by Garon Whited
“Hello to you both,” I returned. “I see Firebrand has a nice place to hang around.”
“Yes,” Tort said, and Firebrand agreed. “I thought it might be content with but one day in such a forge as my angel created, and so wish to accompany you.
Keep this one, Boss, Firebrand advised. She not only likes you, but she thinks ahead.
“I agree,” I said, answering them both. Tort helped fasten everything on and I settled Firebrand into a comfortable position, relegating my other sword to the opposite side.
What do you need that one for, Boss?
I’m sentimental about it. Besides, you never know when I’ll need to grab an enemy’s soul and jam him into a sword. I’m certainly not putting anyone else in with you.
Hmm. Good point.
Besides, I might want to fight with a sword in each hand. Keria did that to me, and it was an ugly, unpleasant experience that I would like ugly, unpleasant people to experience.
Firebrand chuckled.
“I like it,” I told Tort, and kissed her because she seemed to be expecting it. Maybe a little bit because I wanted to, as well. She really is a wonderful person. Why she chooses to hang around with me is an open question.
“Now,” I continued, “what can you tell me about the cities that recently tried to invade?”
“Tolcaren, Formia, and Maran are coastal cities between Baret and the old capitol, Carrillon,” she told me. “Their Princes are Rogis, Palays, and Drannis. Maran attempted an invasion through the seawall under Drannis’ father, Prince Dromon, and was repulsed. Formia—Prince Palays—also attempted an invasion by landing and marching to Mochara, and suffered considerable difficulty before even reaching Mochara. Tolcaren, however, has never before shown any interest in us, but it is suspected that Prince Rogis has been persuaded, either by representatives from Byrne, or by some offer from Kamshasa, to participate in this latest attack.”
I stared at her for several seconds. She looked back at me, unabashed.
“My angel? Is there something wrong?”
“No, no,” I assured her. “I’m just… I didn’t think we knew a lot about the Rethven cities and their politics?”
“You did say we should find out more,” Tort pointed out.
“I did?”
“You did. And so I have.”
“Been spending a lot of time at the scrying mirror, have we?”
“Oh, no!” she protested, shocked. “That would be pointless. Such a course would require seer observing each city—more than one, to watch it constantly. Even then, we would only learn what the seer could actually see. The difficulty with being able to see anywhere is knowing where one needs to look. Watching a palace would take constant effort by teams, for although one room may be interesting, more important things may happen are in another. It really is not a practical way to gain this kind of information.”
I frowned in thought.
“New spell?” I asked. “Or some sort of automated word-recognition? A magical recording, somehow, of various scrying points that you can review later?”
“No,” she said, head cocked to the side, “although your idea is something new. I could attempt such a thing in the future.”
“Okay, I give up. How are you collecting all this information?”
“Spies.”
“Spies?”
“People who will observe and report,” she clarified.
“Yes, I know what the word means,” I told her. “Spies. Direct. Simple. Even mundane. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Because you think like an honest man? Firebrand suggested.
Tort’s lips tightened with the effort of not laughing, but her eyes danced.
“Thank you, Firebrand,” I said. “I’ve missed you.”
Glad to help, Boss.
“Sometimes I’ve missed you more than other times.”
Have I just been insulted?
“Rebuked, maybe,” I allowed, and looked at Tort. “So, you’ve sent spies into various cities in Rethven?”
“Yes, my angel.”
“Okay. Carry on.”
So she told me about the Princes of Tolcaren, Formia, and Maran, as well as a lot more about their cities—who they traded with, who they didn’t like, what claim each had on the throne of Rethven, their family trees, their relative wealth, the size of their standing armies, the defenses of their cities, the works.
We moved into my study area so I could sit down and take notes. Tort just rattled it all off as though she memorized it, which she very well might. She’s a magician; you don’t make it to magician status by being stupid.
I looked over the pages (Pages! Of paper! Lots and lots of glorious paper!—sorry about that. To continue…) of notes and wondered if Tort had missed her calling. Maybe she should have been a spymaster, rather than a magician. Or did being a magician make it easy to be a spymaster? Good question.
“All right. I think I have a plan. Sort of. How are we doing on magic mirrors? Do we have, um, four sets?”
“We do. T’yl and I have recruited some of the wizard’s guild for help; six of your sets are ready. The other six are still not yet complete.”
“That’s more than enough. I only need four, tonight. But I think I’ll need you and T’yl down in the gate room.”
“When?”
“Since it would be rude to wake people, let’s do this now; hopefully, we can finish in less than an hour. Then I can be up all night arguing with people.”
“I feel certain I can help you recover from the ordeal,” Tort promised.
We took the local half of the magic mirror pairs to the conference room and let the mountain hold them on the walls. For my part, I worked with the sand table, zooming out and in, finding three cities. In each one, there was a palace, which required a little “wandering around” before I could find someplace suitable inside it.
