Chapter 354: Unending Rain

In early December, the Imperial Capital wasn't exactly tense.

Shops that were supposed to be open still opened their doors, and clerks still stepped out into the early morning dew for work.

The Imperial Capital Opera House was putting on Handel this week.

Performance advertisements still ran in the newspapers as usual. The font was a notch smaller than it had been three months ago, but they were still there.

Yet some things were completely different than they had been in September.

White sugar had gone from being sold by the pound to being sold by the ounce.

Lines began to form outside the sugar shops. Old women wrapped in blankets would wait there at five in the morning while the sky was still pitch-black.

At six o'clock sharp, a manager would take down the door boards, poke his head out to count the length of the line, and turn back to mutter something to the people inside.

By the time the bell rang for opening, the display cases beneath the glass would already be mostly empty.

The price of flour had nearly doubled.

The female clerk's words from when Richard visited the White Birch Dessert Workshop to buy toffee still echoed in his ears.

He had no idea how high the ratio of beet sugar had risen.

Grey had sent him a letter on Tuesday. The envelope was dotted with pale yellow powder—likely crumbs from some pastry.

The letter wasn't long. Grey's handwriting was usually elegant and neat, but a few of her strokes ended more hastily than normal this time.

"Something happened to our family's ships."

She wrote.

"It wasn't a shipwreck, and they weren't intercepted by the enemy. Our own navy requisitioned them."

"A Royal Navy requisition order. They cited a shortage of transport capacity and stated that civilian shipping must yield to military priorities."

"Father went to the Admiralty to negotiate. After he came back, he didn't say a single word for three days."

Richard frowned when he read this.

Grey's family had been in the spice trade for generations.

Shipping routes, vessels, supply sources—every single one was a vital lifeline.

Having a ship requisitioned was like losing an arm. Worse, they had no idea when it would be returned... and in all likelihood, it wouldn't be.

Grey didn't complain much in the letter.

She only added, "Father said he would figure something out," before shifting the topic entirely.

"The cafeteria at St. Bridge has started cutting back on dessert supplies too.

"We used to have three kinds of cake to choose from for afternoon tea. Now there's only one, and it's usually a leftover from the day before.

"Cunningham and her group have been whining endlessly about it, but I think it's fine. Compared to what the men on the front lines are eating, the school cafeteria might as well be the Royal Grand Hotel."

At the end of the letter, Grey had drawn a tiny cat.

Beside it was a line of text, written a size smaller than the rest of the letter.

"Last time, I said I'd treat you to a meal. When are we making that happen?

"If that restaurant in the Imperial Capital has hiked its prices too, we can always just eat sandwiches on a park bench. I really wouldn't mind."

Richard folded the letter and tucked it into his desk drawer.

Grey's letters and his mother's phone calls were among the few things in the Imperial Capital that carried a trace of warmth.

One smelled of flour in a Briston kitchen, while the other arrived dotted with pastry crumbs on St. Bridge stationery.

He thought of Evelyn.

During his last call home, his sister had mentioned that Mrs. Weir's orange kitten had grown big enough to jump onto the windowsill.

Its latest hobby was crouching outside their kitchen window to watch her bake.

Evelyn claimed it had definitely been lured over by the smell of her almond crisps.

Richard thought the cat had excellent taste.

A moderate rain had recently fallen over the Imperial Capital.

The rain had washed the slate path in front of the Petrie Building until it gleamed.

Standing by a second-floor corridor window, Richard watched an undergraduate sprint past with an umbrella. The student's heel struck a puddle, splashing water halfway up his trouser leg.

When he pulled his gaze back, the door to Room 314 was open.

Isabella sat behind her desk with a telegram strip spread out in front of her.

The strip was short. From his angle in the doorway, Richard could make out a few sparse lines of type.

"Arrived. First dive complete.

"Seabed seal condition is worse than estimated. Additional personnel required."

The signature was a single letter: C.

Isabella didn't say a word after reading it. She folded the strip and tucked it into the deepest part of her drawer.

She placed it alongside the letters Sophia had previously sent back from Mons.

Catching sight of her nephew, Isabella rested her hand on the edge of the drawer and ignored him.

The tin of Iris Toffee at the corner of her desk was sealed tight; the lid showed no signs of being opened today.

Clara saying she "required additional personnel" carried a very clear meaning to any Practitioner.

The seabed seals were degrading at a rate that had already outpaced standard maintenance protocols.

Dozens of capital ships—HMS Dreadnought, HMS Iron Duke, Orion...—were anchored in Scapa Flow day and night.

The body heat, breathing, anxiety, and sheer boredom of tens of thousands of sailors on those decks steeped down into the seawater twenty-four hours a day.

Beneath the seabed, Neolithic stone circles and tombs had lain silently for thousands of years.

Those sacrificial ruins were ancient enough underground as it was. Now, a massive pile of steel and the fear of the living were pressing down heavily upon them.

