Austria, Nurmengard.
Vinda Rosier was reporting to Grindelwald on several important matters.
"The Poland Ministry of Magic has accepted our covert political support. Naturally, they've also signed a number of treaties..."
"We're also looking for ways to infiltrate the Russian Ministry of Magic, the largest of the ministries that split off from the Soviet Union's Ministry of Magic. But quite a few other factions have the same idea, so the Russian Ministry of Magic has cracked down hard, costing us a considerable number of people. Still, what we've managed to retain is quite satisfactory."
"The United States Congress..."
Grindelwald offered no comment on Vita's arrangements around the world. He merely looked down at an old thread-bound book.
Its pages were yellowed and aged, and the page he had opened to contained the "Ode to the Epang Palace."
Grindelwald had discovered that Shawn greatly admired China's Qin Shi Huang. For someone born and raised in England, that admiration was baffling and seemingly without reason. So far, he had been unable to uncover its precise origins.
But to Grindelwald, that did not matter.
If he was going to teach the boy, he first needed to understand his preferences and ideals so he could identify and fill the gaps.
Although he had learned the Chinese language, he still struggled somewhat with Classical Chinese. Those characters borrowed to stand in for other words were sheer torment.
He had only just finished making sense of "Discourse on the Six States" when Shawn recommended the "Ode to the Epang Palace."
Only Grindelwald, with his extraordinary intelligence and first-rate capacity for learning, could manage it. Any other old foreign man would probably have gone mad.
Vita found nothing unusual about Grindelwald's behavior. He had taught her how to divide her attention between two tasks, after all. Then