Chapter Text
Rain caresses the window; Annerose watches it drip down the pane. She had left the Imperial intelligence dossier out on the tea table, beside her half-done embroidery, the ends knotted into a hopeless snarl.
Laid out on the tea table, the pictures of Yang Wenli’s protege look out at the room with truculent intent. In one, he is a boy badged in blood, caught in the grainy stare of one of Brunhilde’s myriad of eyes; in another, a faculty photo from Heinessen University, a young man smiles, gaze sharp and incisive, clad in civilian clothes. The ten years between the two are full of things Annerose cannot guess at; but she kept returning to the boy, shaking and trembling and unbent in all that blood.
As Annerose understands it, the ward of Yang has been submitting polite requests for oral interviews with various Imperial officials for the better part of two years. The first had been an informal affair; Admiral Muller had maintained correspondence with Minci since Iserlohn’s surrender.
Muller speaks of this project with enthusiasm and that strange nostalgia that seems to take hold of Fleet servicemen of an age to have fought the Rebellion’s forces.
“I would rather have Admiral Yang’s protege close and in sight,” Hilda says, whenever the matter of Julian Minci flitting about the Empire is raised with her.
But nobody had expected him to make this request.
“You're sure you want to do this.” Hilda’s voice cuts through the drone of the rain and the whisper of the wind against the palace walls.
When she turns, the Kaiserine steps from the door, looking worn and golden.
For ten years, Hilda has upheld Reinhard’s legacy; ten years of unfaltering work. Sometimes, whatever love exists in Annerose, looking at the Kaiserine makes her feel sick; it’s a helpless, petulant sort of anger that would be better suited to a girl half her age.
I did not want this for her. I did not want this.
“What do you think?” Hilda asks, gesturing at the scattered documents.
Annerose runs a finger over the edge of her embroidery wheel, the fine wood worn smooth with the turn of her fingers. She cannot name the feeling rising in her chest; it is a fragile thing, with teeth that could draw what little blood remains in her.
“I wish to hear what he has to say,” Annerose says.
“He’ll be full of inappropriate questions,” Hilda says. “And stubborn, if he takes after Frau Yang.”
A smile tugs at the corners of Annerose’s lips. “I do not need mein Kaiserine’s protection from one boy’s questions,” She speaks the familiar words softly, fondly. “Mein Kaiserine has more important things to worry about.”
“You are important.” Hilda kneels before her. In the low lamplight, she’s transfigured to worn bronze; it lims the lines at the corners of her eyes, and catches in the warm brown of her eyes.
Sometimes, when Annerose looks at Hilda, all she can see is the masks the kaiserine wears; the roles she has stepped into, to be what is required of her. Is that what this is now, as the Kaiserine kneels before her? And whose role is she taking up?
But when Hilda rests a weary head on her lap, she cards a hand through Hilda’s hair all the same.
When they’re alone, without the children, without Mittermeyer or Mecklinger or any of the others, there’s always a voice that whispers they must be play-acting; two girls, donning robes and swords to play Beowulf, or Julius Caesar. One day, the men would come home and there would be trouble, or sweetness, or simply nothing.
She doesn’t know if she fears that nothing, or longs for it.
The meeting of Annerose von Grunewald and Julian Minci comes on a chill autumn day, when the promise of cold hangs heavy over the skies of Phezzan.
The sitting room of Annerose's choice looks out on the gardens; this late in the season, they lie fallow, but she can see the bones of that which will grow again, come spring, in the carefully-trimmed brown branches and vines around the meticulously-laid stonework. This sliver of promise visible from her seat by the window calms her; even in the worst depths, seeing the gardens come to life brings her a bittersweet kind of joy.
When Alexander was two, Annerose had turned the planning of the gardens over to Eva Mittermeyer, so that they would be full of more than Siegfried's flowers. She could not bear the thought of the children playing amongst beds of only dead men’s flowers. But in spring, they still peak through, along with jonquils and crocus and every other bright thing coaxed from the earth by Frau Mittermeyer’s hand.
She selects threads of brown and copper, and goes to work under the wan fall sunlight.
Lost in her work, she almost misses the soldier announcing Herr Minci. She looks up, to find a young man at the room’s threshold.
