~February 14th, 140 AH~

~Upper Akra, Athelstan Estate~

Of all the Old Earth customs that had made it into Akropolitan society in one bastardized form or another, Martyr’s Day might well have been the most lavishly expensive.

Once a year without fail, on the date an Old Earth patron saint of lovers—and beekeeping, of all things—was said to have been martyred, Akropolitans from all walks of life gathered and intermingled for a day of eating, drinking, dancing, and—presumably—lovemaking. Nearly everything was paid for with Tetrarch funds, which meant it was the one day of the year where Essentials and even Sehermenschen could do away with austerity measures, forget about the war, and concentrate solely on making merry.

For Tetrarchs like Asena, however, the day invariably ended in a formal dinner party at an Upper Akra venue. Despite everything that was happening (or not happening) in her work life, this year was no exception.

Martyr’s Day traditions dictated that engaged or married couples wear matching outfits and sit together with the affiliated family’s patriarch. For many years running now, this meant that Asena sat as the only Shiranui at the Athelstan table, ever acutely aware of her fiancé’s absence.

Of the now twelve years she’d been engaged to Zelen, there’d been a grand total of one Martyr’s Day that they’d attended together, one that a 12-year-old boy and his 10-year-old fiancée spent the entirety of in red-faced silence. Even that had come about only thanks to unscheduled repair work at the Reiter Garrison that saw proto-Reiter training suspended for several opportune days.

For as much as the majority of Akropolitans saw Martyr’s Day—rightly or wrongly—as an excuse to pretend that mankind wasn’t in a century-long war for survival, Reiters and their loved ones often couldn’t afford the same luxury. And nowhere was that disparity on clearer display than at this year’s Athelstan table.

“Did you all have a chance to see the monstrosity Colonel Zhao’s wife is wearing?” a sneering Bannan Athelstan spoke in between large swigs of wine. “You’d think, after twenty odd years in polite company, at least some of our good tastes would’ve rubbed off on her… but I suppose, once an Essential, always an Essential.”

Theirs was by far the smallest table at the gathering. The speaker himself had dressed for the occasion in a dark suit with embroidered collar and cuffs—far too similar to a Joint Forces dress uniform for Asena’s liking. Beside him sat Irena, his young Sehermensch wife who wore a smart dress with matching colours. At the head of the table of course was the grey-haired Chancellor Gerech Athelstan, flanked on either side by his wife Tiamat and Asena herself.

To Asena’s quiet satisfaction, Bannan’s cruel jibe seemed to have fallen flat. She’d ignored it completely, of course, and his father—a serious man of few words at the best of times—merely frowned at the piece of synthetic steak he’d been cutting into. Even Bannan’s wife Irena managed only a nervous and short-lived chuckle, one clearly borne by duty rather than mirth.

Tiamat Athelstan was the only one at the table to humour her son, following up a thin smile with the words, “Good tastes we already have in abundance here in Upper Akra. What we need is loyalty, and that Augustus Zhao and his Sehermensch wife have provided unwaveringly for… what, twenty odd years, did you say?”

Before marrying into the Athelstans, Tiamat had been a Duodecim, and she somewhat shared the broad imposing build typical of the men in her family. She was loquacious where her husband was reticent, and charming where her older son was, well, insufferable. As such, she was the only member at this table that Asena held any real affection for.

“Oh, lighten up, Mother,” Bannan scoffed as he gave his wine glass an exaggerated swirl. “We spend 364 days of the year talking war this loyalty that. What’s the point of living if I can’t spray a little gossip about our friends on Martyr’s Day, of all days?”

As he finished his rebuttal, he glanced Asena’s way and winked, causing her to nearly regurgitate the modest contents of her stomach. Bannan had never seen his wife’s presence as a deterrence to making passes at any woman within his reach, which was yet another reason Asena had begun to dread Martyr’s Day in recent years. As much as she would’ve liked to, she couldn’t admonish him in the current setting without causing drama she didn’t need nor want.

She was momentarily spared from ruminating on her disgust for Bannan Athelstan, as a group of servants arrived en masse to switch out the plates. Dinner guests were now presented with the traditional Martyr’s Day dessert: a layered ‘sponge cake’ topped off with a dollop of synthetic honey. It was clearly meant to be an homage to the ‘beekeeping’ aspect of the actual martyr the holiday was inspired by, but if Asena’s own readings were anything to go by, this was another custom that had departed quite markedly from its Old Earth origins.

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If Asena were honest, she wasn’t a fan. The sponge cake in itself was fine, she supposed, but the honey felt more like an afterthought than an improvement. More of it would dribble and pool on the plate than end up in the same bite with the rest of the cake.

