Gold Throne in Shadow (36 page)

Cantering into Knockford at the head of a column of cavalry was like showing up in a limousine. It made everybody look.

He paid his respects to the Vicar first, including a report on the battle. There wasn't a newspaper printing dispatches from the front. The people back home only heard rumors or what the lords told them. It explained how the draft levees could be treated so badly. Nobody knew what was going on.

He also told her about his assassin. She listened with a stony face to the tale of evil and then shrugged it off.

“You need not worry about us. As long as you spend little time here, she will not risk coming into my lands. Indeed, things have been positively peaceful in your absence.” The way she said it made the hint obvious.

Casually he pulled a small lump of tael out of his pocket and set it on the desk in front of her. “One more thing. I need to start making some deposits against those bonds. So I'd like to sell this to the Church, for gold.”

Vicar Rana glowered sourly at the shiny purple ball. “I doubt we have so much gold on hand.”

“I don't need it now. You can just keep it on account for me. At your usual interest rate.”

For a person who was being bought off, Rana was remarkably grumpy. No doubt she hated having to agree with his actions. Just the appearance of approval would prickle her sensibilities; the actuality of profiting from him would stab her like needles.

But she would take it, just the same. They were all on the same side, after all, and the cause needed all the help it could get.

“Are you sure your precipitous advance can spare it?” she said, with exactly as much irony as the words implied.

“Plenty where that came from.” He knew it was foolish the instant it left his mouth.

The play-acting vanished, and she spoke with complete seriousness. Not as a cantankerous old woman but as a peer in a world where moral choices were never easy and often fatal. “Do not be flippant, Christopher. This was won at a great price, both to you and to the creatures you slew.”

He bit his lip and apologized. “I know that. Believe me, I know.”

She stared at him, hard, the annoyance of her previous glowering replaced with critical inspection. Like she was trying to see into his soul. He squirmed a bit under that unsparing glare.

Finally she relaxed and started breathing again.

“If you wanted to know, you could have just cast a spell,” he said.

“You rely on magic too much,” she told him. He found that ironic and aggravating, but she wasn't interested in arguing anymore. It had passed beyond mere rivalry. With one hand she pointed him out of her office.

From one sharp-tongued woman to the next. Fae was as arch as ever and utterly unapologetic, receiving him in the refurbished magic shop, sitting on overstuffed armchairs while a young girl served tea in fine porcelain and silver. Although Fae had not yet discovered the imposing power of desks, she understood corporate office decor well enough. He felt intimidated by her casual elegance and expensive furniture.

Again it was ironic and aggravating, since he was paying for it all.

“If you wish to inspect the accounts, I can retrieve them for you.”

She had headed him off at the pass. If he asked for the accounts now, he would seem graceless and paranoid. Of course, he didn't really care about what he seemed, so it wasn't much of a defense. But luckily for her, he didn't care about the accounts either. As long as she spent his money on things that profited them both, he would look the other way.

“Can you increase production?” he asked instead.

Surprisingly, she gave him a positive answer. “Yes. I can still double the amount of sulfur.” And then the hook. “But it would tax me to the limit, and I do have other duties. If you are willing to spare the expense, perhaps I could look for an apprentice.”

Christopher tried to hide his automatic wince. Putting someone under Fae's control seemed like a bad idea. But then he remembered she already had dozens of young women who depended on her for their income. He hadn't heard any complaints from them. Fae wasn't a tyrant. Her mistreatment of men was more about payback than unbridled lust for power.

“I would have to approve of whoever you picked. And we would have to agree to a promotion schedule for them.” It wouldn't be fair to leave them trapped as apprentices forever. Even if that was all he ever wanted out of them.

“Naturally,” she said. Her friendly tone meant she thought she'd won. “One more small detail, Christopher. As my patron, you need to provide for my education. Although you cannot buy spells for me, you can finance my purchase of them. Since these deals are difficult to arrange and secretive by nature, it would be best if you would allocate a budget to my discretion.”

Talking to this woman was the most expensive habit he had ever indulged.

“What brought this up?” he asked, stalling for time.

She smiled, becoming the helpful woman who appeared from time to time in her pretty, avaricious body.

“You are rich and famous. This attracts attention, and expectations of profit. I have already had several offers.”

“Anything interesting?” He wasn't sure what powers wizards had, especially at her low rank.

“They were overpriced,” she sniffed. Grinning, he realized her innate stinginess would protect his purse more than any oversight he could inflict on her.

“Name a reasonable amount, Fae, and I'll think about it.”

After all that, the masculine reek of the forge was a relief. Standing in the din of machinery, bellows, fires, and hammers, he nodded approvingly. Dereth yammered on about smelting, but all Christopher could pick out of the noise was that everything was fine.

“More cannons,” Christopher shouted. “Especially the big ones.”

Jhom had papers for him to sign, new contracts for new men. And the inevitable question about promotions.

