The King's Man

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Probably because I spent too much time fetching and carrying when I was a lowerclassman myself, I thought coldly. The librarian was shutting his office, but he had no qualms about leaving an upperclassman in the library. I don’t want to be a jerk too.

  I smiled, then turned my attention to the careers section. There was no shortage of information on apprenticeships, from potions and alchemy to healing and financial wizardry, but almost nothing on the Kingsmen. I read through what little there was, frowning in dismay. The Kingsmen were definitely more than just a career, but there were almost no specifics. There were certainly no testimonials from people who’d joined, served their time and retired. I put the papers aside with a sigh. It was clear I wasn’t going to find anything here, not when I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.

  The door opened behind me. I glanced back, just in case. I’d learnt, back in first year, to be wary of anyone behind me. Saline Califon entered the library, shot me a bright smile and headed down the stacks towards the section on law. I smiled again, then returned my attention to the files. Saline was an odd duck and no mistake. She’d started well, with an academic career everyone envied, then gone sharply downhill. And yet ... she’d started doing better - much better - after the Challenge. I didn’t understand it. She was an aristocrat, with all the power and connections she could possibly want. Why would she slack off in the middle of her schooling? I supposed I might have cared more about it if she’d been common-born. I’d tutored younger kids. I could have tutored her too.

  I put my thought aside as I found the archived newspapers and started to work my way through them. There were hundreds of stories about the Kingsmen, but it was impossible to sort fact from fiction. The Kingsmen were wondrous supermen, who could go anywhere and do anything; the Kingsmen were buffoons, useless fools who couldn’t even find a trio of missing children. They could do anything, but did nothing; they threw their weight around, but it was all for a good cause. My head throbbed by the time I finished reading the stories from the last couple of years. There seemed to be nothing solid in the papers, nothing more than rumours and innuendo. The Kingsmen themselves didn’t give interviews.

  Which probably isn’t a bad thing, I thought, as I returned the stacks to the shelves. The media would probably tinker with whatever they said to make it more newsworthy.

  I snorted at the thought, then stood and looked around the library. Saline had her head in a book, her pretty face frowning. She looked up and met my eyes, challengingly. I looked back, silently kicking myself for getting into a pointless contest. I didn’t want to back down, but I didn’t want to make her back down either. The second dinner bell rang, making me jump. I looked away, smiling as I headed back down the stairs. I’d been saved by the bell.

  And now I have to go see Father, I thought, as I returned to my room and picked up my bag and the envelope. And see what he has to say.

  I hurried down the stairs and strode out of the main doors, heading to the gates that led to the city. It wasn’t uncommon for older students to leave the grounds for a few hours, now that the exams were over, but I still felt oddly exposed as I passed through the gates. Something had been lost when I’d become an upperclassman. The challenge of scrambling over the back wall, with the prospect of being caught and marched to the office by the groundskeeper, was gone. Skullion had given me a black - well, blacker - eye once. I didn’t mind. I should probably have given up instead of trying to fight, but I’d never been the sort of person to simply give up.

  A figure hurried away from me, heading for the bridges that led to Water Shallot. I blinked in surprise as I recognised Louise. Where was she going? Her family had a shop on the far side of the river, but ... she was heading for the wrong bridge. I opened my mouth to hail her, then told myself - firmly - that it was none of my business. Louise was a qualified sorceress in all but name. She could take care of herself. Any footpad or predator who tried to grab hold of her would find himself sitting on a lily pad, snapping at flies. And yet ... it was odd for a young woman of her age to head to Water Shallot alone. Didn’t she care about her reputation?

  People will talk, I thought, as I crossed the road to head to a different bridge. I didn’t want her to think I was following her. And her parents will be furious.

  I felt a twinge of sympathy for Louise, mingled with a grim awareness that it could be a great deal worse. People would talk. It was all they ever did. And she would find herself painted as everything from a scarlet woman to an outright whore. She wouldn’t have to do the crime to serve the time. It would suddenly be very hard for her to get married, if she wanted to get married. Or if anyone wanted to marry her. She did have a very disagreeable personality.

  And she’d probably say the same about me, I told myself. And people have been saying that about my father and sisters too.

  I put the thought aside as I walked along the riverside, staring down into the murky waters. A pair of barges were navigating through Shallot, carrying valuable goods from the docks to the warehouses on the far side of the city. The goods would be on their way to the capital - or somewhere else further up the river - before too long. I’d had a summer job working on the barges, for a couple of years. It had been fun, but I wouldn’t have wanted to make a career out of it. The dockworkers guild was harsh to anyone who refused to bend the knee. I smiled as I turned onto the bridge and crossed into Water Shallot. The city didn’t look any different, not here. The aristos didn’t know what they were talking about.

  Idiots, I thought. They talk about slumming, and yet they never see the real slums.

  It would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so tragic. I’d heard dozens of aristo brats drop hints of roguish dealings in Water Shallot, just to impress girls. They made it sound as if they were travelling to the Desolation, or the jungles of Minima. And they never went to the deep dark places, particularly after nightfall. There were limits to their bravery. I wish I could say I’d been surprised.

