Gold Throne in Shadow (22 page)

“What custom?” he asked the other one.

“It's considered good luck for a girl to spend her first night with a man of rank. And begging your pardon, sir, your generosity and kindness are well-known. We did not understand, sir. We do now. It will not happen again.”

Christopher put his hands to his face in dismay. The old right of the lord, to sleep with the bride on her wedding night. Here it had been institutionalized into a custom perpetuated by the commoners themselves. Giving it voluntarily reduced the instances of having it taken. And plying superheroes with pretty girls to keep them happy and close was in the community's best interests. Christopher, flocked in White, healing children and raising commoners, and wearing the face of a twenty-year-old, would be considered easy duty.

As much as the sight of the girl had aroused him, the depths to which these ordinary people had sunk sickened him. Pretty young women were always drawn to rich old men, in every world, but here it had gone from mercenary biology to self-imposed subjugation.

He went into his room and shut the door, to find his own private peace with his turbulent feelings.

The next day he thought to detect a subtle change in the way his men treated him. He would have expected derision, confusion, or even suspicion at his turning down a nubile girl. He could have accepted jocularity or slackness, since he had not punished the guards in any way for their failure of protocol. But it was none of those.

If anything, they were more friendly and personable, even while their salutes were crisper. If only Lalania were here to tell him why.

Karl, surprisingly, had not yet heard of the incident. But the young man looked drawn and tired. He trained as hard as he drove his soldiers, and he partied as hard as he trained. Still, his instincts were intact. When Christopher described the events of the previous night, he immediately seized on the one significant word.

“You told them you had taken a
vow
?”

“Yes,” Christopher said. “My marriage vow. I promised I would be faithful to my wife, and I aim to keep that promise.”

Karl shook his head in derision. “A foolish thing to promise, especially with your wife so far away. But I have always honored your decisions. Now, I fear, it is no longer your choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“You told them you made a vow.” Christopher nodded for him to continue; they'd already established this. “They have finally found an explanation for your meteoric rise and fantastic good luck. You made a pact with some power, some extra-planer entity. Possibly even a god. And chastity is the price you paid.”

“But that's not true.” Well, he had made a pact with a deity, but it was only the ordinary arrangement of priesthood. Nobody here found his spells to be worthy of special comment.

“Truth is less important than comfort.” Karl shrugged. “Now your entire army views your virtue as their lucky charm. You will need to warn Lalania. If they think she aims to seduce you, they will shoot her.”

Christopher's shock received no sympathy from Karl. “You have given a name to their hopes, a concrete fact to hold against the unknown. And one they can hope to affect, through their diligence. It will do the army good and save me the need of babysitting you.” Karl had already had to intervene once, when Christopher had been seduced by magic.

That new quality he had detected in his soldiers was protectiveness. And they were ennobled by it. No longer merely servants under the protection of his political authority and magic but partners in protecting him the only way they could.

Perversely, he spent the rest of the day annoyed by it. She really had been a very beautiful young woman.

But by the time he retired to his quarters, he had come to terms with the arrangement. He was asking a lot from these men. It was only fair that they could expect him to pay a price, as well. Spotting the same soldier outside his door, he asked about the girl.

“As per your orders, I gave her such comfort as I could, sir. Which explains why I was away from my post for half the night. Not that I am making excuses, sir.”

Not excuses, Christopher laughed to himself, but bragging. Still, that result seemed more appropriate; they were at least of an age.

It didn't make his empty bed any more comfortable, though.

When he walked into Oda
'
s clinic the next day, eager to see another patient, he immediately knew something was wrong. The crowd shrank back from him perceptibly, and Oda
'
s face was a mask of pain.

“I appreciate your help, Brother. But someone does not. I think it best that you reserve your magic for your own men, from now on.”

With great sadness, she produced a cloth from her cupboard. Unwrapping the object it contained, she handed him a crossbow quarrel of white wood, fletched in goose feathers.

“This was found next to the body. Although we did not understand it, we knew it could only be a message for you.”

Christopher understood it. His assassin had found him.

“What body?” he demanded. This was going to cost him a hundred tael, a veritable fortune. “We need to send for Faren, immediately.” It was a long ride to and from the Cathedral.

“We will not send for him, Brother. He would not come. It is of no use.”

He wanted to yell at her, to demand that she talk sense. He wanted to shout loud enough that he could not hear the words in his head, the memory of what Svengusta had told him once, when he had first discovered the power of revival. And its limits.

It is reckoned futile to even try with a child under three.

He crushed the quarrel in his hand, but it did not yield. Its power, like the power of evil, was obdurate.

