Chapter 76: The Ink of the Second Dawn (II)

The rain had stopped by the time Drogo reached the stables, but the world it left behind was sodden and grey, the cobbles of Aachen glistening like the scales of some vast, sleeping fish. He moved without torch or lantern, one hand pressed flat against the seal inside his sleeve, the other trailing along the stable wall to guide him. The horses stirred at his scent. A stable boy, no older than twelve, blinked awake in the straw and opened his mouth to cry out.

Drogo pressed a coin to his lips. "Sleep," he whispered. "I was never here."

The boy's eyes widened, then closed, and his breathing deepened. Drogo saddled his own horse—a grey gelding with a patient disposition and no distinguishing marks—and led it out through the eastern gate, where the guard had been bribed weeks ago with a purse of silver and a promise that no one would ever know. The guard did not meet his eyes. Drogo did not offer a word.

He rode north under a sky the color of old pewter, following the Roman road that ran like a scar through the forest. The trees dripped. Mist rose from the fields, and in the distance a bell tolled—Vespers, or perhaps Matins; the hours had blurred together since the night began. He kept the horse to a walk, saving its strength for what would come, and let his mind run ahead.

The letter Brother Aldric had written would be in Judith's hands by now. Drogo had chosen the monk deliberately: a man of God whose hand shook, whose conscience bled, whose loyalty was to the truth rather than to any prince. Judith would read it and know that Drogo had taken the seal. She would assume he meant to sell it to Lothar. She would send riders to intercept him. And while her riders chased shadows along the southern roads, Drogo would be here, in the north, where no one thought to look.

But that was only the first move. The second required Bernard, who had ridden west at dawn with a message for Pepin's scouts. The third required Lothar's pride, which Drogo had watered with whispers for months and which would now bloom into something monstrous.

He reached the abbey of Saint-Michel at the hour before dawn. It was a small house, half-hidden in the folds of the Ardennes, where the monks kept bees and copied psalters and asked no questions of travelers who arrived at odd hours. The abbot was a cousin of Bernard's, and the scriptorium had a door that opened onto a passage the abbots had used for three centuries to hide from Vikings, heretics, and kings.

Drogo knocked three times. A slit in the door opened. An eye regarded him.

"I am expected," Drogo said.

The door swung wide. The abbot—a lean man with a face like a hatchet and hands stained with ink—bowed his head. "My lord. The chamber is prepared."

"Any word from the west?"

"Nothing yet. But the roads are watched, and the river is high. No rider could cross before noon."

Drogo nodded and followed him through the cloister, past the refectory where the monks sat in silence over their morning bread, past the chapel where a single candle burned before a crucifix of rough-hewn oak. The chamber was small, with a cot, a table, a lamp, and a brazier. On the table lay a blank sheet of parchment, a fresh quill, and a horn of ink.

He sat. He drew the seal from his sleeve and set it on the table. It caught the lamplight—gold and garnet, the face of Christ in majesty, the words of empire circling the edge. His father's seal. The seal that had signed charters, confirmed bishops, declared wars, pardoned rebels. The seal that had made and unmade the world.

He touched it with one finger. Then he took up the quill, dipped it in ink, and began to write.

He wrote slowly, carefully, in a hand that was not his own. He had spent months studying the imperial chancery's script, the loops and ligatures of the scribes who served his father. He wrote in his father's voice, in his father's name, and he wrote the words that would break the world.

*To our beloved son Lothar, greetings. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We have considered your demands and found them just. The empire cannot be divided without bloodshed, and we are too old for war. Therefore we command you to come to Aachen with all haste and with all your banners. We will place the crown upon your head with our own hands, and we will retire to the monastery of Saint-Médard, there to pray for your reign and for the peace of Christendom.*

He paused. The next words would be the ones that mattered most.

*But know this, our son: we have been deceived. There are those in our court who have worked against you, who have sought to place your brother Pepin upon the throne and to divide the empire between them. We name them now, that you may deal with them as you see fit. They are Judith, our empress, and her kin; Bernard of Septimania, count and traitor; and our son Drogo, who has feigned madness to hide his ambition.*

He set down the quill. His hand was steady. His heart was not.

This was the letter that would make Lothar march on Aachen. This was the letter that would make him believe his father had finally broken, that the crown was his for the taking, that his enemies had been delivered into his hands. And when Lothar arrived, he would find not a broken old man but a trap—a trap Drogo had spent months preparing, a trap that would close around Lothar's army and end the war before it truly began.

But the trap required Judith to believe the letter was genuine. It required Bernard to survive. It required his father to live long enough to see it through.

He sealed the letter with wax and pressed the imperial seal into it. The image of Christ in majesty stared up at him from the red wax. He held it for a long moment, feeling the weight of it, the heat of it, the terrible finality of it.

Then he folded the letter and tucked it inside his tunic, close to his heart.

A knock at the door. The abbot's voice: "My lord. A rider has come from the west. He bears the mark of the empress."

Drogo's hand moved to the knife at his belt. "Admit him."

The door opened. A man in mud-spattered cloak and boots entered, his face pale with exhaustion. He carried a leather satchel, which he set on the table with trembling hands.

"My lord Drogo," he said. "I am sent by the Lady Judith. She bids me tell you that she knows what you have done. She knows about the seal. And she offers you a choice."

Drogo raised an eyebrow. "A choice?"

The rider opened the satchel. Inside were two objects: a purse of gold, heavy and full, and a vial of dark glass, sealed with wax.

"The gold is yours if you return the seal and leave the empire by nightfall. The vial is yours if you refuse. She said to tell you that she is not without mercy, but she is also not without resolve. The choice is yours, my lord. But you must make it now."

Drogo looked at the gold. He looked at the vial. He looked at the rider's face, which was young and frightened and utterly sincere.

And then he smiled—the old smile, the fool's smile, the smile that had deceived emperors and bishops and kings.

"Tell the empress," he said, "that I have made my choice. I choose the vial. But not for myself."

He took the vial and tucked it into his sleeve beside the seal.

"Tell her," he said, "that I will drink it at the gates of Aachen, before her eyes and before the eyes of my father, and that my death will be on her conscience and not on mine. And tell her one more thing."

He leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a whisper.

"Tell her that the letter is already written. And that it is not addressed to her."

The rider's face went white. He turned and fled, and Drogo listened to the hoofbeats fade into the rain-soaked dawn.

Then he sat back, and he looked at the letter in his tunic, and he thought of his father—dying in his chamber, trusting his son, trusting God, trusting a peace that would never come.

He had one night left. One night to save them all, or to destroy everything he loved.

He picked up the quill and began to write again.