by M. C. Planck
The words sounded vapid even as Christopher said them. This wasn’t a Little League player who had struck out at the homecoming game.
The smell of wood smoke filtered into the room, the nightmare leaking in from the dark corners around them. The vision pushed at the edge of their sight, threatening to overwhelm them again, and Cannan shuddered. Christopher instinctively reached out with his free hand, gathering the images in spider-web tendrils in his fist. As the strands swirled in on themselves, Cannan whispered a plea.
“Don’t take her from me completely.”
In the gaps left by the strands of the vision, another hallucination took shape. One of Christopher’s choosing: a homey attic, full of unused junk that was too valuable to discard but too old to be of any real use. Christopher wrapped the memories in a frosted glass box with brass hinges, and set the box on a shelf, where Cannan could open it and look at it any time he wanted to. Any time he needed to. The box held the scene like a diorama, two tiny people around a spark of fire, and you could smell the wood smoke when the lid was open.
Christopher shut the lid. He walked back to the stairs and turned out the overhead light. The box glowed dimly in the dark, waiting for him, safe and sound and treasured. He went down the stairs, closed the door, and found himself back in the dungeon.
Kneeling on the stone of the cell floor, bathed in the flickering of the light-stone, Christopher realized the spell was done. He climbed back onto the edge of the bed and watched Cannan. The man sat with his head in his hands, breathing gently, for several minutes before he spoke again.
“Now what?” Cannan’s voice, laden with grief, was still more alive than it had been in many days.
“Now we go to work. I have a job to do, Cannan, and when I’m done, a god will owe me a favor. Your job is to keep me alive while I do my job.” It wasn’t much, but it was the best Christopher had to offer.
“So once again I am your champion?” Cannan’s mouth twisted so wryly that it was bitter. Christopher watched in fascination, curious that such a small thing could be so significant.
“Not so much with the dueling, though.” Christopher winced as soon as the graceless words left his mouth. “Mostly it’s assassins. And ulvenmen.”
Cannan shook his head. “You have more enemies than you know. I remember people asking questions, when we were still in the city. Strange people, and strange questions, and they paid for as much ale as I could drink. I do not remember their names, or what they looked like, or what I told them.”
Christopher shrugged reassuringly. “It doesn’t matter.” Cannan hadn’t known about his revolutionary plans then, so he couldn’t have told them anything important.
“I will do what I can. I shall not fail you from lack of trying. But you should know I am only third rank again.” Cannan opened his fist and offered Christopher a bright purple stone.
“How’s that?” Christopher said, confused. Usually it was him giving other people tael.
“The rank I gained from . . .” He paused for the space of several unspoken words. “I shed it. It clung to me like a rancid second skin, but when your spell ended, it was gone, and this was in my hand. It belongs to you now.”
It wasn’t enough to restore a fourth rank, due to the criminal calculus of tael, but it was a healthy lump. Christopher took it, because he was expected to, but he didn’t know what to do with it.
“I will need a sword,” Cannan said. “After that, you will give me whatever you think I require, and I will not complain. I no longer live for myself, but only for the hope you represent. Should you have to choose between my life and yours, you will choose yours, for Niona’s sake. Is that clear?” Cannan spoke with more earnestness than Christopher had ever seen him use before.
“Yes, of course.” It felt strange to promise he would look after his own life before that of another’s.
Cannan left the chair to go to one knee in front of Christopher. He turned his palms up, like a supplicant, but he spoke with calm conviction.
“Then I am your dog, shepherd, until I am rejoined with Niona. I ask only one mercy: should you change your mind, do not tell me. Simply put me down in my sleep.”
“I can’t do that,” Christopher said. “I made you a promise. I have to keep it.”
Cannan shrugged, not disputing him but not agreeing. In one eloquent lift and fall of his shoulders he seemed to say, The world is perpetually surprising. But of course Cannan would never use a word like perpetually.
Christopher stood, trying to shake the sympathetic bond that still lingered. He wanted to be friends with Cannan, but he didn’t want to be in the man’s head anymore. His own head, with its own problems and pledges, was enough.
