Stuck in Magic 29-30

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Well, at least they’re not demanding we give back the castle to a dead man,” Rupert said, an hour later.  We’d spent the time dictating messages to Fallon, then listening as she repeated their messages back to us.  “That would have been awkward.”

I grinned.  Fallon giggled.  The city fathers had been shocked, according to her, when they heard what we’d done.  They hadn’t even realised we’d continued the offensive, even though it had been part of the plan.  Going on until we hit something so hard we had to stop made perfect sense, as far as I was concerned, and we’d kept going until we won the war.  Warlord Aldred’s former subordinates might try to declare independence, or try to offer homage to another warlord, but it didn’t matter.  Right now, they lacked the firepower to do more than irritate us.  The rebel serfs would keep them penned up until we could smash their castles one by one.  Kuat had fallen.  I had no doubt the others would be even easier to destroy.

Rupert smiled, tiredly.  “We still have orders to wait for the princess,” he said.  “By then, hopefully, the council will have decided what they want us to say to her.”

“They do keep changing their minds,” Fallon agreed.  She glanced at the parchment.  “Right now, they’re asking about securing our new territories.”

I unfurled a map and studied it thoughtfully.  “We’ll position scouts along the roads leading to the neighbouring warlord territories,” I said.  The nightmare was a united advance on multiple fronts, perhaps three or four armies heading straight to the city, but I doubted the warlords would manage to coordinate such an offensive.  They’d need to build a modern army first, giving us time to tighten our defences and send more agents into their lands.  “If they start an attack, we’ll know about it.”

Fallon wrote a message on her parchment.  I felt a shiver running down my spine as the words faded and vanished, as if they’d never been.  I’d never had that reaction to radios or computers … I frowned as Fallon read the reply out loud.  To my eyes, the chat parchment was blank.  It was hard not to feel we were being conned.  We’d busted an insurgency cell, back in the Middle East, whose leader had faked messages from a multinational network to keep his subordinates in the fight.  I knew Fallon wasn’t lying to us and yet it was hard to believe she could see something I couldn’t.

I turned my attention back to the map.  “We’ll place a garrison here, just to make sure someone doesn’t try to take it from us, then split the army and deploy cannoneers to the rest of the castles.  If they surrender, they can leave without a fight; if not, we can blow their walls down and they can die in the ruins.  The quicker we eliminate them, the better.”

“The city fathers want you to detach half the army and send it back home,” Fallon said.  “I think they’re getting worried.”

“We can do both,” I assured her.  “And thank you.”

Fallon nodded, dropped a curtsey and hurried out the room.  The communicators had taken over a handful of chambers, although personally I’d have preferred to keep them in the camp outside the walls.  We were still searching the castle with the aid of the former servants, liberating prisoners from the cells, capturing records and logging every last item of value within the walls.  The latter would probably have to be sent to the city, although I was pretty sure a number of smaller items had already been pocketed by my men.  I sighed, inwardly.  I didn’t want to encourage looting and yet … it wasn’t going to be easy to stop.  Few, if any, people had qualms about stealing from a dead warlord.  God knew he’d been stealing from everyone within his reach.

Rupert smiled at me, then winked.  “She has a crush on you, you know.”

I scowled.  It had been a long time since I’d lain with anyone and right now, in the flush of victory, my body was instant on reminding me just how long it had been.  Fallon was young and pretty and … I cut off that line of thought before it could go any further.  She was young enough to be my daughter, more or less, and she’d grown up in a society I didn’t really understand.  It would be safer to visit an upper-class brothel, when I returned to the city, although that carried risks of its own.  The last thing I wanted was a fantastical STD.

“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” I growled.  I cleared my throat as I studied the map.  “What do you think the princess actually wants?”

“Aldred wanted her to tell us to go home, disband our army and let him kick our backsides a few times,” Rupert said.  We’d found the warlord’s private letters, along with everything else, when we’d searched his quarters.  It was strange to realise that a man who’d had no qualms about twisting the king’s arm – he hadn’t been even remotely subtle about it – had also been a patron of the arts and a moderately gifted poet himself.  “What she wants?  I don’t know.”

I nodded as I turned my attention to organising the aftermath of the war.  I didn’t really want to send a sizable chunk of the army home, even if they took a route that just happened to take them past a number of castles that needed to be reduced if they refused to surrender, but I didn’t have a choice.  The city fathers had to be thinking we were dangerously loose cannons, although we’d won the war.  They might not be openly churlish about it, not when public opinion would be firmly on our side, but they’d certainly do something to clip our wings.  It was just possible they’d order us to concentrate on raising and training new recruits while giving combat commands to more reliable officers.

