Dragging her love past all the horrors, to the suite where she had despaired and hoped, Magda locked an intact inner door and finally collapsed on the bed. Sieg sat beside her, and all she had seen – all so many more had suffered - began to pour. She heard that Sieg had come as soon as he heard of Westerland, for a difficult conversation with Reinhard – she understood later that he must also have been deep in shock for hours. She had an idea at the time that she was in shock, because she could never remember ripping what was left of her dress in two. She groped at buttons until Sieg pulled off his own oil-black tunic. His kisses were clumsy as she remembered, and as perfect. Divine cacophony ringing out through her heart. Gently as he touched her, she dragged him down by the belt she flung aside. It dropped like a snake down the wall, while her ankles locked together above him – their first, his first, was sudden and incomprehensible as passion itself.
The second time was took much longer, though the tempo of their bodies barely dropped. With lips and tongue, then her whole flesh dancing down upon Siegfried Kircheis, until he clutched and moaned. Drowning in her mind and heart, her artfully but utterly devoted love. Magda meant to give her sweet boy an idea of exactly what he'd been missing while he'd been saving the Empire. What she had missed, so many years – since she'd given herself so completely, as Sieg gave himself to her.
He was the better lover, the very best. Every brush of his fingers was strength and heroic care. Nothing in pure blue eyes but her, redeemed, set free. The knight who'd devoted all his life to the long redemption of a fallen empire, for his love and beside his friend, was giving up honor and all the rest only to comfort her, until she smiled from the heart. Until his purity cleansed her of all the past, all the guilt and waste, and she was a heaven-wracked angel of love – clinging to his chest and crying a schoolgirl's tears. All she had suffered, he had suffered, through a Hel-cold sea of war-torn stars, pressed their hour of desperate passion into a living diamond. A treasure to outlive life.
"Magda…" Siegfried, burning roses in his pale cheeks, took quite a time to find words, "I…suppose I did always care for you. Your courage, the way you cared…and did all of it beautifully. Whatever you wanted…you even called me Sieg, when you…"
"…knew only your true love was meant to use that name? Didn't you enjoy me, just a little?"
"Yes, you're incredible, it was…I mean, ah…" His long-suffering look was so familiar, but Magda's kiss made him smile, "You're not just…some temptress, you're more than that, you're…simply a woman. Because I respected you, I had to resist…"
"My hero, to endure so much."
"You endured everything, Magda. I should have protected you, I'm so sorry…"
"I can endure anything, my love, except temptation. I could not love you half so well, loved you not honour more."
"I'm sorry."
"I would have spoilt you. I would have eaten you up, but you have vanquished me."
"You're not a monster, either. Not even when you made Reinhard fight that duel to help Lady Schaffhausen, and he almost got killed."
"I supported what was a fine act of gallantry, until Beenemünde switched the opposing hired dualist for a hired assassin. You know that no one, by any means, has ever induced Reinhard von Lohengram to turn from the path he chose himself."
Pillow talk was over. Siegfried rolled over, hid his face, and let go of the silent scream that had been buried in his gut. Magda waited, then told him what she had told Reinhard many hours before Westerland had been blasted with its people to ash.
"I knew, I knew at once…" Still, the face that rose was fresh-scarred by the blow of proof, "There is nothing he doesn't know. They could never have done it, if he had only spoken a word. The Westerland bombing instantly turned the whole Empire against Braunschweig, the high nobles and the Goldenbaum Kaisers – they were hated before, but I never imagined what it takes, to lead humans from vile past to uncertain future. Through the Border Worlds, we saw starvation, children, war of all against all without honour or mercy. Reinhard knew, but he had to do it; all the wrecks and corpses we'd climbed up on to reach a better future could not have been for nothing. Men would have died if Westerland had been spared, soldiers would have died…happily, I would have led them and died in the place of innocent people."
On the edge of the bed, Siegfried's heroic shoulders fell. Staring away from Magda, back at a terrible universe. She could only kiss and massaged his back as he spoke, but knew it reached his heart.
"Oh, Sieg…how you trusted him. How could he betray you so?"
