The Trials of Empire, page 24
“What has happened, Majesty?” Vonvalt asked softly.
“What has happened? Nema, what hasn’t happened,” the Emperor said, collapsing into a chair with enough force to crack bones. He took a long draw of wine, not even taking a moment to learn the vintage. “I lost control of the Senate. If I was feeling generous, I would say the process was complete by the month of Cervenkar. If I was feeling ungenerous, the reality is probably Vinkar. Sorpen, even. The Mlyanars caucused with the Nemans and all of the independents. They turned the Legionary Prefect, Milena Bartoš, may her spirit be smote upon the Broken Path. Well, you know that they had the Savarans in their pocket. Took a few other orders with them too. Patrias on every street corner spouting nonsense. Tame Imperial Guardsmen with heavy pockets doing nothing to stop them.” He shot a look at Rainer, who remained impassive. “Well, then there came the fucking mess with Iliyana, abducting her own son – my grandson! – and framing some poor sod. You heard what we did to him?”
Vonvalt nodded slowly. I thought about Ivan Godric, the insane man whom Iliyana and Claver had stuffed with false memories about kidnapping the Prince Kamil and whom the traitor and false Justice Luitgard Roza had had publicly and spectacularly executed.
“And then the Lodge was razed. Truly, I thought that was it. I tried to buy back the half of my Imperial Guard who were set to defect – oh yes,” he said, catching Vonvalt’s expression. “I knew they were being bribed. Fanatically loyal to me, until there are marks and titles and estates to be gifted.” He snorted bitterly. “Corruption is nothing new in Sova, you must know that.”
“It has long been rumoured,” Vonvalt said with what was now uncharacteristic tact.
“Well I had little choice but to denounce you, of course.” The Emperor was unused to explaining himself, and his delivery was awkward and stilted. “I did exactly what the patricians wanted all along, which was to withdraw the Royal warrant for the Order of the Magistratum. I was trying to buy myself time. Nema, what a fool I have been.”
“Foolish, certainly,” Vonvalt said. “Stability breeds complacency. I am as guilty of underestimating our enemies as anyone else. When one is faced with such naked evil, there is a temptation to believe that the commonfolk will see it for what it is. In reality it is tenacious, like a weed. It alters perceptions and tolerances slowly, insidiously. It must be fought constantly, and cut out at the roots.”
“Hm,” the Emperor grunted, as annoyed with Vonvalt’s patience as with his insubordination. There was a long silence.
“What happened after the destruction of the Grand Lodge?”
“For a while, nothing,” the Emperor replied. “Professional antagonists need something to antagonise against. The patricians had spent so long building up the Magistratum as the great enemy of the state, that once it was removed as a political force, it took away their entire raison d’etre. It was funny, watching them scramble around after that, looking to justify their own existence. It was a delicious irony.”
“Well, they managed it.”
“Aye. They managed it,” the Emperor agreed darkly. He took another drink of wine. “I was hoping to rally, but Tasa went east, taking the last of the Legions with him – against my orders. Foolish boy. I have heard nothing from him, and can only assume he has been killed. And then there is Gordan of course, widely rumoured to have been slain en route to Seaguard.” There was an uncomfortable pause. That Vonvalt had thrown his – and the Empire’s – lot in with Prince Gordan’s murderers was a nettle yet to be grasped. “And now I hear reports of Luka besieged in Saxanfelde.” He sighed, drained the last of his wine, and poured himself another goblet full. “There is no one, Sir Konrad. I am waiting here, waiting to die. Every hour that passes I feel the disapproval of my ancestors, of Valent Saxan. I feel it like a fucking weight of iron pressing down on me. To think I will have to soon face them again in the afterlife.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Vonvalt said. “I have put things in motion, certain… alliances of convenience. You will not be pleased with some of my decisions, but I urge you to consider the wider picture and what we stand to lose if we should fail.”
The Emperor sneered at Vonvalt. He pointed a trembling index finger at him. “You speak to me as though I were a child. As though I had no head for realpolitik. You forget it was I who raised you up from that gutter they call Jägeland. Do not condescend to me.”
