And then stopped dead when she realized just how much entertainment her tears were providing for Count Lazlo. No way was she going to be his amusement. Lady Clare shook her head crossly, a sudden wave of fury putting back the backbone as she pushed one thin knuckle into her own eye sockets. There were men she was prepared to cry in front of, but the newly promoted Minister for External Security wasn’t one of them.
“Gentlemen...” Lazlo looked round at the four ministers standing near the Prince Imperial, then nodded ironically in Lady Clare’s direction. “And Lady Clare, of course...”
Lady Clare just stared back, as coldly as she could manage. Tears were still drying in tracks on her cheeks, her hair was uncombed, unbrushed and unwashed. Only the Dior dress gave her some confidence, that and the ridiculous shoes. Lady Clare looked down at the already disintegrating court shoes and smiled bitterly.
She should have been worrying desperately about the Empire. Except that even the Empire didn’t really get a look in compared with what really filled her head: that she wasn’t able to say a proper goodbye to her daughter. Memories of LizAlec’s face looking sullen and cold flickered through Lady Clare’s mind. All Lady Clare could remember was her daughter’s contemptuous gaze and the rigid straightness of LizAlec’s spine as she stalked towards the departure gate, never once looking back. Not even a silent nod to signal goodbye.
The girl would have cried on the shuttle, Lady Clare knew that. But not at Charles de Gaulle, not in public, not in front of her. Lady Clare was like that, too. Well, she used to be...
“Are you with us?” The words were politeness itself, icily so. Lazlo stood in front of her, offering her a handwritten list of figures. Everyone else already had a set, including the Prince Imperial. Lady Clare looked at Lazlo’s scrawl and knew instantly what it was. A numerical statement of the Third Empire’s military strength. Row after row of figures about the Garde Impériale. That only the Garde Impériale was listed told Lady Clare that Lazlo had no faith in the other regiments holding to their oath of loyalty.
Only one regiment and not a single experienced human commander to lead them. Both the field marshal and the general were dead. Not that they’d had much real experience either, except at listening to their machines.
Maybe this was what war always came down to, a huddle of people taking critical decisions from a position of blind ignorance. There were still a few combatAIs, of course, and JCIT decks, but they were empty shells, nothing more: reduced to muttering in corners, those of them that hadn’t been reduced to dust.
Not one person in the room could handle the necessary equations to fight an efficient war. Probably no one living could, not manually, unaided. And the Black Hundred didn’t need to, they won by strength of numbers. Everyone in the room knew that too.
“It seems to me,” said Lazlo, “that we don’t have much choice.” Tapping the paper with the back of one lacquered nail, he selected figures at random. “Outnumbered four to one... Number of Garde Impériale armed with ceramic rifles, twenty-eight per cent. Number armed with aquatic-issue subsonic assassination weapons, twelve per cent...”
“The rest?” That was the Prince Imperial asking what Lady Clare couldn’t bring herself to ask.
“Unarmed,” said Lazlo. “Our tanks and APVs are so much scrap. There isn’t a functioning battle hover in the entire city. The figures are all there.” Lazlo didn’t bother to add Your Highness or sir. In fact, Clare realized, he hadn’t used the conventional honorific once since the meeting began. Which told her what she wanted to know, but not yet as much as she needed.
“Totally unarmed...?”
Lazlo just looked at her.
“Totally?” Lady Clare kept her voice calm. Repeating her question into the silence, as the others around them stopped talking and began watching instead.
“Glass knives, zytel blades, sharpened sticks...” Count Lazlo’s voice was contemptuous, making it obvious he answered her only out of politeness.
Thin and bird-like, Lady Clare leant forward and Lazlo flinched as she prodded him once over his breastbone. “Even a sharpened stick kills if it’s stuck in the right place.” Lady Clare smiled grimly. “Ask Vlad Tepes... Besides, there must be glass bottles, reserves of petrol, rags...” Lady Clare raised her chin slightly and pushed back her shoulders. So, this wasn’t how she’d intended the confrontation to go. But she wasn’t going to let Lazlo... Lady Clare stopped and caught her thoughts before they span out of control. Just what was she trying to save? That old man sitting smiling at her, the Third Empire itself, or the girl she’d given birth to? No one could protect all three, not even her.
So had she the guts to betray her country or the brains not to have to, Lady Clare asked herself. Maybe she’d have found it easier if LizAlec really had been her daughter — or maybe she wouldn’t. Lady Clare knew exactly why she should save LizAlec, basic responsibility, but she had less than no idea why she should attempt to save a corrupt, rotting empire. Even assuming the Empire could be saved or she could do it.
“How noble that sounds,” Lazlo said lightly. “Fighting the Reich with pointed sticks. But let’s be less emotional about this, shall we?” He stopped, looked around the small study. “I take it everyone agrees our first priority is to protect the Prince Imperial...”
His gaze halted when he reached Lady Clare.
What did he want from her?
Agreement?
“No,” said Lady Clare. “I don’t believe our first duty is to save His Highness.” Even the Prince looked surprised at that: but he kept silent, his pale grey eyes never once leaving her face as she stalked across to a side table, leaving them waiting. Keeping them waiting while she slowly poured herself coffee and then poured another cup, carrying it back to the Prince Imperial, meeting his quizzical smile.
After a life of indulgence, the Prince had been forbidden coffee, cigars and cocaine by his doctors, not to mention sexual activity and stress. But Lady Clare figured caffeine was the least of his vices and, besides, he was about to need all the comfort he could get.
“Our job isn’t to save His Highness,” said Lady Clare. “It’s to save the Empire. And even if we were successful, to save the Empire means condemning Paris.” They all knew she told the truth. Every one of them had seen Gdansk: not a building left standing, not an oak or plane tree that wasn’t uprooted.
Any army could wreak that kind of damage with a small fission device, just as a neutron burst could clear a city but leave its historic buildings untouched. But to destroy Gdansk with gunpowder, crowbars and ropes because the semiAI howitzers were virus-struck and there were no drones to deliver bombs, that took will. The blood-and-iron kind that drunken Cossacks always sang about.
Lady Clare glanced apologetically at the Prince Imperial, but he just stared back, almost as if knew what she was about to ask. “The question,” said Lady Clare, “isn’t can we save the empire, hut should we... Is our Byzantium worth saving?”
Wind rattled the wooden shutters and flames spat in the grate but that was all the noise there was. “We have a choice,” Lady Clare announced into the silence. “A simple, very basic choice. To have any chance of keeping the Empire together we have to fight, with sharpened sticks if that’s what it takes. Alternatively, we surrender now, which saves Paris. But then the Empire falls...” Lady Clare looked at the others, watching their faces. That she didn’t recognize two of them told her all she needed to know about how well the government was holding together. Chief ministers had been fleeing like proverbial rats, their places taken by underlings.