"It's signed, witnessed, and sealed with lead. With the power of heaven it names you as your father's heir." Volger smiled. "A bit more impressive than a few gold bars, isn't it?"
"One document gives me an empire? I don't believe you."
"You can read it if you want. Your Latin is better than mine, after all."
Alek turned away, gripping the parapet. A sharp edge of broken stone cut into his fingers. Suddenly he could hardly breathe. "But ... all this happened two years ago? Why didn't he tell me?"
Volger snorted. "Aleksandar, you don't trust a mere boy with the greatest secret in the empire."
A mere boy ... The moonlight on the snow was suddenly too bright, and Alek squeezed his eyes shut, his whole life unwinding inside him. He'd always been an impostor in his own house, his father unable to leave him anything, his distant relatives wishing he'd never been born. Even his mother - she was the cause of it all. She'd cost him an empire, and somewhere deep down that fact had always stood between them.
How could the abyss that had defined his life disappear so suddenly?
The answer was, it hadn't. The emptiness was still there.
"It's too late," Alek said. "My parents are dead."
"Making you first in line for the throne." The wildcount shrugged. "Your granduncle may not know about this letter, but that doesn't change the law."
"No one knows about it!" Alek cried.
"I certainly wish that were true. But you saw how doggedly they've hunted us. The Germans must have found out somehow." Count Volger shook his head slowly. "Rome is filled with spies, I suppose."
Alek took the scroll case, his fist closing tight around it. "So this must be why my parents were ..." For a moment he wanted to throw it from the battlements.
"That isn't true, Alek. Your father was killed because he was a man of peace, and the Germans wanted war. You are simply a postscript."
Alek took a deep breath, trying to fit himself into this new reality. Everything that had happened in the last two years had to be rethought - all of these plans his father had made, knowing this.
Strangely, a small thing troubled him most. "All this time, Volger, you've treated me like ..."
"The son of a lady-in-waiting?" Volger smiled. "A necessary deception."
"My compliments," Alek said slowly and evenly. "Your contempt was most convincing."
"I am your servant." Volger took one of Alek's hands in both of his and bowed. "And you have proved yourself worthy of your father's name."
Alek pulled away. "So what do we do with this ... piece of paper? How do we let people know?"
"We don't," Volger said. "We keep your father's promise and say nothing until the emperor dies. He's an old man, Alek."
"But while we hide, this war goes on."
"I'm afraid so."
Alek turned away. The freezing wind still blew against his face, but he could hardly feel it. He'd spent his whole life wishing for an empire, but he'd never realized the price would be so high. Not just his parents, but the war itself.
He remembered the soldier he'd killed. Over the next years there would be thousands more dead - tens of thousands. And he could do nothing but hide here in the snow, clutching this piece of paper.
This frozen wasteland was his kingdom now.
"Alek," Volger said softly, gripping his arm. "Listen ..."
"I think I've heard enough for one night, Count."
"No, listen. Do you hear that?"
Alek glared at the man, then sighed and closed his eyes again. There was the sound of Bauer chopping wood, the moan of the wind, the ticking of the Stormwalker's metal parts still cooling. And somewhere out on the edge of his awareness ... the rumble of engines.
His eyes sprang open. "Aeroplanes?"
Volger shook his head. "Not at this altitude." He leaned out over the parapets and scanned the valley floor, muttering, "They can't have followed us. They can't have."
But Alek was sure the sound came from the air. He squinted into the icy wind, until finally he saw a shape forming in the moonlit sky. But what he saw made no sense at all.
It was huge, like a dreadnought flying through the air.
TWENTY-TWO
"It's a zeppelin!" Alek shouted. "They've found us!"
The wildcount looked up. "An airship, certainly. But that doesn't sound like a zeppelin."
Alek frowned, listening hard. Other noises, tremulous and nonsensical, trickled over the distant hum of engines - squawks, whistles, and squeaks, like a menagerie let loose.
The airship lacked the symmetry of a zeppelin: The front end was larger than the stern, the surface mottled and uneven. Clouds of tiny winged forms fluttered around it, and an unearthly green glow clung to its skin.
Then Alek saw the huge eyes... .
"God's wounds," he swore. This wasn't a machine at all, but a Darwinist creation!
He'd seen monsters before, of course - talking lizards in the fashionable parlors of Prague, a draft animal displayed in a traveling circus - but nothing as gigantic as this. It was like one of his war toys come to life, a thousand times larger and more incredible.
"What are Darwinists doing here?" he said softly.
Volger pointed. "Running from danger, it would seem."
Alek's eyes followed the gesture, and he saw the jagged trails of bullet holes down the creature's flank, flickering with green light. Men swarmed in the rigging that hung from its sides, some wounded, some making repairs. And alongside them climbed things that weren't men.
As the airship passed, almost overhead, Alek half ducked behind the parapets. But the crew seemed too busy to notice anything below them. The ship slowly turned as it settled into the valley, dropping below the level of the mountains on either side.
"Is that godless thing coming down?" Alek asked.
"They seem to have no choice."
The vast creature glided away toward the white expanse of glacier - the only place in sight large enough for it to land. Even wounded, it fell as slowly as a feather. Alek held his breath for the long seconds that it remained poised above the snow.
The crash unfolded slowly. White clouds rose up in the skidding airship's wake, its skin rippling like a flag in the wind. Alek saw men thrown from their perches on its back, but it was too far away for their cries to reach him, even through the cold, clear air. The ship kept sliding away, farther and farther, until its dark outline disappeared behind a shroud of white.