Grasping for the Crowns (The Powers Book 2)

by Alma Boykin

  “You can see it in the papers, Mater,” Mátyás added. “Noch einmal gehen die Menge hamstern. The crowds have gone out hamstering again.”

  “But why?”

  István and Barbara shared a concerned look. She frowned a little, as if concentrating, and he lowered his shields. «How many times have we told her?» she sent with great effort.

  «Too many. I’m worried, my love.»

  «So am I.» Barbara closed the link.

  István raised his shields again before answering his mother. “Because even with ration cards, Mater, the cost of everything has risen very high, and some foods are not available at all, since Hungary is feeding the army as well as ourselves. And early spring is always scant, as you know.”

  “Well, that’s no reason to clog the rails and steal from farmers. We shall leave on Saturday, just as we always have.” She nodded her head a little, as if her pronouncement ended the discussion.

  It did, but not for the reason Lady Marie assumed.

  Mistress Nagy arrived on May fourth. István greeted her personally, with the deference and respect due the House’s chief Healer. Nagy possessed the very rare skill of being able to Heal both bodies and minds. She’d kept him sane, as well as keeping him walking, after his injuries during the first and second Galician Campaigns, when a head wound almost destroyed his connections with the House and Power, and then after a fall re-injured his spine and came within a millimeter of crippling and slowly paralyzing him. A fall caused by Tisza Georg, István snarled, then calmed himself as he held the door open. The quiet woman glided through the doorway of the town palace, dressed in her customary shades of soft brown. “My lord.”

  “Thank you for coming so soon, Mistress Nagy.” If she had a first name, he’d never heard it. “Please, allow me to take your coat.” He took the traveling coat and handed it to one of the maids, along with Mistress Nagy’s traveling bag, and then ushered her into the parlor. Real coffee from the family’s precious, dwindling stock waited for them.

  After she had had a cup, the Healer said, “Your letter expressed concern for her ladyship Marie.”

  “Yes. Since Father’s passing she has grown, hmm, distracted is not the right word. She forgets we are at war, and cannot understand why there is no fine flour, or that people are hamstering, as well as other problems. We tell her multiple times, but she does not remember. And she asks the servants for impossible things, like serving kaiserschmarren for the coffee hour, and becomes agitated when they cannot grant her requests.” The day before she’d gone shopping and returned in a temper, furious with Madame Gabor for not having summer-weight cottons and books of the latest styles.

  Mistress Nagy narrowed her almost white-less black eyes. “Does she truly not remember, or does she choose not to remember, my lord?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, and thought. “I believe that she truly does not remember. I do not know. She has refused to speak with me mind-to-mind since Father’s funeral. I do sense her through the House, but far less strongly than before his passing.”

  “Ah.” The brown-clad woman helped herself to more coffee, adding a drop of honey. “And your lady wife?”

  “She seems to be recovering from the delivery, and the children are well.”

  Mistress Nagy nodded again, the little feather on her hat bobbing. “I will look in on Lady Barbara and the heir and his sister, since the past year has been difficult for nursing mothers and small ones. Is the heir weaned?”

  “Yes, although he was not happy about it. We keep a goat in the hill park for him.” Goat milk did not require ration cards. Cow milk could not be found for any price, even with ration cards.

  “Very good, my lord. And then I will speak with Lady Marie, to offer my respects, and we shall see.”

  István returned to the House Chronicle he was trying to read. Written in Latin during the Thirty Years’ War, in handwriting so cramped it might have been done under a magnifying glass, the tales provided some hints about the challenges through which he might have to guide the House. He hoped its lessons wouldn’t be needed, but one never knew, and if the Russians pulled a dreadful surprise out from under their hairy hats, the fighting could well spill up into the mountains. As he read about House fighting House, he paused, rubbing at the mustache now under his nose. The Romanovs are not a House proper, are they? They are a noble family, but not a House, I think. He needed to ask the Archivist, a post which, at that moment, was not filled at House Szárkány. Archduke Rudolph would know. Or would he? István made a side note to remember to ask the next time he and the Emperor’s buffer crossed paths.

