This Godforsaken Place

Usually, the butler would receive guests at a time like this. But the bespectacled young man with gold-rimmed glasses had panicked and was sprinting toward Wichli Jasiński's room.

"Master, master! There's a—an officer... a guest has arrived."

The young butler tried hard to control his tongue, but it felt as though it had been tied into a thousand knots. No matter how he tried to straighten it out, he couldn't.

Wichli Jasiński wasn't nearly so flustered. After all, he had once visited Vienna and witnessed a military parade. After the Luxembourg Crisis and the victory over France, Austria had held a celebration, and the victorious soldiers naturally had a place in it.

As a great local noble, Wichli Jasiński had also been entitled to an invitation to Vienna to watch the review.

It was an Austrian tradition, one that had endured from the days of the Holy Roman Empire to the present, because it was a way to display the nation's strength.

That was important to a powerful family—or, for that matter, a great power. It could boost the confidence of the people at home, intimidate enemies and potential adversaries, and even give the economy a little push.

In fact, Franz's beer had conquered the German market outright on the back of two victories over France.

Wichli Jasiński's new butler was a top student at Kraków University: learned, sensible, tall, handsome, young, and passionately devoted to Poland. In every way, he was excellent—except that he didn't like calling himself "master."

Though the butler had finally changed his tune, Wichli Jasiński felt no happiness at all. If anything, it proved that the young man he had always thought so highly of was useless when it mattered.

"There's nothing to panic about. Let me meet him."

Master Wichli Jasiński's decision to greet