The hours went quickly.  I checked the pile of captured gold – it looked like a dragon’s hoard – then arranged for it to be returned to the city under heavy guard.  I allowed a detachment of former serfs to raid the warlord’s armoury, taking a few hundred swords, spears, crossbows and suits of armour that looked hopelessly outdated, along with thousands of arrows.  It amused me to discover that the warlord had actually had his very own cannon, although he’d made no attempt to put it into service.  The design was badly outdated, but it could still have hurled a cannonball into the city’s walls.  I was sure his neighbours would be building up their own forces as fast as they could.

Fallon caught me as I returned to the castle, after inspecting the troops.  “We have orders to send the aristocratic prisoners back to the city,” she said.  “They want them back immediately.”

“I’ll see to it,” I said.  The warlord’s wife, mistresses and remaining children had been kept under guard too.  I wasn’t sure what, if anything, we could do with them.  I didn’t want to execute them in cold blood and yet, leaving them alive would cause all sorts of problems in the future.  “And then …”

She stopped as the chat parchment vibrated in her hand, more proof – if I’d needed it – that the original concept had come from my world.  Or one very much like it.  “Sir … the princess has been kidnapped!”

I blinked.  “What?”

“Her carriage was waylaid.” Fallon didn’t look up from her parchment.  “They took her and rode off …”

I led the way back to the throne room and ran to the map table as she gabbled out more details.  The princess had been within the dead warlord’s lands when she’d been attacked and taken by a band of … of who?  I shuddered as the implications dawned on me.  The warlords had refrained from insisting the princess marry one of them – willingly or not – because there’d been a near-perfect balance of power.  Anyone who tried to take the princess, and thus the crown, would be promptly targeted by the others.  But now, with Aldred dead, the northern warlords might just try to snatch the princess, force her to marry one of them and declare themselves the heir to the throne.  I felt sick.  If they took her, if they raped her, she’d have no choice but to marry the rapist.  It would be the only way to preserve her reputation.

Bastards, I thought.  What sort of fucked up society forces a woman to marry her rapist?

“If they take her …”  Rupert’s thoughts were clearly going in the same direction.  “We have to save her.”

I ran my eye down the map, silently calculating the possibilities.  The mystery kidnapper would have sent cavalry, perhaps even mercenaries, rather than coming in person.  He would have wanted to maintain a degree of plausible deniability, even if everyone knew what had happened.  I did my best to think like a total shithead intent on taking the princess – and her title – by force.  If I’d been trying to do it, I would want to get the princess to my castle as quickly as possible.  We’d heard a report that Warlord Cuthbert had moved to his castle on the border … it wasn’t much to go on, but it was all we had.

“If she’s being taken to Cuthbert,” I said as my finger traced a road on the map, “they’ll have to gallop down here.”

It made sense, I decided.  Cuthbert was the strongest warlord in the north, now we’d crushed Aldred.  He might just think he could get away with kidnapping the princess and marrying her by force.  Any of his peers who wanted to do something about it would have to fight their way through our territory first … he might just get away with it, if we gave him the chance.  I had no intention of letting him get away with anything.  The city fathers might not give much of a shit about the princess, or the throne, but Cuthbert was already a threat.  He’d be much more of a problem if he wound up with royal authority as well as his own considerable forces.

“We’ll stop him,” I said.  The idea of saving a royal princess was appealing.  “Rupert, you stay here and get the army ready to secure the border.  Fallon, you’re with me.”

Fallon didn’t object as she followed me down the stairs and out to the campsite.  My skirmishers were already to go, the cavalrymen leaping into their saddles as we hurried towards them.  I noted with some amusement that the common-born skirmishers and the aristocratic cavalry were actually getting along, now they’d won a victory together.  Harbin would be rolling in his grave.  I smirked at the thought as I barked orders, then climbed onto the horse myself.  Fallon sat behind me as we raced away from the castle, her arms wrapped around my chest.  I did  my best to ignore her.

My mind churned as I picked up speed.  My logic made sense, yet … what if I was wrong?  It wasn’t as if the kidnappers had to go down the main road, even if it was the quickest route to the border.  Hell, Cuthbert wasn’t the only suspect.  I couldn’t see any of his subordinates kidnapping the princess without his approval, which wouldn’t come, but what about the southern warlords?  They’d have to admit what they’d done eventually, once the marriage was duly solemnised, but by then it would be too late.  The princess would be theirs and everyone would pretend there’d never been anything wrong with it.

