Mildred sat on the starboard side with her legs in the freezing, polluted water and pulled from her jug of apple wine. Thomas was unconscious, once again, and Shuu was shooting down every hare-brained scheme the Ueichi brat threw out.

The jug of wine was getting low. She had another night of drinking before she had to preserve it for Thomas. For tonight, though, nothing stopped her from guzzling more of the sickly-sweet nectar.

She gazed at her face in the water, illuminated by moonlight. She liked her Æfrian features best. Whatever her father’s contributions, they blended into a single trait of, “not quite Æfrian.” That was what she was. Not quite Æfrian. Even though she didn’t know how to be anything else.

Until last night, she could at least think of herself as living evidence of the brutish violation of the Æfrian people by their Kaihonjin occupiers. Thinking about it that way, her Kaihonjin features were unfortunate, but inescapable. A birth defect.

What did she do with the knowledge that her mother had fallen for an occupier? That her mother was a traitor? To her family, to her people, and to her daughter. Her Kaihonjin features weren’t a birth defect, they were an intentional creation. Two people had come together to make her like this. She hated them both.

Mildred sprawled back onto the cold, aluminum deck, arms splayed, and wished she could be in another body.

“Well, what if I teleport out after I grab the baby?” Sayuri said.

“What are the pirates gonna do after that? Leave Birch Home alone? Or d’ya think they’ll burn it to the ground?” Shuu asked.

Sayuri growled. “Would that I could wipe piracy from the face of the planet.”

It concerned Mildred that she might very well have the power to do that. Shuu must have worn similar concerns on his face because Sayuri added, “O-Of course I was sincerely suggesting no such thing, merely giving voice to my frustration. I have no desire to stain my hands with blood.”

Mildred wondered if Sayuri understood how much blood her clan-conglomerate ran on. Across every industrial accident in every factory and power plant, every “worker pacification” campaign, and all the deaths of desperation to escape her family’s Shroud, the Ueichi Electric Power Company probably burned through gallons of blood by the minute.

“Shit, fuck!”

The jug of apple wine slipped from Mildred’s fingers and sank into the depths. Mildred held her face in her icy hands. Silence told her the Ueichi brat and the Imperial spy were both looking at her and her mess.

“Talk!” Mildred said. The other two said nothing. “Mind your own fucking business and get back to talking!”

Just as Mildred was about to repeat her injunction a third time, Sayuri’s eardrum-puncturing voice sputtered to life.

“O-Oh! Oh, oh, oh! I think I have got it! Mr. Fukuzawa, I think I have our plan.”

“What’s that now, lass?”

“We could have Milly pose as an Imperial official representing Imperial Mining and Resources. And— and then she can inform them they must return their hostage and leave the village alone or be subject to punitive action in the name of the Emperor. It would be such a clever ruse!”

“Sayuri, you sound more brain-damaged than Thomas,” Mildred said.

“It’s the first one she’s come up with that sounds practical,” Shuu said. “Ya look Kaihonjin enough to fool someone at a glance, and ya got the acting skills.”

Fine words from the Imperial spy.

“And I suppose you want me to risk getting machine-gunned into chitterling if they call our bluff?” Mildred asked.

“Aye, lass, I can’t tell ya to do somethin’ ya don’t want to do. But Sayuri looks too young to fool them and I look too old and sloppy, plus my acting skills aren’t half a’ yours,” Shuu said.

Milly was tempted to blow the whistle on his charade right then and there, but Sayuri would’ve done something even stupider in response, so Milly bit her tongue.

“Except, I don’t look like an Imperial bureaucrat either, in case you’ve noticed,” she said, spreading the sleeves of her distinctly-Æfrian wool cloak.

“I’ve…” Shuu paused, working his jaw. “—got a uniform.”

“You possess an Imperial official’s uniform, Mr. Fukuzawa?” Sayuri asked.

“Used to be a game warden for the Valonmaa Preservation. Came down here after I retired and bought my boat. Kept the uniform,” Shuu lied.

