by John Moore
“Or at least that she doesn’t care for Logan. But I’m sure she’ll get used to him. Her mother got accustomed to me, after a while.”
“Sir?”
“Yes, we’ll announce it tonight.” The King closed the dossiers and tossed them negligently to one side. “For recovering the Ancient Artifact, and thus confounding Voltmeter’s Diabolical Plan, Lord Logan is to be awarded Rebecca’s hand in marriage. The Council of Lords was quite insistent. So was Logan himself. Not that I had any objection. It’s the traditional thing to do.”
Both feet broke through the ice this time. “Sir! Your Majesty!” Kevin grabbed the front of the desk. “I really must protest!”
“I understand your disappointment, Timberline. I know you put quite a bit of effort into this match. I have to say that I didn’t think much of you when you came here, but you showed yourself to be quite a worthy candidate over the past few weeks. But my word, Timberline, you’re a diplomatic sort. You of all people should know how these things have to be done. I can’t give a man command of our army, send him off to storm an Invincible Fortress, then deny him the right to marry my daughter. Wouldn’t look right at all. Surely you see what I mean?”
The Prince was having trouble focusing. Images of Becky swam up before him, her face, her eyes, her long hair gleaming in the candlelight. He put a hand to his head and knocked over the whiskey decanter. Steadying it, he tried to put his confused thoughts into words. “Your Majesty— I have to tell you—your daughter—Rebecca—Rebecca and I . . .”
The King leaned back in his chair. “I know what you’re feeling, Timberline. It’s tough to lose a girl like Rebecca. And these things seem so important when you’re young. But you’ll get over it. Here, here’s something that will help you. Go and take that book off the shelf there. The one by Taylor.”
Kevin looked around, still a little unsteady. He saw the shelf that the King was pointing to and took the first book off it. He read the cover aloud. “Handbook of Practical Heroics, by Robert Taylor.”
“Hmmm? No, not that one. The one next to it.”
Kevin put the first book under his arm and pulled out the second one. The shelf immediately rotated to reveal a chamber filled with gold bars. He ignored them and read the second title. “Handbook of Practical Fly-fishing?”
“That’s the one. We’ve got some excellent trout streams here. When this is over, take a few days and go fishing. It’s a great way to relax. Gives you a chance to sort out your thoughts, ponder over life, and put things in perspective. I do it whenever I can get away.”
Kevin dropped the book on the desk. “Please, your Majesty, you must reconsider. There are issues here that I need to explain.”
The King came around the desk and put his arm around Kevin’s shoulders, gently but pointedly steering him to the door. “No need to explain anything, Timberline. Believe me, a few days with a rod in your hand will help you forget about Rebecca. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. Another thing I learned from fishing, ha-ha.” And with those words his office door closed firmly, and Kevin found himself once again in the narrow corridor.
He stalked through the hallways of the west wing, back to the castle’s main entrance. In his mind he turned over the events of the past days. Fly-fishing? Was the King of Deserae some kind of nut? What kind of loon thought you could cure a broken heart by fishing? His depression gradually faded away, to be replaced by anger. Who were these people that treated their daughters like prize cattle, to be auctioned off or given away as gifts? It was demeaning. It was inhumane. Girls should be allowed to make their own decisions. God knows they couldn’t do any worse than their parents. By the time he crossed the center of the castle and found the east wing he had worked himself into a fury. Logistics! Did they really think he was going to help Logan so the man could marry Princess Becky? What kind of chump did they think Kevin was, anyway? Help his rival? Ha! As far as the Prince of Rassendas was concerned, the Kingdom of Deserae was on its own!
He kicked opened the door to his rooms, shut it behind him, slammed his book on a table, and yelled at the top of his voice, “Winslow!”
His valet opened the door from the bedroom. “Yes, sire?”
“Pack up. We’re leaving. Now.”
Winslow appeared about to say something, but he looked at Kevin’s face and thought better of it. He disappeared back into the bedroom.
“No, wait. Winslow!”
His valet came back out.
“Summon a courier. I need to send a message to Dad. Rassendas is filing a diplomatic protest.”
“Sire?”
