Iron Paladin

by Max Irons

  “They sound useless,” Lonni said.

  “That’s just the way Rayan society is, at least in the nobility,” Galeron said. “We can’t change it, so we’re going to manipulate it.”

  Lonni stroked her chin with a long finger. “You said ‘we.’ I thought you weren’t letting me help.”

  Galeron sagged. This was going to be a long job. “I’m going to be out on the streets when I can, but I need you in the company of noblewomen. You might pick something up in their gossip. They won’t be doing any of that around me.”

  “You expect me to sit around and act like a stuck-up manor chit for the next few days?” Lonni glared at him. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Oh, look. You’re halfway there. “I can’t ask direct questions,” Galeron said. “It’d look suspicious for Iven’s guard to keep digging around in a weeks-old murder. You’re new to the gossip. They might retell some of it for you.”

  Lonni’s shoulders sank. “Blast you and your reasoned arguments.” She flared her nostrils, as if she smelled something particularly unpleasant. “I’ll do it, but I can guarantee it won’t be anything useful.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said.

  Lonni stepped away from the window and sat down on the edge of his bed. “I’m part Rayan, you know.”

  Galeron shot her an appraising look. She had been on the tall and thin side since he’d known her, which, admittedly, was all of four months. “Rand has a Rayan parent?”

  She nodded. “How’d you know?”

  “Height is a giveaway, but Rayans don’t usually come in black-haired varieties,” Galeron said. “Besides, we both know it didn’t come from your mother.”

  Lonni gave a small chuckle. “They do make an odd pairing.”

  Iven poked his head in the doorway. “Galeron, we’ve got our first appointment of the day.” He gave him a nonplussed look. “Behold, the face of excitement.”

  #

  Galeron and Iven boarded the carriage once again, this time only accompanied by the driver.

  “Where are we going?” asked Galeron.

  “We’re going to get baths and clothes,” said Iven, scowling out the carriage window. “You’re going to get nice stuff. I’m going to be stuck in some doublet and long-hosed nonsense that squeezes everything you’ve got. Lace is optional. The high-pitched voice isn’t.”

  “Explains Marcus’s lack of children,” Galeron said.

  “I’m suffering, and you poke fun at my misery,” he grumbled.

  “Someone has to.”

  Iven shook his head. “Me, a lord. You better tell me what you find about the murders. I’m going to feel so dull that bread knives will have sharper wits than me.”

  Galeron grunted. Perhaps he was overstating things, but he let Iven rant anyway.

  “I’m going to find a way out of this,” Iven said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Parents aren’t like brides. You can’t just get another one if they don’t work out.”

  “There has to be a way, in all that convoluted court rhetoric and law, to let the lord out of his position,” Iven said.

  “What if you just left?” asked Galeron.

  “Aside from Dianna and Falco hunting me down, the other houses would scramble to take over Porter holdings.” Iven rubbed his chin. “In the meantime, though, the disruption keeps food convoys from moving around, and people starve. Whatever I do has to be acceptable, quick, and smooth.”

  “You’re Raya’s harbormaster, of a sort,” Galeron said.

  “Aye.”

  “You’ll think of something.” I hope.

  Galeron and Iven spent the next few hours scrubbing off sea spray in the bath house and then headed for the Keenan Caffar arsenal, a low squat building with thick walls and constructed of dull gray stone, a stark contrast from the rest of the city’s soaring architecture.

  Galeron walked with Iven through the patrolling guards, who bowed at the sight of Iven’s house cloak, and into the entryway of the arsenal. The building’s interior was as unremarkable as the outside. Lit by lanterns, the innards glowed a deep flickering yellow, long shadows dancing over the barrels of spears, bow shafts, and sheaves of arrows. Swords and polearms hung on the walls, along with varying banners of royal houses. Men and women scurried in and out of the room, carrying bundles of weapons and depositing them into wooden crates that sat in the room’s center.

  “Lord Porter, I wondered when we might see you.”

