Gold Throne in Shadow (39 page)

“To where? It's twenty miles to Undaal, and there isn't an inn between here and there. Every time they build one, it gets burned down in a war. And we can't sleep out in the open on the border. Both sides would consider us fair game.”

“They're at war now?” He thought she had been talking about ancient history.

“Not openly. But acts of banditry are becoming unacceptably common. The Vicar of West Undaal refused to cure Undaal's Captain of Horse, suggesting that the Captain frequent a higher class of whores instead of wasting the Vicar's time. The Captain took this as an insult and got his healing from the Vicar of Portia. Now the Gold Throne has its nose in the middle of a family quarrel, and both sides are too stupid to see that it fans the strife for its own profit.”

Christopher was a Vicar too. Maybe his rank would let him talk some sense into the local ruler. True, they followed different gods, but they were still on the side of the Bright. When he suggested this plan to Lalania, she rolled her eyes so dramatically she practically lost her balance.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked. “Deep in the territory of the Gold. Agents of the Iron Throne are thick as fleas here. Stick your White nose up and somebody will be sure to claim it. No, Christopher, we'll leave the local politics to cooler hearts than yours. Tomorrow we'll be sleeping in Feldspar, a county as surely under the Shadow as the day is long. If they knew a White priest was coming, they'd be sure to put the kettle on.”

That didn't mean they would be serving him a nice cup of tea.

“Cooler hearts? Like your College?”

“Cool hearts make cool blood. We contend always against the peerage's lust for war.”

“Then why haven't I seen any other bards?”

“Because we don't need to do anything in your lands. The Saint is, well, a saint. He's no threat to the peace.”

Belatedly it occurred to him to wonder how much of his grand scheme she would share with her fellows. Surrounded by the men of his army and his Church, he had forgotten that she owed her loyalty to a different institution.

She had not done anything to remind him of it, either. Her behavior on this trip could even reasonably be construed to have helped him forget that little fact. He looked at her sideways, and she sighed in exasperation.

“You could at least pretend to hide your suspicion,” she said. “We are the Saint's allies, even if he does not know it. I do not understand you, Christopher. Half the time you are as simple-minded and obvious as a child, and yet only a moment passes before you say or do something completely mystifying.”

He understood. The things everyone took for granted in her world were all new to him, so she could work out every step before he could. On the other hand, he was from a cultural context she couldn't even imagine. “If you did understand, you'd stop being interested in me.”

“You don't really think I'm that shallow, do you?” When he didn't answer right away, she shook her hair in mock outrage. “I should let you sleep on that rotten mattress alone for that. But I won't. Instead, I'll treat you better than you deserve.”

Extracting her lute from its amorphous leather case, she struck a few chords and began to hum in a language that sounded like the one Fae used for her spells. But he stopped thinking about that when he noticed that their erstwhile mattress seemed to be coming alive.

When he realized it was not the straw mattress that had been enchanted into animation, the flowing motion merely a vast horde of bugs crawling out of it, he flinched and retreated, stopping only when he ran into the door. Lalania ignored him, too busy to perform her usual ocular acrobatics. The bugs began falling from the mattress, disappearing in little sparkles of purple light before they hit the floor.

It took a few minutes for her to finish the entire mattress and the ragged heaps of cloth that would serve as their blankets. When she was done, they looked freshly washed and almost inhabitable.

“I have no idea what you just did, but I am extremely grateful for it.” Assuming he could get the image of that writhing straw mattress out of his head, he was sure he would sleep much more soundly tonight.

“Yes, that is why I became a troubadour and mastered the arcane arts—so I could impress a man with my laundry skills.”

“Well, it's working.”

She laughed at him and shook her head.

“And again you confound me. What man has ever before in the history of the world cared for the quality of his bed when there was a woman in it? That
'
s why I
'
m taking you to the College—so you can confound those more clever than I. Until then, let
'
s go downstairs and ask about our dinner. And . . . if it
'
s as poor as this room, you have my permission to hold the inn-keeper
'
s head in a chamber pot until he stops bleating.”

16

BAR BRAWLS AND BETRAYALS

H
e hadn
'
t held the innkeeper
'
s head in a chamber pot. Last night, the thick cut of beef had been hot, juicy, and heavily spiced. It had gone down easily enough.

But today it lay in the pit of his stomach, causing unpleasant rumblings and eructations every time Royal changed his stride. The juices had turned to cold grease, the tenderness of the cut was probably due to its being on the edge of going rotten, and the spices had been there to hide that unsavory fact. Unfortunately, the spell that would neutralize any and all toxins was still out of his reach. When he complained about this to Lalania, she shook her head at him.

“You could have purified the meal before you ate it, Christopher. It likely would not have given us away. Such a low-level blessing is in the power of an Acolyte, and in any case you could have disguised it as simple religious piety. Plenty of superstitious peasants say a prayer over their evening meal. The alternative is that you could develop a constitution hardier than a girl's.” She belched unexpectedly, and a pained look crossed her face. “I take that back. Tonight I suggest you pray over our food, despite the risk. But discreetly, Christopher. We'll be sleeping in a Dark county tonight, one almost certainly under the sway of the Shadow.”