"No – our dream. His dream. Reinhard has suffered for it more than me. He barely eats or sleeps, he hasn't known an hour's peace or happiness…since we shared that bottle of wine. Nobody can carry a gun in his presence, now; not Reuenthal, Mittermeyer or any the admirals. Not even Oberstein, who proposed the measure – no one but me, and Reinhard wouldn't even have that questioned. I'm his only subordinate, his only friend, that he can trust with his life and his dream – but he sent me to the Border Worlds and kept the reptile at his side. I can hear Oberstein arguing for the murder of two million people who rose up because they trusted Reinhard, as if I'd been there…"
"Perhaps Oberstein even believes it was his own idea. He still may, when Reinhard has him executed one day, to the cheering of multitudes, for every necessary crime that his better world required. I can't blame him, I can't propose a greater Emperor than Reinhard von Lohengram will be…but I can't be silent."
"Magda, the only reason I can imagine that Reinhard has not called me to his side at once – has allowed us even this hour together – is that he knows what he has done. His ideals are his bone and blood, more to him than a hundred crowns and empires. He has not forgotten our dream…I suppose he has only made a mistake." It visibly cost Sieg years of his life to admit the possibility – when Magda considered the cost of an Emperor's mistake, she could understand. "Annerose only asked one thing of me – not even to save her – to be a friend to her brother, on the day he strayed too far from his path. I couldn't imagine what that could mean, back then, when Reinhard was cleaving his own path for us through trackless space. Now, I will go to my friend and tell him that the future must be different from the past."
"…will that be enough?" It took all Magda's courage to ask. Sieg's sigh was unfathomably deep.
"I did all I could for the future of the Border Worlds; autonomy, safety and healing. If it is not enough…then most of the few people and organisations working for their reconstruction are covertly controlled by the Rebels, or by Fezzani Intelligence."
Magda had never known that the autonomous Imperial world of Fezzan had its own secret service, though that was presumably the idea. The desert planet of merchants, centre of finance and commerce to the whole galaxy, would certainly have the money, and the brains; she cared less about their motives than the idea that Dorothea Schaffhausen had given up her family fortune for the reconstruction. Apparently, to the quiet spies who were the only ones working for it. Sieg answered her questions grimly; he had told Viscountess Schaffhausen already. He hadn't told Reinhard, yet. Shaking hands with Kaizuka Kei at the Iserlohn prisoner exchange did not make him a Rebel spy.
"Only Reinhard can bring peace – never any noble, never the Rebels. They looted and burned through the Border Worlds in the name of democracy; we can never submit to those like Dolittle who call us 'vile Huns' and would rather see us dead than what they call enslaved. Kaizuka Kei was different, though. We talked a little – only talked. How can there ever be peace if we don't talk? She's quite unlike Reinhard, she'll never be anything but a soldier, but nothing will turn her the path she judges right. She told me the Rebels and Fezzani are infiltrating the Border Worlds now, as they should have done instead of invading. If she meant to sow chaos-" He tapped his chest, "-she succeeded."
"At least she's presumable the only actor in this drama who isn't madly in love with you…"
"Magda – not even you can joke about everything. Fezzan could be a greater threat to us than the Rebels. Reinhard knows that, but he doesn't know everything, because of me. I did not betray him, I never will…peace, development and autonomy for the border worlds was his dream, from the beginning! I did not betray his dream, when I passed through those light years of scorched planets and starving children, and I could not tell him, yet, that the Fezzanis and Rebels are still at work there…I couldn't bring war back to the border, again. I will have to tell him…what a faithless wretch his only friend is. When I must betray Lady Annerose, or else you…Magda, you know I love her, but how could I leave you, honourably, after…what we've done? How could I leave behind a woman like you, as if you were, um…?"
"…a woman no better than she ought to be?" Magda's smile glowed with gentle pity and wonder, "Darling Sieg, every hero of legend was forgiven every enchantress or nymph left by the wayside of his journey, by the chaste princess who loved and waited. Annerose will forgive you, if you go to her, and so will I."
"That's exactly why I have to be better than that. I'm not sorry for this, for us, I will not be…but I always thought it would be Annerose, when we got married, if that could ever be. If Reinhard could be okay with it…he just needs me to stay by his side, that's all the love he needs. I'm sorry…a hero just isn't what I feel like."
With the weight of wars, dilemmas and bizarre love triangles on his back, Sieg indeed looked sad as a child, and beautiful as a dying knight. Rather than try to unpick the galactic Gordian knot of trouble, or sever it as Reinhard had, Magda knew that sometime distraction was the only path to life, freedom and joy.
