Gold Throne in Shadow

by M. C. Planck

  The King held the gift in his hand, mollified. “You say the danger is over?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Christopher agreed. “Though the ulvenmen came out of nowhere, so I can’t say they won’t do it again. But we killed a lot of them.”

  “How?” Nordland spluttered, finally giving into outrage.

  Christopher was in a bind. Half a year ago he had wanted to brag about his rifles. Now he wanted to downplay their power, at least until every peasant had one. He tried to come up with another reason for his victory. “The wizard built us a fort of stone. My riflemen are very strong in a fort.”

  “Do you take us for fools?” Nordland came perilously close to hissing, which was unnerving coming from a man of his dignity.

  Wincing, Christopher realized the Duke thought he’d brought up forts as a calculated insult. He really needed Torme here, but the man’s head was rotting uselessly in a bucket. The thought that he was arguing with these people instead of reviving his dead annoyed him, and he gave in to anger himself. “Go and see for yourself, then.”

  “Not likely,” the King said. “The swamp is unbearable this time of year, and that wizard is unbearable in any season. We’ll take your word for it, since you’ve put your money behind it.” The King, having been paid, was prepared to be satisfied. But Christopher knew Treywan wasn’t going to share it with the rest of this army, and so they would resent him for having dragged them out here and then sent them home without even a chance of making a profit.

  “I’m sorry to have wasted your time,” Christopher said as loudly as he could without shouting, “but I did not expect to survive. The ulvenmen tried to rush us. If they had been more cautious, I would still be trapped in that fort. And then I would have needed your help.”

  He didn’t think they were convinced. And how could they be? He had warned that three thousand slavering monsters were storming toward civilization, and now a dozen dirty men in leather coats were claiming to have cracked the thunder clouds and sent them scuttling. It didn’t seem very believable, even to him.

  “But any who wish to see for themselves are welcome in my garrison. My men will feed you as best they can. My priestess will heal you. If you want to use my fort as a base to hunt ulvenmen, I’ll make you as welcome as I can.”

  “Does he speak truth?” the King asked Faren, who had been standing quietly to the side.

  “For the most part,” Faren said. “He doesn’t actually want anyone to use his fort as a hunting lodge. He’s much too cheap for that.”

  The King roared in amusement, and a round of laughter went through assembled knights.

  “If we hurry, we can make Cannenberry by nightfall,” the King said to his mounted entourage. Turning to Faren, he added, “Your Vicar sets a fine table, which I freely confess endears him to me. Will we see you there?”

  “Of course, my lord,” Faren replied politely. “Although I would have a word with this young jackanapes first.”

  “Have a basketful,” laughed the King. “Then thresh them out until you discover his secret. I would do it myself, but apparently my inquisitors are useless.” Casually the King referred to Christopher’s brutal torture, reminding everyone of his unimpeachable authority. Christopher found it crass.

  But he hung his head in silence and deference while the King turned and galloped off. He was careful to give Nordland no offense as the Duke glowered at him, before following the rest of the entourage. He even avoided staring at the disgruntled feudal levies, as the army disintegrated into angry buzzing chaos and spilled out in random directions. They hadn’t been invited to Samerhaven for a meal, and now they would have to find their own ways home.

  “Where is Torme?” Faren asked, still smiling his false smile.

  “In one of those wagons,” Christopher answered, still hanging his head in an approximation of humility. “In a barrel. A small one.”

  “Do you have many barrels?” Faren nodded like he was agreeing with a comment about the weather.

  “Sixty-four. And twenty-four of them are the small ones.”

  Faren turned his face away from the army and stroked his beard.

  “Gods, Christopher. You bring us weeks of labor.”

  “I can pay,” Christopher said, obdurate. “If you need to make a profit, raise your prices.”

  “As always, you underestimate us. We are not ungrateful to your soldiers for their heroism. But we fear to be seen as your lackeys. For Krellyan to dance to your tune every season is to invite questions.”