As I did so, I wondered about magical protection. Do people just not much care about being spied on by wizards and magicians and such? Or is warding a whole palace too much work? Admittedly, all magic-workers have varying levels of skill and power; maybe some rooms of the palace are more thoroughly defended than the palace as a whole. Still, it’s not hard to maintain a spell. Someone could hire a magician to put a good one on the palace to prevent scrying and other magical spying, then the court wizard—or wizards, for really rich places—could simply keep it going.
Maybe I’m just too used to magic being all over the place. People in Rethven consider traveling wizards to be the only magic they’re likely to see; they only come to town every week or so. It’s kind of like having the circus come to town. In Karvalen, a wizard is a distinction between a dabbler in magic and a professional that earns his living. Karvalen wizards are more like plumbers—and, yes, like plumbers, they’ll fix what you tried to do yourself.
Once I found my target points, I fixed them in memory and we headed down to the gate room. A little work with a regular scrying spell brought up the first one, in Hagan. Prince Jorgen was a decent sort, and he promised to think about continuing to be a decent sort in regard to Karvalen. I wanted to drop off a mirror so we could talk about it.
I disconnected the prisoners from the scryshield and plugged them into the gate. We weren’t going out of the universe tonight, but I planned to go several places. It was going to strain the gate’s charge.
First, Hagan. There wasn’t an exact fit, but the ornamental, wrought-iron arch over the garden gate was pretty close; we targeted that and I stepped through, carrying a large mirror. The gate snapped shut behind me.
Two minutes later, I had the attention of four guards and was being escorted to their captain. He listened politely as I identified myself, dropped off my gift, and asked to be escorted back to the garden.
There was some difficulty in that he wanted more information. I did my best to explain. It did not seem to comfort him.
“Look,” I finally said, “have the court wizard look over the mirror. In the meantime, take me back
to the garden and watch me leave. If I’m gone, where’s the problem? Plus, you get to see how I leave. But the important thing is that I’m leaving, which means there’s no danger. I’ll even wait long enough for the court wizard to show up and watch, if you like.”
The logic of this appealed to him. I think the ability to share any blame with the court wizard was also a selling point. At any rate, they escorted me to the garden and met the wizard there. I sent Tort a message spell and they opened the gate.
I stepped through, waved, and the gate closed. It might be interesting to hear what sort of report they gave. Considering I was hopeful that Jorgen would be calling me to chat, I might.
Next up was Tolcaren; it was farthest west, so would take the most effort. For this, Tort and I cast a spell to allow us to think at each other constantly. If I had to leave in a hurry, I didn’t want to waste time with sending a message to open the gate. We made sure my typical magical defenses and my disguise spells were in good shape while we were at it.
Then I locked in on the palace at Tolcaren. It had a lot of arches to choose from; the thing was very old. Most of the doorways and all of the hallways were done with a rounded top. I picked one near the court wizard’s quarters.
Moments later, I was trudging through a hallway with a wrapped mirror under one arm. I knocked on the wizard’s door. Then knocked again. When he finally answered, he seemed to be in less than a good mood. Well, it was late.
“What?” he demanded.
“Package for Prince Rogis,” I told him, and held out the mirror. He looked at me as though I were a simpleton.
“Then take it to the Prince,” he said, snappishly, and slammed the door.
Polite bastard, isn’t he? Firebrand asked.
Not so you’d notice, I replied. I turned around and headed in the general direction of that portion of the palace reserved for actually living in. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going; I hadn’t studied the layout all that much. A servant with a bucket and a brush was very helpful when I asked for directions; apparently, anybody in armor is someone to defer to.
I knew it was the door to the Prince’s family quarters because of the fancy-dress guards on either side of it. I approached, still holding the wrapped mirror in front of me.
“Package for the Prince,” I said. “Wizard said to take it up to him.”
They glanced at each other. One shrugged. The other accepted the mirror with a grunt; the things aren’t light.
“What is it?” he asked, hefting it into a better carry.
“Gift from the King of Karvalen. Magic mirror. It’s supposed to be some sort of thing for talking to him.”
The other guard looked hard at my sash. I wasn’t wearing a tabard, of course, but Firebrand’s hilt is distinctive and my sash isn’t exactly standard Rethven issue.
“And who are you?” he asked.
“King of Karvalen,” I answered. “Good evening. And now I’ll be on my way. Remember, you’re not to abandon your posts,” I finished, as I turned and walked away. I could hear Tort laughing in the back of my mind.
I got several paces down the hall while they struggled with what to do. You’d think they’d have some sort of standard operating procedures… then again, what’s the SOP for getting an unexpected delivery from a foreign ruler? Do you jump him? No? Do you chase him? No? What, exactly, does one do in these circumstances?
It turns out they decided to get instructions. One of them rapped sharply on the door, presumably to inform the Prince. I just kept going and made it back to my chosen archway before they sounded any alarms. T’yl and Tort opened it, I stepped through, and it snapped closed again.
Tort was still smiling. T’yl wanted to know what happened, so I told him, with a little help from Tort. He was as amused as she was.
