Chapter 37: The Empress’s Debt
The corridor outside Judith’s chamber was empty, but Drogo did not trust the silence. He walked with the unhurried gait of a man with nowhere to be, letting his shoulders slump and his eyes glaze, the mask of the fool settling back over his features like a familiar cloak. Inside his sleeve, the emperor’s seal pressed against his forearm, a weight that seemed to grow heavier with every step.
Bernard fell into step beside him, his boots echoing softly against the stone. “She will not wait long,” he murmured. “She will want an answer before the week is out.”
“She will have one,” Drogo said. “Just not the one she expects.”
They turned a corner, and the sounds of the palace washed over them—servants murmuring, guards shifting their weight, the distant clatter of a kitchen. Drogo let his eyes drift, cataloguing faces, noting the ones that looked away too quickly. Judith had eyes everywhere, and he had no doubt that word of his visit was already spreading through the warren of corridors like ink through water.
“We need to move faster,” Bernard said. “Pepin’s scouts will reach the gates within days. If we do not have a plan by then, we will be standing in the middle of a battlefield with nowhere to go.”
Drogo stopped, turning to face the older man. “You think I do not know that?”
Bernard held his gaze. “I think you are playing a game with too many pieces, and I am not certain you have counted them all.”
Drogo smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Count them for me, then.”
Bernard’s jaw tightened. “Lothar has the army. Pepin has the resentment. Louis the German has the distance. Judith has the emperor’s ear. And you—” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “You have a stolen seal and a reputation for laziness that will not protect you when the blades come out.”
“Then it is fortunate that I have you to remind me of my limitations,” Drogo said lightly, turning and continuing down the corridor. “But you are wrong about one thing.”
“Which is?”
“Judith does not have the emperor’s ear. She has his heart. And hearts are far easier to turn than ears.”
Bernard said nothing, but Drogo felt the man’s gaze on his back like a blade waiting to be drawn.
They reached Drogo’s chambers, and he pushed open the door, stepping into the dim warmth of the room. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting long shadows across the walls. The bed was unmade, the furs tangled, as if he had risen in haste—a detail he had cultivated deliberately, letting the servants whisper of his restless nights and his fear of the dark.
He crossed to the table, where a parchment lay half-unrolled, and traced his fingers over the words written there. It was a letter, unfinished, addressed to no one. A draft of the message he intended to send to Pepin, though he had not yet decided on the exact words.
“You should burn that,” Bernard said from the door. “If Judith’s people find it, they will know.”
“They will find nothing,” Drogo said, rolling the parchment closed. “Because I am about to give them something better.”
Bernard stepped closer. “What do you mean?”
Drogo turned, the seal heavy in his sleeve. “Judith wants a guarantee. She wants to believe I am her creature, that I will help her son Charles claim a share of the inheritance. She thinks she has purchased my loyalty with threats and promises.”
“And has she?”
Drogo’s smile widened. “She has purchased my cooperation. Loyalty is a different currency entirely.”
He moved to the window, looking out at the rain-swept courtyard below. The clouds hung low and gray, swallowing the horizon, and for a moment he let himself imagine the fields beyond—the marching columns, the banners snapping in the wind, the blood that would soon soak into the earth.
“Send word to Lothar,” he said quietly. “Tell him the seal is mine. Tell him I will deliver it to him personally, in exchange for his protection and a place in his court when the war is done.”
Bernard’s breath caught. “You would give it to him?”
“I would make him believe I am giving it to him.” Drogo turned from the window. “And I will make certain Pepin hears of it before the week is out. Let him think his brother has bought the emperor’s favor. Let him march on Aachen with fire in his heart, believing he has been betrayed.”
“And when he arrives?”
Drogo’s eyes darkened. “When he arrives, he will find the gates open and his brother’s banners hanging from the walls. And he will have a choice to make—strike at the heart of his own blood, or turn and burn the lands Lothar has claimed for himself.”
Bernard was silent for a long moment. “You are playing them against each other.”
“I am giving them both what they want,” Drogo said. “Lothar will have the seal. Pepin will have his war. And I will have the chaos I need to slip through their fingers and take my father somewhere they cannot reach him.”
“And Judith?”
Drogo’s smile faded. “Judith will believe she has won. She will believe I have chosen her son’s cause, that I have delivered Lothar into her hands. And by the time she realizes the truth, the empire will be too fractured for her to put it back together.”
He reached into his sleeve and withdrew the seal, turning it over in his hands. The metal gleamed in the firelight, the image of Saint Peter worn smooth by decades of use.
“This is not a weapon,” he said softly. “It is a promise. And I am about to break every promise it has ever made.”
Bernard stepped forward, his voice low. “And what of your father? When he learns what you have done—when he sees the empire torn apart by his own sons, with your hand in the shadows—will he forgive you?”
Drogo looked at him, and for a moment, the mask slipped. Beneath the languid smile and the sharp eyes, there was something raw, something wounded.
“My father will not live to see the end of this,” he said. “And when he dies, I want him to believe that I did everything I could to hold his dream together. Even if it meant tearing it apart first.”
He tucked the seal back into his sleeve and turned to the door.
“Send the message to Lothar. And light a candle for us, Bernard. We are going to need all the prayers we can get.”
The door closed behind him, and the rain continued to fall, and somewhere in the distance, a horn sounded—low and mournful, like a lament for a world that was already dying.