March Upcountry

It was O'Casey's turn to shake her head, and she pulled at a lock of hair.

"I'm sorry, Roger. I just assumed— Hell, everybody probably assumed." She grimaced in exasperation, then inhaled sharply.

"Okay. Where do you want me to begin?"

"Well," Roger said with a smile, "I had this tutor once who was always telling me—"

"To start at the begi

"You may not have noticed, but I've got all night."

"Hmph. Okay, let me think about how to begin."

She gazed into an unseen distance for several seconds, then made a little moue of a

"You know, I never really covered recent history with you too well, did I? I just let that little detail slide. Renaissance or Byzantine politics, yes, but not what was going on right under your nose. Of course," she flashed a quick grin, "most of the time it was stuck so far up you'd never have noticed anyway."

"True, unfortunately." Roger chuckled ruefully. "But I have to get the story."

"New Madrid," she said, nodding. "As you know, there were few major military actions during your grandfather's reign. This is sometimes pointed at as an indication that he was a great emperor, but what was actually happening was that your grandfather was almost completely ineffectual. The Fleet and Marines were being slashed to the bone, and we lost several border systems to treaties we accepted out of weakness—or disinterest—or small actions that never got much press coverage back home. There weren't any major actions because no one was drawing any lines to stop the gradual erosion of the frontiers. And while they were crumbling, the Empire was self-destructing internally with plots and counterplots.

"New Madrid was part of that action, but not as a central player." She sighed and looked at the prince in the glow from the camp light. "Roger, you got almost all your brains from your mother, thank God. If you'd gotten your mother's looks and your father's brains, you would have been shit out of luck."

"That bad?" he asked with a chuckle. "He's as smart as Mom is good-looking?"

"Say rather that he's as good-looking as your mother is smart. Which is where you come in."

"What a line!" he observed.

"John Gaston, John and Alexa's father, died as you know in a light-flier accident. The Duke of New Madrid was part of the Court at that time, fairly recently arrived. He was, and is, a gorgeous man, and quite the ladies man, as well. However, he was very circumspect at Court. He and your mother struck up an acquaintance shortly after the death of Count Gaston, and the acquaintance slowly changed to... um..."

"Me," Roger said with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, the 'proto' you. Empress Alexandra—Heir Apparent, at that time—might have been having a hard time, but she was no fool. She was more or less swept off her feet, which is why she wasn't on a contraceptive, but she landed back on them quickly. Especially when the head of the IBI brought her a report on New Madrid's contacts among factions known to be maneuvering to control the Empire.

"There'd never been a question of marriage, because she had to leave the way open for a dynastic alliance. With the IBI report in hand, though, she had to know if New Madrid's interests were from the heart or the scent of power. So she let herself appear to weaken."

Eleanora twisted her lock of hair again, and let a smile quirk.

"I understand New Madrid can be somewhat dominant, and he apparently found nothing odd in Alexandra's suddenly becoming compliant during her pregnancy. Which was when he tipped his hand. He began forcefully lobbying her for some of the precise policies that the Jackson Cabal had been promoting."

"Are you talking about Prince Jackson of Kellerman?" Roger asked. "He's one of the most important noblemen in the Senate!"

"Ummm-hummm. And doesn't he just know it?" O'Casey wrinkled her brow. "Towards the end of your grandfather's reign, it became apparent even to him that the Saints were becoming very expansionist. That caught him by surprise, since he'd felt that the Saints were... well, saints. Once he realized he was wrong, and possibly because he recognized that he had been and felt somehow 'betrayed' by them, he began giving a great deal of weight to the more militant factions in the House of Lords."

"And Jackson was one of those." Roger nodded. "He's always been one of the more, um, hawkish members."

"Indeed. However, your grandfather began making most of his appointments on the basis of Jackson's advice. Many of them weren't appointments, whether to the House of Lords or to the imperial ministries, which Alexandra thought were wise. She had long argued against the military drawdown, but when it became apparent even to her father that the Empire was in trouble, he turned not to her, but to Prince Jackson.

"It might have appeared on the surface that there was little difference, since both she and Jackson supported many of the same policies. But even then, Alexandra was more interested in loyalty to the concept of the Empire of Man than in a specific cant. Worse, all of Jackson's choices for appointments were people he could depend upon to follow his lead.

"So when Alexandra found New Madrid spouting the Jackson line, after having been handed that damning report, she saw the situation with amazing clarity. One of the few things she managed to convince her father of in his waning years was to have New Madrid banished from Court."

"However..." The former tutor gave her former student a winsome smile.

"That left me," Roger said, his eyes wide. "I'm surprised she didn't..."

"Oh, it was contemplated. She'd already had the fetus, you," she pointed out with another smile, "transferred to a uterine replicator, so it would have been a simple matter of—"

"Turning a tap," Roger said woodenly.

"Sort of." O'Casey nodded. "For whatever reason, though, she didn't." She began twisting another lock of hair. "I understand that she spent quite a bit of time with you when you were an infant, Roger. It was only as you matured that she started spending more and more time away."

"As I began looking more like my father," he said in a deathly tone. It wasn't a question.

"And acting more like him, frankly," O'Casey confirmed. "There were other reasons. Things were getting very tense at Court as your grandfather began to fail, and Alexandra was desperately trying to line up partisans against the coup she could see in the offing. In the end, of course, she was able to. But even so she's spent the last decade trying to repair the damage to the Empire."

The chief of staff shook her head again.

"To be honest, I don't know if she ever will be able to truly repair all of it. Things were getting tense again before we left. Most of the Fleet has been pulled away from home systems towards the Saint sector, which is Jackson's sphere of influence, and she doesn't trust the Imperial Inspector's Corps. At least she can trust the chief of the Fleet and the IBI, but those are thin reeds with the Saints pressing the border and the House of Lords deadlocked most of the time.

"So," she finished, "that's the tale. Both the one that I used as a case study of blown political conspiracies, and the additional data I was made privy to as your tutor." She looked at the prince, who was staring at the far wall. "Questions?"

"A million," Roger said. "But one simple one first. Is this why no one has ever trusted me with anything important? Because of my blood?" he ended angrily.

"Partially," she admitted with a nod. "But more of it was, well... you, Roger. I certainly didn't realize you'd never been 'briefed,' so I'm guessing that, just like me, everyone else around you must have assumed that someone else had told you. They thought you knew. So if you knew the problems that had been associated with your father, and yet chose to emulate him in every way, then one logical conclusion was that you'd chosen him as your role model rather than your mother."