SHOW AND A DINNER
The troupe performed with disparate skills. The little girl did a dreamy, languid dance that might have been sensual if she had been older or if the movements had been at all comprehensible. Several of the others sang like angels; one had trouble hitting the right notes. Half of them played a variety of musical instruments, again ranging from rank amateur to virtuoso. Lalania sat through the whole performance with a fake smile cemented on her face. The audience applauded politely when Christopher did, but he could tell many of them were wondering why their tax dollars were being spent on this.
After the show, the troupe was given a table at the end of the room. Christopher was amazed at the quantity of food that went to their table and disappeared. Then they went out to the stables to sleep.
Their sheer ordinariness made him wonder whether he’d made a mistake. He leaned over to Lalania to ask.
“A normal lord,” she said conversationally, although her voice was pitched so low no one else could hear, “would send a footman to invite one of more attractive members up to his chamber.”
“Should I do that?”
“You’re not that normal. Not yet, at least. You can go look in on your horse. Everyone knows how you favor the beast.”
He put down his fork. His appetite had not recovered yet. “Only if you come with me.”
“I would be delighted.” Her false smile had not budged.
So it was a party of three that eventually wandered into the stable. Christopher, Lalania, and Cannan, the usual group, although Lalania was sometimes absent for days. He seemed to spend most of his time around these two. Gregor, Torme, and Karl had other duties; they were often in the field training their regiments. Faren had a church to run, and Fae he avoided. Did this mean he could claim only these two as his retinue? The wording of his deal with the hjerne-spica was troublingly vague.
He fed Royal an apple, stroking the big horse’s head. Eventually, the little girl from the troupe joined them.
“Did you like my dance?” she asked with the guilelessness of a child.
“It was unique,” he said truthfully. “Although I’m not sure what it meant.”
“Meaning is a secret revealed only by long acquaintance. Perhaps you should join our troupe for a while.”
He chuckled. “Sadly, I have a kingdom to run.”
She looked up at him. “Kingdoms are like sandcastles; they come and go with the tide. Wisdom lasts forever. And yet a wise kingdom lasts longer than a single tide. Your realm can spare a few weeks while you gain wisdom.”
“Weeks?” He didn’t have that kind of time to waste.
“Ambitious projects require ambitious plans.” She smiled serenely.
There was a lot to unpack in that statement, including the suggestion that teaching him wisdom was an ambitious project, but Lalania didn’t let him.
“You must take the concept seriously,” the bard told him earnestly. “A good king knows when to indulge his subjects.”
“Indeed,” the girl said. “Take leave of your counselors tonight and slip out with us at daybreak to travel your realm in our company. We shall disguise you, so bring nothing but the necessary; your sword, cloak, and perhaps a nice tunic. We will teach you to sing for your supper, and you may learn surprising things about yourself.”
Cannan stepped forward to glare down at the girl. “He goes nowhere without me.”
“Of course,” the girl agreed. “Although I have no hope of making an entertainer of you, still our hostler can use help with the donkey.”
“And myself,” Lalania said.
The girl nodded. “We could use a cook.”
Lalania grimaced briefly before replacing it with a resigned smile. Christopher gaped at her. “Really? All this . . . really?”
She touched his face, glad for his sympathy. “Yes.”
His armor and cloak were packed into a small chest. Cannan’s scaled armor was folded and stuffed into a strong canvas duffel bag. Both their swords were wrapped in a thick blanket and tied up with string. He was wearing ordinary workman’s clothes, scrounged up from somewhere deep in the bowels of the castle. Cannan had been the harder one to clothe; in the end, Lalania had to stitch two tunics together with magic to cover his broad chest. They stood in his bedchamber, saying their goodbyes.
“I don’t like it,” Gregor said. “I don’t like you being gone, not knowing where you are or when you will come back, that you are going out with this lot, and that you have to travel like a beggar. I don’t like any of it.”
“That is rather the point,” Lalania said. “These . . . people . . . are not particularly impressed with pomp and circumstance.” She was wearing the plainest clothes Christopher had ever seen her in. Her only luggage was the lyre. “All those years you practiced humility will pay off now,” she told him. “For a normal lord, this would be exquisite torture.”
“If that minx tries to make me sing, you’ll all know what torture is,” he said.
Torme shook his head, agreeing with Gregor’s displeasure. “We can say you are on adventure. That will buy us a season at most. Any longer and we will face difficulties.”
“She said a few weeks,” Christopher reassured him. “My patience won’t last much longer than that. And in any case, the year’s almost over.”
Lalania cocked an eye at him. The rest of the room stared.
“Oh. I guess I shouldn’t have said that last part. Well, there it is. If we aren’t back by the end of the year, we won’t be coming back.”
Faren snorted. “You won’t get out of it that easily. I will drag your corpse back onto that throne with my bare hands.”
“I can’t believe I’m not going with you,” Gregor said. “How did this happen?”
