Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

  But she was also RAN, if on a bizarre temporary duty assignment under Kosnett’s authority. Jessica would have all their heads if they mistreated the young woman. Assuming Casey didn’t come after them first.

  There were no women Dukes in the Fribourg Empire.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Vo just needed to help her secure that, as well.

  Chapter LVIX

  Imperial Founding: 181/04/17. Imperial Hall of Government, Strasbourg, St. Legier

  It had been a simple enough note, passed along from Vibol, the Master Tailor who served all and none of them at the same time, that brought Em down to the surface.

  After knowing a few folks like Vibol in his time, Em assumed that the man considered his time here to be a mere residency, working on some government grant to pursue art for its own sake. Perhaps a performance art piece.

  But the note has suggested, in rather specific terms, that a visit by the Grand Admiral to the Imperial Palace would not be a waste of his time. And nothing Vibol did was accidental.

  Em had rescheduled the few things that Hendrik couldn’t handle, and caught a shuttle to the ground, landing mid-afternoon in such a way that Strasbourg was winding itself down. The city might never sleep, but Em and others, like Torsten Wald, had issued adamantine orders that people were to work no more than ten hours in any one day, or forty-five in one week.

  Rebuilding this planet would take a generation. Burning out the people doing the work by demanding the impossible would only make it take longer. And it was a gorgeous, spring afternoon. The wind had died down, leaving a glorious sunset and weather currently in the high teens.

  So Strasbourg was allowed to rest. And enjoy itself.

  It had always been a quieter town, removed from the heady brew of business that had been Werder. The waterfront meant that folks were here for relaxation as often as official duty, and that had not changed much.

  Em enjoyed the view of the docks as his boat approached the waterfront. On his left, a wall of palaces stretched for kilometers along the shore. On his right, the main lake-side park that ran along the water, shadowed over by the towers of the downtown district, and newer towers rising in any space that someone could afford the land.

  He preferred to land at the new starport across Lake Zurich and take a water ferry. Navy had once meant a maritime thing, riding atop the waves, and then later under them, before finally escaping into the endless depths of space.

  He could imagine what some of the ancients felt like, sailing home to meet their sovereign. Drake, returning to Elizabeth I, for example.

  As the small boat approached the dock, a party emerged from a nearby building and formed up at the edge of the pier. Em recognized Torsten Wald in the center, and the rest were Household Guards.

  When they docked, Em made his way onto dry land and took Torsten’s hand.

  “You are not the welcoming party I had expected,” Em said.

  Wald grinned.

  “A certain tailor suggested that you might be coming for a visit,” Torsten said. “And that I might meet you here. One does not disappoint Vibol.”

  “Indeed,” Em agreed.

  One did not.

  The group, including Em’s marines and Torsten’s Household Guards, began to move towards a nearby parking lot, where Wald’s transport awaited.

  “Do we know why it was necessary that I be here?” Em asked in a quiet voice.

  The men surrounding the two of them were trustworthy, or they wouldn’t have the job, but some things did not need to be blared across all channels.

  “Your niece is feeling morose,” Wald offered. “Vibol suspected that, with Lady Moirrey off on a mission, Casey is feeling lonely, and needs someone to talk to.”

  “It frightens me,” Em offered as they reached the vehicle and opened the hatch. “How well that man understands things that should be esoteric to an outsider.”

  “I had the same experience last fall, Emmerich,” Torsten said, following Em into the back seat of a stretched repulsorlift sedan. “Were he any less loyal to Jessica, I would have concerns.”

  They rode in companionable silence. Casey had always referred to Em as an uncle, but that was the result of being one of the few males of a close age with Joh when they were infants, and being close enough to the blood. And Joh’s friend.

  Em was actually a first cousin, once removed to Casey, as those things were counted, but his daughter Heike had frequently been a sitter for the Household when she was younger, and Em had been Joh’s Best Man, as Joh had been his.

