The King's Man

by Christopher G. Nuttall

“Or thinks she is,” Sir Griffons said. He was studying me, thoughtfully. “The socialists were never seen as a serious threat. They didn’t seem to have appeal, beyond the very lowest levels of society. The people a little higher up didn’t seem to want their solutions. Do you think that’s changed?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know, sir,” I said. “But whoever attacked the rally clearly thought they needed to be slapped down.”

  “Yeah.” Caroline let out a breath. “I shadowed one of the attackers as he headed home, but the bastard lost me shortly after crossing the bridge into North Shallot. He was no amateur, whoever he was. I’m not sure how he managed to get away from me.”

  I frowned. Caroline was good at tracking people. She’d once followed me all around the estate, despite my best efforts. If someone had evaded her ... there were hundreds of concealment and invisibility spells they could have used, but they tended to leave traces Caroline could have followed. Hell, how had her target known she was even there? Caroline was so stealthy I hadn’t been sure she was behind me and I’d known she was supposed to be shadowing me. The attacker, whoever he was, had been good.

  “North Shallot,” I mused. “An aristo?”

  “It proves nothing,” Caroline said. There was an oddly sharp note to her voice. “The bastard could have hidden in North Shallot, then slipped back into South or Water Shallot the following morning.”

  I wasn’t so sure. North Shallot was heavily policed by armsmen. Someone who had no business there would be moved along pretty damn quick, if they weren’t turned into toads or fish and tossed into the nearest canal. The armsmen had few qualms about doing whatever it took to get rid of unwanted intruders. If the attacker wasn’t from North Shallot, he either had friends amongst the locals or a striking faith in his ability to avoid the armsmen. I supposed he might be entirely justified. He’d certainly managed to evade Caroline.

  “No,” Sir Griffons agreed. “And Lord Dirac has already claimed jurisdiction. We do not have grounds to continue the investigation.”

  “Sir,” I said. “With all due respect, can we trust them to handle the investigation?”

  “Probably not,” Sir Griffons said. “But the blunt truth is that we have very limited authority within the city. We have no grounds to interfere unless we’re asked” - he held up a hand before I could muster a response - “and the request would have to come from legitimate authority. Magus Court has its man on the case. Lord Dirac will handle the affair.”

  I frowned. Lord Dirac hadn’t struck me as being interested in justice. I rather suspected he’d be more interested in covering up the dead, particularly the ones with important names, than bringing them to book. And if he caught Louise ... I shuddered. Being a socialist wasn’t illegal, but I was sure that wouldn’t stop him. Magus Court had a whole string of poorly-written laws that were designed to provide a veneer of legality for just about anything. Lord Dirac could arrest Louise under the Security of the City Act, convict her of something sufficiently vague and ship her off to Skullbreaker Island before anyone could muster a defence. And even if she was rescued from the island, she’d never be the same again. People who were sent to the prison were sent to die.

  “So.” Caroline sounded a little too bright. “What do we do?”

  “Right now, nothing.” Sir Griffins reached for his cloak. “I have an appointment at House Samarra. You two can practice your spells until I get back. If a messenger arrives, call me at once.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. It was hard to hide my relief. I’d expected more questioning. “Can we keep an eye on things?”

  “Yes.” Sir Griffons held my eyes for a long moment. “And Adam ...?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Be careful.”

  I watched him go, wondering what he meant. How much did he know? How much had he guessed? He’d given me - us - some freedom, but he was ultimately responsible for knighting us. Or washing us out, if we failed. It would reflect badly on him, if we did. I was pretty sure he knew more than he’d admitted. He’d been a Kingsman longer than either of us had been alive. He had to suspect there was something I hadn’t told him.

  “Well,” Caroline said, as she poured herself another mug of coffee. “What really happened back there?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  Caroline snorted. “You slept with her, didn’t you?”

  “I ...”

  “Don’t bother to deny it.” Caroline sat down, facing me. “It’s written all over your face.”

  “Get me a mirror,” I said. As jokes went, it was pathetic. “Caroline ...”