“The kingdom needs you,” Lalania said. “The Blue think you are on their side. They support the throne because they assume you look out for their interests.”
Christopher couldn’t help himself. He glanced at Torme. The man always seemed to be left out.
“He is needed, too,” Lalania said. “The Green fear him. They assume he will see through their plots.”
“You are too kind,” Torme told her. “There are more important matters than my feelings. Christopher must name a successor in case he does not return. The nascent church of Marcius should not suffer rivalry for its leadership.”
It shouldn’t have been a hard decision. There were only two choices.
“Um. Torme?” He made it a question, in case anyone objected.
“Of course,” Gregor agreed. “He outranks me in divinity. So much is obvious. But what about the kingdom?”
Christopher looked around the room.
“Not I,” said Faren. “Nor, sadly, our esteemed Karl. The realm is not ready.”
“The logical choice is Duke Istvar,” Gregor said.
Christopher could not abandon his friend and everything they had built. “Karl can’t be king, but he can choose the next king. Let Istvar or whoever make their case to him.”
The man in question tilted his head. “I might prefer the life of a troubadour to that.”
“Karl the kingmaker,” Lalania said. “It has a nice ring. While you hold the army, you will hold the power to impose change. The College will be your ally as long as Friea runs it. You might have to bed Uma to keep her loyal, though. She’s a bit . . . competitive.”
It took Christopher a minute to understand she wasn’t joking. The realization was not comforting; she would only speak so frankly if she were truly concerned they might not return.
“We should go,” Christopher said. If he waited any longer, he might change his mind. He could stay here, live out his days making machines and justice, remain a saint instead of a legend. There was nothing left to threaten his throne. The troupe in the stable would destroy the hjerne-spica without him. His presence wouldn’t matter. He could give away the location and stay safe and secure in the world he had built.
He picked up the wooden chest, heavy with armor, and walked out the door.
One of the men of the troupe had a go at the three of them with little pots of makeup and a pair of scissors. Surprisingly, there did not seem to be any magic involved, only skill. By the time the man was done, Christopher barely recognized his companions. He was spared looking in a mirror because there weren’t any in the stable.
The troupe wandered out as soon as the castle gates rose, just moments after the sun did. The gate guards paid them little mind, perfunctorily searching the wagon and their backpacks for stolen goods and winking at the women. Christopher watched through narrowed brows, taking mental notes.
“Oh stop,” Lalania said. “They’re a hundred times better than they used to be.”
Cannan grunted in disagreement. “They are lax.”
“We are leaving, not entering. Where is the danger in that? They watched the lord of the castle personally let our group in. And in any case, there are no foes left to guard against.”
“Rank always has enemies.” Cannan spat on the ground. One of the gate guards noticed and looked at him. Christopher could see the man forming a sharp comment, thinking better of it, and deciding to let it pass. Another wagon approached the gate, and the soldier went over to it.
“Stop drawing attention to yourself,” Lalania scolded quietly. “At least let us sneak out of our own courtyard.”
Cannan laced shut the huge backpack the troupe had given him and swung it over his back. Christopher did the same with his considerably smaller one. The packs were stuffed with provisions from the castle kitchen. Christopher wondered whether they had been paid for. Lalania got off lightly, burdened only with the lyre in a leather covering.
He walked out of his own city unnoticed, invisible in plain sight. It had been a while since he had seen the city from this level. Normally, he was on the back of a horse. The city seemed closer and yet more distant, the cobblestones hard under his feet, the crowd in the street flowing around him without breaking their own conversations. Nobody stared at him. Nobody cared.
If the troupe had meant to teach him humility, they had already failed. He reveled in it. All through the town and down the long winding road that led to the plain below, he was just Christopher Sinclair. A tourist, gawking at the strange architecture, the unfamiliar costumes, the life of a city borne by little movements. An old codger sweeping the sidewalk in front of his shop. Men and women hustling to work. Three children playing tag throughout the crowd while their mother shouted at them.
“That was nice,” he said at the foot of the spire of rock that held up the city. “Thank you.”
“We have yet to begin,” the girl said, amused. “You can call me Jenny. I shall call you Califax.”
“Sure,” he said. “Califax it is. Now which way do we go?”
“Ah.” Her face fell. “I hoped you would have some idea.”
“If you’re looking for rich courts to play in, I would suggest north.” Claire smiled again, her mood changing as easily as a child’s. “How far shall we travel?”
“Do you know what a prime number is?” He smiled back, pretending he was about to share a secret. “A number that cannot be cleanly divided by anything but itself. There are forty-five such numbers we must pass by ’ere we reach the forty-sixth. And with that many leagues we may find a court worthy of playing in.”
She eyed him critically. “You don’t actually know what a league is, do you?”
“No,” he admitted. “I meant miles. Now are you going to keep criticizing or do you want to hear the rest of the riddle?”
