Arcanum by Simon Morden

Author:Simon Morden [Morden, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: An Hachette UK Company
Published: 2013-11-07T23:00:00+00:00

51

Felix couldn’t help thinking how small Carinthia looked on the map, and how it wouldn’t take much movement of the lines that marked the border to erase it completely. The parts that lay over the mountains, the Drau and Danz valleys, could be swallowed up by Venezia without him even noticing. The land between the Enn and the Salzach was vulnerable to the Bavarians, and in the east, Wien could march around the top of the Alps along the broad Donau plain.

Being left with the area immediately around Juvavum, and the lower reaches of the Salzach and the Enn, was all but unsustainable. All the good land would have gone, with the trade routes that he currently controlled falling into other hands, and the mines at Durrnberg, too.

The palatinate would collapse, and someone else would be installed in the White Fortress, to rule on behalf of a distant king who didn’t care about the land or its people.

And the stupid thing was, he did care. He cared more than his father had, whose one excursion to protect Carinthia from invaders had ended with him dead and his orphaned son on the throne. But Büber was right. It was the Order who’d held all the power, and they were gone, all of them, for certain this time. His father, and his father before him, had been figureheads. Not puppets, exactly, but the faces of men put before other men so that no one would see the monster that hid behind them.

For the first time in a thousand years, a Carinthian prince was solely responsible for the safety of his people, and it happened to be him. The gods weren’t noted for their sense of humour, but he imagined a mocking laugh echoing from the mountaintops and down the steep wooded valleys.

There was a knock at the door, and he absently called his assent, but not so absently that he didn’t momentarily rest his hand on his sword and look around to see who it was.

“Mr Ullmann. Thank you for coming.”

“My lord.” Ullmann walked to the table and waited to be addressed, but inevitably his gaze wandered down to peruse the map.

Felix wondered what he made of it, so he asked him plainly. “What do you see, Mr Ullmann?” He waved his left hand across the map. His shoulder was sore. It was always sore, and he wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life favouring it.

“Carinthia is here, my lord, and…”

“No. I’ve been schooled in geography. I want to know what you see when you look at this. What does it mean to you?” He adjusted one of the boxes that kept the map flat.

Ullmann scrubbed at the bridge of his nose while he thought. “That we’re surrounded by both enemies and friends, but the ink on the parchment doesn’t tell us who’s who.”

It wasn’t an answer designed to please. But it was honest. Felix leant his elbows on the table. “Nor does it tell us that the Bavarians are broke and have no money to pay for their soldiers.

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