When Tanya reached the eastern battlement, she did not remain behind the soldiers or content herself with shouting encouragement from safety.
The moment she saw the surrendered Royal Guards lying face down upon the bloodstained stone—Eternal Guards binding their hands and gathering their discarded weapons—recognition flashed across her face.
She knew them.
And the sight of those familiar men surrendering after what they had done did not calm her fury. It only made it burn hotter.
To the astonishment of Captain Conrad and everyone upon the wall, Tanya stormed among the prisoners and began kicking them back onto their feet. Her small figure, red dress, borrowed fireman's helmet, and protective goggles made her look almost absurdly out of place amid the blood and shattered stone.
Yet there was nothing amusing in her fury.
She cursed them for their cowardice, their betrayal, and the oaths they had broken. She refused to grant them the easy escape of surrender, trial, and execution. They had not earned the mercy of a clean death before a firing squad.
If they wished to escape damnation, they would have to purchase redemption.
They would pick up their rifles, swear themselves to her, and fight until their treachery had been washed away through service, sacrifice, and death. They would become her personal Death Guard—the first soldiers of a condemned corps whose old lives had ended upon that battlement and whose second oath would end only when they did.
Those who refused would not be treated as prisoners. Tanya promised to deal with them herself.
The men were shaken by the sight of her.
They looked at the spent casings beneath their knees, the bodies upon the wall, and the palace burning beyond the gardens. Shame settled over men who only moments earlier had been firing upon the loyalists now standing around them.
The first Royal Guard rose slowly onto one knee.
With tears gathering in his eyes, he struck his fist against his heart and swore himself to Tanya until death.
Others followed.
Rifles were lifted from the stone. Oaths were spoken. One by one, the surrendered guardsmen rose again—not forgiven, but condemned to earn forgiveness beneath Tanya's command.
Captain Conrad recovered from his surprise and immediately put them to use. The newly formed Death Guard joined the firing line along the eastern battlement, turning their weapons against the same Resurrectionists beside whom they had fought only minutes before.
The effect upon enemy morale was immediate.
Word spread through the gardens that the eastern wall had fallen, that First Company had returned, and that Royal Guards were defecting beneath Tanya's banner. Men who had once believed themselves part of a righteous restoration now watched their own comrades fire upon them from the walls.
From the south, Dieter's forces continued pressing through the captured gate and battlements.
From the east, Tanya, First Company, the SEK, and her new Death Guard drove inward.
Caught between both advances, the Resurrectionists began withdrawing toward the palace.
The pressure upon the besieged First Company barracks weakened with them. The three-story building stood northeast of the palace proper, surrounded by gardens and not far from the lake where Oskar had once slipped away at night to bathe beneath the stars. His old bedroom windows overlooked the same stretch of water.
Those windows now flashed with rifle fire.
The barracks had been battered nearly into ruin. Shells had opened holes through its walls, collapsed part of the roof, and driven the surviving Eternal Guards into the upper floors. Yet with loyalist fire now pouring from the eastern wall, the men inside began striking back with renewed strength.
The Resurrectionists attacking through the gardens were caught from the flank. Machine guns swept their exposed positions. Rifles cracked from the battlements. Grenades fell among troops who had believed the barracks only moments from collapse.
Even the remaining tank began to withdraw.
Its ammunition was nearly exhausted, and its fuel was running low. The trucks that had accompanied Prittwitz's Seventh Army lay destroyed before the southern side of the palace, their wrecks burning beneath fire from the captured walls.
Additional shells and fuel had been carried inside before the battle closed around them, but the southern grounds were now too exposed for the tank to rearm safely.
It reversed through the gardens and disappeared around the northern side of the palace, seeking shelter behind the main building near the royal stables. The horses within had been awake since the first explosions, kicking at their stalls and screaming whenever another blast shook the ground.
There, behind the palace, the tank might still be refuelled and supplied from the stores held inside. Yet it's retreat left the infantry without heavy support. Thus the Resurrectionists fell back faster.
While inside the palace, the situation was no less chaotic.
