Benjamin Franklin
The Favourite Son
The ship’s timbers grated against the wharf and Leo took a deep breath of that good Angland air. Felt pure after the smogs of Adua. Felt honest.
There was quite a crowd on the docks to welcome him and his bride to Ostenhorm, and the weather might’ve been grey but their smiles were sunny. Someone was waving a battle flag. The crossed hammers of Angland, ragged from action. It made him think of Red Hill, of the fight on the bridge, of the men marching to victory. It made him impatient to march again.
“They love you,” said Savine, staring at the cheering people.
“Well, you know how it is. They love men who win fights.”
“Leo, they really love you.”
“Not sure I’ve ever seen you surprised before.”
“I have seen angry mobs and needy throngs, but I cannot say I was ever actually liked.”
“I bet they’ll like you now.”
She hesitantly raised a gloved hand and waved. The cheers grew louder. A little boy jumped up and down on the quayside so wildly, Leo worried he might fall in the sea. Savine laughed, and blew him a kiss, and he went so red he looked like he might pass out. “By the Fates,” she whispered. “I think they do.”
Alas, not everyone was so easily pleased. Mustred and Clensher advanced with weighty frowns the moment the gangplank clattered across from ship to quay. Short of diving into the brine, there was no escape.
“We need to talk, Your Grace!” snarled Mustred.
“More troubles over taxes,” growled Clensher.
“The damned Closed Council have no shame!”
“Nor pity! Someone has to draw a bloody line!”
Leo winced. He’d hoped at least to make it to the Lord Governor’s residence before the bureaucratic bog closed over his head again. “We’ll get to that, my lords, but could I first present my wife, Lady Savine dan Brock?”
“You must be Lord Clensher.” She slipped gracefully forward to offer her hand. “I do like your boots, are those new?”
“Well… as it happens, Your Grace…” grumbled Clensher as he bent to kiss it. He’d clearly been aiming to disapprove of Leo’s choice of wife but was already finding it difficult. “I know your father, of course.”
Savine laughed as though he was being hugely charming. “I can only apologise for that. But I am not my father. I am your Lady Governor, and I am here to do everything I can to help. How is Lady Lizet?”
Clensher’s bushy brows shot up. “You know my wife?”
“Only by reputation, but I am keen to put that right. My friend Tilde dan Rucksted is her niece, of course, and speaks so very highly of her. I understood she was having troubles with her back?”
“Well… she—”
“I took the liberty of bringing some salts that I am told can work wonders.” And Zuri produced a jar of coloured powder from her bag.
“That’s immensely thoughtful,” breathed Clensher, utterly disarmed.
“And Lord Mustred—what a magnificent moustache—I brought you a newly printed volume on the heraldry of Angland and Starikland, do you have that one?”
Mustred stroked the binding as Zuri passed it to him. “Why… no, but it’s always been a particular interest of mine!”
“Such a happy chance!” As if anything Savine did was by accident. She smiled even more sweetly, holding out both hands. “And you must be Jurand, Leo’s old friend and comrade.”
“Er…” Jurand had been giving her quite the frown, for some reason, but now he started to soften. “Yes—”
“I heard you had all the brains around here but Leo, why didn’t you tell me how very handsome he is?”
“Well…” Leo cleared his throat. “I suppose that’s not the sort of thing a man notices…”
He watched as Zuri magicked one packet after another from her bottomless bag. Savine had brought gifts for everyone. And not just any old rubbish. The kind a dear friend would bring on a special occasion. In a moment, she changed the mood from angry suspicion to baffled delight.
“It took me years to tame the old dogs,” murmured Leo’s mother from the corner of her mouth. “She has them eating out of her hand the moment she steps off the boat.”
“I own a stake in the armoury here in Ostenhorm,” Savine was saying, “but I have never had the chance to visit. Perhaps one of you two magnates might be kind enough to show me the way?”
“It would be my honour!” shouted Mustred, offering his elbow.
