by Jo Graham
Not I. Izabela spent one night in seven in my room for form's sake, lest people talk, but I had not touched her. Usually we did not speak at all, merely slept back to back in the big curtained bed without a word said, our truce in force. And yet during the day I thought we were not so ill-matched. She was clever and quick, and if her reading had not the breadth of mine it had more method. After all, she had been carefully taught from childhood, trained for the responsibilities that would be hers since she was a babe in the cradle.
"Of course I read Latin," she said in surprise one day when I found her bent over a medical book. "And French. And a little Greek, though I had not got much of that before I married." Her voice sounded a little wistful. "My father had no son, and I knew what I must be. He saw me well settled before he died."
"And your husband?" I asked, going about the table she worked at and sitting in a chair where she could keep my hands in view.
"He was my cousin. It was all arranged," Izabela said. Her eyes evaded mine. "He was a good man."
"But you did not love him." The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Izabela smiled at me. "What is love, Captain? I was betrothed to him when I was eight and he fourteen, and we married five years later. It was a good match and it kept the peace between our houses. I could not rule Falkenau alone, and I was born in the twilight of my father's life. He knew he would not live to see his grandchildren and indeed he did not. He died when I was fourteen. How should I have held Falkenau alone, a girl of fourteen with no husband? I should have been prey for any hawk that wanted to stoop upon us. Jindrich brought the protection of his family and his name as well as his sword arm."
"And yet you are the more talented in battle," I said, remembering the defense of Falkenau. That had not been shabby for a woman still short of twenty. Beneath her pretty eyes she was better than I.
"A quirk of fate," Izabela said. She shook her head and for a moment I thought I saw tears there. "Were I a man I could defend my people and my God and would not have to look to such as you."
"True enough," I said. "But does it not stand to reason that your God has made you this way with a purpose?"
"I wish I knew what it was," she said. She looked away. "I see no reason in it, save to teach me humility."
"And have I humbled you so?" I asked. "By God, madam, not half of what I could!"
"Well I know the threat that hangs over me," she retorted.
"Then would it not be better to do it and have done?" I asked. Perhaps my pride smarted. Or perhaps it was desire. "Or is that a field in which you fear to face me?"
"I do not fear anything about you, captain," Izabela said. Spots of color appeared on her face. Her clear, translucent skin showed everything.
"Then come and give me a kiss," I said.
I expected that she would flounce from the room with a quick riposte, but she did not. Izabela rose from her chair and walked around the table very deliberately. I did not move. I did not twitch a muscle as she bent and touched her lips to mine.
There was fire. She was no timid thing, no trembling virgin scarce touched. Her husband had got two sons on her, and she had enjoyed the making of them from the way she kissed, consumingly and intemperately, as though it were a challenge with trumpets and all, as though it were she who stooped to conquer. It was I who was left breathless as she straightened, the color high in her face.
"I do not fear to meet you, captain," she said.
"Perhaps you might progress to Georg under the circumstances," I managed, thanking whatever demons owned my soul that I had nearly two decades on her in age. Were I a boy her age I should belong to her like a lap dog.
Izabela's eyebrows rose. "Should I seduce you then? Wrap you about my finger and so secure clemency for my people?"
"It is a time-tested strategy," I acknowledged.
Izabela sat down on the edge of the map table, another foot between us, which was probably a mercy. "You do not have the power to grant what I want," she said.
"And what is that?"
"That we should not have to convert or face the sword." Her chin rose. "Your Emperor will make us Catholic. This is Hussite country, Georg. We know what it is to lose. We know what it is to be persecuted for our beliefs."
"Izabela, I care not whether you worship with priest or minister," I said. "It is all one to me. I care not if you light candles to the Virgin or Baphomet or that ancient fellow Jupiter! Have I raised a hand to stop your pastor from preaching? Even once?"
"You have not," she acknowledged. "And we do know that. But your Emperor will not let it remain so, and you cannot gainsay the powerful men who will require it of you."
