by M. C. Planck
Christopher was distracted by Lalania’s outfit as she led him away. She was scantily wreathed in leaves that hung loosely, threatening to reveal intimate details with every movement she made. He could not see any fabric under the ivy.
“Lala,” he asked, “how does that thing stay on?”
“It doesn’t,” she said. “There’s nothing to stay. The dress is pure illusion.”
“You mean you’re naked—”
“Indeed. It’s one of the rules of the Concord—can’t have the working girls outdressing the nobility. You can imagine the men who run things find it quite amusing.”
Christopher wasn’t that naïve anymore. He could guess that the bards found it amusing, too, since they could cloak themselves in magic. There wouldn’t be any common woman out-spying the bards. It wouldn’t surprise him if the Skald had made up the rule in the first place.
“Are we really going to talk to the King?” he asked.
“Only after you promise not to be stupid. The King may ask me to stay with him. If he does, it will almost certainly be intended to provoke you. You must promise me you will offer the King the use of your servant without hesitation.”
Christopher stopped walking, pulling the woman to a stop in front of him.
“I mean it,” she said, staring up into his face earnestly. “You cannot be stupid. I have asked little of you and given much, but now, I ask this. Please, for my sake, do not be stupid tonight.”
In answer, he let her lead him onward.
Lalania steered him through the glade, past little knots of well-dressed and glamorous nobility. Treywan was in the center of all things, as expected. He was speaking with three cloaked men, one in yellow, one in white, and one in purple. The yellow cloak glittered like solid gold, although it hung like cloth. The purple was studded with sapphires and rubies, and shot through with silver thread. Treywan’s own outfit shifted hue as Christopher stared at it, rippling through the entire visible spectrum. The white cloak was the only one that was simple and unadorned.
As he and Lalania approached, Christopher caught the tail end of the man in gold’s joke, delivered with a self-deprecating bow.
“. . . we loyal servants of the King.”
Ice ran through his veins even as his heart pounded. Unwilled, he was pulled into the circle of conversation by Lalania. She curtsied while still on his arm, but Christopher was unable to take any action. All that remained of his fragmented attention was dedicated to not drawing his sword.
He knew that voice, though he had never laid eyes on the face it emanated from. The last time he had heard that voice, his eyes had been nailed shut.
“Your Majesty,” Saint Krellyan said, “allow me to present my brother in faith, the Lord Vicar Christopher.”
The man in gold gave no visible reaction, no sign of surprise or distress. Christopher, in his heightened state of awareness, saw it anyway.
“Lord of where?” Treywan said. “Has he pulled a county out of his pocket? Or are you telling me he has broken the ulvenmen to the plow, and intends to claim that blasted swamp as his fief?”
Christopher stared at the side of the golden man’s head, willing him to turn and face him.
“Neither, I am afraid,” Krellyan said. “He holds only the village of Burseberry. Still, it is sufficient for the technicalities.”
Treywan looked Lalania up and down with frank admiration. “That’s not the thing he holds that interests me. A personal troubadour bought for paper? What kind of magic is that, Master Sigrath, and why haven’t you worked it for me?”
“A thousand apologies, my Lord King.” The man in purple made a subtle bow. “But Your Majesty has no need to purchase bards by the piece. You have command of the whole of them simply by your royal voice.”
Treywan turned his attention to the man in gold, as if sharing a private joke. “What do you get when you breed a demon-calling, soul-sucking wizard with a lawyer? That’s right, a lawyer.”
The golden man tittered. “Insightful, Your Majesty, as always.”
“Pardon me,” the King said, “I have failed to make introductions. Lord Christopher, this is the Lord of Balenar, Apostle of the Golden Throne.”
Treywan smiled like a boy lighting a firecracker and waiting for the sparks to fly.
The golden man, the apostle of darkness, whose cruelty Christopher had seen in broken peasants and felt in broken limbs, turned to him and tipped his head. Whatever he was about to say withered into silence under Christopher’s unflinching gaze.