Torme and Steuben were sitting at the end of the hall, waiting. They stood when they saw Christopher and Cannan walk out of the cell. Torme immediately passed his hand in front of his eyes and cast a spell.
He stared intently at Cannan for a moment. The red knight endured the scrutiny, but Christopher was unbearably relieved to see that Cannan endured it with a carefully buried touch of resentment. It was inevitable; Cannan would undergo many such examinations in the immediate future, and perhaps for the rest of his life, and he knew it. But that he could still be annoyed by it was proof that the old Cannan had returned.
That he didn’t immediately murder Torme was proof that the new Cannan was gone, too.
“My apologies, Ser,” Torme said.
Steuben wasn’t ready to apologize yet. “Well?” he asked Torme.
“Blue, Captain. And no taint.”
Christopher winced. To hear a man’s moral nature discussed in such frank terms was uncomfortable; to talk about it in front of others was insulting.
“Good enough.” Steuben strode forward and handed Christopher’s sword back. “For me, at least,” he said to Cannan, addressing the man directly for the first time. “But not perhaps for others. You left many enemies on both sides of the aisle.”
Cannan shrugged.
“He’s under my protection,” Christopher said.
“Well, then, you can face your enemies together. But not your friends: the Bright who have cause to dislike Cannan will now dislike you, and those that disliked you will now hold him in the same regard.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Christopher said.
Steuben glared at him. “Indeed. But when you take a friendless wolf under your banner, what else do you expect?”
Cannan shrugged tiredly. “My enemies are petty knights, whose chief complaint is that they lost against a ring I defeated. If they seek satisfaction in the dueling ring, then they can apply to the Vicar. For my part, I will fight or befriend whoever he directs me to.”
Christopher thought he could detect a slim smile hiding under Steuben’s beard.
“Fair words, Ser,” Steuben said, “if not fair-faced. But then, we are knights, not priests. No doubt your Vicar can put honey on them.”
“That’s why I have Lala,” Christopher said. “She writes my speeches.”
“Is that what you use her for? Well, that explains a lot.” Steuben seemed to decide the conversation had gone on long enough, and he led the way out of the dungeon, and up the stairs to the Saint’s office.
Krellyan looked up from his paperwork and asked, “I trust all went well?”
Steuben answered. “Pater Torme reports Blue and clear.”
“Welcome back,” Krellyan said to Cannan.
Cannan bit his lip and said nothing. Christopher could feel the tension in the man, twisting him like a wet towel. To be so completely accepted, when only an hour ago he had been feared as a dangerous beast, had to be disorienting. It was making Christopher dizzy, in no small part because he found himself treating Cannan without reservations too. For the big, hard man, who had never shared any emotion but sardonic irony, who had lived without hope for so many months, it would be exhausting.
“What will you do now?” Krellyan asked Christopher.
“Go back to my post.�
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Krellyan smiled and shook his head. “I meant in a more general sense.”
Christopher thought about it for a moment.
“The answer’s still the same. I know my duty, and I will return to it.”
“And the regiment you are training in Knockford? You will turn it over to whatever lord the King assigns it to?”
He was planning on turning it over to Karl. All he had to do was convince Karl to become a noble. Given the miracle he had just witnessed, that was surely possible. But then Karl’s choice was a principled one, not an act of madness brought on by mind-breaking sorcery. No magic would avail against that.
“If it comes to that, sure.” It would be like free advertising. Once the other lords saw firsthand what guns could do, they’d buy them like mad. “But I’d like some influence over the choice, if it’s possible.”
“It may be. You are in high favor, thanks to your recent success. You have been invited to the Concord of Peers. Only as a guest, understand; you do not hold any land. But it is not uncommon for those of your rank to attend.”
“Concord? Like a political meeting?” He might actually have a chance to affect state policy.
“In the beginning, perhaps. Now it is merely excuse for the ladies to glitter and the men to brag. Still, you will meet the King face-to-face, and if you have a candidate in mind, that would be the time to bring it up.”