  Water Shallot wasn’t that different to the lower-class regions of South Shallot. The riverside streets were being gentrified, forcing out everyone who couldn’t afford to live there any longer. I wondered where the former residents had gone, now that the newcomers had taken their homes and shops. A handful of guardsmen were on patrol, eyes nervously swinging from side to side as they made their way down the street. I was sure they’d run when trouble really broke out. The City Guard was kept deliberately weak by Magus Court. The Great Houses didn’t want to create a rival, or a check on their power. Father and I knew, at base, that the only people who’d defend our home and business were ourselves. We couldn’t rely on the City Guard.

  The streets grew a little more decayed as I walked east, passing through growing crowds of fishermen and dockyard workers who’d finished for the night and now intended to drink themselves into a stupor. I shuddered, knowing how easy it would have been for Father to fall into the same trap. Some of my friends, back when I’d been a child, hadn’t been so lucky. Their fathers, treated badly at work, had taken it out on their wives and families when they’d gotten home. I’d seen the bruises.

  It could have been worse, I told myself. I could have joined them too.

  Chapter Four

  My father’s shop - and warehouse, as he put it - started life as a fairly small corner shop, one of a dozen under a giant tenement block. He bought it, then took a loan and purchased the two shops next to it and converted them into a single, much larger, shop. His empire had kept expanding until he’d laid claim to most of the block, with an option to buy what little he didn’t already hold. I had the feeling he’d never gain complete control of the block, but it didn’t matter. He held enough territory to veto anything he didn’t like.

  I stopped in front of the window, inspecting the display of goods intended to entice customers. Father sold everything, from clothes made by part-time seamstresses to meat and fish from the local farms and fishmongers. He’d told me, once, that he intended to make it easy for everyone to shop, fo
r them to come to a single place to do it. I hadn’t been convinced - his neighbours would have pushed back hard if they’d thought he was underselling them with the intention of driving them out - but it seemed to be working. The old man always had a lot of satisfied customers. Who knew? Maybe, by the time he died, he’d have taken his empire right to the limits.

  Father doesn’t believe in limits, I reminded myself, as I pushed open the door. A handful of anti-theft spells buzzed around me, then faded into the background. And neither do I.

  “Adam!” I glanced up and smiled as I saw my sister, sitting behind the counter. “Welcome home!”

  “Toni!” I grinned at her as she motioned me to the backroom door. “It’s good to be back.”

  I felt my smile grow wider as Toni directed the shopgirl to take the counter and led me into the backroom so she could put the kettle on. My older sister looked strikingly like Alana Aguirre, although there was a faint scar on her face that Alana would have had removed the moment the raw magic faded. I’d watched hundreds of boys pay court to her, only to be thwarted by her demeanour and father’s tongue-in-cheek demands for massive dowries. Alana could hardly have done it better. I grinned, then sat on the overstuffed armchair. It might have passed through a dozen hands before it came to our shop, but it was more comfortable than the fancy armchairs I’d seen at Jude’s.

  “You’d better have done well on your exams,” Toni said, as she poured hot water into the teapot. “Father will be cross if you don’t have good marks.”

  “I have it on good authority that I’ve done very well,” I said. “How is the shop?”

  “Good enough.” Toni passed me a mug of tea, keeping one for herself. “The new assistant is shaping up well, certainly better than the last one. Poor girl was trying to steal food to feed her family. Dad was a boozer and mother ...” she shrugged. “I had to let her go. We just couldn’t afford the losses.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Are we making a profit?”

  Toni frowned. “Barely. Father keeps finding new things to sell, which is great when they actually sell.”

  “I know.” I sipped my tea thoughtfully. There was nothing we could do for the former shopgirl. “Some things simply don’t take off.”

  “And others do,” a new voice said. “Welcome home, Adam.”

  I put the mug aside and stood to receive a hug from my father. He was shorter than me, with dark chocolate skin and curly black hair he’d never bothered to straighten. I wouldn’t have either, if it hadn’t been the fashion. Alana and her sisters - and my younger sister - had it worse. Their hair was meant to be long and straight, not short and curly. I had the feeling they spent hours each day just smoothing it down.

  “Father,” I said, stiffly. “It’s good to see you again.”

  My father nodded. “What? No tea for me?”

  “You weren’t around,” Toni said. “There’s tea in the teapot, if you like.”

  “No wonder no one’s prepared to pay a massive dowry for you,” Father grumbled. His smile took the sting out of his words. “Let me know when you want me to reduce it.”

  I looked from one to the other, realising - for the first time - that Father had set the dowry so high to make it easy for Toni to say no. It would be easy for her to blame the failure of any courtship on her father, who held the purse strings and had veto rights as long as she worked for him. She couldn’t be blamed if her father refused to let her go, could she? I wondered, grimly, if anyone would come along she’d actually want. Water Shallot wasn’t a good place to meet men. Or women, for that matter. I could easily see her deciding she’d prefer to stay single.

  Mother died in childbirth, I recalled. And she was one of the lucky ones.

  Father poured himself a mug of tea and sat down. “It’s great to see you again, Adam,” he said. “But why did you come home so soon?”

