Coronets and Steel

Table of Contents

 

ALSO BY SHERWOOD SMITH:

INDA
THE FOX
KING’S SHIELD
TREASON’S SHORE

 

and coming soon:
BANNER OF THE DAMNED

eISBN : 978-1-101-44285-2

Copyright © 2010 by Sherwood Smith.

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

DAW Books Collector’s No. 1521.

 

DAW Books Inc. is distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

 

All characters in the book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a tip of the hat to Anthony Hope.

My grateful thanks to various beta readers—especially Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury, Hallie O’Donovan, Marjorie Ferguson, Jodi Meadows, Tamara Meatzie, Beth Bernobich, and Rachel Manija Brown.

T
OO MUCH IMAGINATION was tantamount to lying, that’s what my grandmother taught me. So when I first got that sense that someone was following me, of course I ignored it. It was only my imagination. Who’d waste time following me?

Here’s what happened.

My first day in Vienna, Austria, I made an appointment with a genealogical research company in a fine old building in the heart of the city.

“
Guten Morgen, Fräulein Murray . . .”
the genealogist greeted me in German.

I replied in my university-trained German—clear and formal—“I am trying to track down my grandparents’ families. The name is Atelier. My mother was only two when she and my grandmother left Paris, but she thinks she might have been born here in Austria.”

The woman picked up the first item in my meager evidence, which was a photocopy of a grubby, much-folded form typed on a manual typewriter that had had a fading ribbon. It listed my grandmother as Aurelia Atelier, age twenty-two, and my mother as Marie Atelier, age two, citizens of France—these forms were all many refugees had as ID. The next item was a photocopy of a portrait of my grandfather, a handsome blond man with a crooked, rakish smile. The woman looked from that to me and back again, her brows lifting.

She was too professional to make personal remarks, but I already knew how much I resembled him: tall, slim build, pale hair, honey-brown eyes, crooked jaw with a single dimple in one cheek when I smiled. In the photo, my grandfather was wearing an old-fashioned military uniform with the brass buttons, the high collar, the epaulettes and gold braid all tailored like a second skin.

She laid that aside and glanced at the last bit of evidence: two opera tickets for the Staatsoper in Vienna, date 1939.

When the genealogist looked up again, pencil poised, she switched smoothly to French. “What is your grandfather’s given name?”

“Daniel. We don’t know anything about his family, or where he was born.” It was a relief to use French, the language I’d grown up speaking with my grandmother. “The only thing my mother knows about my grandfather is that he flew a bomber against Russia at the end of World War II.”

“This is not a German uniform,” she said. “It is not even Austrian from the period before Germany annexed it. I would say this design predates the First World War.”

I leaned forward, my forearms pressing against the tension in my middle. “There is no record of him in the French army . . .” I paused, remembering a conversation with my mother from three months ago. We were sitting in the hospital waiting room, talking about Gran—and about how little we knew of her life.
The only thing she ever told me about my father was his name, and that he flew against the Soviets at the end of World War II. I asked if he was a Nazi, and she got mad. “Not all German soldiers were Nazis.” She was seriously bent out of shape, and wouldn’t say any more. Ever.

That was more than I’d gotten out of Gran. She never talked about her past.

I looked up at the woman. “It’s possible he was a conscript in the Ostlegionen. You know, the foreign-born soldiers sent by the Germans to stop the Russian advance.”

“We can research that.” The woman touched the photocopied ID paper with her pencil tip. “You mentioned Paris. Did you consult a genealogist or archive there?”

“Yes.” My throat had gone dry. “I spent three weeks there. I found a million Ateliers, but none of them ours, and no French forces flew against Russia at the end of the war, at least that I could discover. Which is why I’m here.”

As she told me what she could do and what the initial cost would be, I fought back the urge to tell her to hurry, that I couldn’t afford to stay. I didn’t want to sound like an obnoxious
me first
American and I suspected she wouldn’t care that my grandmother hadn’t spoken in four months.

What, a sensible person would ask, had that to do with genealogy research?

She photocopied the photocopies and wrote down everything I gave her. I plunked down an initial payment, thanked her, and left. I held in the impulse to urge her to hurry. Everyone wants their business to come first; it’s human nature.

So I thanked her and left.

 

As I walked out into the clear sunshine, I tried to shake loose of all that tension. I’d taken steps. I’d put a pro on the case. Surely they knew where to go and what to look for.

I looked around at the pale stone and warm brick-accented buildings with their grand rows of tall windows and Palladian carvings. Not far away, a spire rose above the rooftops. Was that the famous St. Stephen’s Cathedral?

I hadn’t done any sightseeing yet, so why not walk back to my pensione? I’d pass by the oldest and grandest monuments in the city, and I needed to sort through that oppressive fog of emotion.

The problem was that I couldn’t explain the sense of urgency that drove me, even to myself. It had begun that day four months ago when my grandmother lay restlessly in her bed, a hectic flush in her thin cheeks, her eyes glittering with fever as she gripped my hand with fingers still strong after decades of piano playing.

“—your mother is too gentle,” she’d whispered. “I cannot send her to heal the breach.”

What breach? With her family? His family? Surely not with my grandfather, as she’d kept that silver-framed picture of him by her bedside as long as I could remember.

“Yes, the picture was there when I was a little kid,” Mom had said during another conversation, as we waited in another specialist’s office, hoping to find out why Gran had recovered from the fever just to sit there in her chair, staring out the east window.

Mom cocked her head, her short frizz of blond hair the same shade as my long mane. “She wouldn’t talk about our life before we got to California. When I was little we read together. When I started school we talked about that. My schoolwork, my friends. Music, when we went to the Music Center—when we could afford the tickets. And later, we talked about all the recipes I was learning in the pastry school, before I hooked up with your dad.”

Gran and I had been close, as she’d been my primary caregiver while my parents worked. I was named for her. When the weeks turned into a month, then two, then three, and the doctors did their medicalese versions of throwing up their hands, I made the decision to find her family myself.

My parents agreed, Mom because she was preoccupied with worry about Gran. She didn’t do worry well, and she was desperate for something that would work. Dad agreed because he was Mr. Mellow, and if I felt I had to do it, that was good enough for him.

Even if we had to go into hock to manage it.

So here I was in Europe, and with nothing.
Nothing.
To show for it.

I walked faster along the grand boulevards of Vienna, though I knew I couldn’t outpace my sense of failure.