Vonvalt bristled. “Then do not act in such a way as to require condescension!” he snapped.
The Emperor gritted his teeth as a paroxysm of anger washed through him. “I am reaching my—!”
“No,” Vonvalt cut across him. “It is time to listen to me, and listen carefully. You will not like what I’m about to tell you. But know that it has been done in the name of Sova.”
The Emperor looked at Vonvalt venomously. “Just what have you done?”
Vonvalt gave him the full account of everything that had come to pass since our expulsion from Sova many weeks before. The Emperor, who began listening to the tale with a weary, irritated countenance, shook with rage by the end.
“You have made common cause with the fucking pagans?! With the very people who have slain my son and destroyed the Sixteenth Legion? Are you fucking insane? You have the temerity to counsel me on the greater good when my thirdborn is a corpse in the Velykšuma?” The Emperor’s voice was at fever pitch. “You thought I would be happy to learn this? Truly? Prince of Hell, you’ve lost your mind. You are a traitor to Sova!”
Vonvalt launched to his feet.
“Don’t!” I shouted, standing and grabbing him by the arm.
Vonvalt froze mid-step. Rainer, too, had moved quickly to intercept him. She hovered a half-dozen paces away, hand on her sword.
“You are unfit to bear your title,” Vonvalt said.
“Get out of here!” the Emperor exploded. “Get out of my sight! I might not be able to have you killed, but I can do everything short of that. Whatever schemes you have put in motion, they will be undone. I will pass word to the lords of the north to destroy this pagan army. I will not let you carve up my empire like a beef flank. I would sooner turn it over to the Nemans! And as for those fucking wolfmen making their way up the Kova—”
Vonvalt slapped the Emperor across the cheek. The latter, who had not suffered any human contact that he had not directly solicited for many years, looked as though his heart were about to give out.
“Serjeant Rainer,” Vonvalt said stonily in the silence that followed.
“S-Sire?” she stammered.
“The Emperor is tired.”
“Tired?! Have you taken leave of your senses! I shall not—”
“See that he is returned to his chamber and kept there for the duration of hostilities. Appoint a detail of men to ensure that his needs are taken care of.”
“—strung up from a fucking gibbet where you’ll stay—”
“Then meet me back here with your closest and best officers.”
“—are to stop this madness immediately, I am the Emperor of Sova, you cannot—”
“Do I make myself clear?” Vonvalt asked impatiently.
Rainer cleared her throat. “Indeed, milord Justice.”
“Good,” Vonvalt said, and sighed. He turned to me. “Come, Helena. It seems the fate of Sova remains in our hands.”
XVII
Retaking the City
“Twice the labour
Twice the pain;
Twice the horror
Thrice the gain.”
HAUNER FOLK SONG
I couldn’t quite believe it was actually happening, but the Emperor was indeed locked away in his private chambers, by uneasy – but ultimately compliant – Imperial Guardsmen.
We spent the rest of the night moving around the Imperial Palace and its immediate environs, to allow Vonvalt to gather as much information as possible about the state of the city: the arrangement of the loyalist and traitor forces, their numbers, morale, dispositions, and a thousand other things. I followed him everywhere like a faithful dog, and felt about as useful as one.
Accompanying us was Serjeant Rainer, and latterly Sir Gerold Bertilo, the captain of the city watch and Sheriff of Sova, whom I had not seen since the Ivan Godric debacle. The old Southern Plainsman looked even older, his black moustache and hair even greyer than when I had last seen him, his skin rougher and more creased. He had been out manning a temporary fortification at the southern end of the Baden Bridge, but had returned the moment he had heard of Vonvalt’s reappearance. He greeted the latter outside the front of the Imperial Palace with untempered pleasure.
“You are alive!” he exclaimed, pulling both Vonvalt and I into an embrace. He spoke quickly, overexcited and overtired. “By Nema, I thought our plan was sure to fail. I hope you have brought some good news with you; we have all but given up here. Jansen is doing what he can to suppress our enemies. Nema, but his abilities are without rival. It is nothing short of a miracle that he is still breathing.”
