Accidental War Mage

Discussing the duchess’s party with Quentin in a cafe, I discovered that while the express function of balls is dancing, they are also excellent events for conversation and making friends with the nobility, even if one is unable to dance. He was quite disappointed that I’d turned down the duchess’s implied invitation to her next ball, and moreover that I’d done so in such a way as to intimate that I was disinclined to accept any invitations to balls. In the future, he told me, I should try to avoid refusing invitations – it is easier to decline an invitation by note after accepting than it is to get one back after having mistakenly refused it.

Indeed, depending on the nature of the invitation, I might perhaps send someone else in my stead, perhaps a handsome and charming cuirassier such as Quentin himself. With that in mind, I refrained from telling Quentin that I had expressly declined (by note) an invitation to a different ball hosted by an unfamiliar margrave that had arrived by messenger earlier that morning before Quentin had risen. After all, it was too late to undo that decision as well, and there was little point in disappointing Quentin further.

By way of aiding my understanding and his, Quentin drew several family trees as we discussed the duchess’s various guests. The woman I had played cards with – well, “cousin” could mean nearly anything to a noble, as nobles needed to keep careful track of their relations both for purposes of inheritance and for arranging marriages. The western church forbade third cousins from marrying without special dispensation, and a noble could not simply pretend not to know who all of his great-great-great grandparents were in the way an illiterate peasant might.

The fact that magical talents tended to run in family lines in patterns added extra interest in lineage for nobles. One of the few books that Quentin’s mother had made sure he read cover to cover was a treatise on the natural patterns of inheritance of unnatural talent. Some talents seemed to run in a male line or a female one; some talents skipped generations regularly, while others seemed to leave a line forever once they died out.

While literate, I took his point without insult. As the youngest son of the family, my father was already old by the time I left home. I had never met my grandfather and only three of my aging uncles were still alive the last I had heard; I doubted I knew all of my first cousins on my father’s side, much less their children and grandchildren. It was hard enough keeping track of my close family with half a dozen older brothers; it was likely that by now I had at least one new niece or nephew I hadn’t met.

At first, I thought Quentin was simply desperate to enjoy himself to the fullest. However, the longer I stayed in the capital with him and the more I learned from him, the more I realized that he was trying to fulfill his familial duty. As a noble stepson out of the line of inheritance, he lived on the edge of the noble class and risked falling out of it once his mother grew old enough. He would be a potential drain on his family’s assets unless he proved himself.

He was not temperamentally suited to the priesthood, nor was he a mage. He could prove himself a great hero through service in war; if he’d done so well enough in Wallachia, it might have let him exercise his tenuous claim to a Wallachian title. An advantageous marriage would do just as well, however – or simply befriending the right high-ranked noble.

That is not to say that he didn’t become distracted easily by a pretty face or gaming tables – he and Johann both. After Johann heard that I had won ten out of twelve hands with the duke and duchess, he wanted to take me to every gambling den in town. (Not that he played any better than they did.)

I did attend – though did not dance at – one ball, taking it as an opportunity to corner a man I’d met at the duchess’s party. The margrave’s wife’s second cousin proved unwilling to cash out both letters of credit from his burgrave father’s treasure. However, he did work out some kind of four-way deal involving an anonymous individual known to the duchess. While I wasn’t clear on the terms between the three nobles, our side of the deal seemed as generous as I might hope for – nearly full face value on the first letter of credit and three-quarters of the value on the one with the delayed term. We would be able to winter peacefully in Oenipons, as I had hoped, giving us ample time to train, recover, learn, and weigh our options for our next course of action.

The cash traveled back to our temporary headquarters accompanied by several curious nobles and their bodyguards. This included the young woman with the pockmarked face, who wore a deeply hooded cloak and stayed near the back, accompanied by a very vigilant man in full mage-tempered plate who carried half a dozen orichalcum-inlaid triple-barreled pistols.

I was keenly aware that these nobles and others like them in Oenipons were potential next employers. As I greeted them with outward calmness, the infantry captain and several junior officers were rushing frantically behind the scenes to stage an exhibition drill as entertainment for our noble visitors. Ragnar made sure to put the men with our new enchanted wolf-mark swordstaves in the front rank, where the nobles would be likeliest to notice them.

