Gold Throne in Shadow (9 page)

“Not many of those who are to come will find salary acceptable, either,” Lalania warned.

“Then maybe they'll go away,” Christopher said. “Can you tell me what's coming? Are they ranked or just commoners?”

“Some of both, though mostly the latter. Still, I suggest you find a more courteous way to disappoint them.”

Christopher latched on to her. “That's the first thing you can tell me.”

“You truly do not seek associates?” she asked. “You would travel all but alone?”

“I'd love to have Cannan and Niona.” Cannan was the most physically intimidating person he'd met, outside of the monstrous Black Bart. Having him onside was quite comforting. And his wife was a druid of amazing skills and more amazing equanimity. Christopher had become quite attached to both of them while they were all marching around the country, trying to lure the Invisible Guild into an attack.

“An unlikely match to your Church that would be,” she laughed, “but they are still in the Wild, and beyond my trace.”

“How about Baronet D'Arcy?” he suggested. Lord Nordland's Ranger would be the perfect addition, short of the magical Niona, and he had enjoyed teaching Christopher's scouts his woodsman skills. Lalania just rolled her eyes.

“You would hire away Nordland's liegemen? Have you not done enough to the man? No, Christopher, I will not even inquire.”

“Can we get any others like him?” Christopher really wanted an experienced woodsman to keep training his own scouts, but he wasn't even sure where they lived. Niona had merely described her home as being east of Knockford, and Cannan wasn't even from there.

“No Ranger will serve you for salary,” Lalania said. “Why do you insist on assuming money can buy everything?”

A difficult question to answer.
Because it can where I came from
introduced topics he did not care to discuss with the bard, like, for instance, where he came from. Helga saved him by announcing lunch and then monopolizing the troubadour with topics feminine, like dresses and fashion. Only afterwards, when Torme and the officers returned to their duties, did they get the chapel to themselves. Helga brought them beer, and Christopher finally got to explain the militia plan to his informal council.

“A clever ploy,” Svengusta complimented him. “You cannot raise a paid company without the Saint's consent, which he cannot grant you for reasons political. But you pay your ditch-diggers with jobs and arms, not gold.”

“They will be of little value to you,” Gregor warned. “You cannot take them into the Wild or deploy them in other counties.”

“I don't need to,” Christopher said. “I just want them for defense.”

“Against what?” Lalania snapped. An awkward silence ensued, so Christopher changed the subject.

“Have my rifles made an impression? Do you think I could sell them to other people?”

“I confess even I am dubious of their value,” Gregor answered. “It seems too incredible to be true, though I know it must be.”

“The Church of the Bright Lady will buy your arms,” Karl promised. “Their police,” Karl refused to call the retired and soft men soldiers, “already favor crossbows, and your weapon is in all ways superior.”

“But that amounts to only a few dozen,” Svengusta said. “In any case, why would you want to arm the regiments of other lords?”

In the new silence, Christopher tapped his thumbs together patiently. Sooner or later they would stop asking him questions he could not afford to answer.

“If Gregor can't even believe it,” he asked Lalania, “then what do people believe? Why did the King send me to a choice assignment, if it really is one?”

“They believe you have a Patron,” she said. “A powerful entity that aids you in secret, perhaps invisible, perhaps remaining in the Wild to come at your summons.”

“He does have a Patron,” Svengusta objected. “He serves a god.”

“Gods do not intervene so blatantly,” she countered. “One does not need to be a theologian to know that.”

“It
is
a choice assignment,” Gregor said. “So much so that my accompanying you there will arouse no questions at all. Who wouldn't want to do a little hunting in the company of a healer?”

“Especially one with such a powerful, albeit unknown, ally. I think this is the mark, Christopher.” Lalania said. “They seek to test the power of your guardian. After all, it might have been an artifact with a single use that saved you before. Hunting ulvenmen is the sort of low-level constant danger that reveals true rank. Why not try the wood with someone else's ax?”

“And if you get eaten by an ulvenman, then their problem is reduced to someone else's indigestion,” Svengusta pointed out helpfully.

“If that's what they want me to do, then I should do something else,” Christopher said.

“You mean we aren't going to hunt ulvenmen?” Gregor made a sad face.

“What a perfect opportunity that would be for an assassin,” Karl said. “Or an angry lord, with a small but mobile band of knights and an impeccable woodsman for a guide.”

“You don't think Nordland would stoop to that?” Gregor said, slightly alarmed.

“No, I don't think so,” Lalania said, “but Karl is right. It would be foolish to ignore the possibility.”

“So what else do I do?” Christopher asked. The King had all but ordered him to the hunt. “Didn't somebody tell me cavalry was the monster's weak point?”

“Yes, it is,” Gregor agreed. “But you have none.”

“I have money and soldiers. Isn't that enough?”

Karl actually looked pained. “That is out of my expertise, Christopher. I can only teach boys to ride; I cannot train them to fight from horseback. That is the province of the knights.”

Christopher made a face, annoyed by yet another socially imposed restraint on knowledge. Gregor waved it away with one hand.

“It's not that special,” the knight said dismissively. “The only thing standing between Karl and knighthood is tael, not ability. I can teach him everything he needs to know.”

“A service I can pay you for,” Christopher suggested, and the blue knight laughed at having been outmaneuvered.

“Will you charge me, then, for Karl teaching me what he knows? If these rifles of yours are here to stay, then I suppose I should learn how to use them.”

