Gold Throne in Shadow Read online

  “They’ll drag their families with them,” Jhom grinned, “uncles, cousins, dogs, and all.”

  “What about our men? Won’t they be unhappy about outsiders getting promoted first?” He’d always hated that in the companies he had worked for.

  Jhom considered this angle only briefly before dismissing it. “We can’t promote our own men, that won’t draw new ones in. It is your tael, Curate, and you have the right to spend it as you will. The men will accept this.”

  That excuse would get Jhom off the hook, in exchange for leaving Christopher holding the bag. Jhom was a decent man, and he took good care of his employees, but he still was ready to increase his influence at the expense of Christopher’s reputation.

  Or perhaps that was being unfair. These people were used to making hard choices and living with the results, and they were used to unchecked authority. “Necessary” was whatever the guy with the superpowers said it was.

  “Would this work? Announce the promotions and let everyone compete for it, including the out-of-towners. Promote the five best. Then, offer the others a job, since they’re already here.” Christopher was feeling pretty pleased with his plan, until Jhom drilled it full of holes.

  “That will just aggravate everyone, for little gain. Our men will expect to be favored, for their loyalty and time served; the out-of-towners who don’t win will just go home. Those who do win will be resented and constantly challenged, since it is only their skill and not your authority that grants them their place.”

  Jhom took a little pity on him. “The best I can suggest is that you promote one of ours for each new man you bring in. That would please everyone, except your purse.”

  He shook his head. As rich as he was, he could not afford that. Now he had to choose between fairness and effectiveness, something he had never had to do back on Earth. But then, the society he had lived in was not at perpetual war with inhuman monsters.

  “Do what you must,” he said, closing his eyes in dismay.

  “Can I at least tell them that next year, you will promote five of ours?” asked Jhom, trying to give him an out.

  But the Church he served did not tolerate dishonesty. “No, I don’t know that is true. If anything, we’ll need even more new people. And we can’t promote from within and hope that draws more, because we need them now.”

  “Everyone will assume that eventually you will promote your own, anyway,” soothed Jhom, “so this will be almost as good.”

  Except that Christopher didn’t want to promote anyone. Other than a handful of Seniors required for their magical abilities, the machine shop could be run by mere mortals. The men didn’t need tael, just training. That was a concept more foreign than the rule of fairness.

  Which brought up another point. “What about Seniors? Do we have enough of them?”

  Thankfully, Jhom nodded the affirmative. “They need but do a single step, mating the breech to the block.” Using the power of their craft-ranks they made the metal run like oil, forming a perfect fit between the machined surfaces and neatly solving one of the worst problems of paper-cartridge firearms. This did mean that the barrels and breeches were not interchangeable, but Christopher was the only one who thought that mattered. Mass production was another foreign concept.

  “They’ll need to do more than one step for these,” Christopher said, pulling out his latest design. The other problem with paper cartridges was the loading time. One solution was a revolving rifle, a cylinder with six breeches mated to a single barrel. A number of them had been manufactured in the American Civil War just before the metal cartridge made lever-action rifles possible. But Christopher’s industry could barely make enough paper and lead bullets as it was; the technology required for stamping out thousands of brass cartridges was out of reach for now, even if he could figure out how to afford that much metal.

  Jhom was fascinated with the drawings of the cylinder action, so Christopher had to warn him. “We’ll not make hundreds of these.” They would cost a fortune, since they would require multiple steps from the expensive Seniors for each chamber in the cylinder. “We’ll call them carbines, because of the shorter barrel.” He’d cut a dozen inches off of the barrel; the weight of the fat round cylinder added to an ordinary rifle would make the thing unbearable.

  He had another new design for Dereth. He found the Senior smith where he belonged, in front of their primitive Bessemer furnace, supervising a smelting. He had made a sword for Christopher once, the old-fashioned way, by hammering carbon into iron to make a few pounds of steel. Now he poured steel by the ton.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” the smith said, watching the fiery liquid run into molds. “We rarely miss the mark now, my lord.” Dereth used his craft-rank magic to get the precise amount of carbon in, though he would not tell Christopher how he did it. Just being “my lord” was not enough to make one privy to guild secrets.