“He may not be for much longer, if it is discovered that he let Helena and I slip the net. I am still not sure how he achieved such pre-eminence amongst the Mlyanars.” Vonvalt sounded uneasy, but Sir Gerold shared none of his suspicions.
“Other senators have paid for his duplicity with their lives. He may have even wielded the blade himself. But he is stopping the commonfolk from rioting, and that is the most important thing. He has convinced the traitors to discourage assembly, in favour of a curfew and martial law. I do not know how much longer he can keep them at bay, which is why your appearance is most propitious.”
“You are in contact with him, then?” Vonvalt asked.
“Infrequently. He has his messengers. He constantly counsels patience, but we are running out of it along with a great many things. With the city under curfew – and with the commonfolk choosing to remain at home even during the day – we are facing a shortage of just about everything. Sova is home to a million souls. It needs a thousand tons of grain a day. It cannot survive without a constant flow of food.”
“One thing that is clear to me is that we must act with great speed. I want to be in a position to counter-attack tomorrow, or at the very latest the following day.”
“Tomorrow works. My men are champing at the bit.”
“Aye, and mine,” Serjeant Rainer agreed. “’Tis only the injunction of the Emperor which has kept us here, in place. But my people are ready to fight. They would go now, if you were to give the order. They have long sickened of leaving the city to sour.”
Vonvalt nodded his satisfaction. “Good. But Tymoteusz is right. We must be patient – at least for the next half-day. Running headlong into an attack on the streets would be very ill advised without us knowing precisely the layout and composition of our enemies.”
“Most of them are located in two places,” Serjeant Rainer said. “The Temple of Savare, and the Imperial Guard barracks. They control everything south of the Creus Road and west of the Law Library, I would say.”
“The Law Library is important to me. I will need to examine a great many books there in the coming days – or rather, Helena will,” he said, turning to me slightly as he said it. I could not help but feel aggrieved. As much as I baulked at the idea of more violent conflict, the idea of being sent off to study books whilst everyone else got stuck into the fighting irked me greatly. But then I remembered Aegraxes’ portentous words about a “volume of esoteric lore”, and I knew that, for all it injured my ego, it was not my skill at arms that our mission demanded.
We carried on walking through the dark, quiet streets. We walked up the Baden High-Way to the junction of it and the Dubravkan Road, standing briefly in view of the Wolf Gate, before turning back, re-crossing the Sauber, and then making west to the Philosopher’s Palace which was still in loyalist hands. Finally, we returned to the Imperial Palace and then the strategium, collaring several more senior Imperial Guard and city watch officers en route, and there Vonvalt pulled out a number of map scrolls from a cabinet in one corner of the room.
“Who is coordinating Mlyanar efforts in the city?” Vonvalt asked.
“Radoslav Gautvin,” Sir Gerold said. I recognised the name as that of the egregious Mlyanar whom Bressinger and I had seen spouting toxic bile in the Senate.
“Unsurprising,” Vonvalt said, nodding. “And Bartoš is commanding the traitor Guard.”
“Yes,” Rainer confirmed.
“Have any men from the city watch defected?” Vonvalt asked.
Sir Gerold shook his head, his expression one of incredible contempt. “They came for us first. No one was even given a chance to turn traitor; they butchered us in the watch house. I escaped with those I could rally, but…” He shrugged. “Less than a hundred, I would say.”
“That would put our numbers at, what, around half a thousand?” Vonvalt asked the pair of them. He received grunts of agreement. Vonvalt tapped his teeth with a fingernail. “Sir Radomir told me that Jansen believes the Prognosticators are attempting something, acting on the instructions of Claver.”
“Claver is here in the city?” Sir Gerold asked, alarmed.
Vonvalt shook his head, irritated at the interruption. “No,” he said unkindly, as though Sir Gerold should have been intimately familiar with the unknowable arcane machinations of his greatest enemy. “He is directing them from afar. They use sacrifice as a means of creating a link through the afterlife by which they can speak.”
