by Eric Flint
Just in time. As the doctor had foreseen, the king was going into convulsions. Erik managed to shove the rolled-up hat brim into his cousin’s mouth before he could damage himself.
Then, he waited out the convulsions, restraining the king as best he could. Within seconds, two of the Scots were assisting him.
After the king relaxed and fell asleep, Erik rose to his feet.
“And now what?” asked Ljundberg.
Excellent question. Erik groped for an answer.
It came to him within seconds. “Go get the prime minister and bring him here, Major Graham. Gordon, you go with him.”
Wilhelm Wettin arrived an hour and a half later. Quite puzzled, obviously. Erik realized he hadn’t instructed Graham and Gordon to tell him anything, just to bring him here. Scots tended to favor literal interpretations.
By then, the bodies of the chancellor and the three staff officers slain by Ljungberg had been carried into a side room. Gustav Adolf was resting on a narrow bed which had been brought into the tavern’s main room by servants. In the absence of any advice from Nichols—he wasn’t about to trust any of the doctors Oxenstierna had assigned to the king—Erik hadn’t been willing to risk moving his cousin any farther than necessary.
Wettin stared at Gustav Adolf. “Is he…?”
“Yes, he’s back. But—as you can see—he’s still subject to ills.”
Wettin shook his head. It wasn’t clear if the gesture was one of negation, denial, or simply to clear the man’s brain. He probably didn’t know himself.
“Where is Chancellor Oxenstierna?” he asked.
“The traitor is dead,” Colonel Hand said in a flat, cold tone of voice. “At the king’s command.”
That was stretching the truth. You could even argue it was mangling the truth beyond all recognition. But for the moment, Erik didn’t care—and who was there to dispute his claim? The surviving staff officers had been placed under arrest and taken away. The tavern keeper and his servants were so petrified they could barely speak.
“You can go look at his body yourself, if you don’t believe me,” he added, jerking his head toward the far door. “He’s in a room just beyond.”
Wettin shook his head again. “No, no. But…what do you want me to do”
Erik shrugged. “How should I know? I’m just the king’s cousin. You’re the prime minister of the nation. It’s on your head now.”
Luckily, Gustav Adolf recovered consciousness within an hour. After he was told of what had transpired, a sad look came to his face.
“So, my fault again. First Anders, now Axel.”
“It was not your fault, cousin. For one thing, I’m the one who decided to shoot him.”
The king’s thick shoulders shifted on the cot, in what passed for a shrugging motion. “What else could you do? But if I hadn’t lost control, Axel would still be alive.”
Erik was tempted to ask: For how long? Gustav Adolf had made clear in their earlier discussions that he was inclined to simply have Oxenstierna stripped of his posts and sentenced to internal exile for the rest of his life. What Americans called “house arrest”—except the house in question was one of the finest mansions in Sweden.
But whatever the king’s personal preferences might be, he’d also ordered Erik to launch a thorough investigation of what had transpired with Maximilian of Bavaria. If that investigation turned up proof that the chancellor had been involved in the treasonous plot—and Erik didn’t have much doubt it would—then Gustav Adolf would really have no choice. He’d have to order Oxenstierna’s execution.
Now that it was over, Erik decided it had all worked out for the best. His cousin’s guilt for having lost control was a pale shadow of the anguish he would have felt, had he been forced to order his chancellor executed himself. He and Axel Oxenstierna had been good friends for many years.
Erik, on the other hand, had never liked the bastard anyway.
Wettin floundered. But the king was back, and took charge himself.
“First—there is a radio station here, yes?—the news must be broadcast to the entire nation. Along with the following…”
That and what followed was the jabbering from Berlin that Noelle had been listening to when Denise and Minnie returned from the airfield.
“Oh, wow,” said Denise, after Noelle filled them in.
“Interesting times,” said Minnie.
Denise shook her head. “No, that’s a curse. Doesn’t apply at all. God, I hate to think what my life would have been like without the Ring of Fire. Can we say ‘boooooorrrrrring?’ ”
Noelle stared at her. Much the way she might have stared at a Martian. Or a mutant.
Chapter 53
The United States of Europe
All of the major newspapers in the country and many of the smaller ones came out with the story the next morning. It didn’t matter what day of the week they normally published. It didn’t matter whether they were morning papers or evening papers. Even if the edition was just a two-page special edition, nothing more than a broadsheet printed on both sides, they all published something.
The headlines varied from city to city and province to province, but the gist of them was essentially the same:
the emperor recovers
chancellor oxenstierna executed for treason
hundreds in berlin arrested
prime minister wettin freed and returned to power
the emperor orders a halt to all conflict
the emperor offers a truce to king wladyslaw
the emperor to return to magdeburg
The festivities and the parades died down, although they didn’t die out entirely. People of whatever political persuasion understood that the coming days were going to be a time of hard bargaining. Most of them figured they’d wait until they saw the end result before they started celebrating again.
Or started crying in their beer.