“When does this happen?” How much time did he have to work on Karl?
“Not until midwinter. You have half a season to prepare, and what is left of this one.”
“Then I better get cracking.”
“Indeed.” The Saint smiled at him, perhaps thinking of how hard it would be to crack Karl. After all, the Saint had offered the man a rank, and was turned down. How could Christopher hope to succeed?
But Christopher had more than rank to offer. He had an army to give away.
While they were preparing to leave, a rather involved affair considering the number of horses they were leading, Gregor stood in the yard and frowned at Cannan. For his part the red knight bore the scrutiny without comment.
Christopher, feeling like a motherly hen, intervened anyway.
“The Saint declared him atoned. Isn’t that good enough?”
“Oh, it is for me,” Gregor said. “But unless you want to repeat that phrase to every single person we pass, you need to dress him like something other than a prisoner.”
Cannan still wore the peasant clothes they had bought in Palar. They had tried to give him spares from the cavalry troop’s supply of uniforms, but nothing fit. The man was absurdly broad across the shoulders.
“Lala said there was a tailor down the street,” Christopher mused. Glancing to where she was trying to stuff too many parcels into her saddlebags, he bit his tongue. The new brown leathers she wore were a mockery of his army uniform, skintight, sleek, and sexy.
Gregor snorted. “I’m not talking about clothes. A rehabilitated man would be an armed man.”
Lalania wandered over to them with a large sack and began tying it to the back of Gregor’s saddle.
“I agree,” she said. Christopher hadn’t realized she had heard the conversation. “Until you trust him with a blade, no one else will trust him at all.”
“Well, let’s find a smithy and buy him one.”
“Off the rack? For a man of his rank?” Lalania was shocked. “If you gave me fifty pounds of gold and a season to search, I might be able to find something suitable.”
Karl, walking past on his way to another task, stopped to shake his head. “You must learn to make do with what we have.” Karl unclipped his baldric and removed it from his shoulder.
“Giving away my sword again?” Christopher had lost count of how many expensive swords he’d given Karl, only to see the young man hand them off to someone else.
“I told you in the beginning, Christopher.” Karl had said he could not accept a sword from Christopher’s hand. But Christopher had stopped being upset by it, once he noticed that Karl never offered to give away his carbine.
“Fair enough. Cannan, is this suitable?” Swords, like suits, worked best when they were custom-made. Christopher’s sword had been made specifically for him, to a god’s specifications. He owed Cannan at least a chance to turn down a weapon the knight couldn’t excel with.
Cannan took the weapon and drew it partially out of the scabbard. The black blade gleamed dully in the sunlight.
“Gods, Karl. . . .” Lalania looked at the ugly weapon in disgust. “That’s Black Bart’s sword.” Christopher caught his breath. Karl had worn it so long Christopher had forgotten where it came from.
“I have borne it many months, to no ill effect. Just as Christopher has worn his armor.”
Cannan held the weapon, half drawn, and stared at Karl.
“Also,” Karl confessed, “I asked the Saint. He declared the weapon untainted.”
“You place great trust in the Saint’s magic,” Cannan said, though whether he was referring to the sword or his redemption was unclear.
Karl shrugged. “I trust the Colonel’s carbines more.”
From a lesser man it might have sounded like boasting, the commoner reminding the knight of how he had been laid low. But Cannan slid the sword back into the scabbard with the ghost of an approving smile.
“It is sufficient,” he said. Slinging the baldric over his shoulder, he turned to his horse, and Karl marched off to his tasks. Christopher, Lalania, and Gregor were left standing there, to share stunned looks.
Gregor smiled ruefully. “Karl is right. If the man were going to break, better we should know now than later. If he lacks the strength to grasp evil and turn it to good, then he is not worthy of the trust you have placed in him.”
“Still . . .” It was unbearably rude, as if calculated to maximize Cannan’s pain.
