Instead of heading for the stables, Lord Troubles took an abrupt turn into the manicured gardens. "Let me see your sling, boy," he said.
Dalliance removed the folded sling from his pocket. It was simple: a leather cup, leather straps, a leather loop, and the leather tab that he would release at the right time.
"Do you have bullets for it?" the Lord asked.
Dalliance shook his head. "No, milord. I’ve always just used gravel."
The Lord's grounds were paved with pea gravel. Pea gravel isn’t really the right size for a sling, but Dalliance nudged around in the ornamental rock work until he found a piece that looked about a usable size, a little larger than a quail's egg.
"The problem," he said, narrating what he was doing out of sheer nerves, "is that no matter what I do with it, after I am done with my slinging, a rock is just a rock. There wasn't any way to leverage the system to make it more dangerous, not like a spear. And even with bows, you can get a bigger, stronger bow if you’re blessed with strength." He shrugged. "Never tried it on a hunt, but for varmints and birds and things, it’s pretty good now that I’ve practiced."
A manservant stepped forward and respectfully gestured for Lord Troubles to stand behind a garden shed. "For safety's sake, sire," he said.
Lord Troubles benevolently allowed himself to be led behind the garden shed and out of the line of fire. Spitting on the rock for luck, Dalliance engaged [Prediction]. This was, of course, the best way to use a sling: with foreknowledge of where it was going to land. The trouble was, there was hardly anything he felt confident shooting at in the Lord's garden. Each piece of statuary bore a holy symbol; it would be like firing off his sling in the temple.
"What about that young tree at the garden's end?" suggested Lord Troubles, clearly noting Dalliance’s hesitation. The tree in question was about the size of a fence post, a young apple tree by the looks of it.
Dalliance rotated his shoulders until he could be sure of hitting it, and released.
TWACK!
"See? It just hits like a rock," Dalliance said. "But . . . "
" . . . an exceedingly well-aimed rock," completed Lord Troubles. "Not a skill I ever expected to have showcased in this garden by one of my daughter's friends," he said thoughtfully.
"We are just friends," Dalliance said. He'd said it before; it seemed like a good idea to say it again.
"Of course," said Lord Troubles dismissively. "You are young."
"A good shot, young master," said the servant as the two emerged from behind the shed.
Lord Troubles didn’t comment, poking instead at an arching rose briar, moving the stem back off the pathway and tucking it behind another. "So what were you hoping for, inviting my daughter into your group?"
"It wasn’t on purpose," Dalliance said frankly. "I didn’t have any motive. I said something that maybe I shouldn’t have said, and Effluvia said it was a secret, and everyone was stressed about it. And Charity ended up taking care of it. And of course," he added, "there were the events at Sableton."
"Yes. Sir Worth's retainers," he commented, "rode by Sableton."
"What did happen?" asked Dalliance. He'd been a little preoccupied but was curious at the reminder.
"They’ve gone," said Lord Troubles reflectively. "It seems that a good number of imperial citizens have packed up and left. It is a ghost village now. In fact, it already was by the time the Matters boy was found. Presumably, they left upon discovering your escape."
Dalliance frowned. "Doesn’t the Empire have diviners to send for a matter of heterodoxy?"
"Officially," he said drolly, "the word is that there are six gods who are still alive, and only Firth is known to regularly accept offerings. What reason would the Empire have to dispatch its legions after rumors of cultists worshiping a 'dead' god? Or even if they acknowledged that Gnosis accepts offerings, he is one of the 'silent' gods."
"He harms no one. One could come to the conclusion that if no one worshipped him, it might destabilize the Pax Deorum—the peace between humankind and its gods. They didn’t bring us here for nothing. We are meant to worship. If we did not, we would be reneging on the obligations placed upon us by our ancestors' agreement, and they might rightfully complain. The Empire is not interested in experiencing the complaints of the gods. Or did you ever wonder why the Pontifex was an imperial position? The high priest checks the auspices and orates for Remembrance on behalf of the Four Crowns, such that the gods remain appeased. Acts of Gnosis are not good for business."
Dalliance had never heard it put quite that way before. He remembered what Mister Best had said, though: he really oughtn't be discussing this.
"Have I made you uncomfortable?" The solicitous nature of the question was belied by the smile on the aristocrat's face.
"Not at all," Dalliance lied.
“You’re hiding something,” the noble said, his tone still cordial. “Allow me to relieve your nerves. I have a suspicion as to the topic. When did you attain your second Tier?”
Dalliance was confused rather than scared. “Last week, sir.”
“Just so, just so,” Potency said, almost to himself.
Dalliance was unsure what the noble was getting at, but it was hardly a secret. Potency, meanwhile, was murmoring to himself as though he'd been given a great secret.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Perhaps,” said Potency, meditative. “Perhaps. Tell me, what class did you obtain?”
“[Aeromancer], sir.”
“And you expect me to believe,” Potency began, “that you went through all the rigors of the Hunt—risking life and limb—to single-mindedly pursue a stat which was of no use in fighting the creatures you were facing? The horned serpent, the crow, etcetera? You expect me to believe you did all of this while pouring your hard-earned experience into a stat that had never given you anything back, without knowing that you were on the path to unlocking a wizard class?”
Dalliance hadn’t thought about it that way.
