Then Katrin can get back to ruling the Empire.”
“I see. Of course. I’ll play my part.” Never being sure what was real and what was playacting.
All the appurtenances of a state funeral-for a stillborn child. But without them the Empress might be lost.
Hecht had a hundred questions. He dared ask none. The va Kelgerberg woman might have no part in the plot. If there was a plot.
Helspeth saw his confusion. “Someday. As pillow talk.” Boldness on which she almost strangled.
The Commander of the Righteous stationed himself at the end of the tiny gold casket. He wondered where it had come from on short notice. Titus, beautifully turned out, stood at the other end and gently urged people to keep moving.
It would not do to have the little corpse examined too closely.
So Hecht felt.
He thought it looked nothing like the Empress. It was as dusky as King Jaime. He thought it looked nearer full term than six months, too. Though in the available light it was hard to tell, and he was no expert.
Katrin occupied a light throne behind and overlooking the casket. No reason had been given. It was not customary. But she was Empress. She could do what she wanted. She had cried a lot. Then she had fallen asleep.
She slept well, except for one brief crying jag and a short absence to relieve herself. She did not reclaim her place among the living till after the viewing ended. Hecht’s picked men were about to close the casket.
“Wait, Commander. I want one last look.”
Hecht signed his men to step back. Katrin rose with difficulty. Hecht asked, “Do you require assistance, Your Grace?”
“No. But I’ve decided not to look. I just slept for the first time. I should let go now, not torment myself any further. Close it. Take it away. Priests! Do your duty.”
Hecht performed the stiff, shallow bow expected of a senior officer. “As you command, Your Grace.” And wondered how Katrin would have reacted to seeing her infant in the light of day.
The funeral was appropriately somber. Hecht saw nothing to suggest that anyone considered this playacting for the benefit of the Empress. These people really believed.
“Maybe I’ve gotten too cynical,” he murmured to Titus Consent. “I was sure this was all set up so the Empress could save face. Yet, near as I can tell, everybody believes it but me.”
“Sometimes the unlikely can be true, too. And villains don’t have to be black-hearted all the time.”
“Yet I hear no conviction.”
“What I think doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.” Hecht brooded. In time, he decided that only Katrin’s conviction mattered, but she was not alone in her conviction.
If Helspeth and others had worked a scheme, its outcome was good for Empress and Empire.
The Empress who had lost a son was a new Empress: harder, more focused, and less tolerant than the Empress who had gone into confinement. This Empress meant to slay her pain by working herself to exhaustion. And she meant to carry Alten Weinberg along with her.
The Unbeliever had better beware. A furious storm was gathering.
Hecht’s weary staff cornered him one evening. Clej Sedlakova said, “I’ve been elected to speak for everyone.”
“Can you hurry? I have a meeting with the Empress.”
“The woman is eating you alive.” Someone snickered. These were soldiers. “She’s devouring all of us. We need a leader here. We need a decision maker. If you want to spend all your time dancing attendance, leaving us to work ourselves numb best-guessing what we’re supposed to do… Well, you need to delegate somebody to be in charge if you aren’t going to be yourself.”
Surprised, Hecht had to admit that the one-armed man was right. For nineteen days he had spent most of his waking time with the Empress. And not just preparing for her crusade. She insisted. He had become her emotional crutch. He tolerated it because it gave him a chance to see Princess Helspeth, often in circumstances less chaperoned than when he had conferred with her every evening.
They had moments to talk and-more or less-flirt.
Two days ago Katrin had asked, clumsily, “Did you two manage to dampen your ardor for one another while I was confined?”
Helspeth had reddened and sputtered. Hecht had done nothing. He was in no position to contradict the Empress, nor to argue with her outside the realm of war planning.
“Ah. You didn’t. Ellie is still valuable on the marriage market. But she is getting past her bloom. How droll. How sad for you both.” There was a cruel edge to her laughter.
Katrin was going through changes. Hecht feared she would turn into one of those tyrants who practiced their worst cruelties on those nearest them.
Katrin said, “You two don’t hide what you’re thinking. You look at each other like ferrets in season. But, never mind. As you will. So long as it doesn’t sabotage Imperial policy.”
A small cruelty, there. After suggesting that Helspeth might be on the marriage block again.
Hecht did not speak into the silence. Nor did Helspeth.
Katrin tired of waiting. “I’m pleased with what you’ve done, Commander. Especially during my confinement. I’m also pleased with your efforts, Ellie.”
Hecht smelled a “but.” “Thank you, Your Grace. It was a strain. I’m sure it will be less so now that we have you back to guide us.”
“You have requests and reservations?”
“Nothing new, Your Grace. It’s all in the reports. Excepting recent difficulties having to do with me overworking my staff. If you like, I’ll have my recommendations separated out of the body of the reports so you can review them without the distraction of drayage censuses, blanket and tent inventories, and the like. A messenger could have that here in the morning.”
“Yes. Do that.” Said in a way implying that she had not had that in mind.
The Empress had moments where her mind slipped its moorings. When she went away somewhere. She never explained, never acknowledged that anything had happened. Perforce, those in her presence shared the pretense.
“As you command, so shall it be.”
“In all things?”
Uncertain of his ground, Hecht went for cautious honesty. “Almost all things. There is my higher obligation to God. I won’t sell my soul. I won’t surrender to the Will of the Night, though I love you as a man must love his greatest earthly lord.”
“An answer Mother Church and all her swarming little priests would applaud. Good enough. Suppose I were to order you to carry my sister into one of these private chambers and spend the rest of the night making her fantasies come true?”
That edge of cruelty was back in Katrin’s voice, stronger than before. Time to be very careful.
“Much as I might, as a man, wish for such a night, I think that the situation, as you present it, would come near asking me to sell my soul.”
The devil left its place behind Katrin’s eyes. The urge to be cruel evaporated. “Very well. If I can’t help, I can’t. You two will just have to manage it by bumbling and sneaking. Go, now, Commander of the Righteous.” A hint of mockery there? “I want that report right away.”
The Empress seemed to lose interest. Hecht’s meetings with her came further and further apart as winter headed toward spring. He was not alone in enjoying less of her time. She was withdrawing. Her periods of distraction grew longer and more frequent. There were rumors of physical complications left over from her delivery.
