Things happened fast following the orcs’ final, proper, retreat. Things tend to, when one is in the second most economically vital city in all of Anglyn, and the King’s own army had come to lift a siege over it.

  In fact, I would soon find out that more than just the King’s army was there.

  But that wasn’t to be for a while. Celebrations came first, most pressingly the invitation of our saviours into Arvharest. I flinched seeing those great gates open to permit the marching men inside, but it wasn’t hard to remind myself that they were friendlies. Seeing the ruin they’d made of the orcs was one hell of a proof.

  As they entered, the Anglysh Army received all the praise and adoration that we hadn’t after first returning from our battle against the orcs. I will admit to feeling a shade bitter about that, especially as someone who didn’t actually do much to contribute in that battle, but it was hardly unearned on the Army’s end, they had saved the day no matter how you sliced it.

  For my part, I didn’t have the mental strength left to head off to some celebration. I just retired to the quarters Morlo had rented out, barely even managing to strip off my plate armour before I fell into bed and slept. Naturally, everybody misconstrued this about as much as they could have possibly been expected to.

  As I slept, my absence turned, as absences tend to, into rumour. People heard I was wounded in the fighting, true. They believed I was wounded badly, not true. Some said I had, for some fucking reason, gone after the orcs personally to drive them farther off from Arvharest, others even more ridiculous things. I think it’s the most I’ve ever had my reputation grow over something as stupid as a damned nap.

  By the time I finally awoke, the damage had been done. Not just in awe and spreading adoration, oh no. This was something much more damaging for the goal of being left alone. Mystique had festered about me during my recovery, and it seemed to have captured everyone in Arvharest.

  Morlo, of course, had seen it all happen, and he’d done precisely nothing to stop it. I found out why shortly after awakening, because he was there to receive me.

  “You’re going to be meeting the King,” he told me. I entered a coughing fit upon hearing that, not coincidentally, and only recovered after a good twenty or so seconds. If nothing else, my throat could hardly get any more raw than it already had been when I woke up. What was it about fights and making you achy in places you’d not even been hit?

  “King Hengrys!?”

  “Yes,” Morlo nodded, “calm down will you? It’s just a King.”

  Of course Morlo probably didn’t see any reason to be impressed by a little thing like royalty, between his power and his madness. But I wasn’t some venerable Thaumaturge, and was very much executable if the royal took a dislike to me.

  “Relax,” Morlo urged, “you’re going to be meeting him in the best terms you could hope for. He wants to give you a medal or something, probably a reward too. Just stay stoic and say something that sounds suitably modest and Heroic, things will pretty much take care of themselves from there. Oh, and keep that grin off your face.”

  “I can’t help the grin,” I muttered, “it just…happens.” I still can’t, even to this day.

  Morlo was not very accommodating about that though.

  “Well then find a way to cover your mouth without looking rude,” he snapped. “We’re expected at the palace within the hour, don’t fuck up.”

  Morlo left without any more information than that, which, I had to admit, actually meant that I’d been given a greater-than-normal amount of insight into what he planned for me. That was of little consolation right then of course.

  Some of the ridiculous dress-clothes Morlo had bought came into play there, as I slipped them back on and found the lack of armour plating leaving me feeling ridiculously vulnerable. I tried to ignore the feeling, but found that it just wouldn’t go away. Of course full plate armour wasn’t exactly appropriate attire for this sort of event. In the end I compromised with myself, slipping my old chainmail shirt under the fabric. If the royals noticed, maybe it’d just make me look suitably paranoid.

  Outside my room, I found Vara just as dressed up as me. Granted, she didn’t have any chainmail that I could see. She did look nice. I don’t want to describe her now, not really. I’m an old man and leering about the memory of a young woman is somewhere past even my desiccated sense of decency. At the time, I was practically drooling of course. Vara, for once, didn’t seem to notice.

  She was too busy being lectured by Morlo.

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  “Ah good, you’re out.” Morlo acknowledged me with only that remark, then turned back to Vara. “I’ve managed to keep the Grynkori busy at a local tavern, we should have at least a few hours before he’s finished drinking it dry. With luck he won’t find his invitation until a few hours more following that.”

  Vara cleared her throat at that, looking, for once, uncertain. “I…don’t really know how to speak with royalty, or nobles for that matter…”

  “I do,” I cut in, “a bit at least, I met the local nobility on occasion as a kid, just let me take the lead.”

  Morlo nodded in approval. “Good. And Vara, absolutely do not show off or mention your Thaumaturgy.”

  Her face fell at that. “Why?!”

  “Because feminine power is seen as innately evil and untrustworthy, and flaunting it will earn you no favour in a male-dominated world,” the Thaumaturge explained. It was probably the most surprising thing I’d heard him say by then, and Vara seemed to agree going by her own shocked expression. Neither of us got a chance to reply though, Morlo kept talking.

