11

WINTER OF DISCONTENT

He watched the rebellion grow like mold climbing up a cellar wall. The nobility were openly insouciant at court, constantly declaiming on their many and varied services to the crown and demanding commensurate reward. The commoners’ discontent was less obvious, but he could see the resignation creeping over them, the glow of hopeful revolution fading in the cold light of winter days. Trouble bloomed at last in the form of an angry petitioner in the livery of his own castle servants. He saw the figure marching up the carpet with determination and hastily sat back down on the throne, abandoning the fleeting relief that court was over, and composed himself to receive a tirade.

When the peasant woman raised her face from her deep curtsey, he realized who it was. After all, he had just seen her at lunch: his first friend and roommate, manager of his kitchens, and Karl’s wife. “Helga?” he blurted out, surprised.

Lalania had already moved off the dais, assuming the formal business was done for the day. She paused, looking at him for guidance.

He waved the bard away. Helga could come to him any time. She didn’t need an audience.

“I seek royal justice,” the young woman said, her voice cracking in nervous shame.

Christopher was torn. If she was truly making a formal case, he owed it to her to follow procedure. On the other hand, this was ridiculous. He waved everybody out, letting them know the official court was closed. The crowd began moving toward the exit.

“Of course, Goodwoman,” he said. “You can speak freely here.”

She gathered herself to speak. “It is a complement of privilege. I mean, a complaint . . .”

Christopher interrupted her butchery of legalese. He could barely stand it when it was done right.

“Helga. Just tell me what the problem is.”

A switch flipped, and Helga was suddenly a furious hellcat.

“Your witch! Your witch is the problem. She has already cast her spells upon my husband. Now her spawn seeks to ensnare my son.”

The children were barely three years old. It seemed unlikely that one of them was working magic.

“Helga—” he started, but she cut him off.

“What has that devilspawn to do with my boy? She follows him everywhere! Why can she not find some other child to haunt? Hasn’t her blood taken enough from mine?”

Christopher waited for her to catch her breath as she trembled in unfamiliar rage. He had noticed the children playing together. Once he had found them in the throne room, completely unsupervised. They had stared at him with curiosity, wondering why he was interrupting them. He had wondered where their nannies were. Both parties had left without answers.

“He seeks her out, too,” he told Helga. “They like each other.”

“Because he is enspelled!”

“I don’t think its magic,” Christopher said gently. “Just nature.”

“You see it too! You know that harlot already casts a net for him!”

“I don’t mean like that,” Christopher blushed. “I mean they recognize each other. Like brother and sister.” Better they should be raised that way now rather than later. It would forestall any Greek tragedies.

“But they are not!” Helga protested. “What of your vow of truth, that you should encourage such a lie?”

Christopher opened his mouth, but there were literally no words to say. He closed it again.

Helga clapped her hands over her face, stifling a scream as the fact washed over her. She shook with grief and rage, so fragile that he dared not even comfort her.

Her hands came away, balled into fists. Her voice was low and hoarse. “Why did you not tell me before?”

An excellent question admitting of no easy answer. It was a subject no one had discussed, so he had assumed it didn’t need discussing. For once he was the person explaining the obvious, and he didn’t like it. He excused himself as best as he could. “Because the knowledge would bring you pain.”

“Then why did you tell me now?”

In sheer point of fact, he hadn’t, although that defense was clearly inadmissible. “Because not knowing would cause you greater pain,” he said, hoping it was the real reason and not merely cowardice.

Helga hugged herself and wept quietly. Christopher reached out for her, half rising from the throne, but she turned away from his hand.

“Does Karl know?”

Christopher sank back into the throne, ashes in his mouth. “I have never told him.” It was the least truthful answer he could give and remain within his vows. “He has never spoken of it to me.”

“The one thing I could give him that no other could. And now I find she has stolen that too. Yet you reward her with rank, and Karl gets nothing. Everyone around you rises but never Karl.” She was sobbing openly now, but when he leaned forward, she shrank back.