Therefore, her attitude toward the ‘honey cake’ over the years had been one of general apathy. Tonight, however, as she dug into her first spoonful and saw the amber viscous fluid spill ineffectually to the sides, she felt a stab of anger—one that caused her to put down her spoon and stare despondently.

“Something the matter, dear?” Tiamat, ever observant, asked across the table. “You’ve barely eaten all night, and now you haven’t even had a bite of dessert. Shall I ask the kitchen to bring another dish that’s more to your liking?”

“No, it’s quite alright… Mother,” Asena said hastily. “It’s my own problem. My appetite has been… inconsistent of late. The food tonight has been lovely, I can assure you.”

“There’s no need to sugarcoat,” Bannan cut in, still wearing the smarmy smile from earlier. “Frankly, I’m with Asena. This cake has been degrading in quality year by year. Don’t you think so, Mother? Really, I think it’s time I had a proper chat with the chef, remind him who—”

“You will do no such thing.”

A table-ful of eyes turned in unison toward the family patriarch, who’d spoken for what seemed like the first time all evening. He’d done so quietly, with frowning eyes still pointed to his plate, but his singular utterance had been enough to cause Tiamat and Irena to tense in anticipation.

It had no such effect, however, on his oblivious (and clearly intoxicated) son, who prattled on, “I don’t know about you, Father, but I for one would like to see some standards around the place. Just this morning, I caught two of the kitchen staff out smoking in the backyard!” At this, Irena threw her husband the briefest of side-eyes, as if to say, what were you doing in the backyard? “Of course, they scurried away as soon as they heard my voice, but I swear, the next time I see them, I’ll—”

“Enough!”

Gerech banged the table with a fist, jangling plates and knocking over glasses.

A hush quickly fell over the entire room, and Asena could sense dozens upon dozens of curious eyes turn toward their table at once. Tiamat had already leaned in closer to her husband, laying a placatory hand on one arm. Irena, the poor girl, sat frozen, eyes round with terror. Bannan too—finally—regained enough of his senses to clam up and avert his gaze from everyone else present.

Soon enough, Gerech relaxed his posture and sat back in his seat with an audible sigh. Then the servants moved in to clean up the mess, and the chatter around the room slowly built back up to its earlier volume and discordance.

The Athelstans—the smallest and also the most miserable table at the gathering—ate or stared at the rest of their honey cakes in heavy silence. As the servants began to clear the plates and refill wine glasses, however, Tiamat leaned across the table to address Asena once more.

“You mentioned, dear, that you haven’t been eating well. Is there something you’d like to tell us? Something that’s bothering you?”

“It’s really nothing, Mother,” Asena said quickly—perhaps too quickly. “I think I’ve just been preoccupied with work. Things at the base have been unusually busy.”

Normally, keeping her shop talk vague was enough to deflect attention from herself. As much as Akropolitans paid lip service to the Joint Forces and Sehers of any kind, discussing a young Kurator’s latest research project was not anyone’s idea of a fun time. However, nothing about this year’s dinner was exactly normal.

“Is it to do with Zelen?”

Asena stared back at Tiamat, but felt the other eyes on her all the same. She was quickly learning that her top secret mission wasn’t so secret after all. And for that, perhaps she only had herself to blame.

“I can’t…” she stammered. She was never a good liar at the best of times, let alone under the gentle yet penetrating gaze of the Athelstan matriarch. “I can’t talk about it, Mother.”

“You can with us,” Tiamat insisted, voice soft and soothing. “We’re family. You can tell us anything.”

Perhaps Asena herself had had more wine than she ought to have—or she’d simply been waiting too long to hear those words—for she almost did. Told them anything and everything.

Yet, in the last moment, the sight of Tiamat’s square jaws and sturdy shoulders evoked something of the woman’s brother—General Fenix Duodecim—and Asena managed to find her filter once more.

“I hope to,” she said with forced cheer, “once this is all over. But for now, I think it’s best that I stick to protocol. All I can say is… I hope to be the bearer of happy news. For this family. For everyone in Akropolis.”

Tiamat’s eyes flashed for a second, as though she might have more to say. The moment passed quickly, however, and she turned to Irena with an altogether different topic, wine glass in hand. This juncture would’ve also been tailor-made for Bannan to throw in one of his inane quips, but the older Athelstan boy looked to have been sufficiently chastised by the earlier exchange.

The only gaze that lingered on Asena belonged to Gerech. The patriarch’s earlier frown had faded, yet his eyes were narrowed in apparent contemplation. He looked to be in search of something, though even now, he was ever reluctant to give voice to his intentions.

Whatever Gerech was searching for, one thing seemed clear to Asena. He couldn’t find it inside the spacious dining hall of his ancestral estate, any more than he could find it in the polite yet somewhat defiant visage of his future daughter-in-law.

That something had been within his grasp all these years, if he’d only thought to look. And now, it was unclear if he’d ever get it back.