Crown Prince Wilhelm moved through smoke-filled corridors with a pistol in hand, watching the restoration begin to collapse around him. Reports reached him from every direction: sections of the southern wall had fallen, the eastern defenses had been breached, the First Company barracks still resisted, and Tanya herself was now leading loyalist forces through the grounds.
The great entrance hall had become a killing ground.
Servants had been forced onto their knees or stomachs beneath the watch of armed Royal Guards. Bullets came through shattered windows and splintered doors, passing above their heads and tearing through carved woodwork, marble columns, chandeliers, and decorative glass.
The loyalists outside either did not know that hostages were being held there—or did not care.
Their fire continued without pause.
To Wilhelm, the meaning was clear. Time was running out. Worse still, his men had not brought him Oskar's family.
He had been waiting at the first-floor landing overlooking the stairwell, expecting at any moment to see Oskar's wives and children dragged upward from the underground refuge.
Instead, another group of his own men staggered out.
They emerged coughing and half-blind through a column of smoke so dense that it rolled into the corridor like morning fog. Two soldiers dragged a wounded Royal Guard between them, his boots scraping through blood and spent casings. Another man stumbled out clutching one useless arm against his chest before collapsing beside the wall among the others already lying there.
The passage surrounding the stairwell had become a makeshift casualty station.
Dead and wounded men lay beneath the windows and along the corridor walls. Some had been shot. Others had been torn open by grenade fragments or burned by explosions below. Officers shouted for medics while soldiers pressed dressings against wounds, tightened tourniquets, and dragged those still breathing away from the entrance.
Another grenade detonated somewhere beneath them.
The blast rolled up the stairwell and shook dust from the ceiling. Smoke surged after it, followed by the shouts and coughing of men retreating from yet another failed assault.
Wilhelm stared into the darkness below, fury tightening across his face.
The Eternal Guards were yielding ground, but only one landing at a time. Every bend of the staircase had become another barricade, another ambush, another place where his soldiers died without ever seeing the defenders clearly.
And still Oskar's family remained beyond his reach.
They were the key to everything.
The Kaiser and Empress were valuable prisoners, certainly, but the loyalists outside appeared willing to risk the lives of servants, courtiers, and perhaps even the imperial couple themselves. Compared with Oskar's wives and children, everyone else seemed expendable.
But with those women and children in his hands, Wilhelm could control his brother. He could force Oskar to kneel. Perhaps he could even make him place a blade against his own belly and push.
The thought drew another smile beneath Wilhelm's hood.
Then his gaze shifted toward the shattered entrance hall, where bullets continued passing above the servants crowded upon the floor.
Perhaps the loyalists merely needed to see whom they were endangering.
That thought widened his grin almost to breaking.
General Prittwitz approached with a rifle held across his chest.
"Your Highness, what are we to do?" he asked. "Our casualties are mounting, ammunition is running low, and no one can find Field Marshal Moltke. Have you seen him?"
Wilhelm barely glanced at him.
"Calm yourself, General. You are now a servant of the true gods, and all proceeds as they have ordained."
Prittwitz stared at him.
"You need only continue the assault below," Wilhelm said. "Bring me Oskar's family and hold the vermin outside for as long as necessary."
"Until when?"
Wilhelm raised his face toward the ceiling, as though looking beyond the stone and into the heavens above.
"Until the hour of his arrival."
Prittwitz's expression tightened. He did not understand what the prince meant, and the growing madness in Wilhelm's voice frightened him more than he wished to admit.
Then Wilhelm looked directly at him. Beneath the hood, his eyes appeared utterly black.
Prittwitz faltered.
His knees struck the floor before he consciously chose to kneel.
"As you command, Your Highness," he said, voice unsteady. "It will be done."
Wilhelm turned away.
Six Royal Guards formed behind him as he strode along the western corridor toward the principal staircase and the upper floors.
He was going to see his parents.
Prittwitz remained beside the smoking stairwell and watched them disappear.
Around him, wounded soldiers looked up with exhaustion and desperation in their eyes. The restoration had begun with speeches, white armbands, prayers, and promises that the old monarchy would rise again.
