by Garon Whited
I don’t like playing spaceman through a transformation. It makes me itchy and nervous. At least I had mountains in the way and some canopy for cover. I feel better when my armor isn’t in direct sunlight.
Once the transformation ran its course, I flensed the skull quickly with tendrils, peeling and scooping and draining. Hauling the skull back was no trick at all, after that.
Back in the village—I should ask if anyone has named it. I keep calling it “the village,” which makes me sound like Number Six. On the other hand, I’m in nominal charge, so maybe Number Two. Oh, my. Maybe I’m “Them.”
Back in the village, I finished cleaning my dinosaur skull and set it aside. There were no messages from the mirror and the scrying redirector was still working. Good. Presumably, no one poked a magical nose into my village. I checked on Renata and she was fine, sleeping peacefully with no windows, a guard on the stairs, and a quartet of warriors patrolling around the base of the tower. There were three others at fixed posts to watch the tower, itself.
I went out to the fields with Firebrand. Those stumps weren’t going to remove themselves.
While it burned out stumps, I gave some more thought to Renata. She wasn’t pleased at living a life well-guarded. Oh, I suppose she might learn to enjoy the attention, but I doubted it. She was a warrior, despite her beauty-contest appearance, and was accustomed to going out and fighting. Being constantly guarded and protected rankled. Then again, how many beautiful women secretly hate being treated like they’re objects of art instead of capable human beings? I know I never enjoyed bodyguards and I’m certainly no prize winner. Of course, I also felt they were being needlessly endangered by being near me in the first place. Different reasons, but a similar problem.
Was there a way to fix it so she wouldn’t have to be guarded all the time?
Hold on. Naskarl wants her child. For whatever reason, the kid is important. It might not actually be Renata he wants.
Okay, so, there’s an embryonic peanut in there. Get rid of it and the problem goes away. Renata can walk into the Sarcana estate, let their wizard or the priests determine she’s kid-free, and she goes off on her own business, free of their entanglements.
The problem is, I can’t make such a decision. Regardless of my opinion on the matter—do it, don’t do it, whatever—Renata is an independent human being. Her decisions are her responsibility, not mine, and this is definitively her decision to make. No doubt the local medicine men have techniques for terminating a pregnancy, but she hasn’t availed herself of them. Therefore, she’s keeping the kid. I’ll have to ask to be sure.
Back to the basic question. Questions, rather. Why does Naskarl want the kid so badly? Is there a way to hide Renata well enough to let her feel less hemmed-in by guards? If Renata disappears, will that get House Sarcana off our collective backs? Or will they have to be convinced she’s dead? If not, is there some other way for me to persuade them to pick up their marbles and go home? Or will I have to do something brutal and lethal to finish all this?
I do plan to rob them blind, though. They sent a wizard to get whatever money I have, but it might simply be my reputation for wealth. I tend to think it means this whole vendetta business can be expensive. If I take away their gold and… say, donate it to the main temple in Sarashda, giving it as an offering that my side of the vendetta might find favor with the gods?… they’ll have severe cash flow problems. Naskarl might even have to let some of his hired warriors go. He might not even be able to pay his wizards!
This won’t cool things down, but it may make him consider the cost. After all, his big complaint so far is about who controls the House Sarcana. If I can make it expensive enough, he may decide to take me at my word—“I don’t care. Keep it.”—and hope I don’t wreck its finances any further.
On a related note, I do need to make entrance to the valley a bit more difficult.
“Firebrand?”
Yo.
“Would you mind awfully if I got someone out here to move you from stump to stump?”
I guess not. Can you assign Cahira?
“I don’t see why not, if you’ll point out who she is. Why do you ask?”
She’s vicious. I like her.
The world rocked as my eyes rolled.
“All right. Let’s find Cahira and have her poke stumps for you.”
Not to pry, Boss, but why can’t you do it?
“I think I have a lot to do.”
Weather spells?
“Those, too, yes, but I have some stonework to manage, as well.”
Oh. Sucks to be king, doesn’t it?
“No kidding. You’d think I’d be better at avoiding it.”
By now, anyway. Sure, go ahead. I kinda like this precision burning stuff.
Tauta, 21st Day of Milaskir
The local weather isn’t too cooperative, but I think I have it sorted out. The planet rotates so slowly, there’s almost no Coriolis effect. It throws me off, but, with a touch of luck, tomorrow in Sarashda they should have a cold front move through, bringing rain and lowering the temperature down to something more Spring-like than tropical summer. It should be a relatively cool, fresh evening for them.
If everything went as well as the weather, I wouldn’t have problems.
First thing this morning—well, second thing. Leisel sometimes enjoys having me there to wake up to. But second thing this morning, we got a report about a minor barbarian raid on the iron mine’s camp last night. It wasn’t an invasion, just a smash-and-grab by three or four men. They didn’t kill anyone, but not for lack of trying. They were after steel, pure and simple, and made off with over a hundred pounds of high-quality metal in various forms.
There’s the trouble with most of our border protection. It’s fine against an army, but a small group can simply walk in. Okay, maybe not “simply,” what with the terrain they have to cross, but they can travel light, on foot, and make it into the valley. Our sentry posts can’t keep an eye on everything.
