Chapter 122: Boiling Point at Midnight
9th of April 1526, The Swabian Circle, Holy Roman Empire.
A full month had passed... the freezing mud of the western trade roads had slowly dried under the warming spring sun, and the panic of the Savoyard invasion had finally settled.
Everything had, entirely by force of will and sheer logistics, fallen into its proper place.
Konrad sat alone in his study, the firmly locked against the noise of the keep.
His desk was buried under an mountain of messy charcoal sketches, mathematical ledgers, and half-finished blueprints.
He had made the deal with Margarita de Austria.
Margarita de Austria hadn’t even blinked when he demanded double the payment.
Two hundred thousand pure silver florins had been discreetly, quietly transferred into the deepest Swabian vaults through a completely untraceable series of Fugger banking drafts.
In exchange, the strange, white-haired marksman had spent three entire days down in the lower forges, revolutionizing the way Konrad’s master gunsmiths bored their rifle barrels before vanishing back into the shadows with his royal mistress.
Thus, the influx of unrestricted imperial wealth had supercharged the Swabian war machine to a new level.
With the silver secured, Konrad had unleashed Marshal Eckhard onto the continent.
The scarred veteran wasn’t just managing the newly annexed Savoyard border from behind his stone walls; he was actively weaponizing the Habsburg gold.
Eckhard was riding through the neighboring lands, explicitly poaching the best, highly elite mercenaries right out from under the noses of the surrounding Dukes.
He was buying up entire companies of Swiss Pikemen and veteran landsknechts, offering them double their standard wages to abandon their current lords and march under the black Swabian banners.
Meanwhile, Isolde was executing a stressful dual-layered campaign.
By day, the pale spymaster was tirelessly seeking news from every corner of the Holy Roman Empire, expanding her network of shadow-walkers to monitor the Vatican’s political movements.
But by night, she was showing a fierce, unexpected maternal side, helping to care for Albrecht.
She tasted every single drop of milk and checked every linen cloth, ensuring that Duke Wilhelm couldn’t slip a drop of poison into the nursery to end the von Frundsberg bloodline.
Though the lower levels of the keep were a deafening hive of military preparation and raw industrial expansion, the upper levels were pretending to be a paradise.
Tomorrow was the marriage.
It was to be the first truly legal, church-sanctioned marriage of Konrad’s life.
The guest wing and the Great Hall were overflowing with frantic activity.
Duke Wilhelm and Bishop Tomas were sitting lazily in the plush chairs of the high balcony, drinking Konrad’s most expensive imported wines.
The Bavarian Duke was relaxed, his fat face split into a wide, fake smile as he spent his afternoons comfortably looking at the young Swabian maids rushing back and forth.
The servants were arranging the floral centerpieces, hanging the freshly dyed crimson and black silk banners, and preparing the sprawling courtyard for the wedding feast.
It was a sickening display of noble hypocrisy. Wilhelm was sitting there, laughing and drinking, secure in the knowledge that he was going to walk his daughter down the aisle tomorrow... right before the Vatican officially signed the decree giving him a high seat to burn Swabia to the ground.
"Let the fat bastard drink..." Konrad muttered to himself, his hands rubbing his burning eyes.
Even so, the sheer weight of managing the board while simultaneously trying to invent a machine that defied the natural laws of the 16th century was driving Konrad to the absolute brink of insanity.
During this entire month, he had been practically living at his desk.
He was issuing highly technical, deeply complex orders to the forges every single morning.
He was managing the intricate flow of the eastern trade routes, ensuring that the raw Swedish iron and the black coal kept flowing into his valley without drawing the unwanted attention of the imperial tax collectors.
He was single-handedly managing the administrative ledgers of the annexed Savoyard territory, sending ravens back and forth to Eckhard to ensure the local peasants were fed and the walls were properly reinforced.
But his true obsession, the thing that kept him awake until his vision blurred, was the iron horse.
Margarita’s insane demand for a steam-powered locomotive had hijacked his brain.
He was drawing and redrawing the blueprints for the highly pressurized boiler. He was trying to calculate the exact, necessary thickness of the riveted iron plates to ensure the steam pressure wouldn’t detonate the machine like a massive bomb.
He was designing the complex, inter-locking steel gears that would transfer the sheer atmospheric energy into rotational movement along the wagonways.
It was revolutionary... and it was overwhelmingly exhausting.
Konrad stared down at a particularly stubborn charcoal sketch of a steam release valve.
The lines began to swim and blur together on the rough parchment. His eyelids drooped. The comforting, warm smell of the burning pine in the hearth slowly wrapped around him, dulling his mind.
He didn’t mean to fall asleep... he just wanted to rest his head on his crossed arms for a single minute.
Just one minute to escape the ledgers, the cannons, and the fake smiles of the Bavarian Duke.
The darkness of pure exhaustion instantly pulled him under.
He didn’t know how long he had been blacked out against the wood of the desk.
It could have been ten minutes... It could have been three hours.
But suddenly, a small hand was shaking his shoulder.
"Konrad... Konrad, wake up!"
Konrad jolted awake.
He blinked, the dim light of the study slowly coming into view.
It was his younger sister, Elise.
She was wearing a simple, dark wool dress, and her hands were trembling as she gripped the edge of the table.
Elise was usually the quiet, administrative backbone of the family, the one who handled the domestic ledgers with calm precision.
But right now, she looked terrified.
"Elise?" Konrad grunted, slowly releasing his tight grip on the pistol and sitting up straight.
His spine popped loudly in protest. "What time is it?"
However, Elise didn’t answer. She glanced nervously back at the locked door of the study, as if she expected an army of halberdiers to suddenly burst through the wood.
"It is just past midnight, Konrad," Elise whispered.
Konrad frowned deeply. He reached up and wiped a smear of black charcoal off his cheek.
"Then why are you awake, Elise? Did the Bavarian guards do something? Did Isolde send a raven?"
Elise took a slow breath. She looked back at her older brother, her eyes wide.
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