Now it was collapsing into blood, madness and smoke. But retreat was no longer possible.
Every man involved had committed treason against the imperial state and raised weapons within the royal household. Defeat would mean execution. Their ranks and honors would be stripped away. Their names would be disgraced, and their families would carry that disgrace long after they were dead.
They would win, or they would die inside the palace trying.
Prittwitz forced the fear from his face and turned toward his officers.
"Bring forward every grenade we have left," he ordered. "Tear cloth from the curtains if necessary. Soak it in the bathrooms and bind it across your mouths and noses."
One officer hesitated only briefly before saluting.
The orders spread.
Men gathered near the stairwell, tying wet strips of cloth over their faces. Grenades were distributed. Fresh magazines were driven into rifles. Those still capable of standing formed behind their officers, preparing to descend in one overwhelming rush.
They believed they were gathering for another assault. They did not know what was being prepared beneath them.
Inside Oskar's underground complex, the surviving Eternal Guards were arranging sealed chemical containers near the stairwell, freight elevator, and service lift. Once the final defenders withdrew through the immense doors of the Oskar Industrial Group meeting chamber, those doors would be sealed. Oskar's family would retreat still deeper into the laboratory, behind another set of reinforced barriers.
Then the chemicals would be released into the approaches.
The poison was not meant to travel through the ventilation system. It would be driven directly upward through the stairwell, elevator shafts, and open passages, spreading into the occupied floors while the family and its defenders remained sealed behind steel.
The ventilation shafts served another purpose.
They continued feeding clean air into the underground refuge from hidden intakes around the palace grounds and the damaged First Company barracks. If the Resurrectionists discovered those shafts and closed them, they might suffocate the people below.
But they did not know the system existed.
Oskar had installed it years earlier as part of his attempt to modernize the palace—to keep its rooms warm in winter, cool in summer, and properly supplied with fresh air. Large steel trunks now ran behind walls and above ceilings throughout the newer sections of the building.
And inside those same ducts, Karl crawled unseen.
He had intended to cross the basement toward the eastern wing. Instead, unfamiliar bends and rising shafts had carried him upward until he found himself above the palace's first floor.
The sounds had changed around him. Explosions below became sharper gunfire, breaking glass, shouted orders, and the pounding of boots along corridors.
Karl stopped above a narrow grille.
Through it, he saw the chaos beneath him.
Smoke and plaster dust drifted through the hallway. Royal Guards ran between rooms, crouching beneath windows as they moved to reinforce firing positions. Wounded men lay against the walls while others worked over them beneath the continuing gunfire.
Then Karl saw the hooded figure.
The man passed beneath the ventilation grille with a pistol hanging loosely in one hand, six Royal Guards following close behind him.
Karl had never seen Crown Prince Wilhelm like this, but after everything Essen had told him, there could be little doubt.
That was the mad prince, the main man behind the coup.
Karl fumbled for his revolver and twisted awkwardly inside the cramped ventilation shaft. The barrel scraped against the sheet metal as he tried to angle it downward through the narrow slats. There was barely enough room to turn his wrist, much less aim properly.
Wilhelm was directly beneath him.
Karl pressed one eye toward the grille and fought to line up the shot. Perhaps the bullet would punch through the thin metal. Perhaps luck would carry it into the prince's skull.
The revolver scraped again, causing a faint metallic squeal to travel through the duct.
Below, Wilhelm stopped. The six guards halted with him.
Karl froze, scarcely daring to breathe. His finger tightened against the trigger as he tried to force the barrel into position.
For several seconds, Wilhelm merely stood there with his head slightly tilted, listening.
Then he laughed.
It was a sudden, quiet sound, as though he had heard something enormously amusing that no one else could understand.
The laughter grew louder for a moment, echoing strangely through the damaged corridor. Then Wilhelm lowered his head and continued onward without explanation.
His guards exchanged uneasy glances before following.
Karl watched them disappear.
"Damn it," he whispered.
He pulled the revolver back against his chest.
Shooting through the vent had been a foolish idea. He could barely aim, the metal might deflect the bullet, and even if he somehow struck Wilhelm, the guards below would immediately fill the duct with gunfire.
