Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

  Hendrik, on the other hand, might have been carved in alabaster. Both sat quietly sipping their tea as she studied them.

  “What thing is so terrible that it brings you both to my door?” Casey finally asked, after the first mug of tea was gone. Anna-Katherine would have a second pot prepared and be along shortly.

  Torsten sighed and put his cup down.

  “This may be a situation where I am not capable of objectivity, Your Majesty,” he said seriously. “Given even the doubt, I felt it necessary to bring Hendrik along as an outsider whose opinions should probably have more weight than my own.”

  “Indeed?” Casey asked, fixing the man with a serious stare. “How bad?”

  “It has come to my attention that Judit Chavarría has engaged in a pattern of conduct that comes perilously close to making my spies nervous, Lady Casey,” Torsten expanded. “We presume that she has some inside information, from as-yet-unidentified double-agents in our employ.”

  “What has she done?” Casey asked.

  “Nothing,” Torsten said. “It is who she might be doing it with that has caused consternation in the quarters assigned to pay attention.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Trouble-makers on both ends of the scale,” Torsten said. “Men of power and capabilities to effect changes. Some of them are strongly in your favor. Others resent you personally and would happily join a movement to alter the Imperial Succession.”

  “She is seeking to expose the fault lines?” Casey ventured.

  “She should not even be able to identify them with this level of accuracy,” Torsten countered. “One theory is that she is merely seeking to find them, so that she knows where they are, as any good spy might do. A darker suggestion is that she could be establishing communications to the very centers she might wish to engage, if she were interested in mischief.”

  Casey turned to Hendrik, another long-time uncle of unquestioned loyalty, one she had literally known her entire life.

  “Have you seen the findings?” she asked. “Analyzed the underlying data?”

  “I have, Your Majesty” he said with a voice like gravel. “And I understand Wald’s concerns.”

  “Spell them out,” Casey ordered, focusing on Hendrik and making him speak.

  He had always been a quiet man. Intensely internal, almost to the point of taciturn.

  “Whispers in the right ears at the wrong time might provoke problems in the House of Dukes,” Hendrik said. “Paralyze them at a moment when unity might be critical. In that, she might have miscalculated.”

  That last was delivered with a terrible smile unlike any she had ever seen from the man.

  “How so?” Torsten’s face grew clouded with confusion. Honest confusion, the best kind.

  If Hendrik saw something Torsten had missed, perhaps others did as well.

  “If she seeks to drive the dukes apart, she had not taken into account the people,” Hendrik’s smile turned lethal as he looked at Torsten. “That House has been forced to govern. To challenge the old farts in their private clubs with new thinking. You and Lady Casey have leveled the Houses, something that had never happened before.”

  “So how is this a miscalculation?” Casey asked him.

  “The Dukes like to think they exist as a check on you, Lady Casey,” Hendrik said. “On your government’s ability to do the mundane things that keep the wheels turning and the lights on. But the Charter of Man is only a theory, in spite of the changes Wald has made to things in your name. Power still rests in your hands, if you choose to exercise it. Em has always said that true power was in the Inner Council, Flag Officers of the Blood, before so many of them proved to be such little men. The loss of those men allows Karl VIII to populate the Staff High Command with new men, loyal to her, starting with the Grand Admiral.”

  “And you and Tom Provst,” Casey decided.

  “Only as you command, Your Majesty,” Hendrik nodded with great seriousness. “There are others we could induct, but no Princes of the Blood are ready for that rank. Even Tiede Wachturm will be a decade or more growing into the respect of the fleet that they will need. Today, it is you.”

  “And Jessica,” Torsten interjected. “That is why I asked Hendrik to join us in our own little conspiracy.”

  “Conspiracy?” Casey turned her attention back to Torsten.

  “Judit could rile up the Dukes with various promises of support,” Torsten continued. “Both the patriots and the grumblers. She could make promises to both to not intervene, if they chose to clean house, however that phrase was interpreted. That tension could cause trouble, possibly even fracture the fleet itself. Not everyone who was loyal to Sigmund Dittmar has been identified and removed. There is always the risk of another Blue Essex.”