He frowned.

“It can't be helped. We'll make Undaal town by noon. Then it's either wait for morning or push on. I don't counsel waiting. It just increases our risk of detection and gives any pursuit we might have a chance to catch up. But if we continue, nightfall will find us in Feldspar, and we absolutely will not camp in the open there. I know a village inn, near the Estvale border, that should be safe enough. The innkeeper is no cleaner than our last one but no more wicked either.”

“If this one poisons me, I'm going to have to kill him.” A sour thing to say, and probably outside the bounds of strict honesty that his Church demanded. Before he could amend it to be more truthful, another roil of burning garlic-and-clove gas burbled through his belly. As of that moment, he decided his statement was adequately sincere.

Undaal was even shabbier than West Undaal. At least the locals didn't give them a hard time. One look at Christopher's face, wound tight by discomfort and annoyance, a second look at his sword and his horse, and they kept their wisecracks to themselves. The deference was of a different character than back home. In Church lands, people were nice to him as long as he was nice to them. Here, people were only nice to him when he was mean enough to scare them. Christopher was pleased to see that he could tell the difference and was gratified that it still mattered so much to him. He had been impressed before at how the Church could rule without inspiring fear. He was being impressed all over again.

Unfortunately he hadn't memorized the spell needed for cleansing food, so he and Lalania had to risk the local standards for lunch. They settled on the blandest food they could find: fresh bread and a pale, soft cheese. Christopher managed to acquire a few stalks of celery by pretending it was for his horse. The roughage put some solidity into his gut, and he started to feel better.

“Good,” Lalania said, “because I think we've dallied too long. We need to pick up the pace.”

The so-called road was hardly more than a wagon-track, though wide enough to allow the horses to trot safely. The celery allowed his stomach to survive the bouncing gate. They would cover eight miles in the next few hours, without unduly tiring Royal. Christopher tried not to think about how their three-day journey would have been less than an hour, given a highway and an automobile.

He could tell when they crossed the border into Feldspar. Mostly because there were a handful of ragged soldiers collecting a poll-tax of copper for people and silver for horses, but also because the quality of life went down another notch. The peasants in Church lands were often cheerful, or at least content at their labors. In the Undaals they had been disgruntled and sour. Here, in Feldspar, the few peasants he saw were depressed and skittish, afraid of even looking at him.

“Peace, Christopher,” Lalania said, as he was opening his mouth. “Keep your opinions to yourself for now. I already know what you're thinking, and talking about it won't help.”

He asked a question instead. “How do you . . . put up with it, Lala?”

The look in her eyes might have been pity. Or disgust. “I've seen worse. Do you know what county lies due south of us now? Baria, once the domain of Bartholomew the Black. Due to Bart's untimely demise at the hands of some white-flocked hooligan, the county has a new master. The Gold Throne has rewarded Prelate Gareth Boniface with the title. But a Prelate is not a peer. He needs another rank before the King will recognize his right. Do you know where the good Prelate can find the tael necessary to make Curate? No? Then I will tell you. The county has been sentenced to decimation.”

Christopher didn't have to ask what the term meant. His magical grasp of the language supplied the answer: one out of ten, in the original Roman sense of the word. When a legion had exhibited cowardice in the face of the enemy, it could be sentenced to decimation. The legion would line up, in rows of ten. Each man would draw from a bag of white and black stones. Every tenth stone was black. The man who drew the black stone would die, beaten to death by clubs wielded by the other nine.

In all of Roman history only one legion had ever suffered this punishment. Even for the honor-obsessed Romans, the people who would fall on their own swords rather than face a court trial, the brutality of decimation was too savage to be used more than once every thousand years. Even for the Romans, decimation had really been no more than a legend, a terrifying story from the distant past. On this planet, it was an ordinary fact of life. It was only supposed to be invoked when the community was in serious danger, but, as usual, that determination was up to the lord.

Bart had already liquidated two villages to raise new knights. It was hard to believe the county could survive further depredation. Christopher tried to set aside his revulsion and focus on a legal objection. “Wait a minute. The Prelate doesn't have the title, so he can't just take the tael out of the county. He's got to be Baron first. So he can't do that.”

“Strictly speaking, you are correct. When that argument was presented to the Gold Throne, their response was simple. They would decimate one of their current counties to promote the Prelate. Then, once he took possession of Baria, he would decimate it to pay back the loan.”

“Gods . . . that's two decimations.” Twice as many dead peasants. Twice as many grandparents sent to the chopping block because they were too old to work. Twice as many unpopular people, oddballs who rubbed anyone the wrong way, even a little, sent to the ax. Every curmudgeon, whose only crime was not being disliked but merely lacking enough friends to speak up for them.

And, of course, women. There were twice as many women as there were men, with half as much say in who got chosen. Any woman past childbearing age would be facing a death sentence.