“We’ve met,” Christopher said.
“Your Majesty,” Lalania said with a bow that tested the limits of her illusionary dress, “my lord begs a favor of you.”
“Does he now?” the King said absently, watching Christopher watching the Apostle.
“As you know, the Church of the Bright Lady sends forth another regiment with the new year. The Church of Marcius has sent forth a new champion to lead it. Baron Gregor has always been your faithful servant, and now he seeks to serve the Kingdom best. We ask that you let Saint Krellyan assign the regiment to the Baron, should the Saint deem it appropriate to do so.” Lalania was flirting with all steam ahead, trying to drown out the palpable tension between Christopher and the Apostle.
“I am surrounded by faithful servants,” the King said to Lalania, his gaze raking down her dress of foliage as if seeking a weakness in a besieged fortification. “But are they willing?”
“Without reservation, my lord,” Lalania answered with the perfect imitation of a chaste blush.
The King looked back up at Christopher, who still stared unblinking. “Let me have your bard for a night, and I’ll let you have my regiment for a draft. What do you say, Lord Vicar?”
Christopher had no distaste left for Treywan’s petty crudities. Every fiber of his being was already consumed with shuddering contempt. He spoke without turning away from the Apostle. “As long as I get her back in one piece.”
Treywan snickered, then guffawed, his beery, dangerous laughter washing over everyone. “You would be insolent, priest, if you weren’t so entertaining.”
The Apostle’s lip had finally curdled into a sneer. “Your Majesty is more discerning than I.”
Christopher didn’t say anything.
Lalania bowed again. “A favor for myself, Your Majesty. If I could but fetch my lyre, I would sing such a song for you. Though I fear Lord Christopher will perforce miss the play, as he must be off to see to his regiments.”
“Fair enough, girl,” the King said with a disappointed growl. “Fetch your strings and take your sourpuss puppet away before he spoils our little party.”
She bowed so low her golden locks touched the grass. Standing, she put her shoulder into Christopher’s chest and forced him to step back and turn away. With an arm around his waist she propelled him back across the glade. He moved liked an automaton, his breath slow and deep. When they were safely out of earshot, she whispered forcefully.
“Control yourself, Christopher. He is an Apostle. He could destroy you with a syllable.”
“I am under control,” Christopher said. The proof was self-evident. He had not killed the Apostle yet.
“Priest,” Treywan called across the field, his voice angry and blustering. “You take those regiments and put a stop to the ulvenmen. Do you hear me? I want an end to it, once and for all.”
Christopher turned to face the King’s group. From here their faces were indistinct. All he could see were their cloaks, yellow and purple and white and shifting rainbow. He bowed, deeply, one hand at his waist and the other outstretched, palm up. Then he turned and strode purposefully away, Lalania skipping to keep up with him.
Stepping through the vine-entangled archway left him back inside the castle, where his steam-fueled determination deserted him. Lalania took over again, leading him with purpose down a hallway he did not recognize. Suddenly she pulled him into a side room and shut the door.
A beefy, bearded man dressed as a wealthy knight w
as waiting for them.
“Ser Morrison,” Lalania said with a minimal curtsey.
“Ivy?” Ser Morrison said, frowning at Lalania’s dress. “What were you thinking?”
“Oh hush,” Lalania said, and stepped forward to kiss the knight.
Christopher blinked. Somehow Lalania and the knight had switched places. The woman stood on the right instead of the left, wearing the knight’s elaborate tunic and hose. Ser Morrison now stood on the other side, wearing Lalania’s ivy dress, which covered him no better than it had her.
The woman began stripping off her outfit, handing the pieces to the knight who put them on as quickly as they came off.
“You look terrible in green,” the new Lalania said, but in Ser Morrison’s voice.
“Voice,” Ser Morrison hissed. “Get on cue, Nila. Don’t spoil this for me.”
“Simple for you to say,” the new Lalania said, this time in Lalania’s voice. “You’ve got the easier task. But if you want, just say the word, and we’ll switch again.”