“People don’t tend to obsessively pursue a single skill,” Potency continued, his voice like a lecturer’s. “Not due to a disinterest in the skill, merely that it doesn’t offer any immediate advantages. So, while a man may dream of being an actor, on the fields of battle he will nevertheless invest a point in Might in order to stay alive, reasoning that there will always be another opportunity to increase his Charm at a later date. He doesn't realize, as he goes, that the balance of one stat to another will change the trajectory of his development. Eventually, he tiers up, having attained only a portion of his will, and he is merely the merriest soldier rather than a [Bard], let’s say.
“No, we find that those willing to risk life and limb generally come in three camps: the foolish, the forewarned, and the blessed who have attained a Rare class or better, incentivizing them. For example, our [Bard], let us say, awakens as a [Singer]. You’ll note that in the main, Rare classes merely allow you access earlier to what could, through adequate effort, be gotten at a later time under a slightly different name. But let’s say our [Singer] has a skill, let’s call it [Persuasion], which leverages his Charm in a way that is useful to him on a daily basis. It quickly grows indispensable to him. It is truly a sad fact about humanity that any relative advantage over our fellows quickly grows to feel indispensable. And so, our [Singer] will stack Charm, not because he knows how to unlock [Bard], but because he can’t imagine his life without his special gift, and he wants that special gift to be as potent as it can be.
“And so, we are left wondering: what special gift, or else what special class, were you, Dalliance, to so obsessively follow a path of greatest resistance and attain your [Aeromancer] class?”
Dalliance was trapped. There was no way around it. The reasoning was sound. He had never guessed that merely having the class would be a tell.
“That,” he said slowly, “is why you don’t tell people how to become [Wizards].”
“Obviously,” Potency said. “But it’s a bit more than that. You see, if you attain your Tier and choose to be a [Halberdier], I can put a halberd in your hand, and you will be useful that very day. For a mage, you must be taught, you must master a spell, and for every spell, there’s a grumpy old wizard in a tower who invented it and doesn’t want to give it away freely. Or there’s a grimoire manufacturer trying to corner the market on that spell, buying up all the copies and inflating the price. Or possibly, you conclude it’s simply not a very nice spell because it’s widely available, and act the precious brat about it. Don’t take that personally; I have simply worked with a lot of mages.
“In the end, there’s an expenditure required to wring value out of a mage, and that expenditure is simply higher. And for what? Let me go back to our [Halberdier]. I have placed a halberd in his hand; he goes out and kills a troll, and now there’s you. I have placed a spellbook in your hand. You go out there, you cast [Gust], and you blow some dust around. Not only is it more expensive to do any magic, but it requires training, preparation, and the expenditure of Mana, which could be better used by our Archmages, to train you to cast any spell worth having on the battlefield. That is the other reason we do not tell people how to become mages. Because a mage without a sponsor is useless. A ship built in the desert.”
Dalliance's heart hammered in his ears. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to react here.
He studied Dalliance for a moment. “Now, that is very interesting,” he said. “I tell you that you must have a sponsor, and you remain confident. In truth, that is what I was getting at all along. I suspected you must have one already, and when forming a relationship with a student, one naturally allows his teacher’s thoughts to . . . weigh in. Were I your sponsor, there would have been many with that concern about you, that you would become a vector for my pernicious influence upon the scions of the faithful. I myself worry at an unknown master and his influence upon my daughter, through you.”
Dalliance was staring at him uneasily. The conversation had gotten completely away from him, but he didn’t know how, or how it could be salvaged.
“So tell me, boy,” Mister Troubles asked. “Who is your sponsor?”
Dalliance’s mind scrambled for a deflection. I don’t have one was likely to read as a lie. His Redirection skill was new and untested. Why had he even come?!
But it wasn't Dalliance who answered.
“I am.”
Topaz's voice, usually friendly and cheery, like a little bell ringing to welcome him home, sounded eerie now. It was alien, and cold as frost.
The air grew heavy. A stillness fell over the garden. Rime grew upon the flagstones of the path, and hoarfrost bristled off the bare winter trees, fogging the faces of the polished marble shrines. Dalliance’s breath plumed in the air, white in the sudden chill.
A light began to grow, ethereal and impossibly blue, the purest blue Dalliance had ever seen in his life. It radiated like a star from where the pixie hovered. Her form was minuscule, nearly hidden amidst the shrubbery where she’d been hiding even now—but the world gave her away.
The meticulously trimmed hedges of the garden flattened to the soil as if pressed by a great, unseen weight. The dormant rose bushes, wrapped in their burlap shrouds, bowed down to the gravel path, their thorny branches scraping against the stones. The very air around her seemed to warp, her light shining as if from a very great distance.
Dalliance had never seen his friend like this.
Potency, Lord Troubles Esquire, stared into the face of the baleful light, a mortal boggling at the divine.
His knees shook. "That . . . that is not possible," he stammered, his gaze fixed on the shimmering form. “You have no power here. You have no authority—"
Her voice was proud in a way Dalliance had never heard it and completely uncompromising.
"—but what is granted me over my kith and kin."
The garden was silent, but Dalliance’s mind was anything but.
Kith and kin, she had said.
He felt tears spring to his eyes. He had never thought about the word "godmother" literally. He had joked that she was like a mother, but hearing the acknowledgment of their relationship from her side made his throat close up, holding back involuntary sobs.
Lord Troubles, the master of social arts who had so thoroughly dissected Dalliance, knelt to one knee in the gravel of his own garden, averting his eyes to the ground.
"Godmother," said the aristocrat.
The light faded as suddenly as it had come.
“I do my best,” she said lightly. The hedges and roses sprang back up to their full height. Greener. Like springtime.
Dalliance wondered if that would kill them.
Topaz