“After inviting us to bid for the hand of Princess Rebecca, Deserae is terminating the contest. I’m going to demand that they proceed as originally planned. Get Berry and Wainright in here. I’m going to need their help on this.”
Winslow said nothing. He simply pointed to the desk, and when he saw that it had received Kevin’s attention, he quietly retreated back to the bedchamber.
The desk held a buff envelope, tied with string and sealed with the mark of the Rassendas Diplomatic Corps. Inside was a second, smaller envelope, with a note from Wainright saying that it had just arrived by fast courier, and the contents were for Kevin’s eyes only. The second envelope bore the seal of the King of Rassendas.
Kevin opened a pot of ink, got out a fresh sheet of foolscap, and began work with his cipher key. It took some twenty minutes to decrypt the message, which eventually laid out like this:
IM LIKE HEP TO YOUR FEELINGS MAN AND KNOW YOU DIG THE PRINCESS BUT IMPORTANT TO MAINTAIN GOOD RELATIONS WITH DESERAE AND ANGOSTURA SO STAY COOL MAN I LIKE VOLUNTEERED YOUR SERVICES TO CALEPHON OKAY BEST OF LUCK LOVE DAD
Kevin crumpled up the decoded message and threw it into the fireplace. “If he ever asks me to call him Daddio, I’m gonna put my foot down.” He found an armchair to slump into and put his head in his hands. Eventually he looked up and found himself staring at the book on the table. He stood up and examined it. It was small, with a soft leather cover, the right size to slip into a hip pocket. The front and back were blank, but the title was embossed in gold along the spine. It was the Handbook of Practical Heroics. He had left the King’s office with the book still under his arm.
He took the book back to his chair and started leafing through it, scanning the pages, slowly at first, then more quickly, with gradually mounting excitement. An hour later he carried the book to his desk, got out another sheet of foolscap, and began making notes. The pages fluttered beneath his fingers. By the time Becky arrived he had a plan.
She brushed past Winslow and fell straight into Kevin’s arms, putting her face against his shoulder and immediately bursting into tears, so for a while he could do nothing but hold her until the sobs ran down and she was able to talk. “Oh Kevin, I am so, so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” He stroked her hair. “It’s not your fault.”
“I came straight here as soon as Daddy told me. I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Same with me.”
“Then I went to the Council of Lords. But they wouldn’t talk to me either. I have to marry Logan. There’s no way out of it. Unless Lord Voltmeter kills us all. And you really can’t plan a wedding around something like that.”
“You don’t have to marry Logan. We can elope.”
Becky straightened up. “Kevin! Do you really mean it?”
“Absolutely.” He gave her waist a quick squeeze. “You love me, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Her face was streaked, but her eyes were shining. She took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and blotted the tears.
“Pack a few things, and we’ll take off for Rassendas tonight. I’ll have a coach waiting. I’ll think of some sort of story to tell Dad, and by the time he sends a courier here and back to check it out, we’ll be married and done with it. We can even get married in the royal chapel, so you’ll still have a royal wedding.”
“Tonight? No, that’s impo
ssible!”
“Why? Do you have other plans?”
“No, but . . .” Becky moved thoughtfully to the couch and sat down. “Kevin, everyone is watching us. We can’t leave when the country is threatened. The people will think we’re running out on them. There would be panic. Maybe rioting and looting. The army will lose morale—that could be dangerous for Deserae.”
“Hmm. Yes, you’re right.” Kevin sat down next to her. Reflexively, she edged over into his lap. “We’ll have to wait until Logan gets the Ancient Artifact back. Becky, you’ll have to stay here until then.”
“So will you, sweetie. You need to stay and help outfit the troops.”
“Yeah, right. I’m going to help my rival so he can win my girl? Not hardly.”
“Kevin, if you leave the kingdom now, it will look like you’re running away from danger. There’s no way I can marry you if you appear to be a coward. The people will never stand for it.”