Her last treasure, the LP of Tannhauser, was still on the dresser – she reached for it. Vinyl with a hole in the centre made an intentionally teasing cover for her bare privee parts, even if it held the great Kunstler's 352 IC production and had cost rather more than its weight in gold. Its value was infinitely more, as she unfolded to Siegfried; he was hardly an opera fan, but Magda had never found it difficult to command the interest of her lovers while reclining in exquisite nudity upon a well-used bed. Speaking of the thousand-year-old myth that was more than story to her; under her soft, inspired voice and pressing hand, her hero sank back into her arms.
"Heinrich Tannhauser, so his legend tells, was a poet-knight of ancient Terra. Seeking the true, untamable nature of love he strayed beneath a certain hill, into the domain of the goddess Venus. Living on under the name of Holda, since still more ancient days, but she was and remains the same, and she loved Tannhauser. He thought on Elisabeth, the princess he had pledged his love to – he recalled her, after a time - and left behind the love of a goddess. He wandered across the world, seeking forgiveness and finding it nowhere. At last, he returned in despair to the goddess of love, who greeted him with song –
"O, welcome, faithless man! The fount of delights, for you, forever flows – return, forever, to me!"
"At the last, a true friend rushed in. He told how the princess, Elisabeth, never failing in love and forgiveness for Tannhauser, had died that day with prayers for him on her lips. Her knight immediately expired upon her grave, and, we are told, was reunited with his love in paradise. While Venus went away weeping for Tannhauser, lost to her forever - though I trust her weeping did not last forever."
"…but Tannhauser and Elisabeth both died? Because it's opera?"
"Because we must all die, so I understand, perhaps even goddesses – but in this moment, we are alive, still, and free to live out the story that pleases us best." Her hand stroked Sieg's bicep; her grey eyes held his deeply, "Isn't that one blessing?"
"I guess I can do better than a mad fool who wandered the world, when the woman whose forgiveness he needed was right there…alright, I get it, but Annerose isn't a fairytale princess. She feels pain – she's known too much, far too much..."
"Then bring her happiness, dear Sieg, with all your heart. Annerose has endured worse than the man she loves could possibly do to her. She's worth fifteen princesses. When she is ready, when you are ready – I believe you will make each other happy."
"But what about you, Magda? After all you've done for us…it just hurts that I can't make everything right for you. Let alone all of the dead, and all the living."
"Because you aren't perfect. That is the vital message of Tannhauser, its truth that saves. There are no pure and perfect heroes, no faultless saviours of humanity. We must remember our faults and our mistakes, our need for each other. For love and forgiveness."
"Magdalena…I've known nobody in the universe quite like you. Don't do anything reckless, I mean…at least, be careful. I'll protect you all I can, but I want you to live, whatever happens."
"You must go, my dear Sieg. My perfect knight. If you let me touch you again, I will never let you leave me."
At Siegfried's last touch, Magda breathed in ecstasy and shut her eyes. She could feel how hard it was for him to get up from the bed and gather his clothes, but she knew he would do it. Go to save his beloved friend, Reinhard von Lohengram, from himself, before they saved humanity together. He would save Annerose, at last, one day…
A chill shot through her bare body. Her eyes flashed open, she reached out - grasped empty space where he had been. Her hero, pulling a uniform over his bare back. leaving her bed of love behind, to face his hard and higher destiny – but she knew.
Not her Tannhauser, her Adonis. Set high in the stars, even now, beyond her touch or voice forever. The hero she loved could be no hero, unless he left her – nothing she could give would ever hold Siegfried Kircheis back from the door he was marching towards.
The hero she loved and cried out to - not to go, never to leave - knowing it would bring him nothing but pain. One step slowed, but Siegfried did not look back. He left her. She was naked and alone.
-0-
As with other events held up as pivotal in history, the exact causes and consequences of High Admiral Siegfried Kircheis' death would never be determined with certainty. His last private meeting with Supreme Admiral Marquis Reinhard von Lohengram was surprisingly frank and civilised on both sides. It was ended with the assertion that subordinate officers should share their ethical scruples only when asked to share them. At all times an aloof and royally dignified commander, it was still perceptible that Reinhard seemed rather unhappy for an emperor in all but name. No one but Siegfried did perceive it, as he spent the hours that followed their last meeting alone in his staterooms. Only staring at the hologram of his sister upon the desk.
Ten years of deadly, constant work. His sister's new world had always demanded sacrifice, even of friendship. A supreme commander could no more lean upon his friend than utterly give himself to his love – Oberstein had only told him what he'd always known. An Empire of billions, and Siegfried Kircheis, believed Reinhard von Lohengram could do anything he determined to. Only he could not make wrong into right, or turn back the hand of time.