Sweat prickled down my back as we galloped onwards.  I’d studied the map carefully.  If we picked the right crossroads, we should find ourselves ahead of the kidnappers … I tried not to think about the dangers of someone else taking the princess.  What if it had been a serf faction?  They had motive to hate the royals too, without any compelling reason to keep the princess alive.  I’d heard horrifying tales of what happened to aristocrats who fell into commoner hands.  The viciousness was appalling.  And who could really blame them, when the aristocrats were so relentlessly savage to their serfs?  They didn’t even see the serfs as human.

We reached the crossroads and swung around, cantering south.  My heart started to race as I mentally checked the timing, again and again.  There was just no way to be sure … we could have missed them, or gone the wrong way, or simply set off on a wild goose chase.  What if … I wondered, suddenly, if we were being lured into a trap.  The princess’s life didn’t mean that much to the warlords.  They might just feel it was time to partition the kingdom between them and to hell with the legitimate royal family.  Alexander the Great’s successors had done pretty much the same thing.

I heard a shout ahead and raised my head.  A handful of horsemen were galloping towards us.  I snapped orders, sending the cavalry ahead while the skirmishers hastily dismounted and formed a line.  The enemy troops – they had to be hostile, now the remainder of the aristocracy were cowering inside their castles – didn’t slow down.  I gritted my teeth as they crashed through the cavalry, punching through the gaps in their formation rather than trying to stand and fight.  They didn’t have much of a choice – the terrain on each side of the road wasn’t good for horses – but it was still alarming.  There was a very real chance we’d kill the princess, completely by accident.  I was entirely sure everyone would assume it had been deliberate. 

“Target the horses,” I ordered.  I’d already told the skirmishers what to do, but I wanted to be sure they understood.  “Fire!”

The muskets barked as one.  The enemy line shivered and came apart, turning into a ragged mass as a number of horses hit the ground hard.  The remainder kept coming.  I reached for my pistol, all too aware I was running out of bullets, as the muskets fired a second volley.  The enemy broke, trying to scatter in all directions.  I saw a figure slung over a horse, hands tied behind her back.  I swore under my breath.  The chief kidnapper was going to get away.  I was a good shot, with the best weapon in the world, and yet I was unsure I could shoot out the horse’s legs or put a bullet through the beast’s head.  That only worked in bad movies and worse TV shows.

Fallon waved her hand.  I saw light splash around the horse’s feet, an instant before it shuddered to a halt.  The rider flew out of the saddle and crashed into the ground.  I didn’t need to check to know he was dead.  His neck had clearly been snapped by the impact.

I dismounted and hurried over to the horse.  The beast was quivering, struggling against an invisible force.  I felt another shiver of disquiet as I pulled at the ropes, undoing the bonds tying the princess to the saddle.  They hadn’t cared about her comfort – she would have cramps soon, if she didn’t already – but they might have saved her life.  The ropes had kept her from being thrown off the horse too.

The princess stared at us.  Someone had stuffed a gag in her mouth, as well as everything else.  I did my best to look reassuring as I cut her hands free, the best sign we could give that we were friendly, then helped her remove the gag.  The bastards had nearly choked her.  I looked at the dead men, wishing I could kill them again.  They hadn’t had to treat her so roughly.

She coughed.  Fallon offered her a canteen of water.  I studied the princess with interest as she sipped the water, then started to massage her limbs.  I’d expected, I was discomforted to realise, something akin to a Disney Princess, but Princess Helen was clearly out of her teenage years.  I mentally tagged her as being in her late twenties or early thirties, with light chocolate brown skin, dark hair and a figure that was more solid than willowy.  She looked tough, I thought.  Her arms were strikingly muscular. I had the feeling she would have made a good soldier, if she’d been born in a better society.  Warlord Cuthbert – or whoever had ordered the kidnapping – might have made a dreadful mistake.

“My thanks,” she said, finally.  Her voice was stronger than I’d expected.  “And who are you?”

I hesitated, unsure how to answer.  “We’re from Damansara,” I said.  It wasn’t as if she’d recognise any of us.  The monarchy seemed to prefer to pretend the cities didn’t exist.  “We heard you’d been kidnapped and came to rescue you.”

The princess looked surprised, although she hid it well.  I guessed she’d been caught by surprise by the sheer speed of our advance too.  Her kidnapper had probably assumed we’d be too busy fighting Warlord Aldred to do anything about him.  And that Aldred would be in no state to protest either. 