Next, Maran. Considerably closer, it wouldn’t take as much to open, but we didn’t have any archway types of doors or ornamental trellises or whatever. The closest thing I could find in the place was a fancy, circular window about the right size—it had a circular piece of glass in the center, then wedge-shaped bits extending from there to the frame, all set in lead or tin or something. It would work, but it had the drawback of being in one wall of the Prince’s private study.
I gave serious thought to just burning the extra power to force a connection with a rectangular doorway. If there weren’t four trips—two for Maran, two more for Formia—to get through tonight, I might have done it. We could probably manage that, just on the charge left in the gate; if not, we could invest it with more power from simple spellcasting efforts, charging it directly.
But I don’t like having a low battery. It makes me nervous. If anything went wrong, or if the gate had to be open for longer than anticipated… yeah, I like having some margin for error. I have lots of errors; I want margin for them.
I did a quick check with a scrying spell. The Prince was up and going through paperwork.
Great.
On the other hand, Firebrand pointed out, we could just kill him on the spot and save the boring talking part.
“And then we’d have a war for certain,” I reminded it.
Yes?
“Yes.”
…and?
I sighed.
“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t want to have a war.”
Oh. Maybe we can have one later…?
“There is always that possibility,” I admitted. “For now, though, let’s try to be as diplomatic as possible.”
You mean, as diplomatic as it’s possible to be when you step straight into his study?
“Have I told you to shut up recently?”
No.
I waited.
Ah. Shutting up now.
Tort’s laughter was only in the back of my mind; her face betrayed nothing. I grumbled under my breath as we readied the gate again. It opened and I stepped through and down to the floor; it snapped shut behind me.
“Evening,” I offered. Prince Drannis looked up from his paperwork and studied me. He didn’t seem frightened, just mildly startled. He wasn’t a large man, but he had good shoulders. His hair was light brown, liberally salted with grey. He wore a beard, close-cropped, running low along his cheeks.
“Good evening,” he replied, sticking his quill into a holder. “If I ask what this is about, will I regret it?”
“I hope not. I’ve just come to give you a gift.”
“A gift unasked is often more trouble than it is worth,” he observed.
“A gift you ask for isn’t really a gift, either,” I told him. He nodded, slowly.
“Very well. I have other questions.”
“I’m sure you do,” I replied, and put the bundle of the mirror down next to the window. “I’m on kind of a tight schedule, tonight, but I can take a couple of minutes. That is, I can spare you a dozen flickerings of the candle.”
“Who are you, what is the gift, and why are you giving it to me?”
“Succinct. I like that.”
“Thank you.”
“In order, I’m the King of Karvalen, it’s a magic mirror so we can talk at greater length, and because we need to discuss your part in the invasion of my kingdom.”
“If you are who you say you are, I take it that you are not here to kill me?”
“Yep. That is, you are correct. I have no desire to kill you.”
“I find that hard to believe,” he said.
“You’ve been listening to rumors about me,” I accused.
“Of course.”
“You should really try sending someone over,” I suggested.
“I did.”
“I mean, to talk. Not to invade. Gossip only goes so far.”
“Well, that’s true,” he allowed.
“Great. I look forward to talking with you about it. Just get your wizard—you do have a court wizard, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Your wizard should be able to use the mirror to reach me, or someone who works for me. It’ll work for y
ou, too, but it’s easier if he shows you how. I’d like to work out a reasonable alternative to your invasion attempts. My first thought is to have a trading alliance, but I’m not a politician; I have people for that. We can work something out, I’m sure.”
“I do not think so,” he replied. He lifted a sheathed sword from where it had lain, out of sight behind his writing-table.
“Oh, for—look, before you start, can I at least ask why?” I asked. He hesitated and I pressed him with, “I answered your questions. Please?”
“Because I have no choice. Parrin has my daughters. I’ll not risk them for your sake.”
“Aha. That would be Prince Parrin, of Byrne?”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough. I’ve been thinking that I may need to kill that man, anyway. This just confirms it.”
He drew his sword.
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Oh, I’m planning to recover your daughters, first. I’m against the idea of him having hostages, especially children. You may have heard that about me.”
“Yes… I have,” he admitted. “But you will understand that I will not risk them.”
“No problem. We’ll talk about this more, later; in the meantime, you go right ahead doing whatever you need to do to keep them alive. I won’t hold it against you.” I paused for a moment. “Do you happen to know if Formia or Tolcaren are in the same boat?”
“Boat?” he asked, frowning.
“Are they being blackmailed? Does Prince Parrin have hostages from them?”
“I do not know,” he admitted, “and I do not care. All I care about is getting my daughters back.”
“Okay. I’m with you on that. We’ll work something out.”
The gate opened behind me and I sat down in the gate/window, rolled backward amid much clanking, and it closed after me.
“Did you get all that, Tort?”
“I did.”
“Anything from the spy network on that?”
“No, I have not heard of it. It is either a close secret, or is very recent.”
“Fair enough. T’yl? How are we on gate charge?”
“I am certain we have enough for Formia,” he said, judiciously, “but I should hope we have something much more accommodating than that window you just used.”