Sword of the Bright Lady (20 page)

He stood on the doorstep to Flayn's shop, feeling the weight of the bag of coins in his hands. The church clerk had raised an eyebrow when Christopher had asked for so much money, apparently presuming no single purchase of such magnitude could be wise. Privately, Christopher agreed with him, but he could see no other choice.

Svengusta's words of advice from the duel came back to him. There was no room for indecision anymore; he had chosen this path, and now he had to act to a single purpose.

He strode inside, nodded politely to Fae, and dropped the bag onto the counter with a heavy jingle.

Fae's cheek twitched, her only visible sign of emotion. “Master Flayn,” she called out in a pleasant, controlled voice, “we have a customer that must speak to you.”

They stood there for a few minutes, waiting for the wizard. Christopher marveled at the woman's strength of reserve.

Flayn stepped out from behind the curtain warily, like a man in a strange building, even though it was his own shop. He looked at Christopher, at the money on the counter.

“What do you think you can buy here, Pater?” he said coldly.

Fae answered for him. “Your apprentice.”

Flayn had been cold; now he was steaming with fury. Not a muscle moved in his face, though.

“Does my apprentice wish to be bought?” he said, his voice carved out in daggers of ice.

Visibly trembling, Fae stepped forward, stared the wizard in the face. Suddenly she slapped him, a ringing blow with every ounce of strength she had.

Flayn's eyes tightened, and though he did not react in any other way, Christopher was suddenly worried that the wizard was about to blast the girl into the middle of next week.

He cleared his throat, casually hitched his thumb on his sword sash.

“Will you answer for the actions of your apprentice?” Flayn demanded without looking away, his voice flat, ugly, and crawling with menace.

“She's not my apprentice,” Christopher said. “She's my employee. But yes, I'll discipline her, if you can look me in the eye and tell me you didn't deserve that.”

Flayn turned to face him slowly, like a mobile statue. His eyes raked up and down Christopher with contempt.

“Do you think your sword protects you, fool?” he hissed, a snake threatening to strike.

“No,” Christopher said, as mildly as he could under the circumstances. “I think that big honking church over there protects me. If you wish to bring suit against the girl, then you can. But she'll get up in open court and explain why she thought you deserved it. If you don't like the sound of that, then let's just call it even, and forget about it.”

“Get out,” Flayn ordered. It seemed an unlikely way to run a business; the more gold Christopher brought in, the quicker he was thrown out.

“I'll collect my things,” Fae said. She had aimed for light and breezy. It came out more like a sobbing wheeze as she darted behind the curtain.

The two men stood there, one relentlessly glaring, one gratingly uncomfortable.

“This doesn't have to be so difficult,” Christopher said resignedly. “I've no hard feelings toward you, Master Wizard.”

“You'll pay for this,” Flayn whispered, as if making a promise to himself.

Christopher confined himself to looking pointedly at the wall and said nothing.

Fae came down, carrying a large burlap bag, and edged around the immobile wizard, clutching her cloak about her tightly. Christopher opened the door for her, and silently they escaped into the street.

“That was stupid,” he said, taking the bag from her.

“I know,” Fae confessed. “It was poorly done. I let my emotions get the better of me. Yet more proof that I am not fit for the arcane arts, he would say.” She wilted, but then anger inflamed a rally. “But you were not the one who stood to his groping every night! No,” she sighed, seeing his look, “he did not force me. In the beginning I was not unwilling. But then I discovered that it was always about him, and never about me. And then I realized that everything is about him, and never about me. Now I have nowhere to turn, nowhere to live, nothing but your charity. Don't you see, I had to slap him. Or I would turn tail and run back to him and his false promises, even now.” She was trying not to weep.

“You're coming to live with me for a while,” he answered. “I don't dare leave you in town with Flayn steaming like that. Let him cool down a bit. Once our operations are in full swing, you can come back to town if you want. No,” he sighed, seeing her look in return, “do not worry. I have no interest in groping you. You are very pretty, Fae, but I have a wife. She's not here,” he explained when Fae looked at him dubiously. “But someday I am going to go back to her and look her in the face and tell her that I missed her every single moment of every single day. And night.”

They walked back to the church stables, where Fingean and Tom were waiting with the wagon.

Tom said from under a raised eyebrow, “That was a nice purchase, Pater. I'm glad you made us wait for it.”

Christopher was going to defend her, but Fae gave the man such a haughty glare that he burst out laughing instead. Tom waved imaginary flames off of his beard, and even Fingean cracked a smile.

Helga was not as impressed with the addition as Tom was, eyeing Fae with barely concealed disdain. It didn't help that Fae was still wearing her shop clothing, tailored to be suggestive to the point of provocation. Christopher escaped outside to help unload the bricks.

“We have it in hand, my lord,” Tom said.

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“You're ranked, and I work for you.”

“I think I prefer Pater . . . or even just Christopher.”

Tom's eyebrows shot up, and he pretended to eye Christopher appraisingly. “Not that you're not well favored, Pater, but . . .”