  Caroline let out a breath. “I’m not angry,” she said. She sounded angry. “I know you have every right to start a relationship with someone outside the order, just as I do. But you should have told Sir Griffons you’re no longer ...unbiased.”

  “I am unbiased,” I protested, a little too quickly. “Caroline ...”

  “You slept with her,” Caroline said. “Didn’t you?”

  I cringed. It was the most embarrassing conversation I’d ever had, up to and including my father’s explanation of the facts of life. I’d wanted to crawl into a hole and die when that conversation had finally come to an end, too late to spare me from hours of embarrassment and mind-numbing horror. But this was worse. I felt ... I felt as if I’d betrayed her, even though I hadn’t. Caroline and I hadn’t been together. We weren’t allowed to be together. It just wasn’t fair.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “And I talked to her afterwards.”

  “I’m sure your pillow talk was most interesting,” Caroline sneered. “Did you tell her more than she told you?”

  “I let her do most of the talking.” I ignored Caroline’s snort. “She has good reason to hate the aristos.”

  “Hatred blinds,” Caroline observed. “And just because she slept with you doesn’t mean she’s in the right.”

  “I know that.” I stood, brushing down my trousers. “I ... we ... wanted to celebrate being alive! Is that so wrong?”

  “No,” Caroline said. “But you should bear in mind that she might have been trying to manipulate you.”

  I shook my head. Louise was almost painfully blunt. She’d never learnt how to cosy up to her social betters and manipulate them, trading favours for patronage. She’d reacted very badly when someone suggested she should do his homework for later favours. I found it hard to believe that Louise had seduced me for later manipulation. For one thing, she would have had to know I was worth manipulating.

  I did save her life, I reminded myself. I felt like a heel for even thinking it. And she probably needs a better bodyguard.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I know her.”

  “And that’s exactly why your emotions cannot be trusted,” Caroline said. “She takes off her clothes in front of you and suddenly you cannot think straight.”

  I glared. “And girls are any better?”

  Caroline scowled. “We tend to be vulnerable to people who pretend to listen to us,” she said, sourly. There was a hint of pain in her voice. “And yes, that can bite us too.”

  I picked up my mug and carried it into the kitchen. “I think we need to focus on what’s actually going on,” I said. “Did the aristos attack the socialists because they blamed the socialists for Cathy’s kidnapping?”

  “The morning papers certainly say as much.” Caroline followed me into the kitchen and watched as I washed my mug. “Only a couple of papers even mention the riot in Water Shallot. The remainder are screaming about how horrible the socialists are, kidnapping and abusing a little girl. They’re practically glossing over her safe return to her family.”

  I looked up, sharply. “Was she hurt? I mean ... apart from the muscle cramps?”

  “The healer’s report says no,” Caroline said. “The whole kidnapping doesn’t make sense. Why bother kidnapping someone without trying to keep them? All they did was take her to the warehouse, lock her muscles and just leave her there. They didn’t even try to hi
de her.”

  “I said as much,” I said, a little tartly. “Do you think I was right, now?”

  “I never said you were wrong,” Caroline said, evenly. “But it makes no sense.”

  I frowned. Maybe it did make a certain kind of sense. Kidnap Cathy, then leave her in a building crammed with socialist literature. Blame the socialists for kidnapping her, before using the kidnapping as an excuse to clamp down on the socialists. Or ... there hadn’t been any legal attempt to clamp down, had there? Perhaps the kidnapping was to provide an excuse for attacking the socialists, then clamping down in the wake of a riot and a few deaths. I still didn’t know how many people had been killed or wounded. I wondered if Louise knew.

  “They might have been trying to frame the socialists,” I said, outlining my theory. “And then they’d have all the excuse they needed to clamp down.”

  “That’s way too thin,” Caroline objected. “The mere presence of socialist claptrap doesn’t prove anything.”

  “It does if people want it to prove something,” I countered. “There are people out there” - I waved a hand southwards - “who’ll assume that a man and a woman walking hand in hand, or even side by side, are in a relationship. The rumours will have them married with children by the time they reach their parents. And they won’t stop because they’ll want the rumours to be true.”

