Gold Throne in Shadow

by M. C. Planck

  So, alone with his fear, he ran after the coach, which seemed to be in some haste. He struggled to keep it in sight for several blocks, gradually falling behind as exhaustion gained on him. But when the gap had opened up to a hundred yards, the coach stopped in front of a handsome building, and its occupants disembarked and hurried inside.

  Brown and square and three stories tall, with thick oak double doors and bay windows on the upper floors, it looked surprisingly like a good New York brownstone. The thought of storming it to rescue a child about to be sacrificed to dark gods momentarily seemed absurd. Christopher stood in front of the steps, checked by sheer normalcy. It was a calm, sunny day on a busy city street; how could he single-handedly assault somebody’s house?

  “My lord,” called a voice from the nearest intersection. Torme and a squad of hard-breathing soldiers came jogging up. “You should not have gone out without an escort. You should not have come here alone.”

  “But I’m not alone. You’re here, and just in time. It’s happening now, Torme. I saw the Gold Curate grab a kid off the street! They’re in there, right now. We’ve got to do something.”

  Torme frowned at the building, glanced over his squad, and looked up and down the street. “There,” he said, pointing at a wagon full of cabbages. The squad of soldiers descended on it, pushing it onto its side while Torme intimidated the driver into silence. The men knocked off the wheels and liberated an axle. Gathering around their newly acquired battering ram, they prepared to charge up the steps.

  “We will necessarily lose the element of surprise,” Torme said.

  “Or not,” Christopher said, and cast one of his new spells on the axle. He had memorized it as a joke, intending to use it on the bard the next time she lectured him on his many failings, which he assumed would be minutes after the next time he saw her. Now it would be put to serious use.

  He touched the battering ram, and silence washed out from it, pooling around them. “. . . ,” Christopher said, intending to say let’s go, but the silence was complete. The noise of the city was blanked out, along with the sound of his own breathing. He grabbed the front end of the axle instead.

  Torme gestured, and the men surged forward. The axle slammed into the door, visibly shaking it. The men struggled a bit to get into rhythm without any verbal cues, falling into unison only on the third swing. After the fourth the door sagged. On the fifth the left side fell back into the hall, landing at the feet of a wide-eyed butler.

  The butler tried to scream, but the men threw the log into the hall. His voice cut off, the butler turned to flight. Christopher sprinted after him, catching him by the back of the neck. He pulled the man back, handed him off to Torme, and ran down the hall. Torme passed the butler down the line, each soldier in turn passing him to the last and youngest, who pushed him up against the wall and threatened him with his rifle.

  A few meters from the entrance the noise of the world broke over them like ocean spray. Their footsteps boomed in Christopher’s ears, and he wondered how the household remained unaware.

  Torme was still not speaking; he sent a man down each hall or door they passed with a wave of his hand. Christopher instinctively looked for a basement, and when he threw open a door and saw stairs down, he shouted, “Here!” Assuming he was followed, he went down three steps at a time, and now his footfalls truly rang out, accompanying the jingle of his mail and his scabbard knocking at the wall as he tried to draw the sword.

  He burst into the bottom room and a terrible scene. The lad was hanging upside down from his knees, his shirt off, the Gold Curate striking him on the back barehanded. A servant knelt in front of the child with a bowl and rag; several others stood in the background, watching mournfully.

  “Get away from him!” Christopher shouted, which he realized was a singular waste of words when Joadan answered by casting a spell. There were better things to do with speech than threaten people; you could use it to kill in this world. Christopher’s self-recriminations were cut short when a huge black panther leapt out of the shadows on the floor—not that there had been shadows on the floor an instant ago—and tried to bite his face off.

  He went down on his back, both hands locked around the beast’s throat to hold it off. The animal had unnaturally glowing yellow eyes, but its hot, fetid breath in his face felt terrifyingly real. He could see its fangs, yellowed and fearsome. Once it realized it could not bite him, it latched onto his shoulders with its front paws and proceeded to rake his belly, trying to scoop him out like a melon baller.

  He could feel its claws scrabbling on his chain-mail, links catching and bursting off to tinkle across the room. In another few seconds the dribble would become a deluge and his mail would cease to exist. Even now claws raked through rents, burning lines of fire down his torso. His tael, though vastly greater than when he had been first-rank and thus only twice as hard to kill as a mortal man, would still only last seconds under this sustained assault.

  Torme leapt into action, straddling the beast and grappling its head with both hands. At that precise moment Christopher truly felt the sting of his penury; he still had not bought the priest a blade, which would have spared him the sight of a man wrestling a panther barehanded. The two of them were strong enough to immobilize the cat’s head, though they could not dislodge its grasp on Christopher or stop its raking attack. Then a soldier stepped up, put his rifle into the cat’s mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  The animal burst like a pillow into a thousand gold rose petals, which slowly faded into gray and then nothingness after landing on the ground. Christopher was lifted to his feet by his men, who faced him in the right direction and put his sword in his hand. He ignored the steel rings still dropping from his armor and pointed his blade across the room.