  “Can you double production?” Christopher shouted over the clatter of bellows and hammers.

  “I am not the neck of the bottle,” Dereth replied, still enraptured by the glowing steel. “Your Tom cannot dig fast enough for me.”

  Christopher gave up trying to talk and just shoved some papers into the smith’s hands. “Only two or three,” he shouted, as he lost the smith’s attention to the schematics of his new toy. The little two-inch guns were nice, but having seen the quality of the monsters, he wanted something monstrous, like the five-inch Napoleon sketched out on his papers. Hopefully Dereth had enough experience with casting to bring the beasts to life.

  Tom should be the easy part; all he would need was more unskilled labor. Dealing with the irreverent second son of a farmer made into the head of the Teamsters Union was always a joy, so he decided to save it for last, and steeled himself for meeting with Fae, the inscrutable and provocative apprentice witch who ran his chemical industry. Walking through town to her building, the fresh spring air did its part to undo the lock he had placed on all things amorous.

  “Shut up,” he told a chirping cardinal, preening from a branch in boastful glory. “You’re not helping.”

  4

  CHANGING WIZARDS

  “Impossible,” Fae said. “I already use my magic to the fullest to make your sulfur. I cannot do more with what I have.” She was doing that subtle flirting, the kind where if you draw attention to it, people raise their eyebrows at your vanity.

  Fae was only the first wizard’s apprentice-rank, the equivalent of a smith’s novice and thus a fairly cheap employee. “Can we hire others?” he asked, hoping she would give him a different answer than Dereth had.

  “No other apprentice would surrender a career in wizardry for you,” Fae said, callously dismissive of his stupidity.

  “What about Flayn? Can we subcontract it from him?” Maybe the extra business would placate the man.

  Fae merely smiled enigmatically, which he understood was her look of total victory, at the mention of her old master. “You can, of course, ask.”

  The feeling of being bested by a slip of a girl in a sensuous lace frock was enough to drive him to defiance. He resolved to do just that, despite knowing it would be totally futile. His tenacity was wasted, of course. Fae simply smirked as he rallied his forces, consisting of Torme and a few young soldiers, and marched across town. The soldiers were not his idea. Karl seemed to think he needed an escort everywhere these days.

  “That is a remarkably attractive woman,” Torme said unnecessarily. The man was the perfect servant, almost invisibly discreet and polite to a fault, but Fae was a force of nature.

  His boys had been cowed by her profession and intelligence. His men were made of sterner stuff. They did not speak out loud in the presence of their commander, but the leers on their faces were irrepressible.

  “Don’t even dream about it,” Christopher laughed at them. “I don’t want to have to dig you out of whatever hole she buries you in.” But boys made into heroes lived and breathed dreams, and they didn’t even have the decency to blush. />
  Outside the baroque glass door of Flayn’s shop, Christopher steeled himself yet again. Flayn was as creepy and infuriating as Fae was provocative, and both of them were as wily as drunken snakes.

  Entering the shop, he reflected that bringing the entire squad with him was perhaps not a politic move, especially since the young men’s swagger turned protective and aggressive, responding to his own subconscious discomfort. Behind the counter Flayn had already managed to be rude with nothing more than a glance, and Christopher had to bite back a snide taunt about doing his own shopkeeping now. As he was fishing for some polite opening remark, he happened to notice Torme standing beside him. The man had gone still, like a mongoose ready to strike.

  Flayn’s gaze faltered before settling into to its customary sneer. “What thrice-cursed god sends you to darken my door?”

  “Necessity,” Christopher answered, only slightly curious of Torme’s reaction. It was what Christopher normally felt when dealing with Flayn, after all. “I require your services.”

  Panic flickered through the wizard’s eyes, a curiously inappropriate response to a job offer.

  “They are not for sale to the likes of you,” Flayn said.

