by M. C. Planck
As they were about to retire themselves, there was a knock on the door. Christopher found himself immediately reaching for his sword, but it was Kennet and three other young men, come for night duty armed with heavy cudgels. All of them were destined for the winter draft, and they found it hugely exciting to be considered man enough to fight for their soon-to-be comrade-in-arms. Several of them hinted they could share the bed by the fire. Helga would have none of it. They didn’t have beards to speak of, and she was in a higher class now. Instead they wound up double-bunking with each other in Svengusta and Christopher’s room.
The boys fell asleep quickly enough, no doubt due to hard labor and clean consciences. Christopher lay awake for a while, listening to the breathing of the young men he had conned into sharing his danger, for no more reward than the thrill of it.
Unfortunately, all the boys shared was the danger. The work was his own. He had never thought of chemistry as a physically challenging endeavor, but the amount of energy it consumed was phenomenal. Most of his time was spent at the woodpile, and it would need replenishing soon. Splitting wood with an ax was exhausting; cutting down a whole tree with one seemed improbable. Nonetheless he found himself eyeing a particularly large fir at the edge of the woods.
He was taking a breather to consider the problem when a one-horse wagon ambled up, with Tom Fool on the bench seat next to the driver.
“Actually swinging that ax would cut more wood than praying for a miracle,” Tom suggested.
“Except my prayers have just been answered.” Christopher stuck the ax in the chopping stump and waved Tom an invitation.
“Or you could just burn coal,” Tom said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at a well-laden wheelbarrow in the back of the wagon.
“There’s a tree that owes you its life,” Christopher said, although the relief in his voice was more for his own sake.
“Perhaps it is the tree’s prayer that was answered, then,” Tom said. “In either case I am happy to be the instrument of deliverance.”
The wagon driver jumped down to help unload, and Tom performed an introduction.
“Please meet Fingean the drayer,” Tom said with a little flourish. “He’s in my guild, as it were, the guild of second sons. But he drew a horse and wagon out of the deal, so he makes a living hauling. I thought if you were wanting a lot of coal, you might be thinking of hiring a wagon.”
The other man bowed, not quite as comfortable with unpredictable priests as Tom.
“How much does it cost?” Christopher immediately thought of a better question. “I mean, how much did you pay?”
“Ah, about that,” Tom said with exaggerated dismay. “I’d talked the fellow into coming out here to meet you, and I just tagged along for the ride. I wouldn’t know what his ordinary charges are.”
“You mean to tell me,” Christopher said, “that when I paid you to deliver a wheelbarrow of coal, you recruited a man to haul it out here and convinced him to do it for free?”
“Yes, Pater,” Tom answered, a little wary. “I hope that’s acceptable.”
“Acceptable is not quite the word I’d use,” Christopher replied. There was an old adage about hiring the right person when you met him and figuring out what his job was afterward. “How much would I have to pay you to work for me full-time?”
“Doing what, Pater?”
“Manual labor,” Christopher answered honestly. “For now.”
“Then I am pleased to say I am qualified. An honest wage for a man with no skill or guild certificate is a silver a day,” Tom suggested.
“That’s forty gold a year.” Christopher tried to decide if he could afford it. Were his finances sufficient to maintain a horse and a servant? But there was too much work to be done alone.
“Only thirty a year, if you provide room and board in your fine chapel,” Tom countered. “But I get a day off a week, to see my girl in Knockford.”
“Deal,” Christopher said, leaping at the bargain. “But you get two days off a week.” It wasn’t as nice as it sounded. Around here a week was ten days long.
He turned to the drayer. “Let me pay for the service Tom tricked you out of, and come on in for lunch.
“Oh, damn,” he told Tom, as Helga sighed and got out the dishes she had just put away now that the soldiers were gone, “I forgot, I’m under some kind of death sentence by the Invisible Guild. You might not want to work with me after all.”
“I’ll not let foxes chase me off from the golden goose.” Tom had an uncharacteristic look on his face, and Christopher finally recognized it as seriousness. “I swing a cudgel as well as the next, or even a sword if you’ve got one to spare.”
“Where is he going to sleep?” Helga asked with some interest. She hadn’t paid the soldiers any mind, but Tom had a charm that accented his rough-hewn look.
“We’ll just have to reduce the number of boys,” Svengusta said. “This lad’s worth two of them, anyway, and surely half the commotion.”
After lunch Christopher paid the drayer with a heavy gold coin. Then he sighed and cornered Helga in the kitchen.
“Tom’s going to be eating with us, and I can’t expect Sven to pay for that. So how much do you need?”
“Pater gives me a gold a week for the three of us,” she said.
Christopher ate as much as the old man and the girl together. Not that he was putting on weight; if anything, he was losing it. Tom would eat at least as much, so that meant another twenty gold a year. Which was ten more than he’d saved by offering Tom a bed in the chapel.
There was no question about it. He’d hired the right man.
He counted over four precious coins. “That’s for the next four weeks, then, for Tom and me.”
Tom made himself useful immediately, in a way that Christopher had once tried to do but failed. Helga would let him help with the chores she never allowed Christopher to touch. No doubt it had more to do with competence than rank; Tom actually knew what he was doing.
