by M. C. Planck
“You just did,” Steuben said. “But to answer your question, my duties are normally considered ceremonial. I rarely leave Kingsrock, as the Saint is hardly expected to be in danger in his own lands. But your little adventure with the Invisible Guild has everybody in a tizzy.”
They followed him into a large dining hall, where Saint Krellyan and a handful of others were finishing a lunch buffet. Karl bowed stiffly to Krellyan, and Christopher copied him, the formality surprising, but the Saint immediately released them from it.
“At ease, Goodman, Pater,” Krellyan said. “Have you eaten? No, of course Karl has not delayed for mere necessities of the body. Please, help yourselves.”
While they filled their plates, Karl and Steuben speculated on the reasons for the mummers’ attack. The discussion led nowhere. Apparently Faren’s interrogation had been no more profitable than Vicar Rana’s. Christopher didn’t pay much attention because he was distracted by the buffet. He had forgotten what it was like to have to choose what went on his plate. There were actual pastries, not sweet like doughnuts but still light and airy compared to the ordinary bread, and once he realized Karl wasn’t interested in them, he took the rest of the platter. He could get fat on this kind of food. That would be a problem he’d love to have.
“Are you cursed?” Krellyan asked. “You seem to draw violence and trouble to you from the farthest quarters of the world.”
“I don’t know,” Christopher said, his mouth still full of fruit tart. “Am I cursed? Can’t you tell?” He was tired of being blamed for what other people did to him.
“I’m sorry, it was a poor attempt at drollery.” Krellyan paused and then spoke in Celestial, tracing a glyph in the air with his hand while peering intently at Christopher. “But no, I don’t think you are.”
Krellyan had a way of making you regret your petty slips.
“The fault is mine, Saint,” he said contritely. “I just don’t see how I could do things differently.”
“You don’t see how you could try to fit in more?” Krellyan asked gently.
“Oh, I see how it could be done. I just don’t see how I could do it.”
Krellyan sighed. “Neither do I. It does seem odd that one first-ranked priest should matter so much. It’s not like people haven’t knocked heads before, but this seems never-ending.”
“Well,” Christopher struggled to explain, “I think it’s more than that. I’m, uh, I’ve got different ideas about things. And I think that disturbs a lot of people.”
“It always does,” Krellyan agreed with resignation. “Now, I understand you have something to disturb me with.”
“I do, but it’s more impressive at night. Can I make my presentation after dark?”
Everybody in the room was suddenly staring at him.
“It’s a light show,” he said quickly. “The lights show up better at night, that’s all. But I can do it in the daytime, if you want.”
“Yes, after sundown will be fine. No, Captain,” he said to Steuben with a smile, “do not fret. The Pater is new to our lands. He likely does not even know why you are suddenly alarmed and suspicious.”
“It’s true,” Christopher admitted sheepishly. “I mean, I guess nighttime’s favored by evil, or something like that, but I didn’t expect you all to be superstitious.”
“You’d think the man didn’t have demons where he came from,” the captain snorted.
“I didn’t. I mean, we don’t,” Christopher said sadly, nostalgia pressing in.
Steuben was startled but looked at him with sympathy. “Then you came from a blessed land indeed. I’m sorry you got lost and wound up in our little corner of misery.”
“You didn’t . . .” started a young priestess. She stammered to a halt.
“Go on, Sister,” Krellyan encouraged her.
“You didn’t come from a higher plane, did you?” she asked shyly.
“No,” Christopher said, glad he could answer the question honestly. “Absolutely not. We had plenty of monsters. Just not demons.” Pol Pot and Stalin leapt to mind. “Our monsters went about in the day.”
“So do enough of ours,” Krellyan agreed. “Go relax, refresh yourselves. We will reconvene at sundown.”
A servant girl led them upstairs to a pair of small rooms. She offered to draw them a bath, if they wanted. Christopher didn’t want to impose, but yes, he said, that would be fantastic, and it was. He ran the girl ragged asking for hot water until she finally disappeared on him. He didn’t know what Karl did with his time, although the man seemed quite refreshed when sundown came.