  Entirely unexpectedly, Torme spoke up. “But perhaps freely offered to others?” His voice was hard now, thick, heavy iron, the peasant burr like flakes of rust. Christopher raised his hand to quiet his acolyte, uncertain why the hostility in the room was rising so quickly.

  Flayn snapped out a proverb like it was threat. “Geese may quack, but the lord of the manor hears only his dinner.”

  “Truth is only a spell away,” Torme retorted.

  The two men were almost shouting at each other, a tennis match spiraling out of control. Christopher put up his other hand to quiet the wizard, a dubious proposition in the best of times, and at this juncture entirely unwise. Flayn reacted to the movement by throwing up his arms, and as Torme went for his sword, the wizard began chanting a spell.

  Automatically, instinctively, Christopher began his own spell, but as short as it was, Flayn’s was shorter, and all around him men fell helplessly into unnatural slumber.

  But not Christopher: this enchantment no longer worked on him, a fact that Flayn could not have known yet. His own spell left his lips and his hand, the tael in his head yielding up the power it had stored, and Flayn froze like a statue, his hands in the middle of some complex and doubtless nefarious act.

  In the silent shop, Christopher was at a loss, bewildered by the sudden violence in a place he had thought of as safe, and he had no idea what was supposed to happen next. He kicked Torme in the ribs while he reflexively drew his sword.

  “What the Dark?” he barked, and Torme looked up, righteous anger burning the sleep out of his eyes.

  “It is the wizard who slept your men at Black Bart’s command!” Torme had been working for the other side, then. “I knew not his name or origin, but I cannot forget that sorry ferret face. His hatred of you was so great that Bart boasted he served for free.”

  That same loathing poured out from Flayn’s eyes now, the only part of his body still under his control. If looks could kill, the room would be full of burnt and blasted corpses.

  And looks probably could, given a few words, a gesture, and tael. Christopher’s spell was only good for seconds, and time was running out the door in sheer terror of a wizard’s wrath.

  “What do I do?” Christopher moaned, clueless, his anxiety stuttering in impotent hands.

  “Slay him now, my lord,” Torme pleaded, “while you can. Who knows what devices or spells he may call upon?”

  “Disarm him?” Christopher begged, still trying to avoid the obvious.

  “How?” Torme said simply, and it was true. They didn’t even know what to look for, a bracelet, a ring, perhaps a rock hidden in his shoe. Magic was like that.

  Torme probably knew the laws better than Christopher did, even here in White lands. Flayn had attacked them, after all, and of course there was always the consolation that they could bring him back from the dead. Shooting first and asking questions later actually worked here.

  Just another hard decision he had to make. Disgusted, he took it out in action, letting the cleanliness of the stroke wipe his mind. But as the wizard’s head fell from its instantly limp body, emotion came rushing back, dropping him to his knees where he could not see the stump of the neck pumping out blood. He put his hand to the wall to steady himself and concentrated on not throwing up.

  Torme stared at him in wonder. “He was your enemy.”

  “He was a human being,” Christopher choked, gagging.

  “Not so much,” Torme said. “The only thing standing between him and the Black was courage.” Torme might have atoned, but he still thought cowardice a worse vice than evil. Christopher might possibly be the only person on the planet who would disagree.

  While Christopher tried to decide what to do next, Torme went into action. Awakening the soldiers, he took effective command, sending two to summon the Church officers, and two to guard the door against intrusion. Then he checked the body to make sure it was still unmoving.

  “A good stroke, my lord,” Torme said with approval. Christopher couldn’t accept the flattery, though. He’d practiced for years on bound reed mats, designed to simulate the high point of the samurai’s art—cutting a standing neck in one stroke—and had managed to achieve it on several occasions. But this time tael had guided his hand, so the credit was not his. Not that he particularly wanted it.

  Skittering away from the memory of the deed, Christopher’s mind found something to analyze, pinning his attention to facts and figures in defense against feeling. Tael had not bound Flayn’s neck with unnatural resilience: the man could not have been higher than first-rank.