"He is not my Emperor," I snapped. "You speak as though I chose him. I have no oaths to him. I have not even laid eyes on him! I am Wallenstein's man, and I will go where he goes." And in that moment I realized I had said too much.
Izabela's eyes narrowed. "By which you mean Wallenstein may yet leave the Emperor," she said quietly.
"You have said it, not I."
She regarded me solemnly. "And if so, you are his man, not the Emperor's?"
"Yes," I said.
Izabela sat back on the edge of the table, her skirts brushing against my legs, but I did not think she even noticed. Her face was abstracted, as though she parsed out some tactical problem. "Why would you do that? Why would he?"
"Because if we do not have peace we will have a wasteland," I said. I did retain enough sense not to mention Richelieu. "Wallenstein is Bohemian. He does not wish to see this land made a desert." I sat up and reached for her hand, taking her fingertips in mine. "Izabela, cannot we have a truce? Our interests run together, so far as they go."
"You want Falkenau." Her eyes met mine solidly.
"Yes," I said, and threw the dice once more. "And you cannot hold it without me. You are talented and you have the tactical sense of a man, but you are right that without a husband to act in your name you will be prey for any hunter, while I need you to have any claim to that which I have taken. If we make common cause, who can stand against us?"
"Only the armies of the world," Izabela said, and there was the devil's smile on her lips.
"Then let the armies of the world try us," I said.
At that she laughed, but she did not withdraw her hand from mine. "You are very strange," she said.
"Am I?"
"Stern and cheerless, but when you say things like that it is almost as if there is someone else inside you, someone I might like to know." She shook her head. "I do not have it in me to fear you."
"Perhaps that is your temper, not mine," I said. "Well, Izabela? A truce between us?"
"A truce," she said. "And let it serve as it may."
Winter came down in earnest. The mountain roads were clogged with snow. It took three days for a dispatch rider to reach Plzen, a distance that was only a day in good weather. February opened, candles for the Churching of the Virgin glimmering on the snow, a hard freeze on top of snow knee deep. The roads closed entirely.
For all practical purposes we were alone. Falkenau might have been the only settlement of humans in a world of ice. The river was frozen. Snow rested on the ice like a great plowed field. Beneath it, water flowed, cold and ready to swallow the unwary.
There was food enough, carefully rationed out. No roaring fires or roasted boar, but endless cauldrons of soup flavored with a little ham, breakfasts of bread and cheese. We did not live well, but none of us would die. The world narrowed.
And yet somewhere beyond this, beyond the mountains, things were happening. The occasional dispatch was unenlightening, and yet they left me oddly on edge. They said too little and nothing directly. I should go to Plzen myself and see what passed, but the snow was deep and I had not been ordered to. And yet as the days passed, as February began to wane, a deep unease settled over me.
Perhaps it is only the weather, I thought. Perhaps it will break with the thaw. Already the days grew longer, a promise of winter's end.
/> I dreamed in the bed beside Izabela. I dreamed that I went to report in Plzen and found no one there. Windows were open to the storm, dispatches blowing in the empty rooms. I went to the window and looked out into the snow-wracked darkness. Where was Wallenstein?
As happens in dreams, I stepped through the window insubstantial, soared like a bird over town and sleeping fields, like a raven on tireless wings. White lands spread beneath me, the dark curve of the Agara beckoning, a swift-flowing torrent too fast to be imprisoned in ice. A black tower glimmered with lights amid the whirling snow, the castle at Eger.
And yet something was wrong. The drawbridge was raised, the portcullis lowered. Lights glimmered in high windows but in the courtyard no one stirred.
Shots rang out, the stink of powder borne on the snow laden wind. I circled, silent and helpless, listening to the cries of men. I watched. I saw the courtyard doors open, saw one man stagger out, a trail of blood in the snow behind him — Adam Trcka. I saw him make for the stables and I saw them shoot him down in cold blood, spilling across the dark stones like a sacrifice.
