[Genevieve 01] - Drachenfels

by Jack Yeovil - (ebook by Undead)

  The elector of Middenland sent a note of apology to Detlef’s bedside, and promised to settle any outstanding debts accrued during the production of Drachenfels, providing he were given a token percentage of the profits of any eventual staging of the work. Hubermann translated Detlef’s reply into a polite “no”, and refinanced the company by asking the actors and musicians to invest their own money. Somehow, he found some old gold and silver artefacts of elven manufacture in a trunk and used them for capital. Guglielmo drafted the business agreements that founded the Altdorf Joint Stock Theatre, and cheerfully signed the running of the company over to Detlef Sierck.

  The electorals conferred briefly, one seat around the table conspicuously unfilled, and requested that the Emperor nominate a new elector of Ostland. The princedom was due to pass to a cousin of Oswald’s, but the electoral vote, it was decided, should be disposed of elsewhere. The Emperor’s first suggestion, that the Imperial family be granted a vote in the college, was turned down. And, in the end, the vote went with the kingdom after all. Maximilian von Konigswald had been a good man, and all the others of his line before him. But the whole family were stripped of power thanks to the treachery of a single son of the house. The Emperor’s choice of successor was approved. The new electors of Ostland would in future be the von Tassenincks.

  Finally, it was decided that the fortress of Drachenfels should be destroyed, and alchemists were brought in to place explosive charges throughout the structure. Baron Johann watched from the opposite mountain, conscious again of the hooded phantoms in the periphery of his vision, and the whole place exploded most satisfactorily, raining down enough stone into a nearby valley to keep the villagers of three communities supplied with blocks for household repair for generations to come.

  Henrik Kraly was arrested and charged with murder. Despite Detlef’s deposition, he was acquitted on the grounds that Vargr Breughel had more or less killed himself and was probably a dangerous mutant anyway. However, without a salary from the House of von Konigswald, the former steward ran up a huge legal bill he was unable to settle, and spent the rest of his life as an inmate in Mundsen Keep. His dearest ambition, to become a trusty, was never fulfilled.

  Lilli Nissen was briefly married to a successful pit fighter until an accident in the ring cut short his career. Her much-vaunted Marienburg production of The Romance of Fair Matilda was a costly failure, and she retired from the stage soon after being offered her first “mother” role. After several more marriages, and a well-publicized affair with a cousin of Tsar Radii Bokha, she retired completely from public life and drove to despair a succession of collaborators engaged to help her with her never-to-be-completed memoirs.

  Peter Kosinski became a popular jester in a double act with Justus the Trickster.

  Kerreth the cobbler became official dress designer to the Countess Emmanuelle von Liebewitz, and was a great favourite with the ladies of Nuln.

  Szaradat became a grave robber, and was torn apart by daemons while looting a tomb that happened to be under a particularly severe curse.

  Innkeeper Bauman was persuaded by Corin the halfling to re-enter the Black Bat in the Street of a Hundred Taverns’ dicing tourney, and the inn’s team swept the event three years in succession.

  Reinhardt Jessner and Illona Horvathy were married; they named their twins Rudi and Erzbet.

  Clothilde of Averheim discovered a herbalist who successfully treated her skin condition, and she became the most celebrated beauty in this corner of the Empire.

  Clementine Clausewitz left the Sisterhood of Shallya and married an apothecary. Wietzak the vampire returned to Karak Varn and was destroyed by a secret society dedicated to the memory of the Tsarevich Pavel.

  Lady Melissa d’Acques grew bored with the Convent of Eternal Night and Solace and travelled widely, it was rumoured, in Lustria and the New World in the company of a series of foster parents.

  Sergei Bukharin lost an eye in a bawdy house brawl on the Altdorf waterfront and later succumbed to untreated syphilis.

  Elder Honorio continued to offer refuge to world-weary vampires, and opened a sister refuge for werewolves and other shape-shifters.

  Governor Gerd van Zandt was indicted on charges of corruption, and sent to command a penal colony in the Wasteland.

  Seymour Nebenzahl converted to the worship of a new-discovered demi-god of frosts and ice, and became the most influential soothsayer in Norsca.

  No one ever asked what happened to Lazslo Lowenstein.

  Detlef Sierck recovered and rewrote Drachenfels as The Tragedy of Oswald. He took the title role in the first run at the Temple of Drama in Altdorf, but Genevieve Dieudonne could not be persuaded to repeat her one and only venture as an actress. The play ran for some years, and Detlef followed it up with The Treachery of Oswald, which told the end of the story, and in which he surprised everyone by casting Reinhardt Jessner as “Detlef Sierck” and himself taking the twin roles of Laszlo Lowenstein and Drachenfels. Then, he produced a succession of mature masterpieces. With the profits of the Oswald plays, he bought a theatre which, by common consent of the company, he renamed the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse. The History of Sigmar was rewritten and staged to some critical acclaim, although it never equalled the popularity of Detlef’s later works. Even the critics who hated him personally came to acknowledge him as at least the equal of Jacopo Tarradasch. Although no one ever called him devout, he made substantial donations to the cult of Sigmar and built a shrine to the hammer in his town house. He spent some years with Genevieve, and discovered many new sensations with her. His sonnet cycle To My Unchanging Lady is widely held by scholars to be his best work. They were finally parted by the years, when Detlef was in his fifties, and Genevieve still seemed sixteen, but she remained the love of his life.

  Genevieve lived forever. Detlef did not, but his plays did.

  Scanning, formatting and basic

  proofing by Undead.