This is the first chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the prologue, click here.
1878, March 4
The Simeonoglou House stood on the shore of the Sea of Marmara, in what was probably still the Ottoman Empire, surrounded by Russian troops. One of these, Junior Physician and Baron Andrei Trifonovich Voropayevski, dragged his boots across the threshold of the house's dining room and tried to pull himself to attention.
The previous owners of this room had once entertained here, but now the smells of meat and wine were, like the tables, buried under paper. Stacks surrounded the uniformed man before Andrei, who still hadn't looked up. His head down, he scratched his pen methodically across the bottom of a document.
Andrei could not be the one to speak first. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to calculate the number of hours he'd gone without sleep. It was, it seemed, morning. This silver spring light didn't come till April back in Russia. It played across the water of the bay and the British warships that floated there.
The guard to the left of the door stifled a yawn, and it was all Andrei could do not to yawn back. He looked down, blearily watching the patterns and boot prints on the carpet. His hands, chapped from too many washings with bad soap in frozen water, clenched around the coins in his pocket.
Don't jingle them, Doctor. Don't slouch.
Andrei didn't know he'd muttered the words aloud until the other guard made a noise in his throat. A little laugh of fellow-feeling from a man whose job it was to keep his back straight all day and maybe kill somebody.
The man at the desk set his pen aside and looked up, expression bland.
"The Well Born Junior Physician, Captain, and Baron," the laughing guard announced, "Andrei Trifonovich Voropayevski."
Andrei swayed and jingled. He should be in the field hospital, either preparing for surgery or conducting it. How many died, even now, as the Russian Imperial Army wasted its physician's time?
Better not to calculate that, Doctor. The number would only upset you.
"The physician, yes," said the Major General. "Come." He had recently shaved his chin, which gleamed between a pair of voluminous brown muttonchops.
Andrei tried to pull himself to attention again.
Imagine a string, Doctor, he told himself. A marionette's string, yes, and hooked to your spine. Would you prefer a noose?
The door shut behind him.
"Doctor. You operated on one Junior Unteroffizier…" The Major General glanced across the papers in front of him. "I don't seem to have his name to hand, but you were the surgeon and the patient was under your observation while he recovered, is this not so?"
Observation. Recovery. The words did evoke some distant memory. When was the last time Andrei had seen a nurse in a starched uniform? The medical rail car in Romania? When he closed his eyes, Andrei saw a knee. He would hold it here and press the saw blade there.
"Junior Physician!"
Andrei rubbed his hand over his face. "Pardon, sir?"
"I asked you why you didn't think to bring your records with you."
"Sir." There seemed to be more expected of him. Andrei squeezed it out. "The records are in a state such that collecting them and carrying them here would be, would constitute, I mean, a major logistical operation."
"Enough of that humor, Captain."
"Yes, sir."
"This is a serious matter. This is death."
"Serious," Andrei repeated. He wanted to ask this officious twit what he knew of death. Instead he used his remaining willpower to bottle up the horrible laughter he could feel bubbling in his belly.
The Major General prodded a word on a particular sheet of paper. "Look here. You operated on a soldier, a Junior Unteroffizier, as I said, whose duty it was to stand guard outside the door to this very room."
Andrei thought blearily of the guard who had yawned. Then, even as his own hand rose to his mouth, the realization swept down upon him. He didn't know the Junior Unteroffizier's name, either, but he did remember the patient. The babbler.
"I didn't operate," said Andrei in growing horror. "He has typhoid fever."
"I know that." The Major General put a hand to his face and pulled irritably on his mutton-chops. "When I said 'operate,' of course I was speaking broadly. You administered some sort of care, did you not, for this case of fever? What medications did you prescribe, Doctor? For example, willow tea?"
Andrei would have laughed at that if his stomach hadn't felt so full of ice. "Our supplies are quite limited, sir. The patient received boiled water and rest." Watering the corpses, the men called this treatment.
The Major General let go of his whiskers. "I see. And what did he say?"
Andrei's hands trembled. A numb warmth like the first stages of frostbite traveled up his wrist. If only he could grab a scalpel and calm himself. "As far as I can recall, sir, the patient pleaded for death."
The Major General flicked his fingers impatiently. "I won't tell you again to control your sense of humor. Your patient, as I said. What did he tell you?"
Andrei looked out the window, trying to think. He imagined the ships of the Crusaders sailing into this bay, heavy with impatient commanders.
"The man under my care spoke, sir, but he was in no state to tell anyone anything," said Andrei. "He has been delirious since he was admitted to my care."
"Yes." Light flashed across the Major General's glasses as he nodded. "This would be yesterday morning?"
"If you say so, sir."
"I do say so. The patient was sent to the infirmary after chastisement for failing to muster at roll-call. He was found still in his billet." The Major General cleared his throat. "Is he infectious?"
"Our first action with all new patients is to bathe them and crop their hair. The lice. Bedsheets and linens are not washed as often as they should, but insecticides—"
"Good, good, I'm sure." The Major General made a face and scratched at a muttonchop. "He is in a state of, what did you call it? Semi-consciousness?"
