Chương 131: Grenzwacht

Voralberg Magitek Augustin took the stairs to the second floor faster than dignity allowed. The factory thundered beneath him. Hammers rang against brass fittings. Mana-fed cutting frames hissed through copper plate. Every few seconds, a testing array discharged somewhere on the western production line. Major Oswin Brauer climbed beside him. The major was heavy, twenty years older, and carrying too many old injuries.

Augustin reached the first landing and turned sharply enough that the ledgers beneath his arm nearly slipped.

"Have you tried contacting Kaspar directly?"

"Repeatedly," Brauer said.

"Through which crystals?"

"The palace's northern-route crystal. Iron Cross headquarters. Your workshop's registered unit. We also had the eastern relay attempt to bounce a signal through Hexenzeit."

"And?"

"Nothing." They kept climbing.

"He has been out of the capital since yesterday," Brauer continued.

"The convoy is moving north of the main trade road. Too many ridges between him and the nearest relay tower." Augustin reached the second floor and pushed through the office door. The administrative mezzanine overlooked the main production floor. From here, the whole operation was visible. Nearly a hundred workers moved between assembly stations. Magi-Cooling units occupied the western lines. Rail-pistol components covered the eastern benches.

Beyond both, a walled passage led toward the restricted boiler-house wing, where Rolf's cannon program produced expensive noises and increasingly creative forms of molten copper. Augustin put his ledgers on the nearest desk.

"Can this wait until he comes within range?"

"No." Brauer closed the door behind them.

"The Hall of Deliberation is in session now," the major said.

"Princess Elara introduced her amendment less than twenty minutes ago. The clerk called a brief recess while the factions revise their positions."

"How brief?"

"Perhaps half an hour." Augustin stared at him. Brauer's face remained flat.

"Kaspar needs the approval before he gets to the town," Brauer said.

"Without it, the Magical Army and House Hexenzeit can challenge his authority to act in Kaltbach. His current mission order permits pacification under Iron Cross command. It does not establish jurisdiction."

"And if we delay?"

"Prince Varen is going to decide for him." Augustin removed his spectacles and cleaned them on his sleeve, then opened the office door.

"You," he called to an assistant carrying a stack of invoices below. The young man stopped so abruptly that the top third of the stack slid onto the floor.

"Get Asena and Rolf. Now." The assistant looked at the scattered invoices.

"Sir, these—""Immediately."

"Yes, sir." The assistant abandoned the paper and ran. Augustin closed the door.

"How bad is it?" he asked. Brauer considered the question.

"Princess Elara supported Kaspar's elevation." Augustin went still.

"That bad?"

"That bad." Asena arrived first. She came through the door without knocking, her shoulder-length ice-blue hair tied back with a strip of leather. Copper dust stained the side of her face. She still held a regulator housing in one hand.

"What happened?" she demanded.

"Did the Ministry cancel the crystal allotment again?"

"Not this time." Rolf arrived seconds later, escorted by the terrified assistant. He wore a leather apron over his work shirt and was wiping black grease from his hands with a cloth. He stopped in the doorway.

"Augustin, we're rebuilding the Mark VII cannon. Do you really need me up here?" Augustin gestured toward the table.

"Sit." Brauer remained standing at the head of the table.

"The Parlament is considering Kaspar's elevation to Baron," he said.

"The original petition grants him Kaltbach and its surrounding demesne, contingent on his successful resolution of the revolt." This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Asena nodded.

"That part we knew."

"Princess Elara appeared in the royal observation box and declared her support." Rolf stopped wiping his hands. Asena lowered the regulator housing.

"She then proposed an expansion to the territorial grant. Under her amendment, Kaspar would receive Kaltbach in the north and Grenzheim in the south." Asena stared at Brauer.

"Grenzheim?" she asked.

"Yes." Asena put the regulator housing on the table with exaggerated care.

"I don't get it."

"A generous trap," Augustin said. He crossed to the wall map. The factory's procurement routes had been drawn across the Empire in colored ink. Copper from the eastern foundries, treated timber from the central provinces. Mana crystals from Crown and private mines, alchemical supplies from the southern routes. Augustin put one finger on the northern border and dragged the other to the southern front. The span between his hands was the Empire.

"He would hold territory at both extremes," Augustin said.

"Two isolated jurisdictions with the Empire between them." Asena moved closer to the map.

"How far?"

"From one to the other?" Augustin calculated.

"With functioning roads, favorable weather, and regular changes of horses, a month at least. Longer for cargo. Considerably longer in winter." A house supplying both ends would be late to whichever end started burning first. Rolf's cloth moved slowly between his fingers. Asena waited.

"The amendment grants him Grenzheim and its garrison district," Brauer said. Augustin's fingers stopped on the southern mark. Grenzheim had never had a lord. The Crown had built the barracks, the armories, the wall. Untitled land sat on the army's ledger. Pay, grain, crystals, and kit came out of the Ministry because there was no house to send the bill to.

"Once the charter is sealed," Brauer continued, "that district leaves the army's books and falls into yours." Augustin did the arithmetic against numbers he already knew.

"Can he refuse Grenzheim?" Rolf asked Brauer's eyes settled on him.

"In law? Yes." Rolf waited.

"In practice?" he asked.

"That is where Princess Elara's amendment becomes effective." Brauer crossed his arms.

"If Kaspar accepts Kaltbach and refuses Grenzheim, he becomes the Hero of Grenzheim who declined responsibility for the city that made him famous. The papers sympathetic to Elara will call him an ingrate. They will say he used the dead of Grenzheim to build his legend but wouldn't stand beside the survivors."