“You have lived an interesting life, Mr. Fukuzawa,” Sayuri said, buying it completely.

Her level of naivety bordered on suicidal. The girl had no idea how lucky she was that someone as honorable as Thomas was the one to scoop her up. Mildred’s attention returned to how sick she felt.

Asleep, she dreamt of the man she shot. Awake, she simmered constantly with a rage she could not—or would not—calm at the naked injustices she was helpless to prevent. And now her one source of stability, her sense of Æfrian identity and her role in building an independent Æfrian nation, was gone.

“Milly, they have no other—-”

“Fine,” Mildred said. “I’ll wear the fucking uniform. But you—” She jabbed a finger at Sayuri. “—are dressing up in your little kimono and you’re coming with me. This is your plan, and if things go sideways, you’re getting us out. I’m not dying for some stranger’s crotchfruit.”

Stolen story; please report.

As an ironical atheist devotee of Loothsa, Mildred was obliged to obey and follow through on the whims of wine-drunk insanity. Her decision wasn’t truly spontaneous. Not really. But it was the fruition of a chain of a thousand million little decisions and events so thick and dense and overlapping that they faded into dark unknowability.

After she lay down for the night, a few links of that chain fluttered in the darkness. Something came. Too incomplete, too dramatic to be a memory. Too solid and too old to be a dream.

The walls of her old classroom rose around her and the piercing green eyes of her teacher, Ms. Beth, met her. Words so sanguine they dripped blood came from a Mother of Æfria:

“Today is our school’s last day. Tomorrow, it will be knocked down in the name of profit. Today you are students and tomorrow you will be unemployed. But you did not waste your time here. You are our future. You are our Æfria. If you remember nothing else, remember that.

“We help each other because we are one big family, and that is how we have to think if we ever want to emerge from our enslavement. Only when every single Æfrian thinks like this, when not one steps on his or her brother or sister at the promise of extra table scraps, when we help one another not because we would gain, but because we would want to be helped—then we can be free. Don’t you DARE forget that.”

Never had Mildred Drake, the half-breed of the Drake clan, felt more Æfrian than when she shouted back in concert with her entire class. “Yes ma’am!”

Mildred hadn’t thought she drank that much, but the next morning woke with a pounding headache and a mouth so dry it made the polluted river look tempting. She slammed a mug of lukewarm tea then drank the rest of the cooled boiler water and was still thirsty.

“When are we doing this?” Mildred asked, doing her best to push through quivering anxiety.

“Soon as possible might be best,” Shuu said, “no way of knowin’ when they’ll get antsy for money.”

Mentally, if not physically, Mildred felt somewhat better than yesterday, if only because their dangerous plan was more imminent and more threatening than her identity crisis. Her mind didn’t have the space for both crises.

Mildred and Sayuri used Hilda’s cabin to change. Sayuri, of course, fit her kimono perfectly even though it was a little ripped and torn. Shuu’s uniform, however, was not a good fit.

It consisted of a high-collared, single-breasted dark indigo jacket with service ribbons, a pair of matching slacks, a belt with golden buckle, a peaked cap bearing a white Imperial insignia on the front, and black shoes so scuffed they were almost gray. It smelled moldy and was just damp enough to be uncomfortable. The main problem, however, was the size.

The slacks bunched around her ankles and were long enough to trip over, the jacket stopped halfway down her thighs, the hat slid around on her head, the shoes were four sizes too big, and her fingertips barely cleared the jacket sleeves.

Sayuri tapped her chin. “You…”

“Don’t look convincing. I know,” Mildred said.

“What should we do? Your shoes we can stuff with rags, but for the rest… perhaps we ought to confer with the other two?”

A good performance lay in the details, and the details screamed imposter. But something in her made her want to solve this herself, without involving Shuu or Thomas. Their answers would be wrong.

“Do you think your hatsuden could shrink Shuu’s uniform?”