Lalania had slipped up behind, returning to the scene of disaster. She caught Helga by the shoulders and hugged. Helga melted into her warm embrace and buried her face in the bard’s blonde hair.

“The fault is mine,” Lalania said, and for once Christopher agreed. “I should have told you years ago, dear Helga. I did not think it mattered. He has never acknowledged the child, and she has never laid a claim. I assumed soon enough there would be other children.”

“She cursed us,” Helga sobbed. “Nothing works, and I thought it was me. But it was her. She will not let me have a daughter of my own.”

Christopher’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. Lalania, with Helga’s face safely in her shoulder, dismissed the notion with a roll of her eyes. “Mistress Fae does not command such potent magic. Yet perhaps there is something that needs to be done. We shall ask the Cardinal. If that fails, there are medicines in the College of Troubadours that men have never bothered to study.”

He sank back in relief. Lalania could fix it. Until he saw her face. Whatever the answer was, he wasn’t going to like it.

One of the priestesses had returned, drawn by the sounds of sobbing. Lalania sent Helga off with her to see the Cardinal. Christopher waited warily while Lalania chose her words.

Finally, she shrugged and spoke bluntly. “It is Karl. That man has ridiculous self-discipline.”

Christopher tried several different questions in his head, but all of them were absurd, so he left them unspoken.

Lalania explained, grudgingly. “I don’t think he wants more children. So he has been . . . performing carefully.”

Cannan, who as always stood at Christopher’s shoulder as silent as a pillar, spoke up incredulously. “For three years?”

“He is a stubborn man,” Lalania said.

Cannan was not satisfied. “How can Helga not have noticed?”

“He is also a skillful man. I doubt she is left in a condition to notice anything.” She arched her eyebrows, trying to make a joke of it. It didn’t help; both Christopher and Cannan winced at the implicit comparison. “Oh, stop it. This is not about either of you.” She turned her attention to Christopher. “You must have a talk with Karl. I cannot guess why he has made this choice and would not dare broach it with him. But it is not fair to Helga.”

Guilt fell onto Christopher like an avalanche. There were plenty of reasons for Karl to fear the future, and everything Christopher had done for the last two seasons multiplied them.

He put it off a few days, then a week. After the second week, he could no longer bear to evade Lalania’s accusing gaze. When he found himself standing in a training yard, watching Karl watching cavalry men putting their horses through paces, he spoke up.

“Helga came to me with a problem.”

“I have already told her to drop the matter. As guilty as the witch is, the child is innocent.”

“Not that,” Christopher said.

Karl’s face was a warning sign with “NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS” stamped all over it. He stared at Christopher, amazed that anyone would dare to bring up such an intimate matter. If it weren’t for twelve ranks of supernatural power, continuing this conversation would earn Christopher an epic beating.

He hunched his shoulders and bulled through. “A wise man once said, to have children is to give hostages to fortune.”

“Yes,” Karl said, as dry as a desert. “The future is ever uncertain.”

“Never more so than now.” There, he had said it; the elephant in the room stretched out its trunk and roared.

“True.”

Christopher stared out over the training yard, afraid to look at Karl when he spoke. “Do you trust me?”

For a long moment, Karl simply stared at him. Then he turned to the training field and strode out into the mud, calling corrections to the horsemen.

There was a time when Christopher would not have understood, when he would have demanded a concrete answer. He had changed. It was not just the strange effect the rank seemed to have on his social perceptions. Years of command had taught him that some questions should not be asked, and some should not be answered. It was the Heisenberg principle of leadership; merely to acknowledge the issues changed their shape.

Karl had no choice. The man could not be more committed than he already was. To speak would have implied that it was even possible for him to doubt Christopher. Ironically, to say “Yes” could only have meant “No.”

Yet it was necessary for Christopher to have asked. The question told Karl that Christopher knew he was doing wrong. To assume Karl’s loyalty would have been to lose it as surely as demanding it would have. Like a chess match, he had to push his pawn so far but no further. He had to leave room for the future to shape itself to his ends.