  “And Lord Dirac might want to believe the socialists are behind the kidnapping,” Caroline said. “I take your point.”

  “Yes.” I turned and opened the stasis cabinet. We’d have to buy more food. We were down to cheese and bread for lunch, unless I wanted to go to the trouble of cooking a piece of meat and preserving it. “One could argue that possession of a copy of Voice of Shallot means I own the newspaper, but it would be a pretty stupid argument.”

  “But it would imply an interest in reading the news,” Caroline mused. “If I wasn’t interested in potions, I wouldn’t be reading Potions Monthly. A person who wasn’t interested in socialism wouldn’t be reading socialist journals.”

  “But that wouldn’t make him a socialist,” I said. “And even if he considered himself a socialist, he might not be a formal member.”

  I frowned. The socialists might not have a formal membership structure. Hell, it would be a dangerously unwise thing to have. Each subsection might be centred on a different club - there were at least thirty Working Men’s Clubs in Shallot - and operate largely independently. And then ... I wondered just how much power Louise had amassed in a few short months. Had she convinced everyone to go along with her? Or ... I remembered just how painstakingly through Louise had been, at school. She might have taken over the paperwork and used it to leverage herself into a position of power.

  But there’d be limits to how far she could go, I reminded myself. A secretary commands no real respect.

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” I added. “But Lord Dirac wants it to prove something.”

  I sighed as we headed up to the duelling chamber. It was quite easy to be branded something that was manifestly absurd and yet maddeningly difficult to refute. The rumourmongers loved to create slanders that were too weak to demand legal action - or a challenge to a duel - but strong enough to weaken someone’s future prospects. I’d seen it happen, back at school. A lie could gain strength and credence, the more people who repeated it. And no matter how many corrections the victim tried to put out, he could never rid himself of the lie. Louise and her comrades might have real problems, if they were branded child-snatchers. Even the hardened folk of Water Shallot would turn on them.

  If they believed whatever they read in the papers, I thought. The writers were either aristos or commoners sucking up to the aristos. They had little sympathy with the working men and it showed. The newspapers might kill the story by promoting it.

  I put the thought aside as we practiced our spells. Caroline was clearly in a bad mood and took it out on me, snapping off spell after spell as she chased me around the chamber. I ducked and dodged, firing back spells of my own. Caroline was good. I wondered if someone had been drilling her while I wasn’t looking. She’d certainly have kicked my ass if I’d met her six months ago.

  “Hold still,” she growled, as she slammed a spell at me. I jumped aside, too late. The spell crashed into my shield and threw me to the ground. She darted forward, magic crackling around her fingertips. My weakened shield shattered. She landed on top of me, blue light sparkling as she pressed down on my chest. “Surrender?”

  I glared, trying to think of a way out. But there was nothing. She’d sense me mustering a spell and stun me before I could cast it. She had me, bang to rights ...

  “Yeah.” I leaned back, trying to relax. “You got me.”

  “Hah.” Caroline pressed down on me for a second, then rolled off me and stood, brushing down her tunic. I wondered, suddenly, if someone had given her a hard time for wearing trousers. It wasn’t as if she could pass for a boy. “Good bout.”

  I heard Sir Griffons coming up the stairs and hastily stumbled to my feet. “Good afternoon, sir.”

  Sir Griffons entered the room, his expression unreadable. “Am I to deduce that you spent the last hour beating each other up, instead of practicing your spells?”

  “We were doing both, sir,” Caroline said. She sounded like my sister, when she was trying to get out of trouble. It worked more often than it should. “We learnt a great deal while trying to beat each other up.”

  “You are expected to work as a team,” Sir Griffons said. “Particularly when you’re tested against other teams. Which will happen, believe me.”

  I exchanged glances with Caroline. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “Good.” Sir Griffons turned, his lip curling in disgust. I had the feeling it wasn’t aimed at us. “We’re going to spend the afternoon pressing the flesh. I expect you both to be ready to ...”

  He broke off. A second later, the wards vibrated an alarm.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “What the ...”

