Stratagem Read online

  “By terrorism, do you mean to say he plans on assassinating me?”

  “No, I think it’s something else.”

  “Why?”

  To Reinhard’s pregnant question, Hilda provided a push. Assassination was more likely a means for redeeming one’s past rather than for building a future. Were Reinhard to be assassinated, someone else would take his place and all the power that came along with it. One reason why the noblemen regimented under the Lippstadt Agreement had been defeated was that Duke von Braunschweig and Marquis von Littenheim had been ultimately in disagreement over who should rule in Reinhard’s place after he was overthrown. As Admiral Kessler had surmised, there was reason to suspect Phezzan’s involvement in Count von Lansberg’s infiltration. The collapse of a unified power resulting from Reinhard’s death would bring about social and economic mayhem, and that was the last thing Phezzan wanted, at least for now.

  “That’s where my mind is at. If Phezzan is intent on committing any act of terrorism, it won’t be an assassination, but the abduction of someone important.”

  “In that case, who’s the target?”

  “I can think of three people.”

  “Myself being one of them, of course. And the other two?”

  Hilda stared directly into his ice-blue eyes.

  “One would be Your Excellency’s sister, the Countess von Grünewald.”

  Even as these words escaped Hilda’s lips, color spread through Reinhard’s complexion, prelude to a surge of violent emotion.

  “If any harm should come to my sister, I’ll make that blasted good-for-nothing poet wish he’d never been born with a capacity to feel pain. I’ll kill him in the cruelest way imaginable.”

  Hilda saw no reason to believe that Reinhard wouldn’t carry out every word of that vow. If indeed Count Alfred von Lansberg had yielded to the temptation of insubordination, then he had unleashed the next wayward avenger.

  “Duke von Lohengramm, I’ve exceeded my brief. Please forgive me. There’s hardly any reason to suspect that your sister would be abducted in this case.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because abducting women as hostages goes against everything Count von Lansberg stands for. As I was just saying, he’s a romantic at heart. Rather than bear the ridicule of abducting some helpless maiden, I think he’ll go another route, one not so easily realized.”

  “You’re right. Maybe Count von Lansberg is just a foolish poet, after all. Still, if Phezzan is involved in this plot as you suggest, it could be an expedient means to an end. The Phezzanese are realists in the worst possible sense. They’ll probably force Count von Lansberg’s hand by whatever methods will yield maximum effect with the least amount of effort.”

  Reinhard’s feelings for Annerose, the Countess von Grünewald, held constant sway over his reason. This psychological fortress he’d built around her, as far as its weak spots were concerned, was nothing like the stalwart sociopathy of Rudolf the Great, who was sometimes referred to as the “Steel Giant.”

  “Duke von Lohengramm, I’ve narrowed it down to three possible targets of abduction. I’ve already crossed Your Excellency’s name off that mental list. And even if you were Count von Lansberg’s intended target, he seems oblivious to the fact that Phezzan is pulling the strings. I would also rule out the Countess von Grünewald, because I doubt Count von Lansberg is even aware of her. This leaves us with the third candidate. The only one, it seems to me, who meets all the criteria.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “He wears the emperor’s crown, even as we speak.”

  Reinhard betrayed no surprise. He’d come to the same conclusion as Hilda, although his tone underscored its unexpectedness.

  “You mean to say that our romantic intends to abduct the emperor?”

  “I doubt Count von Lansberg would see it as an abduction, but rather the duty of a loyal retainer delivering his juvenile lord from enemy hands. He would do it in a heartbeat.”

  “A poet I can handle. But what about the other parties involved? What could Phezzan possibly stand to gain by abducting the emperor?”

  “That remains unclear. Unless, of course, Phezzan’s involvement was never discovered.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Reinhard nodded, concluding that the possibility of Hilda’s inferences was more than likely. Not that he could blame Phezzan, considering its utilitarian way of thinking and Count von Lansberg’s character.

  “So the Black Fox of Phezzan rears his ugly head once more. He never dances alone, but plays his flute in the shadowy recesses of the curtains. Serves that good-for-nothing poet right for being their lapdog,” muttered Reinhard, his voice tinged with loathing.