Every move had costs, however. This one had made him a liar. The promise he had given D’Kan was worthless. Karl would never betray him.

The rest of the kingdom was a different matter. Faren’s weekly divination warned of a minor incursion on the western border days before it would happen. Christopher should have dispatched Gregor or Torme to deal with it, but he was tired of doing what an ordinary ruler would do. Instead, he did what a stupid ruler would do and went himself.

Not alone; an entire company of cavalry followed him. Eighty men on horseback with carbines and half a dozen multibarreled rocket launchers on wheels. The launchers were shorter range than a cannon but much lighter to transport. The speed of his troop meant he could set out only the day before. By the time the city figured out he was gone, he was already halfway to the border. After a cold night camp, they were back in the saddle all day, reaching the expected trouble spot just as the sun was going down.

Cannan came with him, of course, along with Lalania and four priestesses of the Bright Lady. The troop was led by Major Kennet, one of his first recruits. The boy had grown into a frightfully competent young man. Lalania had spent the journey flirting with him and apparently had won him over. While the soldiers laid out their ambush, picketing the horses in a little forested hollow and digging a line of foxholes, she lectured Christopher with Kennet at her heel like a welltrained dog.

“We are in agreement: you must not reveal yourself until the enemy principles are identified. If this is a trap, you must run away. By the way, it should be a trap. Your head is the single most valuable object in the kingdom. Lopping it off would be a prize worthy of a dragon.”

“The realm can replace a company,” Kennet agreed solemnly. “It cannot replace a saint.”

“Faren said it was minor,” Christopher said, trying to find a plausible excuse for his presence.

“Then we should be able to handle it on our own,” Kennet said.

“Agreed,” Christopher said. “I’m just here to observe.” It was close enough to the truth. His real goal was to not be on the throne while nobles glared at him and commoners avoided eye contact.

Lalania was having none of it. “If you wanted to watch, you could have scryed the battle. That is what any normal ruler with your resources would have done. Your mere presence denotes command, and command has its privileges. Specifically, the right to plunder. By leading this mission yourself, you have denied the Lord of Montfort any claim to the tael. He will view it as a theft rather than a favor.”

Montfort had been slow to commit to a side and hence had mostly missed the civil war. Christopher had never figured out if that meant he should reward Montfort for not opposing him or punish the lord for not being a supporter. “I’m allowed to respond to threats to the realm,” Christopher argued.

“A threat you just declared as ‘minor.’ And therefore, by definition, within the competence of the local lord.”

“My lady,” Kennet said earnestly, “this is the first significant incursion during the Saint’s reign. We set precedent here. Defense of the realm is a national matter, not some lordling’s adventure.”

Lalania glared at the young man. “You can stop helping now.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said politely. With a crisp salute, he marched off to see to the disposition of the rocket launchers.

She turned her glare to Christopher. “You’ve ruined all of them. No one ever called me ‘lady’ to my face before you came along.”

“Well now,” Christopher started, and then bit his tongue. He was about to mention the fact that Lalania was older now than she used to be, which might account for why men treated her with more respect. This would not be wise. He had come here for a battle, not a war.

“It was always there,” Cannan said. “You bards only played at blurring the line between noble and common. They only played along because they had no choice. Now . . . now they think they have a choice.” She ran her fingers through her hair, dislodging a handful of dirt and gravel from the road. With a grimace, she agreed. “True enough. I never thought I would appreciate the overweening pride of the nobility before. But now blindness saves them. If they had a clue about the faces the common make behind their backs, they would reach for a whip, the commoners would reach for a rifle, and you’d have a problem genuinely worth your time.”

A pair of soldiers approached, carrying carbines. “My lady,” one said, his voice barely above a whisper, “the Major has called for silence.” Lalania put her hands on her hips and glared at the rebuke. Christopher turned away to stifle his laugh. Night fell; the lightstones were stowed away, and the men were invisible in the dark. With their stillness, the normal forest sounds began to return. An owl hooted in the distance, answered by several crows. The herd of horses was far enough away that Christopher could not hear them. In any case, they were probably going to sleep, much like his own was. Royal stood with his head hung low and his eyes closed. The warhorse was disciplined enough to remain quiet and valuable enough to keep at hand. He was still saddled after the long ride, which would cause blisters. Fortunately, that was a problem Christopher could easily solve.

