Love's Labor's Won (12 page)

“It felt strange to sleep alone,” Frieda confessed. “But I made it, eventually.”

Emily had to smile. She liked her privacy, but Frieda had grown up in a tiny hovel and then moved to the dorms of Mountaintop. Frieda had never known true privacy from the day she’d been born until the day Emily had taken her to Whitehall. Even then, she’d shared a room with Emily rather than one of her own.

“I’m sure you did,” she said, softly. A maid — not Janice — appeared with a menu, which she placed in front of Emily. It was written using English letters, but half of the dishes still made no sense to her. “I’ll just have scrambled eggs, please.”

The maid looked astonished, either at the simplicity or the politeness, but merely curtseyed and departed, leaving the menus behind. Emily sighed inwardly, then looked at Frieda’s plate. It was crammed with bacon, eggs and pieces of unidentifiable vegetables. After a moment, she decided she didn’t want to know.

Frieda leaned forward. “What are we going to be doing today?”

“I’m going to have a long chat with Bryon,” Emily said. She cursed under her breath. It hadn’t occurred to her that she should have organized something for Frieda. “I think Lady Barb might be willing to show you around the city.”

Frieda looked doubtful. “I don’t think she likes me that much.”

Emily snorted. “I think that was because you and your friends managed to catch her and two other tutors in the crossfire,” she said. “Why were you playing Freeze Tag near the tutor’s lounge when there’s no shortage of empty floors in Whitehall?”

“It’s more exciting down there,” Frieda said.

“I bet it was,” Emily said, dryly. It was hard to blame the tutors for being annoyed, even though they hadn’t banned the students from playing. “But it wasn’t a very clever place to play.”

“I suppose not,” Frieda said unrepentantly. “We had detentions for months afterwards.”

Emily opened her mouth to point out that she obviously hadn’t suffered that much, but closed it when her breakfast arrived. There was more on her plate than she could have eaten, even after a day of casting spells at school. She sighed, made a mental note to ask for a smaller portion later, and started to dig into the eggs. It wasn’t easy to estimate just how many eggs had been broken to make her breakfast, but she would have bet it was somewhere around six or seven.

Lady Barb entered the room, looking disgustingly fresh and cheerful. “There’s a couple of people I know down there,” she said, nodding in the vague direction of the Faire. “I’d like to see them after breakfast, if you don’t mind.”

“Can you take Frieda with you?” Emily asked. “She really needs an escort.”

Lady Barb gave her a knowing look. “
You
need an escort,” she said. “But you can’t hide behind me here, not during the Faire. You’re their host.”

“I know,” Emily said.

She finished her breakfast, shaking her head at the waste, then rose. “I have to see Bryon,” she said. “But I’ll catch up with you later.”

Lady Barb smiled. “Don’t let him get away with anything,” she said. “You have to watch people carefully when you give them power.”

Emily swallowed the comment that came to mind — she’d been granted power, which suggested King Randor would keep an eye on her — and then walked out of the door, down towards the office that had been set aside for her. It was a chilly room, despite the roaring fire; Emily had a private suspicion, from the number of stuffed heads mounted on the wall, that Baron Holyoake had used it for something other than actual work. The desk, made out of stone, looked laughable to her. If she ever came back permanently, she promised herself, she would have the whole room turned into a proper workroom.

“My lady,” Bryon said, as he entered the room. “You wished to see me?”

“Yes,” Emily said. Several questions rose to the top of her mind as they sat down, but she focused on the most important one. “How large is the Faire going to be?”

“It grew,” Bryon admitted. “We had the first request, the one you signed, last year. And then we had more requests from several magical families. And then Viscount Steam made his own request, followed by several others. Right now, we are looking at hundreds of stalls, thousands of exhibits and hundreds of thousands of guests.”

Emily fought down the urge to put her head in her hands. “And you have this under control?”

“I believe so,” Bryon said. “Only a handful of the guests, the most important ones, will be granted rooms in the castle. The remainder will be staying in the city or traveling through the portal network. They’ve been organizing rooms for the last two months, my lady, and prices have been rising constantly.”

