“So he’s healed, is he?” Petrard Grimes, one of the King’s Engineers, asked.
“Afraid so. He does that quite a bit,” Sammy answered.
Both men frowned down at the contraption of leather and steel that laid between them. They were in a dismal little drawing room within the castle, the kind that could barely crack open a window to stir the air and consequently was allowed to be used by visitors and workers, such as Petrard. The invention had seemed inconsequential to Lucius, and I didn’t have the time to waste on one man’s claims, so the polite task of responding to the inquiry fell to Dr. Samson.
For his credit, the engineer tried to keep a stiff upper lip about it. “You see this part here? It would clamp onto a stirrup through a locking cam system, yes? I couldn’t decide if the release mechanism should be manual or gravity based so I added both. There’s a flip selector here. He could have stamped it onto the stirrup and held on with ease. Then still walked on it when off horse.”
“It does seem very impressive. Did you study anatomy to make this?” Sammy asked as he picked up the prosthetic custom designed for Lucius’ missing leg, which he of course was no longer missing.
Petrard nodded. “Yes, sir. But I didn’t do no grave spelunking as it were. At first I thought I should just, you know, give a good squeeze to my collaborators, but I figured that the shape of a human’s leg is meant to control a human’s foot and that’s not quite what I made here, you see? I actually based it upon a crane, sir. Narrow, elegant, houses steel cables to pull the graspers shut. For birds, that would be on fish. For this, it would be the stirrup. I made it with riding in mind.”
“Most would just adjust the saddle to grab onto the leg.”
Petrard grinned. “But then he wouldn’t be able to get off and fight, now would he?”
“True. Honestly, the craftsmanship here is some of the best I’ve seen. You treated steel like gold.”
“Gift of the gods, Sir.”
“You have a stigmata?”
“Oh, not me. One of the students at the university. These are all my designs, but it was him that formed them. Not that this couldn’t be made by a mundane craftsman, but it’s all in the speed, you see. A regular blacksmith would need fixtures and jigs, you see, yes?”
“I’ve had a few lessons in prototyping,” Sammy said as he put it down. “Do you have a design you could propose for mass manufacturing?”
Petrard stared back at him. “Beg your pardon?”
Gesturing at the device, Sammy said, “The reason they sent me wasn’t because Young Solhart was simply too busy. I’m his doctor. I’m the one that amputated his leg and I did a fair deal more than that during the rebellion. Infection robs men of feet regularly during war and if they survive, at the moment, they are reduced to either hopeless cripples living on charity or, if they’re lucky, they manage to fit a cup to their stump and wobble around on a peg. If we could return veterans to the battlefield by merely paying money and fitting them with a device like this… well, surely you can see the advantage. This would be akin to vision correcting glasses for fine craftsmen.”
“A mass produced version… one that could be outsourced, could be given to apprentices…”
I had given the boy some instruction on how to handle the negotiations if they seemed profitable. “Do you work with the ley cannon production?”
Petrard blustered and turned up his hands. “Not directly, sir. But, I know them.”
“They’re using a step-wise production method. If that could be adapted to this device…”
“We’ve barely created a methodology for… but, yes, I see… that would require, well, the scale would depend on the need, you see.”
Sammy grinned and drummed his fingers on the prosthetic. “Why don’t you put some work into estimates? Lay out what would be needed to produce a thousand of these a year and how much that would cost, but also cost out ten thousand a year. I’ll bring the proposal to Solhart and he can bring it to the king.”
Petrard fell into a chair, his eyes seeing nothing but figures and diagrams within his mind. “Ten thousand,” he mumbled.
“How sturdy is it, by the way?” Sammy asked, picking it up once more and giving the main shaft a flex.
“Pardon?”
“Could it bludgeon a man to death?”
Petrard blew air through his mustache and shrugged. “It wasn’t designed for that, but it is made of steel. We could even make them sturdier, but it would weigh it down. I would think it easier to put a blade on it than to make it a club. A spike perhaps, like a mining tool.”
Sammy nodded. “I suppose that would have worked better than what Lucius had to make do with.”
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Now, when Aria arrived at the White Halls Villa, it was the day after Lucius arrived. As it turned out, she had surreptitiously joined Aisha’s caravan and masqueraded as a mere merchant’s daughter. An unsuspecting Aisha had welcomed the company and while she hadn’t done anything intentional to betray Lucius’ identity, her tongue betrayed us yet. To this day, I don’t quite know what sowed the seeds of doubt, or what line of questioning Aria used to deduce what had occurred. Doubtless, it was some method of knowledge only siblings could have for one another.
