“Sounds reasonable to me,” Sonny agreed. “You understand I am going to be working for Prince Ferdinand, so if you want me to try surveying the route for your railroad, you’d better write him a letter, too.”
“I shall. Never doubt it,” Prince Karl said. “Meanwhile, I took the liberty of having some maps copied from some of the up-time maps in the national library.” He opened up the map and pointed. “Here is what I was thinking would make a good route.”
Sonny looked over the route that the prince had in mind and made some suggestions that looked like they might make it easier. Karl agreed to some and disagreed with others for political reasons. Some of the landholders along the route were more likely to be reasonable about a railroad through their lands than others. Some liked his family, some disliked them, after harking back to actions taken by Prince Karl’s father, who Sonny already knew had been something of a hard case.
“I’ll do what I can, assuming that it doesn’t conflict with anything Prince Ferdinand wants. But two things . . . one is I will have to look at the ground itself before any of this can be anything but tentative. Second thing is, this is going to be a lot of work. And I don’t work for free.”
Prince Karl smiled at Sonny and Sonny felt himself smiling back. “Do you want cash or shares?” the prince asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sonny said. “I probably need to ask my fourteen-year-old daughter.”
“Why not?” Prince Karl said. “That’s who I consult . . . well, the Barbies in general, more than Hayley in particular.”
* * *
Sonny did ask Hayley, and Hayley asked the Barbies and Mrs. Wendell. The answer that came back was, “It depends on how much stock and how much cash, but the odds are that Sonny could get a better deal for stock.”
“Get a lot of stock, Dad,” Hayley told him, “or get the prince to pay you in cash. Railroads are great for the territory they go through, but not so much for the companies that build them.”
“So why not just insist on cash?” Sonny asked his daughter.
“Because you could end up with a lot of stock,” Hayley said. “A whole bunch.”
Duchess’ Palace, Cieszyn
Duchess Elisabeth Lukretia von Teschen laughed as she read the letter from little Karl. Not so little anymore, and always more reasonable than his uncles. He had apparently been impressed, and improved, by the Ring of Fire. “Pawel, bring writing instruments.” A railroad was probably a good idea, but she would write to King Albrecht about it first.
Liechtenstein House, Vienna
Gundaker von Liechtenstein didn’t laugh. Instead he threw the letter across the room, then picked it up and went to complain to his brother, Maximilian.
Maximilian was in the office section of the house, dealing with Johannes Koell, the family’s chief bookkeeper. The fussy little man took a few minutes to make his points, then Gundaker could get Maximilian into a private room to show him the crumpled letter.
“Actually, it’s a fairly reasonable position,” Maximilian said after looking over the letter. “Both for us and for the lenders. Should the emperor win and the lands be restored to us, the debt is good. Should Wallenstein win, Karl can be sued to make good the loan. It gets the emperor the money he wants from us—at least part of it. And keeps Karl in the good graces of Wallenstein because he isn’t giving the money to the emperor, just authorizing us to borrow money on his lands to support the family. It’s not his fault what we do with it.”
“And the faith, brother? What of the faith?”
“Gundaker, Karl is living in a miracle,” Maximilian said.
“Possibly a miracle,” Gundaker corrected. “It could well be something less benign.”
“Agreed. I don’t know what it means and apparently Holy Mother Church hasn’t decided yet. Though, considering that the pope has made the up-timer priest a cardinal, it is leaning toward approval. In any case, as to God’s will, Karl is, quite possibly, sitting right next to it. We must trust him, for now at least.”
In the years after the Ring of Fire, the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire had a great deal to adjust to. First, of course, was the Ring of Fire and the up-timers and their support of Gustav II Adolf. Then there was King Albrecht Wallenstein—who was assassinated in the original timeline. In the new timeline, he avoided assassination and carved a great big chunk out of the Holy Roman Empire to make his own kingdom. Specifically, he took Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. Before King Albrecht, the Bohemian crown was held by Ferdinand II, who still claimed that crown. This put a whole lot of nobles in a somewhat touchy political position. A position made even touchier by the fact that a number of those nobles were residing in Vienna under the eyes of one claimant, while their lands were under the guns of the other claimant.