The Duke's Decision

Archmage Warin looked out across York from the roof of the keep. The city was full of activity. There were hundreds of people milling around the walls and in the streets below. Some of them were soldiers, others farmers and tradesmen. In four days' time, the most important wedding of their lives would take place in the bailey below.

He sighed and carefully placed another silver coin on the edge of the outer wall of the inner keep, holding his finger on it to fuse it in place. A line of coins lay edge to edge along the battlements, defying gravity to stick firmly to the stone where the line went up and down the sides of each embrasure.

He'd finished placing coins edge to edge around three of the tower's four lobes, making him three quarters of the way done with the tedious and boring task. Soon, he'd be able to close the loop of silver and bind a ward to it, protecting the tower against many forms of magical invasion. The bailey was too large for a similar ward, unfortunately; the motte would have to stand alone. At least, the bailey was too large for him to ward it; perhaps another archmage might have felt differently.

Warin was a powerful wizard, and credited as among the most powerful in the empire, but he only knew his own limits well. Exactly where archmages stood in relation to each other was unclear even among the archmagi; wizards tended to become more secretive and specialized as they became more powerful, both of which made it more difficult to compare their power against each other. Partly, this was a matter of risking fragile pride and the loss of face; partly, it was a matter of security.

They all deferred to the great Obsidian Necromancer, at least in public – who would not? – but even he avoided unnecessarily testing himself against other archmagi. Emperor Ivar the Fleshless had greater cause than most to show off his magical prowess, but he preferred to let the sudden disappearance of an overly-ambitious noble speak for itself rather than risk showing off a magical weakness in public.

Warin had been born in the Empire, and had lived his entire life within its borders. He'd watched the imperial bureaucracy slowly expand its reach. He’d watched the nobility grow wealthier, more insular, more magical, and more corrupt with every passing decade. He'd watched the emperor grow more and more reclusive, increasingly detached from the day-to-day governance of his empire. He could see chaos rising on the horizon. It had taken him a long time to realize that he could do something about it.

He'd never intended to try to overthrow the emperor himself, but both the mundane signs and the magical portents suggested that the emperor's reign would not last much longer. Ivar the Fleshless was increasingly detached from the day-to-day business of governance. New centers of organized political power were rising. The emperor’s days as the keystone of the empire were ending soon. Even if he was not overthrown and did not abdicate, his interest in governance was waning. Perhaps – and Warin was not sure if this was the best case or the worst case – he would remain in his tower in London as a ceremonial figurehead, leaving governance in the hands of a squabbling pack of greater nobles, archmagi, and bureaucrats. The isle of Great Britain would be riven by undeclared civil wars.

The same signs could be seen in York; the old duke had been granted his title by the emperor in the wake of his conquest of England. In the beginning, the emperor’s decrees had regularly instructed the duke on governance. Over time, the emperor had grown less interested in the management of York; as long as taxes arrived regularly, all of York was the property of the first Silver Duke to use as he saw fit, and it was governed by his laws.

The same was true of the other principalities, duchies, jarldoms, and counties to a greater or lesser degree, but the old Silver Duke had been special: Senile by the end, perhaps, but not corrupt or cruel. Whatever abnormality had given rise to his draconic appearance was unlike the “aristocratic disease” of vampirism; nor did he seem to be particularly friendly to wizards at all, much less necromancers. This made York particularly resistant to the encroachments of imperial bureaucrats, who had in part grown out of the aristocracy and the imperial orders.

Bureaucratic authority had grown out of London on thin tendrils of authority, based on charters and mandates that, for the most part, related to the promotion and regulation of wizardry and coastal security. While the duchy of York had a coastline requiring protection, that coastline faced across the widest part of the North Sea, making it a rare destination for corsairs and smugglers. It was also, crucially, distant from the capital city of York, placing imperial military bastions far from the center of political power.

The old duke of York had left behind a handful of squabbling heirs, two of which had ultimately raised armies in the field against each other. With neither a specific mandate nor a strong presence within the heart of York, the imperial bureaucracy had simply sat by the sidelines, paralyzed with indecision. Their general mandates did not relate to orderly succession of the great nobles, and York had never before experienced a succession crisis. Once the emperor’s absence was total, the growing Imperial bureaucracy centered in London would struggle to exert any authority at all over the fourteen dukes and twenty-three earls scattered across England – much less the twenty-three jarls of Scotland or the half-dozen princes in Wales and Cornwall.

With that thought, Warin laid the last coin, closing the loop. The archmage stepped back from the outer wall and raised his arms, causing the silver line to melt and sink into the rock as magic rippled from coin to coin, connecting them with a powerful circular current that heated the metal from the inside. With the silver embedded into the stone and connected as one piece, he started the wearisome process of casting the actual ward. If anyone had been watching from above, they would have seen glittering runes flit across the surface of the molten silver.

The ward that he'd created was designed to resist many forms of attack. It was not impenetrable, but it would prevent outsiders from teleporting straight into the keep as well as blocking certain… less material intrusions. Now to repeat the process with the smaller square inner wall, he thought to himself, and sighed. It was tedious, but it needed to be done. A layered defense was best, and he was fully committed now to using Avery for his plans. Fiona had chosen him.

