No Money

Of course, material things draw loyalty out of a person too.

Pai thought of her master. Every orphan’s life runs more or less the same course, in want and in misery. How could anyone not follow the person who hauled them up out of a gutter like that, put food in front of them, gave them a place to sleep? For that alone her master was her world and her everything. That held until she was old enough to think for herself.

The soldiers, though, were all adults, not blindly devoted four-year-old orphans. They knew, roughly at least, how the world turned. Could a single one of them have served a man as incompetent and greedy as Count Luigi Husslix, the sort who had never known his place, and honestly respected him?

He should have just hired mercenaries.

Had he paid out a lump sum for a mercenary company, the tide of the fight would have been running more in his favor than it was. But Luigi Husslix, of all people, had his pride. Having propped himself up on a just cause of sorts, he would not have wanted to borrow mercenary strength to drive his young nephew out.

With Keith it was another matter. His claim to legitimacy was flimsy, and he had no need to stand on appearances. He offered practical gain instead, so it hardly mattered whether his lover went to a mage with her hand out.

“…Who?”

Keith asked it with a wary air, and the boy with the bobbed hair answered with a sullen face.

“Hamel.”

The moment the name was out of his mouth, a cluster of white light gathered at his fingertips. It had started no bigger than a bead; in an instant it swelled, and a fierce wind came up with it.

— Thud!

“Yeek!”

A long, octagonal plaster pedestal went over with a great clatter.

“A— a maaage!”

One of the soldiers cried out, terror in his voice. To them, at any rate, a mage seemed more frightening than a knight who used aura, and they were not wrong about it. Keith had gone easy on them. Hamel had no reason to.

— Tss-tss-tss-tsssss…

A strange, unpleasant noise rang in their ears. Pai caught hold of the boy’s sleeve in a hurry.

“You mustn’t kill him!”

“What?”

“I said don’t kill him.”

“You should have said so in advance.”

“That’s why I’m saying it now, isn’t it?”

Hamel grumbled a moment, then recited a spell.

— Bang! Ka-ba-boom! Ka-boom!

With a din like bombs going off, the milk-white marble tiles cracked apart and the columns shuddered. The violet wind rose fiercer still, and the grit it swept in ground nastily between the teeth.

“Aaaaah!”

“How’s anyone supposed to beat a mage!”

A moment before, the soldiers had been glued to the floor and groaning; now they scattered in blind panic and fled like chickens with their heads cut off.

“Whoaaa…!”

Ardine’s eyes went round, violet and glittering as though stars had been set into them.

“Hamel, you’re super strong!”

“Khuk, kak! Kaff!”

But the life of a villain is a stubborn thing. Luigi, looking ten years older than he had, braced himself against the wall and dragged himself trembling to his feet. He knew this was the last of it. If he backed down now, there was nothing ahead but a sheer drop. Coughing blood, he closed his hand around the fallen sword.

— Tss-tss-tss-tsssss…

The moment that unpleasant sound started up again, though, the space around Luigi’s elbow crumpled.

“Kh— nngh?!”

Space bending in on itself made a strange sight, and there was no putting the shape of it properly into words. Ardine pulled her brows tight together and concentrated hard, so as not to miss the least part of the bizarre spectacle.

“Kh— aaaaargh!”

Along with a scream soaked in pain, something dropped onto the marble floor.

— Thunk.

Luigi’s forearm lay there on the floor by itself, like a hunk of fish with the head lopped off. Pai hurriedly covered Ardine’s eyes, and Enri gagged, ‘Bleurgh,’ pretending to throw up.

“Haaaargh! Y— you wretch…!”

“I didn’t kill him.”

Hamel shrugged.

“…”

Keith did not put his sword away. Where the storm had passed, silence lay over everything but one man’s pain-filled wailing. Step by step he closed on Luigi, then leveled the point at him.

“I will give you one last chance, Uncle.”