  “That’s why I said you can raise your prices. Then people will know you’re just taking advantage of my inexhaustible wealth.”

  Faren stroked Royal’s head, and the horse snuffled at him affectionately. Faren softened his face and his voice. “What really happened out there?”

  Christopher sighed, letting go of his anger and frustration. “We fought our asses off, Faren. For one terrible night we clung to life by our fingernails. We thought we were dying to give the Kingdom a few hours more preparation for a horde of ulvenmen. And then I come out here and get this. . . .”

  “This is better than I had hoped, Christopher. The King did not arrest you, Nordland did not ride you down on the spot, and no one denounced you. You must admit, your victories are suspicious.”

  Christopher wanted to be offended at their ingratitude, but he couldn’t be. He knew perfectly well that the lords should be suspicious of him. He was plotting a democratic upheaval, after all. So he changed the subject.

  “I need to get these wagons to the Cathedral. I’m stretched to the limit with preservation spells.”

  “That would be unwise,” Faren mused. “You should not be riding in the same direction as the rest of the peerage of the realm. I will take your wagons. Captain Steuben and his knights accompany me; they will provide adequate protection. Although we won’t tell him what he is protecting. I don’t think he would be happy.”

  Christopher managed a weak grin. Steuben would chew his ear off if he knew. The man had already warned Christopher what his generosity to commoners would earn him, and now he would be one big “I told you so.”

  “Can I go to Knockford first? I need supplies.”

  Faren sighed, but he didn’t say no. “Give Samerhaven a wide berth. And keep your wits sharp. I would warn you of the danger, except it seems you carry danger with you. Dare I ask how Disa and Karl fared?”

  “They’re fine. I promoted Disa to Prelate, by the way. We thought we would need her healing for the siege.”

  “On behalf of the Saint, I thank you for your contribution to our Church.” Faren was duly impressed.

  “Too bad it’s not tax-deductible.” Christopher tried to make a joke out of it. Faren ignored it with a quirked eyebrow.

  “And yourself?”

  “Vicar,” Christopher admitted, “but after you’re done raising my men and restoring Torme’s and D’Kan’s rank, I won’t be able to make seventh.”

  “Gods.” Faren put his hand to his brow, massaged the worry lines there. “You really did kill thousands of ulvenmen.”

  “About fifteen hundred, we think. But it was the dinosaur riders that really paid off.” Those monsters would have eaten Nordland’s cavalry for lunch. The only thing that had saved Christopher was fifteen feet of stone.

  “Your handful of men have spared the Kingdom a terrible blow. And yet you ride from this meeting in disfavor. Do you know how to avoid this, Christopher? Do you understand how to earn the lords’ trust, instead of their suspicion?”

  “No,” Christopher admitted.

  “It is a simple expense of tael. And yet, though I know you to be generous to a fault, I know you will not do it. Simply promote your men. As many as you can, to first-rank. Make them knights, and the mantle of hero will rest comfortably on their shoulders. The realm will admire them, instead of squinting at them through narrowed eyes.”

  “No,” Christopher sighed. He wasn’t here to create an elite group of heroes. Trying to find a way to explain it to
Faren, he said, “Even if I could afford it, how could I promote the next draft?”

  Faren grimaced. “Why would you want to? We cannot give you another regiment. Next year’s recruits must serve a different lord, and we cannot even say who. It would be typical of the King to give them to Nordland. Logical, even.”

  Christopher did some grimacing of his own. “We’ll see about that.” He still had enough tael left over to promote someone to the fifth-rank. Karl didn’t want a promotion, but for the sake of the men, he might reconsider.

  With a snort, Faren waved Christopher off. “I have enough of my own problems. I don’t need to hear about yours. Keep your head low and do not tarry long from your post. But do not worry about your dead. They are our men, too.”

  The hostility of the recent encounter put this ready friendship into stark relief. “Thank you,” Christopher said, meaning it. Galloping over to his cavalry, he informed them of the change of plans.