  Close enough to brothers, especially if Casey needed family to talk to.

  Once at the palace, Torsten and his group left them. Em felt like Jason about to enter the Maze, facing the door to her suite. He nodded to the guards on either side as he waited. These men did not answer to him, so he could only make polite requests.

  Anna-Katherine Gonzalez opened the door and beckoned him closer.

  “Is she taking surprise visitors?” Em asked the young woman.

  Anna-Katherine turned beet red at some inner thought, and took a deep breath.

  “She should,” the lady finally said in a quiet voice. “Or perhaps you should barge in when I open the door to ask?”

  “Lead,” Em commanded lightly. “I will follow.”

  The new palace was a vast improvement over the old hotel, but it lacked some of the homeyness, as cold, stone walls had not yet been personalized with art or decorations in the mad rush to move people first and add beauty later.

  There would always be another task on the list.

  Em followed Anna-Katherine deeper into the maze and waited a polite distance when the woman knocked at a door and then stuck her head inside.

  “You have a visitor, Your Majesty,” she said.

  “I do not wish to be interrupted,” Casey said in a half-growl from the other room.

  “Not even for me?” Em called loudly.

  “Em?” Casey asked, almost in shock.

  Anna-Katherine stepped to one side with a relieved smile and Em entered into Casey’s outer chamber.

  The Emperor rose gracefully from a couch and rushed forward, embracing him like a life preserver on hostile seas.

  She wore a simple, mauve dress, something Moirrey had sewn from the look of it. Over her shoulder, he noted an open bottle of wine on the side table, half empty, and a book she had dropped on the floor in moving.

  She might have been crying, or just shocked. Em held her tight against his chest as she let all the emotions spill out.

  Finally, she sniffled and leaned back to study his face.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “A little mouse whispered in several ears that you were down,” he said, detaching himself enough to lead her back to the sofa and sit her, while he went looking for a glass for himself.

  This was a formal room for entertaining guests, with a wetbar, so he found something good enough, and returned to pour a glass of red.

  “It’s hard,” she began, as he sat in a nearby chair and sipped.

  He nodded.

  “A year ago, I had to be everywhere, doing everything,” Casey continued.

  “And now you’re afraid that nobody needs you and you have been forgotten,” Em completed the thought.

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “Your father used to bitch at me for the same thing,” Em said. “When Karl VI and Ailina were killed in that accident, he had to walk away from his naval duties and become Emperor overnight.”

  “I don’t do anything,” Casey wailed.

  “And neither did he,” Em replied with a smile. “He used to accuse me of dreaming up adventures, just so I could go out and do things, while he was stuck here in the palace. There might have been a kernel of truth to that.”

  “I feared this day,” Casey’s mind was obviously all over the place, so Em just sat back and let her talk. “Jessica and I used to talk about the corset called Imperial Responsibility, and what it would mean,
back when I expected Father to live another thirty years and me to just have to deal with marriage.”

  “And you have it magnified,” Em noted. “Joh at least had Kati inside that trap.”

  “And without Moirrey here, I have no one to talk to on personal issues,” Casey nodded. “What do I do?”

  “The thing you have that Joh did not is your art, Casey,” Em offered. “I understand that the grander the emotions, the greater the outcome, so perhaps not all of your work will be suitable for public consumption, but you are uniquely suited for another symphony. I have heard parts of what you have constructed to date. More would help with your long-term goal to rebind the Empire into a tighter whole.”

  “Really?” she asked, sounding more like a young woman and less like an Emperor.

  “They all have loss, Casey,” he said. “Very few of them have the gift to share it. Right now, they think they are alone in their sorrow, but you could bring them together.”

  “Perhaps,” Casey said.

  She finally remembered her own glass of wine and took a sip. Em joined her, because she always had access to the best stuff. Except when he had managed to steal a few cases here and there from Joh’s cellars when the man wasn’t looking.