  “Did you get kicked out?” Toni smirked. “Or were you simply bored of loitering around the school?”

  “Neither.” I resisted the urge to make sarcastic remarks as I opened my bag and removed the envelope. “I got a job offer.”

  I felt my heart start to pound as I passed the demagicked envelope to my father. If he said no ... I could take off on my own, and perhaps I would, but I could hardly come back after a very public break. I wasn’t sure what I’d do, if he said no. I didn’t want to give up the chance to do something great, but ... I knew he wouldn’t be keen on me doing anything for the king. The king wasn’t a normal aristo ...

  “I see.” My father’s voice betrayed nothing of his feelings. “Do you want to do this?”

  “Yes, father.” It was hard to speak definitely, but I had no choice. “It might give me a chance to make a difference.”

  “Might,” Father repeated. He passed the papers to Toni. “Knocking down a building would also make a difference, but not a particularly good one.”

  I scowled. Father was fond of dropping little sayings like that into the mix whenever we argued. It was never easy to tell what he meant - what he actually meant, as opposed to what he said. I’d never known anyone so good at giving mixed messages. Even girls weren’t so good at confusing me. I had the feeling he wasn’t inclined to support me, but ... how could I be sure?

  “I might catch someone with their hand in the till or their pants around their ankles,” I said, pushing as hard as I could. “And that person might be very important indeed.”

  “Which would put you in danger,” Father pointed out, coldly. “You don’t need to be a Kingsman to catch someone with their pants down.”

  “Of course not,” Toni agreed. “You can just go to the brothel.”

  Father gave her a sharp look. Properly brought up young women weren’t supposed to know the brothels existed, although pretty much all of them did. I’d heard plenty of chatter about that too, in both Jude’s and Water Shallot. Any young woman born and bred in the poorest part of the city had to know the brothels were an option, if she had to put food on the table or if there were debts she couldn’t repay. I swallowed, hard. The thought of Toni or Nora ending up in one of them was sickening.

  “Father,” I said. “What else am I going to do with my life?”

  Father waved a hand at the wall. “You could work here. For me. For us.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to be a shopboy,” I said. “And it would be a waste of my education.”

  “You could go into tutoring,” Toni pointed out. “If you’re as good as you say ...”

  “I’d never get a magic licence,” I said. There were some loopholes in the system, mainly covering parents teaching their children, but not ones I could exploit. “The Great Houses have the system all sewn up.”

  I met her eyes. “And besides, can you imagine me trying to teach a little brat? I’d go mad within the week.”

  Toni smirked. “A little brat like you, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” I conceded the point without rancour. Tutoring lowerclassmen was easy. Tutoring children promised to be hours of pure hell. “I don’t understand how Father refrained from brutally strangling me.”

  “You got too big, too fast,” Father said. He sipped his tea. “There are other options.”

  “Not many.” I met his eyes, evenly. “I don’t want to be a shopboy. I’m not going to inherit the business, even if I wanted it. Toni will do that ...”

  “Thanks a bunch,” Toni muttered.

  “... And Nora and I will have to find something else to do with our time,” I continued. “I have the grades to seek an apprenticeship, but that would mean pledging myself to an older sorcerer and his family. There aren’t many other options for me, are there? The careers I might want, the careers that might allow me to build a life for myself, come with strings attached.”

  “Strings that will be used to hang you, if you refuse to toe the line,” Father said, evenly. “You’ll be so tied up you won’t be able to move.”

  “Yes. I know.” I shook my head. “At least this way, I might have a chance to accomplis
h something for myself.”

  “Not for yourself,” Father said. “For the king.”

  He scowled. “And the king was pretty useless during the House War, wasn’t he?”

  I shrugged. I’d never heard a clear explanation of just what had happened during the House War, even though I’d fought beside the others to retake and defend the school. Stregheria Aguirre had been plotting a coup, some said; Crown Prince Henry had been her dupe, her pawn. Or, perhaps, her partner. It seemed unlikely - the Crown Prince would inherit everything when his father died - but I’d heard stranger stories. I didn’t really care. It was more important to look to the future.

  Father let out a long breath. “That said, the Kingsmen have done some good. It was one of them who took Biddy Murphy away from her wretched husband. Saved her life.”

  I nodded. I should have remembered that.

  “And you’re sure of this,” Father said. He took back the papers and thumbed through them. “You’ve made up your mind.”

  “Yes, Father.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I do intend to try.”

  “Best you can do,” Father grunted. “You’ll be taking yourself out of the line of inheritance” - he held up a sheet of paper - “but you didn’t stand to inherit much anyway. I think I can still leave you my trousers, if nothing else. The girls aren’t going to want them.”

  Toni rolled her eyes at me. I snorted. Young ladies weren’t supposed to wear trousers. Maybe that would change, one day, but I doubted it. Toni wasn’t going to be blazing a trail. It would have to be someone with real clout, someone like Alana ... I snorted, again. No one was going to see her in trousers anytime soon.

  “And perhaps a little money,” Father added. “And guest-right.”

  “I don’t want anything,” I said, carefully. “Father ...”