In person, Julian Minci looks every bit as incisive as his faculty photo. He’s dressed in simple civilian clothing, in the slightly less formal, Phezzani style becoming more and more popular amongst the younger citizens of the Empire. He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the royal guards, and the years have not dulled the taut awareness evident in the photos of the bloodspattered young soldier; but there’s something still about him too, an ease that had been absent before. Or perhaps she is reading too much into old, grainy footage of a boy who had collapsed from blood loss shortly thereafter.
Flanked by the Imperial guards and the majesty of the palace, he looks — comfortable. There’s no hint of awe in his face, but there is a sharp curiosity when their eyes meet.
“Frau Grunewald,” Julian says, and does a credible impression of a courtly bow.
“Herr Minci,” Annerose says, putting aside her embroidery and gesturing to the chair opposite her. “Welcome.”
Now, a flash of awkwardness; he glances at her, clearly uncertain what exact protocols to follow. She remains sitting, watching what he will do — come forward and kiss her hand, as a man of the old court might have done, or shake her hand, like an Alliance politician?
He settles for sitting down opposite her. “I appreciate you agreeing to meet with me,” he says. “I understand that you don’t do it often.” He speaks with only a trace of an accent.
She waves a hand, and the guards depart to the respectful distance of the hallway. At the guard’s departure, one of her girls brings in tea and a tiered arrangement of refreshments; Annerose had risen early to see to the specifics. “I value my solitude,” she says, reaching forward to pour tea into both of their cups with steady hands. “And truly, there is little need for anyone to seek my audience, and I do not have the energy for idle curiosity. But Admiral Muller spoke to me about your project. Your — history.” She tips her head. “What do you hope to gain from writing it?”
When Julian lifts the tea to his lips, a flash of surprise crosses his face; quickly concealed. Annerose smiles.
The tea is of a kind grown in the old Alliance outlying planets; doubtless harder to acquire in Heinessen, now that those worlds are no longer part of the broader Alliance, and the outworlds, by necessity, catered to Imperial tastes. But she had had time to prepare. She may not host strangers often, but these little details were always the ones she could work through, in the days when she was restricted to the role of the Kaiser’s mistress, and the habit is another comfort.
He considers it for a moment, placing the cup carefully back down on the saucer. “What do you mean?”
“I would think a man like you would have more interest in your own side’s story, in immortalizing Yang Wenli and your other comrades,” Annerose says. “That, you could have written yourself, with no need to travel so far.”
“I couldn’t — not accurately, anyway,” Julian says. “I saw only a sliver of the conflict.”
“You were Admiral Yang’s protege,” Annerose says. “Surely that is the next best thing to being Yang himself.” She watches him closely, trying to gauge his reaction to that.
“Even still — even if I were Yang, I wouldn’t be able to write a history, with only my knowledge. A memoir, maybe, but I’m not interested in those,” he says. His eyes are clear, impassioned. “I want to — gather everything I can and record it, and put it down so that future generations will be able to understand it in a way that we cannot yet. And —” He hesitates. “Perhaps find some understanding there, myself. The Admiral put great stock in the study of history, and I’ve come to agree with him.”
Interesting phrasing. “So you’re here to ask me about Reinhard,” Annerose says.
“I’d like to ask you about your life,” Julian says. “If you are comfortable with that.”
Your life. It means he wishes to hear about the Kaiser, too. There’s no part of her pain that may remain private, no part without the glaring eyes of the world on it, even everything that had happened in those beautiful silk rooms on the planet she has not set foot on since her brother died.
There’s still time to turn him away; it doesn’t seem as though he will make a fuss.
And even if he did, there are few people who can wield power against her. That is Reinhard’s most enduring gift to his sister.
“Do people come asking you about Yang Wenli?” Annerose asks.
“Yes,” Julian says. “My students, of course. And — others.”
“Do you answer their questions?”
“I try to,” Julian says.
“Do you ever grow tired of it?”
“I survived; I’m living the kind of life Yang never got — one he badly wanted,” he says. “I think talking about him is — a small price, for everything he did for me.”
“So you will answer questions about him forever,” Annerose says.
Julian laughs. “I won’t promise that. Maybe I’ll feel differently about it, in twenty years. But — I owe him so much.”
Doesn’t that debt strangle, she wants to ask. Can’t you feel it crushing you, little by little, bending you into the shape you must be for history to take its course? “Do you think of yourself as a faithful son to Yang Wenli?”
Julian falters. “What do you mean, Frau Grunewald?”