He’d chosen to consider York first because York was the largest of the English duchies, even if it was a little backwards economically. The fact that the new Silver Duke was neither corrupt nor senile was arguably a bonus, but corrupt or senile rulers could sometimes be manipulated more easily. There had been others to consider – other dukes, lesser nobles, even a few imperial officials. However, the time for considering alternatives passed when his adoptive daughter made her choice. He could not deny her a chance at happiness; not when his divinations indicated that Avery was possessed of a sound character.

“Merde.” Robert de Lancaster stared at the cracked crystal ball. “Bring me another,” he said, in a voice too strong for a man whose hair had gone to pure white several decades previously.

Thanks to the paradox of prophecy, the mere presence of the archmage diviner in York had precluded any attempts by any lesser diviner at predicting the future as it related to York, forcing him to resort to more direct means of observation when he wished to learn more. With a second crystal ball cracked, it was clear York Castle – or at least the duke’s solar – had been thoroughly warded against scrying, whether that scrying was performed by Robert’s court wizard or by Robert himself.

Not that his occasional direct observations had been as helpful as Robert would have liked. Not even with the experience of a century of reading lips. The young Duke of York spoke rarely in private, and that mostly with his foster mother; he sometimes kept long silent periods of company with his foster sister, his seneschal, or his master of hounds. The simplest explanation was that the young man was a mere puppet; but Robert had not ruled the Duchy of Lancaster for a century by assuming his neighbors were simple.

“Your Grace, I fear it would only break,” murmured Robert’s court wizard as he scurried forward, another crystal ball in hand. “This is the last one I have on hand.”

“John, I am not so foolish,” Duke Robert replied, fixing his illegitimate nephew with a glare. “I have a mind to look in on someone else.”

Rosamund shivered suddenly as she stood in the doorway of her hut. “They didn’t follow you here, did they? I feel as if someone is watching.”

Sir Malkin Guy shook his head. “I got both of them.”

The hedge witch looked back and forth. “Very well. Come in, but be careful.”

Malkin crouched, hunkering low to get through the door of the hut. He started to stand.

“No, sit,” Rosamund said. “You’re too tall. Worse than my son, and he knocks the rafters if he’s not careful. Now, let me get a good look.”

With a snap of the witch’s fingers, the room was flooded with bright light, and Malkin closed his eyes with a wince.

“Cut through the steel links like butter,” Rosamund said. “Must have been mage-sharped. Quality work. You’ll need to take off your mail. Doublet, too. A bolt like that can go right through a man.”

Malkin grunted, pulling his doublet over his head. The hedge witch’s fingers delicately danced over his chest. “There was one in the back, too,” he said.

The fingers withdrew, and then returned on his back. “I can see one of your ribs,” the hedge witch’s voice said. “Was it barbed? It looks like you ripped it out.”

“I didn’t want it in me,” Malkin said.

“Men. So impatient. This will want some cleaning. What were you doing in York?” There was a clattering of metal and the slosh of water in the background.

“You could just wrap it back up,” Malkin said. “Put one of your magic bandages on it.”

“And a week later, when it’s red and angry and swollen, you’ll be either blaming me for it going red and swollen or begging me to help you drain it. Or both. I’ll have water on boil soon enough, now tell me what you were doing in the city.” The hedge witch’s voice was entirely too forceful for a woman of her size and fragility.

“The new duke promised to make me a lord,” Malkin said. “Baronet Malkin Guy.”

“The duke promised you a lordship?” A clattering of metal. “And what did you do for him?”

“I gave him my daughter,” Malkin said. “He’s to marry her, I think.”

A moment of silence. “You think? Did you speak with the duke?”

“I spoke with his seneschal. Lord Marcus. The new duke made an announcement about marrying, but I didn’t understand, and then Lord Marcus explained to me later.” Malkin shifted his legs, trying to find a more comfortable position to sit on the threadbare rug.

“Lord Marcus? Do you mean Sir Marcus?” The hedge witch’s voice sounded like it was quite close.

“I thought he was Sir Marcus, but the duke enlarged him to baronet when he made him seneschal,” Malkin said.

“Oh!” The hedge witch’s voice sounded happy. A hot wet cloth, nearly hot enough to burn, pressed down on Malkin’s back. “So your daughter is marrying to Duke Richard?”

“The new Duke of York is Avery,” Malkin said. “There was a battle, Richard lost. You haven’t had news here?”

“Nobody visits unless they want something,” the hedge witch’s voice said wryly as a cold liquid splashed against Malkin’s back, confusingly bringing with it a burning sensation as it poured into the wound in his back. “I thought Richard would have the crown, for certes he wanted it more. Avery is Duke of York? He’s taller than Merilda. Taller than my boy. Almost as tall as you. I bet they’ll have tall strong children. Maybe that’s why he decided to take her. So, when is the wedding?”

Malkin, gritting his teeth, hissed out a reply as the burning sensation faded. “When he announced, he said two weeks. That was…” He paused, deep in thought as he counted. “Eleven or twelve days past, I think.”

“What? And you left the city rather than stay to see your daughter married to a duke?” Delicate fingers coated in some kind of salve poked at his back. “You’ve a heart of stone.”

“Is that what stopped the bolt?” Malkin said, glad for the subject to turn back to the treatment of his injuries.

“Never mind, you.” The hedge witch’s voice receded. A few moments later, Malkin felt a hand pressing a cloth on his back, and the voice was close again, circling to his front side. “Tell me about Lord Marcus. How is he doing? Is he eating well? Was he hurt in the battle?”