The Spark

by David Drake

  No one spoke up, though I saw several of those in the audience whispering to neighbors.

  “Well, report back tomorrow,” Jon said. “Next petitioner.”

  An attendant in black led the man from Austerlitz to the side; an elderly woman hobbled into his place on the arm of another attendant. Guntram motioned me to follow him back into the hall.

  When we got outside I said, “Sir, how do we hear things so clearly in there? Is this something you did?”

  “No, it was just the design,” Guntram said. “An architect from Bassai planned the room for Jon. She said very little herself, just bustled around making notes, but her six assistants all spoke of her as though she took dictation from God.”

  He smiled and added, “Judging from the hall’s acoustics, they may have been right.”

  “Sir,” I said. “Why does the Leader care about an estate on Austerlitz? Does he have property there himself?”

  “He doesn’t care in the least,” Guntram said. “The important thing to him is that people come to Dun Add to sort out their problems instead of going to war with one another. If a Champion isn’t sufficient to enforce the Leader’s decree, then there’s the army or a portion of it. But that’s only been necessary twice that I know of.”

  He led me down a much narrower staircase next to the outer wall rather than the courtyard by which we’d come up. I didn’t ask where we were going. Guntram was taking me to places that he thought I ought to see. He knew more about it than I did.

  “Who were the people on the benches, sir?” I said. A lot of them had been too old or frail to be warriors, or they were women.

  “Some are Champions, listening to judgments in case they find one that they’d like to get involved in,” Guntram said. “More of them send a clerk to take notes for them, for the same reason. And there are those who just like to watch the court.”

  We left the stairs at the second floor and started down a hallway. A pair of servants saw us coming and lowered their heads as we brushed past one another in opposite directions.

  I hadn’t thought about how Jon’s government was organized. The stories told about people—in the stories they were pretty generally beautiful ladies—coming to Jon and him sending a Champion out to right her wrongs. The beautiful lady had always been injured by a villain, whom the Champion slew in a great battle.

  I knew from Beune that when neighbors or a couple fell out, it generally wasn’t easy to tell where the fault lay. Well, better, it generally seemed that they were both acting wrong. The priest would get together a neighbors’ council and the council’d make the best choice it could. Which generally left everybody angry at them, but also quieted things down between the parties. Nobody likes to know that his neighbors think he’s being a fool.

  We don’t have Trial by Combat on Beune, but sometimes the parties or healthy male relatives have it out. This may mean an eye gouged or a finger bitten off, but we don’t have weapons. I’ve never heard of anybody being killed.

  Guntram opened a door whose hinges squealed like it hadn’t been used in a year. From the way people in the workroom beyond turned their heads to look at us, it can’t’ve been common for folks to come by this way.

  There were cubicles on both sides of the room, six on one side and five on the other plus a door in the center with a broad aisle between them. Each cubicle had a couch and a built-in table. Four were occupied; three men gathered at a sideboard with food—cheese, meats, and fruit—and storage jars with narrow dippers hanging from the rims.

  The tables had Ancient artifacts on them, mostly weapons and shields. Nearby were trays and bins of the stuff you’d need to repair them. All the people here were Makers.

  “Master Guntram,” one of them said. He bowed and the others muttered, “Master,” and bowed or dipped their heads, except for the two who were in trances.

  “This is my friend, Lord Pal,” Guntram said generally as he led me toward the door at the end of the room. There were nods and murmurs as we walked past. I smiled and nodded back, feeling out of place.

  The wide door—it was four feet across, easy—had been carved with a pair of dragons swallowing each other’s tails. I’d been impressed even before I got close enough to see that it was all one piece of wood.

  Instead of knocking, Guntram put his hand in the upper center of the panel, about opposite his face. When he touched the wood, it suddenly got a sheen like there was a plate of glass over it.

  The door opened inward. “Teacher!” said a small blond man with a pointy beard and a little moustache. “What brings you here today?”

