Conquest of Avalon

Luce V: The Spirit-Charmer

“Today’s password is ‘Horseshoe’,” Graves reported. One of Uncle Miles’s men for fifteen years, he was among the more reliable of Luce’s new guard, and best positioned to give reports in Charlotte’s absence. “Where would you like to start?”

With Charlotte, to be honest. But she was looking into something more important, and Graves was genuinely better suited for some tasks. “Any more illegal attempts to restart the forest harvesting?”

Graves gave a crisp nod, lips curled inward. “One Mister Moncrieff arrived at the mill with two personal guards and around a dozen laborers, insisting on his personal property rights. Fortunately, we were able to dissuade him from doing anything rash.”

“Good,” said Luce, though the fact that it had been needed at all was alarming enough. At first, people had seemed happy when Luce extended the work stoppage after the end of the impromptu holiday, since he’d forced the owners to guarantee half-rate standby wages to the workers until he could figure something else out.

But now Sauin had passed and the original weeklong holiday that Luce had hastily dubbed the Autumn Spring continued to drag on. Laborers were struggling under half-wages and the mill owners and forestry rights holders were on the verge of burning Luce alive for forcing a guarantee of even that much. The worst part was that they weren’t even wrong, not entirely. Luce was infringing on guaranteed property rights, and he was depriving hundreds of laborers of desperately needed wages in the wake of a global catastrophe. That was before even getting into seizing power over the nominally sovereign Charenton. He just didn’t have any better alternative right now. Not unless he were willing to countenance the incursion, plunder, and further destruction of Cya’s forest, which he’d promised to protect.

“Keep an eye on him, but from a distance. I’ll bet you anything that he goes running to the rebels the moment he thinks he isn’t being watched.” Hopefully, after today, we can put the issue behind us. “What news from the war?”

“The High Kingdom of Micheltaigne has surrendered unconditionally. High King Rennet is confirmed dead in the bombing, as are his sister and son. Queen Consort Serein commanded all remaining combatants to lay down their arms and is currently in transport to Cambria. Princess Mars remains missing, presumed dead in the attack.”

“Khali’s curse.” Just like that, an ancient people forced into submission beneath our bombardment. Humanity had mastered flight, harnessing forces of the earth and marshaling them towards the sky, and that crowning achievement was being used for this monstrosity. “They’ll go after the Rhan lands next, I’d guess. Dangerous to leave hostile territory in between your conquests. If we’re lucky, they’ll at least wait until Lorraine submits.”

But I haven’t exactly been lucky so far. It was a keen reminder that for every day Luce spent here, Avalon’s military was continuing their march of war. Solving the food supply issues was more important, more urgent, but at this rate, by the time Luce was done here, there might not be a continent left to save. I need to wrap this up, fast.

“It’s possible,” Graves agreed. “Especially after the siege’s latest setback.”

“Wait, what happened in Lorraine?”

“Her Verdance escaped after Captain Richter’s soldiers were ambushed from behind. According to a few of the troops, they were led by a knight clad head-to-toe in red armor, leading a force of less than one hundred. The angle and surprise were sufficient to disrupt the perimeter, allowing the escape, but the attackers were swiftly driven off. Captain Richter offered her resignation to General Echols, but was refused.”

I suppose that’s somewhat encouraging, in its own way. If Echols was shortsighted and petty enough to discard his subordinates for impossible-to-anticipate failures, I’d have even less hope of getting him to stand down while I work things out with Harold. A low bar to clear, perhaps, but Luce had no doubt at all that the likes of Perimont and Stewart would fail that same test.

Still, it came with its own issues, perhaps more significant than the benefits. “Without Her Verdance, I’m even less confident in Lorraine’s ability to hold out.” And the moment it falls, half an army gets freed up to move on to the next target. “That’s a lot of detail. How did you find this out, again?”

Graves chuckled, a deep rumbling that was gone almost as soon as it began. “Captain Richter and I served together in the Foxtrap. All I had to do was write a letter asking.”

