"Donate a battleship?"
Konteradmiral Ludwig von Birkenhagen actually blinked. For a man who normally reacted to surprises with roughly the emotional range of a stone wall, the movement was practically equivalent to falling out of his chair.
A battleship was not a launch, a patrol craft, or even a torpedo boat. It was a capital ship: tens of millions of marks transformed into steel, guns, armor, engines, coal bunkers, and thousands upon thousands of hours of labor. Even a prince of the House of Hohenzollern, comfortably supported by family wealth and investments, could not simply reach into his pocket and pay for something like that.
"Your Royal Highness," Birkenhagen said slowly, "are you joking?"
His tone made it perfectly clear what he thought the answer ought to be. Birkenhagen was an old-fashioned naval officer, rigid in manners and even more rigid where duty was concerned. In his world, a prince making an empty promise merely to escape his studies was not childish behavior. It was an insult to the service itself.
Oskar straightened his shoulders and arranged his face into what he hoped looked like the expression of a very serious adult. "Admiral, I am not joking with you, my man," he said solemnly. "I know that with my current… abilities, I will fail."
He stopped, realized how that sounded, and hurried to correct himself. "Not school. I mean money. Financial resources. Right now, building battleship is absolutely impossible."
Oskar tapped himself once on the chest before continuing. "But, you see, my man, I use money to make money. In these four years, I earn enough bills for big ship. I swear in the name of Chi—" He coughed abruptly. "No. In name of personal honor, I am very clear-headed, very serious person. Not crazy."
His face said determination.
His grammar suggested severe neurological trauma.
Birkenhagen studied him in silence. He had no idea where the boy's confidence came from. As far as the admiral could tell, Oskar looked like someone who belonged almost anywhere except on the bridge of a warship, near a wireless set, or in command of anything more dangerous than a spoon. Perhaps, Birkenhagen thought, the Navy would ultimately be better off if this peculiar prince never joined it at all.
And yet the sheer audacity of the proposal stirred something in him. Perhaps amusement. Perhaps curiosity. Or perhaps some small and deeply impractical corner of his mind still possessed enough optimism to wonder whether miracles occasionally arrived wearing princely uniforms.
Oskar pressed on before the admiral could change his mind about listening. "Admiral, compared to one big battleship, whether I sit here and learn to shout 'aye aye' is not important, yes? If I fulfill promise and extra battleship is built, that is great thing for Navy. Big benefit. If I fail, Academy loses nothing. You lose nothing. Only I lose face."
He smiled at the admiral with an expression so earnest and stupidly hopeful that Birkenhagen's lips almost twitched.
Logically, the chances that Prince Oskar could accomplish what he was promising were microscopic. But if, through some ridiculous accident of providence, he actually succeeded, the Kaiserliche Marine would gain a warship it otherwise would never have possessed. And if he failed, the consequences were hardly catastrophic for the Navy. A prince would be embarrassed, a few officers would be annoyed, and Germany would continue floating.
Birkenhagen exhaled slowly. "Very well," he said at last. "Your Highness, I will agree to your… proposal. But there will be conditions."
Oskar's eyes lit up. "Hit me," he said automatically, before remembering himself. "I mean—please speak, Admiral."
Birkenhagen clasped his hands behind his back. "You have four years until you reach the age at which most officers would complete their initial training. However, I will not give you four years without proof. Within two years—two, not four—you will show me clear evidence that you are making progress toward this battleship. I want something tangible. Money. Contracts. Investors. Partners. Industrial arrangements. Anything that proves this is more than an absurd promise made by a young man desperate to avoid class."
His eyes narrowed. "If you cannot produce such evidence within two years, you will return to this Academy and complete the remaining two years in full. Classes, drills, duties, examinations—everything. Do you understand?"
Birkenhagen paused before adding, with the faintest trace of reluctant practicality, "And if your academic performance proves… difficult, I will find ways to soften the embarrassment where possible, for the sake of your family. But you will be here, in uniform, and you will serve as a proper cadet."
It was, in the admiral's mind, a reasonable compromise. If the prince was merely blowing smoke, there would still be time to repair the damage. Two years of freedom to pursue his fantasy, followed by two years of mandatory training once reality inevitably crushed it.
Oskar's grin nearly split his face. "Admiral," he said, "you have chosen path of light, my man."
It was honestly a miracle he did not give the officer a thumbs-up.
Getting Birkenhagen to agree—getting him to unlock even the smallest side door in the Academy's iron wall—had been harder than almost any boss fight Zhang-Ge had rage-quit in his previous life. But now he had what he needed.
Time.
Time to breathe, time to hunt money as though it were a resource node on a strategy map, and time to avoid four straight years of marching, memorizing, saluting, and being laughed at every time he mangled another German sentence. And if some nineteenth-century version of schoolyard bullying existed among naval cadets and noble sons, Oskar was perfectly happy never to discover what it looked like.
