Gold Throne in Shadow (17 page)

“I fear not, Lord Captain. My Patron grants me Luck as a domain, and I do not wish to taint your game.”

“Bah,” the Captain grumbled. “You two are as meek as nuns.”

“Speaking of meekness,” Christopher said, “you've got some of my men in your jail. I was wondering if I could have them back.”

“Meekness? Your boys are as arrogant as dukes. And as pretty as peacocks, the way you've dressed them in all that finery. For the sake of our young women's virtue, they should all be locked up.”

The young woman he was currently groping didn't look all that virtuous.

“You know what would cure them?” the Captain continued, coming around to what Christopher suspected was the real point. “Shoveling mud. Put them to work on the walls, and the discipline problems will go away.”

No doubt. If his army was reduced to dirty, simple-minded laborers, they really would lose their appeal. And the spirit that made them an army.

But Christopher was distracted by a technical question. “Mud? What has mud got to do with wall-building?”

“Ha!” the Captain chortled. “Everything. In fact, everything you see here was made out of mud.” He waved his hand at the stone walls, spilling ale on a well-dressed man standing next to him. The man carefully ignored the accident.

Christopher couldn't decide if the Captain was making fun of him or was just too drunk to understand the question. He decided it would be polite to not press the issue. The Captain was still sober enough to detect his suspicion.

“You don't think we cut those miles of stone out of the ground by hand, did you? I don't know how it goes in your county, but in this one, the lord earns his keep.”

“Hail to the Lord Wizard!” someone immediately shouted, and everyone took a healthy drink from their mugs.

So there was magic involved. Christopher had never seen a wizard in action. Except for Master Flayn, who hardly counted, being only first-rank. Well, and Fae, but he preferred to forget about that.

“That's an impressive feat,” Christopher agreed. After the hordes he had seen in the Wild, he felt every town should have these kinds of defenses. “I'd like to see that.”

“Then you're in luck. I was just on my way to a setting.” The Captain drained his mug, looked into the empty bottom of it, and took a fresh mug from the person standing next to him. “One for the road,” he muttered, draining it in a single go as well, though not without spilling some down his bearded chin.

The Captain did not present a particularly impressive figure at the moment, being drunk, disheveled, and stinking of sweat and smoke. Christopher found his appearance so unusual that he spoke without thinking.

“Are you sure you're ready to meet your boss?”

The Captain glared at him. “Unlike your peacocks, I know when not to act above my station.”

That was not altogether heartening.

“Besides,” the Captain said, with a grin that was supposed to be manly but only came out lopsided, “there's no shame in fortifying your courage to meet the Lord Wizard.”

“Hail to the Lord Wizard!” came the automatic refrain. The Captain reflexively raised his own mug, even though it was empty.

Outside, he and the Captain walked through the well-lit streets, Torme following a respectful distance behind. The Captain did not make small talk, however, lost in his own thoughts.

On the edge of the city, there was a work gang milling around a long wooden form of a concrete mold. The scaffolding reached fifteen feet into the air and went on for thirty yards, where it joined a section of already finished wall.

“Wait here,” the Captain growled, and went to join a fancifully dressed man standing on the stone wall that abutted the wooden extension.

“I wish Lalania could see this,” Christopher told Torme. “She might understand what's happening.”

“If wishes were wings, then beggars would fly,” Lalania whispered, stepping out of the shadows. “And if I were Joadan, you would be dead. Why don't you have a guard detail with you?”

“He cannot display his army so brazenly,” Torme said, answering for him, although the truth was he just hadn't thought about it. “And in any case a squad would only show weakness.”

“Fortuitously, his corpse will not care about other's sensibilities,” she said. “In the future take more precaution, lest you stop caring altogether. Now try not to draw any attention. I do not wish to chance the wizard's recognition.” Discreetly she pointed at the wall.

A black-robed figure moved slowly through the air, stopping to hover next to the Captain and his associate. Christopher gaped, impressed and diminished by the authority of a being that tread on air. Which was, of course, the point. Lalania could make a grand entrance when she wanted to, but flying in trumped everything.

There appeared to be a brief conversation, too distant to hear, and then the wizard turned his attention to the wooden wall. Christopher saw the wizard flick something outward from his hand, and then there was the sound of wood groaning and creaking as the load it bore changed. The wizard flew off, disappearing into the night sky above the illumination of the weak streetlights. The two men on the wall relaxed, and the work gang began carefully tearing down the wood.

“Wow,” Christopher said. He had not seen magic used on the scale of buildings before. Could they build a fort on the march? Could his enemies build a fort against him?

Stone masons fell to work, hammers banging, cleaning the flashing from the cracks in the mold and continuing the decorative grooves from the wall it was attached to.

“Why are they doing that?” Artistic license didn't really seem likely to be the explanation here.

“I'm not sure.” Lalania was unhappy about not being sure. “I'll find out.”

“I have a better idea,” Christopher said, seizing on the chance to shield Lalania from further dangerous investigations. “Let's get them to tell us.” He started walking toward the Captain, but neither of his companions moved.

“Perhaps you should tell us your plan first, my lord, so that we might not foil it through ignorance.” Torme was being nice. What he really meant was, so they could stop him if it was hopelessly idiotic.

“Good idea,” Christopher agreed. This was what he had promoted Torme for, after all. “I'm going to suggest to the Captain that wall-building is more important than I thought. Therefore, I would like to assign the men he has in jail to the wall crew. But only if they are required to learn all aspects of the job.”