“You won the war?”  Princess Helen sounded unconcerned, as if the matter was of no import to her, but I could tell it was an act.  She was clearly far more intelligent than she wanted to let on.  Being her father’s only child meant she couldn’t afford to pretend politic s were something that happened to other people.  “What happened?”

I grinned as I motioned for one of the cavalry to loan the princess his horse.   “It was very simple,” I said.  We’d tell her the full story later, once we returned to the castle.  “We came, we saw, we conquered.”

Chapter Thirty

Five days after the battle, we returned to Damansara.

The city greeted us with a massive party.  They’d known we’d beaten the warlord before, in a handful of skirmishes, but now the threat from one warlord, at least, was gone for good.  The warlord was dead, the remainder of his family put into permanent protective custody; there were other warlords, of course, but they were no longer feared.  My men were the heroes of the hour, telling tall tales about how they’d single-handedly won the war when they weren’t dancing in the streets.  The old stigma of being a soldier was gone.  It was suddenly fashionable to be in the army, or to date a military man; my troops had no trouble, no trouble at all, finding willing partners.  I had the feeling things were definitely going to change for the better.

It was strange, a day after we returned, to attend Harbin’s funeral.  I stood in the crowd and watched as aristocrat after aristocrat paid tribute to Harbin as a great war leader and the hero who practically won the war on his own.  It was hard to resist the temptation to stand up and point out that Harbin had been a coward and a rapist who’d only led a charge because his own people would have turned on him if he hadn’t, but I forced myself to keep my mouth shut.  Harbin was dead.  I’d shot him in the back of the head myself.  And I’d gotten away with it.  There didn’t even seem to be a hint of suspicion there was anything even slightly untoward about his death.

My eyes sought out Gayle, on the far side of the ceremony.  Her face was a blank mask.  Harbin had tried to rape her, only to have the whole affair swept under the carpet by heavy bribes and heavier political pressure.  I wondered what she was thinking.  Did she think Harbin had died well?  Or did she think he hadn’t died soon enough?  He would have cost her everything, from her reputation to her chance of making a good match, if he’d managed to actually go all the way.  If I’d been in her shoes, I would have been plotting Harbin’s death well before some kindly soul put a bullet in him.

I frowned inwardly as I noticed Princess Helen standing next to Fallon, who’d been appointed as her semi-official guide and bodyguard.  The princess had spent the last few days asking hundreds of questions, listening to the answers and then asking more questions.  I’d met police and military interrogators who were less capable of spotting evasions and half-truths and pushing through them to get to the truth.  Rupert had admitted, privately, that he found the princess rather intimidating.  It didn’t really help that she occupied a vague spot between being a women, and thus socially inferior, and being a royal princess who was the only realistic heir to the throne.  I’d looked up the genealogy.  It made very little sense to me, but – as far as I could tell – Helen was the only clear heir.  Everyone else … if she died, or was put aside, there was going to be a major struggle for power.  The warlords would take sides and the uneasy truce would be shattered beyond repair.

Right now, too many warlords are stunned by what we’ve done, I thought.  But that will change soon enough.

The funeral continued, until it ended with a parade through the streets.  I kept my face under tight control as I mentally listed all the things I needed to do, now Rupert and I had enough power and clout to get things done.  Better sanitation, better water supplies … I hoped I could raise newer regiments, armed with better weapons in a bid to stay ahead of the warlords.  We didn’t have any hope of keeping them from using gunpowder weapons themselves, let alone magic.  The secret had gotten loose well before my arrival.  I’d just made it worse by proving gunpowder weapons weren’t just a fad.  The genie could no longer be put back in the bottle.

I breathed a sigh of relief as Harbin’s corpse was cremated, then turned to walk back through the streets.  The party would go on and on, as if the war was the end of war itself, but I couldn’t afford to believe that it really was the end.  We’d beaten one warlord; the others would unite against us soon enough, once they had newer weapons of their own.  Boris and his peers would have to help me send agents into their lands, armed with the secret of gunpowder and the simple truth the warlords could be beaten.  We’d already started to recruit new soldiers from the liberated serfs.  Some of them, I was sure, could be sent into enemy lands to undermine their rulers before they started to pose a threat to us.

A servant met me as I returned to city hall.  “My Lord, your presence is requested in the meeting room.”