Kevin picked her off his lap and set her back down, so he could pace back and forth while he pondered this. Damn, he thought. She was right again. “No. No, this is a really bad situation. If we get married before Logan gets the Ancient Artifact, then it’s kind of a gray area. Everyone will be angry, people will say we shouldn’t have done it; there will be all sorts of high-level retribution, but there will be no way to undo it, and we can talk our way out of real trouble. That’s what eloping is all about.”
He sat down on the couch, leaned his head back so he was staring at the ceiling, and put his arm around Becky’s shoulders. “But Becky, if I stay and help with the attack, that’s tantamount to agreeing to the whole stupid plan. Once Logan has the Artifact—well—from a diplomatic point of view, you belong to him. I’ll be nothing but a double-crossing scoundrel who seduced away a hero’s bride. It’s the sort of thing that countries go to war over. Hell, Logan will go to war over it. He loves that stuff. If you and I get married after the attack, Logan will mobilize Angostura’s army and march on Rassendas.”
“Can Rassendas defeat Angostura?”
“Sure. We would kick their butts. But Becky.” Here Kevin paused and thoughtfully nibbled her earlobe. She gave a little shiver. When he spoke again his voice was very soft. “But Becky, people will die. No matter who wins, soldiers will die because of our love. It’s not the sort of foundation we want to build a marriage on.”
Becky pulled away. Her eyes began to well up with tears again. “Then I’m trapped. I will have to marry Logan. There’s no honorable way out of it.” She sniffed. “I guess I’m lucky that he’s such a hunk.”
“What!”
“Um, I’m just trying to look on the bright side.”
“Yeah, well don’t get your hopes up, because you’re not marrying Logan.” He jumped to his feet. “Winslow!”
The door snapped open before he got to the second syllable, as though his valet had been standing just on the other side, listening. “Yes, sire?”
“Bring my saber.” Kevin turned back to the princess. “Start planning our wedding, my love. I’m going to get the Ancient Artifact back myself.”
The problem, as Lord Voltmeter saw it, was that he had plenty of evil but not enough lord. True, he had an honest right to be called Lord. He’d purchased the title. It came with a decaying manor house and some boggy salt marsh on the coast of Angostura. Centuries ago it had been adequate grazing land, but the area had subsided and now grew little more than mosquitoes. Voltmeter visited it once, to check the names on the tombstones against the title search. You couldn’t be too careful about something like that. There were a lot of crooks around.
The upgrade from Lord to Overlord was justified also. There were plenty of lords who knuckled under to Voltmeter, either because of blackmail, debts, threats, or a combination of all three. His mercenary army was the largest and deadliest private force in the Twenty Kingdoms, while his evil minions had infiltrated every seat of government. His criminal activities kept the gold rolling in, while leaving a grisly trail through five countries. His competitors were mostly dead.
And the Evil part of the title went without saying. Yes, Voltmeter was hated and feared throughout the continent. But it wasn’t enough.
Voltmeter finished signing the papers on his desk and waited until his Chief Minion left his office. Then he threw open a pair of shutters. Thick gray mist swirled around the Fortress of Doom, and a cold rain pattered on the sill. A handful of forlorn birds huddled under the eaves. Lamplight spilled onto the ramparts below his window, where his mercenary guards, clad in oilskins, patrolled in the wet and fog. The light gleamed on his black silk shirt and reflected off his gold pinkie ring. His Lordship ignored the rain and sat on the sill, stroking his beard thoughtfully.
No, it wasn’t enough. Money wasn’t enough anymore. And he didn’t want just the kind of power that money could buy. Any rich merchant had that. Granted, Voltmeter was an evil, crooked merchant, but when you faced it, that difference was only a matter of degree.
His goal was legitimate rule. He wanted to go beyond stealing, swindling, and extorting. He wanted to tax. That was the ticket. Brutal, repressive taxation could crush your subjects far worse than any simple theft.
And he’d had enough of secretly torturing his enemies to death, deep in some private dungeon. He wanted to flog them publicly, then hang them. Better still, haul them into court on phony, trumped-up charges until they were bankrupt and disgraced, then release them to live out their shattered lives. Ha! You couldn’t do that when you were a criminal.