  Although Reinhard felt no sympathy for the “good-for-nothing poet,” neither could he bring himself to celebrate the victory of Phezzan’s landesherr, Adrian Rubinsky.

  “Fräulein von Mariendorf, I suspect it was one of Phezzan’s spies who anonymously reported the infiltration of von Lansberg and his crew. What do you think?”

  “Yes, I believe Your Excellency speaks correctly.”

  For a moment, Hilda expected Reinhard to smile. Instead, the young prime minister returned his ice-blue eyes one last time to the window, his face stern as rock, tracing the pathways of his thoughts.

  II

  The unseasonable weather carried over into the next day, shrouding the central imperial graveyard in sheets of water droplets that were neither mist nor rain. Even the rows of spruce trees, which on clear days parsed sunlight into shafts of crystal, stood solemn in the haze.

  Leaving her landcar behind to wait, Hilda walked along a stone path, holding a bouquet of fragrant, golden-rayed lilies. Three minutes later, she reached the grave that had brought her there.

  The grave was far from magnificent. Even the inscription carved into the immaculate white gravestone was rudimentary:

  here lies my friend

  siegfried kircheis

  born ic 14 january 467

  died ic 9 september 488

  Hilda stood before the gravestone, her white cheeks wet with tears. my friend. For how long would people rightly and fully comprehend the weight of those words? Reinhard had repaid the redheaded comrade who’d saved his life many times over: as imperial marshal, minister of military affairs, and, lastly, commander in chief of imperial forces, he’d devoted himself to the important task of being third imperial commander, as so many admirals before him had dreamed of becoming themselves. Reinhard was still in mourning over his redheaded friend, and for him the gravestone’s inscription carried a deeper hidden meaning than what was written there.

  Hilda left her bouquet of lilies on the cold, wet, flat gravestone, wondering if the temperature would enhance or weaken their fragrance. Even as a girl she’d never been one for flowers and dolls, and her gentle, ordinary father had been too occupied with concerns of heredity and environment to care.

  Hilda had never met Siegfried Kircheis. But had it not been for Kircheis’s victory in the Kastropf uprising two years prior, Hilda’s father, Franz von Mariendorf, might not have lived. She felt she owed him something, at least. Immediately before the Lippstadt War, Hilda had persuaded her father to negotiate with Reinhard, bringing peace to the Mariendorf earldom and delivering the house of Mariendorf from the clutches of death. Hilda had never overestimated her own meritorious service, either.

  Siegfried Kircheis had been unequaled in his abilities, insights, and loyalty. He had assisted Reinhard as advisor and earned the highest accolades in such campaigns as the Kastropf Rebellion, the Battle of Amritsar, and the Lippstadt War. Had he lived on, who knew how, and by what monumental deeds, he might have altered the course of history through his antialliance operations.

  Still, as a man, he hadn’t been perfect, and would certainly have made a few mistakes along the way, resulting not least of all from po
ssible conflicts of emotion and clashes of ideals with Reinhard himself. They had, in fact, butted heads often. When Kircheis had saved Reinhard by his own person, he had been unarmed. Until then, only Kircheis had been permitted to carry the handheld weapons prohibited to others. When Reinhard revoked that privilege, treating his redheaded friend as he would have any other subordinate, the tragedy of it all tore at the blond dictator with talons of remorse. The Westerland massacre had also driven a wedge between them, leaving a sense of immeasurable, unresolved regret.

  Hilda shook her head. Tiny droplets of water stuck to her short blond hair. An unpleasant heaviness weighed on her shoulders. She looked at the epitaph once more. Despite being a gift from the heart, maybe the lilies weren’t so appropriate for Siegfried Kircheis. Maybe they were an omen. Maybe she needed to learn more about flowers.

  Hilda turned and left. She’d come here at great pains and left unable to find any words with which to honor the dead.

