by Garon Whited
“Before we go any further,” Torvil said, “I would like to ask something, if I may, Sire.”
“Sure.”
“Assuming the Queen is empowered to reign and the reins of the kingdom placed in her hands, what becomes of us? We are not knights of the Queen, after all.”
“I think I would want you to watch over the royal house—the princes and princesses of Rethven. No doubt Lissette will want to pick her own bodyguards, but she may want your oversized feet to fill those mammoth shoes. Personally, I’m pretty sure I won’t be sticking around the palace, nor would I be welcome. It would be nice to know someone I trust is watching out for the kids.”
Torvil and Kammen looked at each other. It wasn’t quite the same as Malana and Malena looking at each other, but it reminded me of them.
“It will be done,” Torvil assured me. Kammen nodded grimly.
“Good. Now, which of these objectives do you three think you can handle?”
“None of them, Sire,” Seldar replied. The other two nodded.
“None of them?”
“None.”
“Then, if I may make so bold as to ask, what do you intend to do?”
“Keep you alive long enough for you to do so.”
“Fat lot of help you are. I was hoping to hand all my problems off to you and wait for results.”
Seldar smiled. Torvil smiled. Kammen grinned. Dantos remained inscrutable.
Strangely enough, that made me feel better.
“Dantos,” I said.
“Yes, Sire.”
“You’ve been running the place in my absence?”
“Yes, Sire. With help from the lady Mary and Sir Seldar.”
“Very good. I’ve placed Seldar in charge because of his seniority and experience, but I want you to know your familiarity with the city is vital.”
“The lady Mary has already made mention of it.”
“Really?”
“She is often out all day or all night, and always has many questions when she returns.”
“I see.” I made a note to talk to Mary. What was she doing? Out enjoying the place? Or actively listening to rumors, gauging the people, polling the voters? Probably the second one.
Whups. No voters. It’s an absolute monarchy. Make it “polling the peasants.”
“Well,” I continued, “I’m pleased she has you to consult. I’ll expect you to advise Seldar, too, and to be at every meeting. There’s no telling when your knowledge or opinions will be sought.”
“As you wish, Sire.”
“Another thing. What do you think of Nothar?”
“He is an honest man, loyal and brave. His loyalties are divided. He wishes to be loyal to his father, but he also wishes to be loyal to his king, and he wants to be loyal to his…” Dantos trailed off. “I am not sure what she is.”
“Tianna?”
“Yes.”
“I think we can say she’s his girlfriend.” Rethven doesn’t really have a word for girl-friend. I used amisincae, a word from Zirafel, then had to explain it to everyone. Rethven, being somewhat short on feminism and long on chauvinism, only has a few relationship categories for ladies: children, acquaintance, betrothed, wives, widows, and dead. Women who aren’t “ladies” have a couple of other possible categories, all of which have some variation on “mistress” or “prostitute.” There simply aren’t enough women with sufficient independence and power to have a fundamental cultural impact on a culture this static. I’ve often thought I could fix that. Cultural changes take time, but I’m immortal. At least, I might fix it if I ever got to stay awake and active for long enough.
“Girlfriend,” Kammen repeated, as though tasting it. “I like it.”
“You would,” Torvil replied. He seemed half joking, half sneering.
“Just ’cause I’m the handsome one and you the ugly one—” Kammen said, serenely, but I interrupted.
“So, Dantos? Nothar will definitely be helpful as long as we don’t have to cross his father’s interests? And then it could be a problem?”
“I would say that is fair. He would not betray you, I think, but he would not think it wrong to also help his father, the Baron, on his own initiative, if it did not interfere with your own plans.”
“That’s less than I’d hope for in a knight, but more than I can expect from most people,” I mused. “I can live with it. It’s good to know and may be important. Thank you.” Dantos bowed from the neck, accepting the implied praise.
The world bent. It twisted, in fact, as though someone grabbed it by the edges and tried to rotate it while the center remained fixed—and tried to twist me with it. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I didn’t like it. Reflexively, I grabbed it right back and turned it the other way, relieving the tension on myself and, hopefully, on the fabric of space around me.
All four of my knights had swords out and were standing around me, dividing their attention between me and anything that might show up outside their perimeter. They guarded me while I wrestled with the space-time continuum and the weird ways it wanted to warp. It went on for a while—two minutes? Ten? —before whatever it was gave up.
When things settled down, Torvil asked the obvious question.
“What was that?”
“I think,” I said, slowly, still gripping the edge of the table, “someone wants to see me.”
“A message?’
“No, a summons. I think I resisted it.”
Which made me wonder. If the astral girl-spirit hadn’t lightning-blasted me, could I have done something similar with the initial summons? If not, how did I resist this attempt? Did they think with their recently-enhanced powers they could simply summon me without weakening me first? And how did they know where I was without pinpointing me with another spirit? Or was a pinpoint location required? Maybe they only needed to get the right world?
Naturally, I thought it was Johann & Family. And I knew it was a space-bending attempt to grab me. I know how a gate spell works, and this felt like the initial stages of one. The fact they could even try such a thing without a perimeter-defining locus at this end said a lot about how powerful they had become.
