Chapter 87: The Fifth Dawn’s Bargain

The council chamber of Aachen smelled of cold stone and colder men. Drogo entered without knocking, the emperor’s seal a small weight in his pocket, and found them already gathered around the long oak table: Count Gerulf of the palace guard, Bishop Modoin of Autun with his ink-stained fingers, the seneschal Adalard, and three lesser lords whose names mattered less than their swords. Twelve guards lined the walls. None of them looked pleased to be summoned before prime.

“You said the emperor would speak to us,” Gerulf said. “Where is he?”

“Indisposed,” Drogo replied, settling into the chair at the table’s head—his father’s chair. He let the silence stretch. “But his will is not. You will hear it from me.”

Modoin’s eyes narrowed. “By what authority?”

Drogo drew the seal from his pocket and set it on the oak. The wax caught the gray light from the high windows. Every man at the table knew that seal. Every man had seen it pressed into charters, into pardons, into death warrants. Gerulf’s hand drifted toward his sword hilt.

“The emperor is dying,” Drogo said, and the words fell like stones into still water. “He has perhaps a week, perhaps less. Before he goes to God, he means to prevent the war that will otherwise consume his house. You are here to help him do it.”

“Lothar marches on Aachen,” Adalard said. “You told us to arm and be quiet. We have done both. Now tell us why.”

“Because Lothar believes I have sold him the city.”

Gerulf’s face went very still. “Have you?”

“I have sold him the belief,” Drogo said. “There is a difference. He thinks the gates will open for him within the week. He thinks the regency council has already bent the knee. He thinks our father’s seal has signed away the empire to him. Every letter he has received in the past fortnight has told him so—written in my hand, sealed with that wax.”

Modoin leaned forward. “You forged the emperor’s seal?”

“I used it. With his knowledge and his blessing.” Drogo let the lie sit there. It was not entirely a lie. His father had blessed him, in the end, though he had not known half of what Drogo intended. “Lothar will come to Aachen expecting a coronation. Instead he will find the gates barred, the walls manned, and his own supporters wondering why he promised them a victory that never came.”

“And Pepin?” Gerulf asked. “He crossed the Loire a week ago. He will be at our walls within days.”

“Pepin will arrive to find Lothar already outside the gates, believing himself betrayed. Two armies, each thinking the other has stolen their prize. They will not fight us. They will fight each other, or they will negotiate, and either way they will not enter this city.”

The lords exchanged glances. It was Modoin who spoke first. “You are playing a dangerous game, prince. If either of them learns the truth before they arrive—”

“They will not. The letters were convincing. Brother Aldric saw to that.” Drogo allowed himself a thin smile. “Lothar has already begun moving his household to Aachen. He has told his bishops to prepare for a coronation Mass. He believes he is emperor already. That belief is the trap.”

Gerulf’s hand finally left his sword. “And what does the emperor want us to do?”

“Hold the city. Speak to no one of what I have told you. When Lothar arrives, I will go out to meet him. Alone.”

“Alone?” Adalard’s voice cracked. “He will kill you.”

“He will try to use me. That is not the same thing.” Drogo stood. “You have your orders. Bar the gates at noon. Double the watch on the eastern wall. No one enters or leaves without my word.”

He left them arguing among themselves and walked out into the gray morning. The bells had stopped. The fifth dawn had fully broken, and Aachen lay quiet beneath a sky the color of wet slate.

Bernard was waiting in the corridor, his face still pale from the dungeons, his wrists raw where the irons had bitten. He fell into step beside Drogo without a word.

“You heard?” Drogo asked.

“Enough.” Bernard’s voice was low. “You are going to meet Lothar with nothing but a story and a stolen seal.”

“Not stolen. Borrowed.”

“Judith will have told him everything by now. She knows you used the seal. She knows you have been writing in your father’s name. She will have sent word to Lothar the moment she left your chamber.”

“She will have sent word that I am a traitor and a forger. Which is exactly what Lothar already suspects.” Drogo smiled. “But she does not know what I wrote to him. She does not know that the last letter he received promised him the city gates would open at dawn tomorrow. He will arrive expecting an ally. He will find a locked gate, and he will wonder if Judith lied to him, or if I did, or if the whole world has turned against him.”

Bernard stopped walking. “You are setting brother against brother.”

“They were already set against each other. I am merely choosing the ground.”

They emerged into the open air of the courtyard. The rain of the past weeks had ceased, leaving the flagstones dark and slick. Somewhere beyond the walls, a horn sounded—distant, tentative. A scout’s signal.

Drogo looked up at the eastern gate. “That will be Lothar’s vanguard. He has moved faster than I expected.”

“What will you do?”

“What I have always done.” Drogo adjusted his cloak, feeling the seal press against his ribs. “I will smile, and I will lie, and I will make them believe the game is theirs to win.”

Bernard caught his arm. “And if it is not enough? If they see through you?”

Drogo met his eyes. For a moment, the mask slipped—not into fear, but into something older and wearer, the face of a man who had spent his whole life pretending to be less than he was.

“Then I will have one more move to make,” he said. “And it will cost me everything.”

He turned and walked toward the gate, and behind him the horns sounded again, closer now, and the fifth dawn gave way to a morning that would decide the fate of an empire.