  “Good morning, Louis,” Guntram said. “You’ll recall that shield I brought you, the one made from a rain repellant? This is the man who made it.”

  “Come in, come in!” Louis said, closing the door behind us. “That was a remarkable piece of work, sir! Guntram, I can certainly find a use for him.”

  This workroom was as neat as Phoebe’s parlor when she was expecting company. While Guntram had shelves and tables overflowing with bits and pieces, the walls of Louis’s room were covered with cabinets and drawers, all of them closed. The grain of the wood matched from one rank to the next so that they looked like paneling instead of storage.

  The artifact—it was a weapon—on the table beside the couch was the only evidence that this was a Maker’s workroom. Even so, the trays of repair materials had been put away since the work wasn’t in process at the moment.

  “Sir,” I said, “the shield didn’t work. I could barely move it when it was on full.”

  I’d just been offered the chance to work with the greatest Maker in the human universe. And I didn’t want the place. I felt sick at the thought of turning down such a wonderful offer.

  “And he’s not for you, Louis,” Guntram said. “Or for me either. Pal is on Dun Add to join the Company of Champions.”

  There hadn’t been proper introductions. Neither Maker paid much attention to the little social stuff, and I’d never been any good at it either.

  “Indeed?” Louis said, looking at Guntram and raising an eyebrow.

  “Indeed,” Guntram said. “Besides, I think you’d find Pal too whimsical to work out well with you, Louis. He would get bored turning out serviceable weapons for the troops day after day. Just as I would.”

  “Trying to make toys from Not-Here work is all well and good, Teacher,” Louis said, his voice suddenly hard. “I think baubles need to wait until Here has been returned to a state of law and order, though.”

  “I know what you believe, Louis,” Guntram said. “I wish you and Jon all good fortune in your work. But as you know, it’s not for me.”

  Louis lost his sudden harshness. He bowed and said, “You may be the wisest of the three of us, Teacher, but Jon and I aren’t going to give up our dreams.”

  He looked at me. “If you change your mind, Pal,” he said, “come and see me. The Maker who turned an umbrella into a shield could probably be useful for more things than arming common soldiers.”

  I bowed and said, “Thank you, sir.” I turned to follow Guntram out of the office.

  “And Pal?” Louis said. Guntram and I both looked back.

  “It seems to me that shield of yours could be quite serviceable if you could switch it on and off very quickly,” Louis said. “I can think of several ways to do that, if you’d like to come down and discuss it with me some time.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  Guntram and I returned to the general workroom. We went out by the door between two cubicles. It was bigger than the one we came in by, so I figured it was the main door.

  “You could learn a great deal from Louis,” Guntram said as we walked down the hall. I didn’t know where he was taking me now.

  “I noticed the cubicles,” I said. “They were all really neat. Not as neat as Louis’s own room, but neat.”

  “So they were,” said Guntram. “I’m sure it’s a very efficient working environment.”

  I shrugged. “It wor
ks for some, I guess,” I said. “I don’t figure it’d work for me. Anyway, I want to be a Champion.”

  “Yes,” Guntram said. “The shield I gave you is one that Louis built from scraps, some of which came from what I believe was a clock. I don’t think there’s ever been a Maker with more of a flair for arms. He and Jon are well suited to their task of reuniting Here by force. Where that’s necessary.”

  I thought of Beune. I didn’t recall anybody there complaining that there wasn’t more unity. I didn’t say anything.

  The door head at the corner of the hall was seven feet tall with an arched top. Its brass mountings were for show, not strength, and they’d been polished recently, maybe just this morning.

  The two guards were probably for show too, but they had good arms and looked like they knew how to use them. They moved a little apart as we approached. The taller one said, “Good morning, Master Guntram. We don’t often see you in this end of the palace.”

  “I’m showing my friend Lord Pal around,” Guntram said. “I thought I’d introduce him to Lady Jolene.”

  “Any friend of yours, sir,” the guard said. He pulled the door open and with his fellow stood braced as Guntram led me inside.