“It’s an easy way to lose my head.” Ser Morrison was exasperated, in the way Lalania was often exasperated. “All you have to do is get drunk.”
“That’s not all,” the new Lalania said. “Hardly all.” By now she was stark naked. Christopher, still confused, did not have time to react before she spoke a word and green ivy shot out from her hands to cloak her as it had cloaked Lalania.
She picked up one of two golden lyres sitting on a table, strummed it experimentally, gave Christopher a salacious wink, and slipped out of the room.
Christopher tried to remember how many glasses of wine he had consumed.
“You remember that the King told me to fetch my lyre, right?” Ser Morrison was looking at Christopher earnestly, the way the real Lalania often did. “Well, I’m going to obey that royal command. This disguise will just make it easier.” He picked up the other lyre and stuffed it inside his doublet. Somehow it fit without leaving any unsightly bulges.
Ser Morrison led him out and down the hallway. They passed a serving woman, who stepped quickly out of their way and kept her head down. When they turned the next corner, he spoke over his shoulder. The voice was Ser Morrison’s, but the question was pure Lalania.
“When did you meet the Apostle?”
All of the tension in Christopher’s body contracted into his stomach in a gut-wrenching punch. He fell to his knees, heaving, and threw up on the floor. All that came out was sour, stale wine.
“Lord Vicar! Are you poisoned?” Even in this extremis, Lalania did not slip back into her own voice.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The Apostle was my torturer.”
She frowned through Morrison’s bearded face. “That seems unlikely. Why would he stoop to such a thing?”
“Maybe he likes it.” Christopher stood up, weak and light-headed. He looked down helplessly at the mess on the floor.
“Leave it,” she said. “They’ll just assume someone had too much of a good time. But are you well? Can you continue? I promise you we will not meet the Apostle again tonight.”
The pulse of blood rushing through his veins was gone, replaced by a terrible itching in the palms of his hands. They ached to wield his sword, to feel the peculiar sensation of holding steel as it sliced through meat and bone. His forearms twitched in anticipation of strike after strike, his diaphragm seizing with each imaginary blow.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Morrison stared at him intensely for a brief second, a look of such personal concern that he could almost see Lalania through it. Then she threw herself back into her role. With a short bow, Ser Morrison said, “If we may continue, Lord Vicar, please follow me.”
Servants and soldiers got out of their way with bowed heads and cautious greetings. “If it please you, Ser Morrison,” they said, if they said anything at all. The fake Morrison led him through bewildering halls, stairs, and rooms, going up and up, until they came to a massive double door bound in iron and flanked by two guards.
“Open it,” Ser Morrison said, in a tone that brooked no argument. The guards glanced at Christopher, but they obeyed Morrison, both of them struggling to lift a massive beam from its brackets. When they dropped it to the floor, Morrison pushed one of the doors open and stepped over the beam. Christopher followed him inside.
The room was smaller than he had expected, and although there weren’t piles of gold coins lying around everywhere, it was clearly a treasure vault. Wooden chests lined the walls, stacked three deep. In one corner several suits of armor hung from stands, some plain, some studded with jewels. Against the far wall a rack was crowded with dozens of swords, and a few odd weapons like maces or morning stars.
Morrison shut the door behind Christopher. Silently he pointed up, toward the ceiling. In the wavering light of magic stones Christopher saw three crude, ugly shapes, deformed humanoids with stubby wings and fanged faces. They perched on a ledge above the door and glared down with sightless stone eyes. Notre Dame’s gargoyles seemed friendly compared to this lot.
While Christopher stared up, fascinated by the intricate details, Morrison crossed the small room to a sheet-covered pedestal. Whispering and moving his hands in a complex pattern, he raised the sheet without touching it, lifting it into the air, folds and all. Underneath was a gold-painted lyre.