“My particular pleasure, Your Grace!” shouted Clensher, offering his, and she glided off with an old lord on either side, both gormlessly grinning as they competed for her attention. For maybe the first time since he took his mother’s place as Lord Governor, Leo was free of their demands. Free to limp over to his cheering people and press hands, slap shoulders, return their beaming smiles. Free to actually be a leader.
“Bloody hell, Leo.” Antaup stared down at a shining pair of new spurs with his family crest on the buckle. “I think I’m in love.”
“I know,” said Leo, smiling at Savine. Everyone was smiling at her right then. “I think I am, too.”
Steel on steel. By the dead, how Leo loved that sound. Sweeter than birdsong. He caught Jurand’s sword on his, blades grinding then ringing as he flung his friend away, pressed in with a couple of cuts and made him stumble back, only just keeping his balance on the wet grass.
“Better.” Jurand was grinning as he found his stance again. “Much better.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Leo, grinning, too. It was good to be back with him. Very good. And the rest of the boys, of course.
The leg was still sore, but he was learning how to manage it. He’d strapped a belt around it under his trousers, just above the knee. Made it stiffer, but a lot more solid. Jurand tried to circle but Leo watched, waited, forced him to circle back the other way. He’d had to change his style. Far less aggression. Much more patience.
Jurand darted in but Leo was ready, parried once, twice, a careful shuffle to shift his weight then a pinpoint jab, and another, and he sent Jurand stumbling back the way he’d come.
Savine had told him to look at his leg as simply a new challenge. Overcoming challenges was what he did, after all. And she was right. When wasn’t she?
Jurand came on again, but he was tired from all that dancing. Leo parried the first thrust, sidestepped the second to let it slip past him, then twisted, swung, flicked the back of Jurand’s leg as he blundered past and sent him rolling across the lawn with a despairing squawk.
Antaup punched the air. “A touch to the Young Lion!”
“Damn it!” Jurand propped himself on one elbow and spat grass. “I take it the leg’s feeling better?”
“Far from healed.” Leo bared his teeth at the pain as he pulled Jurand to his feet. “But I have to be ready.”
“For what?” asked Antaup, waggling his eyebrows. “You’re a married man. It’s a different kind of sword-work that’s called for.”
Whitewater Jin smirked. “Aye. Your battle’s in the bedroom now.”
They all laughed, but they’d no idea how right they were. Leo thought Savine might’ve loosened one of his teeth last night.
“How are the men?” he asked.
Jurand was trying to scrub the grassy stain from his fencing jacket. “I was going to disband two regiments, now we’re on a peacetime footing—”
“Don’t.”
Antaup narrowed his eyes. “Expecting trouble?”
“It’s possible.”
“From who?” asked Glaward, always spoiling for a fight. “Not the bloody Northmen again? Or are you thinking about Dagoska—”
“A good deal closer to home.” They all looked at him, curious, excited. Leo knew there was nowhere safer than the gardens of the Lord Governor’s residence, no one he trusted more than these four, but even so he felt the need to draw his friends in close. Every time he whispered the words, every time he told someone new, it becam
e that little bit more real, that little bit more dangerous. “From the Closed Council.”
Jurand’s eyes went wide. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s chaos in Adua! Far worse than I dreamed it could be. Trouble with the Breakers. Trouble with the nobles. The Closed Council is out of control. King Orso is out of his depth. They’re throwing away all our principles. Everything we fought for. Everything my father fought for!” He was making himself angrier and angrier, and his friends’ faces were getting angrier with him. “They’re dragging the country into the fucking sewer! Did you hear what happened to Fedor dan Wetterlant? Did you hear what happened to me?”
Jurand exchanged a worried glance with Glaward. “We heard… something about it.”
“Thrown out of the Lords’ Round!” snapped Leo. “For telling the truth!”
Jin ground one big fist into his palm. “Wish I’d been there.”
“Next time you will be,” said Leo, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t let the bastards get away with it. There comes a point when talking about a better world just isn’t enough. When good men have to bloody stand up and fight for it!”