He would accomplish nothing except getting himself killed inside an air pipe.
Karl resumed crawling, but with every meter the ventilation system seemed to carry him farther from where he needed to be.
The unfamiliar ducts twisted, narrowed, rose, and divided without any clear pattern. He no longer knew whether he was moving east toward Oskar's family or wandering uselessly through the palace walls. Worse, every second spent inside the shaft was another second in which the family remained trapped and the defenders below were being pushed closer to destruction.
This was taking too long.
He needed to get out, find his bearings, and act before there was no one left to save. And if he encountered Wilhelm again, perhaps one well-placed bullet could still end the restoration at its source.
A short distance ahead, the duct divided.
One branch rose sharply toward the upper floors. The other turned left.
Karl recognized the direction.
The left-hand branch should pass above one of the modern staff lavatories Oskar had installed during the palace renovations.
He took it.
The metal trunk narrowed around his torn batsuit as he crawled onward, pointed hood brushing against the ceiling and cape dragging behind him. Soon he reached another grille and looked through.
Below lay a surprisingly elegant bathroom.
Pale tiles covered the floor and lower walls. Marble-topped sinks stood beneath broad mirrors, their brass taps gleaming beneath electric lamps. Polished wooden partitions enclosed a row of private stalls, while pipes and porcelain fixtures reflected Oskar's determination to drag even the servants' conveniences into the modern age.
The room appeared empty.
Karl studied it through the grille for another moment before working his fingers against the screws holding the cover in place. Most turned without protest, but the last resisted stubbornly. He twisted harder until the metal gave a faint, complaining squeal.
Catching the grille before it could fall, he carefully pushed it aside.
Then he lowered himself through the opening.
For a moment, Karl hung from the edge by both hands, his revolver clenched firmly between his teeth and his torn cape dangling beneath him.
Then he released his grip.
Karl dropped onto the tiled floor, struck shoulder-first, and rolled smoothly across the room. A heartbeat later, he rose onto one knee with his cape settling dramatically behind him and the revolver already raised before his face.
In Karl's opinion, the landing had been exceptionally heroic.
Then he noticed that he was not alone.
A man stood only a few meters away, pressed flat against the wall beside the door.
He had clearly expected danger to enter from the corridor. From his position, anyone stepping through the doorway would have passed directly before him without seeing him until it was too late. A heavy kitchen knife rested low beside his thigh, gripped tightly and ready to be driven into the back of the first Royal Guard unfortunate enough to enter.
It was, Karl had to admit, a reasonable ambush.
The man had prepared himself for soldiers coming through the door.
He had not prepared for a small black figure with pointed ears to fall out of the ceiling.
For one long, startled heartbeat, neither of them moved.
They simply stared at one another.
The stranger looked absurdly well prepared for a pleasant morning rather than a palace coup. He was young, tall, and powerfully built, with broad shoulders beneath a fitted black waistcoat and a white shirt whose sleeves had been rolled neatly to his elbows. His blond hair had been combed back with meticulous care, though several strands had come loose across his forehead. His face was freshly shaved, his jaw sharp and square, and his cold blue eyes belonged far more naturally to a soldier than to any kitchen assistant.
Even his polished brown shoes and wristwatch suggested that he had dressed for a date.
The knife did not.
Recovering first, the young man swung the blade toward Karl.
Karl pointed the revolver directly at his chest.
Knife against pistol.
The stranger immediately understood the imbalance.
The knife clattered onto the tiles.
"I surrender."
"Hands where I can see them."
The man raised both hands.
"Who are you?" Karl demanded.
"An assistant cook," the stranger answered quickly. "That is all. I was off duty and came to meet my girlfriend when her night shift ended. Then the shooting began. I mean you no harm."
Karl studied him.
The man's hands were raised, but his feet remained planted with perfect balance. His shoulders were relaxed without being loose, and his eyes continued measuring the distance between them.
He looked like a trained killer attempting to impersonate a kitchen servant.
Karl's gaze dropped to the plain ring upon his left hand.