I nodded – I’d been forced to endure a number of meetings with the city fathers over the last two days, all of which had veered between insane optimism and deep despondency.  They seemed unsure if they wanted to keep the captured lands, some seeing it as a chance to expand their own holdings at the warlord’s expense and others seeming convinced it would be needlessly provocative.  I wasn’t surprised to note that none of them gave a damn about the serfs who worked the land.  Given time, that would change.  They’d have to realise the serfs were armed now, armed and dangerous.  Trying to put them back into chains would merely plunge the city’s military into a nightmarish quagmire.

My heart twisted as I followed the servant up the stairs and into the meeting room.  It was heavily warded, as secure as magic could make it.  I wasn’t sure if the wards would keep out something as mundane as a tape recorder, let alone a smartphone, but it would be a long time before the locals had to worry about anything along those lines.  I blinked in surprise as I saw Fallon, standing guard outside the door.  She wouldn’t have done that for just anyone.

She smiled at me, charmingly.  “Her Highness is waiting for you.”

I nodded.  “Thank you.”

Princess Helen was seated in a chair, I noted as I entered the room.  She stood and looked me up and down, then nodded to a slightly smaller chair.  I sat, resting my hands on my lap as I studied her thoughtfully.  The princess would never be taken for pretty, but she had a very definite presence.  Her eyes flickered towards the far corner.  Gayle sat there, her back to us.  I guessed she was a chaperone.  The princess’s reputation would suffer if she was alone with a man.

Which makes it harder for her to have any private discussions with anyone, I thought, sourly.  They’re deliberately trying to hamper their future queen.

The princess looked me in the eye.  “Where do you come from?”

I blinked at the question, then shrugged and trotted out the story I’d given Rupert only a few short months ago.  A traveller from a far-distant land who’d become a mercenary, then a guardsmen, then finally entered Rupert’s service … it wasn’t entirely untruthful, although I’d made sure to leave out all the interesting details.  The princess didn’t seem impressed.  She probably heard so much bullshit in her life that she was pretty good at detecting when someone was trying to mislead her.  I wasn’t lying that badly, but I was fairly sure she wouldn’t see it that way.

She smiled, humourlessly.  “And the truth?”

I found myself answering the question before my mind quite realised what I was doing.  I told her about Earth, I told her about how I’d arrived in Johor, I told her about Jasmine and the Diddakoi and how I’d eventually found myself working as a guardsman before entering Rupert’s service.  The words just spilled from my mouth … I realised, too late, she’d used magic.  A wave of anger shot through me, followed by fear.  The protections I’d purchased from Carver and his ilk hadn’t kept her from enchanting me.  If I got out of the meeting alive, I resolved, they were going to regret it.

It was hard to focus enough to pick my words properly.  “You put a spell on me!”

The princess held up her hands.  “Technically, I wove the spell into my words, but the effect is much the same,” she said.  She sounded oddly relieved.  “Gayle and I had a long chat about you.”

Her voice hardened suddenly.  “They’re going to kill you.”

I blinked, one hand dropping to my pistol.  “Who?”

“Lord Galley is leading the charge, but there’s a bunch of others.”  Gayle turned to face us, her voice grim.  “Some of them think you’re a rogue element, a mercenary who cannot be wholly trusted.  Others think they don’t need you anymore.  And others … they think you have an unhealthy influence over Rupert.  Father is particularly concerned about your relationship with him.”

Her lips twisted in distaste.  “The rumours have been spreading for weeks,” she added, after a moment.  “You don’t so much have his ear as you have your hand on another part of his anatomy.”

I shook my head in disbelief.  They thought Rupert and I were lovers?  The local attitude to homosexuality had always struck me as odd – being a top was fine, being a bottom was not – but I didn’t swing that way and, as far as I knew, nor did Rupert.  There was no way to be entirely sure, of course.   I hadn’t seen him spend much time in the brothels, but that proved nothing.  He was rich and well-connected enough that he could probably get anything he wanted, just for the asking.  He wouldn’t have any trouble finding someone who was discreet …

“It doesn’t matter what they believe,” Princess Helen said, briskly.  “All that matters is that they intend to get rid of you.”

“Ungrateful bastards,” I muttered, heedless of who might be listening.  My mind started to race as I considered what to do.  Could I round up my troops and launch a coup?  I doubted it.  The units that might be loyal to me personally were garrisoning the occupied lands … there was no way I could get them back in time before the hammer fell.  “What do they think I want to do?”

I shoved the question aside as I forced myself to think.  I’d kept my salary in my office … I could go back, get my hands on it, then grab a horse and run.  I knew a lot more about the lay of the land now.  I could try to head west, to see if I could find the other cross-dimensional traveller, or simply see if I could make a name for myself in another city.  They’d know what I’d done for this city.  They might take me on, now I’d proven myself.  It would be a great deal easier if I didn’t have to explain every little detail to minds that had been ossified by disuse.