I’ll be making the goat trails more difficult later today. It won’t put a stop to such things, but it should discourage any but the most determined. And if a few of those should slip and fall, I find myself strangely okay with it.
Leisel sent riders out to patrol the perimeter of the valley, especially toward the western ridge and the series of falls for the river’s outlet. I offered to hunt them down magically. Her response?
“We have live prey to hunt and you want to deprive your warriors of the sport?”
Maybe she had a point. I went out to the camp to see to the wounded. Most of the damage was from stab wounds or clubs. A little flesh-welding, a bit of bone glue, a healing spell or two, and orders to take a couple of days off were all it took.
I received considerable thanks and even more funny looks. I really ought to enchant something so I can be seen using a magic item instead of casting spells—or claim that, anyway. Maybe a glove. It can glow red while I hold it over a wound. That should work. I asked for some and went off to my next task.
Back at the tower, I did the usual maintenance checkup on my solar conversion panels and was surprised at how far they spread. I shouldn’t have been. It’s a high-magic environment, after all. Everywhere else, they replicate slowly. Here, they have power lying around, as well as their own output.
Observing their power output, I wondered about those glowing spheres. Some of the spells in and around the valley don’t run on the solar panel power supply, or not exclusively. The tower’s spells, for example, take all the energy they can get to make it reconfigure at what I might call a reasonable rate—as fast as the hour hand on a clock, perhaps. Not something you see moving, but, if you don’t watch it, you’ll come back to see it has moved. How many of those shining things get sucked into the power intakes and ground up for energy? It would explain why I haven’t seen any around in a long while. Are they smart enough to avoid cities and other magic-hungry places as a dangerous environment? Or is it more like not seeing any bugs due to
the bug zapper?
I also have questions about a glowing ball of energy bonding—I presume—with an unborn baby. I can’t detect anything unusual with Renata or her child, but this only raises more questions. Is the glowing thing in there at all? Was it spiritually digested by Renata? Or by the baby? Or is it a possessing entity and I simply can’t tell the difference?
I don’t like these questions. Probably because I can’t answer them.
Fortunately, I had other things to think about. The solar conversion panels are a good example. Having them as a dome-like construct, though, seemed less of a good idea. It’s a valley. Any panels near ground level will either be in shadow or aligned edge-on to the sun. Instead, with so many panels already available, I rearranged them. I picked out five mountain peaks around the valley and started moving everything. Instead of a dome, I laid them out flat with the peaks as fixed reference points. They cover the valley like a big, tight-stretched canvas roof. This put them up high enough to be completely out of anyone’s way, as well as giving them room to spread.
By then, someone found me a pair of gloves. They were soft, probably deerskin. They were well-made, too, if a trifle small for my hands. I worked them over with a basic glow enchantment while I wore them. I also had a repair spell work them over, stretching them a bit. I clapped my hands together and they lit up with a soft glow reminiscent of a chemical light-stick. The color of blood, of course. Perfect for “healing gloves.” No warrior should be without a pair, obviously. They still didn’t do anything, but they were only an excuse, anyway.
With my future alibi prepared, I went to see Renata. She was on watch duty in the village’s guard tower. I nodded at the quartet of guards at the base and went up one of the four corner posts, the one with the pegs in it, to join her in the box at the top.
“Sir.”
“Morning. How are you?”
“Doing fine, sir.”
“Any morning sickness?”
“Not so far, sir, if I avoid Brock.”
“Brock?”
“New man, sir. He’s making eyes at me, but I can handle that. He needs to bathe more often, or he just smells bad. Nobody else complains, so maybe I imagine it.”
“Pregnant women often have a keener sense of smell. Mention it to Leisel. I will.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Did Leisel talk to you about this whole Sarcana thing?”
“The vendetta? No, sir. I know it’s my fault, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Oh, I might have had something to do with it, too, you know.”
“If you mean sticking a sword through that bastard Palan and burning him to death, I call it no more than he deserved!”
“Happy to help. Do you want to tell me what he did?”
Renata ran her hand over her abdomen. She wasn’t far enough along to tell, at least under armor.
“I never wanted this,” she stated, flatly. “I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for him. All I wanted was a job as a warrior, not a bedwarmer. But he was charming, at first, and wealthy, and I… I know I’m not too high-ranked as a warrior, never will be, so I needed to keep my position in the household… and now this.”
“This interferes with your plans, I take it?”
“You could say that. Sir.”
“It’s not helping mine, either, so I sort of understand.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry I’m—that is, I’m sorry this is all because of me and Palan and Naskarl.”
“Can you tell me why Naskarl is so all-fired determined to get you back?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I was afraid of that. All right. You worked for House Sarcana for a while. You know the people. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Who is Naskarl? What’s he like?”
“He’s a jealous brother who always wants whatever his brother—Palan—had. Including me, I guess.”
“Fair enough. It would explain why he was so upset at the galvanais idea.”
“Sir?”