Lalania was impressed. Christopher was a little embarrassed by how much that meant to him. Torme agreed, too, but his approval just didn't carry the same effect the pretty blonde's did.

“I'll explain it to your men,” she volunteered, “in such a way as to keep their eyes open without betraying their curiosity. And I'll tell them they do it for me, so if they are questioned, they cannot implicate you as a spy-master.”

That was a good idea, too.

Torme volunteered, as well. “I'll explain to the rest of the army that if they get in any more trouble, they'll be out there digging mud too.”

“And I'll talk to the architect.” Christopher figured talking shop with a civil engineer was something he could handle. The Captain and the fancy-dressed man from the top of the wall were heading their way.

Lalania gave the architect a dismal glance. The closer they got, the worse he looked. Christopher wasn't that certain of local costumes, but he was pretty sure the man was wearing his vest inside out. He was considerably overweight—which was a rarity in this world, given how expensive food was—and unkempt, with what little hair he had left straying in all directions. “Fair enough,” Lalania muttered, and disappeared into the darkness.

Torme covered Lalania's departure by taking his own as soon as the Captain arrived. “By your leave, Curate,” he said with a salute, and strode off.

“Impressive work,” Christopher said to the architect. “Did you also design the tower?”

“No, the tower has stood forever,” the architect burbled. He was drunker than the Captain. “And though I have thankfully seen it up close only once, it was made by a different process. No need for peasants to labor, or men to oversee their labors.”

“If he did that for the walls, he could spare us this nightly ordeal,” the Captain grumbled. He meant himself and the architect, of course, not the men who dug in the mud.

“But then we could not build walls so fast. Transforming mud to rock must be less taxing than summoning it out of nothing.”

“How fast do you build them?” Christopher asked.

“One every night, for the last ten years. And the presence of the wizard never gets any easier to bear. Did you know, tonight he asked me about my wife?” The architect grimaced.

“You're married?” The Captain was surprised.

“No,” the architect said. “But if I was, I wouldn't want my family to come to his attention.”

“Captain,” Christopher interjected, “I think an appropriate punishment for my men would be to assign them to the walls. Just the ones who are in jail, I mean.”

The Captain shrugged, no longer concerned with petty details. “Settle it with Alstanf,” he grumbled, and stalked off.

“Pleased to meet you,” the architect introduced himself. “I style myself Esquire Alstanf, though I confess I have no rank of any kind. Only skill, for what little it is worth.”

“I am apparently the Lord Curate Christopher. You can just call me Christopher.”

Alstanf quirked an eyebrow but accepted the informality. “Well, Christopher, would you like to join me in a drink? I feel the need of relaxation.”

The architect didn't look like he needed any more drinks. But Christopher wanted to talk to him, so he said yes. “Just not The Hanging Tree, please. That place scares me.”

“I've no desire to haunt the Captain's company any more than I have too,” Alstanf agreed. “I know a quiet tavern. The girls aren't as pretty, but they're twice as friendly and half the cost.”

The girls weren
'
t as pretty. They weren
'
t girls, either, being closer to thirty. But they were friendly instead of brazen, the dozen patrons in the tavern were talking in low voices, and the ale was a fair price. Even for the pale lager that was the only drink Christopher found potable.

“So how did you get into the wall business?” he asked Alstanf, leaning back on the padded bench and getting comfortable.

“My father was a stonemason, but I didn't have the hand for it. My eye was good, though, so I made a living laying out lines and drafts. I went where the work took me, living a free and easy life, if a bit thin at times. After the war, I knew there would be work here, so I came. And now I am trapped.”

“Trapped?” The man was comfortably wealthy. The clothes, the weight, and the way he tipped the waitress attested to that.

“It's true the wizard pays me well. But I dare not think of leaving. He would send some Dark spell after me, to fetch or punish me. And I am so very sick of building walls. I laid out the plans years ago. Now there is nothing for me to do but oversee the labor, which never changes. All I have to look forward to is some unimaginable catastrophic failure, for which I will no doubt be blamed.”

“Well,” Christopher said, trying to be helpful, “the ulvenmen could come back. Then people would appreciate your walls.”

“Perish the thought!” Alstanf exclaimed, and upended his mug. “With my luck, they'd throw down the walls with magic, and we'd all be dog food within the hour.”

“Is that possible?” The walls were raised by magic. If they could be lowered by magic just as easily, that would rather severely reduce their value.

“Not according to the wizard. He claims the scrollwork we do on the face of the walls prevents the spell from being reversed. But I worry all the same. It is my nature.” He called for another drink.

“What about ordinary siege efforts?” Christopher was wondering how big he should be making his cannons.

“The stone is not granite, for which the masons are most grateful. Still, it is stone, ten feet thick and fifteen feet high. It will hold for many days against trebuchets. And because each piece is a solid block, it will hold against undermining. But I ask you the question I ask everyone: How high can an ulvenman jump?”

Christopher had to admit he didn't know.

“Neither does anyone else. If it is sixteen feet, my walls are as wasted as my life.”

“Another layer, then?” Doubling the blocks would make the walls absurdly high.

“It's not as simple as stacking blocks. The bottom would have to be wider, to support the weight.”

They spent the rest of the evening talking about stress-to-weight ratios. All in all, the best evening Christopher had spent out in a long time. Alstanf even paid for the drinks.