Krellyan had set up court on the back porch of the house. The household assembled there, sipping mugs of hot spiced tea, dressed in warm, genteel clothes. The light-stones shone out into the night, and people talked and laughed softly. It was like a cocktail party except that there wasn’t a stereo playing in the background.
The porch faced a large garden, covered in thick snow. Christopher set his rocket launcher up on the far side of a brick planter, where it wouldn’t hurt anybody if the tube failed and exploded. He loaded his first rocket, a simple green burster.
“I’ll need a real candle, not a light-stone,” he said.
It was a measure of how dependent on magic they were that it took them a few minutes to find one.
“Everybody understands this goes boom, right? And the stable’s secure, somebody is with the horses?”
“My captain assures me all is in readiness,” Krellyan said. Steuben was standing next to the Saint, looking jaundiced, alert, and suspicious all at the same time.
“Here goes.” Christopher lit the fuse and stepped back behind the planter. “It takes a few seconds,” he explained. “It should be about—”
The rocket shrieked into the night with a whomp and a cloud of white smoke. But the internal fuse didn’t light, and it fell silently into the distant woods.
“Interesting,” Krellyan said.
“Is that white smoke dangerous?” Steuben asked.
“Oooooh!” the ladies said.
Karl, however, said nothing.
“Actually,” Christopher explained, “that one didn’t work. Let me try again.” He went down and reloaded the tube with a yellow burster. It was difficult because his fingers were numb from the cold, compounded by unexpected nervousness.
But this time the rocket exploded into a star over the dark fields and forest. The yellow was not that different from plain white. He needed stronger salts. Christopher stopped analyzing the color and paid attention to the crowd.
“Ahhh,” the ladies said. They liked this one.
“Is that yellow fire dangerous?” Steuben asked.
“Well, no more so than any fire,” Christopher said. “I mean, it’s not magical or anything. There’s no magic involved here.” He loaded up one of his untested designs, a multicolored sparkler.
It worked better than he had hoped, pale-blue and green rays streaking out from the explosion, the chemically treated bits of paper twinkling in burning flight. The effect was enhanced by the two colors being on roughly opposite sides of the burst.
“Are those sparkles dangerous?” Steuben asked.
“Not particularly,” Christopher said absently, thinking about his next test.
This one was supposed to be a two-stage explosion, the first one green, the second one yellow. It didn’t exactly work out. The green burst was good, but the yellow charge apparently came apart too soon and merely fizzled a little.
“I have a few more of these,” Christopher said before Steuben could ask his inevitable question. “They are variations on the basic theme, just different colors to amuse people. What I want to show you is how this craft could be turned to weaponry.”
He loaded his bomb, its payload a full quarter-pound of his finest milled blasting powder. He winced at the thought of a misfire or the bomb exploding in the tube, but he had a point to make.
“This one will be really loud,” he warned. He lit the fuse, instinctively covering
his ears.
The rocket streaked up and burst high in the sky, rumbling like thunder after a too-near lightning strike. The porch shook, the audience shrieked most satisfyingly, and even Karl seemed to notice. The boom echoed off some outlying hilltop, and in the starlight the huge white cloud floated peacefully away while the clerks chattered excitedly. Only Krellyan sat unmoved, thinking.
“That was definitely dangerous,” Steuben said, raising his voice above the prattle. Other noises leaked around the edge of the house, grooms shouting and the horses acting up in the stable.
“I think we are done here, Pater,” Krellyan announced. “You’ve gotten our attention. Now let us go inside, and you can tell us what it means.”
He ushered his giggling flock of servants into the house with his usual gentle smile. To Christopher, it seemed strained.
Krellyan assembled his clerical staff in the main hall while the servants went to prepare dinner.
“Tell us what you intend,” he ordered Christopher.