PART V
March 1636
The thunder and the sunshine
Chapter 54
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
Gustav Adolf arrived in Magdeburg five days after Oxenstierna’s killing. His advisers—that mostly meant his cousin Erik, right now—had had to talk him out of flying to the capital. Why take the (admittedly not great) risk, when there was no point to it? There would be no way to start any serious negotiations until Mike Stearns arrived in the capital, after all. Given the situation in Dresden and his responsibilities there, it would take him most of a week before he could leave for Magdeburg.
Besides, Gustav II Adolf—the full and formal name was needed here—could spend a useful two days or so dealing with the men who’d been arrested in the palace. Oxenstierna’s minions, as Colonel Hand was wont to call them.
Deal with them he did. The emperor was sorely tempted to have the ringleaders summarily executed. But Wilhelm Wettin talked him out of that. The prime minister pointed out that given the chancellor’s freewheeling abuse of power, it would probably make a nice counter-example if the emperor displayed a great deal of restraint at the moment.
Gustav Adolf was a bit dubious of the logic, but since Erik weighed in on Wilhelm’s side, he decided to accept their advice. He was still shaken by the results of his temper tantrum and not as inclined as he normally would be to trust his own instincts.
Having ruled out summary executions, however, he drew the line at summary punishments short of removing heads. No way would he accept timid restrictions!
He started by stripping von Ramsla and anyone else whom Oxenstierna had given any sort of official position of all of his noble titles. Then, of all his lands, if he possessed any.
As a strictly legal proposition, his right to do any such thing was eminently disputable—and there was no shortage of lawyers in the USE ready and willing to argue the case. The problem was that Gustav Adolf did not extend the punishment to the heirs of the punishee—but made it very clear that he would do so the moment any of them tried to challenge hi
m.
That made the whole thing a very risky proposition. A man could bow his head, accept the penalties, and slink back home—where, at least for most of them, their families would maintain them in more-or-less the same comfort they’d been accustomed to. Or, he could challenge the emperor in court. If he lost, though, he risked being out in the cold with his entire family.
Most of them accepted the punishments. Only three indicated an intention to file a legal challenge. In all three cases, because their families detested them and would be pitching them into the cold anyway.
That done, the emperor ordered any of Oxenstierna’s minions who might conceivably—remotely, at the far edges, barely, tangentially, it didn’t matter—have been involved in the plot with the Bavarians to be kept under arrest until such time as Erik Haakansson Hand got around to interrogating them and deciding they were innocent.
At which point, of course, any other penalties would kick in.
That done, the emperor levied heavy fines on anyone who had participated in what he chose to call the “outlaw convention.” If the person in question had been a member of Parliament, the fine was doubled and the emperor unilaterally decreed that their election was null and void because they had violated their oath of office by participating in said outlaw convention.
This ruling was very questionable, there being no provision in the constitution that gave the emperor any such power. And, in the end, Gustav Adolf would rescind it two weeks later. The electoral disqualification, that is, not the fines. He did so not because he feared the courts but because Mike Stearns insisted on it and the emperor decided it was not an issue he was prepared to fight over tooth and nail.
That done…
He decided to rest from his labors. He’d already stripped large pieces of hide from just about everyone who’d been arrested, after all. In fact, the only exceptions were two servants who’d been rounded up by mistake.
And by then, the barge was ready to take him to Magdeburg. The very luxurious barge, with the world’s best doctor on it and ready to tend to his needs. James Nichols had come up from Magdeburg at the emperor’s request.
Dresden, capital of Saxony
Eddie finally arrived in Dresden just about the same time Gustav Adolf stepped aboard the barge that would take him to Magdeburg. By the time he got there, Denise and Minnie had two more accomplishments to their names. First, they’d produced one of the best-manicured airfields in Europe, certainly in wintertime. Secondly, they’d learned how to use a plow.
“A skill,” Minnie pointed out, “that for girls like us is probably as useful as knowing how to grow those little miniature trees—what do they call them? Something Japanese.”
“Banzai trees.”
Minnie frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah. Japanese people get fanatical about stuff.”
They’d had plenty of advance warning, so all three of the women working for Nasi who’d gotten stranded in Dresden were waiting in the little hangar at the airfield with their luggage packed. Noelle had paid off the rent owing on the townhouse already so they were ready to go.
The bolder of the two young hostlers waited with them. He’d continued to help them all the way through, because Minnie had relented and decided he was okay after all, on the cute side, and unlike Denise she had no boyfriend. (Steady boyfriend, anyway. Whenever she was in the mood, Minnie never lacked for male company. One-eyed or not.)
The hostler was sorry to see Minnie go. For that matter, Minnie would miss him herself. It had been a very pleasant few days.
On the other hand, once they left Dresden she’d get over the loss in about fifteen minutes and he’d get over it in twenty. Theirs had been a friendly relationship, but one driven far more by hormones than by hearts.
It didn’t occur to any of the women to ask Eddie where they were going until Noelle realized they were flying south.