"Bullshit."
The stranger stiffened.
"Your girlfriend?" Karl continued. "Then why are you wearing an engagement ring? And why does a cook's assistant look as though he could strangle a lion with his bare hands?"
The man's expression hardened. For a moment, Karl thought he might lunge despite the revolver.
Instead, Karl reached up and pulled back the pointed hood.
"Calm yourself. It is me—Karl von Jonarett. Oskar's best friend, his right hand, the wealthiest dwarf in Europe and, very possibly, the entire world."
He raised his chin.
"You may call me Batman."
Recognition slowly replaced suspicion.
"Sir Karl?"
The young man dropped onto one knee and struck his fist against his heart.
"My apologies, sir. I did not recognize you beneath the—"
"Batsuit."
"Yes, sir. The batsuit."
"Name and unit."
"Corporal Leonhard Falk, First Company, Eternal Guard."
Karl nodded toward the ring.
"And she is not your girlfriend."
"My fiancée," Falk admitted. "She works among the palace staff. We were supposed to leave for a short holiday in Switzerland once her shift ended this morning."
He glanced toward the closed door.
"I believe the Resurrectionists have her in the great entrance hall with the other servants."
Karl retrieved the fallen knife and returned it handle-first.
"Then we have the same enemies."
Falk accepted the weapon.
"I saw Crown Prince Wilhelm pass through the corridor with six guards," Karl continued. "He is behind all of this. If we follow him and cut off the head, the rest of the coup may collapse."
Falk remained beside the wall.
"Sir, the corridors are filled with Royal Guards."
"I noticed."
"And I fear Wilhelm may no longer be our greatest problem."
Karl frowned.
"What could possibly be worse than the lunatic who started this?"
Falk glanced downward as another muffled explosion rolled through the floor.
"The men protecting His Highness's family."
Karl's expression sharpened.
"Explain."
"First Company has final measures prepared in case the refuge is about to fall. I was never told the full protocol, but I once overheard several captains discussing it while His Highness was working on a new incendiary substance."
Karl felt something cold settle in his stomach.
"What substance?"
"They called it napalm."
The word struck him harder than the distant explosion.
Karl remembered Oskar's little red book, now locked somewhere inside the underground laboratory. Among its sketches of machines, weapons, and impossible inventions had been notes about a war fought in distant jungles—aircraft dropping burning liquid that clung to trees, buildings, vehicles, and human flesh.
Oskar had once described it to him. Fire that could not simply be brushed away. Fire that stuck.
A bead of sweat ran down Karl's temple.
"I have not been below in some time," he said. "How much napalm is stored there?"
"I do not know," Falk answered. "Experimental barrels, poisonous compounds, industrial chemicals—materials from His Highness's work on nylon and other projects. No one except Oskar knows exactly what is kept in that laboratory."
Karl did not ask whether the guards would use it.
He knew they would.
No captains remained with the family below, only exhausted Eternal Guards driven back toward the final doors—fanatics prepared to die for Oskar's bloodline and destroy the palace, its occupants, and every priceless invention or artifact within it rather than permit the refuge to fall.
"They will seal the family inside the laboratory," Falk continued, "then release the poison and incendiaries into the stairs, lifts, and surrounding passages. Everything above them will become a grave."
Another explosion shook the bathroom. Mirrors rattled, and dust drifted from the open vent.
"How long?" Karl asked.
"I cannot say. The men below cannot hold forever."
Karl looked toward the corridor where Wilhelm had disappeared.
"Well… shit."
He pulled the pointed hood back over his head.
"Then I suppose we save the hostages first and pray to God that the lunatics below do not drown us all in poison and fire before we reach them."
"Yes, sir."
Karl took position beside the doorway with his revolver raised. Falk moved opposite him, holding the stolen kitchen knife close against his forearm.
For a moment, the two men looked at one another.
One pistol. One kitchen knife. Hundreds of hostages, a palace full of armed traitors, and fanatical Eternal Guards preparing to turn everything above them into a burning grave.
Neither had the faintest idea how they were going to save anyone.
But they were sure as hell going to try.