  That meant he could not have been a credible danger to Christopher.

  Torme’s advice had made the difference. Christopher knew that was no excuse. No one would believe a Curate acted on the will of an Acolyte. He watched the man dealing with the priestess who had arrived, sending her away with casual authority, his suspicion lurking under the memory of Faren’s endorsement.

  The Vicar Rana was not as angry as she could have been. She was angry, yes, like a kettle boiling the last of its water away in screaming agony, but not as angry as she was capable of. She didn’t threaten to kill Christopher this time.

  “You swear this,” she demanded of Torme again, which was gravely unnecessary since he was standing inside the zone of her truth-compelling spells. “Master Flayn aided Bartholomew in his attack last spring?”

  “I swear it, my lady,” Torme said.

  The lady glared at Christopher from the judge’s bench, obviously misinterpreting his anxiety. “No need to summon your Cardinal to this perch,” she growled. “The law is clear. The violence of the ranked are beyond my jurisdiction. Your prize is safe.”

  “Flayn attacked me!” Christopher protested.

  “You did not have to kill him—” and at first he thought he had said it himself, his guilt was so overwhelming “—but if you had not, then you would have made us do it. Honestly, we should be grateful to you for doing our dirty work.” She was not grateful in the tiniest, littlest bit. “His tael is yours. As is his shop and all his worldly goods, forfeited by his stupidity and royal law.”

  “Can’t we revive him?” Christopher asked, looking for an escape from his culpability. “I can pay for it.”

  “Why in the blazes would we do that?” the Vicar thundered. “In any case, I cannot believe he would come at our call. Would you go to the summons of a Dark priest?”

  She shook her head in disappointment at his childishness. “Not every broken pot can be mended. If you do not like the consequences of your actions, then I suggest you act more carefully. In any case, now you must clean up the shards. Dispose of that body, at your own expense, and take possession of his demesne. I leave it to you to disarm the traps he doubtless left there, without causing harm to my town or my people.” The sub
tle emphasis left room for him to cause all the harm he wanted to himself. “Should his master come seeking vengeance, do not look to me for defense.”

  Court adjourned, the small crowd spilled out into the street. Karl was deeply satisfied and did not hesitate to give due credit to Torme for the profitable outcome. “Once again they put a weapon in your hand and you strike unerringly,” he said to Christopher. Lowering his voice, he went on. “I almost suspect the Cardinal of suspecting . . . but no matter.”

  “Master?” Christopher bleated. “Vengeance?”

  “True enough,” Karl mused. “I don’t suppose the wizards will approve.”

  The Lord of Carrhill was a wizard. Christopher’s program of diplomacy seemed poised to sink in the harbor.

  “Burn it,” Torme suggested. “Just burn the accursed shop to the ground, body and all.” Nothing had been touched, yet. The crime scene investigation had consisted of the Vicar looking in the shop and shaking her head in disgust. After that, the door had been barred, and now the place was Christopher’s problem.

  “Perhaps it would be safer that way,” Karl said, “yet on the other hand, you must learn to deal with wizards and their craft. This may be the only time you can plunder a magic shop at your leisure.”

  Hadn’t he already hired someone to do his wizardry for him? “Fae. She was an apprentice—she was his apprentice. Shouldn’t she be able to help?”

  “Flayn’s traps are probably less dangerous,” Karl said. “But as you wish.”

  The arch of her pretty back broadcast her triumph. Subtly, of course, as was her nature, although the effect it had on her décolletage was not so subtle. Hat in hand, metaphorically speaking, Christopher petitioned his putative employee.

  “Flayn shared few of his secrets with me,” Fae demurred, “and even if he had, I am of little use to you as an Apprentice. To separate the wheat from the chaff, and the harmful from the insignificant, would require a true wizard.”

  Torme frowned. “No wizard is going to help the Curate sack another’s shop,” he quite logically objected. Christopher sighed as the man played directly into her hands.