11.
FIRE IN THE SKY
Neither Svengusta nor Helga were willing to tolerate burning coal in the chapel’s fireplace, so Christopher cooked his first batch of coke over an open fire. Tom’s tongue, normally quick to prod an irony, seemed dumbfounded by the act of burning wood to heat coal. The process took several days to yield a sack of hard gray lumps.
“We’ll need to build an oven,” Christopher said. “Do you know a bricklayer?”
“If you don’t plan to live in it, I can probably manage,” Tom said, “though I hope you don’t want me to make the bricks myself.”
“Not unless you can,” Christopher said, but not seriously. Making bricks required firewood.
Now it was time to go to town and burn through his fortune. Buying Fae’s freedom would take half his capital; her and Tom’s salary and food for the horse would take the other half. That left Christopher a beggar again, depending solely on whatever Karl brought back from Kingsrock. But whenever he found himself fretting over a life of poverty, he reminded himself that he would likely be murdered in his sleep before he starved.
Christopher offered Tom a ride into town, figuring the huge warhorse could easily carry them double. But the horse gave them such a withering glare when Tom put his foot in the stirrup that both men thought better of the idea, and poor Tom had to walk. In town they split up, Tom to find Fingean and bricks, and Christopher to see the wizard.
First he had a friendlier task, paying a visit to Dereth to order a steel tube, about two inches in diameter and a foot long. Before Dereth could complain about lack of resources, Christopher dumped the sack of coke into the charcoal bucket.
“I cannot smelt with coal,” the smith said. “Your tube will be useless, as brittle as glass.”
“It’s not coal,” Christopher said. “Well, anymore.”
Dereth picked up a lump and examined it more closely.
“This will liquefy your iron. Use a bellows to blow clean air through the melt and watch the flames. When
they come out the right color, you’ll have steel.”
“And what color is that?” Dereth asked.
Christopher shrugged. “No idea. I trust you to figure it out.”
He stood on the doorstep to Flayn’s shop, feeling the weight of the bag of coins in his hands. The church clerk had raised an eyebrow when Christopher had asked for so much money, apparently presuming no single purchase of such magnitude could be wise. Privately, Christopher agreed with him, but he could see no other choice.
Svengusta’s words of advice from the duel came back to him. There was no room for indecision anymore; he had chosen this path, and now he had to act to a single purpose.
He strode inside, nodded politely to Fae, and dropped the bag onto the counter with a heavy jingle.
Fae’s cheek twitched, her only visible sign of emotion. “Master Flayn,” she called out in a pleasant, controlled voice, “we have a customer that must speak to you.”
They stood there for a few minutes, waiting for the wizard. Christopher marveled at the woman’s strength of reserve.
Flayn stepped out from behind the curtain warily, like a man in a strange building, even though it was his own shop. He looked at Christopher, at the money on the counter.
“What do you think you can buy here, Pater?” he said coldly.
Fae answered for him. “Your apprentice.”
Flayn had been cold; now he was steaming with fury. Not a muscle moved in his face, though.
“Does my apprentice wish to be bought?” he said, his voice carved out in daggers of ice.
Visibly trembling, Fae stepped forward, stared the wizard in the face. Suddenly she slapped him, a ringing blow with every ounce of strength she had.
Flayn’s eyes tightened, and though he did not react in any other way, Christopher was suddenly worried that the wizard was about to blast the girl into the middle of next week.
He cleared his throat, casually hitched his thumb on his sword sash.
“Will you answer for the actions of your apprentice?” Flayn demanded without looking away, his voice flat, ugly, and crawling with menace.
“She’s not my apprentice,” Christopher said. “She’s my employee. But yes, I’ll discipline her, if you can look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t deserve that.”
Flayn turned to face him slowly, like a mobile statue. His eyes raked up and down Christopher with contempt.
“Do you think your sword protects you, fool?” he hissed, a snake threatening to strike.
“No,” Christopher said, as mildly as he could under the circumstances. “I think that big honking church over there protects me. If you wish to bring suit against the girl, then you can. But she’ll get up in open court and explain why she thought you deserved it. If you don’t like the sound of that, then let’s just call it even, and forget about it.”
“Get out,” Flayn ordered. It seemed an unlikely way to run a business; the more gold Christopher brought in, the quicker he was thrown out.
“I’ll collect my things,” Fae said. She had aimed for light and breezy. It came out more like a sobbing wheeze as she darted behind the curtain.
The two men stood there, one relentlessly glaring, one gratingly uncomfortable.
“This doesn’t have to be so difficult,” Christopher said resignedly. “I’ve no hard feelings toward you, Master Wizard.”
“You’ll pay for this,” Flayn whispered, as if making a promise to himself.
Christopher confined himself to looking pointedly at the wall and said nothing.
Fae came down, carrying a large burlap bag, and edged around the immobile wizard, clutching her cloak about her tightly. Christopher opened the door for her, and silently they escaped into the street.
“That was stupid,” he said, taking the bag from her.