  Located in the western portion of the imperial capital’s center, the Freuden mountainous zone spanned six hours by landcar. Mountain ridges met at a single point from three directions, colliding in gnarled waves of rock. Deep ravines and chains of lakes had formed where the ranges and waterways intersected. At such high elevations, mixed flora gave way to conifers and to stubborn clusters of alpine vegetation that seemed to kiss the sky, glossed by the rainbow brilliance of perpetual snow hit just so by sunlight.

  Pastures and natural flower beds dotted the land between the forests and promontories, unassumingly asserting themselves as ideal cradles for the mountain villas that adorned them. These villas, almost without exception, belonged to royalty, although most of their owners had perished in the Lippstadt War. Eventually they would be handed over to lay citizens, but for now they just stood there, abandoned and untended.

  The villa of Annerose, the Countess von Grünewald, was situated on a Y-shaped peninsula jutting out into the middle of a lake.

  A gate of evergreen oak stood at the peninsula’s base, its door left open. It was here where Hilda disembarked from her landcar. The petty officer serving as her driver stressed the late afternoon hour and the distance she had yet to walk. He encouraged her to use the car, but she refused.

  “That’s okay—it’ll give me a chance to stretch my legs.”

  To Hilda it seemed a crime not to luxuriate in this atmosphere, so cool and refreshing as to be sweet.

  The unpaved path inclined slightly into thickets of hazelnut trees, through which percolated the babble of a stream running alongside.

  Accompanied by her driver, and with a gallant step—a characteristic her future biographer would surely stress—Hilda walked for some time before stopping at a curve in the path. The trees ended, revealing a fragrant meadow, and standing in it a trim, two-story wooden villa. Hilda walked slowly toward the beautiful, slender young woman standing before it, being careful not to startle her.

  “The Countess von Grünewald, I presume.”

  “And you are?”

  “Hildegard von Mariendorf, His Excellency Duke von Lohengramm’s private secretary, at your service. I would be ever so grateful for your time.”

  Those deep-blue eyes quietly regarded Hilda, who met their gaze despite a vague tension taking root within. Here is someone, thought Hilda, who doesn’t have a combative bone in her body, and against whom deception and strategy would be futile.

  “Konrad!”

  A young boy emerged from the villa at once. The golden hair of Annerose’s servant, in all its subtle variations, glowed in the waning sunlight. He looked no older than fourteen.

  “You called, Lady Annerose?”

  “We have a guest, whom I am obliged to entertain. Escort the driver to the dining room, would you, and fix him some supper.”

  “Right away, Lady Annerose.”

  As the driver took his leave with the boy, his expression a blend of gratitude and anticipation, Annerose led her unexpected visitor to a cozy, old-fashioned salon with a fireplace.

  “Countess, isn’t that Viscount von Moder’s boy?”

  “Yes, he’s all that’s left of the von Moder family.”

  Hilda knew that name as one of the royal families against which Reinhard had fought. By some twist of fate, Annerose had become his guardian.

  Looking out the window, she saw the sun setting, that much closer to summer solstice. A ray of light fell from the sky, weaving a band of gold around a distant beech forest until it disappeared. The sky went from deep to dark, and before long the silhouettes of trees were indistinguishable against its expanse. Stars filled the night with their hard light, making it seem that all one had to do was peel away a layer of atmosphere to touch the cosmos. In the day, the sky belongs to the earth; at night, it belongs to the universe—Hilda remembered hearing that once. Annerose’s younger brother had waged battle in that same sea of stars, had indeed conquered some of them, and was readying himself for another round.

  Flames danced vigorously in the fireplace. Spring and summer came to these mountains two months later than at the capital’s center, while autumn and winter came two months earlier. The twilight air grew by the second from cool to cold, against which the glowing fire seemed like a thick coat sewn from human spirit and flesh. Hilda sat on the sofa and, not wanting to be impolite, stifled a sigh of satisfaction. Relaxation was a luxury she couldn’t afford. After Hilda divulged the reason for her visit, the beautiful countess gracefully looked away.

  “So Reinhard insists on guarding me, does he?”