“I want to make weapons based on this craft,” Christopher said. “Like crossbows, only deadlier. I don’t know yet how well I can do—that depends on the skill of your smiths. But I know I can make a weapon that will supersede all other ranged attacks.”
“And you need money.”
“Of course,” Christopher said. “Tons of it. I want to equip the entire draft levee with these weapons. Then I’ll be happy to march to war with them. We’ll actually have a chance.”
“Nonsense,” Steuben declared. “Pater, your lights are pretty, but your alchemical tricks are no substitute for rank. Your men will die just as fast, only more expensively. The money would be better spent on ranking the best ones.” He gave Karl a look fraught with significance.
“We don’t have the money,” Krellyan said, but nobody paid attention.
“You don’t understand,” Christopher argued. “It’s not lights I’ll be using for war. You saw how far out those rockets went. I’m going to make weapons that do that, kill people at six hundred feet or more.”
“It’s been tried before,” the captain countered. “They march out, brave and strong in their shining armor, their fine swords, their beautiful horses. And they die, to all manner of ludicrous monsters. Only rank can withstand the power of rank.”
“We don’t have the money,” Krellyan said again, not any louder. This time something in his tone made everyone notice. “Even if I were to accept your scheme, we don’t have the money.”
“I have a, uh, scheme for that, too.” Christopher produced the fruit of his latest novelty, bank notes made from Fae’s paper and fine penmanship.
“What are these?” Krellyan asked as Christopher passed them around for inspection.
“It’s called a bearer bond. See the date there? On that date, which is ten years from now, you can cash in the bond for that amount of gold. These are thousand-gold-piece bonds. The Church of Marcius is bound to give whoever holds this paper one thousand gold.”
“Your Church commands such exalted funds?” Krellyan asked with gentle disbelief.
“No, not yet. But I’ve got ten years to raise the money.”
“How?”
“By investing the money I get now. See, for me to give you that bond, you have to give me five hundred gold first. It’s like a loan.”
“And you’re going to invest the money in your magic weapons and get rich off booty from the battlefield,” Krellyan finished sadly.
“That’s the general idea,” Christopher agreed. “Why is everybody shaking their heads?”
“It is the oldest con in the book,” Steuben declared sourly. “You take the money and invest it in a carriage trip to the farthest part of the world.”
“But I won’t do that,” Christopher protested. He played his trump card. “You know I won’t do that, Saint Krellyan. I can’t. I don’t have anywhere to run to.”
“What difference does it make?” Steuben asked. “If we don’t have the money, then we can’t buy your little slips of paper even if we were stupid enough to want to.”
“I’m not selling them to you,” Christopher said. “I’m going to sell them to everybody else. The townies. The peasants. I’m going to make bonds in denominations of one and two gold, and sell them for five and ten silver. I only need a few gold from each person.”
“You’d con our entire nation?” the captain squawked, stunned at the magnitude of Christopher’s plot.
Krellyan sat quietly, thinking. “I do not know as much as you think I do. Tell me, what will you do if I forbid this?”
“I’ll go somewhere else,” Christopher said, suddenly angry, sparked by the fear of rejection and abandonment. “Somewhere on this pathetic planet there must be somebody who understands vision, who can see the value of new things. You keep telling me Marcius put me here, guided my hands, but you balk at my every step. Why am I here if not to change things? Why are you trying to stop me from changing things?”
“Because I fear,” Krellyan said sharply, cutting off Christopher’s rant. “I fear everything. I fear yesterday almost as much as I fear tomorrow. Twenty thousand people depend on me for protection, guidance, healing, and I fear to fail them. Tens of thousands more cry out to me for justice every day. I fear to fail them. I have far too many responsibilities, Pater, to not fear.
“Silence,” he commanded when Christopher opened his mouth. “Your point is made. And I know your mind as well, Captain. I am not blind to either the possibilities or the necessities. There is one person more I would hear. Karl, you are the voice of my common people. Tell me what you think of this.”