  They trusted Faren, too. They would have died without hesitation to protect the dead bodies in their care, but they turned them over to one old white-haired man with relief. Only the wagon drivers would accompany Faren.

  Freed of the wagons, the horsemen doubled their speed and headed by back roads and byways for the heart of Christopher’s empire.

  He had been in the swamp so long he had forgotten that the season was changing. Here in Burseberry the mornings were crisp and cool, and soon his training camp would shut down for the harvest season.

  But not yet. The lead sergeant, the mercenary turned draftee known as Bondi, had turned the recruits out for inspection. They stood in wobbly lines, hardly more than boys, scared of the future, of Bondi, and, of course, of Christopher. It was hard to remember that his men had been like this only a year ago.

  He knew he was supposed to say something inspiring. But all he had was the truth.

  “You owe me three years,” he told them. “Don’t think you’ll get out of that by dying. Fix it in your head. No matter what, you’re coming back to do your time.”

  They didn’t know what to make of that, and Christopher didn’t know how to explain it to them. The memory of snapping jaws and barrels of bodies could not be communicated in words.

  But afterward, in private quarters, Bondi could guess. “Another battle, my lord Curate?”

  “Over sixty dead. But we won. It’s Vicar now.”

  Bondi nodded in satisfaction while Svengusta laughed.

  “Just watching your rise makes me dizzy,” the old man said. “It’s like you strapped your arse to one of your rockets.”

  “And Karl?” Helga asked, with more direct interest than she had ever shown before.

  “He’s fine. Torme and D’Kan bought it this time.” He realized they didn’t know who D’Kan was. “Niona’s brother.” Then he realized they didn’t know about that either, and he had to tell them the sad news.

  Helga burst into tears and ran out of the room. He was a little surprised that she didn’t turn to him for comfort, like she used to. Not that he had any to offer.

  Svengusta was always thinking of others first. “Lalania will be hard set over this, Christopher. She will blame herself for not predicting his fall and intervening to redirect it. Her College thinks it can influence even the decisions of madmen.”

  Christopher was far more sympathetic to Lalania’s view than Svengusta’s. He had encouraged the man to violence, had profited off of his dueling, even when Lalania had warned him that Cannan was shirking his good manners. He had ignored the man’s growing brutality, unwilling to see it as long as Niona pretended it wasn’t there.

  At least he wouldn’t have to tell the troubadour. She would almost certainly have ferreted out the news on her own.

  Normalcy tried to return. Bondi went back to his duties, and Christopher started in on paperwork. But Svengusta overruled him.

  “Set down your rank for a while,” the old man said, “and come have a drink in the tavern, like old times. Your duty can wait till tomorrow.”

  The villagers welcomed him like he had never left, and they didn’t ask for news. Instead, they talked about the weather, horses, and pigs. At first, he fretted, feeling like there was something more important he should be doing, but in the end Svengusta was proved right. The evening, with its thoroughly mundane and predictable sameness, was both relaxing and invigorating. Relaxing because no one expected anything of him except a report on how often it rained in the swamp. Invigorating because it reminded him what he was doing all of this for, anyway.

  The only notable change was that everyone was drinking lager now, in a sign of solidarity with their weak-bellied favorite priest.

  Cantering into Knockford at the head of a column of cavalry was like showing up in a limousine. It made everybody look.

  He paid his respects to the Vicar first, including a report on the battle. There wasn’t a newspaper printing dispatches from the front. The people back home only heard rumors or what the lords told them. It explained how the draft levees could be treated so badly. Nobody knew what was going on.

  He also told her about his assassin. She listened with a stony face to the tale of evil and then shrugged it off.

  “You need not worry about us. As long as you spend little time here, she will not risk coming into my lands. Indeed, things have been positively peaceful in your absence.” The way she said it made the hint obvious.