While Siegfried stood in his own quarters, gazing at a simple photograph. Annerose, Reinhard and Siegfried, smiling together, years ago. When his friend had dreamt of the kingdom he had now obtained. A new world of justice, where innocent lives would not lie in the hands of tyrants. As mere boys, they had sworn to save their princess – who had never ceased to believe in her brother's ideals, or in his faithful friend.
Nothing had changed. The dream was not dead. Reinhard would make a future better than their past, one day.
Many eyes saw Siegfried proceed to the grand hall of Geiersberg fortress, newly taken, with a light step. Ready to serve his commander, whether as officer or friend, for the sake of the dream they still shared. His eyes held the faith worth as much as fulfilment, since nothing can be fulfilled without it; his smile told that he had spoken the truth and done all his duty. Undaunted, as Admiral Oberstein informed him that his unique privilege of going armed in the supreme commander's presence had been suspended. He gave up his weapon and took his place in the black ranks of Reinhard's most valuable admirals.
Enthroned upon the same chair that Braunschweig had commanded his doomed resistance from, Reinhard was magnificent and impenetrable as a figure of gold, a white cape overhanging his brilliantly polished dress uniform. His business was to pronounce the suppression of the high nobles' rebellion. After receiving the corpse of Duke Braunschweig from the hands of his former subordinate, Commodore Ansbach, in token of the surviving rebels' submission.
The open coffin and bier had been searched; the gun had been pushed into an incision in the bulky corpse itself. Ansbach's grisly hand rose towards Reinhard von Lohengram; nobody else had a weapon, no one could stir a foot or finger. Except for Siegfried Kircheis, flung against the assassin by nothing but his pure heart's instinct.
The wicked duke's most loyal servant and the boyfriend friend of the Galaxy's hero died in one embrace of laser fire. Reinhard could not move from his throne or speak, for some time. When he reached his love's side on his knees, gripped his hand, and screamed his name a hundred times, Siegfried had expired with a rictus upon his lips that still resembled a smile.
Oberstein, Reuenthal, Mecklinger and the other admirals, despite their commander's incapacitation, agreed that all their lives depended on an instant response. An impromptu conference in a sideroom soon concluded that the palace ministers on Odin, who had allied with Reinhard to secure the child Kaiser's succession, must then have employed the unlamented Ansbach in his assassination attempt. Having effectively run the Empire while Friedrich dallied with mistresses, the ministers had doubtless schemed to eliminate the upstart Reinhard after he had disposed of the overbearing Braunschweig, leaving a child Kaiser and inviolate status quo.
Within hours, before Reinhard had spoken or moved his gaze from the spot where Siegfried's body had fallen, the palace ministers had all been executed or obliged to commit suicide. A few loyal nobles managed to flee with the young Kaiser Erwin; in a feat almost as unlikely as the Westerland bombing, they passed safely through Imperial light years to Fezzan and then Heinessen, where they surrendered their charge and themselves to the political asylum office.
When Reinhard rose from the floor, where the only man he would ever love had breathed his last, he went to a communicator and had a short conversation with his sister. Then he contacted Oberstein, was informed of developments, and gave orders. The wives and female relatives of his enemies would merely be exiled to barren frontier worlds, with their infants, but boys of ten years or older would be executed. Old enough for moral complicity with the blood-soaked aristocrats that had murdered Siegfried, massacred Westerland, and abused the people for five centuries. It had been a ten-year-old boy, after all, who had resolved with his true friend to bring down an Empire of cruelty and corruption. Succeeded at last in what a boy had resolved to do, for his sister and his ideals.
-0-
A minority of Imperial nobles had been persuaded by Hildegarde and Magdalena to declare for Reinhard while there'd still been time. Even the undecided generally got off with banishment or bankruptcy. Among the survivors of Braunschweig's party – thousands of noblemen, with extensive families – some were vouched for or otherwise weaselled their way into exile. The majority would not swear fealty to a usurper even to save their families and were duly disposed of with all possible discretion. Liechten's wife and daughter were banished to a barely habitable world, and his teenaged son was killed – Magdalena no longer had the influence to prevent it, no longer the strength to try.
Beside the galaxy spanning genocides of Rudolf von Goldenbaum, or August the Bloodletter, the purge, the civil war and Westerland were small atrocities. Many Goldenbaum Kaisers had assumed imperial power with less bloodshed, but of course these deaths were final justice upon a corrupt and blood-stained dynasty. The coming new Empire would be entirely different, and this was the bloody price.