Assuming, of course, it wasn’t someone entirely different in this universe. But that’s another level of paranoia and problems.
It happened again. I resisted it again. Then a third, fourth, and fifth time. It wasn’t easy—that is, it wasn’t a casual thing, like brushing off an insect. It was more like moving a heavy piece of furniture; it involved a fair amount of effort, but the outcome wasn’t really in doubt.
Inter-universal logistics being as difficult as they were, that roughed in well with my estimation of their powers. Dragging me out of this universe and into theirs wouldn’t be impossible with an open nexus, and they had four. But why keep trying if it failed? Could they know their summons was actively counteracted, or were they unable to tell why it failed?
After the fifth attempt, they apparently gave up. Seldar provided me with a handkerchief. I proceeded to dab at sweat on my upper lip and forehead.
“Is there anything we can do?” Seldar asked.
“Not at the moment. I think they’ve quit for now.”
“Who is it?”
“Those magi from another world, I think. I’ll work on something automatic to defend me as soon as I can.”
“Very good, Sire, because I do not understand what happened.”
I put the handkerchief away and noticed the edge of the stone slab serving as a table. It had strange ripples in it, changes in the texture of the stone. There were odd, overlapping lines, somewhat curved, like an interference pattern or two mismatched spirals. The curves seemed to center somewhere off the table—about where I was sitting. I checked the heavy, wooden chair for ripples. Yes, it was oddly patterned, too, almost as though the grain of the wood itself was altered.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m not real clear on it yet, myself.”
When our inner circle meeting broke up, I sent the four
of them off and asked them to send in Mary. Seldar and Dantos headed out, but Torvil and Kammen remained. Seldar looked back quizzically. There was an exchange of headshake and eyebrow language before he shrugged and swung the door shut behind himself.
“Something the matter?” I asked.
“Sire,” Torvil began, “we need a word in private.”
I gestured, sending an arc of power into the air, then widened and rotated it until it surrounded the chamber.
“It won’t last long, but if anybody breaks it to listen in, I’ll know it. Talk fast.”
“Sire, during the course of our duties in the Palace, we had ample opportunity to discover things, overhear things, which, while not officially part of our mandate—” Torvil began, but Kammen interrupted.
“The Queen’s doing the Court Wizard. Liam is the only kid that’s yours.”
Torvil stared at Kammen, aghast. I merely looked at them mildly.
“Well,” Kammen went on, addressing Torvil, “he said talk fast. You were blathering like Seldar.”
“I hadn’t intended to be so…”
“Blunt?” I supplied.
“Yes. Sire.”
“It’s okay. I suspected the two of them were… Anyway. I wasn’t aware of the paternity business, precisely, but okay.”
“Okay?”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. He wasn’t getting it, so I reached for an excuse. “Look, Liam is the prince, right? He’s mine. No problem. Lissette is the Queen and can have kids by anyone she cares about. Given that we have magic to prevent a pregnancy or stop one, if she’s chosen to have children with Thomen, what do I care? They’re half-royal, at least, and Thomen doesn’t seem a bad choice for a father. Liam will need advisors and loyal nobility when he takes the throne. If everyone is raised as part of one big family, what’s the problem?”
“That,” Torvil said, “is unbelievably tolerant.”
“I’m happy to hear it,” Kammen countered, then added, “Beats the last nine years.” Torvil winced.
“He has a point, Sire,” Torvil admitted. “We’re not really used to you being…”
“Nice,” Kammen finished.
“Yeah, nice. We expected you to tear the table apart at the very least.”
“I’m me again,” I reminded them. “I’m not the Demon King. I’m the king you would have had if I wasn’t stupid.”
“Speaking for myself,” Torvil began.
“We’re glad you’re back,” Kammen finished.
“So am I. Now can I talk to Mary?”
They went to swing the door open. While Torvil pushed, Kammen ran back to me, grabbed me in a bear hug that lifted me completely off the ground, then ran after Torvil.
I think he missed me.
Mary came in a few minutes later, carrying a large, wooden tray.
“Second breakfast?” she asked, cheerily.
“This could be hobbit-forming,” I replied. She winced, but sat down. We ate while we talked.
“So, tell me more about this disastrous conversation with Lissette,” I prompted. Mary swallowed and sighed.
“Look, before we get into that, we need—I need—to understand a little more about the whole political marriage thing.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“For starters, how do you feel about Lissette? Compared to me? I need to know where I stand.”
Either she was listening at the door or it was a pressing concern. Either way, it was a good question and deserved an answer. We ate in silence for a minute while I put my thoughts together. It wasn’t really a matter of deciding how things stood, merely a matter of how to explain them.
“The way I see it,” I said, “Lissette is the Queen. I’m the King, but I’m trying to give the kingdom to the Queen so I can walk away. The stigma of the Demon King is too much for me to handle; sticking around won’t help anyone.”
“And this relates… how?”
“Legally, I’m married. I’m also a king, which means—at least, from what I understand of Rethven—that I have other options besides having a wife. Consorts and concubines and so forth. While, legally, I’m married, I’m also allowed, even expected, to, uh, ‘have’ other women.” I sighed. “Patriarchal only starts to cover this culture. Women aren’t actually property, but they’re right next door to it.”