“Sure,” Christopher said. “Double our staff. Just get me those new rifles.”

“A profitable season, my lord?”

Since there was no hope of Christopher reaching seventh, he could afford to be generous. The leap from six to seven was so large that even a fraction of it seemed like profligate spending. The crumbs from his table, indeed.

“You could say that. How is the mill coming along?” Their only sources of power were the four water bottles, and they were already running them in two shifts. Building his own mill farther up the river was the next logical step, even if it would apparently take longer than he planned to stay on this planet.

“Well enough, my lord, but we could use a dozen more.”

Christopher would have to invent steam engines soon. He wasn't looking forward to it, since he had only the vaguest idea of how they worked. You heated water, and the steam pushed on something. He was pretty sure it was more involved than that, though.

“So build them. How are the other goods selling?” Wagon axles and stoves were just the beginning.

Jhom grinned, finally on a topic he could brag about.

“We have all but destroyed the smithies of Sprier and Montfort. Their forges cannot compete with our prices. Soon those men will be in our shop.”

Another reason for the lords to be pissed at Christopher. This was like bailing out a papier-mâché ship. Every time he dipped the bucket, he knocked another hole in the hull.

“Won't their lords be angry about that?”

“No,” Jhom reassured him, “I am not that foolish. I will not hire the lords' armor smiths. Not that I could, since you do not promote men above Senior. And since townsmen do not pay taxes, the lords will not even notice the lesser smiths are gone. If anything, they will appreciate the import taxes on what we ship back.”

It was all coming up roses. At least, as long as Christopher kept the money flowing. The bulk of the factory's income was military equipment.

“What about Palek? Is he going broke, too?” The independent smith had reason enough to hate Christopher. He didn't want to give him more.

“No, my lord. The men in this town who do not work for us have adapted. They do not try to make the things our factory does. They have learned to specialize.”

They probably weren't happy about it, though. Christopher had taken a profession that was as much artistry as labor and turned it into factory work. All he had to offer in return were regular paychecks and the excitement of powered machinery. He wasn't sure that was enough.

But he didn't have a choice. He needed guns, cheap. This society needed them. It needed lots of things, cheap, so that the many could wield as much influence as the few.

Then Jhom gave him the latest toy, and like any boy, he had to rush back to the village to play with it.

Lalania found him at the shooting range, an hour before sunset.

“There you are,” he said, relieved that she had finally shown up. He had no way of contacting her on his own.

“Here I am,” she replied. She seemed different somehow, distracted and unfocused.

“Did you hear about Niona?”

“Yes,” she answered, and he understood. He had never seen her depressed before.

“I'm going to revive her brother. I paid for it already.” It was the only good news he had to offer.

“Do not expect him to return to your call. That is not their way. Not everyone lives by your Church's dogma, Christopher.”

Damn but she could take the wind out his sails. The trick was that she was always right.

“Should I send the body back to the Druids, instead?”

A sigh. “It is too late. They have but a week, and you dallied too long.”

It wasn't dallying, but he didn't want to argue with her. He hadn't known, and no one had told him, and he probably couldn't have gotten the boy home any quicker anyway. And now, he wasn't even sure he could find the body. They hadn't bothered to label the parts that went in the resurrection barrel. Just making sure there was only one finger-bone from each corpse had seemed adequate at the time.

“Then I'll try it my way. I even paid to restore his rank, Lala. It was the best I could do.”

“Does that excuse work for you?” she said, piercing him with her gaze. “
The best you can do?
Is that enough to let you sleep at night?”

“What else is there? We didn't know Cannan would go nuts. We don't even really know what happened.” He was arguing with her, though his words were for himself.

“It is your choices I fear, not his. He destroyed only himself and the Lady Niona. Yet look at what you are doing.”

He looked at the pistol in his hand. It didn't seem that perilous.

“Not that.” She rolled her eyes in frustration, the thespian in her unable to resist dramatics.

“You mean the army?” he asked. She would already know of their victory, of course, and probably of the price.

“I don't think so.” The strange Lalania returned, the uncertain and hesitant girl. “I think it's Knockford. I tell myself the changes are merely temporary, the result of your showering of wealth on one little town. I tell myself it's just a local hero made good, and that it means nothing in the long run. But I do not believe it.”

“What do you believe?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“I don't know. But I was hoping you would come to the College and explain it to wiser heads than mine.”

Her College was the only institution of higher learning he'd ever heard about in this realm. He'd been trying to figure out how to wrangle an invitation out of her, and now she was just offering one.

“Sure. I'd like to talk to some scholars. Especially if their archives go back further than the Church's.” He hadn't found very many answers there.

“Just like that, you'll go?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“You'll have to leave your army behind. We'll be traveling toward Nordland's territory and must rely on discreetness rather than armed force. It could be dangerous.”

“I don't think Nordland is going to hunt me down.” He'd met the Duke at the crossroads and received nothing worse than insults.