Helpless, I watched the muster in the courtyard, watched them kick him like a dog to be sure that he was dead. I watched them assemble, watched the drawbridge lowered, saw them march into the town. I was a dream, not even a ghost, not even a phantom. I followed through the silent streets to the mayor's house, the finest house in town, watched them kick down the door and pour inside. I saw. I saw all.
In Falkenau I sat bolt upright in the dark chamber, reaching for sword and pistol. Izabela came awake in one swift move as I stood up, flinging open the casement at the window as though I could fly in truth, as though my human eyes could bridge the distance I could in sleep. "What is the matter?" she said.
"Wallenstein is dead."
There was worry in her voice. "How do you know this?"
"I dreamed it," I said, my hands on the sill. Outside the snow still blew in swift gusts, but fresh or blown from tower roofs I could not tell. "I saw him start from his bed. I saw him run through with a halberd. No man survives that. He is dead." I closed my eyes as though that would block sight unphysical. "The Emperor has killed him."
Izabela put her hand on my shoulder and I flinched. I had not heard her leave the bed. "Do you dream things that are true?" she asked me quietly.
"Sometimes," I said. Whatever I might have feared in her knowing was eclipsed by the memory of Adam sprawled in the snow, his blood steaming.
She put her other hand against the front of my shirt, turning me from the window. "That must be useful."
"Not very," I said dryly. "What use to know when there is nothing I can do?"
She wet her lips like a cat, thinking. "There is much you can do," she said. "There is much you can do, knowing before you can know. Wallenstein's death changes everything."
"It means there will be no peace," I said.
"Does it?"
I opened my eyes. The wind was cold through the open window, snow swirling around us in the dark. Her pale skin glimmered as though she were made of moonlight. "It means the Emperor will not make peace with the Swedes," I said. She recalled me to myself, her hands warm through the linen of my shirt. I took a breath. I could think. Adam was only one man dead. There had been many such before.
"And then?"
"The Emperor has no general who is half so good," I said. "The rest of the lot are pigs. Tilly was good, but he's gone. The Swedes will roll over us."
"Then we change sides," Izabela said. I looked at her sharply and she smiled. "Why not join with the Protestant princes and be Sweden's ally? Take Falkenau back where she belongs, to the side her people love. You have said you care nothing for Pope or Emperor. Why serve them? Why play this game of thrones on a side you do not even believe in? If it is all one to you, then betray your master's murderer and preserve what is yours!"
I looked at her. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"Wouldn't you?" Izabela asked. "What do you owe them? Your men fight for hire and they will just as readily fight for the Protestant princes as against them. An offensive in the spring against the Emperor's men unprepared and ill-commanded…. You are Graf Falkenau, and Wallenstein's man besides. You could have a strong voice in their counsels. The Protestant princes could bring the Emperor to bay, force a peace of their own forging. The only way we will have that is to make it so!"
I shook my head as though to clear it. "You will bewitch me into folly," I said.
"Is it folly?" Izabela demanded. "Do you not see the tactical situation before you? Half of Wallenstein's men will not follow the Emperor and the other half you have said are ill-commanded. It is winter. Everyone is bogged deep in snow. No one is moving. But at the thaw the Protestant princes can take Prague! Good God!" Izabela's hand tightened on my shirt. "Were I a man I could do it in three weeks with a thousand men! I could stuff a treaty down the Emperor's throat! Do not tell me that you cannot!"
I took a deep breath. "France is paying Emperor and King of Sweden both. Richelieu is playing both sides."
Izabela's face was serious as though she considered it, clockwork turning. "Until it becomes too expensive for him," she said. "You can make it too expensive. The Protestant princes can make it too expensive. Let us turn this war against him, that he may see the price of his own actions when the battle moves onto French soil instead of Bohemian. You can do this."