Sayuri shook her head. “I lack an omniscient knowledge of what I am capable of, however, according to our scientists, nothing I do outright adds or removes matter. I could use it to carve your garments, though I have not the hands of a seamstress.”

“Better an oversized uniform than a shredded one,” Milly said with a sigh. “But it— hmm…”

Mildred shrugged off the jacket leaving her in the uniform’s black button-down undershirt. It was big on her too, but with the sleeves rolled to her forearm and the hem tucked into her trousers, the dark color hid wrinkles and gave it a passable fit. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail, tucked it under the cap and threw the uniform jacket over her shoulder, holding it by a thumb.

“Better?”

“A-Ah— O-Oh, erm, I-I should think so,” Sayuri said, her eyes suddenly more interested in the cabin’s cross-beams.

“Good. The trousers we can pin into cuffs with some safety pins. I’m sure Hilda won’t mind if we borrow a few,” Milly said, rifling through kitchen drawers.

Once the pants were pinned, Milly straightened the cap and belt and stuffed her shoes full of dish rags until they stopped sliding around when she walked. She wanted a full-length mirror to look at, but Sayuri’s opinion would have to do.

“Well? Do I look like one of His Augustness’ appointed representatives for the Imperial Mining & Resources Company?”

Sayuri pursed her lips and nodded curtly.

“Good,” Mildred said.

Her “assistant” scurried after her, protesting Mildred walking too fast now that she was back to being trapped in a restrictive kimono.

Getting the uniform straightened out gave her some confidence as she strode down the gangplank.

Thomas stood up. “Wow, Milly, you look good. Err, like an Imperial officer.”

She giggled. “That’s Lieutenant Drake to you, private.”

Thomas smirked. “Staff sergeant, actually. Though, Lieutenant, I’d advise that you are currently engaged in a dress code violation. Are you trying to disrespect His Augustness?”

“Yeah, fuck Him.”

Shuu didn’t seem as enthralled by their roleplay and was trying to hide his grimace at her blasphemy against the Heimei Emperor.

“You think she’ll pass, Shuu?” Thomas asked.

“To a bunch of river pirates? Yeah, she oughta pass. Won’t work too good on anyone who knows what they’re looking at. And I wouldn’t let ‘em get too close a look,” he said.

Milly had already surmised that the uniform, with its service ribbons and peaked cap, was not a game warden’s uniform. Fortunately, it was enough to fool Sayuri, who had probably forgotten that anyone other than clan-conglomerates could field standing armies.

“Let’s get going, Shuu,” Milly said, afraid that if she had to sit and think about it any longer she’d be sick.

The boat ride was short. There was barely enough time to practice a Kaihonjin accent before they came upon the four beached motorboats the Birch Homers reported at the bottom of a forested hill. Shuu slowed the Daisagi-Maru before they got any closer. The shore was exposed. Her performance started before her feet touched dry land.

“Here,” Thomas said, “this’ll complete the look.”

He held out his gun. Even knowing there was no ammunition in it, the sleek, black polymer pistol carried an ominous aura. Her own dinky little revolver looked like something for self-defense. It projected the image of a last-ditch effort. But the milled lines of Thomas’ ruthlessly efficient killing tool invited, even welcomed, threat. The gun spoke, and it said, “use me.”

“Best not,” she said, pushing the thing back towards him. “I just have a feeling.”

He looked at her with his big green eyes that were like staring up into a forest canopy and when he saw that she was serious, he tucked the gun away.

“Be careful, Milly.”

“I know.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

To steady herself, she ran through her plan again. Thomas would hide behind the far side of the bridge as Shuu pulled them in, Mildred—or Hinomiya, her stage name—would step off with her assistant, Ms. Ashimoto. She would look irritated and inconvenienced, barge her way up to the camp, and demand to see their leader who would willingly turn over their hostage, leave the Birch Homers alone, and all would be well.

The only hitch in the plan was that, before they made it to shore, six ragged-looking men and women came down the beach with assault rifles in their hands, their cold eyes watching the Daisagi-Maru drift in.