  “I was thinking about Moirrey today,” Casey offered, unconsciously running her hand down the dress, as if she could touch the engineer across the light-years. “Missing her.”

  “And no, I have not heard anything,” Em said. “The group is under strictest silence, so it is possible we will never hear, if they fail. Only in success will we know.”

  Casey grimaced and nodded. She had read the mission statement. Approved it herself, like Joh had once been required to do, at the point when those orders had to come from the very top.

  Especially when they involved asking for the assistance of a Sentient system.

  Em had spoken with the bartender twice since Gunter and the team had left. Once, to nail down a specific answer to a design question that had come up, with regards to the new technology that the being had taught Yan Bedrov and Pops Nakamura.

  The second time, to try to understand what it must have been like for Bedrov and Barret, walking into the lair of the War God himself to drink wine and tell lies to each other.

  Em could not imagine the courage it must have taken, for Bedrov to do that. The man was gruff, rough, opinionated, and brilliant.

  That had required a hard as nails beyond what most of his officers would ever imagine, let alone achieve.

  “What happens after?” Casey finally broke the silence that had descended. “If they succeed?”

  “It is my fervent hope that the Three Kingdoms Period happens, Your Majesty,” Em said. “The Librarian, the Provost of Alexandria Station, had made multiple backups of herself, and stashed them in a variety of places, but she was still trapped by my assassin.”

  “Your assassin?” Casey asked pointedly.

  It dawned on Em that he had probably never talked about the Battle of Ballard with Casey as an adult. Even a precocious thirteen-year-old lacks the depth of experience to understand most of the words he and Joh had spoken at the time.

  “Mine,” Em confirmed. “That was my mission, my vision. My dedication to evil.”

  “Evil, uncle?”

  “Evil,” he confirmed in a heavy voice, emptying his glass and reaching for the bottle to refill it.

  “I had been beaten by Jessica twice, and it tweaked my professional reputation,” Em said. “So I laid a trap for her at Ballard. Would have destroyed her, were it in my power. I failed, and in that failure might have saved the galaxy.”

  Em felt his eyes grow distant with memory, back a decade and standing on the deck of Amsel as he dueled to the death with that woman. Casey sat up straighter and listened, but Em was elsewhere.

  “Em?” Casey prodded.

  “I destroyed the station that housed the songbird, Casey,” Em said. “The woman who had brought humanity back to the stars, but never threatened them. Jessica escaped. Suvi escaped, at least in that they were able to rebuild her later from the plans she had left behind. Without Jessica, there is no Thuringwell. No Peace. No Lady Moirrey nor Lord Vo. Osynth B’Udan might have fallen by now, at the rate we were losing systems in those days. Sigmund Dittmar might have prevailed, and you would be dead or married off to that bastard as a prize. One hell of a failure, huh?”

  “I’m supposed to be the one depressed, uncle,” she said carefully, drawing him back into himself.

  “And that, you are,” Em agreed. “If we kill the Lord of Winter, one way or the other, my hope is that we can keep the regional Khans and Ministers of the First and Second Rank from rebuilding the beast. Without that central intelligence, we can push back, or just hunt down his ships and kill them, which is Jessica’s plan.”

  “And the worlds left behind?” Casey asked.

  “Become colonies filled with weirdoes, Casey,” he said. “Ancient China, prior to the First Diaspora, was a unified culture and nation for the longest time, but early on, it fragmented for a stretch that lasted centuries, depending on which set of records you use. If Moirrey or Jessica can succeed in killing the beast, your grandchildren can deal with it.”

  “You don’t have plans to try to absorb them into the Empire?” Casey asked delicately.

  “They outnumber us, both in planets and population, Casey,” he said. “And represent a culture so alien that trying to conquer them turns into the worst possible guerilla warfare. Give them a generation to figure themselves out, and for our traders to penetrate The Holding. You can use that time to shore up Fribourg and make the changes you want.”

  “I see,” she said, sitting up straighter again. “You mentioned grand-children, Em.”