And if things had gone slightly differently, you’d be happily fighting beside her now, no matter how unjust the cause… Important to remember, when Charlotte was the only one whose morals Luce could absolutely count on. Still, Graves’ loyalty wasn’t in question.

“Good work,” Luce said, since it was true. “The rebels?”

“We caught a few of the kids playing dice by the harbor and got them to talk. Now we know why Simone Leigh and her cronies haven’t been making any trouble since the prison break. They fled to Malin days ago, probably at Magister Ticent’s invitation. They’re also openly accusing you of consorting with spirits, saying you tried to press-gang the flaming rogue and the rest to feed the hunger of the Rhan. Nothing anyone with an ounce of sense would ever believe. We also caught a few of the slower escapees and a group massed with pikes outside the armory, but otherwise nothing.”

And so Leclaire gets more soldiers for her army, ready to lead them back over the border the second she’s confident she can survive the counterattack. The hypocrisy of condemning Luce for consorting with spirits while running into the skirts of Leclaire of all people was absolutely galling, but there was nothing to be done about it now, short of invading Malin and condemning Father to certain death, so Luce cleared the thought from his mind.

“The Countess Dimanche finally sent our envoy back, but with a list of demands a mile deep, most egregious among them being a formally recognized independence. She refused absolutely to recognize Avaline authority, and signed the letter “Countess Irène Dimanche, of the United Lyrion League.”

“That’s annoying.”

“It’s outrageous!” Graves countered. “She’s in violation of her agreement, backing rebels against the Crown.”

“Which is irritating, but not a priority. Lyrion and the other mainland Territories were devastated, and if we can’t get them productive again, thousands more will starve. She’s betting that the military is otherwise occupied right now, which it is, but that won’t be true for long if I have anything to say about it. Dimanche can keep playing her games until the music stops. That’ll be all for now.”

Graves dipped his head as Luce walked past, making sure to look each of his guards in the eye as he passed them in the corridors of his ship.

Which still needs a new name. Ferrous Ram tells you everything about Anya Stewart’s mission and nothing about mine. But that was so far down on the priorities list that even telling someone else to do it went somewhere just before ‘create an experimental regimen to improve sleep efficiency’ and just after ‘source matching uniforms so my forces present as a single cohesive force’. Luce might be able to get to the bottom of that list in a matter of months if nothing new came up, but there was about as much chance of that as Terramonde awakening and swallowing him whole.

At least the drills that Charlotte was running with the guards seemed to be proceeding well.

After the flame-wreathed rogue had single-handedly broken in and stolen back a precious spiritual artifact merely by moving fast and blasting fire, it had become abundantly clear that preparations for fighting magical foes were thoroughly lacking. Thanks to the Gloves of Teruvo, Charlotte had staged more than eight mock break-ins from different angles, one time even climbing up the side of the ship from the water below, and each one had been successfully repelled despite her skill wielding the magical artifacts.

And Laura is no Charlotte. Ultimately, it was better to find out the problem now, losing a boon of unknown utility that had fallen into his lap, than later with something more serious. Now, if something like this happened again, they’d be ready.

Charlotte was there to greet him at the docks as Luce descended from the ship, her face lighting up the moment she recognized him. Unless that’s just wishful thinking. “Luce!”

“Welcome back,” he greeted. “Any luck?”

“Better than we could have hoped for. Turns out we’re dealing with the foolhardy sage of Flammare.”

“Like the song?” Does that mean that that pirate Florette became a bandit queen too?

“Written about her, it turns out, though not any more accurately than any other song. Turns out she was telling the truth about her name. Laura Bougitte, second daughter of Count Cédric Bougitte, of Torpierre. Sage of Flammare for eight years, then… Well, obviously she’s not his sage anymore. She was spotted at the Convocation of the Hearth down in Gaume, then disappeared. Countess Hermine put out a three hundred florin bounty for her delivery alive, but no luck as yet.”