  István managed to become so engrossed in translating the Chronicle that he jumped out of his skin when Ferenk spoke from the library doorway. “My lord, if you have a moment, Mistress Nagy wishes to speak with you.”

  Already? István looked over his shoulder at the clock and saw that four hours had passed since she’d arrived. “Ah yes. But not just at this moment. I’ll be back.” Four hours had also passed since he’d visited the WC, and that felt to be half an hour too long.

  He returned, much more unhurried, to find Mistress Nagy waiting. “You are right to be concerned, my lord.”

  István sat a little harder than he’d intended and winced at the pain in his back and leg. “My lady mother?”

  “Needs a change of scenery and fresh air, my lord. Nagymatra will be good for her and for the children. She also needs, or will begin to need in the future, a companion with some medical training.” The Healer’s face softened a little, and a touch of sadness entered her voice. “My lord, Lady Marie has suffered several tiny strokes. I suspect they are the first of a series that will grow more severe over time. She is also in willful denial of the war, but the two are intertwined to an extent. The damage is too old for a Healer to rectify, my lord.”

  István closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the late Emperor Franz Josef’s last years. “I see. Thank you, Mistress Nagy. What do you recommend?” And how long does she have before she loses everything?

  “Patience is my first recommendation, my lord. I suspect her first attack came just before Lord Janos passed, and she has associated the two in her mind, which is why she has blocked you. If you need to act as Head, however, she will obey.” She removed a tiny notebook from a pocket in her walking suit. “Fresh air, a different setting for a few weeks at least, and quiet. After that, a companion and eventually a nurse, or a place in one of the Sisters of Mercy foundations, such as the one near Lake Balaton, depending on the family situation.”

  István made notes of his own. “Thank you, Mistress Nagy.” At least he knew what the future held, even if it cut his heart to the quick. “And the children and Lady Barbara?”

  Nagy made an odd gesture with the hand not holding the little notebook. “Normally I would not advise this, but Lady Barbara must nurse as long as possible, until Erszebéth is two at least. And Lady Barbara and Imre need to eat more. Again, fresh air and leaving the city is encouraged.” She skewered István with a stern glare. “And you need to stay out of the city for as long as possible as well. I realize that you have other concerns, but your connection with the House must be strengthened, my lord. You are young in your Headship, and absenting yourself from the House’s territory is not wise.”

  István twitched. “Yes, ma’am.” Well, even Archduke Rudolph would not contradict a Healer’s orders when she spoke for the House. No, he’d probably grab me by my collar and belt and toss me onto the first north-bound train. Thinking of Rudolph reminded István of his earlier speculations. Maybe she knew about the other Houses and Powers. “Ah, Mistress Nagy, a completely different question and topic. Do you know if the Romanovs, the Russian royal family, are a House?”

  She blinked, sat back, and tucked her notebook away. “To my knowledge they are not, my lord, although I believe House members have married into the line. Peter the Great and his granddaughter-by-marriage, Catherine, were HalfDragons, but were also the last ones in the Romanov family
. And both came from out-crosses with families that were Houses. The imperial Chronicles may have more, but,” she wrinkled her nose, tipping her head to one side. “My lord, I seem to recall hearing at some point in my training that the Mongols eliminated almost every House in what is now Russia, although a few returned to the western edge of the Russian Empire in the late 1700s. They have very, very few Healers and those are human. No True-Dragons, as you can well imagine, my lord. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m not certain, Mistress Nagy. The question came to mind as I was reading an older Chronicle. What you say would explain why there have been no attempts to arrange a direct House to House negotiation.” He would ask Rudolph. What about the Powers in Russia? Or had many survived this long?

  “And do not attempt to contact the Powers east of Transylvania, my lord,” she said.

  “I’ve been warned.”