It wasn't the least bit surprising that the seals were in worse shape than estimated.

But the Orkney Islands were the heart of the navy. The roster of Practitioners permitted to touch those seals was strictly controlled.

"Additional personnel" looked simple enough on a telegram, but going through the approval pipeline meant clearing three hurdles.

The Admiralty's security clearance, the Department of Internal Affairs' background check, and the General Administration's coordination of wartime personnel allocation.

By the time all three hurdles were cleared, Clara would have to spend that much longer soaking at the bottom of the sea.

He couldn't help with this matter, and if he couldn't help, he shouldn't stand around being a nuisance.

Richard backed out into the corridor and headed downstairs to his classroom.

As he entered the stairwell, he ran straight into Edith.

The girl was hugging her botanical encyclopedia as usual, her shoes dotted with mud.

"Morning," Edith said, shifting the encyclopedia to her other arm.

"Morning."

The two walked down the stairs side by side.

After a few steps, Edith suddenly spoke.

"Richard, don't you think the school cafeteria's margarine has been getting spread thinner and thinner lately?"

"You noticed it too?"

"They only spread a single layer on yesterday's bread. It was so thin I could see the bread right through the butter."

Edith tilted her head in thought.

"I grew up in a mill, so I know flour prices all too well.

"At the current price of flour in the Imperial Capital, you could buy three times the amount back in my hometown."

"Have prices gone up over there too?"

"They have, but not nearly as outrageously as in the Imperial Capital."

She opened the encyclopedia to a specific page and showed it to Richard.

Tucked inside was a price list swiped from a grocery store. Pencil circles highlighted the rows for flour and butter.

Next to them was a line of her own annotations:

"September to December increase—flour 87%, butter 112%, white sugar unknown because it's impossible to buy."

"You keep track of this too?" Richard was slightly surprised.

"It's a habit." Edith tucked the price list back into the encyclopedia.

"Someone who grew up in a mill will always care more about the price of grain than Latin conjugations."

Her expression was very calm as she said this.

Her fear of hunger was far more deeply ingrained than her fear of whatever lurked behind the veil, because the former was something she had faced every single day growing up.

The two arrived at the classroom door.

Fischer was already seated inside. The bandages on his forehead had finally been removed, leaving behind a fresh pink scar.

He waved as soon as he saw Richard.

"Williams, have you seen today's paper?"

"Which one?"

"The Imperial Capital Morning News." Fischer handed over the newspaper, turning it to the third page.

In the middle of the third page was a column.

The headline read: "Letters from the Front: A Mother's Question."

Below the article was an editorial note, printed in a font so small that one had to lean in to read it clearly.

"This newspaper has received multiple letters from the families of front-line soldiers questioning the officially published casualty figures.

"The editorial board has forwarded the relevant letters to the War Office Press Censorship Department for review. The following content is published after undergoing censorship."

Richard scanned the article.

The mother who wrote it stated that when her son's battalion deployed in August, it had over seven hundred men.

A letter arriving in late November only mentioned that there were "over three hundred brothers in the battalion now."

She asked: where had the other three hundred-plus men gone?

Were they transferred, or were they gone?

If they were gone, why hadn't she received a death notice yet?

The mother's name was hidden, and the unit designation and military formation mentioned in the letter had been blurred out.

But those two numbers—"over seven hundred men" and "over three hundred brothers"—were printed plainly on the newspaper.

"Published after undergoing censorship." Richard read the line again.

"The editorial board forwarded the letter to the War Office Press Censorship Department, and the censorship department read it and let it pass."

Fischer scratched the newly grown skin next to where the bandage had been.

"Do you think the censorship department actually found no issue and let it pass, or is there someone on the inside who thinks the outside world should see this?"

Richard didn't answer that.

He handed the newspaper back to Fischer and sat down in his own seat.

Class hadn't started yet, and the classroom was sparsely filled with less than half the students.

Three seats in the row by the window were empty.

Two belonged to faces he hadn't seen since the semester began; rumor had it they had gone back home, to homes near the front lines.

The other seat was empty because that student had caught a cold, which was actually good news.

Richard pulled out his notebook.

This morning's class was Ritual Languages.

The class bell rang.

Pollock drew two circles on the blackboard with his chalk.

"Today we will continue with something you'll actually find useful."

He wrote a line of Latin on the board.

"Requiescat in pace. (Rest in peace.)"

Pollock put the chalk back in the tray.

"You've all seen this phrase on tombstones.

"But did you know it originally wasn't written for the dead?"

He swept a glance over the students below.

"It was first written for the living to read.

"When a living person stands before a tombstone and recites this phrase, it equals telling the dead below, 'You can stay still.'

"The implication being that if you don't say it, the one down there might move."

The classroom fell silent for a few seconds.

Outside the window, it began to rain again.

The drizzle hit the windowpanes with a dense rustling sound, much gentler than Pollock's chalk words.