First Chapter: Night-time Remembrance

First Chapter

Sándor awoke in cold sweat, grasping for the sword on his side. But the blade wasn’t there, only the thick, velvet blanket. It took him a few seconds to realize he wasn’t on the battlefield anymore, but in the Transylvanian Embassy, on the top floor, and in the Ambassador’s bedroom. His breathing steadied, and he let his head fall back on the pillow.

It was too little, too late. The woman beside him moved, groaning in displeasure that her sleep would be disrupted. Sándor watched as she turned towards him and opened her eyes slightly.

“Are you alright?”

“I am,” the man answered. “Go back to sleep.”

“You know I can tell when you lie,” she muttered, but she turned around, and gave no sign she was awake as Sándor walked out of the room and closed it behind himself.

He walked to the balcony and stood there. He wore no shirt, but luckily he was used to the cold winters of Transylvania, and the Swedish summer couldn’t compete with that. He looked out over the city of Ice and Steel, as Karen Sieer, the ambassador, put it in her letters, and let his thoughts wonder off. Taking the shackle off his brain usually tired him, and that helped him fall asleep.

The last thing he wanted was to wake her. Karen pushed herself to her limit in the past weeks, with the Swedish and the British at each other’s throat over the German States. Transylvania still held a lot of sway in Swedish politics �" thanks to Sándor and King András, Karen’s half-brother, who saved the Swedish King’s life just a couple of years ago �", and she ran from one meeting to another, trying to prevent an all-out European conflict.

Sándor, though being a military man with many scars and a missing hand to prove it, couldn’t be angry at her. Possibly because he spent years as her brother’s personal bodyguard and best friend, and seen how these fights can be. Still, he cursed all politicians for timing it to the month he could spend with her.

And now he was here. Stockholm has been different than the capital of Transylvania, and not even comparable to the village he escaped to join the military when he was fifteen. The airships made their landing in their part of the harbor, while ships entered and exited the port. The whole city was driven by ruthless precision, something Sándor well expected from the capital of the Policemen of Europe.

He heard muffled footsteps behind him. He jerked around, suddenly realizing how easy it would be for someone to strike him from behind, and he raised his arm to defend and to deflect. But it was Karen, her light-brown hair messy, and the dream she woke from still in her eyes.

“I knew you weren’t alright,” she sighed.

“I told you not to sneak up on me,” Sándor reminded her.

“You warned me, to be precise. And I spent too much time around you not to take it as a challenge,” she laughed softly.

Sándor was surprised how easily he got used to the woman’s American English. She taught him how to speak the language just before he headed to Istanbul. They made considerably more progress with his English than with her Hungarian, and by the time she did learn one of the two Transylvanian languages, he just got used to speaking with her in a different language.

She joined him, leaning forward and looking out at the city. She didn’t waste more than a few seconds however �" she must’ve been used to the sight by now.

“So, what is it?” She asked. “And you better not make me ask for the third time.”

“It’s just still uncanny, being back here,” Sándor confessed. Then he pointed towards a black spot in the city’s web of gas-lamps. “You see that place? That’s where the old rails were, before the Technocrats blew it up. Right under the train András and I were on.”

Karen nodded, and caressed his mechanical hand in a gentle manner. That was one of the many things Sándor loved about her �" she wasn’t repulsed by his “ungodly” arm. She remained surprisingly calm too, given the aforementioned Technocrats wanted to kill her too, on a number of occasions. Actually, if not for them, they never would’ve met.

“I understand it can be hard,” she said, “but we can’t visit half of Europe without running into a place you hadn’t fought, or had an affair in your youth, so…”

“Youth,” he scoffed, tasting the bitterness of the word. “I’m not even thirty, woman!”

“And you tend to sound like one, just like my brother,” she grinned, and Sándor shook his head as he realized how easily he walked into her trap.

Sometimes, Karen was just like King András. The man was the greatest strategist Sándor knew, and leading his country to victory in not one, but two wars against impossible odds. Karen could lay a trap, just like he could, with her words.

She stepped backwards, through the door. Sándor looked at her with his eyebrows raised in question.

“Will you come to bed now?” she asked, and enticing smile playing on her lips. Sándor couldn’t refuse her �" he was never able to. For a long time he believed pretty woman were his weakness, but all that changed when he fell for Karen.

Just as he kissed her, somebody knocked on the door. He cursed any god who’d disrupt them while Karen walked over there and opened the door. The young aide was so intimidated by the sight of the woman in her nightgown that he stuttered in Swedish and flushed red as he handed over an envelope.

Karen closed the door, then tore it open and read it.

“What does it say?” Sándor asked after half a minute of silence.

“I’m invited to represent Transylvania on a committee between the British, Swedish and Germanic States later tomorrow afternoon,” Karen said. “Well, it would seem they are grasping at straws here.”

Sándor didn’t let his disappointment show on his face. Now not just their days, but now their nights had to be tainted by the coming war?

“Will you let me accompany you?” He asked.

“You won’t like this,” Karen grimaced. “It’s going to be long, and boring talk about borders, and disputes, and who has a larger shaft.”

“I’ve been to a few thousand of these with your brother,” Sándor reminded her.

“Oh, yes,” she smiled suddenly. “I always forget he made you sit through all those horrible negotiations.”

He walked over and kissed her. Maybe the war was encroaching, and she was more troubled than she wanted to show, but Sándor knew her. And he also happened to know how he can make her life just a little easier.

Nobody would take the nights he had with her away. Not while he lived.