  “Consider this a stronger warning, my lord. Something strange is going on in Galicia and to the east, and your defenses are not strong enough yet. I trust you do not care to repeat your experience from 1914?”

  “No, Mistress Nagy, I do not.” Fresh air and leaving Budapest sounds better and better.

  The afternoon rain pattered down on the roof of the long verandah at Nagymatra, soothing and calming the people inside the old wood and stone hunting lodge. István watched the rain from his office, savoring the growing quiet within and without. His mother had retired to take an afternoon nap after going walking earlier with Barbara. Hans, the huntmaster, had assured the ladies that nothing large lurked in the woods around the lodge, although he told István that they really needed to thin out the deer. István looked at the calendar and made a mental note to organize a quiet hunting party in the fall, along with Imre’s delayed birth celebration.

  After another hour, the rain faded away and István ventured out onto the verandah. The house faced south, and he could just glimpse the mist and haze lingering in the folds of the valleys below the lodge. Bits of cloud, snagged by the trees, hung like tattered washing from the edges of the sharper ridges. He knew that the ground under the trees would be clear of underbrush, shaded out by the thick leaves above, while wild rose and other plants clung to the edges of the clearings and roads. A few pastures, fields, and vineyards, cut from the ever-advancing trees, would provide different shades of green once the mists burned away. If István had stood on top of the mountain north of Nagymatra, he would see the grey haze fading into the blue-grey distance of the Great Hungarian Plain, the Alföld, the land claimed by the Power known as Pannonia.

  How many years had his ancestors looked out at the land from Nagymatra and the mountains around it, István wondered. The first Eszterházy of record had appeared just after the Mongols swept west, then east, slaughtering half the people of the plain and a quarter of those in the hills. In the 1500s the family had divided under twin sons, one branch moving west and south to become the Eszterházys of the Habsburg court, led now by his distant cousin Prince Miklos Eszterházy. The other branch remained in their mountain fastness, allied to the Power of the Matra Mountains, senior in age but junior in political might. They’d been here at least seven hundred years, humans, HalfDragons and True-dragons, and the even older Power.

  As if the thought summoned the being, István felt the Power brushing his mind. He lowered his shields, taking the images and sense that the creature sent him. The rain had refreshed the land, and all prospered within the mountains. On the foothills and plains, however, the damp bothered the creature, especially north of the mountains. It turned the soil into mud and threatened the plants growing in it. István made a note to himself and continued to observe. Was the Power in need of anything? He sensed a negative reply—it required nothing of him at this time, other than his continued presence. And that he avoid Galicia, at least Galicia east of Lemberg. István assured the creature that he had no intention of venturing in that direction or of trying to “read” the Power that claimed the battered land there. The Power of the Matra communicated a sense of satisfaction and withdrew.

  Since his shields were down, István reached for the House, not calling or asking, just feeling. Silver and green, he thought of the world, the green of the Power and the silver stars of the members of House Szárkány–Kárpátok. Like stars, the House members appeared, clusters in villages and hamlets, scattered individuals in the woods and fields within the House’s territory, and even a few, like his sister Judit, at the very edge of his perception and within other Houses’ domains. Several thousand people, whom István served as leader, arbiter, protector, and guide. The weight of his responsibilities scared him at times, and had terrified him at his accession to Head and War Lord, but he accepted them. He’d been bred and born to the role, trained since childhood, and had sworn his oaths to the House and Power with a clean heart and conscience. Just as he’d sworn allegiance to Emperor Josef Karl von Habsburg, Head and War Lord of House Habsburg, Emperor of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, mediator between the Houses within the empire, and protector of all the multitude of peoples within the realm.