The giggling face of the little girl swam before his vision. The first person he had ever cured of disease, the first person he had made whole and healthy for no other reason than that he could.

And now dead, because
he
had healed her.

“None blame you, Brother. But they fear you.”

Why were the only people who ever feared him the ones he tried to help?

“I understand,” he said through gritted teeth, though he would never understand what useless spite drove a person to such lengths. The assassin gained nothing from this, risked herself for no profit, only for the harm it did him. That she was a woman and used a child as naught but a stone to throw against his window baffled him. But confusion crumbled before a tide of anger.

Stiffly he bowed to Oda, turning to leave like a wooden toy soldier. She sensed his fury and clasped him in a tearful embrace. “Do not blame yourself. We are not responsible for what evil chooses. Do not blame yourself.”

“I know who to blame,” he growled.

The people of the town parted before him as he stalked through the streets, every boot-fall a warning of violence, his soldiers marching now stone-faced and double-time behind him, their cheery insolence evaporated without residue. But their advance broke on a wall of stone and a servant in black livery.

“I'm here to see the wizard,” Christopher announced to the chubby, sleepy-eyed gateman at the foot of the high stone tower.

“Not during the day, you aren't.” The man shook his head in denial. “My job is a simple one, suited to a man of my simple abilities. My job is to tell people to come back at night.”

“This is about murder. Let me in.”

“If I do, it will be, about mine. It's worth more than my life to open that door in the daytime. Come back at night.”

Shouting up at the barred windows seemed too undignified, even for Christopher. And he was coming to ask a favor. Defeated, he turned away and retreated to his barracks, the one place in town where his law was absolute and his people were safe.

Karl was confused as well. “I did not think her so wicked as that. You have a way of bringing out the worst in people.” Christopher almost said something snappish, before he remembered Fae. Karl had earned the right to talk like that.

“Not always the worst,” Torme demurred. “But, my lord, consider your next action carefully. You do not want to drive the wizard to extremes.”

Gregor shook his head, too. “Lalania thought you safe from the assassin, and in a way you are. You certainly outrank her now, and in any case she must know the Saint can revive you from a single hair. She cannot hope to destroy you directly. But no one could expect her to strike like this.”

“Could Lala find her?” Christopher had failed to catch the woman when she was hiding on his own Church lands. Finding her here would be ten times as hard.

“No,” Gregor said. “Because of the duty of wall-building, almost every man in the city is tracked. It would be hard for a man to live here without attracting the attention of that ravenous labor press gang. But nobody keeps track of women.”

A thousand times as hard.

“Maybe the wizard has magic that can help.”

Disa shook her head. “I doubt it, Brother. The governance of society is the domain of priests, not mages.”

“I'm going to ask, anyway.” Christopher could not bear to do nothing.

Gregor and Torme accompanied him to the tower in the dark, along with Karl and a dozen soldiers. They didn
'
t expect trouble, but they could still hope for it. A vicious, poison-edged ambush was preferable to the assassin
'
s current tactics.

The same servant met them at the door.

“Don't you have a replacement?” Christopher asked.

“No, my lord. The wizard does not care to squander more gold than necessary.”

“So you are always on duty?” When did the man sleep? Or do other things, equally biologically necessary things.

“The duty is not that burdensome, my lord, although I thank you for thinking of me. Hardly anyone ever wants to see the wizard. Indeed, you have been so kind that I wish to advise you, exalted as you are, no doubt fully aware in your omnivorous perspicacity of all salient facts, yet nonetheless embarked upon a course of action whose dreadful outcome is acutely expected by myself, not through any contemplation or faculty of thought, I assure you, but merely brute, raw experience.”

That was the biggest word salad Christopher had heard on this planet. And like salad, completely devoid of calories. “Advise me of what?”

The doorman quirked his eyebrows, perhaps surprised Christopher had followed his entire speech.

“Why,
not
to see the wizard, my lord.”

“Not an option.” Christopher would leave no stone unturned to exorcise the creature that haunted him.

“As you wish, though you must hazard the tower alone.”

“If you're not out in an hour, we'll come in after you,” Gregor growled.

The blue knight was only third-rank. The wizard was at least ninth, or so Lalania had claimed, based on the magic she had seen him do. It was not a credible threat.

“If you're not out by daylight, we'll knock the tower down,” promised Karl.

Even though Karl had no ranks at all, the threat was serious. Karl had a dozen cannon back at the barracks. Christopher grinned wolfishly, thinking of how surprised the wizard would be to see his tower smashed from a thousand yards away, until he remembered he would still be in it.