Still, Magda would never forget a baron's young daughter, a friend she'd once comforted, torn by soldiers from her eleven-year-old brother. She'd screamed that if she wasn't allowed to die with her little brother, she would devote her life to the death of Reinhard the usurper. No one had listened, or imagined Reinhard's fall to be possible now by any means, let alone a woman's.
Silent and unregarded, in her least torn dress, Magda sat in a passage that led nowhere for hours. The smashed remains of Kunstler's Tannhauser of 352 IC lay about her feet.
By intention or happenstance, now Reinhard stood over her. Nothing in his face, so fair that it seemed to shine, showed what had passed. A patch of Siegfried's blood, on the hem of his white cloak, had been the only sign.
"No more witticisms, Lady Westphalen? You should not be here. Why are you still sitting there, mourning? You could not even comprehend how I loved him. No one will ever know what I lost, today."
"I really have no desire to understand you, Reinhard." Magda spoke distantly, as if to herself, "It's not always all about you, don't you see? Didn't your sister tell you…? Ah, you didn't know he loved her! Fought and died, died…for the sake of my dear friend, Annerose! They both loved you, as they loved each other, but it was never enough for you. It will never be enough. You really were a most extraordinary little boy."
Blue fire flared in Reinhard's eyes – but the voice that had shaken the stars was quiet.
"My right hand preserves a billion lives. My left hand slips, and a million die. It is all about me, Westphalen – this galaxy, this war, and the issue of them. I always thought you were an unusually intelligent and strong-willed woman. It was another tragedy of the old Empire that you were made nothing but an ornament of it. My new Empire will give equality with men to all women worthy of it. Education and prosperity, justice and security. Peace; one hundred and fifty years of war will be over within one year, forever. I will clear humanity's dross away and make something greater of it. My name and the consequence of my work will endure for the rest of human history. Your little salons and sparklings are already forgotten."
She had sparkled and Siegfried had kissed her; Magdalena would have rested content with nothing else. She did not say so to Reinhard, only wondered whether she would be killed for knowing what had been known about Westerland, or for the love of Siegfried Kircheis. Finally, Reinhard's cloak swept about as he strode off. Only for Annerose's sake, she knew, and for the honour of Reinhard von Lohengram, she had been spared.
Reinhard later found the time to inform a few guards that Baroness Westphalen was not safe to be left at liberty. He told Magdalena that she would never see or speak with his sister again. This was after Magda had got suddenly to her feet, rushed to the nearest Communicator, and had a call placed to Annerose von Grunewald. Informing the uneasy technician with irresistible assurance that Lord Reinhard would not appreciate his sister being kept from her friend at such a time as this.
"Annerose…I'm so sorry….but you can still save your brother. Years ago, you asked only that Siegfried should be Reinhard's conscience. That he keep his friend, who holds the galaxy in his hands, upon the right path. Sieg never betrayed your trust…but he is gone. Only you can hold Reinhard back now."
"Maggie…then you believe, with everyone else, that I am responsible for my brother's deeds?"
"He let two million defenceless peasants die, to make a despised autocrat look a little worse. He is having children killed, right now, in a cause he calls good. Do you agree? Do you approve?"
"Oh, Reinhard…you can't know how I long to hold him, but I cannot. Since our mother died, since I was taken, he has lived without love. Longed for what he could never have, has lost forever in poor, poor Sieg…if I held out my arms to Reinhard now, he would run to me and never leave. If he broke down now, under all we have lost, he would never rise. When we spoke, I told my brother that I would not see him again until he had finished what he had set out to accomplish. The salvation dear Sieg gave his life for – the ending of war and tyranny. The little boy I laughed with once is gone; my brother must now be the saviour we still need."
"The monster we still need. I know you never schemed to topple an Empire or take revenge; you're not responsible for anything except the brother you love. I also supported him, with many others, because I hoped and still hope he shall be a better ruler than Friedrich or Braunschweig. Perhaps the greatest emperor of history, perhaps the most terrible since Rudolf von Goldenblum – but cold hunger will never keep Reinhard's steps from the darkness. Only love can save him now, save all of us, still – I saved you because I love you, Annie, my poor, sweet friend. For love's sake, tell me one thing. How do you feel?"
"It would be hypocritical of me to say. If Reinhard has judged that the nobles who have hurt and exploited the weak must die, I will not question him. I could never bear such a burden as he bears…"
"No, Annie. You bore too heavy a burden, too long."