  “Yes, Duke von Lohengramm has reason to fear you will become a terrorist target. He was hoping you might come back and live with him but said you’d probably never agree to it. At the very least, he hopes you will allow him to place armored guards around the Freuden perimeter.”

  Hilda waited for Annerose to speak. Hilda did not expect an immediate reply and knew better than to force one from her.

  Reinhard had told her what to expect in a manner less becoming of a dictator than of a little boy genuinely worried about his elder sister’s safety. He might have called upon her himself, but knew she wouldn’t have seen him, and so had entrusted the matter to Hilda.

  It’s because of her that we live in the world we do, thought Hilda, unable to restrain a certain wonderment. The enchanting Annerose, whose gentle modesty gave an impression of early spring sunlight, was the keystone of her generation. Twelve years ago, while she was housed in the late Emperor Friedrich IV’s rear palace, was when the dam burst. Future historians would say as much—that the downfall of the Goldenbaum Dynasty had been set into motion by this single elegant creature. Were it not for his sister, Reinhard von Lohengramm’s precipitous rise to power would have been impossible. No one altered history, and the world, at a whim. Like pollen carried to a barren landscape in anticipation of new flowers, their flourishing was up to the wind.

  At last, Hilda had her timid answer.

  “I’ve neither the need nor worthiness to be guarded, fräulein.”

  Hilda and Reinhard had anticipated this answer. As the one entrusted with the prime minister’s request, Hilda was prepared to change her mind.

  “With all due respect, Countess, you both need and are worthy of it. At least Duke von Lohengramm thinks so. We’ll make sure your quiet life goes unchanged. Won’t you, at the very least, agree to some extra protection around the villa?”

  A prudent shadow of a smile revealed itself on Annerose’s lips.

  “Let us speak no longer of the present. Our father, after spending his modest fortune, ended up forfeiting his estate and moving into a small house downtown. That was twelve years ago. It felt like we’d lost everything, but we also gained new things to replace it. Reinhard’s very first friend was a tall boy with fiery red hair and a pleasant smile. I told that boy, ‘Sieg, you be nice to my little brother, okay?’ ”

  The logs shifted in the fireplace with
a loud pop. Orange flames danced, casting shadows of speaker and listener in turn. Listening to the beautiful countess speak, Hilda saw that humble downtown corner of the capital reconstructed before her very eyes. There stood a girl in her teens, smiling that same transparent smile, and a redheaded boy whose face burned as brightly as his hair. And there was the other boy, watching them like some angel that had lost his wings, grabbing the hand of his redheaded friend and saying, with a conviction beyond his tender years, “It’s settled, then. We’ll always be together.”

  “The redheaded boy made true on that promise. No, he did more than I ever could’ve hoped for—something no one else could’ve done for me. I’ve robbed Siegfried Kircheis of his life, of his entire existence and everything beyond it. He is gone from this world, even as I continue to live in it.”

  Hilda said nothing.

  “I’m a woman full of sin.”

  In all her experience with eloquent diplomats, scheming tacticians, and even stern public prosecutors, this was the first time Hilda had ever found herself at a loss for words. Knowing there was little use in arguing, she held firm, calm and unashamed.

  “Countess von Grünewald, please forgive me for speaking this way, but I would speak nonetheless. If anything were to happen to you because of terrorism from the old royalists, would Admiral Kircheis rejoice in Valhalla?”

  Under any other circumstance, Hilda would have barred herself from such tactless reasoning. She’d never been one to let emotions get the better of her. In this case, however, it seemed like the only way.

  “Besides, I would implore you to think not only of the dead, but also of the living. Duke von Lohengramm can’t be saved, Countess, if you forsake him. Admiral Kircheis was too young to die. Don’t you think that Duke von Lohengramm is, too?”

  Something other than the firelight trembled on the mistress’s porcelain-white face.

  “Are you saying I’ve abandoned my little brother?”

  “I believe Duke von Lohengramm wants to fulfill his duty toward you. If only you would accept his wishes, then he might come to think that his existence still means something to his sister. And that’s incredibly important not only to Duke von Lohengramm, but to everyone.”