“I thought his main worry was about the child becoming heir to Sarcana. I offered to take you as my galvanais and claim the child as my own. That would chop off any inheritance issues. Assuming, of course, you would agree to it, purely as a way to get us out of a jam. He didn’t like the idea at all.”
“I’m not sure I do, either. I’ve had enough of being handed around.”
“I only bring it up because your description of him might explain why he turned it down flat.”
“It might,” she agreed, restlessly. “Nironda might have more to do with it.”
“Oh? Nironda is—was—Palan’s galvanais, wasn’t she? She was supposed to be the one providing him with an heir?”
“That’s her. Promoted up from concubine when she caught his eye. They say she always miscarries, though. Some say she’s barren, some say she arranges it. She’s never had a child, but I hear a rumor she’s carrying Palan’s.”
“You don’t sound certain.”
“Maybe she is,” Renata shrugged. “Could be she’s decided it’s the only way she’ll stay out of the concubine quarters, so she’s not getting rid of it. It’ll assure her place as galvanais.”
“Speaking of which…”
“No.”
“Okay, so, not speaking of it. Back to Nironda and Naskarl. How do you think Naskarl feels about Nironda carrying his brother’s child?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Nironda is carrying Naskarl’s child, not Palan’s. Naskarl is much more charming, as well as handsome and lecherous. He’s had every woman on the estate at least once. And Palan didn’t spend a lot of time with Nironda, especially in the last few weeks before he died. I would know.”
“There’s an interesting thought,” I mused. “If Nironda actually has Naskarl’s child, then Naskarl’s kid will inherit the House, yes?”
“Not exactly,” Renata demurred. “The inheritance in Sarcana is a little more complicated. Palan has the cleanest claim to the House, so his firstborn inherits it. With Palan dead, it goes over to his half-brother, Naskarl. Thing is, Naskarl is the product of the same father—Vorell—but his mother was of a lower caste. Palan was actually the younger brother, but he was born of Vorell’s galvanais, all legal and proper. They have an even younger sister, Malais, who was born of Vorell’s milette. She’s likely to inherit after Naskarl, but before his heirs. If she has heirs through the agency of another manzhani or other high-born, likely the line of succession will follow her.”
“If I were her, I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same house with Naskarl.”
“Or Nironda,” Renata pointed out. “Nironda’s a cold-blooded bitch and wouldn’t blink at slipping a knife under someone’s chin.” Unspoken but clear in her expression was the added, including my own.
“Do you think Malais would be more open to a deal instead of a vendetta?”
“The deal would have to include killing Nironda before birthing Palan’s child.”
“What if it’s Naskarl’s child?”
“It wouldn’t be a threat to her. Word is, the child is Palan’s, and if there’s a child by Palan and his galvanais, there’s nothing Malais can do about it, unless someone can prove it isn’t true. But I’m a warrior, not a diplomat. Seems to me a sword through the guts is a compelling argument for either side.”
“You’re not wrong, but sometimes it pays to be a little more subtle.”
“I defer to your expertise, Mazhani.”
“Experience, maybe. I wouldn’t call it expertise. Anyway, about Malais… while you were there, did she stay at the Sarcana estate?”
“Yes. I don’t know if she’s there now. I wouldn’t think so.”
“Where would she go?”
“The House owns properties in the city.”
“Where would she go to avoid being found by Naskarl and Nironda?”
“Oh. Hmm.” Renata considered the question for some time. “I really don’t know. I wasn’t involved in managing the Ho
use.”
“Fair enough. Oh! You remind me. Do you recall where the vault or money room is?”
“In the main estate?”
“Wherever the largest repository of valuables would be.”
“The estate had people coming and going on business all the time,” she told me. “I’d guess the vault under the house was the biggest, but I can’t say for certain.”
“It’ll do. Where, exactly, under the house?”
“Oh, I see!” she declared, grinning. “Go in through the south gate and head straight to the house. It’s a water garden, so there will be a couple of patrols, but the sight lines are bad. The door you reach will be guarded…” She went on in some detail, describing how to get to the vault and what obstacles would be in the way. I appreciated the information, but I didn’t presently intend to stage a full-on invasion. Still, I asked questions—you never know.
“Thank you. This may help.”
“Anytime.”
“By the way,” I added, nodding toward the eastern quarter, “what’s the deal with the new building?”
“Which one?”
“The one with the red door.”
“Brothel.”
“There’s enough demand for one? I thought the mining camps were the big hitters for the industry.”
“There are still a lot more women than men in the village.”
“So?”
“So someone took a chance on our business.” She grinned. “I’d say it’s paying off.”
“It caters to women?”
“It’s a brothel. They don’t turn away customers. Although, yeah, it does have mostly male staff. A couple of women, for those with the taste. Most of the men around here don’t have much trouble finding someone. Leisel says it’s one of the draws for the village. Miners hear there are lots of women, but they wind up in one of the camps, not here in the village.”
“She’s a clever girl.”
“You oughtta know. Sir,” she added. I chuckled.
“Thanks. I also wanted to talk to you about your freedoms. Does it still bother you to be constantly under guard?”
“A little,” she admitted, looking out over the village. “Maybe more than a little.”