"And if he accepts Grenzheim but refuses Kaltbach?"

"He loses the legal foundation for what he intends to build in the north," Brauer said.

"More importantly, the political interpretation will be immediate. Kaltbach is predominantly mutant. Elara's people will say Kaspar was willing to accept a famous Imperial town but refused a poor territory populated by mutants and farmers without influence." Augustin's jaw tightened. THE BASTARD KNIGHT ABANDONS THE MUTANT NORTH. HERO REFUSES GRENZHEIM. KASPAR CHOOSES GLORY OVER DUTY.

"What if he refuses the entire grant?" Asena asked. Brauer gave her a look.

"He would surrender the title, Kaltbach, and every legal right required for his project. Varen would also have spent political capital advancing a petition whose beneficiary rejected it in public."

"So that's impossible." Asena turned to Augustin.

"Then Kaspar decides."

"He can't," Augustin said.

"He's two days up the road."

"And we have less than half an hour." Asena went quiet. Brauer's expression softened by a degree.

"Varen is willing to decide. But Kaspar built this operation with the three of you. The prince wants your answer before he imposes his own." Augustin looked at the map. Every road would run longer. Every shipment would sit more exposed. Neighboring nobles would invent claims on both borders. And at the southern mark, a garrison that would be eating every golden crown they had. The distance could starve the work. The bill could starve their growth. Either could break Kaspar before the first factory wall rose.

Rolf had stopped cleaning his hands. He stared at the wall of filing cabinets beside the drafting desk. No one spoke as he crossed the room and began opening drawers. He pulled the project proposals from the Academy and private workshops, sorted according to the research fields Kaspar had ordered Augustin to investigate. Rolf searched through the folders.

"What are you looking for?" Asena asked. Rolf didn't answer. He opened another drawer and removed a thick set of folders bound with red cord. He carried them to the table and untied the bundle. Augustin recognized them. The research categories Kaspar had requested before leaving for Kaltbach. He laid them out in order. Magi-car crystal-drive efficiency, heavy cargo, old-world road reconstruction, long-distance comm-crystal relays, automated freight guidance.

Rolf turned the folders so the others could read the labels.

"He knew," he said. Augustin frowned.

"Knew what?"

"Not about Grenzheim. About distance." Rolf tapped the transport folder with one grease-darkened finger.

"Kaspar asked us to find researchers connected to magi-cars, roads, cargo movement, relay crystals, and distributed manufacturing. None of those fields helps build a railgun directly. They don't solve our material problem." He looked at Augustin.

"He asked for people who could make the distance smaller." Asena picked up the road-reconstruction folder.

"He was already planning for a remote city," she said.

"Yes," Rolf replied.

"Kaltbach was never going to remain isolated if his plan worked."

"Still, the roads don't exist yet," Augustin said.

"Neither does the cannon. Yet," Rolf answered.

"That hasn't stopped him." Everyone looked toward the restricted research wing.

"If Kaspar believed the existing distance made the plan impossible, he wouldn't have asked us to buy research capable of changing it," Rolf said. His finger stayed on the transport folder.

"If Grenzheim's problem was gold, that would be easier. The princess is looking at a disowned Hexenzeit and a village mill. She has no idea what the floor is producing. I can see it from down there. If we keep this pace, we will have the gold to supply that city." Augustin didn't look at the folders.

"If we keep growing," he said.

"That's not a small condition. The mill and the waitlist. If any of that stalls, the garrison eats the reserve and there is nothing behind it." Brauer looked at Rolf.

"You vote to accept both territories."

"Yes." Then he looked down at the black grease covering his fingers.

"I think."

"That's less reassuring," Asena said.

"I'm a researcher. I'm just trying to think as Kaspar did." Augustin looked at Asena.

"And you?" She placed the road folder on the table.

"I'm thinking it's going to be expensive. The garrison more than the roads. But useful." Asena walked to the map and put her finger on Grenzheim.

"The town sits less than a day from the southern front. It already has garrison roads and a labor population used to war production. Every new weapon we build eventually has to be tested under real conditions." Her finger remained over the southern town.

"Kaltbach can build," she said.

"Grenzheim can test." Augustin considered that.

"Kaspar has said from the beginning that this was not about profit." Asena's eyes remained on the map.

"If we accept Grenzheim, we have a base next to the front line."

"And the risk of elven attack?" Augustin asked.

"It's Grenzheim," Asena said.

"The risk already exists."

"The town was nearly erased once."

"That's a risk we take. But if it falls, Silberwald goes next." Augustin inhaled slowly.

"I hope," he said, "this isn't the most expensive mistake we've ever signed." He turned to Brauer.

"Tell Captain Falke that Kaspar accepts Princess Elara's amendment in full." Brauer didn't move immediately.

"You're certain?" Augustin straightened his coat.

"We are." Brauer nodded. He reached inside his uniform coat and removed a narrow dispatch case. From it, he drew a single sheet of paper and a steel pen.

"There's one more question." Augustin's stomach tightened.

"Of course there is."

"The Chancellor's clerk needs a designation for the new house. It can be amended before the final Crown seal, but the provisional charter must identify the collateral branch by something other than House Hexenzeit." Augustin rubbed his forehead.

"We're choosing his house now?"

"The Hall resumes shortly."

"Kaspar is going to hate all of us."

"He can change it before formal investiture." They looked at Asena. She hadn't moved from the map.

"Grenzwacht," she said.