And hiring a regiment of criminals and cutthroats, no matter how brutal, just didn’t compare with riding into a city before your own army, a real army, with banners and horse-drawn artillery and full-dress uniforms, parading before a sullen, conquered people who had been forced to come out and wave flags. That was power. The way Voltmeter saw it, anyway. He didn’t want to be a Lord. He wanted people to lord over.
The world is full of megalomaniacs who aspire to positions of power. The good news is that most of them never achieve it. At best, they merely get to abuse their apprentices and perhaps send their children to bed without supper. A lucky few will succeed as tax collectors, and fewer still may reach assistant headmaster at some public school. But in places like Rassendas, and Angostura, and Deserae, the real authority was in hereditary positions. You couldn’t buy them. You couldn’t earn them. You had to be born into them, or at least born into the class that was appointed to them. That was not such a bad thing. When power went to the eldest heir, there was a pretty good chance that the man who inherited it would not be a complete lunatic. Whereas when men competed for positions of power, it was generally acknowledged that the ones who got it were invariably the ones who could least be trusted with it.
Men like Voltmeter.
A short knock sounded on the door. Voltmeter started from his reverie. “Yes, Valerie?”
A slim young woman slipped inside. She had long black hair, bloodred lipstick, and fingernails that were sharp enough to field dress an elk. Her heels were high and her clothes were tight and she walked with a sway to her hips that was almost snakelike. There was the usual hesitation, a brief imbalance, as she came under the Overlord’s spell, but she was used to it and recovered immediately. “Excuse me, my lord.” Her voice had a husky sound, as though she had spent too many evenings in smoke-filled taverns and burned her throat too many times with cheap liquor. “The dungeon is getting rather full. Stan suggests it is time for another round of executions.”
“Ah. Whom did we get in the ventilation shaft this week? Anyone good?”
“Just the usual, my lord. A couple of traveling salesmen, a Jehovah’s Witness, and a pair of children selling cookies.”
“Buy two boxes of Thin Mints and kill them all.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The girl swiveled out. Voltmeter watched her leave with appreciation. Being a master criminal had its advantages, not the least of which was that you had hot, kinky babes like Valerie working for you.
Now where was he? Voltmeter tried to pick up his previous train of thought. Ah, yes. Acquiring power. Once in a while, a kingdom would end up being run by a decent, compassionate man who abhorred war and violence. The kind of man who thought that conflicts could be solved by diplomacy and negotiation. At first glance, it might seem that men like these would be pushovers for an Evil Overlord. But no. Nice guys invariably had the sense to install brutal killers—men like Lord Logan—to head up their armies. Their defenses were often well organized. So there was no easy answer there either. Overthrowing a kingdom was a long, bloody, and expensive process.
Or rather, it had been.
Voltmeter smacked one fist into his palm and gave a short laugh. It was a harsh laugh, an unpleasant and chilling sound, and the men on the ramparts looked up and gripped their weapons more tightly. The Overlord pulled the shutters closed. He stood in the center of the room, his head thrown back in silent laughter, his arms raised above his head, his fists clenched in that famous, overly dramatic gesture known to theatre students everywhere as “milking the giant cow.” Yes, it was hokey and clichéd, and Voltmeter knew it, but he loved doing that gesture anyway, the quintessential stance of a man mad with power. He practiced it several times a week.
In private, of course. He wasn’t ready to do it in public, yet. But he had the Ancient Artifact. Soon his army would be ready. Soon they would be invincible. They would break out from their fortress in this isolated valley, they would conquer kingdom after kingdom, and Voltmeter would be there at their head. Eventually he would subjugate the entire world. He would show them what the words “Evil Overlord” really meant.
Then he would milk the giant cow.
Prince Kevin was not stupid. Under normal circumstances, that is. Indeed, the people of Rassendas tended to look upon him with a certain self-congratulation, pleased that this time around they’d gotten themselves a sensible heir to the throne, a solid young man with a good head on his shoulders, not one of those idiots who too often result from upper-class inbreeding. His parents, his relatives, his tutors, his coaches, the various levels of court authorities, and the gossip columnist for the Rassendas Herald all agreed: the Prince of Rassendas was a smart cookie. That, of course, was before Kevin fell in love.
