, splitting the weight between the two of them. Together they half-carried Dylan into the castle, away from the icy wind. Their hurried steps echoed through the stone corridors. Alek could hear the others following quickly behind, but he didn’t care to listen to what they were saying. The only thing that mattered was getting Dylan to safety.
“Where are we taking him, sir?” Hoffman asked.
“The dining hall,” Alek said, after a moment of consideration. “In front of the fire. He needs to warm up, he was frozen half to death out there.”
Hoffman nodded.
“You didn’t tell me you lived in a barking castle,” Dylan muttered. He slowed down to look at the worn-out tapestries on the walls, but Alek and Hoffman continued to drag him along.
“It wasn't all that important,” Alek said.
“I guess not.” He shivered again.
The fireplace in the dining hall was already roaring, filled with fresh firewood that someone must have chopped between their arrival and his disappearance. Alek had never been more grateful to see the dancing orange lights of a burning fire in his entire life.
It only took a moment to set Dylan at the edge of one of the ancient tables. His eyes darted around the room before finally landing on the fireplace, staring into the warm glow of the logs. He pulled the blanket a little tighter around himself.
“Our medic is going to look you over,” Alek explained, hoping to calm his nerves. “He’s one of the best in the country.”
He chose not to mention that Klopp was a fabrication specialist. That would likely just upset the pilot.
“Alright,” Dylan said, sounding unconvinced.
Suddenly, there was a firm hand on Alek’s shoulder. “A word, Aleksandar?” Volger said in German, making it very clear that this was not an optional conversation.
Alek’s heart dropped into his stomach, but he just nodded and gave Dylan a reassuring smile before letting the man steer him out of the room and into the hallway.
Volger glared down at Alek. “You told me you understood,” he said, his voice brimming with quiet anger. “You said you wouldn't go out there.”
“I couldn't just leave him to die,” he said.
“It was unbelievably reckless. Your father-”
“Would have wanted me to help,” Alek said, glaring back. “What good is peace if I can't even help the people around me?”
“You fail to understand the gravity of the situation,” Volger said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Everything is riding on the survival of your loris, and it would be astonishingly easy for this soldier to smash it while it's an egg. This may have been his plan from the very beginning.”
Alek shook his head. Volger hadn't seen the crash, he hadn't seen how badly the plane was damaged. “Dylan wouldn't do that to us,” he said.
“'Dylan’? You two are already on a first name basis?”
Alek winced. That had been very forward, he had to admit. But after the ordeal of climbing back up the glacier, he felt that there was at least some sort of bond between the two of them. “Mr. Sharp,” he corrected himself. “If he’d wanted to hurt me, he would have already.”
“You have known him for an hour at most. We have no idea who he is or what he's capable of, and it is foolhardy to pretend otherwise.”
“He doesn't know about the loris,” Alek insisted. “We just need to keep it a secret until his crew comes to rescue him.”
“That isn't better for us. One soldier is bad enough, the last thing we need is the entire British Air Service flying through the valley.”
Another fair point– they didn't have a chance of keeping dozens of armed men from poking around the castle. If the British mechanists found a loris in an almost-abandoned castle nestled high in the alps, they would certainly have some questions.
“I couldn’t just leave him to die,” Alek repeated, unable to think of anything else to say.
Volger sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he finally said. “I will deal with this, you go see to the egg. Remember why it is that we're here.”