  I broke off as the wards vibrated again. A disconcerting sensation swept over me, my head spinning as if I’d been deep underwater and suddenly surfaced at terrifying speed. My ears hurt, then popped so painfully I almost cried out. Caroline rubbed her ears, her face stricken. I had the horrible thought, just for a second, I’d been deafened. It was hard to hear anything. It wasn’t until Sir Griffons turned and ran for the door that I realised I hadn’t been deafened. My ears just felt weird.

  We followed Sir Griffons into the morning room. The windows had been covered with wooden slats when we’d arrived and we’d never bothered to take them down. Now, Sir Griffons tore at them until the windows were exposed, peering over the city. A nasty haze hung over the city, flickering with dark magic. Smoke was billowing up from the direction of Magus Court ... slightly beyond the weirdly-shaped building, if I was any judge. I glanced at Caroline, her face slack with horror. What the hell had happened?

  “Grab your protective cloaks,” Sir Griffons snapped. Our master ran down the stairs, moving like a teenager. “Hurry!”

  I followed him, snatched my cloak from the hooks and ran outside. Dark magic hung in the air. It was dissipating, but not quickly enough. Dogs howled as we hurried through the gatehouse and up the road towards Magus Court. I could taste the scent of human agony in the haze. Whatever had happened, it had been bad.

  My heart raced as the scene of the disaster came into view. A large building had been badly damaged, its white walls blackened and scarred by dark magic. There had been a gatehouse once, I recalled; the gatehouse was now nothing more than a smouldering crater fuming with dark magic. I shuddered in horror as I remembered what the building was. It was a dorm for scholarship students, brought in from the countryside and made to wait until the new term began. I hoped it hadn't been full of new students. The people close to the blast might be lucky if they were merely killed.

  Sir Griffons raised his voice as a handful of armsmen came into view. “Seal off both ends of the stree
t,” he snapped. They were so stunned they followed orders without question. “Don’t let anyone in or out until we can get a decontamination team up here.”

  I peered into the crater and felt my gorge rise. There were a couple of bodies, warped and twisted into a teeming mass of flesh. They were still, yet ... somehow, I knew they were still alive. The stench was appalling, horrific beyond words. I couldn’t help myself. I turned to one side and threw up, emptying my stomach of everything I’d eaten. Beside me, Caroline looked as if she wanted to be sick too. Sir Griffons glanced at us, but said nothing. He seemed to take the horrifying scene in stride.

  A senior armsman arrived with a small army of assistants. Sir Griffons directed him to finish sealing off the street, then call for help. I watched, unsure of what I should be doing. My stomach hurt, aching as if I’d been hit repeatedly. I couldn’t help looking at the blackened building, at the confused webs of tangled magic that were all that were left of the wards. The disaster, whatever it was, could have killed dozens - if not hundreds - of people. I couldn’t imagine what had happened.

  “This way,” Sir Griffons growled. “Try not to step in anything.”

  The dormitory courtyard had been surprisingly elegant, once upon a time. Now, it was a tattered mess. The cobblestones looked as if they’d been picked up one by one and then dumped in random locations. The bushes planted near the walls were now warped and twisted messes, as if they’d been blasted with waves of raw magic. It dawned on me, slowly, that that was precisely what had happened. I hoped none of the students had been caught in the blast. Their families would never know what had happened.

  That could have been me, if things had been a little different, I thought. I knew students from the countryside, boys and girls with enough raw magic to earn scholarships. They were innocents, in every sense of the word. What the hell happened here?

  Sir Griffons pressed his gloved hand against the door. It shattered at his touch, pieces crashing to the ground. I tasted decay in the air and looked up, warily. The brick looked as if it was starting to crumble, something I would have thought was impossible. I glanced at Caroline as Sir Griffons led the way, picking his steps with extreme care. The floor creaked uneasily, as if it was on the verge of collapsing under our feet and sending us plummeting. Water dripped down from the ceiling, pooling on the floor. The pipes above us had to have broken. I tensed as my foot slipped, the floor nearly giving way. Sir Griffins kept moving, practically hopping as he reached the bottom of the stairs and peered up. A terrified face looked back.