  “Even after I had him executed?” Casey growled.

  “Because of, or in spite of,” Torsten countered. “It matters not. Dead, he becomes a useful martyr. Alive, he might have been a rallying point for those sorts of men.”

  “So what should be done about the Palatine?” Casey asked.

  “Nothing,” Hendrik spoke up definitively. “If she is causing trouble for the Empire, over and above the usual, we will need far better evidence before we go public. And we might never, anyway.”

  “Never?” Torsten asked.

  Casey would have spoken, had Torsten not.

  “Never,” Hendrik repeated with force. “That might be her trump card, and the reason I am here. Suppose we are offended enough to order her to withdraw. What then?”

  His eyes contained the angry growl that never made it to his lips. Casey held her peace.

  “We order her gone, yes,” he continued. “And the Aquitaine Senate is so mortally offended that they order Jessica to withdraw as well, with all of her forces. The War with Buran is returned to the status quo ante, which we were in the process of losing. Em and your father have both mentioned in my presence that Keller might be the only thing that saves us. What happens without her?”

  “What about Moirrey?” Casey asked. “What if she succeeds?”

  “Then I expect Chavarría to step up her games,” Hendrik replied. “To possibly provoke us to the point that we order her to go, and risk losing Keller’s forces in the balance. What happens then?”

  “Then Jessica plans to retire,” Torsten said. “And she and I would return to Petron.”

  “So the head of the civilian government is replaced, and their best commander departs,” Hendrik nodded. “We still have a potential two-front war on our hands, especially if the Republic decides to get snitty about being caught with their hand in the cookie jar. This might all be exactly to cause that situation, so that they could restart the war, with us being in the moral and ethical wrong.”

  “Hendrik, in case I haven’t told you, or Em has not, we will not be trying to conquer Buran space, even if Moirrey or Jessica succeeds,” Casey’s own hard voice matched the Admiral’s. “Trade and exploration are acceptable, but I would rather they slowly implode over the next century and turn into something else while we watch from behind our current barricades, and I intend to raise my children with that understanding. We can have peace for my lifetime, if we do it right, and at the end of that time, I expect Fribourg to be rich enough and powerful enough that other worlds demand to join the Empire, rather than being forced. Enter that in your notes for your successors, as well.”

  She watched the man like a hawk as he nodded. Father had always said that the key to ruling was to not make too many orders, but to let the experts you had chosen run things, only stepping in when a change was needed.

  Or a hard, bright line drawn, like this one.

  Give her twenty-five years, and she could take the underlying strength of Fribourg and build it into a force comparable to the ancients in scope and wealth.

  If she could have that peace.

  Casey could understand the games Judit was probably playing. At almost no risk to herself, she could insert burning splinters of wood under the Emp
ire’s fingernails. And anything Casey did would only provoke the situation.

  “What have you told Jessica?” Casey turned back to Torsten.

  “Nothing, as yet,” he said. “As I said, I may not be capable of objectivity, or even the perception thereof, given the situation. Thus Hendrik, whose credentials no man or woman will challenge. Jessica does know, via Em I might add, about Moirrey’s mission. He asked her to escalate on the Altai front to distract Buran. She would not have risked communicating anything important back to Ladaux, as she takes the Imperial Flag flying overhead seriously.”

  “So we may have two openings,” Casey observed, including both men in her calculations. “One, the Dukes are not the center of power they were even two years ago, and this poor, overwhelmed waif of a girl-emperor might not have to rely on all those important men to make decisions for her.”

  That got a chuckle from both men, as she intended. Many of the nobles believed exactly that about her, and would make mistakes that way, like Kiril Hahl had.