The two soldiers sat down and made themselves comfortable, cradling their guns. Cannan silently joined them, squatting on the ground. Lalania paced about, trying to keep warm without making a sound. Every time Christopher moved a muscle his armor rattled, and the entire group would stare at him. When he sat down on a stump, he made so much noise that Royal briefly opened one eye. After that he stayed still. His tael wouldn’t let the cold do any real damage to him regardless of what it felt like.

Several excruciatingly boring hours passed by in silence, giving Christopher ample opportunity to reflect on all of his mistakes to date. Chief of which, at the moment, seemed to be the decision that sitting in a cold forest all night would be better than staying in the city and having a nice hot dinner.

A light flashed, fifty yards to the front. Christopher’s stomach flipped. They didn’t actually know what kind of monster to expect. The last few hours had allowed his imagination to supply any number of horrific options. He prepared himself for the roar of gunfire.

“Ser?” a voice called out. A lightstone revealed itself. In the circle of illumination, Christopher could see three armored horsemen. Major Kennet and two other soldiers stood up and advanced.

“Name yourself,” the lead horsemen commanded gruffly.

“Major Kennet,” the young man answered. “On border patrol. We did not think to see you here, Ser. It is Viscount Conner, is it not?”

“It is,” the horseman replied. “And I did not expect to see you, either.”

Christopher let out a disappointed sigh. He had come all the way out here to face an interesting and new monster rather than angry nobles, and now he was facing one he already knew. Not a friend but technically an ally and in the employ of a neighboring lord. He had learned respect for the man’s competence during the war, if not his friendship. Presumably Ser Conner had already defeated the monster and was on his way home. Lalania had warned that divinations were not guaranteed.

Beside Christopher, Lalania whispered a furious curse. He looked at her, but in the dark she was only a silhouette that communicated nothing.

“You were on adventure, were you not?” Kennet asked, the distant conversation clear in the still forest. The major seemed well briefed on local conditions.

“I am,” Ser Conner corrected. “And I do not intend to return until I am prepared to restore the kingdom to its traditional ways.”

“Yet you are here now,” Kennet said coolly.

“I find myself only a few souls short of my next rank. Before I journey further into the Wild, I intend to avail myself of the kingdom’s resources one last time.”

“The Saint will not sell you tael to carry into the Wild,” Kennet objected.

Christopher was suitably impressed with the political acumen of his army officer. Lalania, in contrast, seemed to think it was a terrible response. She darted forward to intervene, racing through the woods silently.

Cannan rose and took a half-step after her, then stopped and turned to Christopher. Before he could ask what was going on, it went.

“I do not intend to buy,” Ser Conner said, and with an effortless motion drew his sword and decapitated Kennet. “Yours will do.” One of his companions uttered a spell, and the other two soldiers collapsed instantly.

Lalania stopped running. “Dark take it,” he heard her swear, and then finally the sound of thunder. Rifles blazed from all over the forest. Conner’s two companions fell; the man jerked from the sting of bullets and reared his horse. In the flash of fire and smoke, lanced by countless shots, it pawed the air and died.

Man and beast fell to the ground. Conner took cover behind its corpse. Half a dozen men advanced out of the woods. Before Christopher could call out a warning—the knight would kill anything that got within sword reach—two men threw grenades.

The blasts forced Connor to his feet. The rifles cut him back down.

A priestess dashed forward to attend to the fallen soldiers. They were already rising, woken from their unnatural slumber by the din.

Christopher stopped running. He had started when Kennet fell. Now he stood next to Lalania, robbed of urgency and bewildered. “I don’t understand,” Christopher said. “We came here to fight a monster from the Wild. But Ser Conner was one of us.”

“Ser Conner no longer thought of himself so,” Lalania said. “Thus, neither did the spell.”