At around the same time, an imperial envoy arrived at the Bernkastel Hotel: Vice Admiral von Streit, in a large landcar. Rather than placing a visiphone call, Hilda had sent him there as a mark of respect to the empire’s guests.
“The kaiser wishes to see you,” von Streit said. “I apologize for asking this during such dreadful weather, but please come with me.”
Julian and his three companions exchanged glances. Julian’s throat felt suddenly constricted, but he finally forced some words out of it.
“Is his condition grave?”
“Please hurry.”
At this indirect response, Julian and the others prepared to depart.
Marshal Yang, as your representative, I am about to witness the death of the greatest individual of this era. If you are there in the next world, please watch with me, through my eyes. Thus spoke Julian in his heart to Yang, partly because he did not feel he could retain his composure without Yang’s help. Poplin and Attenborough, too, changed into their uniforms in silence, with none of their usual irreverence.
Amid the wind and rain, Julian and the others finally arrived at the provisional palace. Entering the main hall, they caught sight of a beautiful golden-haired woman walking by in an upstairs corridor. This, von Streit confirmed, was the kaiser’s sister Annerose.
So that is the Archduchess von Grünewald! Julian felt an almost dreamlike sentiment pass through him. He was not familiar with every aspect of Reinhard’s life, but he had heard that it was Annerose who had made it possible for Reinhard’s star to shine so brightly. In a sense, she was the creator of today’s history. He could not feign disinterest.
Annerose, of course, did not even notice Julian staring from below. Entering Reinhard’s sickroom, she bowed to her sister and sat in the chair at her brother’s bedside. As if in response, he opened his eyes and looked up at her.
“Dearest sister. I was dreaming…”
A soft light drifted in his ice-blue eyes. It was a light Annerose had never seen before. At that moment, she realized that her brother was truly going to die. His battles had always been driven by the desire to fill the insatiable void in his heart, ever since he was ten and first became aware of what it meant to fight. He had fought to seize power, and he had continued to fight once it was his. Whether through some subtle change somewhere along the way, or because this had always been his true nature, it seemed now that Reinhard had made fighting itself the goal of his life.
“The kaiser is warlike by nature.” “Reinhard der Löwenartig Kaiser” (“Reinhard the Lion Emperor”). These were alternate expressions of his pride, and more than suitable for the man who had blazed like a comet in history. But now he had finally been consumed by that flame. The mildness in him now was like warmth from the white ash that remained after body and soul had burned away. Lingering heat, soon to cool and vanish. A flash of light before the return to darkness.
“Do you wish to dream more, Reinhard?”
“No, I have had enough of dreams. More than enough of dreams that no one has dreamed before…”
Reinhard’s face was far too mild. Annerose felt her breast freeze up, heard the spiderweb cracks spreading out across it. The awful clarity of those sounds spread through her every nerve. When her brother’s vigor and intensity had softened, he would die. A sword had no reason to be anything but a sword. To her brother, satisfaction was the same thing as death. Someone or something had shaped his vital energies that way.
“Thank you for everything, dear sister,” Reinhard said, but Annerose did not wish to hear words of gratitude. She wanted him to forget the sister who had retreated from the world at so tender an age—to spread his wings and fly once more across the sea of stars. After Siegfried’s death, that had been her only wish—the slender crystal thread that tethered her to this world.
“This pendant…”
Reinhard’s fair hand, noticeably gaunt, reached out toward her. The silver pendant he placed in her palm illuminated the two with a translucent gleam.
“I have no more need of it. I give it to you. And…I also return Siegfried to you. I am sorry for borrowing him for so long.”
Before Annerose could reply, Reinhard closed his eyes. He had lapsed back into a coma.
The storm grew stronger, and at 1900 the road outside the provisional palace was flooded. An urgent report arrived through the wind and rain. The liquid hydrogen tanks outside the city had been detonated, and evidence had been found on corpses at the scene connecting them to the Church of Terra. The Imperial Navy, holding its breath with the kaiser at death’s door, could not help but be shaken.
When the report reached Ulrich Kessler, commissioner of military police and commander of capital defenses, he scolded his reeling subordinates.
“Pull yourselves together. Setting fires and explosions as decoys is standard operating procedure for the Church of Terra. Their true target is the imperial family. Focus solely on guarding the provisional palace!”
The Terraist organization on Phezzan had been eliminated. Kessler had confidence on this score. With a bow to the other admirals, he left the parlor to stand in the entrance hall, using it as a command center to direct the military police on the scene. His diligence was praiseworthy, but it cannot be denied that he partly sought to escape into his duties. For all his resoluteness of character, he could not bear to simply sit and wait for the kaiser to expire.
Mittermeier had not yet returned from his home, and the five men remaining in the parlor—Müller, Wittenfeld, Mecklinger, von Eisenach, and Wahlen—were so fretful and anxious they felt as if their veins might rupture. At 1950, von Oberstein returned from the ministry. The end was near, but there was still one act to be played.