  “Two,” she continued. “If Moirrey succeeds, I can think of no greater wedding present to you and Jessica than to quickly withdraw her from the front line, reward all of her people, and send them home with the gratitude of the Fribourg Empire. I want both of you to make lists of the rewards, awards, and glory we could shower on Denis, Robbie, Alber’, Kigali, Whughy, Strnad, Vlahovic, and others. And we need something extra special for Phil Kosnett and his people. Let’s short-circuit Judit’s punch, rather than trying to block it.”

  “As you command,” Hendrik said, rising with a gleeful smile on his face. “With that, I will depart you to prepare.”

  He bowed and withdrew quickly, leaving her alone with Torsten as Anna-Katherine brought in more tea.

  “Make sure Vibol knows, as soon as you do, if Moirrey succeeds,” Casey commanded lightly. “His place in all this will probably be overlooked in the official histories, so perhaps I should command a hagiography of Vibol and his impact on the war.”

  Torsten grinned at her.

  “I believe that would be a most useful lesson, Your Majesty,” he said, eyes gleaming. “I believe I know a scholar we can entrust to handle the task correctly. Does the war with Aquitaine begin anew, once Buran is off the stage?”

  Casey paused, studying the man.

  “I remember my very first impression of Tadej Horvat,” she said. “He had a cruel mouth. Sharp and dangerous, and not a man to be taken lightly. I have studied his history. Horvat brought down his own government and sacrificed the premiership for many years, just to crush someone that had challenged him within his own party. Never forget that. He can be a man of grand retributions. Judit will get the credit for the Peace. I expect Horvat will want to have an even greater measure of success. They know our weaknesses as well as our strengths, because of their proximity over the last few years.”

  “Will my departure weaken us?” Torsten asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Casey replied. “Tell me the things about Cameron Lara that I don’t know, if you truly expect him to succeed you.”

  She watched his eyes grow distant with thought and memory.

  “He was the second son of the old Duke of Pherile, and is now the younger brother of the current duke,” Torsten said. “Medium height and almost bald, as you know. Rather rotund, as he is a gourmand with a keen intellect and a weakness for after-dinner port and sherry, sitting in the salon and letting his intellect wander far afield to challenge whatever dinner guests have joined him. Jovial.”

  “And he still employs the best chef in Strasbourg?” Casey pressed with a smile.

  “If not all of St. Legier, Lady Casey,” Torsten said. “Cameron is not the dour intellectual he would replace, but a very cunning operator, a glad-hander who had the extremely good luck to be on vacation with his family the week Werder was destroyed. You could have just as easily selected him as your Chief of Deputies at that time, and been as well served.”

  “Any jealousies of you getting the job?” Casey asked.

  “None evident,” Torsten replied. “Everyone knew that it was a temporary situation, and that I would not be tied to the job any longer than Jessica would allow. Hendrik and Em both speak well of the man, as do several others whose opinions I value.”

  “Thank you,” Casey said abruptly. “For being there when I needed you, and willing to suffer that separation from Jessica. I will hold you no longer than I must.”

  She watched the man blush slightly and nod back to her. She would miss his calm competence, especially as Sri Lara was a larger-than-life figure much of the time.

  “What else do we have to cover?” she asked.

  While he talked of other things, Casey made a note to add someone like Torsten to her personal staff when the man left. Someone who could dive deep into the numbers and reports, as Torsten Wald had done from his first day on the palace staff, to help shine a useful light into otherwise dark corners.

  The Peace with Aquitaine had been Father’s idea, but Torsten’s analysis of Jessica’s Cahllepp Frontier campaign and other things had moved the right minds.

  She shouldn’t lose that, when she lost the man behind it.

  Chapter LXVIII

  Imperial Founding: 181/06/12. RAN Archangel, JumpSpace

  When moving a monstrous fleet like this long distances, even the best navigators needed to stop and regroup. Vo had taken advantage of that to swap back and forth between assault carriers at every stop. And meet with Jessica, Denis, and Tom frequently.

  Iskra was less critical to this mission, and Vo expected that Jessica would ship her off with a few corvettes to raid nearby colonies at some point, just to rile things up.