“I bet they have,” Emily said. Cockatrice City might be large, by local standards, but it wasn’t
that
big a city. These people would be astonished if they’d ever set eyes on Washington, New York or London. “And have there been problems?”

“Not many, my lady,” Bryon assured her. “They have all been handled.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Emily said. Lady Barb’s horror stories echoed through her head. “And security...?”

“They would not dare to cause trouble,” Bryon said. “Not in
your
lands.”

Emily shook her head. She knew magicians too well to assume her reputation, both as the Necromancer’s Bane and Void’s supposed daughter, would provide any protection. Some magicians would go out of their way to show they weren’t scared of her, while others would take one look and instantly dismiss her reputation as nothing more than a tissue of lies. Only people like the Grandmaster, or Void, seemed to command the sort of respect that led to instant obedience.

“Put Lady Barb in charge of security,” Emily ordered, flatly. “Pay her if she wants to be paid. She can muster support, if she thinks we need it.”

“Yes, my lady,” Bryon said. “Do you expect trouble?”

Emily shrugged. There hadn’t been any trouble at the last Faire, as far as she knew, but there had been a dozen Mediators there, along with a number of other senior magicians. Here, there would be her and no one else...she cursed herself under her breath. In hindsight, she should have thought harder before agreeing to host the Faire. It might have been a mistake.

No
, she told herself.
It was a mistake
.

“Lady Barb can handle security,” she repeated. The older woman wouldn’t be happy, but she would do it, even if she did extract a price afterwards. “Putting that aside for a moment, are there any other issues I should know about?”

Bryon smiled at her before he started to speak. “Local taxes have been sharply reduced, as you ordered,” he said. “However, there have been enough new taxpayers in your lands to more than compensate for our loss in revenue. Furthermore, scrapping the tax collection policy has actually saved us a considerable sum of money. Currently, we have a surplus of gold and several hundred requests for low-level microloans.”

Emily nodded. Microloans had been an idea she’d heard about on Earth and introduced to the Nameless World. They had to be paid back, of course, but they made it easier for any would-be entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. In the long run, she knew, some of the businesses would fail, yet she was sure enough would succeed to keep her in the black.

“However, we have complaints from some of our neighbors,” Bryon continued. “Beneficence hasn’t bothered to register any complaints, but Earl Wycliffe and Baron Gaunt have both filed formal complaints about peasants, slaves and even traders moving from their lands into yours. In addition, my lady, the Temple Master of Solis has filed a complaint of his own.”

“I see,” Emily said. “Why?”

“The Word of Solis, the dictates of the god, were meant to remain verbal,” Bryon said. “One of their senior initiates took the word and actually wrote it down, then produced hundreds of copies. The entire country can now look into the heart of their religion.”

Emily shrugged. “Is that our fault?”

“They want someone to blame,” Bryon said. “And we do have the largest printing press industry in the world.”

“True,” Emily said. King Randor had wanted her to watch for subversive printings...and she would have bet good money that most of them came from Cockatrice. She’d never bothered to supervise what was being printed, let alone try to censor it. “Can they actually cause problems for us?”

“I don’t know,” Bryon admitted. “But it should be watched.”

He smiled, thinly. “On the other hand, the Temple of Justice has been having its holy texts printed and distributed to the faithful,” he added. “They
love
the printing press.”

“It will sort itself out in time,” Emily said. “What else?”

“Some minor issues,” Bryon said, uncomfortably. “There are a handful of court cases that require you to make a final judgement. I’ve been keeping them frozen in the hopes they would go away, but I can’t delay them any longer now you’re here.”

“I’ll hear them later today, if they’re urgent,” Emily said. “How serious are they?”

“Mostly, they concern land distribution,” Bryon said. “I’m afraid that one of them is...sensitive.”

Emily groaned. “How sensitive?”

“Sensitive enough to upset a great many apple carts,” Bryon said. “A couple of smallholder freemen made a contract that one’s son would marry the other’s daughter, thus combining their lands. The contract was due to come into effect last year...”

He paused, allowing his voice to trail off.