Sir Gerold and Sergeant Rainer shared a worried glance, but Vonvalt did not give either of them a chance to voice their concerns.
“But we will need to take care of the enemy forces first. And there are other matters that I must attend to immediately. The first of these is to recall as many of the closest Legions as we can. I have heard unwelcome news that the Confederation has sought to engage the Legions arrayed up and down the Kova, to pin them down ahead of Claver’s arrival. From a strategic perspective, this, of course, makes a great deal of sense. Pulling them back will mean losing almost all of our holdings east of the Kova, but, well. It is what it is.”
That someone could simply throw away decades’ worth of attempted expansion and all of the attendant costs – millions of marks, thousands of gallons of blood, not to mention a dozen of the most advanced and impregnable fortresses Imperial engineers could construct – in a stroke, profoundly shocked his audience. But such was the force of his presence and personality that no one dared say anything to counter him.
“It is what the Emperor should have done months ago. Now he has let Prince Tasa piss away the last of the Legions within a stone’s throw of the capital. It is no use presiding over ten thousand acres of occupied land in the Confederation if we don’t have a capital from which to command its occupation.
“Now, the commonfolk. We might be able to pull together some volunteer companies. I find it extremely unlikely that every man in the city is in the pocket of the Mlyanars, certainly not the better half. Has any effort been made to backfill the ranks?”
There was an uncomfortable pause. Eventually, it was Serjeant Rainer who spoke. “The Emperor’s instructions have been explicit,” she offered half-heartedly. Not everybody shared Vonvalt’s appetite for casual treason.
Vonvalt shook his head dismissively. “Have a party sent out right now. Head for the unsociable trades – that is where all of the strongest men and women will be, to say nothing of the armourers and weaponsmiths. There will be plenty of former Legionaries to choose from. Gather up only those who have the strength and courage to fight – I am not interested in a massacre of cowards. Cross the river south of the Fleischregale and take as many who can be spared in the south-eastern closure, all the way to the Sun Gate. Anyone in the lee of the Estran Wall who wants to fight, bring them back here. I’ll warrant we will get another half-thousand by midday.”
Rainer ordered one of her subordinates to go immediately.
Vonvalt rapped a knuckle against the map table. “The next thing to do is to offer a pardon to anyone who has defected.”
All of his instructions so far had been met with a mixture of unease and enthusiasm. This was met with uproar. A great clamour went up from the assembled officers. These were the people who had chosen the difficult path, the way of loyalty and duty. Even though his logic was clear – the wisdom undeniable – I was certain he had lost his audience.
Vonvalt, completely unafflicted by self-doubt, weathered this outrage implacably.
“Listen to me,” he demanded, and achieved silence. “I am not interested in the niceties of the law. I do not care whether these people turned traitor or broke their oaths. I do not care what atrocities they have committed, who they have burned in the name of bloody Savare, and what other follies they have been exhorted to undertake. A reckoning can take place later. Now, I want to make sure that Sova is every bit the fortress it can be when Claver and his Templars come knocking at the gates. And that means degrading – completely – our enemy’s ability to fight. So, pardons for every man and woman, Guard, Templar, fucking patria, I do not care. Whoever wishes to return to the fold will be allowed to.” He held up a finger and pointed it at each of the assembled officers. “And that means quarter, victuals, and fair treatment.” He let his arm drop. “With any luck, we will not need to fight at all.”
No one in the strategium shared Vonvalt’s high-minded consequentialism; but to be taking action, to have a commander who spoke sensibly and knowledgeably, to be receiving orders designed to rectify rather than prolong the situation, ultimately conspired to assuage their doubts. Still; he asked a great deal of them, and their compliance was a slow, unsure thing.
“Have your messengers pass this on to Senator Jansen, so that he is aware of our plan. Then we will put it out more broadly. With any luck, he will be able to fan the flames of doubt. Their numbers are not so much greater than ours as to make this a certainty for them.”