“Damn right,” growled Glaward. “Damn right.”
“Fight the Closed Council, though…” Jurand had that disapproving look. The one he had when Leo suggested a reckless charge, but worse. “Fight the king—”
“Fight for the king!” Jurand’s doubt was making Leo doubt, and that only made him insist the harder. “To free him from these bloody leeches, these bloody bureaucrats. To put the Union back the way it should be.”
Everyone looked convinced. Except Jurand. He looked less convinced than ever. “But you’re talking about…” He dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. “You’re talking about civil war, Leo. You’re talking about, well…” The word treason went unsaid, but it hung over the lawn like a bad smell even so. “There has to be another way! Was this the Lady Governor’s idea? They say she’s the most ambitious—”
“This is my idea!” Well, his, and Isher’s, and Heugen’s, and Barezin’s. “If Savine knew about it, she’d be bloody livid. She can’t know, and neither can my mother. Not yet. But when the time’s right to tell them, they’ll see it has to be done.” Or, at any rate, the whole thing would be too far along to stop.
“So it’s not just you looking for a fight?”
“They brought the fight to us!” snapped Leo, and Antaup gave a grunt of agreement. “They left us to die in their war.” And Jin gave a growl of support. “They made us pay for their war.” Glaward nodded along harder with each point. “They’re bleeding us white with their taxes.” As Leo convinced them, he convinced himself. “They’re hanging our friends. They’re shitting on our most solemn principles!”
“Bastards!” snarled Antaup, shoving back that lock of hair so it fell straight into his face again.
“No one wants a war,” said Leo, even though his heart beat faster at the sound of the word. “We all hope it won’t happen, but… if there’s no other choice… we have to be ready. Can I count on you?”
“’Course you can!” said Glaward, throwing his heavy arm around Leo’s shoulders.
“For anything,” said Antaup, gripping Glaward around the back.
“Always!” said Jin, hooking Antaup around the neck.
“Jurand?” Leo held out his arm, beckoning with the fingers. But Jurand still stood, rubbing worriedly at his jaw.
“Jurand?” coaxed Glaward.
“Jurand, Jurand, Jurand?” wheedled Antaup.
Leo caught his eye and gave him his most wounded look. “You wouldn’t turn your back on me, would you?”
“Never!” And Jurand’s smile burst out like the sun from behind a cloud. A troubled smile, but a smile even so, and he threw one arm around Leo’s shoulders and the other around Jin’s and closed the circle. “I’ll be there, Leo. Whenever you need me. Always. But you have to—”
“That means a lot.” Leo felt tears in his eyes, and he dragged his friends close, into a sweaty huddle. “That means more than you can know.” Jurand gave a shocked whoop as Leo shoved him over onto his back and plucked his sword out of the turf. “Now defend yourself, you stringy bastard!”
Patriotic Contributions
Savine walked down the echoing hallway, shaking her head. “This building. It feels more like a prison than a palace.”
“It is a shade… shady,” admitted Zuri, running a fastidious finger down the top rail of the panelling.
Ostenhorm was pretty enough, if rather lacking in modern conveniences, and the air was a great deal cleaner than she was used to, but the Lord Governor’s residence itself was horribly oppressive. A labyrinth of gloomy stonework and faded tapestries, displays of tarnished weaponry and armour, antique furniture old and large enough to have been used by great Euz himself, its slitted windows overgrown by ivy that let only chinks of dusty light into the murk, all smelling of fust and slow decay.
“They hardly have an excess of sun up here,” said Savine. “You might expect them to make the best use of what there is.”
“Almost enough to make one nostalgic for the South.” Zuri neatly blew the smudge of dust from her fingertip. “Were it not for all the civil war.”
“The whole province of Angland is trapped in the past. A very great deal needs to change around here.”
Nowhere was that more obvious than in the so-called governing council. It might better have been called the grumbling council, since the old men around the monstrous table in the cavernous hall treated every point of business as a problem to be avoided in the most tedious way imaginable.