She smiles, sadly. “You understand that Kaiser Reinhard forbid — informally, but quite decisively — anyone broaching these subjects with me. Of course, it has been long enough that that protection has begun to lapse.” Her brother’s hand would reach far into the future in some matters, she has no doubt, but the will of the dead begins to unravel at the moment of their death; that is inevitable. Not even the gods’ hands can hold something in shape forever.
Julian frowns. “I didn’t, no,” he says. “I made my request through —“
“The proper channels, yes. I doubt it would have reached my ears if it weren’t for your friendship with Admiral Muller.” She tilts her head.
“So… why now? Why me?”
“I am tired of my brother’s constraints,” Annerose says. “Even if they were kindly meant.” She picks up her embroidery. “I have two conditions. The first of which is, I cannot promise I will be able to answer your questions. I haven’t spoken of — it has been a long time since I have spoken of many things.”
Julian takes that in, and appears to turn it over in his mind. She thinks she likes this quality of his. “I think I understand,” he says.
“And my second condition is that you will answer my questions in kind.”
Julian considers that for a moment. “What kinds of questions will you ask?”
“The same kind of questions you want to ask me, I imagine,” Annerose says. “About Admiral Yang — about you.”
“There isn’t much I could say that would damage Admiral Yang’s reputation,” he says, cautiously. Honestly. “If that is what you are hoping for.”
“Are you looking for something to damage Kaiser Reinhard’s reputation?” Annerose says.
Julian shakes his head, adamant. “No. But I am aware —“ He considers for a moment, weighing the words. “ — Admiral Yang is gone. The legacy of a dynasty is different.”
That draws a little laugh from Annerose. “You are a chivalrous man. I am not a naif, Herr Minci, and you need not explain courtly politics to me.” He has the courtesy to blush at that. “But I have no interest in having a hand in politics, beyond — beyond what I must. Perhaps it is a cowardly thing to say, after everything, but it is true.”
“Then why are you interested in the Admiral?”
“I am tired of answering questions for those who have no stake in the matter,” Annerose says. “I have broken bread with enough vultures for a lifetime.” She smiles. “Consider my curiosity the price of this conversation, if you like.”
“Alright,” Julian says.
“So — do you consider yourself a faithful son?”
The boy — in that moment, he does look like a boy — is flustered. “I don’t think I can know. I wish I could know,” he says, and then shakes his head. “Well — I have done things that he would agree with, and things that he wouldn’t, since — and I know what he would have said, to some of those things —” His eyes go faraway. “ — But I can’t know the sum of it.” He shakes his head. “He would be angry, I think, that I spend so much time thinking about him.”
“Truly?” Annerose says.
“Now that the war has been over for all this time? I think he would consider it an unjust tyranny of the dead,” Julian says. “He would have hated what we made him, after he died. The symbol. He hated it enough when he was alive — but it was what needed to be done, for our cause to survive. The only other choice would have been giving up.” He shrugs. “Sometimes, when I’m going over his writings, I can imagine him saying — give it a rest, Julian. Don’t you have a life to live?” His smile is rueful. “But it isn’t about him, anymore. He went and left us, after all. If he wanted a say — he should have survived.”
He speaks the words lightly, but they resonate with something buried deep in the tangle behind Annerose’s ribs, the anger she has swallowed again and again as she watched another golden-haired child grow up.
“I understand you were an orphan, given into Admiral Yang’s care,” Annerose says. There is a Fleet dossier on him; it still bears the incisive mark of the late Admiral Oberstein’s hand; Muller and Mittermeyer’s accounts of the way this young man cleaved through the ranks of Reinhard’s imperial guard to reach her brother; almost nothing from the time Julian had spent on Phezzan, after Reinhard’s death. As shameful as it might be to the Imperial apparatus, Hilda had remarked that everyone had had rather a lot on their hands, in those days. Julian Minci executing his father’s murderer in the courtyard had felt like barely a footnote to an ending of another magnitude. “There is no shortage of children like that here.”
“War orphans aren’t in short supply anywhere,” Julian says.
A fact which, in some ways, could be pinned squarely on Annerose. For all that she had not allowed Reinhard to make her the soul of his nation — what good had that done, in the long run? Who had it saved, besides herself?
Had it saved her? She runs her fingers over the little details of her embroidery, glad of the excuse to look away from him. Some mornings she cannot bring herself to get out of bed; some mornings she finds herself talking to her mirror, to Kircheis, though he never answers her like he did her brother.