Her face white as ice upon the screen. Eyes vast, blue and dry, suspended over the cruel mountains of her trauma and grief. Stepping through the years of grand balls, tea parties and captive abuse, hiding all she submitted to under the gentlest smile. Burying in her heart, with such strength, all the poisonous waste than remained and killed. Only one true knight had fought for her; he was dead and all Annerose' hope for herself had died with Siegfried.
Magdalena only hoped her friend would be able to weep, one day. Think of her two lost little boys, and all the little children burnt to nothing on Westerland. Feel for them all and weep out her eyes, as a free woman with a good golden heart. Little enough of hope or feeling were left within her own emptied heart; she could not ask Annerose to take up the salvation of a blood-soaked galaxy.
"…Siegfried loved you, Annerose, only you. He truly never betrayed you…I'm sorry."
"I would have forgiven him any betrayal, but he is dead. I'm sorry for you, Maggie…I do hope that you find true love. When I was in prison, you sustained me, Maggie; you showed me that even a woman utterly alone can survive off her own mind and heart. Because of your love I will live on in this prison, alone, until the day I can be free."
-0-
In another world, far from Geiersberg fortress or the Odin she had returned to, Magdalena had extended a scandalous invitation to Shara Badawi, galactically famed actress and Fezzani dancer. It had been very far from a triumph; some of her salon guests had only stared at the beautiful brown girl as at an animal released from its cage, rather than engaging with one of the most refreshing conversationalists Magda had yet encountered.
Charitably, it might have unsettled them that Miss Badawi had starred in several of the Rebels' decadent holo-movies, although everyone in the Empire discreetly watched them. She was allegedly the mistress of more than one Imperial admiral, and a spy either for the Rebels or against them. Magda presumed that the guileless desert rose made herself very useful to both powers, and neither had yet attained the definite idea of her loyalties that would have instantly brought on arrest, torture and death. From what Sieg had told Magda about Fezzan's private spy network, Magda was prepared to stake her life on a third answer.
Their meeting was in the discreet back room of a wine bar frequently by artists and actors. Exactly the kind of place that would be bugged to the eyeballs, even if Magda hadn't been quite aware that the DSD had put her under surveillance as soon as she returned to Odin. She hadn't dared to meet or call a single friend or leave her house more than once. Living in a police state all her life, she had never felt watched as she changed for bed, frightened to fall asleep in her own bed, until she'd stood up to Reinhard von Lohengram. She had only written to congratulate Mister Eugene Richter Esq., Mister Karl Braque Esq. on their well-deserved ministerial posts. Hildegarde, who she had also written to, had been appointed by Reinhard as his personal secretary.
The streets thronged with peasants wildly cheering the end of the civil war, the downfall of noble corruption. The triumph of Premier Reinhard von Lohengram, who had only to crush the Rebels he'd never failed against to crown the Imperial power he already held. Already, his tax cuts, micro-loans, public works funded from the nobility's plundered fortunes, had transformed the face of the Empire. A single, just law code for every world where a hundred lords and governors had exercised a hundred different tyrannies. The luxury of Neue Sanssouci palace had been gutted; where armies of nobles and servants had poured away selfish torrents of treasure, there would be an office for a dozen staff and a single beloved ruler.
The commons would possibly not have ceased to worship their saviour if he had personally nuked a planet, or stabbed their mothers in the middle of Kaiserplatz, Packed celebrants toasted Reinhard the future, eternal emperor, all across the bar where Magdalena sat and told a foreign spy she was being watched by the DSD.
Heavily disguised with paint and a smock as a starving poet, Shara's eyes were still luminous with deceptive innocence; untouchable purity of a gorgeous mirage. Her face soft as a child's, body firm as a girl who'd been dancing and training since she'd been three. Her hand that patted Magda was soft too.
"The DSD? I'm Imperial Intelligence, ladyship, or so they say, so you've heard. We don't let those dull, nasty policemen interfere, when we just want a chat with somebody of very great interest. We can talk quite freely of anything you consider worth talking about, woman to woman. No recordings, no listening ears. Neither Reinhard nor Heinessen will ever know about our girl talk."
"Reinhard knew about the Westerland bombing, hours before. I sent the warning, he allowed those people to die."
Magda knew, if she had been wrong about Shara Badawi, she had just pronounced her own death – but when Sieg had thrown his life after so many others, she could not value her own. To speak the scandal that had to be spoken had always been her honour.
Shara was smiling like a cat. Magda's own heartbeat was quite calm as her body was deathly still. Towards a darkened denouement, to the very end, she could only play her part.