Regardless, she confronted my pupil before he had gotten his armor on to see to the men. Many a lesser historian assumed that she simply used a false name and gauged his reaction. Surely a false brother would fail to recognize his sister appropriately. This is not what happened. I had thoroughly educated Lucius in such obvious pitfalls. Unfortunately, the true event is far less credible.
She walked through the door. He saw her and greeted her. Within less than six seconds, she told the servants to leave. The moment they were alone, she planted her hands on her hips. “Who the hell are you?”
A flabbergasted Lucius, already feeling the cold sweat, tried to deflect.
“You aren’t my brother,” Aria declared. “My brother was terrified of women. He was ever since he was fourteen. I cannot believe my brother successfully impregnated somebody.”
We had prepared for this, although the best plan had always been to simply never encounter the girl. There were a thousand small pieces of memory that could be tested and could not have been planted into my pupil’s brain. At least, not without undoing so many years of training I had put him through. “Look, a good deal of alcohol was involved at first. I’d appreciate if you kept your voice down.”
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Aria sniffed. “My maid will have chased off the locals. Do not worry, Imposter. Now, who are you?”
“Aria, this isn’t funny.”
She marched up to him, mustering every inch of her modest height. “Drop the act or tell me what happened on your fourteenth birthday.”
He took a gamble and glared. “If you talk about that one more time, I will make you regret it, dear sister. War is no place for gossip.” He of course had no idea what had happened on the original Lucius’ fourteenth birthday. When he was turning fourteen, I had abandoned him(1) and Ezra in the wilderness to hone their survival skills.
Aria spun away in apparent triumph. “And caught you. Nothing at all happened on my brother’s fourteenth birthday. It was a few months after when he was traumatized. Now, enough with this game. I don’t care if you killed my brother. I want to know why you took his name. He was worthless. A drunk left in a meaningless garrison. How did you end up invited to dine at the king’s table? If nothing else convinced me you were a fake it would be that accomplishment. Seriously, I swear on my name, if you mean no harm to the family your secret is safe with me, Imposter.”
A moment later, the door flew open again and Aria’s maid was forced to stumble through. Lupa had the woman gripped by the hair and her knife to the maid’s throat. Not to say that the maid was in some way weak or small, but she was fundamentally a woman of etiquette and courtly conduct. Being confronted by what amounted to a savage with a knife proved too much.
“Don’t kill her,” Lucius ordered, turning his back on the affair to finish getting himself dressed.
“Lu, who is this woman? She got in my way and said I wasn’t allowed to come see you. You never told me that somebody else might order me away.”
Aria’s voice cracked as she shouted, “What is the meaning of this?”
“Lupa, meet my sister, Aria. Aria, meet the woman who saved my life in the desert.”
Without letting go of the trembling maid, Lupa smiled at Aria. “How do you do, sister-in-law?”
“Sister-in-law!?”
“Ignore her,” Lucius said as he cinched his belt. “She’s still getting ahead of herself. And Lupa, let go of the maid while she can still walk. She’s about to faint.”
Lupa sighed and released Aria’s maid, sheathing her blade. “And you still say that even after we bathed together, after all that time we spent tied at the hip to one another.”
“Oh, come now. Apparently I’m deathly afraid of women, so says my sister who hasn’t seen me in years now. Can’t be having you spreading any rumors about us bathing together, now can we?”
Lupa crossed her arms. “You didn’t even make a move on me. Maybe you are afraid of women.”
“Regardless,” Lucius said as he strode to the door. He turned at the portal. “Sister, I would appreciate greatly you not running your mouth so foolishly? And next time, come announced so that I can actually make time for you. I have an army to attend to.”
Aria’s mouth was left quivering over words until he had turned his back on her and walked off. When Lupa followed along, sticking her tongue out at her, Aria shouted, “That’s another reason I know!”
At this time, Lucius didn’t simply abandon his alleged sister to her own devices. That would have presented far too much danger. Instead, he sent for Sammy and quickly explained the situation to him and the good doctor was assigned to be her companion for the day. That began an arduous and awkward handoff from person to person to person, each getting privately grilled about Lucius for days. She established nothing except that he didn’t talk about his past much. which , of course, was a lie.
Fortunately for her, this was when we learned that Golden’s ability to seal memories had been part of what he had traded to Anubi, which caused me the greatest headache I’d experienced in years. I wasn’t worried about the girl. She wasn’t actually my pupil’s sister. Poisoning her and removing her would be trivial. The problem was that I had promised to restore Kajsa and my ability to do so had debased himself into a mortal and still smelled like a sea captain carnal house.