Julian is still talking. “— and my father was killed when I was eight,” he says. “A soldier, like Admiral Yang. He served under Rear Admiral Cazellnu, once, who was friends with Yang. That’s how I came to be Yang’s ward, eventually.”
“Do you consider yourself a faithful sister?” Julian says, emboldened.
“Reinhard certainly thought of himself as a faithful brother. I don’t know if I can say the same.” Her lips curl into a little, bitter smile. “As you know — or perhaps you don’t? I abandoned him.”
A line appears between Julian’s brows, over the faint worry lines beginning to show there. It must be some girl’s dream, to reach up and smooth those lines away; the thought catches Annerose for a moment, and makes her ache for something that will never be. “What do you mean?”
The little curls of steam have faded from the surface of the teacup; Annerose lifts it, and plucks a cube of sugar to drop into it, to watch the ripples brush the rim of the cup. Then, she lifts it to her lips. Once, she had made an art of this; she could drive any audience-seeker into a frenzy of anticipation, waiting to see if she would agree to their petition, if she would bring their matter before the Kaiser or not.
Magdalena had always had more fun in those games than she, though. The gentle floral taste of the tea rolls over her tongue, grounding in its faint unfamiliarity.
“Now, everyone says I look like Kaiser Reinhard. It’s why I still get my way, even though half the men who swore to Reinhard that they would protect me are dead.” One by one, all those handsome officers who had come to save her had died; after Siegfried, she hadn’t felt anything but a faint dread. “It is my place to lend legitimacy, until Prince Alec comes of age. I borrow on my brother’s reputation.”
“You said you have no interest in politics,” Julian says.
She studies her hands. “For the Kaiserine’s sake. I owe her — much. And for Alec’s. He’s a sweet boy. He never asked for this — for any of this. And you see, if it weren’t for Hilda — it would have been me, who they turned for. For an heir.” She swallows past the sick lump in her throat, and takes a sip of tea. “So I have much to be grateful for.”
Julian looks sickened.
“But when Reinhard was a child, everyone said he looked like me. Our mother died when he was very young,” Annerose says. “And our father was — well, a drunk.” A strange expression flits over Julian’s face; Annerose captures it, and stores it away for later. “So I came to think of him as mine, too. My baby.” She clasps her hands. That girl feels like a different person — the child trying so hard to play mother, who took delight in her brother’s every little accomplishment. “He was a willful child. An angry child. I knew — I knew he could come to harm, and that was why I was so glad — why I wanted so badly for Sieg to be his friend.”
“Siegfried Kircheis?” Julian says.
Annerose nods. “You’ve heard the stories, of course, about Reinhard and Sieg. When Reinhard was a young officer — “ Reinhard hadn’t lived to be an old officer, had he? — “When they called Reinhard that blonde brat, all the Court talked about was how much he looked like me. How beautiful he was. How it must please the Kaiser, to have a matched set.” It’s easy to say it now, in a flat, dead voice; Reinhard is beyond harm. No one will ever hurt Reinhard again. “They couldn’t reach me — not in the way, anyway —” She was reserved for the Kaiser alone, of course. “ — But when my brother joined the Fleet — I heard about things that happened to pretty young ensigns.” She shudders. “Marquise Benemund and her women, they liked to speak of things like that, to provoke my reaction. But I never gave them the satisfaction. I knew Sieg was always with him. I knew Sieg would protect him, and — protect him from himself, too.” If anyone had ever tried to lay hands on her brother, there would have been blood. “It wasn’t a done thing, for two officers to be allowed to serve together like that — but I had the Kaiser’s ear, of course.”
“When they were older, Reinhard promised me to Sieg. He would speak of it, every time we were allowed to meet,” she says. “Of course, I didn’t know if such things would come to be, but — it was his way of saying he would protect me.” One day, her bed would not be a place of fear. Sieg would protect her, as he had protected Reinhard; he would make sure she was never lonely. Maybe he could have found the key to her, as he always seemed to for Reinhard.
Whether Reinhard would have ever truly relinquished him, that is another matter.
“I met Admiral Kircheis, once,” Julian says, softly.
Annerose blinks. It’s so easy to think of Sieg as hers — only hers — now. She doesn’t wear her brother’s locket; she keeps it locked away, jealousy or fear, she can’t quite tell. If she lost it, she would come to pieces. “You did?”
