Black Harvest

by M. C. Planck

  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.

  16

  SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOTTEN

  For the performance that night, he was given the worst job. They dressed him in motley, painted his face in ridiculous colors, and sent him into the crowd with a hat in his hands to solicit offerings. Jenny, the little thief, played his song to wild applause.

  Walking through the audience, two or three score of villagers layered in dirty, dull-colored linens, he was gratified to see no signs of hunger. They paid almost no attention to him, their eyes on the performances. He collected eight copper pennies, a loaf of hard bread, and a wedge of cheese wrapped in a handkerchief.

  At the edge of the crowd, he witnessed a small drama. A stocky man was staring down a skinny teenaged boy holding hands with a pretty girl his own age.

  “Shove off,” the man said.

  “You shove off,” the girl said with spirit. “I came here with him.” The man snorted. “You’re wasting your time. Just look at him. He won’t come back from the draft. He hasn’t got the fiber for it.”

  “That’s not true,” the girl said. “Everybody comes home from the draft now. Saint Christopher sees to it.”

  “Well, then, what’s the point of that?” The man sounded truly aggrieved. “Should we breed our mares with any fool horse that can walk without falling down? The line will falter and we’ll be reduced to flighty weaklings. Like this one.”

  An old man spoke over his shoulder, his eyes on the troubadours who were doing a juggling act. “He’s not wrong.”

  “Aye,” an older woman sighed, still watching the show.

  “I don’t care,” the girl declared. “I made my choice.”

  The man took a step forward. “What makes you think it’s up to you?”

  Instinctively, Christopher put his hand to his waist. He froze when he didn’t find his sword, remembering why he wasn’t wearing it. He could knock this bully down with a dozen different spells, but he wasn’t supposed to use magic. For that matter, he could easily win a fist-fight, thanks to his supernatural vitality, but again that would give away his identity. He was, ironically, more helpless than the first time he’d witnessed this little scene. One that must play out endlessly across this harsh world.

  Before he could decide what to do, someone else intervened. A shorter, leaner man, younger than the deliberateness of his movements, stepped beside the burly man and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “It might not be up to her,” he said conversationally. “But it’s not up to you either.”

  The bully brushed his hand aside and squared his shoulders. “Walk away, Goodman,” he said, low and dangerous. “This is none of your affair.”

  “Aye, it might not be. And yet here I am.” The lean man stood with his hands at his side, not at all threatening. And yet, his stance was obdurate, a pillar of granite that did not challenge, but simply was.

  The girl and her boyfriend had made use of the diversion and skipped off. The bully looked at the interloper, considering, but there seemed to be little point in pushing the issue now. He turned and stomped away.

  A woman joined the lean man, stepping next to him and hugging him. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.

  “So do I,” he answered good-naturedly, putting his arm around her. “I just can’t stand to see them pick on the kids.”

  Christopher stared. He knew this man. He just couldn’t figure out from where. The man noticed him staring, and Christopher ducked his head and turned away.

  Then it came to him. The last time he had seen this man had been three years ago, in a tropical swamp. Christopher had tried to shoot him. If he had succeeded, no one would have held him to blame. The man—a boy, then, barely older than the teenager he had just defended—had been making a game of torturing an ulvenman pup. Karl had dismissed the man from the army and sent him fleeing, all in the time it took Christopher to reload a rifle.

  There was a story here. A private story that Christopher would never know. All he could do was watch the occasional scene from a distance and wonder at all the wheels that must have turned behind the curtains.

  At the base of the city of Kingsrock, there was a field that held a thousand corpses. Men who had died for choosing to be on the wrong side of Christopher’s theological dispute with the Gold Apostle. Men who might have turned out like this one, given time. Or like the bully; who could say? At that moment they had been enemies, whatever the wheel of fate might have made of them in the future, and now enemies they would remain, thanks to the permanence of the grave. He could never afford to revive so many.

  He shuffled back to the wagon, where the troupe was taking their final bows. The crowd dispersed, and Jenny came over to check his earnings.

  “Did you learn anything yet?” she asked.

  “Nothing I didn’t already know,” he said. “And you?”

  She inspected the contents of the sack. “I learned that you’re terrible at this, too. Before you bed down, visit Jaime. He wants to talk with you.”

  He found Jaime beside a fire, sewing on a blanket. When Christopher squatted next to the gray-haired man, Jaime threw the blanket over both their heads. With a cheek pressed up against Christopher’s, Jaime whispered, “Speak plainly what track we shall tread.”

  Jaime smelled of sweat, and his hair hadn’t been washed in ages. The man also did not understand personal boundaries. Christopher hurriedly repeated the words the hjerne-spica ha
d told him. Jaime responded by whipping the blanket off and resuming his sewing. Dismissed, Christopher went to his bedroll. There was a pile of firewood he hadn’t seen before, and Cannan was using it to build a fire that would burn hot and slow for the night. Lalania was still cooking dinner, so he sat and watched Cannan work.

  “I’ll stand the first watch,” Cannan told him. “Although it seems unlikely we will face trouble tonight. The crowd was reasonably pleased; the girl didn’t do that ridiculous dance.”

  “She stole my song,” Christopher said. His fingertips were still sore. “I think they expected more of an argument out of you.” Cannan grinned wolfishly in the firelight. “I admit it is a pleasure to watch others crash upon the rock I have so long foundered on. Lala’s enjoying it, too, I wager.”

  “Why would I argue?” Christopher wondered. “This is what I need to do. What would be the point of resisting?”

  “Perhaps, for some, the journey is as important as the destination.” Christopher looked across the flames at the big man.

  Cannan tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Not for us.”

  Lalania came to bed late, her hands cold and wet from doing the dishes.

  They walked for days, always heading north, stopping at a different village every night. Christopher was allowed to play on the magic lute, which won him applause for his one song. Cannan did a much better job of collecting money, looming over the audience like a giant clown and blocking the sight of the stage. Eventually, they paid him just to get him out of the way.

  Christopher never seemed to have a chance to speak with Alaine. She avoided him, and he let her. If they could not talk freely, there was no point.

  The troupe seemed entirely comfortable with life on the road, although not with each other. Christopher witnessed several spats, three bouts of tears, one of which included Jaime, and a dozen awkward embraces. There did not seem to be any romantic couples despite the almost even division between men and women. Nor did anyone seem to claim the child Jenny. Indeed, they listened to her counsel gravely and respected her decisions.