The Kingmakers(73)
“Thank you.” Adele felt a flutter of emotion at the general's appraisal, but she had doubts that even his worshipful opinions couldn't overawe. “I'm afraid of what I'm becoming.”
“I don't understand.”
She clasped her hands in front of her, and then lowered them because that looked childish. “I just sent someone off to execute a man. With no trial.”
“Ah.” Anhalt pursed his lips in understanding as columns of cannons newly manufactured in the factories of Lord Aden rolled past accompanied by the clip-clop of horses drawing caissons. “Aden made his choices. He must now deal with the consequences. His fate isn't murder, Your Majesty. It's justice. Lord Aden is the vilest of criminals. He is in league with our enemy.”
“Am I so different?”
“Completely different. Your relationship with Greyfriar isn't affecting your prosecution of the war.”
“Isn't it?” she wondered aloud.
He dropped his salute as the artillery unit moved off, but remained at attention. “No, Your Majesty. I am your commander in chief, and my orders have been to kill all the vampires we encounter and liberate the humans under their sway. I must assume those will remain my orders. So far as I can tell, Greyfriar has not altered your commitment to the war.”
Adele considered his statement and admitted, “I'm not sure about that. There are things about me that you don't know. You saw what I did in the Mountains of the Moon and again in Grenoble. I know you're a man who believes in the power of steam and steel, but there are powers in this world beyond those. I can marshal those powers in ways I still don't completely understand. But Mamoru says…said…that I have a unique role to play in the defeat of the vampires.”
“There are things about me that you don't understand, Majesty. Yes, I believe in steam and steel. Fervently. But I am a man of strong faith as well. I don't discuss it because such beliefs are not looked on with favor, particularly in a man of position. I practice Hindu tenets, quietly. And yes, I have seen what you can do. I don't understand it in any way, but I accept it even though it frightens me. I pray you can control it.”
“I pray I can too. More than you know.” Adele smiled at her commander with an awareness of their shared unpopular beliefs. “I never knew you were a Hindu, dear Anhalt.”
The sirdar snapped up a new salute as the Seventh Isfahan Lancers passed. The unit's five hundred pennants swept into the air accompanied by the thunder of hooves and the dancing plumes on their turbans.
Adele gave a grateful nod to the passing horsemen. “You see, Mamoru believes that Greyfriar is attempting to subvert me, and the war effort, through some long convoluted scheme to gain my trust and separate me from those who truly serve humanity's cause.”
“I understand that argument.”
“What?” Adele gaped at Anhalt before recovering herself and turning back to the passing parade. “You don't think that he's using me, do you?”
“I believe what you believe, Majesty.”
“No. That's not good enough, General. I want to know whether you trust Greyfriar.”
Anhalt held his hand rigid before the brim of his helmet, squinting in the sun. “I understand Mamoru's claims. Greyfriar has, in fact, created a grain in your mind that vampires may have some redeeming quality, that perhaps they should not be wiped from the face of the Earth.”
Adele felt the pounding of the drums. Her head began to spin and her breath quickened. She was terrified by the doubts she heard from him. She raised a hand to her forehead, careful to maintain her imperial visage on the passing men going off to fight her war.
She whispered, “I can't believe this.”
“If I may, Majesty,” Anhalt said, holding his salute steady. “I have seen Greyfriar operate under many circumstances. I have served with him on the battlefield. There are many things he is—a swordsman, a ranger, even a figure of enormous melancholy and subtle wit. If his goal was to remove you from events, he would have killed you when he first set eyes on you. The fact that Greyfriar has troubled himself to protect you this past year means only one thing: that he means to protect you. That is his single goal in life.”
Adele took a deep breath of relief. “Thank you, General.”
“If you'd care to direct your eyes to the roof across the square, just to your right.”
The empress looked beyond the marching troopers passing their reviewing stand, across the crowded Victoria Square where units moved in undefined order. The chaotic border of the Turkish Quarter rose up with its shuttered windows and awnings. In the jagged shadows created by the old buildings, she saw a figure moving strangely above the ground. Some flowing shape moved across the gap from one structure to another, and then it paused.