“Of course,” she said politely.
“Seventeen coins you were paid, but two were false. The true ones lean east.”
She shook her head sadly. “You’re really terrible at this.”
It had taken him an hour to count out all the prime numbers to three hundred and seventeen. Consequently, he’d rushed the rest of it a bit.
“Let me know when you need another hint,” he said, enjoying the walk. The sun was bright on the snow-covered fields, and his feet hadn’t gotten cold yet. That was the weak point of his disguise. He was wearing peasant clothes, but his boots were fit for a noble. There was a limit to how much he would suffer for the sake of art.
By the time they stopped for lunch, the fun had stopped. Now it was just a terribly slow way to travel. He could still see the city in the distance, a lump of stone standing up on the horizon.
The troupe milled about, doing their own thing. Several practiced a juggling act while a woman tuned a lute. Lalania broke out pots and pans and cooked something hot over a blaze of kindling, Jenny watching critically to make sure the bard didn’t cheat and use magic. Christopher sat on his pack and thought about taking up pipe-smoking. It would at least be something to do.
Cannan was at the wagon, helping Alaine rub down the donkey while it was out of the traces. So far the elf hadn’t said a word to him. He stared at her, wondering whether he’d made a mistake. The sum total of his experience with elves was the woman and her daughter. He had assumed they looked similar because of the relationship, but what if they all looked like that? Maybe he couldn’t tell one elf from another. He shouldn’t apply a human template, as Lucien the dragon would have told him.
The elf looked up to catch him staring. The expression on her face killed his doubts. This was clearly a woman who had already exhausted her patience for dealing with Christopher. That meant she knew him well.
He realized he couldn’t ask her where her dragon boyfriend was. Even if he figured out a suitably coded message, he wouldn’t be able to understand the answer.
Jenny brought him a cup of hot soup. It was delicious in the way campfire food always is.
“Thanks,” he said, cradling the cup in both hands.
“We will find a village to spend the night in. The others want to know what you can perform.”
“I can do math tricks,” he said between slurps. “And bad riddles.”
“Neither of those seems appropriate entertainment for the peasantry. Perhaps I should find something else for you.”
“Sure,” he agreed. It was a relief to not be in charge.
When she came back to collect his empty cup, she brought him a lute.
“Um,” he said. “Unless you want me to fix it, I don’t know what to do with this.”
“Just try it,” she said. When he held it up, she frowned and corrected his hand position. “Now play something you like.”
He couldn’t even read music, let alone recall a song from memory. Playing a lute seemed a bridge too far. But Jenny’s face was so intent, he felt compelled to try. He closed his eyes and thought of the fantastic intro to Heart’s “Crazy on You.” His imagination was so vivid he could hear the notes ringing in the air.
When the bass was supposed to kick in, he realized something was wrong. He could still hear the music, but it clearly wasn’t in his mind because there was only the guitar track. He looked down at his fingers flying over the lute. He would have dropped the instrument in shock, but he liked the song too much. So he gave in to the moment, letting his hands do whatever they wanted.
When it was done, he discovered that his fingertips were bleeding. Magic might have granted him skill, but it hadn’t given him the calluses of a professional.
“That was lovely,” Jenny said, taking the lute from him and wiping specks of blood off the neck. “Don’t heal your hands. We’re not using spells today.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said, before she could divert him. “It’s magic. I get that. But I don’t actually know the song. Where did the notes come from?”
“You have heard the song before, yes?” When he nodded, she shrugged her shoulders. “Then it is somewhere inside you.”
“Do you have any idea how many songs I have heard?”
“No,” she admitted. “Your realm has a bardic college. Surely they know a thousand or more. Your realm is isolated, however, so I would not expect you to know more than those. And how many hours a day can you spend attending performances, anyway?”
He shook his head. A thousand songs was a single rack of a record store.
“You know how to make a stone glow like a torch, right?” He’d spent a fair amount of time casting that spell, back when he had been merely a Curate. “Imagine if you could make a stone play music. And then carry it around in your pocket all day.”
“To what purpose?” she asked, mystified. “Light enables work, but what do you gain from constant music?”
“Amusement.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It seems like a frivolous use of power.”
He nodded. “Cardinal Faren would say the same thing. I would even agree with him. And yet, if you made pocket rock concerts, people would buy them.”
“That sounds like the kind of logic that wizards used to invent trolls. And now the world is plagued with the creatures, while whatever warlord who first dreamed of paying for such a hideous tool is long since dead and dust.”
Now she sounded so much like Alaine that he glanced up to make sure the elf was still at the wagon.
“That’s one thing I know,” he told Jenny. “Change can’t be stopped. Swim with it or get drowned by it, but you can’t stop it.”
“Hmph,” she muttered with a delicate shrug.
Alaine and Cannan were putting the donkey back into harness. The rest of the troupe was putting on their packs. Christopher joined them.