“I’ve noticed. Nobody gives me a hard time, though.”
“Nobody? Not even people who don’t know who you are?”
“You raise a good point,” Mary admitted. “But chauvanists are delicious. They’re like bacon with the blood still in it.”
“I’m going to ask you not to elaborate,” I decided. “Back to my point. As for the royal prerogative of a harem—or unreasonable facsimile—I don’t fully agree with the idea, but in the cases of a purely political marriage, I can see how it’s workable. The marriage cements an alliance, the children are a generational assurance of continued unity, all that stuff. It’s unfair to Lissette, of course; it’s a massive double standard. As a king, I can pretty much do who I please and as I please, but she’s expected to be the faithful wife so as to assure the political aspects of the relationship stay solid.
“As for you, you’re not a political move. While I like Lissette, I’m not in love with her. I respect her, even admire her, but I simply don’t know her well enough to say I love her—although, from what little I know of her, I think I could, given time. However, since the Demon King has apparently done some awful things to her, I’m starting to think I’m not going to get a chance to apologize, much less be a model husband and father for the rest of her life.”
“So, where does that leave me?”
“Officially?”
“Start there.”
“Technically, a ‘consort,’ as we know it, is the non-royal spouse of a reigning monarch. Around here, it’s anyone a member of the nobility chooses to have as an official lover. If Lissette had a lover, he would be—or she would be, I suppose, if Lissette went that way—a consort, as well. It’s kind of like having a second spouse, ranking with-but-after the official spouse.”
“So, what’s a concubine, then?”
“Um. Less dignified. A concubine, at least in Rethven, would be a… hmm. Where a consort has an intimate relationship with the noble person, both physically and emotionally, a concubine is more like a prostitute under exclusive contract. A consort can have a headache, ask for the night off, even tell the noble what to go do with himself and get away with it. They have romantic dinners, go on picnics, read books together by the fireplace in the winter, all that sort of thing. They’re friends as well as lovers, at least in theory. A concubine, on the other hand, has a job to do, and that job is to make the noble happy—and if it involves sex, a foot-rub, peeling grapes, or just lounging around in a skimpy outfit as a pretty piece of living art, that’s what happens.”
“A slave?”
“Not exactly. Maybe someone paid to pretend to be a slave. A concubine can quit. I think. If they couldn’t before, they can now—or should. I’ll have to ask about how well my anti-slavery policies have been enacted.”
“Okay. Now that we have the terms defined, where do I stand?”
“Legally, you qualify as a consort. I know you better than I know Lissette and I like you more. I’m stuck being married to her; she needs the legality to rule Rethven effectively. But I plan to spend my time with you, not her—at least, if you’ll let me.”
Mary smiled and raised a cup in my direction.
“Hail, Halar, Demon King of Rethven. Long may you reign far away from your wife.”
“I admit, I’m relieved to hear you say that.”
“Why?”
“Because I was appallingly nervous this was leading up to something I wouldn’t like.”
Mary put her hand on mine and looked me in the eyes.
“You may be the most interesting man I know,” she said, softly. “Ignoring the magical powers, you’re brilliant, charming, handsome, and tireless. In som
e ways, relentless—it goes with being a little OCD, I think. And you’re as close to an honorable man as I’ve ever met, regardless of what you tell your knights to motivate them. It scares them a little to have to try and live up to being better than you—and the ones I’ve met aren’t counting the Demon King thing, just so you know. They’re thinking of back when you first showed up in this mountain. And, lastly, if I’m ever in trouble, I know you’ll move Heaven and Earth on your way through Hell to save me.”
I didn’t know what to say. While I could agree with a little of it—I can be a little obsessive, and I would go through fire and water to help her—she was way, way off on the rest. But how could I tell her she was delusional? It didn’t seem like a good idea to burst her bubble, so I nodded and went back to eating.
“By the way,” she added, “two other things are on my mind.”
“That makes it a three-track mind, not two.”
“Don’t make me stab you with a fork.”
“I apologize. What’s on your multi-track mind?”
“First, I’ve been poking around town in various disguises, getting wired in and establishing my connections. Dantos has been really helpful in telling me about the place and who I should get to know or get to know about.”
“Good for him. Let me know if you think he needs to be promoted.”
“He needs to be promoted,” she replied. “He’s sharp, respectful, and he can be one smooth operator, let me tell you.”
“Like him?”
“A lot. If I can sell it to his wife, can I borrow him some day while you’re busy?”
“The Consort’s consort? Or just to play with?”
“Jealous?”
“Not yet. But if you can get Laisa to agree, I won’t argue. Want me to baby-sit Caris?”
“Maybe. I’ll see what Laisa has to say about it.”
“Definitely start there, but be prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer. What else?”
“One of the things I’ve discovered is the church of shiny stuff has a right bastard for a leader.”
“Um. Lotar?”
“That’s the local guy, only he’s ‘Lord Lotar.’ He’s not going by a religious title unless you’re part of his religion—exclusively part of his religion.”