“I have no secrets from you,” Christopher said, and then had to modify his statement to remain within the bounds of strict honesty. “On that score, I mean.” This made yet another uncomfortable silence, but Lalania was back on her game and smoothly changed direction.

“That dispenses with the commoners. Now what of the ranked? Strong alliances keep the peace, Christopher. To be perceived as standing alone invites assault. Because you are not of the Bright Lady, some may think that the Church will not defend you as it would its own. Because Gregor is bound to you only by friendship, they may think that he will not be bound to vengeance.”

“We have a saying here,” Svengusta interjected, before Christopher had time to register his confusion, “that perhaps is not known to you.
Tael is thicker than blood.
Your retinue would be expected to avenge you, even more so than your kin, and that expectation would keep you safe.”

No one had told Svengusta the secret of Christopher's origin; nonetheless he had clearly guessed more than he had ever told anyone else. He had been the first person to speak to Christopher, and he alone seemed to remember that Christopher was truly foreign to this place, needing even ordinary convention explained to him.

But if Lalania was given any more time to think about it, she might be making guesses of her own. Quickly he lurched ahead with the conversation.

“I just can't afford it.” Although he didn't know how much tael he needed to get home, it was safe to assume it was going to be a lot. Also, he wasn't trying to make a new group of aristocrats; he was trying to empower the ordinary folk. “And I don't think I can trust anybody who shows up here, anyway.”

Lalania sighed. “So you will force us to protect you out of pity and friendship, at our own expense, and make it as hard as possible in the bargain.”

“Oh no,” Svengusta said. “He could make it much harder. Trust me on that.”

The laughter masked, though it could not erase, the blush that crept up Christopher's neck.

“Lala, you're smart,” he said. “Figure out a way I can give you some money, too.” He'd offered her a salary every time he'd seen her, but she was as prickly about her free-agent status as the knight.

“That's not so hard,” she said. “First you open your purse, and then you hand me the coins.”

“Will you sing for us?” asked Helga, excited. Christopher was embarrassed at the mercenary transaction, but Lalania smiled indulgently.

“Of course I will,” she said, “and I will write Christopher a pretty speech to give his petitioners.” Turning to him, she lectured. “The commoners you can defer to Karl, but because I am not your servant, I cannot represent you to the ranked. This you must do yourself, and though they are low, you cannot afford discourtesy. You will say the words I tell you to say, and spend the money I tell you to spend.”

Christopher nodded his grateful surrender.

The days that followed were difficult for Christopher. Not physically: the technical details all went well. Every day one or two people would present themselves in his chapel, kneeling before him while he recited Lalania's speech. They ranged from the ragged to the heavily armored, the academic to the muscular, men and women, young hopefuls and aging has-beens. He disappointed them all and then fed them a banquet while Lalania sang and played her lute. The food was fabulous, because Lalania was directing Helga's kitchen; the speech was effective, because Lalania had written it; and the music was elegant and graceful, perfectly suited to an air of sorrowful but necessary refusal. The petitioners went away satiated, if not satisfied. The troubadour turned Christopher's military lecture hall into a refined court of nobility, through genius and unending labor. All he had to do was sit there and act the part.

Which was the difficulty. He did not like playing nobility, even when he knew it was merely an act. And it would be graceless to complain when everyone else was working so hard, so he couldn't even vent. Most of all he worried that Karl might come to think of him as actual nobility. He dared not broach that topic with the young veteran; Karl would be offended at any doubting of his loyalty, and in any case, openly discussing the democratic leanings of his army officers was probably a bad idea in general.

“No,” said the latest applicant, a young woman with curly black hair. She was Mary Ann to Lalania's Ginger, cute, petite, and stubborn. “You may not turn me away, Brother.”

“Huh?” he said, confused.

“Yes, Brother,” she repeated, politely ignoring his gibbering idiocy, “I am entitled to the word, though it is impolite to use it in mixed company. But I am a priestess of the Bright Lady, I am reporting for duty, and you may not turn me away.”

“We have not heard of this, Sister,” Svengusta smoothly intervened. “You are among friends of the Church, so you may speak freely.”

The girl looked dubious, but she had a case to make, and it spilled out of her in a rush.

“Your regiment has no healer. It is the duty of the Church to send two healers with each draft.”

“Two were sent,” Svengusta gently interrupted her. Christopher was relieved that the old priest was going to handle this, so he just shut up and listened.

“Of which I should have been one,” the priestess answered. “I had already received my orders and made my peace with my family. I was to go to the draft. But Brother Christopher was sent in my stead. As unfair as that was, I did not complain.” In the way of these priests, she amended her statement so that it conformed to the truth. “Much.” Then she continued, uninterrupted. “But now the regiment has none instead of two. The draft is not optional. One is not allowed to choose to leave it, once sent. Though the Cardinal rules otherwise, I am bound by honor to replace the one who failed you.” It was obvious who she meant, even if she did not name names, for fear of speaking ill of the dead.

“Unfair?” Christopher asked, too surprised to remain quiet. “You
wanted
to be drafted?” That seemed highly irrational.

She at least blushed. “I do not seek war. But it is an open secret that promotions go first to those who served most. All of the men have been drafted once, before they became priests. All of our senior clergy served as healers in a draft, and most of them are men because some fools think war is easier the second time around. I would not have my career crippled merely because I am a woman.”

Christopher was openly grinning by the end of her speech. A true feminist polemic, delivered from a perky college coed. But she was right, of course. Even Christopher could see that. Vicar Rana was the highest-ranking woman in the Church, and she was crusty enough to have served in ten drafts.