The young soldier’s voice was uncharacteristically soft. “I am just an ignorant farm boy, so stupid he got drafted twice. I do not understand state policy or grand visions. Please do not put this responsibility on me.”
“I must,” Krellyan said, implacable but not without pity. “I would know your mind.”
Karl looked into the fireplace, and Christopher realized that it all came down to this. Karl was the man on the spot, who knew Christopher the most. He was the one who knew what was best for the common soldiers. Now the bond Christopher had begun to forge with the hardened young veteran would be tested to the extreme.
“I can only tell you this, my lord. If Pater Christopher goes to distant lands to pursue his scheme, I will go with him.”
Christopher had to turn away, to hide his eyes. He had never conceived of such a loyalty. He was awestruck by the courage this young man had, to stake his entire life, not just his future but even his past, on blind faith in another man.
Even Steuben was moved, blinking in surprise.
Krellyan was convinced. “We cannot risk losing such a servant,” the Saint said with a gentle smile. “Pater, I allow you to do as your conscience dictates. I will not oppose you in this endeavor, though I cannot aid you much.”
“There is more,” Christopher said, feeling utterly graceless. “I want the mineral rights to the Old Bog in Knockford. The current mining methods are hopelessly inefficient. I’ve consulted a local expert,” meaning Tom, “and I’ve calculated that the smiths are effectively paying two silver pieces for every barrow of ore. They don’t know this, because they have to pay their apprentices anyway, so they think the labor is free, but those men could be doing something more productive, like making nails.” There were never enough nails.
“And worse,” he continued, “in the summer you can even see Journeymen digging their own ore.” Or so Tom had claimed. “That’s a terrible waste of talent. I am certain I can provide the smiths with ore at one silver a barrow. That means they’ll produce more, for less, which will make everybody richer. I’d like you to trade me the mineral rights to Old Bog for the next ten years, for those two bonds, on the condition that I sell ore at half price. I think it’s a fair deal for you. And I need more metal than the current production methods can provide.”
The captain snorted. “It’s the first sensible thing the Pater’s said all night. By all me
ans, knock some sense into those guildsmen.”
“I’ll have to discuss it with our legal expert, Cardinal Faren,” Krellyan said, “but I suppose you aren’t asking for anything I can’t give.”
“One last thing, my lord,” Christopher winced. “I need credibility. I need to be able to tell the people that you’ve paid me a thousand gold for my bonds. You have, of course, because you’ve given me the mineral rights to Old Bog, which are worth at least that much. But they won’t buy unless you do, and who could blame them?”
Captain Steuben was frowning storm clouds.
“No,” Krellyan said sadly, “I cannot do that. It is too close to a lie. If you must have my name, then you must have my gold. I will send a cheque with you, for one thousand gold drawn from my personal account. I will keep these bonds as fair exchange. You will send me four more of these bonds, made out to the Church, for the rights to Old Bog. Assuming Faren tells me I am allowed to dispense public property so freely.”
Christopher stammered. “You have been incredibly generous, my lord. Again. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I object,” Steuben said. “I know my objection is irrelevant, but I object all the same. It is the height of folly to lend your august name to this unknown priest, no matter how pure his intentions. He could, after all, make an honest mistake—like for instance getting himself killed in a duel—and then where would we be?”
“In another bind that requires Cardinal Faren’s legal legerdemain to extricate us.” Krellyan smiled. “Thus, I will give him the final say on both these matters. I will not oppose you, Pater, yet I will only support you if Faren thinks it right. I hope you understand.”
“I do,” Christopher said. “It’s only fair.” He didn’t know how Faren would react to these proposals, but he couldn’t deny that it was fair.
13.
ROAD TRIP
In the morning they got a late start, Karl unable to decline a breakfast invitation from the Saint. Krellyan was a wonderful host, and Christopher was remembering what living a civilized life was like. Not that civilized, though: there wasn’t any running water or central heating.