  The man who’d just gotten up from a stool in the small anteroom was a servant with sharp features and a fringe of red hair which had gone mostly gray. He wore black tights and a tunic in two shades of blue, both muted.

  “Master Guntram!” he said. “How shall I announce your companion, please?”

  “I’m Pal of Beune,” I said quickly before Guntram could call me, “Lord Pal,” again. Lord of what? I didn’t even own the farm my parents had left me.

  Though I had a boat, come to think. I wondered what Camm had owned and how he’d become “Lord Camm.” Still, that was on his conscience, not mine.

  Had been on his conscience.

  “Master Guntram, and Pal of Beune,” the attendant called into the big room beyond. He didn’t speak loudly, but his voice carried in a liquid wave.

  “Lady Jolene,” Guntram said, “this is my colleague Pal. He’s enrolling in the Aspirants’ Chamber.”

  “We don’t see you often, Guntram,” said the lovely blond-haired woman on a central chair. “Would you like some refreshment? We have wine and also sherbert thanks to the marvelous cooler that you made for me.”

  There were three men, all Champions by the look of them, and seven or eight women. One of the women had been singing softly as she plucked a musical instrument with a long neck and a round sound box, but she stopped and looked at us when Jolene began speaking.

  Lady May was the singer.

  “No thank you, lady,” Guntram said. “Pal has done me a number of services, both here and on the Marches. I was pleased that he took my advice to join the Leader’s Company. Now that he’s here I’m showing him the important things in Dun Add—”

  He paused and bowed. Guntram wasn’t without social niceties after all, though he only practiced them when he chose to.

  “—which of course includes you, your ladyship.”

  Jolene wore at least three and maybe more layers of blue gauze. There were fish embroidered on one layer or another; they seemed to swim when she made a flirting gesture with her hand toward the old Maker.

  “Guntram, you’ll turn my head,” Jolene said. She continued to smile as she turned to me.

  I stood straighter. It was like being stared at by a cat. A really big cat.

  “Where is Beune, Pal?” Jolene said. Her voice was as smooth and lovely as the rest of her, though I was beginning to see that she was older than I’d first thought. “I don’t believe I’d heard of it before.”

  “It’s on the Marches, ma’am,” I said. I’d been thinking about answering the question instead of remembering who I was answering. “That is, your ladyship, I mean.”

  She laughed like silver bells. “Just call me Jolene, dear,” she said. “Nobody needs to stand on ceremony in my chambers.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. To change the subject I said, “Beune’s thirty-two days out from Dun Add by the Road, and that’s hard travelling. I came here by boat this time, though.”

  “You have boats on Beune?” a forties-ish man said. He didn’t speak loudly but his voice had authority. So did the man, obviously, from the way everybody in the room looked at him as he spoke. He was as tall as I was, but much more powerful.

  “Well, there was just mine,” I said. “And now that I’m here, not mine either. It’s real uncommon to see a boat on Beune.”

  “You own a boat?” one of the women said, leaning forward like a hot-pink flower. She had black hair, and her lip-rouge matched her dress color.

  “Ah, yes ma’am,” I said. I hadn’t expected to be doing any talking when we entered the room, and I’d sooner have been right about that. “I can’t guide it myself, though. I just own it.”

  I hadn’t really thought about ownership before. Nobody was going to argue my claim, that I was sure of.

  “Jolene, would you mind if I showed Pal the terrace?” May asked. “He and I know each other, you see. We met before.”

  “By all means, child,” the Consort said, gesturing toward the window with a movement that made her look even more like a cat.

  I heard giggles. One of the men nudged another—not the fellow who’d asked me about boats—and chortled.

  I stiffened. I thought May started to blush, but she said, “This way, Pal. The roses are still blooming nicely, though it’s been so dry that we have to water them every day.”

  She opened the casement and stepped out, then closed it after us. I’d noticed greenery through the glass but I hadn’t paid it much attention. Now I saw that there was a roof garden with small junipers in pots right outside. You couldn’t see through their branches any better than you could’ve a brick wall.