“Gregor is right.” Lalania seemed unhappy to admit it. “He will face this issue many times. If he can’t handle it in a stable, then we can’t risk him on a battlefield. Whatever pain it causes, he must be able to deal with.”
“He’ll need to work on that, then,” Gregor said. “It’s generally not considered proper form to accept a magic sword and not even say thank you.”
Lalania frowned. “I don’t imagine he was feeling very thankful.”
“I don’t imagine Karl expected thanks,” Christopher said.
They went to their own horses. Christopher mounted, and watched Lalania watching Cannan. He suspected he knew why she was so unhappy. Cannan’s actions were not those of a Cannan-bot. They were the deeds of a hero. The woman hated being wrong.
11
JUST LIKE OLD TIMES
He didn’t go back to his post. He went to Burseberry instead, dismounting in the chapel yard while its last master came out to greet him.
“You just left, and you’re already back?” Svengusta said. “If you’d only ridden a little faster, you could have arrived before you left, and saved yourself the trouble of going in the first place.”
Gregor laughed out loud. “It’s good to see you, too, you old rascal.”
“Ser Gregor, well met again! And is that Ser Cannan? Come to escort the Pater home from his latest misadventure, no doubt. Just like old times. I tell you, the things that boy gets up to.”
It wasn’t even remotely like old times. The chapel had been expanded half a dozen times, the village was drowning in a sea of young men, and the sound of gunfire from the rifle range was almost constant.
Cannan stood silently, scanning the chapel grounds. At first Christopher thought he was looking for Niona, and instinctively he glanced around for her. But she was not here, of course.
Not like old times, at all.
“All this greeting and well meeting has left me dry,” Svengusta said. “Let us repair to the tavern for some restorative elixir.”
“Maybe later, Sven. I’ve got work to do.” Christopher’s assault on the mound of paperwork had been interrupted ages ago, and the pile
had taken advantage of his absence to advance across the entire surface of the table. It was times like these that he regretted making paper cheap. “Where’s Helga?”
“Hiding in her kitchen,” Svengusta said. “She’s got so many pots and pans now she’s better armored than a knight.”
“Speaking of which,” Gregor mused aloud, “we’ve none ourselves. I was thinking of visiting your smithy and seeing what they could do.”
“There’s an armorer in town.” Christopher waved in the general direction of Knockford. “Senior Palek. He can do good work, but it will be expensive.”
“If I wanted to pay for it, I would have bought it in Kingsrock. Let’s see what your own men can make first.” Apparently Gregor was taking Karl’s economy lesson to heart.
Another reason for Palek to hate him, but Christopher kept his mouth shut. He probably owed Gregor a suit of armor, having made him leave his own in the swamp. If the blue knight would be happy with something homemade, that would save Christopher a lot of money.
When Christopher went into his office, Torme and Cannan followed him.
“You can go get a drink or something,” Christopher said to Cannan. “Torme and I can handle this.” Christopher wasn’t even sure if Cannan could read.
Cannan didn’t answer, unless his grunt counted. The red knight sat down on a chair next to the door, drew out and planted his sword between his knees, half closed his eyes, and settled in, like a lizard basking in the sun.
Torme glanced at the red knight once, and then went about his business.
Christopher realized that he’d just added another layer to the shell of people that surrounded him. Cannan would sit there all day, rather than leave Christopher alone for even an instant. This could prove embarrassing when it came time to visit the outhouse.
And outhouse it still was. He might have introduced assembly lines and power tools, but modern sanitation would take more time and money than he had to waste.
Dinner was the first time he got to see Helga. She served them at the officer’s table but did not take a seat. Christopher missed his little family gatherings. Dinner had become a formal affair. His table was in the same room as the rest of the mess hall, which struck him as a classic medieval arrangement. At least it matched what he had seen in the movies. Lalania assured him it was unusual here, however. Lords ate, drank, and lived with their retinues, their peers in class if not necessarily in rank. To have a rank was to be separate from the ordinary. The gulf between aristocrat and commoner was larger here than it ever had been on Earth.