“A bounty for her own daughter?” Luce blinked, thinking through the problem. It could mean that she was guilty of betraying Flammare—her parents obviously wouldn’t appreciate that—but it could also be as simple as wanting their child back, especially if they thought she’d been captured.

Which I guess she was, for a little while.

Three hundred florins was pitiful, though. Perhaps the Bougitte family had fallen on hard times?

“Maybe the sword was left over? Something she prepared in advance to keep her power after Flammare died?”

“With her life to draw on instead when we took it from her,” Charlotte agreed. “Yes, that was my thinking.”

“Well, the Empire can write all the cutting songs about her that they want, but I’m not going to judge someone for getting rid of a spiritual tyrant. If she did, that explains why she helped us, too.” And it means she was probably telling the truth about her sword… A spirit empowered it without any sages or binders involved.

But Charlotte didn’t seem wholly convinced. “Her origins leave ample motivation for her to sabotage us as well. Why else tell Simone Leigh and the prisoners what we’d been asking about?”

Good point. “We don’t know that she did. There were rumors just like that in Malin; Leigh and company would hardly have needed to be very creative to start repeating them here with a new spirit in the role.”

“True, but the possibility remains.”

“It does.” But if we really don’t have a way to reach Rhan, how many more people will die? “But what she said lined up with my research. And I’m positive that she couldn’t plant half a hundred books in the Magister’s library just to fool me.”

“She certainly seemed to lack the temperament for it,” Charlotte conceded. “And given the date of the Convocation, she wouldn’t have had enough time either. But where does that leave us?”

It still leaves us with a massive risk, to be honest. And both of us will suffer the consequences if I’m wrong. “Do you trust me, Charlotte?”

“With my life.”

Luce smiled. “I feel the same way. There’s no one I’d rather stand beside, facing an ancient spirit. There’s no one else who’d… who I can trust to make the right decision. I believe it’s a risk worth taking, for all the good it could do, but I want you to decide.”

“Luce, it’s not my place.”

“It’s your life too. And you’re much better at protecting us than I ever will be. What do you want to do?”

Charlotte frowned, peering out over the Rhan, though what she was thinking, Luce couldn’t know. “You really think we should do this?”

“I really do.”

She swore quietly, then turned back to meet his eyes. “Then let’s meet the Rhan.”

≋

Luce shivered as he felt the frigid water lap against bare flesh. Whatever traces of summer remained in the air of this autumn spring, it felt as if winter had already reached the Rhan. A small fraction of his anxiety faded away once the water reached his chest, only to be replaced by greater and weightier concerns.

And the sensation of freezing to death. It had been warmer a few weeks ago. They might have tried this then, at the cost of abandoning all sensible caution and very possibly ending up eternally bound to the spirit’s will. No, waiting until they had enough information to be confident was the right call, especially since it wasn't just Luce’s own life he was risking.

It just felt, in this particular moment, as if it might not have been.

Charlotte, by contrast, seemed largely unperturbed. Though she had let out a shiver at the first moment of entry, it had immediately given way to the same stone-faced determination her expression usually bore, made only slightly amusing by the juxtaposition with her wading exposed through a frigid river.

Certainly better than I’m holding up, anyway. At least he was beginning to go a bit numb. That helped, though not enough to make this anything but thoroughly unpleasant. And I haven’t even started the dangerous part.

“Noble Spirit Rhan, Guardians of the Waters, Severer of the Earth, I call you forth to hear my words.” Despite everything, Luce managed to keep his voice level and confident, making sure not to offend Rhan with some unintentional slight before their dealings even began.

“Noble Spirit Rhan,” Charlotte followed, projecting her voice out across the waters. “Cradle of Life, Thief of Stars, I call you forth to hear my words.” Everything had to be doubled with the Rhan. Two forks of the river, two supplicants to earn even a moment of their attention, two spirits as one.

One did not simply call for one of the spirits, or their plea would go unanswered, at best. The books had been somewhat oblique about it, but Laura’s more recent bits of advice fit the sentiment perfectly, the two sources helping to validate each other.