Emily met his eyes. “But?”

“But your laws say that no one can marry until they’re sixteen,” Bryon said. “The contract specifically states that they have to marry as soon as they are of marriageable age. And, at the time the contract was signed, that was twelve. The girl is twelve, the boy is thirteen and their parents want them to get married.”

Emily felt sick. “No,” she said, flatly. “The contract didn’t take the change in the law into account, did it?”

Byron shook his head. “How could it?”

“Then they can get married, if they want to get married, at sixteen,” Emily said. How could she explain, even to Bryon, just how fundamentally
wrong
it was to push such a young couple into marriage? Even if the girl was capable of bearing children — and the boy old enough to sire them — they were both too young to make responsible decisions for themselves. “And if they don’t want to get married, they will not be forced into wedlock.”

“Most similar contracts are based around marriage ties,” Bryon said, quietly. “If you choose to bar this contract from going into effect, it will certainly cause problems for others.”

Of course
, Emily thought, savagely.
Who gives a damn about the young couple when land and money is involved? They can just make the best of it!

But it was wrong. And she was damned if she was going to condone it.

“I don’t care,” she said, shortly. “If the contracts were signed before I changed the law, they can be altered to fit the current circumstances. Or they can be scrapped; they
should
be scrapped.”

Bryon slowly bowed his head. “As you command, my lady,” he said. “But the problems...”

“We will deal with them,” Emily said, firmly. Maybe it had happened, in the past, on Earth. But that didn’t mean she had to tolerate it here. “And if they complain, tell them they’re getting away lightly. There are worse things that can happen than having to tear up a contract!”

Chapter Ten

E
MILY STILL FELT COLDLY FURIOUS THREE
hours later, even after a light lunch and a long session in the wardchamber, slowly and carefully reprogramming the hearthstone. It should have helped calm her down, but even the most complicated part of the task hadn’t done more than sharpen her anger. She knew, all too well, that her rage might prove a danger to anyone she encountered.

She sighed as she tried to concentrate. The castle had never had anything beyond basic wards, not when its former owner hadn’t been a magician in his own right, and it was something she knew she needed to fix before the guests began to arrive for the Faire. She concentrated, keying both Frieda and Lady Barb into the wards before she devised a series of new ones, one after the other. Finally, she scanned the castle for unexpected magic and blinked in surprise when she discovered that two of the maids used potions regularly.

I’ll have to see what they’re doing
, she thought, as she disconnected her mind from the wards.
Something to keep themselves pretty...or something more sinister
.

“My lady,” Bryon said, startling her. He bowed as she turned to face him. “The first case is ready to be heard.”

Emily nodded. He’d tried to convince her, several times, to
hear
the case of the invalid contract, but Emily had flatly refused to even consider it. Instead, he had organized a handful of other cases she needed to hear, all of which had considerable implications for the future of her lands. She checked the wards one final time before allowing him to lead her back up the stairs into the Great Hall. No matter how often she stepped into the chamber, she couldn’t help feeling faintly absurd. It was, in intent if not in name, a throne room.

King Randor would have pulled it down, if he had known
, she thought, as she sat on the large chair. It, too, was a throne in all but name.
It was clear that the
baron
had regal pretensions
.

Bryon stood next to her. “My lady?”

Emily gritted her teeth. Judgement, Lady Barb had shown her, was part of a roving magician’s job, but this was different. She would have to live with the consequences of her decisions, which might be taken on the spur of the moment. In hindsight, she understood precisely why headmen and even kings were so relieved to have visiting magicians handle their cases. The magicians wouldn’t stay in the village, allowing them to take the blame if the population didn’t like the decision.

“Bring in the claimants,” she ordered.

The doors opened, revealing five men. Two wore farmer’s clothing; two more wore city outfits, while the fifth wore a simple grey outfit that marked him as a scribe and recorder. He was here, Emily knew, to record everything that happened, good or bad. King Randor had been quick to see the advantage of keeping careful records, even before English letters had spread through his kingdom. It was astonishing just how much could be drawn from records, she had learned from experience, if someone read them with a gimlet eye.