I nodded slowly. "I can write to others. We will not be told of Wallenstein's assassination for days yet, maybe weeks. The Emperor will not know we know. Not until it's too late." There had to be some use to this, to Adam dead, to the ruin of Bohemia. Some use, somehow….
Izabela took both my hands in hers. "Change sides, Georg. Be my husband and my voice. Be my sword. Forge this peace."
I met her eyes. "Your husband in truth?"
Izabela swallowed. "Yes."
"I would not have that be a price," I said. "Your body for my allegiance." And yet I wanted her.
"Do not you see?" she said, and her voice broke. "It is the only way I can."
She stood there in the cold, her hair across her shoulders, and I did see indeed. A bargain with an ally was not surrender. Izabela would never surrender.
It was not that a sword stood between me and Falkenau. It was that I must take that sword. No prince would command me, no God-sent queen justify my actions. The choice was mine, and thousands might live or die upon it, the course of history shifted in its bed though none should know my name, though none should remember Georg, Graf Falkenau.
I closed my eyes. No angels would come at my call. In this fallen world there would be no trumpets, no flash of light. There would be diplomacy and councils with men I did not like, and more than probably bloody battles in any event. But when I died it would not be for nothing. She would outlive me by decades, this glorious woman, Izabela and our children after. I should be a name in the lists of men who had died for this land, a man who had built a tiny corner, who had preserved an orchard or raised a tower, who had repaired a bridge or sired a daughter to stand on these walls in bright starlight to watch the stars or the courses of the wandering planets. Whether my bones lay in her crypts or on some distant field, I would have a place, Lord of Falkenau, now and ever.
"I will take your bargain," I said, and took Izabela's hands in mine. "And together we will weather every storm."
Her eyes glittered. "Like carrion birds," she said. "We stoop to conquer."
I kissed her there amid the falling snow that swirled about the towers of Falkenau.
Dion Ex Machina
4 BC
Dion is one of my favorite characters in the Numinous World. Needless to say, Dion wanted a story of his own about his life after Hand of Isis and its tragic end. This story takes place many years later and is, oddly enough, inspired by a story I've never read. I've tried to get my hands on Mary Renault's short story "According to Celsus" for twenty years now, but I've never found it. Still, I like to think this story is perhaps related, and that were she
living she might like it.
It was Roman September, as the official news proclaimed all over town, the September after the Grand Conjunction, September when the terrible anniversaries of August were come and gone. Twenty four years, Dion thought as he made his way through the markets near the Canopic Gate in early morning, the sun still slanting sideways over the walls of Alexandria. The gates had been opened less than an hour, but the farmers bringing in things from the countryside were already doing a brisk business. He liked the mornings. Once he had seen them from the other side, the end of a day that involved all night at the Observatory, or in wine and conversation, or in love.
Twenty four years, my darling, Dion thought. And who would have imagined it? Still here and still hale, and like to be a great grandfather soon, the way that scamp Alexander is going. There will be some girl's father calling on me, the way he's seventeen going on thirty. He'll bring it to me, knowing Demetria will be less sympathetic.
Dion strolled around a stall full of chickens clacking and clucking in their cages, raising a hand to forestall the seller. As though he looked like he was buying chickens! Surely his respectable dark robe over a finely worked chiton proclaimed him what he was, a scholar of discernment. He was not the sort of man to buy chickens!
In a quiet corner behind the stall, a young girl was standing with a baby on her shoulder, her wide dark eyes taking in all of the crowd, the horologers returning from the temple outside the gates with their gilded staffs and pleated linens, the busy drovers bringing in cattle from the countryside, the Roman guards on the gates standing at ease in their steel and scarlet, a doctor passing by in her litter with her white hair pinned severely close to her head, schoolboys rushing by yelling in the middle of some game, all the bustle and beauty of the City. The girl waited beside a tired donkey, its head down. On her shoulder, the baby craned to look, raising pudgy hands in delight at the spectacle. He, at least looked well fed, but his mother had a thin, pinched look, as though worry and travel and care had eaten from her.