  And allied with a multitude of Powers, István recalled. Beyond the edge of the woods, at the feet of the Matra Mountains, lay the territory claimed by Pannonia. Northwest sat Bohemia’s lands, and to the west of those the creature called Austria held sway well into the Alps. István had brushed all three, and feared the creature of the Plain. Archduke Rudolph acted as buffer, protecting Josef Karl from the raw energy of the three Powers, just as he had done for Emperor Franz Josef. And thanks be to God that I am not in that position. The Matra is enough. Three Powers in my mind, and one of them Pannonia, would be enough to drive me insane, or to drink, or both. And supposedly Pannonia gives Logres, in the British Isles, a wide berth. He shivered a little at the very thought. As amoral, cold, and deep as Pannonia felt to his mind, he had less than zero desire ever to encounter Logres. Not that he would, given the current situation in Europe.

  István pulled back within his own mind as he felt someone approaching. He turned to see Agmánd, the dull-orange-and-grey True-dragon butler and manager of Nagymatra, appear from around the corner. A young True-dragon followed behind, pulling a teacart. “I take it I am having tea in the fresh air?” István half-asked.

  «Her ladyship Lady Barbara requested it, my lord.» Agmánd replied. He flicked one round ear and his whiskers floated up, then down, before hanging low beside his broad muzzle.

  István wondered again what it would be like to have married a quiet, placid, dependent woman who did nothing without asking him for express permission. Nice at first, then probably not far from pure misery after a year or two. Especially now, he decided—yet again. House Szárkány had little room for powdered-sugar teacakes at the moment, at least as Lady of the House. István stayed out of the way as the youngster unhooked the pull straps from the cart, raised the leaves, tidied the dishes and teapot on top, locked the wheels, and pulled two chairs up to the little table, watched closely by Agmánd. The True-dragon was three meters long, and had sharp claws and a very firm tail tip to reinforce his natural gravitas and authority. The younger blue-and-grey reptile finished her task, and Agmánd dismissed her with a wave of one forefoot. She bowed to István and trotted off, mindful of her tail and the chairs.

  “Thank you, Agmánd,” Barbara said, emerging from the house. She’d changed into a practical day dress in green that complimented her brown hair and green eyes. István took her hand and led her to the tea table, steadied her chair, and then took his own, allowing Agmánd to push Barbara’s seat a little closer. Agmánd poured for both of them, uncovered the afternoon’s offering, then departed when Barbara thought something to him. István was impressed—she rarely used her relatively weak telepathy. “I could become a country mouse,” she informed her husband after a moment of peace.

  “It is tempting, my lady my love. Stay here, pull up the drawbridge, have Agmánd fill the moat, and let the world go by.”

  “Agmánd would object to getting muddy.”

&nb
sp; “Quite true.” He sipped the tea, which he suspected contained only a memory of real tea leaves, and considered things. This seemed to be the best time to ask her, he decided. “The House wishes me to remain closer than Budapest.”

  “Not live here, at Nagymatra, all year round, surely,” she protested.

  “No, not at all. I have other duties, which the House knows and of which it approves. I was thinking of making the townhouse in Kassa our full-time residence, at least when duty allows. I think it might be better for the children to be away from the big city until they are older. And Mistress Nagy suggested that a less chaotic scene might benefit Lady Marie.”

  “Ah.” Barbara sipped her tea before nibbling on one of the brown-bread sandwiches made with potted venison. “I believe that might be helpful for Lady Marie. Or will a move just add to her, ah, confusion?”

  “I do not know. Mistress Nagy recommended hiring a companion for her, preferably someone with medical . . .” The words trailed off as a calculating expression appeared in his bride’s eyes. Her full lips pursed as she considered something, and István could almost see the idea forming in her mind. “You have a candidate?”

  “Perhaps. Someone familiar to Lady Marie, known to the House, with medical training. A widow of impeccable morals who also needs a place to stay,” Barbara counted off. “Although the staff at the house in Kassa might be taken a bit aback, and the person I have in mind is not as free to go out with Lady Marie as others might be.”

  István put the pieces together. “Aunt Claudia. You are thinking about asking Aunt Claudia to come.”

  “Why not? Besides the obvious, my lord husband.”