Obviously Christopher was asking for a level of informality that bordered on the intimate. Being able to speak the language masked the fact that he was in a different world, and he kept forgetting the little things. “Okay, Tom, you don't have to make fun of me every time I say something stupid.”

“Believe me, Pater, I don't.”

“You should have been a mummer,” he told Tom with a laugh.

“The only job less respectable than a starving peasant.” Tom shook his head sadly. “And it requires travel. I'd never see my girl then.”

Christopher could relate to that sentiment.

He didn't want to face Helga yet, so he invited both men into the tavern for a pint and was not surprised to find Svengusta already hard at work on one.

“Our intrepid adventurers return from town, and this time without the Vicar in tow. I trust you've been up to no mischief, then?”

“I guess we better not tell him about the shop-girl we brought home,” Christopher said to Tom.

“Good gods,” Svengusta moaned, “don't we have enough people underfoot?”

“Don't complain just yet,” Tom said. “She's easy on the eyes. Wait till she talks to you. Then you can complain.”

“Oh no,” Svengusta said with trepidation. “Tell me you didn't bring home Flayn's apprentice. Must you make enemies faster than we can bury them?”

Just to annoy him, Christopher asked, “Flayn looked hot enough to call me out.”

“Ahhh,” Svengusta moaned. “If you get into another duel, Faren will hang you by your ballocks until you stop squeaking.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Christopher laughed. “Now if Tom's done with his beer, we can go home and douse the cats. That's how you stop a cat-fight, right?”

“Or we could just sell tickets,” Tom suggested.

But dinner surprised them all. Helga was chatting with Fae like an old friend, and the apprentice was for all appearances grateful for her company. Christopher realized he could hope to master magic and inter-dimensional travel, but some mysteries would always be beyond his reach.

It was becoming a bit of a struggle to fit all of these people into the small living area of the chapel. Fae and Helga would have to share a bed now. Christopher felt comforted despite the close quarters. The Invisible Guild would need grease to slip past all these people.

Fae had not come without gifts: a sheaf of paper, a pouch of sulfur, and skills he had not imagined. And magic.

Uncertain of the exact formula, Christopher decided to make a dozen batches of different ratios. Fae produced a balance scale, mortar, and pestle from her bag and accomplished the task while he was still explaining it. Then she looked at him expectantly. He had to ask her what she was waiting for.

“Aren't you going to tell me the properties of each mixture?”

“I don't know the properties. Hopefully, one of them explodes.”

“How can you not know? They are your formulas.”

“This isn't my . . . specialty. We have to do some experiments.”

She sat back, like a cat arching. Christopher imagined he could see the fur standing up.

“I can't keep asking you to explain things, Fae. Just tell me.”

“Experiments are not normally a part of arcane study. A single misplaced syllable can destroy an entire city.”

It seemed unlikely that wizards wielded that much power but still mucked about in book shops under the rule of priests. His doubt must have shown, because Fae amended her statement.

“Admittedly, not first-rank magic. Still, we may be in danger.”

“This isn't arcane study.”

“So it is divine magic. Am I to be a priest, then?”

“No,” he said, “it's not divine magic. It's not any kind of magic at all. We'll be safe if we take some precautions.”

“But you have taken no caution. I see no wards, you have said no prayers, and as far as I can tell the icon of the god has no power.”

“Okay. You can stop telling me now.” Fae in explanatory mode was just as mystifying as she was in silent mode. “Look, we just made small batches. So if it explodes, it will be a small explosion. And the stuff's still wet.”

“The next step is to dry it?”

“Yes, but without exposing it to fire, since it will eventually . . .”

Fae, not waiting for him to finish, passed her hand over the mixtures while muttering something in a language he almost recognized. When she was done the mixtures had changed color, losing their rich blackness and turning grayer, dry as dust.

“How did you do that?”

“The same way I made your sulfur. I separated out the impurities—in this case, water.”

He gaped at the buckets of white crystal he had spent so much effort purifying. But Fae shook her head.

“I am only the first Novice rank. A pound a day is my limit.”

“But we'll need barrels of the stuff.” Apparently the nascent study of chemical engineering would survive its first contact with magic.

Fae's thin lips closed in disapproval. “Even a great wizard would balk at barrels, and why not? A pinch to trigger the spell is all that is normally required.”

“We're not doing magic. And we're going to need barrels of paper, too.”

“What will you do with it all?”

“Burn it,” he said with a grin and was rewarded with a look of proper horror.

Now came the moment of his own trepidation, however. He had launched down this path with no guarantee of success. Even if he had done every step correctly, it was within the realm of raw possibility that he was wasting his time. Perhaps the rules were different here. He could not conceive of any set of physical laws that preserved the chemistry of the human body and yet banned a simple combustion reaction between oxygen and carbon. But so far his inability to conceive of impossibilities had not proven to be a hindrance.

He made firecrackers out of her fine white paper and his gray powder, and touched them off with a burning twig. Three refused to ignite, two spit sparks, one shot across the room like a rocket, but the sixth one went off with a bang that made Fae jump and fixed a lopsided smirk on his face that threatened to become permanent.