I could sense that at least one of them was a full mage, though it was hard to tell which. Likely several were talented. The feeling was very diffuse and I felt quite unsure. My lack of formal education in magic was taking a toll on my confidence; while I was sure that some purported wizards were fakes (such as Banneret Teushpa), I had no idea why or how I would sometimes feel certain someone was a mage before they used magic.

At the end of the demonstration, the nobles applauded politely, by all appearances duly impressed. By twos and threes, they went back to their carriages, but the woman with the pockmarked face lingered. When we were alone, or rather nearly alone but for her well-armed and well-armored protector, she stepped close.

“You announced yourself at my service earlier, when we first met,” she said. “Did you mean that?”

I winced. “I – that is, ma’am, I could be,” I said, glancing away from her soft muddy brown eyes. “It is a figure of speech, isn’t it? We are not under contract, though, so I have no pressing reason to refuse you.”

“Hm,” she said. “You will stay here through winter.”

“Yes, your grace,” I said, interpreting her statement as a question about our plans and remembering my manners. I had never learned her precise standing within the Gothic nobility and if I had been given her name at the duchess’s party, I had forgotten it. Her lips curled up at my affirmation and then back down at the form of address, though only briefly.

“Hmm.” She slipped off one of her gloves, then slipped a jeweled ring back on her bare hand before holding it out palm-down. “You may kiss my hand.”

In the moment, I wished I had Quentin whispering in my ear. Was this some sort of impropriety, or was it a normal sort of noble thing? I glanced over at her guard, but the slits of his visor offered no clue. I reluctantly took her hand in mind and gave it a gentle peck on the ring, my lips barely contacting her skin. When I straightened back up and let go of her hand, the bodyguard still hadn’t moved.

The woman bit her lip momentarily. “Hmmm.” She looked me up and down. “You may be at my service later,” she said as if granting me some great boon. “But to be clear, take care that you do not leave this district before winter.”

As I watched her bodyguard assist her into her carriage, I realized that her first statement about winter had not been a question at all, but a command. Who was she to offer me orders without having hired me? The carriage jolted into motion with a soft hum, proving that it was powered by an arcane flux engine. One powering each axle – no, each wheel – separately. An engineering extravagance and a thaumaturgical one.

Thinking about who could afford such an extravagance, everything suddenly fell into place. The horseless carriage powered by a cutting-edge arcane flux engine. Her discomfort at my addressing her like a duchess. The way that everyone treated her as important, even though the duchess had not addressed her with a title, only speaking of her as a cousin. The plain face, even – while I had not known many nobles, everyone always seemed to think that noble breeding brought beauty with it. She had to be the daughter (or niece or granddaughter) of one of the emperor’s best mages.

Magical talent and noble status tended to correlate but did so imperfectly. While, on average, a duke would be more likely to have magical talent than a peasant (or even a lesser noble) the most powerful mages are rarely conveniently born to the very highest titles. They do, however, tend to gain substantial status and wealth, and often gain a well-born noble wife. The daughter of a powerful imperial thaumaturge might readily borrow the carriages he enchanted and maintained, and could easily have a duchess for a cousin through her mother’s side.

Or father’s side, if the thaumaturge were a woman, I thought to myself; but no, if the noble blood was on her father’s side, then she would have a proper noble rank that would place her neatly in the noble hierarchy, and surely that would have been brought up during introductions. No; most likely, she had a noble mother and had gotten her looks and some measure of magical talent from her lower-born mage father.

It would not surprise me if her father was our mysterious benefactor, in fact; a powerful imperial mage would be able to collect on nearly any debt held by a noble, even one in an outlying march, and was likely compensated well in cash to make up for his lack of hereditary landholdings. Additionally, if her father was the ultimate source of the money delivered, she might feel entitled to give orders on that account, which explained a great many things.

I was distracted and deep in thought as I approached the converted barn, and so the voice took me by surprise.

“Your new woman is very beautiful,” a bitter voice said in a feminine register. The words were in Slavonic, and they came from upwards.

Looking up to the open hayloft, I saw a rifle barrel resting in an artificial hand, both glinting in the setting sun. The red-orange gleam of the reflected sunlight nearly perfectly matched the color of Katya’s hair.