II
“Shall I send for your sister, Your Majesty?”
It was the evening of February 22, and Hilda was by Reinhard’s sickbed. The tinge of red in his porcelain-white cheeks was not the color of his blood showing through but the aftermath of his fever.
Reinhard shook his head slightly. “No,” he said. “With you by my side, there is no need to trouble her.”
His words warmed Hilda’s heart, but she knew that they were spoken partly out of concern for her feelings, and as such she could not obey them without argument.
“I think I will send for her,” she said, mopping the beads of sweat from his brow. “She is already on Phezzan, after all.”
A weak smile was the young and comely invalid’s only response.
Reinhard’s older sister Annerose was still on Phezzan, the new capital planet of the empire. The unrest in the former alliance territories had disrupted transport and communications there for some time now, and there were concerns that these disruptions might spread into the empire’s older territories. Of course, it was obvious to all that Reinhard was in large measure using this as an excuse to delay her departure, and that he secretly wished for his sister to remain on Phezzan permanently.
Annerose was aware of Reinhard’s condition, and had already visited Stechpalme Schloß once during this bout of fever. She had not met with him on that occasion, instead only offering comfort and encouragement to Hilda before returning to her lodgings. On the night of the 23rd, a new messenger sent by the kaiserin arrived at those lodgings, and Annerose came to visit Reinhard in his sickbed the following morning. Hilda left the room and allowed the siblings thirty minutes to speak privately. After Annerose emerged from Reinhard’s sickroom, the two sisters-in-law took tea together at the kaiserin’s private salon.
“Kaiserin Hildegard, the kaiser is yours now,” Annerose said with sincerity. “He belongs to you and you alone. I hope you will never abandon him, or give up on him.”
“Annerose…”
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness in calling me here. But it has been many years since my brother belonged to me.”
Annerose’s smile was like sunlight filtered through leaves that swayed in the wind.
“Three and a half years ago, he may have believed I’d abandoned him,” she said. Her voice was as subdued as her expression. A lesser soul would never have sensed how deep the waters ran beneath that placid exterior—far deeper than any roaring rapid.
“Annerose, no…”
“No, I am sure he thought so. I understood, of course, that he sought my comfort then. But that was not all I understood.”
Learning from then-admiral Paul von Oberstein of Kircheis’s death had plunged Annerose’s consciousness into those inky depths. At fifteen, she had been locked away in Kaiser Friedrich’s inner chambers before she even knew what love was. She had spent the years since then watching her brother soar ever higher with his friend. Her ability to offer minor assistance from time to time gave her the strength to carry on. For two years this had continued, but Kircheis’s death had brought it all to an end.
Light danced on the wind, illuminating the succession of particles that make up history: her brother, growing taller by the day as the beauty of his features and the keenness of his spirit increased; the red-haired youth who had shared with her the burden of accepting that brother’s acuity and intensity. Annerose had sensed the admiration in Kircheis’s blue eyes becoming something deeper and more serious. He would not be a boy forever. Confusion and apprehension about the import of this had secretly grown within her.
Then came the day on which Kircheis had ceased to age forever. And after that, the day when the von Müsel family—nobility in name only, eking out a living on the fringes of society with no connection to the glory of the privileged classes—became known as the family that had birthed the conqueror who had seized the history of humanity itself in his crushing grip. The flower of her brother’s genius had reached full bloom. Had such been Annerose’s wish? Had what she had wished for been granted?
Annerose took Hilda’s hands in her own. “Do you see, Hilda?” she asked. “My brother shares his past with me. But his future will be shared with you. With both of you.”
Hilda blushed, realizing that Annerose spoke of the child still growing inside her. And along with this realization, another came to her unbidden: the fact that the kaiser’s sister had never birthed or raised a child of her own, and never would.
✦ ✦ ✦
The expedition led by Reinhard had been postponed, but the disruptions in the Neue Land and the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army’s provocation remained pressing concerns. On February 25, Reinhard ordered the minister of military affairs, Imperial Marshal Paul von Oberstein, to travel to Heinessen in his place, vested with the full authority of the kaiser to deal with the offenses against order there.
Von Oberstein was a highly respected military official and staff officer, but as a leader in actual combat he lacked both experience and the confidence of the troops. This, at least, was the impression shared by the operational commanders, one of whom would naturally be assigned as his subordinate for this mission. The commanders waited restlessly to see who would be given that duty, and the answer was finally announced on February 26.
“Why should I have to take orders on the battlefield from von Oberstein? I’ll take responsibility for my own mistakes, but I’ve no interest in mopping up after his. He’s spent his life behind a ministry desk, and if there’s any justice that’s where he’ll die, too.”
This lamentation came from Senior Admiral Fritz Josef Wittenfeld, in a voice even louder than usual. Senior Admiral Neidhart Müller was sentenced to the same fate, but he accepted it with only a small sigh. And so it was decided that von Oberstein would be accompanied on his mission to Heinessen by two senior admirals and a vast fleet of thirty thousand ships.
“We wouldn’t be stuck with this dismal assignment if Siegfried Kircheis were alive,” muttered Wittenfeld. “The better the man, the younger he dies.” His words cut too deep to be entirely dismissed as an angry outburst, and they would strike later observers as more than a little prophetic in character.
At this time, Wolfgang Mittermeier was busily traveling back and forth between Phezzan and sectors near Schattenberg, discharging his various duties. When he heard of the “late February assignments,” he turned to his subordinate, Admiral Bayerlein, and said, “Von Oberstein, sent to the Neue Land?! Well…I suppose I have no business commenting on an imperial order.”
With luck, he will never return, Mittermeier refrained from adding. Feeling a pang of sympathy for the residents of the Neue Land, he asked Bayerlein who would be providing operational support to the minister to compensate for his meager battlefield experience. Wittenfeld and Müller, came the reply, and the Gale Wolf ran a hand through his unruly honey-colored hair. “I’m not sure which side deserves more sympathy,” he said.
“A difficult question, Your Excellency. I do not imagine that the minister will find Admiral Wittenfeld eager to take his orders.”
Young Bayerlein was not by nature mean-spirited, but he knew when to lay on the irony.
In any case, the eight imperial marshals and senior admirals on Phezzan were now reduced to four: Mittermeier, von Eisenach, Mecklinger, and Kessler, with the other four all deployed to Heinessen. Von Oberstein aside, Mittermeier reflected seriously for a moment on how much he’d like to see Müller, Wittenfeld, and Wahlen again.