“I know,” Fae confessed. “It was poorly done. I let my emotions get the better of me. Yet more proof that I am not fit for the arcane arts, he would say.” She wilted, but then anger inflamed a rally. “But you were not the one who stood to his groping every night! No,” she sighed, seeing his look, “he did not force me. In the beginning I was not unwilling. But then I discovered that it was always about him, and never about me. And then I realized that everything is about him, and never about me. Now I have nowhere to turn, nowhere to live, nothing but your charity. Don’t you see, I had to slap him. Or I would turn tail and run back to him and his false promises, even now.” She was trying not to weep.
“You’re coming to live with me for a while,” he answered. “I don’t dare leave you in town with Flayn steaming like that. Let him cool down a bit. Once our operations are in full swing, you can come back to town if you want. No,” he sighed, seeing her look in return, “do not worry. I have no interest in groping you. You are very pretty, Fae, but I have a wife. She’s not here,” he explained when Fae looked at him dubiously. “But someday I am going to go back to her and look her in the face and tell her that I missed her every single moment of every single day. And night.”
They walked back to the church stables, where Fingean and Tom were waiting with the wagon.
Tom said from under a raised eyebrow, “That was a nice purchase, Pater. I’m glad you made us wait for it.”
Christopher was going to defend her, but Fae gave the man such a haughty glare that he burst out laughing instead. Tom waved imaginary flames off of his beard, and even Fingean cracked a smile.
Helga was not as impressed with the addition as Tom was, eyeing Fae with barely concealed disdain. It didn’t help that Fae was still wearing her shop clothing, tailored to be suggestive to the point of provocation. Christopher escaped outside to help unload the bricks.
“We have it in hand, my lord,” Tom said.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“You’re ranked, and I work for you.”
“I think I prefer Pater . . . or even just Christopher.”
Tom’s eyebrows shot up, and he pretended to eye Christopher appraisingly. “Not that you’re not well favored, Pater, but . . .”
Obviously Christopher was asking for a level of informality that bordered on the intimate. Being able to speak the language masked the fact that he was in a different world, and he kept forgetting the little things. “Okay, Tom, you don’t have to make fun of me every time I say something stupid.”
“Believe me, Pater, I don’t.”
“You should have been a mummer,” he told Tom with a laugh.
“The only job less respectable than a starving peasant.” Tom shook his head sadly. “And it requires travel. I’d never see my girl then.”
Christopher could relate to that sentiment.
He didn’t want to face Helga yet, so he invited both men into the tavern for a pint and was not surprised to find Svengusta already hard at work on one.
“Our intrepid adventurers return from town, and this time without the Vicar in tow. I trust you’ve been up to no mischief, then?”
“I guess we better not tell him about the shop-girl we brought home,” Christopher said to Tom.
“Good gods,” Svengusta moaned, “don’t we have enough people underfoot?”
“Don’t complain just yet,” Tom said. “She’s easy on the eyes. Wait till she talks to you. Then you can complain.”
“Oh no,” Svengusta said with trepidation. “Tell me you didn’t bring home Flayn’s apprentice. Must you make enemies faster than we can bury them?”
Just to annoy him, Christopher asked, “Flayn looked hot enough to call me out.”
“Ahhh,” Svengusta moaned. “If you get into another duel, Faren will hang you by your ballocks until you stop squeaking.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Christopher laughed. “Now if Tom’s done with his beer, we can go home and douse the cats. That’s how you stop a cat-fight, right?”
“Or we could just sell tickets,” Tom suggested.
But dinner surprised them all. Helga was chatting with Fae like an old friend, and the apprentice was for all
appearances grateful for her company. Christopher realized he could hope to master magic and inter-dimensional travel, but some mysteries would always be beyond his reach.
It was becoming a bit of a struggle to fit all of these people into the small living area of the chapel. Fae and Helga would have to share a bed now. Christopher felt comforted despite the close quarters. The Invisible Guild would need grease to slip past all these people.
Fae had not come without gifts: a sheaf of paper, a pouch of sulfur, and skills he had not imagined. And magic.
Uncertain of the exact formula, Christopher decided to make a dozen batches of different ratios. Fae produced a balance scale, mortar, and pestle from her bag and accomplished the task while he was still explaining it. Then she looked at him expectantly. He had to ask her what she was waiting for.
“Aren’t you going to tell me the properties of each mixture?”
“I don’t know the properties. Hopefully, one of them explodes.”
“How can you not know? They are your formulas.”
“This isn’t my . . . specialty. We have to do some experiments.”
She sat back, like a cat arching. Christopher imagined he could see the fur standing up.
“I can’t keep asking you to explain things, Fae. Just tell me.”
“Experiments are not normally a part of arcane study. A single misplaced syllable can destroy an entire city.”
It seemed unlikely that wizards wielded that much power but still mucked about in book shops under the rule of priests. His doubt must have shown, because Fae amended her statement.
“Admittedly, not first-rank magic. Still, we may be in danger.”
“This isn’t arcane study.”
“So it is divine magic. Am I to be a priest, then?”
“No,” he said, “it’s not divine magic. It’s not any kind of magic at all. We’ll be safe if we take some precautions.”
“But you have taken no caution. I see no wards, you have said no prayers, and as far as I can tell the icon of the god has no power.”