“Prague,” he said. “The boss has a new assignment for us.”
“What is it?” asked Minnie from the back of the plane. She and Noelle were crammed into a seat that was really designed for one person. They’d agreed to let Denise have the co-pilot’s seat so she could be close to Eddie.
“How should I know? Since when did Francisco Nasi become a blabbermouth?”
“For Chrissake,” Denise complained, “we’re the ones who’ll be doing the assignment. How can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll tell you once we get there.”
An upsetting thought occurred to her. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then why didn’t he tell you?”
“So I couldn’t tell you, of course. Denise, you’ve really got to brush up on your operational security.”
Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Emperor Ferdinand III gave Janos Drugeth a suspicious look from under lowered brows. “This is not simply an elaborate ploy on your part to see your American woman again, I hope?”
Janos wouldn’t normally roll his eyes in response to an imperial comment—that would border on lèse majesté—but he did on this occasion. “Don’t be absurd! And how could I have done it anyway? You think the sultan conspires with me?”
Ferdinand kept peering at him from under lowered brows.
Now, Janos threw up his hands with exasperation. “The Americans have a word for this, you know. ‘Paranoia.’ ”
“Yes, I know. Demonstrating once again their tenuous hold on reality. Apparently they think people have no enemies.” He sniffed. “It’s like having a word for a fear of heights. Completely useless. Of course people are afraid of heights.”
Janos decide to wait out the imperial fit. It was true enough that emperors had lots of enemies.
After a few seconds, Ferdinand sighed and slumped back in his chair. “You’re certain?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I am.” Janos thought formality would help here. “As certain as I’ve ever been of anything in my life.”
He leaned forward in his own chair, his hands extended in what was almost a pleading gesture. “Ferdinand, look at it this way. We’re in the beginning of March. If I’m right, Murad will have begun his troop movements. By the end of the month—no later than sometime in April—the first detachments will have begun arriving in Belgrade. Once that happens, you know perfectly well the invasion will be underway.”
After a moment, Ferdinand nodded. Like any Austrian ruler, even a young one, he knew the military realities. That great a mobilization of troops was simply too expensive for an empire—any empire, even one with the resources of the Ottomans—to use as a feint or diversion. If large numbers of soldiers started appearing in Belgrade in the spring, the Turks would be at the Austrian border by mid-summer at the latest.
And Austria had lots of spies in Belgrade.
“Go on,” he said.
Janos leaned back. “So let’s use the intervening weeks to establish private communications with the USE. Which we can do using Nasi in Prague as the intermediary.”
The emperor made a little snorting sound. “Who will no doubt use as his own intermediary a certain young woman who already has an Austro-Hungarian connection.”
“Well…yes, I imagine he will. It would make sense, after all.”
Ferdinand went back to gazing at him from under lowered brows.
“Oh, very well,” he said. “Set the process in motion.”
Solemnly, Janos inclined his head. He saw no need to burden the emperor with the knowledge that he’d already begun that process a week before, as soon as he returned to Vienna. What else were royal advisers for than to anticipate the decisions of their sovereign?
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
Since Mike Stearns hadn’t arrived yet, Gustav Adolf spent the first two days after his return to the capital mostly with his daughter. They had not seen each other for almost a year—a year in which a great many things had happened, including an assassination at
tempt on the girl that came very close to succeeding and the murder of her mother that very same day. Not to mention the near-death of her father and his subsequent mental collapse.
She had held up surprisingly well. No, extraordinarily well. He was very pleased with her.
No, immensely pleased.
Most of that pleasure was personal, nothing more than the sentiments any father would feel when one of his offspring demonstrated good qualities under pressure. Some of it, though, was dynastic and quite cold-blooded. It was a simple fact that the Vasa dynasty had come out of a crisis that might easily have turned into a disaster in better shape than ever. Its position in the United States of Europe was now extremely secure, even if its direct power might have declined a bit.
That was largely thanks to Kristina. The huge, cheering crowds that had greeted Gustav Adolf when he arrived in the capital had been there as much to applaud a father as a monarch. Kristina had been riding with him in the parade, and that much was blindingly obvious.
In a much darker way, the position of the Vasas in Sweden was stronger also. As part of his bargain with Oxenstierna when he took the throne in 1611, Gustav Adolf had restored the Swedish aristocracy’s privileges that his grandfather has stripped away from them. Now, with the chancellor’s betrayal and subsequent death, the king intended to strip those privileges and powers away from them again.
Not immediately. He had many more pressing matters to attend to first. But it was now clear to him that his grandfather had been right after all. The great man who had founded their line in Sweden had understood something that Gustav Adolf himself had had to learn the hard way—a smart dynasty bases itself on the populace, not on the nobility.
There had been another change in Kristina since he’d seen her last. This one more subtle but just as unmistakable. The girl was simply more cheerful than she’d been before. More at ease in her father’s presence, less anxious, less needful of being the constant center of attention. Yet no less affectionate.