  Casually he pulled a small lump of tael out of his pocket and set it on the desk in front of her. “One more thing. I need to start making some deposits against those bonds. So I’d like to sell this to the Church, for gold.”

  Vicar Rana glowered sourly at the shiny purple ball. “I doubt we have so much gold on hand.”

  “I don’t need it now. You can just keep it on account for me. At your usual interest rate.”

  For a person who was being bought off, Rana was remarkably grumpy. No doubt she hated having to agree with his actions. Just the appearance of approval would prickle her sensibilities; the actuality of profiting from him would stab her like needles.

  But she would take it, just the same. They were all on the same side, after all, and the cause needed all the help it could get.

  “Are you sure your precipitous advance can spare it?” she said, with exactly as much irony as the words implied.

  “Plenty where that came from.” He knew it was foolish the instant it left his mouth.

  The play-acting vanished, and she spoke with complete seriousness. Not as a cantankerous old woman but as a peer in a world where moral choices were never easy and often fatal. “Do not be flippant, Christopher. This was won at a great price, both to you and to the creatures you slew.”

  He bit his lip and apologized. “I know that. Believe me, I know.”

  She stared at him, hard, the annoyance of her previous glowering replaced with critical inspection. Like she was trying to see into his soul. He squirmed a bit under that unsparing glare.

  Finally she relaxed and started breathing again.

  “If you wanted to know, you could have just cast a spell,” he said.

  “You rely on magic too much,” she told him. He found that ironic and aggravating, but she wasn’t interested in arguing anymore. It had passed beyond mere rivalry. With one hand she pointed him out of her office.

  From one sharp-tongued woman to the next. Fae was as arch as ever and utterly unapologetic, receiving him in the refurbished magic shop, sitting on overstuffed armchairs while a young girl served tea in fine porcelain and silver. Although Fae had not yet discovered the imposing power of desks, she understood corporate office decor well enough. He felt intimidated by her casual elegance and expensive furniture.

  Again it was ironic and aggravating, since he was paying for it all.

  “If you wish to inspect the accounts, I can retrieve them for you.”

  She had headed him off at the pass. If he asked for the accounts now, he would seem graceless and paranoid. Of course, he didn’t really care about what he seemed
, so it wasn’t much of a defense. But luckily for her, he didn’t care about the accounts either. As long as she spent his money on things that profited them both, he would look the other way.

  “Can you increase production?” he asked instead.

  Surprisingly, she gave him a positive answer. “Yes. I can still double the amount of sulfur.” And then the hook. “But it would tax me to the limit, and I do have other duties. If you are willing to spare the expense, perhaps I could look for an apprentice.”

  Christopher tried to hide his automatic wince. Putting someone under Fae’s control seemed like a bad idea. But then he remembered she already had dozens of young women who depended on her for their income. He hadn’t heard any complaints from them. Fae wasn’t a tyrant. Her mistreatment of men was more about payback than unbridled lust for power.

  “I would have to approve of whoever you picked. And we would have to agree to a promotion schedule for them.” It wouldn’t be fair to leave them trapped as apprentices forever. Even if that was all he ever wanted out of them.

  “Naturally,” she said. Her friendly tone meant she thought she’d won. “One more small detail, Christopher. As my patron, you need to provide for my education. Although you cannot buy spells for me, you can finance my purchase of them. Since these deals are difficult to arrange and secretive by nature, it would be best if you would allocate a budget to my discretion.”

  Talking to this woman was the most expensive habit he had ever indulged.

  “What brought this up?” he asked, stalling for time.

  She smiled, becoming the helpful woman who appeared from time to time in her pretty, avaricious body.

  “You are rich and famous. This attracts attention, and expectations of profit. I have already had several offers.”

  “Anything interesting?” He wasn’t sure what powers wizards had, especially at her low rank.

  “They were overpriced,” she sniffed. Grinning, he realized her innate stinginess would protect his purse more than any oversight he could inflict on her.