A grating sound of back teeth grinding. But he made no move to attack, and nothing in his bearing threatened one.

Luigi, gone white with blood loss, limped out into the cloister with Jenkins holding him up. Blood that had soaked the velvet black left a long red tail across the white marble.

“Are you just going to let him go?”

Pai came up to stand at Keith’s side as she asked it. Her tone was as familiar as ever, as though the several days apart had never happened. Only then did Keith slide his sword back into its scabbard.

“I have sent knights I can trust to the castle. He will have to pay for his crimes.”

“You haven’t a drop of blood or a tear in you.”

“…Is that a compliment?”

“Of course.”

Pai smiled faintly and dipped her knees in a light curtsy.

“I’m back, Your Grace.”

With the chaotic investiture over, they returned to the White Castle.

No fierce battle had broken out, and still Keith was worn out like a rain-soaked leaf. For days before the investiture the strain on his mind had been at its peak, and he had felt like a musician made to play on broken strings. His nerve-strings came back to their proper pitch only once the ceremony was over.

And then the aftereffects came down on him like a landslide. He barely managed to wash before he went down into bed as though collapsing. The curtains he never got to at all, and the light through the window poured over his face, but it was no match for sleep.

When he woke, the sun had already gone over the ridge. He did not realize he was hungry until his stomach growled and heaved.

“As though I were a beast.”

Sleep when sleepy, eat when hungry. He tugged the bell-pull to have supper made ready and got himself in order to go down to the dining room. What he had not foreseen was that it would be an hour when everyone else was hungry too.

Pai and Ardine, Enri, and even that mage he had seen at the temple sat dipping bread into steaming soup. At the clean, warm smell of it, saliva rose fast in Keith’s mouth.

“Oh! Captain!”

“Yes.”

“I figured we’d starve to death waiting for you to wake up, so we started eating first. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

Keith sat down fast enough to look urgent about it and fell on the food. He soaked bread in the vegetable soup and bit into it, and only then did he feel he might live.

“There’s something I’d like to say to you.”

Pai had waited until he caught his breath a little. The meat, the main course, was just coming out. They had ridden back from the temple in separate carriages, so this felt like the first proper exchange of words in days. At a light jerk of Keith’s chin, she went on.

“What if the White Castle hired a retained mage as well?”

“…”

“And there happens to be a suitable candidate, too.”

“And this suitable candidate is…”

Keith slid his eyes over for a stolen glance at Hamel. A boy who looked fourteen at the most was tearing greasy chicken apart with his bare hands and cramming it into his mouth. He knew perfectly well that the odds were good this was not the boy’s true form, and still, as he watched him bolt the meat down, an uncalled-for pity stirred in him.

“Hamel…!”

Pai called to the boy, who was gnawing at a chicken leg with no thought for anything else. Only then did Hamel lift his head, which had been all but touching the plate.

“Hunh?”

“The contract. The contract.”

“Right.”

The boy scrubbed his greasy mouth with a napkin and spoke.

“I shall graciously grant you your chance.”

“…”

“Hire me, Paragon.”

“…”

The offer came out of nowhere. He had seen it only briefly, but the mage’s skill was formidable, and having a mage like that at the White Castle would be a comfort.

There was one practical problem, though. Going through the backlog of documents in the days before the investiture, Keith had learned that the domain was not as wealthy as he had supposed. Not that it was in any danger of failing to keep itself; only that Elrod had never made aggressive use of the aurorastone mines or the snow wolves, either of which could have brought in serious money. In the barren North, the mines and the wolves were the one vein of gold that turned into coin.

Weighed against the stable running of a domain, Elrod Paragon’s direction had been the right one. Keith agreed with it a hundred times over, but because of it there was no margin anywhere for hiring an outstanding mage. The regret came trailing after the agreement and left his mouth bitter.

As the master of a domain, he made an effort to set the regret aside and state only the facts as they stood.

“The White Castle has no money to afford a mage.”