Not to guarantee anything, though. Even if Rhan showed up, there was no reason to be sure they’d want to negotiate at all.

Damn it, Harold’s the binder, not me. Just like he’s the politician. Why did it keep coming to this? Luce could only hope that this assumption of the role went better than his efforts in Malin. At least the spirits there hadn’t killed him; that was something. Cya had even saved his life, in a sense. But Camille Leclaire had known them and their ways, trained since birth to twist their ends to serve her own.

This was different.

The water swelled, a slender turquoise fish coalescing as the ripples grew higher, of the water and yet more than it. By the color, this would be the Norforche. Where the Rhan split at Fleuville, one fork led straight east while the other plunged south towards the High Kingdom, each represented by one part of the spirit Rhan, or one of the spirits Rhan. It was hard to be sure exactly how it worked when most of the books Luce had found were fundamentally incurious about the mechanics of it. All that seemed to matter was the narrative: the spirit who’d defied Terramonde to cleave out the river from the stone, and been forever fractured as punishment.

And who’s not above taking out their anger on hapless guests in their river.

Norforche was gone almost as fast as it appeared, though the ripples continued out from the spot where they’d surfaced. Luce almost worried that he’d done something wrong before he heard a splash behind him, jarring him like an explosion. Luce spun around just in time to catch a glimpse of the turquoise spirit disappearing back under the water.

Always in motion… He recalled that from one of the books, though it had seemed decidedly more metaphorical at the time. Hopefully that meant they were alright, though the absence of Sufforche was not at all a good sign.

“You called us forth, humans,” the ripples seemed to say, water splashing just so as the spirit jumped and submerged again. “Say your piece.”

“Noble spirit,” Luce began, though he was far from sure that the descriptor applied. “I am Lucifer Grimoire, son of Harold Grimoire, Prince of Crescents. I—”

“A contradiction on two legs, it seems. Harold Grimoire slew the Prince of Crescents.”

Uh… That must have been about Luce’s ancestor or something, but either way it wasn’t relevant.

“There is no contradiction, noble spirit.” Seeing Luce’s confusion, Charlotte jumped in. “Luce is but the latest of the Grimoire line, his title freely granted, rather than seized. I—”

“Always ‘I’, as if Terramonde itself is yours to take on alone. Humans are much alike in that regard.”

Luce swallowed, feeling currents of water rush past him. “We are here to bargain, noble spirit, and right the wrongs of my forefathers.”

“We present you the Gloves of Teruvo,” Charlotte continued, holding up the artifacts. “Though he was slain, this piece of him remains.”

“And with it, his kindness? His generosity? Or merely power, for which we do not want?”

“It’s all that’s left,” Luce said, since what could he say but the truth? “As a Prince of Avalon, I wish to formally apologize on behalf of my nation for the wrongs done to you and your fellow spirits. We are here to try to rectify them.” More the wrongs we did to the people than to you, frankly, but this deal should benefit you just as much. “Cya called me the white sheep of a black flock, and perhaps it’s true. It took me too long to understand what she meant.”

The water stilled at the mention of Cya.

“We are fully committed to preserving and restoring her domain,” Charlotte said, getting away from Luce’s personal description. Good. “And yours, should you choose to accept our bargain.”

“I know this ‘Avalon’, invaders from across the sea, murderers and arsonists, disrupters of the natural world. Even now, my other half must swell her banks to quell the flames your people have wrought. The East Wind is a friend, and we have not heard from her since your assault.”

Luce met Charlotte’s eyes nervously, looking for some kind of reassurance, but for once, she looked just as scared. I asked too much. This isn’t the job she signed up for, and now this spirit is going to kill us both.

“But Cya, too, was a friend. If you seek to replenish her withered lands, I shall listen to what you have to say. Do not tarry, for we are needed in the South.”

“Of course.” Luce and Charlotte said, synchronized. He could see the smile on her face before he felt it on his own. We actually have a chance here, without any scheming sages to get in the way. We could really do this. “This is what we have in mind…”