hidden behind him.
Khor-ben Jarneyn arrived.
The Ninth Unknown announced, “We have him.”
“That fellow?”
“That’s him.”
“He doesn’t look like his mother at all.”
“Maybe he takes after his dad.”
“I never met Gedanke. I don’t know. Tuck him under your arm and take him back.”
“Uh…”
“The stranger his surroundings when he wakes up the more likely he is to listen when you explain. He’ll want information so he can figure out what’s really happening.”
Februaren eyed his captive. He hoped Iron Eyes was right. “Heris? Shall we?”
29. Alten Weinberg: Spring
Titus Consent tapped on the frame of the open doorway. Hecht said, “Come ahead.” He set Redfearn Bechter’s memory chest aside. “What?”
“Algres Drear is here. He wants to see you. He seems distracted.”
“He say why?”
“Not straight up. Not to me.”
“Bring him in. And feel free to eavesdrop.”
Hecht expected that to happen with or without his approval. His people got more protective every day. There were times when he missed Madouc’s easygoing ways.
He resented the increasing isolation. He went back to contemplating Bechter’s bequest.
He did that when he was feeling low. Wondering if there was a deeper message. Was it part of a pattern? Was it proof that the world was essentially random? Was his own passage through life part of a divine plan or just a stream of events with no real meaning?
He could argue both ways. Were he in an epic it would, for sure, lack a traditional plot, everything connecting to everything else and coming together in the end. His epic consisted of a lot of little plots entangled.
Titus Consent coughed, held the door for Algres Drear, then disappeared. Drear peered around. “No armed guards in the inner sanctum?”
“Don’t give them ideas.” Drear was back in Braunsknecht livery, with an extra band of black silk around his wrists.
“It might already be easier to get to Serenity than it is to reach you.”
“I find it tedious, too. Then I have a shooting pain in my shoulder that reminds me why. I try to tolerate the overreaction of the people who want to keep me among the living.”
“Not to be critical. But if you let them isolate you, pretty soon you won’t have any idea what’s going on.”
Which echoed Hecht’s fears.
“You aren’t here to warn me about that.”
“No. I have a different warning in hand.”
“If it’s time-sensitive you’d better spit it up.”
Drear decided not to take offense. “There’s a new plot afoot against you. It appears to include some serious players.”
Hecht considered. “You did go back to work for the Princess Apparent, didn’t you?” He knew the answer, of course.
“I did. In part thanks to you. I owe you for that. Plus, I want to shelter the Princess from the ambitions of her supposed friends.”
“Ah. Do go on.”
Drear told his story. He named no names because he had most of his information second- and third-hand. But there was a cabal, embracing some of the Electors, the Council Advisory, and senior court functionaries. They planned a palace revolution. The Commander of the Righteous would be arrested before all else. And killed, if he resisted. Katrin would be replaced with the more tractable Helspeth.
Hecht observed, “Those kinds of rumors have been around since Lothar went belly-up.”
“And the plotters never have the balls to take the plunge. I know. But Katrin’s recent behavior has given them fresh courage. And I don’t want my benefactor hurt by power squabbles amongst the Empire’s most spoiled nobles.”
“And you especially don’t want your principal to become a pawn in a game not of her own devising.” Hecht suspected that Drear harbored deep, well-hidden feelings for the Princess Apparent. Possibly more realistically founded than those of an itinerant war fighter who was not at all sure of who he was or where his true loyalties lay. He suspected, as well, that Algres Drear was perfectly aware of the weakness of the Commander of the Righteous where the Princess Apparent was concerned.
Captain Drear, married man, was offering to found a conspiracy of would-be lovers who dared not touch.
“I especially don’t,” Drear agreed. “With the Empress getting more erratic, more unpredictable, and more harsh, I don’t. She could have Helspeth executed this time. She’d be sorry and penitent afterward but it would be done.”
“If somebody does something really stupid and says he acted on her behalf.”
“That’s what I’m trying to stop. If we can make it to summer, and the diplomats find a court interested in a marital alliance, Katrin wouldn’t feel so threatened. Although Helspeth getting married won’t change the succession. Katrin has to produce an heir to do that.”
Hecht feared Katrin’s enemies would feel pressed to act before Helspeth could be dealt on the marriage market. “A lot of old men would be thrilled if they could just get Helspeth out of the country. If Katrin died they might have years to run the Empire if they could keep Helspeth away. If they could get her to abdicate. I understand that Anies is senile but healthy as a horse.”
Anies, Johannes’s sister, followed Helspeth in the succession. She was old but likely had a decade left. Hecht had not met her, though she shared Winterhall with the Empress and Princess Apparent. Indeed, she was the grande dame of that establishment.
Drear grunted unhappily.
“Dynastic troubles. There must be a better way,” Hecht mused. “How could we get Jaime of Castauriga back here for a while? He could solve all our problems with a five-minute effort.”
“That would be ideal. But we’d have to kidnap him. Witnesses agree, Jaime developed an abiding, irrational loathing for Katrin while he was here. As potent as her obsession with him. Who knows why? Nobody knows what happened in private. But it’s there, and Jaime’s feelings are so strong he’s even lost interest in gaining the Empire through his descendants.”
Titus Consent held the same opinion. But would that continue to be the case? The opportunity had to be gnawing at Jaime. When he fell asleep at night. In that twilight state when he was wakening. And every time one of his family reminded him what he was putting aside.
He could be the father of an Imperial dynasty.
Hecht said, “Maybe Helspeth should marry. She’d be safer. Her husband would have a vested interest in protecting her.”
Sourly, Drear agreed. “It would make her safer. But because Katrin has no issue there’ll always be knives with Helspeth’s name on. The temptation to meddle might even increase if it looked like a foreign line might come in. Especially if a match with Regard of Arnhand turned up.”
There had been resistance to that from all factions before. But that had begun to change when Katrin created her own lifeguard legion while steadfastly refusing to wilt like a woman.
Hecht said, “It could happen. The flaw, though, is that Arnhand is so supportive of the Brothen Patriarchs. That’s where Anne of Menand doesn’t restructure her values when a change might be convenient. And she’s