"This is good, ladyship." Shara spoke gently, once she'd finished asking questions, "No hard evidence, but one way or another, there will be. This is a tough business, ladyship – top to bottom, we all needed a strong reminder that we are doing the right thing."
"Which is what, if I might venture to ask? I've always been very open to exciting new ideas."
Magda's tone, light as madly spinning roulette, did not reach her eyes. Reinhard's death or deposition would birth nothing but a new civil war, tyranny restored, more centuries of galactic war and astronomic profits for the planet of merchants. She had known, but she could not be silent. Shara patted her hand again. Her voice was so free and light-hearted that a crowded bar of Reinhardists with working ears heard no sedition at all.
"Reinhard was needed, to draw the curtain on the old Empire. Not to set up a new Empire, where every planet eats the same sauerkraut, fake-worships the same dead gods, and fears the same secret police. Our autonomy, our culture, anyone's culture, will have no place in Reinhard's brave new world. The Alliance has just crushed a farce of a military coup within twenty-four hours – the first defeat of Reinhard von Lohengram, who planned the whole thing. They will fight Reinhard until he kills them, and he will – first the gay and not-white citizens who defy him, then the ones who might. Then all the brown girls and boys left on all the other worlds, who might have a reason to make trouble, though I can't imagine what. There are worse things than war, ladyship – but don't worry that you've changed the destiny of the universe, or that people will die because of what you've let slip. Tragedy rolls on, and we can't stop it, only survive to find some beauty and comedy. Not Reinhard, not even the lady on Fezzan I risk my life for, can shape the course of the stars. They are in better hands than ours, inching toward freedom and peace – inshallah."
Magdalena had never heard of Shara Badawi expressing any kind of religious belief, let alone that strange, ancient cult, uncommon even on Terra and Fezzan. Which suggested that the spy who danced deceit across the galaxy had let fall a true and treasured word. Magda should have been shocked that she had shared her secret with an agent devoted to an irrational faith - but where was reason in love or faith, in a galaxy of cold, inexorable death? Shara's eyes were bright with humanity and Magda was a fool to believe in them, as she had always been.
"If I might be allowed one more small indiscretion, does the coupling of your name with Oskar von Reuenthal hold any truth? I'm sure you know what you're doing…but do be careful."
"Discretion is my watchword," Shara's smile was sweet enough to eat, "I have a certain someone watching over me, and I don't mean the One who is a sea of mercy."
"Shara…I spoke to you because I hoped to prevent more deaths. I might not have entirely burnt my bridges with Reinhard's circle. I could help you further…?"
"…sorry, ladyship, but we don't employ agents who talk in their sleep. Or talk to their dead, invisible friends, when they think they're alone."
The cold shock went through Magda like a bolt. Shara bowed her head, genuinely contrite.
"You should leave Odin; Neue Westphalia will be safer. You've done and suffered more than enough, burnt out at both ends…you were always nice, for an Imperial noble, Magdalena. I'd much prefer for you to survive."
Some weeks later, Magdalena heard of High Admiral Oskar von Reuenthal's unexpected suicide. Shara and her ominous colleague, even if the death had involved a fall from a hotel roof, had at least shown enough class not to expose Reuenthal's relationship with High Admiral Mittermeyer. Though the personal collapse of the latter admiral at his lover's death had been impossible to conceal.
Even without his three most trusted admirals, Reinhard had demanded the return of the young Kaiser Erwin from the Alliance. President Dolittle's response was that there was no Kaiser on Heinessen or any other world. That such imaginary creatures as emperors and nobles had never been, and would never be, other than a delusion imposed by abusers of nations; that young Master Erwin Josef was a victim of persecution and abuse, under the protection of the Democratic Alliance of Free Planets.
Thoroughly as Reinhard's own media control office had blasted the Goldenbaums, Erwin was only six. It wasn't hard to imagine the Rebel fanatics humiliating or executing the boy for his ancestor's so-called crimes, without the encouragement any Imperial who could afford the new cheap holo-sets received. There had been a general mood among the liberated citizens of the Galactic Empire that the present generation had done enough dying. The war against the Rebellion might honourably be put off until the next one, and the fruits of enlightened rule appreciated for a while. The insults of the Rebels' unnatural and arrogant leader, however, with the widely published threat of a new Rebel invasion and the absolute, universal faith in Lord Reinhard, had whipped the Empire up for one final push; Operation Ragnarök. Reinhard von Lohengram, the boundless resources of Empire at last exclusively in his hands, would destroy the Rebel Alliance and the corrupt and unmanly delusion called democracy. The man above all men would rule all mankind, as his devoted soldiers and citizens fervently prayed.