  We walked around the junipers, into a little plaza with wicker couches and potted rose bushes. May turned and faced me. “So, Pal…?” she said. “It was just a disguise, you pretending to be a poor rube who didn’t know anything about the big city?”

  “Ma’am, it surely was not!” I said. “I was just what I said I was—I still am, mostly. I’ve had some good luck, that’s all. And the biggest luck was all the things that Guntram’s done for me. He made it sound like I’d helped him, but that’s not so—not to mention, anyhow.”

  May smiled. God knows she was pretty!

  “So,” she said. She straightened the collar of my red suit. I was glad now that Baga or maybe Maggie had told me to change out of my regular clothes. “Guntram is responsible for your new taste in clothing?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am,” I said. “This suit’s from Marielles and I’ve got two more like it. A lady gave them to me because I’d helped her find her sister.”

  “A lady?” May said, cocking her head. The rosebush behind her was in full bloom. That made me remember the first time I saw May when she had a bunch of tulips in her arms. “Was she as pretty as me?”

  “Oh, goodness, no!” I said. “I don’t know anybody who’s as pretty as you, May!”

  “You’re a sweet boy,” she said. “And don’t worry, I won’t pry.”

  I started to tell her that there was nothing to pry about, but before I got the words out May had lifted up on tiptoes and kissed me on the lips. Not hard, but a real kiss.

  “Come along, now,” she said and led me back around the junipers to the window we’d come out by.

  I know my cheeks were red when we went back into Jolene’s chambers.

  CHAPTER 17

  Making Friends

  The same clerk was on duty in the Aspirants’ Hall as the first time I applied. I doubt she recognized me in my new suit. I took out my shield and weapon as I entered.

  Guntram said, “Mistress? I vouch for the quality of his arms.”

  The clerk looked past me and saw him. “Oh!” she said. “Well, that’s good enough for me.”

  When I started to put the equipment back in my pockets, she frowne
d and said, “Sir? I’ve admitted you, but could I look at that shield anyway? Just for myself?”

  I set my weapon and shield before her on the counter. She switched on the shield and made a couple quick turns with it, then set it back down.

  “Master Guntram?” she asked. “Does he have a waiver from the Leader or Lord Clain? You know I’d like to exempt him on your say-so, but I can’t.”

  “Pal will go through the usual process,” Guntram said. “And I’ll get out of your way. Pal, if you need me, I’ll be in and out of my room in my usual fashion. You know where to find me.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “For everything.”

  In truth, I didn’t think I could find Guntram’s room on my own, though I suppose I could get somebody to guide me. I didn’t plan to do that. I wasn’t asking for favors.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “I’m Pal of Beune.”

  Instead of responding to me, she jotted information down in a ledger. Turning her head toward the open door behind her, she called, “Heckert? Has Room Twelve been cleared yet?”

  A middle-aged man came out. He was missing his left arm from above the elbow. “That’s done,” he said. “We like to get on those first thing, you know.”

  “Well, take Lord Pal up and introduce him to his roommates,” the clerk said. She looked at me again as I put my shield and weapon away. “Where’s your gear, Lord Pal?”

  “It’s in my boat with my man,” I said. I guess I’d become Lord Pal without saying anything. If the clerk was making a mistake, it was in the safe direction. “Ah, and his wife. I don’t have much.”

  “After you’ve dropped him off,” the clerk said to Heckert, “go find his servants and show them their quarters. All right?”

  Heckert bowed slightly. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

  * * *

  Room Twelve was on the next floor up. One of the doors off the Aspirants’ Hall was to a staircase. It led down as well as up, which surprised me, but a building as massive as this one must have foundations like nothing we dreamed of back home.

  There were four doors off the landing, three with brass plaques—9, 10, and 12—and a discolored patch on the center of what I supposed was Room Eleven. Heckert tapped lightly, then opened the door of Twelve.