The Arch-Steward had three hours to make the Empire look solvent and perhaps one hour to speak with its Emperor.
Anselm Wierach laid the tax rolls beside the obligations list. The ink had run on one page where a clerk had tried to dry it too quickly. On the other, a captain in the south demanded wages for six hundred men, the northern granaries wanted payment before they sent another load, and a courier from the western road waited to learn whether the palace would answer his master at all.
“Put the southern captain last,” Wierach told the treasurer. “He has written twice. He can write a third time.”
“He says his men will leave if we do not pay by the feast.”
“Then we should learn whether he has enough horses to carry them away.”
The treasurer marked the page. Beside Wierach’s elbow, seven letters lay under the imperial seal, one from each elector. Their wax remained intact. The replies had to go out before the couriers left at noon, but Wierach had read the copies his clerks made. Three electors would stand with him. He needed one more, and each letter offered a different price for the same answer.
A knock came at the counting-house door. The physician’s servant stood there, cap in both hands.
“His Majesty asks for the Arch-Steward.”
Wierach closed the obligation book. “Now?”
“He is clear.”
The servant had been trained to make the words sound like good news. Wierach rose and gathered the elector letters. The treasury keys stayed in his pocket. He left the accounts open on the table, where the treasurer would keep working and wonder which debts could be paid without him.
Ludolf lay propped against pillows in a room that smelled of vinegar and boiled linen. The physician was at the window, turning a cup in his hands. The Emperor’s face had thinned until his beard seemed too large for it. But he watched Wierach enter and spoke without asking who had come.
“You’ve left the west unpaid again.”
“The treasury is short.”
“The treasury is always short when a man wants an army.”
Wierach put the letters on a chair. “Duke Walram’s account is under review.”
“His soldiers have been under review for two years. They still eat.” Ludolf shifted against the pillows and winced. “What do the electors want?”
“To know whether you are well enough to receive them.”
“That was not my question.”
Wierach waited. Ludolf’s good hours had grown shorter. The physician had warned him the weakness could take the Emperor’s speech, then his breath, without giving warning between. Still, this morning Ludolf had signed two orders and asked after Ottokar. The boy’s name had come with a frown.
Next
Ottokar has been warned to keep quiet, but the first adult he chooses to trust with what he saw may not be Wierach.
Wierach glanced at the physician. The old man had closed his eyes. Ludolf watched them both, then let his own lids fall. “I’m tired of being discussed in the doorway.”
The physician made Wierach wait in the adjoining room while he examined the Emperor. Through the open door, Wierach heard the scrape of a stool, the clink of glass. Then the physician called him in.
Ludolf’s hand had fallen from the coverlet. The physician held it and looked at Wierach as if the Arch-Steward could change what had happened by naming it carefully.
“How long?” Wierach asked.
“Since before you came.”
The room had a narrow door to the private chapel. Wierach shut it. He stood beside the bed and studied Ludolf’s face. There were still decisions to make: Ottokar, the electors, the seal, and the body. The court would ask for proof. The princes would ask for access. A bell rung too soon would bring both.
“Who knows?”
“You. Me. The servant who came for you.”
“Then she knows only that I was summoned.” Wierach looked at the physician. “You’ll report a small recovery this afternoon. A better night. His Majesty has asked for his grandson.”
The physician’s fingers remained around the dead man’s wrist. “He has not.”
“He did this morning.”
“He is dead.”
“I heard you.” Wierach took Ludolf’s hand and laid it beneath the coverlet. “The report will say what I told you.”
The physician did not agree. He did not refuse either.
Wierach sent the servant to fetch the chapel steward. He ordered the inner doors watched, the hall emptied, and the bells left alone. In the counting house, the treasurer was told the Emperor had tired and that no audience would be held. The elector letters went back under lock.
At the chapel, the steward brought two lay brothers and a cart of salt from the palace stores. Wierach did not let them carry Ludolf through the public passage. They took the narrow door and descended to the crypt, where old stone coffins stood in their wall niches. The body was wrapped in linen and laid in a chest beneath the chapel floor. The brothers packed salt around it until the linen vanished.
“Keep the key,” Wierach told the steward. “You answer to me alone.”
By then Ottokar had come down the passage from his rooms. He stopped beside a stack of salt sacks and watched two servants carry another toward the crypt door. The boy wore a dark jacket buttoned wrong at the throat. He had a book tucked under one arm.
“What is the salt for?” he asked.
The steward straightened. “The crypt is damp, Highness. Salt draws the wet from the stone.”
Ottokar looked at the sacks. “Then why are they taking it inside?”
No one answered quickly enough. Wierach stepped between the boy and the open door.
“Your grandfather is unwell,” he said. “The physician will bring you to him when he can receive you.”
“He asked for me.”
“He did. He’s resting now.”
Ottokar looked past him at the steward, who had gone pale. The child held the book tighter against his ribs. “They said the Emperor was better.”
“He may be better again.” Wierach kept his voice even. “Go back to your lesson. I’ll send for you.”
Ottokar went, but not before looking once more at the sacks. Wierach watched him reach the turn in the corridor. The boy had seen something he did not understand, and had not yet decided what to do with it.
That afternoon the physician told the court that Ludolf had slept well and was recovering a little strength. Wierach had the statement copied and sealed. He sat again in the counting house while a clerk prepared letters for the electors. Each began with the Emperor’s name. Each bore the privy seal.
A separate dispatch went west. Wierach dictated it himself: every coin owed to Walram’s army would be paid if the Duke remained on his side of the Wern and kept his men there. The treasurer looked up from the account.
“That is the whole arrears.”
“Yes.”
“We cannot pay them and the palace guard.”
“Then we will delay the guard.” Wierach watched the clerk dust the wet ink. “The Duke can decide what his men are worth to him.”
The letter would take days to reach Seyne. It would arrive as an offer made in the Emperor’s name, while the Emperor lay packed in salt beneath the chapel.
Ottokar came to Wierach’s door after the lamps were lit. He had left his lesson book in the corridor. Wierach let him in and set aside the letter he was reading.
“They took salt to the crypt,” the boy said. “The steward told me it was for the damp. It wasn’t.”
Wierach closed the door behind him. “What do you think it was for?”
Ottokar’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know. But Grandfather hasn’t sent for me, and they keep saying he’s better.”
Wierach could have asked who else the boy had told. Instead, he pulled out a chair. “You must keep what you saw to yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because people will use it before you understand it.”
Ottokar lowered himself into the chair. “Is he dead?”
Wierach placed both hands on the desk. The seal rested beside them, heavy and warm from the lamp. “Your grandfather is beyond receiving visitors.”
“That means yes.”
“It means you must not repeat what you think you know.”
The boy looked at the seal and then at Wierach. “I won’t tell the steward.”
He had chosen the wrong person already. Wierach did not correct him. He gave Ottokar his lesson book and sent him back to his rooms with a promise that the Emperor would call for him soon.
When the door shut, Wierach took up the physician’s report and checked the wording once more. Outside, the palace clerks carried the Emperor’s orders to the gates. The couriers would take them across the Mainlands in his name.