“And now I must use the Assaulteaux against wounded men for telling the truth,” Gerard said. “By the way, my friend, Minister Lebars also assures me that it is better to die on your feet rather than live on your knees.”
“Does the woman always talk like that?”
“Invariably. It’s not just the speeches.” Gerard looked down at the map table. “Leave us,” he said to the other officers.
“So I have no choice,” he went on, touching a red plaque with a fingertip. It fell on its side, lying behind an arrowhead of black markers. “And how am I different from Libert, now?”
“Libert started it,” Jeffrey said, putting a hand on the other man’s shoulders. “You couldn’t be like him if you tried. We’ll do what’s necessary.”
“I will,” Gerard said. “Keep the Freedom Brigade troops in the line. This is a Union matter.”
Jeffrey nodded. “Don’t hesitate,” he warned.
It was probably wise to keep the Brigade troops out of Gerard’s coup, although they were just as rabid about the Committee of Public Safety as the native Union soldiers of the Loyalist army. Still, they were foreigners.
“Hesitate? My friend, I have been hesitating for six months. Now I will act.”
He strode out of the room, calling for aides and staff officers. Jeffrey remained, looking down at the map. Unionvil was a bulge set into the rebel line, a bulge joined to the rest of the Loyalist sector by a narrow bridge of secure territory.
“I hope you’re not acting too late,” he said, reaching for his greatcoat.
Heinrich Hosten was in charge on the other side, looking at the same map. Jeffrey knew Heinrich, and he also knew exactly what he’d do in Heinrich’s boots at this moment.
Jeffrey ducked out into the chilly night.
* * *
“Senator McRuther?”
The meeting was relatively informal. At least, John wasn’t being grilled in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee in full, in the House of Assembly, with a dozen reporters following every word. This oak-paneled meeting room was much quieter, redolent of polish and old cigars, not even a stenographer taking notes. Most of the faces across the mahogany table were formidable enough, age and power sitting on them like invisible cloaks.
Senator McRuther was nearing seventy, and he still wore the ruffled white shirts and black clawhammer jackets that had been modish when he was a young man. He represented the Pokips Provincial District in the western lowlands, and he’d done that since he was a young man, too.
“Mr. Hosten,” he said—turning the “s” sound almost into a “z” with malice aforethought, the Chosen pronunciation. “What exactly have you accomplished with your policy of ‘constructive engagement,’ except to get us into a war?”
John nodded. “You’re right, Senator. We are in a war, although not a declared one. However, I might point out that the Land of the Chosen has over forty thousand of its regular army troops in the Union del Est. They’re backing General Libert, and they’re winning. I suggest that this is not in the national interests of the Republic of the Santander.”
“Hear, hear,” Senator Beemody said.
A few others nodded or murmured agreement; not all of them were from the eastern highlands, either. John’s eyes took tally of them. Beemody’s eastern Progressive bloc; a number from the western seacoast cities, which were growing fat on new naval contracts. And a scattering from the rural districts of the western lowlands, some of them McRuther’s own Conservatives. The elderly senator hadn’t kept office for fifty years by being stupid, even if he was set in his ways.
“As you say, they’re winning. Never do an enemy a small injury; you’ve succeeded in antagonizing the Land without stopping them. If Libert and his Nationalists win we’ll have a close ally of the Land on our eastern frontier, a powerful garrison of Land troops keeping him loyal, and we’ll have to support this grossly inflated standing army forever. I realize that you and the rest of the highlander industrialists would love that, but my constituents pay the taxes to keep soldiers in idleness.”
“Senator,” John said quietly, “the Land is not antagonistic to Santander because we’ve backed the Loyalist side in the Union civil war. It’s antagonistic to us because we’re the only thing that keeps the Land from overrunning the whole of Visager. And I hope I don’t have to go into further detail about what rule by the Chosen means.”