  Joadan’s servants were readying themselves for a desperate defense, several with daggers and one wielding a footstool. Joadan was pushing a servant toward the back of the room, uttering harsh commands, his sword drawn and already softly glowing. The servant was carrying the boy, and the boy was reaching out to the Curate, with both hands, crying out. Once Christopher’s hearing recovered from the rifle shot, he understood the boy’s plea.

  “Daddy!”

  Christopher opened his mouth and closed it. There were no words appropriate to the situation. Instead, he dropped his sword and raised his hands in surrender.

  “My lord?” Torme asked, clearly astounded.

  “Drop your weapons,” Christopher said. “Everybody drop your weapons.”

  “He was attacking the child,” Torme argued.

  “No,” Christopher said, “he was saving his son’s life.”

  At that Torme threw down his wooden sword and raised his hands. The other soldiers looked around nervously before setting down their guns and imitating their officer.

  “Pick up your sword,” Joadan said. His voice was tightly controlled, like he paid for every word and meant to get his money’s worth. “I would not have it said I killed an unarmed man.”

  “No,” Christopher answered. “We were wrong. I was wrong.”

  “You burst into my house, assault my servants, terrify my child, and you think I was wrong suffices? Pick up your sword and prepare to die.”

  “You’re a priest,” Christopher said. “Why don’t you just heal him?”

  “Oh,” said Joadan, clapping his free hand to the side of his face in comic surprise. “Why didn’t I think of that? Why did it never occur to me to use the power of the gods to undo the fate the gods had bestowed upon my child? All my life I have stumbled in confusion, needing only your brilliant insight to set me free.”

  Christopher felt his facing turning red, but he did not let it distract him from Joadan’s words.

  “If you can’t, then let me.”

  Joadan put his hand down and stared at Christopher with incredulity. This was a comforting development, as it was by now a response Christopher was used to.

  “Do you truly take me for a lackwit?” Joadan said, when it
became clear Christopher wasn’t going to say anything more. “Would you trap me so easily?”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “What price would you have me pay?” Joadan said. He didn’t seem to think it was funny anymore. “The Gold Throne has forbidden commerce between our Churches. Should a single coin pass between us, the Apostle would have my head.”

  Silly politics. “Then I’ll do it for free.”

  Joadan’s sword sagged, as if it could not bear the weight of so much stupidity.

  “Surely you must know, I took a vow: to pay for, and be paid for, every transaction; to neither give nor receive charity; to be only what I can be, not what others make of me. The Yellow Emperor would have my ranks for the sake of that vow. You offer me a choice between death and impotence.”

  Apparently his metaphysics were even sillier. As a priest, Joadan was naturally bound to a certain code of conduct derived from the precepts of his Patron’s affiliation. Christopher hadn’t expected that code to be cripplingly stupid. His own religious vows were vastly less confining.

  “And yet,” Joadan said, his sword rising up again to point at Christopher’s throat, “you do me even further insult. Did you think your own power greater than mine? Does your god favor you with miracles instead of mere spells?”

  “Sometimes,” Torme said. “This is the Lord Curate Christopher, whose mere survival is a miracle. You would be wise to reconsider your threats.”

  Improbably, Joadan’s face fell, and he turned to the side in disgust.

  “Go,” he said. “Begone.”

  Despite this welcome change of attitude, Christopher could not leave well enough alone. He had to ask. “Why?”

  Joadan glared at him while answering. “The consequences of intemperate oaths. I swore to spare the hand that brought low the Baron Black Bartholomew, regardless of its color. That odious stain on my Church’s honor is now expunged. And with this, my oath is expired. Our next encounter will not be similarly constrained. Now leave, as you entered: in silence.”

  Christopher had to bite his tongue to stop himself from apologizing again. Instead he picked up his sword and sheathed it. His men followed him out quietly, Christopher not even trusting to speak to the poor butler, still standing against the wall. He settled for patting the man on the shoulder and grimacing an apology.

  Standing on the street, watching the butler try to stand the broken door back in its place, and surrounded by a group of cautious but angry cabbage-sellers, Torme was the first to speak.

  “I confess myself confused.”

  “That makes two of us,” Christopher said. He took out his purse and started counting gold coins into the wagoneer’s hand, until the man’s face brightened. He added a few more, for good measure, and then led his squad down the street in a random direction, since he still didn’t know which way was home.

  “That seems unlikely,” Torme said, “as you are the author of my confusion. Why did you condone the Curate’s child-beating? It is legal, of course, yet you spoke of life-saving.”

  “That’s the part that confused you?” Christopher said. “Okay, look, the kid has cystic fibrosis.” The words sounded wrong to him, and he realized they were in English. “Basically, he’s drowning in his own snot. Joadan was clearing his lungs.”

  “I have not heard of this disease. It must be in the advanced studies.”

  That was nice of Torme, although of course Christopher had not actually undergone advanced studies. He wasn’t even sure they existed.

  “It’s a genetic thing,” Christopher said, and again the word was in English. Torme nodded, pretending to understand, but Christopher stopped walking.

  “Wait a minute. Maybe that’s why Joadan can’t cure him. The spell for diseases—it doesn’t fix allergies, right?”

  “One must treat allergic reactions as a poison. But of course you knew that,” Torme said, managing to look only a little alarmed at Christopher’s ignorance.