  “This is going to be your big chance to introduce yourselves to high society, so don’t fuck it up.”

  I hadn’t been planning on fucking it up, of course, but if I had been the glare Morlo impaled me with would’ve banished such ideas instantaneously. By the look on Vara’s face, she was similarly stricken with it. We headed out alongside Morlo soon after that, travelling by coach. To me, that vehicle felt like the fastest in the world. Most vehicles do when they’re taking you somewhere you don’t want to be.

  Ours was not the first coach there, by the time we reached the closest thing Arvharest had to a palace—one of the finer mansions in the city—there were already two scores more assembled outside it. Each of them looked like the sort of fine vehicles I’d expect of nobility, though I knew better than to think they all belonged to that class. More likely, a good few were owned by the scholars of Arvharest, here to…what exactly? Rub elbows with the aristocracy? That didn’t seem likely.

  I’d find out soon enough, of course, and might have guessed earlier still. Unfortunately, being drenched in my own nervousness didn’t do very much for clear thinking and predictive acuity. It was all I could do not to tremble myself into a state of terminal exhaustion as we headed inside, and Vara looked scarcely better. Only Morlo seemed comfortable.

  Believe me, you’re in dire straits if the most relaxed member of your group is a pyromaniacal serial nudist.

  He wasn’t nude today though. I’d not noticed it earlier, but Morlo’s robes actually looked rather finely made and seemed to flow as he walked, like something out of a storybook. No. Hang on, not seemed to, he…I couldn’t help but smile. The old bastard was using Thaumaturgy to send ripples of motion through the fabric with every step he took.

  Theatricality, he’d told me, was a great part of Thaumaturgy. Well now I was seeing that demonstrated for my own eyes. Being privy to the trick probably blunted its effects on me, because I saw quite a few awed expressions directed at him as we headed farther inside.

  “They’re staring at us,” Vara murmured. I snorted at that, glanced at the people, and then felt all the good humour drain out of me as I realised that they actually were. Morlo wasn’t the only one soaking up attention, apparently, and I didn’t enjoy receiving it nearly as much as he did. Not here at least.

  “Shit. How do we stop them?” I don’t know why I asked Vara that, she clearly didn’t have a plan and just stared at me in a flustered helplessness to indicate the fact.

  “A distraction, maybe?” she blurted out, squirming even more than I was, apparently, and just as eager to extricate herself from the stares.

  Fortunately, we were interrupted before our frantically awkward brains could coin anything that might damage the situation. Morlo finished leading us through the building and into a grand hall that looked to me as if it had been made for lectures, but had hastily been reconfigured into a makeshift ballroom. The walls were easily fifty yards apart and the ceiling at least half so far from the floor, all of it stone and glass, every voice echoing well beyond the owner’s lips. The air was hot with a great fireplace built into each corner and the warmth of several hundred bodies.

  I’d met with nobility before, even been to events like this, but I’d never seen such a concentration of power and numbers. The very lowest of people gathered now were the high scholars of Arvharest, men who probably wielded the power of Barons or more just by themselves. And of course, the King didn’t escape my notice either.

  Hengrys was a tall man. A very tall man, in fact, which was rarer than you might think among royals. In retrospect I realise that he was just suffering from a below-average amount of inbreeding, but at the time I’d been stupid enough to take that as some indication of character.

  Being honest, he did have most of the characteristics necessary for a truly great King. Which is to say, he looked good and had the sense to keep his mouth shut as often as was polite. He stood almost my height and was broad around the shoulders, wearing some ridiculous dress-uniform that he most certainly hadn’t gone into battle with, but was probably hoping everybody assumed to be fresh from the fighting.

  I didn’t, of course. Say one thing for my idiot young self, I knew a scam when I saw one. The benefit of pulling so many of my own. Naturally I also knew better than to call out the bloody King on this fact, and kept my mouth sensibly clamped shut as I eyed him from across the room.

  Morlo had disappeared almost as soon as we walked in, I realised. And just as soon as that fact struck me, so did another. The King had looked over, set his eyes on me. Started smiling. Started walking over. I returned his smile, because what else could I do, and tried to keep from trembling as he approached with a gaggle of sycophants in tow.

  “He’s walking this way!” Vara hissed, through her own smile. I felt mine tightening like someone was pulling on its edges, began to worry whether my teeth were exposed enough to come off as some sort of snarl.

  “Just keep smiling and be polite,” I grunted, “heart pounding so hard it felt like Gruin was working my chest over with his hammer.”

  There was no time for any more communication, silent or otherwise, because his Royal Highness was upon us a moment later, smiling the smile that could launch forty thousand men.

  And, in fact, had done so just half a day earlier.

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