"I believe I said delirium, sir."
"He babbles, as I said. On what subjects?"
Here it was. The Junior Unteroffizier had told Andrei to make it stop, to fetch a priest, to save his manhood. Maybe he'd thought he had syphilis. But that wasn't what the Major General cared about. Andrei knew what occupied the man's little mind. He'd know since he'd heard the words, "in this very room."
It was in this room, two or perhaps three days ago, that the Treaty of San Stefano had been signed. With it, the representative of the Sultan had ceded the territory of his European lands to the Tsar.
Oh, the new territory would be called autonomous, but Count Ignatyev had no intention of withdrawing his troops. The Russian Empire now extended, in fact if not yet on paper, to the Mediterranean.
Andrei knew all this because one of the guards at the door had heard it. A guard who had waited until after the historic occasion to succumb to his fever. And in his fever, he babbled.
What is more deadly than a fever, Doctor? A diplomat's suspicions.
"Doctor," pressed the Major General. "Captain, what did your patient tell you?"
"He told me." If this suspicion proved contagious as well as virulent, the Major General might well kill Andrei just for treating his patient. God damn him, but he was tired of this. "He told me nothing of consequence, sir."
The Major General eyed him. His finger tapped his desk, but did not rise to point at Andrei's chest. No hands seized the doctor from behind. "He speaks, you say,—babbles—only of personal matters?"
"Yes, sir."
"But you were not at his side the entire day and night, were you? And there are other men billeted within earshot." The Major General shuffled his papers as if consulting a list of all the army's men and where they slept at all times. "Yes." He nodded to himself. "Better to overdo than underdo. And I did bring you all this way. It would be a shame if I sent you back with no orders."
The Major General's eyes flicked up and narrowed in annoyance. Andrei realized he was jingling his coins again, and stopped.
"Junior Physician, you expect he will recover?"
"Sir." Sweat chilled Andrei's back. "If I can keep him from lapsing into a coma for the next two weeks, sir, maybe."
"Very well." The expression of official annoyance did not change. "See to it that he does not."
Andrei imagined the string around his neck, and kept himself upright. Metallic light reflected off the waters of the bay outside. This house had been built right up against the shore. A man could jump out that window and right into the Sea of Marmara.
"The man is a traitor," the Major General continued. "He revealed state secrets during a war. Makes no sense to revive someone who'll only be shot anyway. Two weeks is far too long. Remove the body from the bed so it can be given to a loyal soldier."
"Remove the body." Andrei did not ask it as a question. He repeated the phrase in anger and disgust. That the man who had planned the Blockade of Plevna could now not muster the courage to say, "kill this man" in so many words. That this officer wasn't even going to make up some excuse. Just call the patient a traitor and trust his doctor to murder him. The war wasn't over; it had only turned around to gnaw on itself.
The Major General tilted his head and light flashed again off his spectacles. "And of course you, Your Well Born, heard nothing of his ranting."
A terrible cowardice seized Andrei. Fingers seemed to close around the back of his neck, and a deep, cool voice spoke through his mouth. "No, sir."
Not "no, I will not kill my patient." Not, "no, kill me instead, because I'll be a corpse before I'll be a murderer."
Andrei simply told his superior "no, sir." He had heard nothing. "Yes, sir." He would obey orders. "Yes, sir," and whatever else he needed to say to get out of this room. This house. This entire occupied territory!
Andrei stumbled out of the Simeonoglou House and into the late morning sunlight. The sky burned blue between black branches of the trees in the mansion's garden. Seawater washed the beach cobbles and a breeze blew through his coat to dry the sweat on his back. It was a beautiful God-damned day.
Andrei shoved his shaking fingers into his pocket. The coins there.
Better a corpse than a murderer? Better a traitor than a corpse. Better a deserter.
Without a look at the house and its guards at his back, Andrei walked down the road until he found a Turk on horseback. It took a bit of walking.
Andrei did not know how to say "sell me your animal" in Turkish, so he held out his fistful of coins and pointed at the ground. "Get down."
The horseman looked down at Andrei and showed his teeth.
"Coward!" Snarling, Andrei seized the sash around the man's waist. Dense felt pressed against the nails of his hands. "Get down here! Take the coins. Para!"
People were staring, but no one shouted. The horseman, although livid with rage, dared not defend himself. Andrei was a member of an occupying army, and he was no weakling. He hauled the Turk off his horse and forced gold down the collar of his undershirt.
The horseman spat on the ground and dug for the coins as if to throw them in Andrei's face, but by now Andrei was up on the horse. He looked down. The Turk started, made a sign against the Evil Eye, and ran off.
It's your face, Doctor. If only you could see yourself.
Andrei did not pursue that line of thought. He only escaped.
Classic Russian "zingers" in there: nice touch. Spotlighting the Russian sense of humor is great shorthand for placing the reader in the scenario with Andrei.