Before his courage could evaporate, he stepped forward, seized Birkenhagen's hand, and shook it with so much raw, boyish enthusiasm that the gesture bordered on physical assault. Karl, standing politely off to one side, watched with horrified fascination.
It looked rather like an overjoyed bear attempting to make friends with a wolf that had never once in its life requested affection.
Birkenhagen endured the handshake because he was a disciplined officer, and discipline could endure many things, but his face suggested that neither war nor weather had ever made him quite this uncomfortable. Oskar finally remembered where he was, released the man's hand, bowed as properly as he could, and headed toward the door. Karl bowed as well, because Karl still inhabited the real world.
The two crossed the courtyard in relative silence, their footsteps fading across the stone. Birkenhagen remained by the window after they had gone, watching the pair shrink below: the prince, tall and broad enough to look more like a young artilleryman than a naval cadet, all muscle and enthusiasm and catastrophic German; and the attendant, small, composed, moving beside him with the quiet resignation of someone who understood exactly how many different ways this could end badly and had chosen to follow anyway.
It was, Birkenhagen had to admit, quite a sight.
"This Royal Highness…" he muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Is he mad, or merely a fool?"
He exhaled and let his gaze drift beyond the courtyard, past the Academy walls and toward the distant masts and cranes of the yards, great skeletal shapes rising against the sky like the promise and hunger of steel.
"But if he truly delivers a battleship…"
The words sounded ridiculous even when spoken privately.
Still, a ship was a ship. Armor was armor. Guns were guns. The Navy did not possess the luxury of laughing at miracles simply because a miracle happened to walk through the door speaking atrocious German.
Duty demanded more than hope.
Birkenhagen turned from the window, returned to his desk, and pulled a telegram form toward himself with the same decisiveness another man might draw a sidearm. His handwriting was clean, controlled, and economical. He reported the prince's unexpected visit, the bizarre request for exemption from ordinary attendance, the promise to finance a capital ship, and the conditions under which Birkenhagen had agreed to permit the arrangement.
He embellished nothing and concealed nothing. His doubts were stated plainly, along with his reasoning. The decision had not been made from weakness, favoritism, or indulgence, but from calculation. If Oskar succeeded, the Navy gained something extraordinary. If he failed, the Academy would still have time to drag him back into the normal course of training.
Somewhere beneath all that professional caution, however, Birkenhagen allowed himself the smallest and most dangerous thing of all: a sliver of hope.
If the prince succeeded, the Kaiserliche Marine—and perhaps the Reich itself—would be stronger.
If he failed…
Birkenhagen's pen paused for half a heartbeat.
Then he continued writing.
If Oskar failed, the Kaiser could deal with him.
Outside the Academy, once the heavy doors had closed behind them and the echoes of the courtyard faded, Karl's self-control finally broke.
"You promised WHAT?" he hissed, his voice strangled with disbelief. "Are you genuinely planning to donate a battleship to the Navy within four years?"
As the man responsible for Oskar's accounts, Karl knew exactly how many marks existed in the prince's name. It was a respectable fortune, carefully managed and quietly grown. During the past year, while Oskar had been busy behaving like some magnificent primitive creature, Karl had discreetly invested portions of that money into several ventures and earned a healthy return.
Healthy, however, was not the same thing as battleship-sized.
Compared with the cost of a modern capital ship, Oskar's fortune was little more than pocket change. Even if he sold everything he owned, stopped eating like a horse, and somehow found himself honest employment, he would still be nowhere near the amount he had just promised.
It was insanity.
Oskar waved one hand as though Karl were complaining about the weather. "Relax, my little man. I know the future."
Karl stopped walking.
"You… what?"
"I mean," Oskar corrected immediately, "I know markets. Trends. Opportunities. My current bills are far from enough, yes. But soon they will not be. From now on, we work hard. We make big money. I do not want to break word to Admiral, and I definitely do not want to go to school."
Karl stared at him the way one might stare at a man calmly announcing his intention to lasso the moon.
"If you fail," Karl said carefully, "the admiral will hate you, the Navy will hate you, the Emperor will erupt like artillery, and the two of us may very well end up selling newspapers beneath a bridge. Do you understand that?"
Oskar shrugged. "Then failure is not option."
Karl closed his eyes briefly. "Yes. Of course. That is exactly the sort of thing every historical disaster says shortly before becoming a cautionary tale."
Still, he followed.
Reckless or not, Oskar was his prince.
They continued through Kiel without escort or ceremony, and Karl considered that a blessing. People certainly stared, but not because they recognized royalty. They stared because Oskar was extraordinarily tall, broad-shouldered, absurdly well-built for his age, with slightly wild blond hair and a uniform that had long since ceased being immaculate. He looked more like a soldier who had misplaced his regiment than a royal prince returning from a private meeting.
Women allowed their gazes to linger.
Men watched him with the instinctive caution people often reserved for large animals.