A thought struck me.  “Does Rupert know?”

“As far as I know, no,” Gayle said.  “There aren’t many people who know.”

I looked at her, sharply.  “How do you know?”

Gayle met my eyes, an unusually forward gesture for a young aristocratic woman.  “I have ears,” she said.  “And so do some of my friends.”

“It’s astonishing what people will say in front of you, if they think you’re just a young woman with nothing between her ears,” Princess Helen said.  Her voice was cold, but there was a hint of anger that shook me.  The princess was hardly a teenager, yet there were still people who treated her as a child?  “It is sometimes useful not to be taken seriously.”

I nodded, slowly.  Gayle and her friends might come from rival houses, but … it struck me, suddenly, that young women would have every interest in pooling information.  They had so little power of their own that they needed information to make the best use of what they had, to gain some influence before it was too late.  Their families might be rivals – Rupert and Harbin really had been rivals – but they still needed to work together.  I felt a pang of pity.  It wasn’t fair.  Gayle and her peers could have been so much more.

“Thank you for the warning,” I said, finally.  I briefly considered going straight to Rupert, but … it would be pointless.  It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to choose between his family and me.  I thought he liked me – and I’d done my best to become a father or older brother figure to him – but he wouldn’t put his family ahead of me.  “I …”

“Come with me,” the princess said.  “Let me hire you.”

I stared.  “You want me to come with you?”

Princess Helen let out a sigh.  “My father is a good man, but he is weak.  He doesn’t have the military force to bring the warlords to heel.  His forces simply cannot stand up to them in open combat, which means that – as long as the warlords work together – they can humiliate him any time they like. When I take the throne, it won’t get any better.  They’ll keep blocking prospective husbands, which means I won’t have a heir of my own.  That needs to change and, thanks to your victory here, I might have time to actually make things change.”

“And you think I can do that for you,” I said.  I wasn’t blind to the simple fact she had interests of her own, but … they meshed with mine.  For the moment.  It was difficult not to believe her warning about the city fathers, not when Gayle backed her up.  I knew them well enough to believe they’d try to put a knife in me, as soon as I outlived my usefulness.  “Do you think they’ll let me go?”

“I’m planning to depart tomorrow, before they start pushing for me to leave,” Princess Helen said.  “You’ll join me in my carriage.  I’ll tell them, once we’re on the way, that you have agreed to enter my service.  Your former master will be compensated and the remainder of the city will breathe a sigh of relief.  As far as they’ll know, you don’t have the slightest suspicion they’re going to kill you.  They won’t think of you returning to extract revenge at some later date.”

“And if you want to,” Gayle added, “please remember that I helped you escape before it was too late.”

I looked at her, thoughtfully.  “If you don’t mind me asking, how do you two know each other?”

“We exchange letters regularly,” Princess Helen said.  She winked at me.  “We don’t talk about anything secret or sensitive, not as far as any of the menfolk can tell.  But we can develop relationships that come in handy from time to time.”

I frowned.  I had a feeling that wasn’t the whole story.  I also thought I wouldn’t never know the rest of it.  But it didn’t matter.

“I want to invite a few people along, later,” I said.  “Is that possible?”

“Fallon has already agreed to join my service,” Princess Helen said.  “The others … you might have to recruit them later, once you’re safely away from the city.”

I nodded, thinking hard.  The princess was telling the truth.  Probably.  I knew Gayle well enough to understand she’d have some interest in repaying the debt she owed me, even if it meant risking a clash with her father or brother.  And … the city fathers really were a bunch of ungrateful bastards.  I had no trouble at all believing they’d turn on me the moment they thought they didn’t need me any longer.  Telling lies about my relationship with Rupert would probably make it harder for him to object, later.  Bastards.

My mind churned.  I didn’t have to go with her.  There were other options.  I had enough money to go almost anywhere I wanted, from Zangaria to Heart’s Eye.  I could make a new life for myself there.  And yet … she wasn’t fool enough to use me, praise  me and discard me.  Probably.  She’d need me – or someone like me – for the rest of her life.  It wouldn’t be easy to take the throne, let alone rule effectively.  She was right.  She did need an army of her own.

“Very well.”  I stood and bowed.  “It will be my honour to enter your service.”

“And it will be mine to accept you,” Princess Helen said.  “Together, we will change the world.”

End of Book One