And so it came, that the day after Lucius lost his foot to an attempted assassination, she forced herself into his company as he headed to the mercantile district of Puerto Vida. The boy, outfitted with a peg leg, had dozens of meetings to attend to among the food distributors. He had an army to take north and that meant provisions. Much of the work was tedious, but he had no officers he could trust on financial matters. Bribery would be expected and while he could accept a certain amount of corruption if it came at the price of feeding his army then it could not be allowed.
Thus, after many hours of negotiating deals, signing papers until his hands turned blue, and assuring everyone that he would be hale and hearty before they knew it. By the time the sun was setting, the two of them took a simple meal upon the marble steps of the grand fountain in Puerto Vida(2). While he coyly chided Aria about whether or not he really was her brother–a verbal game of cat and mouse he used to tease out more details about how he should be acting–a trio of Giordanan men walked up to them.
The one in front had no armor and his silken shirt was but loosely tucked. “Lucius Von Solhart, I take it.” The man in the lead spoke loud enough for an arena, gathering attention to them. “A brave nobleman to travel without guards. For that, you have my respect.”
Lucius had nothing more than the crust of his bread remaining, and tossed it into the fountain behind him. He recognized where the act was going and rose to face the local. “There are two types of men that can travel without guards, and neither are brave. There are those that have the love of the people around them…” He trailed off and examined the crowd. None spoke against him, but few returned his gaze. Most cleared their throats or shuffled away, as there were no Vassish in the crowd. He grinned nevertheless. “And there are those who do not need guards.”
The man nodded. “My name is Nasir Khalil. Earlier this year, you crucified my blood brother, a man of your own kin. His name was Carlyle Widders and he saved my life. Now, I have come to avenge him.” And so, he pulled open his shirt and revealed the jagged scars, both from dog teeth, and the rough line common to brash men of violence. Before Lucius, he drew his oath blade once more and cut the scar open. “Today, I renew my vendetta, Lucius von Solhart.”
First, Lucius gave Aria a look to say, “See? He thinks I’m Lucius.” That did nothing at all to assuage the fresh fear that she would be taken by such thugs after they had ganged up and killed Lucius. Then he addressed the men. “I delivered nothing but justice. I take it you mean to kill me regardless?”
“As I understand it, you can’t be killed. I will be satisfied with your heart.”
Lucius nodded and drew his sword. “You might want something better than a kitchen utensil.”
The man’s face colored. His nostrils flared as he gestured to Lucius’ missing leg. “A suitable handicap.”
“You think so? I won’t protest. You two, on your honor you are here as witnesses. I’ll have no false stories. I, Lucius Von Solhart, accept this duel request,” he said as he took his sword in a backhanded grip. He held it before him like a knife fighter, his forearms twice the size of Nasir’s.
Before the crowd grew too large, the Giordanan let out a whoop and hacked at Lucius. He moved with a deft control of his body, his estimation of reach perfect. What he underestimated was the boy’s tip control. He hooked the back end of Nasir’s dagger and pulled it aside. The blades did not bind, but it opened Nasir’s side for an instant. While the Giordanan pulled himself back, ripping his blade back around to lunge it forward, Lucius spun his leg around. With his right foot planted like a pillar to the earth, his peg leg whipped around. Wood struck Nasir’s ribs hard enough to shatter bone and to break the leather straps holding the cup to Lucius’ limb. The tool flew away, broken and Lucius was nearly helpless.
Nasir fell to the ground, sucking air and spitting up blood as a shard of his own ribs ripped through his lung.
Lucius, standing poised like a heron, declared, “Consider honor satisfied.”
With heads bowed, Nasir’s companions rushed him to a surgeon and the crowd dissipated with their rumors to spread. Lucius had little choice but to turn back to Aria. “Sister, dear sister, you’ll help your brother get back to the villa, won’t you?”
Aria’s color returned with an irritated pout. “I’ll hail you a taxi cart, dear Imposter. Where did you learn something like that? Certainly not in Vassermark.”
“I was kidnapped by Aillesterran pirates for a time, didn’t you hear? They have strange martial arts. Some of them are useful.”
“I cannot believe Lord Raymi is vouching for you.”
“He vouches for me because my capacity is more important than my identity, dear sister. When you come on campaign with me, you’ll see. And you will be coming.”
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1. He was not truly abandoned. I watched him at all times through a crow. There was no way I could simply risk such a lengthy investment.
2. The fountain is the same as the grand fountain still there today.