It quickly became clear by what a brilliant strategic coup this was to be accomplished. A feint against Iserlohn, then the true attack upon Fezzan, and the second corridor to the Rebel worlds. Fezzan; a professedly loyal Imperial domain. Its autonomy, security, and round billion of merchants, entertainers and civilians, only protected by stacks of treaties honoured by every Goldenbaum Kaiser. Whatever had been said about the power of finance, the influence of trade, or Imperial honour, soft power would be helpless before iron-hard spacefleets. Reinhard's historic occupation of Fezzan would cost a mere few hundred deaths, with some unavoidable, swiftly-punished looting and rape, unless the Fezzani actually put up some suicidal resistance.
-0-
"…milady, I'm going to have to leave you, soon. Really. All the other girls have left already. Gone to learn about computers and pressing buttons. They're saying they'll even have women in the military - to press buttons, anyway. The times are changing. They say it ain't right for us be servants now – it ain't safe. Milady, please…I don't want to be your last maid, like that bloody fool in that bloody play you went on about all through last week!"
"King Lear, and his poor fool. 'We will sing like two birds in a cage…talk of court news…wear out packs of great ones'. Oh, yes, Lear with the happy ending would have been most fitting for the dramatic festival next month. It will be Tamburlaine, I suppose, or some conquering hero, but not The Massacre at Paris. Not Westerland…"
"Milady, don't talk about Westerland. It's not safe, you'll only destroy yourself-"
"If I did not speak, I would go mad. Oh, gods, let me not be mad…I cannot stop thinking of the children. We must arrange a charity gala soon, for Westerland. For the orphans, the widows, the wounded survivors…won't you come, dear Sieg? Won't you come, come again, and will he not come again…?"
"MILADY! Admiral Kircheis is gone. All your bloody men, all your fat, stupid friends are GONE! All your money's gone – everything you didn't give to those border peasants got taken. There were no survivors of Westerland, everyone knows – that's why you'd see some words your mother never taught you, sprayed right across every floor of this house, if you ever stepped outside. That's why you'd get things thrown at you if you ever went and did your own shopping!"
Magdalena, lolling on her couch with red eyes and tangled hair, suddenly gripped her maid's arm with the power of a galvanised corpse.
"Sarah, they hurt you. Stuck your poor, pretty head, when you protected me. You were bleeding, it must have hurt so much, I'm so sorry, sorry, sorry…"
"Buck yourself up, milady. It's alright. You should leave for Neue Westphalen; it's not safe here. If your own people don't take care of you, after all you did for them, they're ungrateful sods."
"What would you do without me, Sarah?"
"…I'd find something, milady. You've been as much trouble as a daughter to me - but children have to grow up."
"Sarah…I'm afraid I can't possibly leave Odin yet. Not until this age is wound down, my part played, and the curtain falls. The end of an age, dear Count Liechten…the city where everything happens, nothing changes and everyone remains. Sweet Annerose is here, in this world. My darling Sieg, where else should you be but here? You will live, while I never forget. Sieg, Sieg, Sieg...since our friendship has grown so delightfully close, you really cannot refuse to attend-"
"Magdalena Westphalen! If you care for me at all, even the tiniest bit of how I love you, please, please, stop…"
"Mama. I'm so sorry...we haven't talked for some time..."
Head falling on Sarah's frilly white bosom, Magdalena fell silent. Stared about the hollow room, as poor Sarah wept into matted, uncurled hair.
All her things were still there. Decanters and ornaments glittered, silk curtains almost glowed with softness. The plush as rich beneath the derriere as on the evenings when she had held court to so many marvellous people – scattered, lost or dead.
Within the drawing room that had been her castle, she saw several items undusted, or discoloured. A few knick-knacks out of place. A room dark and dead, without music or wine…but she was still loved, bless Sarah's dear, dear heart, and she was not mad. Some eccentricity was surely allowed, when she had such a part to play… always the actress, fluttering and sparkling across the stage of Empire, a spot of light in blood-soaked space. Left on a darkened stage, trapped before a silent audience of secret police – they would surely have dragged her to prison long before now, had she not put on such a good show.
Sieg had told her she must live – told her, with the old longsuffering smile, she had not betrayed him. For all he was, shining among the stars, for all she had been, while laughter had still lived.