  Christopher backed up and tried a different tack.

  “What spell cures birth defects?”

  “You mean, like Charles’s missing fingers?”

  “Yes! Joadan’s boy is like Charles, except what he is missing is, uh, not fingers. Something internal.”

  “This would not seem to help. Only the Saint can regenerate, and Joadan can no more deal with him than he could with you.”

  “Well, then, maybe he should switch sides.”

  Torme frowned. “It is not perhaps as easy it seems. Particularly for a man already so far advanced in age and rank, and learned in theology.”

  “Ah . . . sorry,” Christopher mumbled. Torme was not just the only person he knew who had switched teams; he was the only person he’d ever heard of switching. Making light of it was incredibly rude.

  Torme acknowledged his apology by smoothly changing topics.

  “Perhaps you were confused why he would loathe Black Bart. I can shed some light. Bart of course did not take his knights into his counsel. Nonetheless we detected hints of disagreement. At the time I took it for mere rivalry, but perhaps it was a sign of schism.”

  “Schism?” Christopher couldn’t imagine how that could occur. He was under the assumption that if he were screwing up, Marcius would appear and set him straight. Wouldn’t it work the same for everyone else?

  “Your own existence has caused division in the White. Imagine how much more so if our affiliation did not command us to humility. In other faiths, where personal power is a direct sigil of divine favor, there is somewhat less . . . cooperation.”

  “Don’t the gods have anything to say about that?”

  Torme looked at him askance. “A priest expects to meet with his god but once, at his initiation, and that is a rigidly formal affair. Even a mere conversation with a god must be hedged on all sides by limits and restrictions, else risk violating the sacred compact.”

  That didn’t really describe his interaction with Marcius. Christopher felt it might sound like name-dropping to bring it up, though.

  “Well, if there is a split in the Gold Church, maybe we can use it to drive out Joadan.”

  His assistant didn’t look very happy with the thought, but he held his tongue.

  “What is it? Damn it, Faren told you to be frank with me. You defer too much to my judgment. I need you to be more assertive. You need to tell me when I’m making a mistake.”

  “I completely agree,” Torme said, perhaps thinking of the most recent debacle, though still too polite to mention it.

  Christopher took out his little silver vial, opened it, and poured out a precise amount of purple.

  “I’m sorry I took so long to do this. Write to Dereth and tell him you’ll need a sword.”

  Torme was polite and grave. “As you will, my lord.”

  But the man was not invulnerable, and he had to ask the question that preyed on him, as it must on anyone in his position. “What if the Marshall does not accept me?” Acolyte-ranks did not require the direct approval of the god, but a full rank did.

  Christopher shrugged, unconcerned. “I don’t expect that to be the case.” He did not consciously realize they were the same words the Saint had said to him, over a year ago. “Now tell me: what’s wrong with my plan?”

  Torme put the pellet of tael in his mouth before answering.

  “It seems profitless to wash the walls with mud.”

  That was an excellent point. It would not be an improvement to replace the likes of Joadan with the likes of Black Bart. He would have to think of something else. And soon—Joadan would likely be eager to provoke another confrontation, one that Christopher wasn’t sure he could win and was even less sure he wanted to.

  “You should not be seen in this state,” Torme said, unbuckling the remnants of Christopher’s chain mail. His shirt came away with it, having been reduced to rags. “Your dignity would suffer for it.”

  Torme took off his own shirt and handed it over. Christopher objected, saying, “What about your . . .” but he tra
iled off into shocked silence when he saw the scars on Torme’s back. Old and long healed, but the sight still sent a sympathetic twinge down his spine.

  “I am a commoner for one more day. And commoners have no dignity,” Torme answered. Hefting the tattered mail over his shoulder, he took the lead, and Christopher and the men followed him home.

  8

  A NIGHT ON THE TOWN

  The army loved him, but they were young men. For the first few days, just cleaning and settling into the barracks sufficed to keep them busy. Inevitably, though, the town they were embedded in began to lure their gaze and drain their attention. Christopher stepped up the busywork, but he knew that very soon someone would slip and do something foolish like sneaking out. And then he would have to dispense real punishment.

  Torme knew it too. “’Tis hard to tell the men they cannot venture out at night for a drink or two, especially when you are paying them drinking money.”

  “Do you think we can hold out till Karl gets here?” Letting this pack of boisterous young men loose on this town would create problems Christopher had no idea how to handle.

  “No,” Torme said, insensitive to Christopher’s desire for an easy answer. “My suggestion would be to put them under the command of the Captain, building walls and training with pikes.” The pikes had started arriving, and Torme had declared them to be of acceptable quality and only twice as expensive as they should be.

  But Christopher was not going to turn command of his army over to anybody else. He had a brief moment of sympathy for the UN Peacekeeping forces, who were routinely expected to do just that. Back when he was a civilian, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal, and he had authoritatively shaken his head in dismay at the foibles of military officers. Now the shoe was on the other foot, and it pinched.

  “Pick the best ones, and give them a night’s leave. Make sure they understand that if they misbehave, there will be no more leave for anyone.” He hoped that would buy him a few nights.