  A man sporting a scruffy white beard and the face of a sun-dried tomato shuffled toward them from behind a desk, inclining his head and leaning heavily on a gnarled walking stick.

  Iven nodded at him. “Fabron. You’re looking spry and youthful.”

  “Aye, m’lord. I could make it down the lane and back.” Fabron cracked a misshapen smile. “What manner of business shall we attend today? Sizing for tourney armor wouldn’t take much of your time, or we could put in for your ceremonial garb.”

  Iven shook his head. “I’ve arrived a bit late to enter the lists.” He gestured to the crates. “Besides, it looks like they’ll be starting sooner than I’d like.”

  Fabron grunted. “Fallen Ones’ Day is a mere sunrise off, and I’m still a hundred spears short for the melee. Laborers have been hit hard by knife gut.”

  “I’m actually here to get my paladin proper garb,” Iven said, waving a hand at Galeron.

  Paladin? Iven hadn’t mentioned anything about that. What did it even mean? He frowned at him, but Iven ignored the look.

  Fabron narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze up and down Galeron’s form. “A bit on the short side, isn’t he?”

  “They don’t grow very tall in Broton,” said Iven.

  Galeron scowled. He wasn’t that short. Compared to the long-featured Rayans, he might register a bit…under height, but still. He was as tall as most of the women.

  “Which color will you want?” asked Fabron.

  Iven bit his lip and gave Galeron a mock-appraisal. “Green really isn’t his color.” He grinned. “We should do black, like his personality.”

  “You think you’re so funny,” Galeron said.

  “Oh, no, I know I am,” Iven said.

  Fabron looked from Iven to Galeron for a moment, and then grunted. “As you wish.” He whistled at one of the bustling servants. “You, boy, take his measurements.”

  The servant dropped his load into a crate, gathered some knotted string from his pocket, and proceeded to manhandle Galeron’s limbs, twisting him in all kinds of directions while holding the string up and mumbling about things like “inseams” and “hemming,” whatever that meant. After a bit, he finished and trotted off into the back of the building.

  “When do you need him dressed?” asked Fabron.

  Galeron glowered. He wasn’t some child to be shoved into an outfit his mother deemed appropriate. He could, in fact, handle dressing himself.

  “By the morning,” said Iven. “I’m taking oaths with King Balen tomorrow.”

  Fabron sighed. “I could have used more warning, m’lord.”

  Iven shrugged. “Apologies, but I just arrived this morning. This was as early as I could get.”

  “It cannot be helped, then.” Fabron shuffled back to his books. “Will there be anything else?”

  “No,” Iven said.

  “What of your own ceremonial garb?”

  Iven winced. “Dianna is taking care of that.”

  “A good day to you, then, Lord Porter.” Fabron inclined his head, and Iven returned the gesture.

  They walked out of the arsenal and back to the carriage.

  “Paladin?” asked Galeron as they climbed back inside. “What’s a paladin?”

  “Nothing much,” Iven said. “Just the lord’s personal champion. You get to wander around with me at court functions, keep me safe from assassins, and accept any challenges that someone might make.”

  More excuses to rub noses with nobles. Wonderful. “A little warning might be nice next time.”
>
  Iven raised an eyebrow. “It shouldn’t be a problem. Paladins are just a ceremonial position. I can’t remember the last time I actually saw one do something besides eat.”

  “You haven’t been at court that much,” said Galeron.

  Iven opened his mouth, and then shut it again as the carriage rattled into motion. “Fair enough, but this does make it easier for you to talk with the lords, or eavesdrop, whichever’s easier. You won’t look so out of place now.”

  True. Being Iven’s paladin would get his work moving faster than disguising himself as a household servant, scullery boy, or any of the other hundreds of invisible workers in a royal household. On the other hand, it would demand a lot more of his time and possibly bore him to the verge of screaming. There’s always a downside.

  “What are you planning to do next?” asked Iven.

  Galeron rubbed his temples. A good question. There were too many ways to proceed. He had to narrow them down.