Fortunately, nobody bowed or saluted. Apparently no one nearby recognized him, and Karl found that deeply comforting.
The fewer witnesses to this madness, the better.
Then a little girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, broke away from her mother and stepped directly into Oskar's path. She tilted her head back and stared up at him, then farther up, apparently fascinated by just how much man there was to look at.
"Guten Tag, Herr Soldat!" she chirped brightly.
Oskar froze.
The words drifted through his mind like smoke from an artillery shell: familiar shapes, vague recognition, and no clear understanding of what he was expected to do with them.
He stared down at the girl.
She stared back, fearless and curious.
Karl felt dread bloom immediately in his stomach.
Oskar gave her a slow, grave nod. "Ah yes, my man," he declared with complete confidence. "Nice day."
The girl blinked.
Then she burst into delighted laughter. "You're weird!" she giggled, covering her mouth with both hands before darting back toward her mother.
The woman looked mortified.
Oskar, meanwhile, looked deeply satisfied, as though he had just conducted a delicate diplomatic exchange with extraordinary skill.
Karl pressed a palm to his forehead.
Please, he prayed silently, let us reach the railway station before His Highness attempts any further international relations.
They resumed walking.
While Oskar and Karl were still making their way toward the station and trying to find a train back toward Potsdam, Birkenhagen's telegram arrived on Wilhelm II's desk.
The Kaiser read it once.
Then he read it again.
By the end, his mustache looked nearly capable of declaring war independently.
Oskar had objected to ordinary study, fled to Kiel ahead of schedule, negotiated behind his father's back with the Academy director, and—most insulting of all—made promises about battleships as though steel, armor, engines, and guns could be bought like sausages at a market stall.
"Hmph!" Wilhelm slapped the paper onto the desk. "Oskar grows more out of line with every passing month. Does he imagine himself some sort of business genius now? Does he believe study is for fools and money simply falls from trees?" His jaw tightened as he paced once behind the desk. "The boy cannot even speak properly, damn it."
He stopped and looked back down at the telegram.
"If money were so easy to make, the whole of Germany would already be a nation of wealthy merchants."
Standing beside the desk was Essen von Jonarett, the Emperor's long-serving steward and Karl's foster father. Essen bowed slightly, choosing his words with the care of a man stepping across thin ice.
"Your Majesty, it may simply be that His Royal Highness wishes to test himself," he said. "Admiral Birkenhagen's arrangement is… not entirely unreasonable. If His Highness fails, he will be compelled to return to the Academy within two years. And if he succeeds…"
Essen allowed the smallest pause.
"…then he will have given a remarkable gift to the Navy and to the Empire."
Wilhelm II did not despise businessmen. Quite the opposite. He understood capital, industry, steel, coal, factories, shipping, and the enormous machinery required to turn national ambition into actual power. Germany's future rested as much upon disciplined industry as upon disciplined soldiers.
But Wilhelm wanted his sons in uniform.
He wanted them commanding ships, leading men, carrying responsibility, and showing the nation that the House of Hohenzollern bore the same duties expected of any German family. And Oskar, of all his sons, had somehow become the strangest.
"Perhaps I expected too much," Wilhelm muttered. "It is natural, I suppose, that one son should turn out… differently."
For a moment, something almost resembling tenderness entered his expression.
Then it disappeared.
"Very well," he said. "Let the boy play merchant. I want to see what tricks he believes he can perform in a few short years."
He lifted Birkenhagen's telegram again and read the lines as though they were charges entered into a court record. "But if, when the time comes, he cannot fulfill this promise—if he brings shame instead of ships—then he will no longer hold the title of Prince."
Essen's expression remained still.
Wilhelm's voice grew colder. "He will be struck from the rolls of the House of Hohenzollern and stripped of his claims and income."
Essen bowed his head, outwardly calm, though something tightened inside his chest. He could already imagine who would suffer first if Oskar's grand experiment collapsed: the small, loyal young man he had once rescued from a northern circus and who was now tied by duty and affection to one of the most reckless princes in Germany.
"After that," Wilhelm continued, "we shall see how capable a businessman he truly is when he is standing in the street without my name, my protection, or my money behind him."
Disappointment sat heavily on the Emperor's shoulders. In Wilhelm's eyes, Oskar had done all of this to avoid duty, avoid discipline, and avoid becoming the sort of proper officer his brothers had already accepted they were expected to become. A son who could dismiss the Naval Academy as garbage, no matter how poor his language, seemed barely worthy of the responsibilities attached to the Imperial House.
Worse, the suspicion that had been growing quietly throughout the palace refused to disappear.
That fall on the staircase nearly a year earlier had not merely injured the boy.
It had changed him.
Wilhelm moved toward the window and stared out into the darkness beyond, toward Berlin, toward Potsdam, toward the railway lines that would eventually bring his son home as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
"Very well, Oskar," he murmured.
"Impress me… or disappear."