The old bores tolerated Savine and Lady Finree’s presence provided they sat at a rickety side table and busied themselves with something feminine. Occasionally, when some particularly dated opinion or provincial attitude was expressed, their eyes would meet and Leo’s mother would roll hers to the heavens. The young Lord Governor Brock appeared entirely uninterested in the mechanics of governing, almost nodding off at times to the droning of ancient voices. Until the subject of Angland’s armies came up.
“… since savings must be made in order to satisfy the Closed Council,” gurgled out Clensher, sounding as if he had a sockful of gravel in his throat, “I move that we reduce Angland’s standing armies by two regiments, and—”
“No!” snapped Leo, sitting up so sharply his chair’s legs jumped and banged down.
Savine could not tell whether it was Mustred’s chair or his joints that gave the tortured creak as he sat forward. “Your Grace, your father could not, and you cannot, afford to maintain them in—”
“Angland has to keep her military strong. If anything, we should raise more men!”
Lady Finree chose that moment to set aside her needlework. “Leo, your lords have a point. As things stand, we need money more than soldiers, and—”
Leo bashed the table with his fist, making everyone flinch. “I’ve made my decision! I didn’t ask for your advice, Mother.”
There was an awkward silence. Leo turned angrily away, rubbing at his leg. Lady Finree coloured as she retreated to her chair. Savine felt for her, she really did, but she was yesterday’s woman. Her son might act like a child on occasion but treating him like one was a blunder. If he had to have his toy soldiers, Savine would find a way to give them to him. While he was busy playing army, she could mould Angland into the thoroughly modern province she needed it to be.
“My lords, if I may?”
Mustred cleared his throat. “Well, actually—”
“I think I have a way to satisfy the Closed Council and fund the strong army that we need.”
Clensher snorted. “Are you a sorceress, Lady Savine? Will you conjure money out of thin air?”
“In a manner of speaking.” She stood, setting her hand down on the great stack of ledgers Haroon had brought in. “I took the liberty of examining the accounts of the province over the past ten years.”
Mustred rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Lad
y Savine, we have been preparing those very accounts for many years before that—”
“But the nature of finance, commerce, industry and law has transformed in that time.” And these old fools had barely even noticed. “I have done a great deal of business here. Here and in Midderland, Starikland, Styria and beyond. I see many opportunities for new revenue.”
At the word “revenue,” Mustred and Clensher’s brows shot up as though hoisted by a single chain. They were like any other investors, in the end. The bottom line was all that really mattered.
“With your kind permission, I would meet with some interested parties—owners of land, mines and mills, operators of penal colonies—with a view to raising more taxes.” She gave Leo’s shoulder the gentlest of reassuring touches. “I am confident you will be pleasantly surprised.”
“A pleasant surprise would be a nice change.” Leo put his hand on hers and looked across at the old men. “Where’s the harm in trying?”
Savine gave the old windbags of Angland her sweetest smile. “Where indeed, my lords?”
“Master Arinhorm, what a tonic to see an old friend!” The sounds of the workmen putting new windows into the façade echoed faintly from outside as Rabik showed him into the room. “I apologise for all the commotion, I am making a few changes. Bringing things up to date.”
Arinhorm leaned to kiss Savine’s hand. “Lady Savine, it’s—”
“Your Grace.”
He winced ever so slightly. “Of course, Your Grace, I apologise. It’s… a lot to get used to.”
“Consider it from where I sit! Whoever would have thought I might find myself Lady Governor of Angland?”
Arinhorm sourly worked his mouth. “Not I.”
“I daresay when I turned down your scheme for increasing the efficiency of mines, we supposed we would have nothing more to do with one another. Now fate forces us to become partners regardless.”
Arinhorm frowned over at Zuri, who had the book open on the desk in front of her. “Partners?”
“Partners, Your Grace,” corrected Zuri, without looking up.
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