  “Lonni’s listening to court gossip,” said Galeron. “Hopefully she can provide some useful information.” He paused. “I’ve thought about venturing into the clean portions of the outer burg and looking into the firelock or dust that killed Fletcher. It can’t be that easy to get hold of either here.”

  Iven nodded. “I doubt anyone of good virtue sells them.”

  If I can find out who has them, it might bring me one step closer to the truth,” Galeron said. “

  “Good luck getting them to talk,” said Iven. “Weapons traders around here aren’t like the nice and soft folk in Broton. The city watch has a hard time keeping order in the burgs. Threatening to bring the law down on them will do nothing.”

  “Better give them something more urgent to think about.”

  Iven shifted in his seat. “I can’t go with you. Dianna has me locked down for the next day and a half with all kinds of disgusting work.” He started ticking tasks off on his fingers. “I’ve got positions to appoint; dinner with Dianna, Falco, and my other sister Phoebe; a speech to learn for the oath ceremony tomorrow; and the both of us have to go to the Fallen Ones’ ball tomorrow night.”

  “What is this Fallen Ones’ Day?” asked Galeron.

  “It’s a celebration every year of the Delktian Wars’ end,” said Iven. “Doesn’t Broton do something like that?”

  Galeron shook his head. Had it already been five years? Of course, it had been a little hard to know exactly when everything ended up north. There were only two seasons: cold and less cold.

  “Broton mainly ignores it,” Galeron said. “We aren’t much of a partying people.”

  Iven chuckled. “You aren’t, but you will be for one night.”

  He scowled. “You mean I have to go to this ball?”

  A brief mental image flared of him tripping over his own feet, slamming into his dance partner, and causing an entire floor of people to stop moving or fall over them.

  “Indeed, and not only that, you have enjoy it.” Iven grinned. “Don’t worry, if you find out having fun isn’t for you, I promise you won’t have to do it again.”

  Galeron sighed. A ball. What was next? “I don’t do—”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Iven said. “It’s part of the disguise. All the other house paladins will be there having fun, or at least pretending, so you have to look the part.”

  “I can’t dance,” said Galeron. “Now what?”

  Iven rolled his eyes. “I’m sure I can convince Hadrian to give you a quick lesson.”

  “Who?”

  “Eldest sister Phoebe married one of the sons of Lord Marduke, Hadrian.” Iven shrugged. “A bit on the rough side, but he owes me a favor.”

  A deep scowl fell into familiar grooves across his face. “Should have gone for a scullery boy.”

  “Keep your hat on, Galeron. It isn’t that bad, and dancing isn’t that hard.”

  Galeron raised an eyebrow. “You can do it?”

  He sighed. “Yes, it’s something you can’t avoid as a nobleman. Besides, it’ll let you ask more questions.”

  Galeron’s stomach twisted. Easy for him to say. Informer training taught him how to blend in and be discrete, almost always as a background servant. Nobles treated them as invisible, letting him work easily. Being Iven’s paladin might garner him an excuse to be in more places, but it severely limited what he could and could not do. People at the ball would be aware of his presence and might actually talk to him. Arlana aside, he rarely interacted with those in power. Could he be that subtle, worming information out of unsuspecting attendees?

  “There’s no way out of this?” asked Galeron.

  “Not in the slightest,” Iven said. “If there was, I’d be the first to do it, but I’m expected to make friends as head of house Porter.”

  Trapped like a rat.

  “Oh, and don’t be surprised if some of the other paladins, or lords, issue a martial challenge,” said Iven.

  Martial…that can’t be good. “Why would they do that?”

  “It can sometimes happen if the new lord appears weak, or so Dianna says,” Iven said. “It’s the houses’ way of weeding out weak leadership. Winning sides get honor, or occasionally payments of coin for a set period of years. Sometimes the fights are to the death, but usually it’s just to incapacity.”