  “That I did, Casey.”

  “What do I do if he doesn’t come back?” she asked.

  Ah. That was what had brought him here. Whatever Vibol had seen, or heard, that compelled the man who in turn required the government and Navy to move.

  Em took a deep breath and held it for several seconds before he let it go.

  “We have a list,” Em admitted. “Torsten, Hendrik, and I put it together. Plus a few others. It is a rather fluid and unofficial list of men that might make a good match, if worse came to worst and we had to fall back on political maneuvering, rather than your first choice.”

  Her eyes flashed angry, but that receded quickly. She was, at the end of the day, Emperor. That required certain ways of thinking that were alien to most people.

  “And?” she asked.

  “None of them are Vo,” Em admitted. “A few are pale reflections of the man, but none capture that vital essence that held St. Legier together. Most of them solve other problems that might crop up.”

  “Such as?” she demanded, voice growing hot.

  “How many Imperial gentlemen are likely to settle for being merely an ornament?” Em asked, letting the sneer creep into his voice. “You will rule, as well as reign. All he brings to the table are his connections to someone else, and the ability to father children. In time, he might, might, be accepted into the inner circle, but that’s going to be me and Tiede for now, plus people like Tom Provst and Hendrik, who have proven their loyalty to your person, rather than your chair. Blood is no longer good enough entry into that room. He will have to settle. Who might?”

  She paused in thought.

  “Not many,” she agreed. “Plus he will have a wife that is an artist and a warrior. A free-thinker and a revolutionary. A rebel in ways that will make most of them exceedingly uncomfortable.”

  “And you must in turn find him interesting, intelligent, passionate, and handsome enough to bring forth a new generation of offspring that will secure the Empire.”

  “You are a cold, vicious bastard, when you want to be, Em,” Casey noted.

  “Oh, no, Casey,” he countered. “This is Torsten’s doing. He’s tougher, meaner than Tom Provst, if you will grant me that conceit. If he hadn’t met Jessica, Wald might have been
high on your list, just because of who he is and what he’s done with his life. And he’s the one checking names and backgrounds and determining who we might fall back upon, if necessary.”

  “Another uncle?” Casey stared at him.

  “At least,” Em said. “He’s good enough for Jessica, Casey. And I knew Warlock. I had recruited that pirate in the first place, to overthrow Arnulf Rodriguez and claim the throne of Corynthe. Vo might have held their hearts and minds safe, but Torsten held your government together long enough for the rest of them to save it. Never forget that part.”

  Her wine was empty, so she refilled it. Drank some. Pondered. Stared at him as if she could read his soul.

  “Thank you,” she finally said.

  Em nodded. He had known this girl since she was born. Watched her grow into a bright child, a stubborn teenager, and an Emperor.

  As Vibol had obviously noted, sometimes she forgot that the rest of them existed to protect her. To keep her safe, because in doing so, she would keep them safe.

  Now he just had to hope that Moirrey, Jessica, or Tom Provst could keep Casey safe.

  Chapter LX

  Imperial Founding: 181/04/12. System Headquarters, Osynth B’Udan

  Tom didn’t like it, but there really wasn’t any way around it without causing more problems than it was probably worth. He had learned to trust Jessica’s people, and Phil Kosnett had made it clear he was willing to become a royal pain in the ass on the topic.

  Em might raise a stink later, but this couldn’t wait. Tom wanted to strike as rapidly as possible.

  So he had let Kosnett drag him down to a dock well away from the military operations. The man’s three primary troublemakers were here as well: Lau, Skokomish, and Mildon, as well as the last two prisoners: the husband and wife combination known as Lan and Kiel.

  They all watched as a tug delivered the last box of cargo into the stern of a relatively-new Windward-class Type Two transport.

  Tom had been aboard the cramped vessel the aliens had owned before being captured. Kosnett’s teams had done a great job cleaning it up, but it was still tiny and old.