“On Iserlohn, when he came to parlay for a prisoner exchange,” Julian says. “I was there with Admiral Yang.” He smiles, his eyes shining in admiration, and for a moment he looks very young. “He was just six years older than me, and an admiral. He told me to stay well.” A shadow passes over his face. “I didn’t know he was your fiancé.”
How strange, that there had once been a man called Siegfried Kircheis, who spoke to people she had never met, and went places she had never seen and would never see. How strange that the idea of this kindness makes resentment curdle in her blood, a hot, flushed feeling that she vents into jabbing at her embroidery.
“What did your Admiral Yang think of Siegfried?” A story of Kircheis, one she had never heard before; for a moment, she could almost pretend he was alive, and just very far away.
“He thought he was an honorable man,” Julian says, his eyes still faraway. “Once, he said that if Admiral Kircheis hadn’t died, we would have been able to make peace with Kaiser Reinhard.”
A helpless laugh escapes Annerose. “I sent him to his death,” Annerose says. “Me and Reinhard, between us, we used every piece of him up.”
“What do you mean?” Julian asks.
So she tells him of that miserable house, in the bourgeois neighborhood; of their father’s debts; of the red-haired boy who lived next door, and the promise she had drawn from him.
“If he had survived, Sieg would have loved me enough for the two of us,” Annerose says. “And loved Reinhard enough for the two of us, too.” And then, there would have been peace. “But when he died — I couldn’t stay with my brother. Without Sieg — I was afraid of who he would be. And I could never stand up to that, not the way he could, not after -” The words die in her throat, and she swallows past the crush of those memories. Ten years, perfecting herself to be a woman the Kaiser wouldn't cast aside.
"Frau Grunewald?" Julian says.
“When the Kaiser called me to his court, I would have gladly died," Annerose says. It’s easier to say now, with twenty years between her and the girl she had been. The misery is dulled, almost quaint, except when she wakes in the middle of the night with her skin crawling with the sense-memory of that touch. “Sometimes, I wanted to die. But — then there would have been no one to protect Reinhard. As long as I pleased the Kaiser, he would seek to please me — and I made it clear, that my brother’s successes pleased me most of all.” She takes a breath. “Once he became an officer, he was only allowed to see me when he won. Just short visits. Sometimes all I could think about was the things he was required to do to earn them. The people who died — in the name of my happiness.”
Something lights in Julian’s eyes. “Yang would say things like that.”
“Did you promise him that you would continue his work?”
“I didn't have the opportunity," Julian says. "He might have done something like this, if he had survived."
The idea draws a little laugh from Annerose. “Reinhard would have been grieved to have missed that,” she says. “He talked incessantly of Admiral Yang, even when — when I came back to him, near the end.”
“But I can’t know. Ultimately — I don’t know if this is — in service to his legacy, or a perversion of it.” He ducks his head.
“A perversion?”
“Breaking bread with the people who built this empire,” Julian says, honestly.
Annerose has to laugh. “My, you are like Frau Yang,” she says.
A smile touches the corners of Julian’s lips. “I'm sure you knew that already.”
“By reputation, perhaps,” Annerose says. An impulse rises in her, to pull on this thread; she had been adequate, once, at the games of the court, even if it did not come naturally to her.
“He didn’t want me to be a soldier,” Julian blurts. “He wouldn’t forbid it, but I knew it hurt him. He wanted to give me the choices he didn’t have. But he needed someone to protect him. He always — he wasn’t good at that. I wanted to protect him.” An expression flashes over Julian’s face, a raw, flayed grief Annerose knows well. “I would have done anything to protect him.” I failed, his eyes say.
The words stir something in Annerose’s chest. “Do you ever hate him?”
Julian looks stricken.
“I mean - do you ever resent how he has caged you?” Annerose says, in pity. “I think some part of me will live in men’s cages for the rest of my life. My brother sought to free me, but all he could do is fashion me a cage of his own. I don’t fault him for it — I don’t know if he could have done better. It wasn’t in his nature.”
“Admiral Yang didn’t have a choice,” Julian says, his voice sharp.
“I can see how that would make it easier, to tell yourself,” Annerose says. “But you see, I could say my brother never really had a choice either.” She smiles, sadly. “Not to begin with. Any other choice would have been leaving me behind.” She folds her hands.
“He had no choice but to conquer the universe?” Julian says.