From inside his voluminous doublet he extracted the other lyre, a perfect match for the one on the pedestal. Quickly he swapped them, making the vault’s lyre disappear back into his doublet and carefully arranging the new one to replace it. Then he lowered the sheet, apparently through sheer concentration, and only relaxed when the spell was spent. After that he took a pouch of dust out of his pocket, and artfully replaced the specks that had fallen away.
Christopher was impressed. He didn’t think a CSI unit would be able to tell the sheet had been touched.
“What did you need me for?” he asked.
“Access. Your presence provides a plausible excuse for entering in the first place. Now hush, and do nothing. Do you understand? No matter what happens next, do not react.”
Morrison went to the door and reached for the handle with some hesitation. Just before he touched it, the gargoyles moved.
They shifted and preened, like great birds of prey, the sound of stone on stone grating on Christopher’s nerves. One lolled out a long, gray tongue. All of them leered down at the fake Ser Morrison. Christopher felt hairs on his neck rise, and not just from shock at the terrifying sight. Someone—or something—had cast a truth spell.
“I take only what I may by King’s Right,” Ser Morrison said, in Lalania’s voice, though quiet enough that the sound would not carry through the door.
The gargoyles stopped moving, sitting perfectly still, though still watching. Morrison forced his hand to clasp the door handle and pull.
The door swung open, and the gargoyles remained as still as stones. Morrison stepped out into the hallway. “If you are finished, Lord Vicar, may we go?”
He had been told to hush, so without speaking he stepped forward. The gargoyles let him pass under them and through the door without reaction. The guards closed the door behind, grumbling as they struggled to restore the huge oaken crossbar to its iron brackets. Morrison and Christopher walked silently but quickly through the halls, returning the way they had come.
In the room where Lalania had first turned into Morrison, the knight stripped off his clothes and tossed them into a basket in the corner. This time Christopher turned his head away, in anticipation of the resumption of her true and necessarily naked form.
“Very sweet, Christopher, but wholly unnecessary. I have learned my lesson.” When he looked back she had turned into a different bard, one with dark hair and a terribly risqué lace gown. “However, you must let me play the part of a companion, at least until we return to the Cathedral. You can hardly be seen to be leaving with the Minstrel Lalania, as she is currently entertaining the King.”
She picked up t
he lyre carefully, covetously, and for a moment triumph sparkled through her mascara-painted eyes. Stepping close to Christopher, leaning into his arms as she guided him out of the room, she whispered, “I will play such a song for you, my lord. But not here.”
14
FOUR WEDDINGS
Freed from the Concord by days and distance, Christopher rode comfortably past snow-covered fields and pastures, traveling up the same road he had once fled down. Then, he had been dressed in rags and frightened for his life. Now, he was warmly cloaked in furs, but not particularly safer. His enemies bred faster than he could bury them, and he suspected burying the worst ones wouldn’t even slow them down.
A year ago he had feared what lordship would do to him. Now he feared what it would do to the people around him. By being his friend, taking his gold, or simply living near him, they had gained his enemies. He wondered if what he had given them in return was enough.
The villagers did not seem to question the bargain. They turned out en masse to greet their new lord. They cheered him as loudly as his own soldiers, lining the road and crowding around the chapel. Christopher had come to collect his troops, but when he saw Faren’s carriage on the village green, he went in search of answers first.
“We didn’t tell you because we weren’t sure we were going to do it. I drew up the papers in advance, so Krellyan could choose to name you lord or not, depending on how the conversation went. Apparently he felt you needed the help.” Faren sat in Christopher’s chapel, comfortably warm and less crabby than usual.
“And now you are master of Burseberry,” Svengusta said. “Had I known you would become my lord, I might have treated you better in the beginning.” This was a lie, of course. Svengusta had treated him like a son from the start.
“It’s more than just a title,” Faren said. “It’s two thousand gold a year.” A year ago Christopher would have boggled at the amount. Now it was only worth a nod. The Cardinal had already given him ten thousand to equip and feed the regiment for the next three years. “It is money we can give you without making it look like charity. As the head priest of Marcius, with the rank of a peer, you had a solid legal claim to the village anyway.”