  A ball where I have to dance, be subtle about finding a murderer, and might be challenged to several fights. He closed his eyes and groaned inwardly. Yet another example of why he’d quit being an informer.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Galeron and Iven arrived back at the Porter mansion in time for lunch. The grave feeling that persisted in Galeron’s stomach hadn’t let up in the intervening travel time. He managed to down some of the mutton soup the cooks prepared for the midday meal before slipping away as Dianna dragged Iven to the lord’s study for a very long session with his quill and paperwork.

  Back in his room, Galeron slid his leather armor back on, fastened his cloak, and buckled on his sword. Relief flooded through him as he straightened the weapon. He hadn’t realized just how vulnerable he’d felt without it.

  “Wherever you’re going, I’m going, too.” Lonni strode into his room.

  “Would you mind knocking next time?” asked Galeron.

  “Why? You were decently clothed,” she said.

  Galeron bit down on an angry retort. “I might not have been. Have a care for a man’s privacy.”

  “As you did when you walked in on me bathing?” Lonni arched one brow. “That seems a little unfair.”

  Heat rose in his cheeks. “You’ve got a hole in your memory. It was a mixed bathhouse, and I was still in the changing rooms when you walked in. Besides, I didn’t see anything.”

  “I’m still coming with you.”

  Why was she insisting on this? Hadn’t they already discussed it? “We’ve been over this. No.”

  She shook her head. “I’m going to go mad in this place. There’s nothing to do, Dianna is a simpering etiquette mouse, and if I have to spend another moment with her alone, I’m going to shoot her.”

  He frowned. “You don’t have any dust.”

  She pulled at a lock of hair. “I don’t care. I’ll mix some if I have to. This is your fault. You dragged me into this, good intentions or not, and now you expect me to sit around like a display barrel in Papa’s shop?”

  Galeron sighed. “You have a job to do.”

  “I’ll listen to gossip just as soon as I find someone who’ll do some gossiping,” Lonni said. “Dianna won’t speak of the murders. She thinks it isn’t something genteel women should be talking about.”

  “Lonni—”

  “If Iven’s going to spend the afternoon in his study, and you’re headed off to who knows where, what do you expect me to do?” she asked. “Sit in my room and twiddle my thumbs until you have use for me?”

  “I—”

  “I’m going with you, Galeron Triste, and I’d like to see you try and stop me.”

  Galeron groaned and put a hand to
his forehead. Balls, courtly functions, a murder, and a very cantankerous firespeaker in one day. What was it like to be bored? He’d have to find out someday.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go before I regret this.”

  They departed the mansion and took a short carriage ride down the mountain to the base of the inner wall. Galeron and Lonni clambered out, and the driver rattled away.

  “Where are we going?” asked Lonni as they walked through the gates and into the outer city.

  Galeron’s gaze swept the wide road through the heart of the outer city. So far, no one paid them any mind. Everyone traversed the paved roads with their own business and an apparent lack of awareness of the others doing the same.

  “Outer burgs,” he said.

  He glanced up at the towering buildings, some of which looked like rectangular hedgehogs with overlong spikes. Many of the structures had no blank spaces on their stone. Carvings, reliefs, and statues dotted their surfaces, turning walls and support structures into menageries of color and stories.

  Some presented pictures from Raya’s history. Galeron recognized some of the newer depictions from the Delktian Wars. Others might have been history or legends. It was hard to tell. Lizard-like drake heads formed water spouts at the corners of roofs. That combined with the statues staring out at the roadway gave Galeron the distinct impression he was being watched.

  “What’s in the burg?” Lonni asked.

  Galeron dropped his voice. “I’m looking for a weapons trader. Firelocks and night dust don’t just appear in Raya. I need to know who’s been buying them.”

  “And they’re just going to tell you?”

  He scowled. “I was going to ask nicely.”

  Galeron held a hand out and dragged his fingers along a stone wall of a building as they passed. He rubbed the grit and dirt over his hands and scrubbed it into his cheeks.

  “You just took a bath,” Lonni said.

  Unfortunately. “How many clean sell-swords do you know?” asked Galeron. “Better yet, how many folk of the lower cities have a freshly scrubbed face?”

  She rubbed a hand across her own face. “How do I look?”