  Right now, he and Alan had just wrapped up another one of those meetings and sent everyone back to their own ships. And his cohort centurions had all left as well, back to their teams.

  Alan was in Vo’s office, with the spare chair turned sideways for Alan’s feet. His hands were laced behind his head and Vo wondered if the man was likely to take a nap, right here in his office.

  Alan had done stranger things. At least he hadn’t walked off with Vo’s favorite coffee mug recently.

  “I keep coming back to Barnaul,” Alan said out of the blue. “What does it gain us?”

  “Terror,” Vo answered with a rumble. “Stanovoy, on the ground. A reminder that no place is safe from us. From her. Even the smallest, least significant colony in the middle of nowhere might suddenly have troops drop on it.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a difference here and I’m not sure Keller grasps that,” Alan groused. “It’s one thing to sit in orbit and blow up freighters, or drop big bombs on the surface. Something entirely else to kill people with small arms.”

  “I’m not about to order the men to shoot women and children, Alan,” Vo said. “Once we crush all military resistance, we’ll herd people out of the places we’re blowing up, and then get to work on infrastructure.”

  “That include those two storage warehouses?” Alan’s feet came down with a thump and he turned squarely to face his commander. “That’s the colony, right there. All their food. All their everything. We kill that and we might as well have just killed them. Better a quick death than starvation.”

  Vo marveled, especially after some of the things that had come out of Alan’s mouth over the last two years. This was a side of the man he wasn’t sure he had ever encountered.

  But nobody joins the military to be evil. Or rather, those got washed out quickly. The ones that made it were men and women of rules, but more importantly saw themselves as protectors.

  And sometimes, that could extend across enemy lines. Like say, Thuringwell, and a unit that had once been Karl IV’s 189th Division, Mountain.

  “So we kill the mine and free the prisoners,” Vo let his voice soften from the hardness it wanted to have. “Are you suggesting we ignore the warehouses completely?”

  “More than just that, Vo,” Alan’s face got critical. “The warehouses require power to k
eep the refrigerators working. We kill that and the food spoils, so we can’t blow up all the power stations. We can’t blow up whatever computer system is the quartermaster section, the records, or they’ll never find what they need in terms of foods and medicine. And we have to spare the hospital for the same reason.”

  “So what can we kill, Alan?” Vo let the exasperation show.

  “Police stations,” Alan smiled. “Jail, after we’ve emptied it out. Used speeder lots. Bars. Maybe half the restaurants, if we can figure out the ones with worst kitchens. Get everyone clear and burn some housing blocks, just because Barnaul never gets cold enough to kill people sleeping rough. If we had enough time, I’d use the big earth-moving equipment on-site to fill the mine back in.”

  “We don’t have that much time, Alan,” Vo scowled at the man.

  “So let’s steal every single thing from the mine we can drive off,” Alan retorted, “instead of killing them. Start our own Construction Ala with those dump trucks and things. Empire knows we’ve got the DropShips handy to steal everything.”

  “Steal?” Vo saw where Alan was headed now. “You’ve gotten infected by Siobhan Skokomish, haven’t you?”

  Alan laughed.

  “If I was single, Vo,” he grinned. “Lucky for all involved I’m a happily married dork.”

  “Piracy, huh?” Vo asked.

  “I don’t want to be the bad guy here,” Alan got serious again. “You can order us to wipe this place out to the last child and last cat, but Jessica Keller has always been about taking the high ground and kicking you in the teeth if you wanted to argue with her.”

  “But looting the place with the care of a cat burglar?” Vo offered.

  “Appeals to the juvenile delinquent in me,” Alan replied. “And will to the team as well. Plus I know a cat burglar, supposedly reformed, who might be willing to offer my teams advice on how to do something like that.”

  “Supposedly?” Vo asked.

  “Never assume that the man’s gone straight, just because he joined the marines, General,” Alan laughed. “Might be the biggest swindle of all time, that nobody’s cottoned on to it yet.”