The Duke's Decision

The sitting room of the apartment was small. It would not be called cozy due to a lack of any decoration; it featured furniture in mismatched styles, chosen for comfort without regard to appearance. A small side table was wedged between a striped chair (presently occupied by Archmage Warin) and a bottle-green couch upholstered in well-worn velvet that must have been expensive when new (presently occupied by Master William Taylor).

Between the two of them stood a maid holding a tea tray, illuminated by the uneven light of a hanging chandelier. Only three of the four sockets had magelights in them, and one of the magelights was colored orange with the other two being the more usual sunflower yellow shade.

A larger and more lightly-constructed card table covered with a thin layer of felt occupied the center of the room, ringed by bare wooden chairs. Chips were neatly stacked in slots around the edge of a cylindrical ivory-colored chip holder perched on the corner of the card table. In the center of the chip holder rested two decks of cards.

“Of course I can raise a zombie in the Scottish style!” Master William Taylor puffed out his chest. “I am credentialed as a master.”

Master Warin smiled softly, a polite smile creasing the edges of the diviner’s mouth as he leaned back in a striped plush chair. “Of course, Master Taylor. You are a master necromancer, I don’t doubt your credentials. Would you mind showing me an example of your work with Scottish zombies?”

“Well, I don’t have any Scottish style zombies on hand right now,” William Taylor said, gesturing at the unblinking waxy-skinned maid holding the tea tray. “You’re already looking at the only zombie I own, in fact—Florence here was my masterwork project in Cambridge. I keep her around for sentimental reasons, but most of my work ends up with my clients, and I primarily do industrial work, which means skeletons, mainly.”

Warin sipped tea, nodding. “I see,” he said. “If you’ll forgive my prying, what’s special about Florence? I was under the impression that zombies simply came in the regular variety and the Scottish one, and I’m afraid further distinctions escape me, what with my focus on divination.”

William nodded, eager to prove himself. “Florence, place the tea tray on the side table.”

Mechanically, the maid walked over to the side table, bending at the waist to place the tea tray on the table, then froze.

William walked over, pulling the dress over the zombie maid’s back to reveal smooth waxy skin. “Absolutely flawless. You wouldn’t know she’s been animate twenty years, would you? It’s not just regular washing and waxing, Florence is self-repairing.”

The gray-bearded diviner sipped his tea, peering over with an expression of mild interest but keeping his seat. “Really?”

“After a fashion, anyway,” William added hastily. “I haven’t violated the second law of necrodynamics, she does need feed stock. She’s not a vampire, but it’s a similar sort of principle that goes into her enchantment. If I add too much feed stock, the overflow starts going into her hair and nails, though, which can be a little annoying.”

“Self-repairing seems useful,” Master Warin said. “Why aren’t most zombies self-repairing?”

“It’s a complicated enchantment,” William said. “Not many people know it. Also, the reagants are expensive. I needed almost ten pounds of human soap for the ritual cleansing, though my master told me to buy fifteen in case I ran out partway, and the pearls… Alric says it’s cheaper to just do repairs actively as they come up, and he’s probably right.”

“So, is she as good as a Scottish style zombie?” Master Warin stirred his tea.

“They’re not self-repairing,” William said. “And she won’t improvise.”

“I thought zombies just did as they were told,” Master Warin said.

“Regular zombies do only as they’re told. Scottish zombies do as they are told, but they improvise.” William sat back down, leaving the smooth-skinned maid frozen in an awkward position like a mannequin. “Everything Florence does is by my design. Well, I’ve read a lot of standard interpretation commands into her, but everyone does that, nobody writes out all of their own program of motion anymore anyway.”

Warin frowned briefly behind his teacup. “Really?”

“There are only so many ways someone can tell a body how to climb up a set of stairs,” William crossed his arms defensively. “And most of them will only work on half of the stairs in this city, so it makes sense to use a well-proven script from another master. You don’t need to do that with a Scottish-style zombie, though, they have a certain amount of directing intelligence.”

“That seems better,” Warin said. “Not having to do a lot of reading in of commands, that is.”

“Until it does something you’re not expecting,” William said. He gestured at the maid, still bent over the table, and pulled away the tea tray. “Florence, pick up the tea tray off the table.”

The maid stood up straight, her rumpled dress falling back into place. First she turned, then her hands reached down to the surface of the table, curled as if to grab something, and stopped.

“She doesn’t detect a tea tray on either table. Because I have given her advanced interpretation commands related to visual errors, she attempts to complete the task once based on the last recorded location of a tea tray on a table.” William placed the tea tray on the table; the zombie maid stayed frozen in place. “I haven’t given her a persistent command keyword, so the task ended incomplete. A Scottish zombie might have snatched the tray out of my hands, or it might have waited until I put it on the table. To make it desist, I’d have to issue another command. That kind of unpredictability is not good in an industrial setting, where everything needs to be precisely in its place. Frankly, if you wanted a zombie of the Scottish style, well, as much as I’d hate to dissuade a potential client, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Very interesting,” the archmage said, then placed his teacup on the side table, putting his hands on his knees as if about to stand.

William hastily interrupted. “Would you be interested in commissioning a regular zombie? I promise you, with a good library of interpretation commands, they’re really quite capable personal servants, and my restoration skills are top-notch.” He waved at the maid. For a moment, his eyes flickered towards the card table before traveling back to meet Warin’s eyes.

Warin stood, smoothing his robes. “Not right now, but perhaps later. I understand sourcing the necessary material is a little difficult at the moment, and I don’t have a body on hand for you. I just wanted to find out a little bit more on the topic from an expert, and after speaking with Master Alric about your depth of necromantic knowledge, I felt I needed to talk to you.”

William Taylor’s face cracked into a wide genuine smile. “Really? I mean, of course. There are not so many credentialed master necromancers here in York, and I went all the way to Cambridge for schooling. Master Alric did his apprenticeship in Cumbria, not far from the border. I’m sure he’s at least seen some Scottish zombies, but I suppose he might not have had a master that knew much about the interior differences.”

“He was rather cagey about where he studied,” the archmage said, shrugging.

“Perhaps he felt embarrassed,” William said. “Not everyone can study at Cambridge.”

Simon stared down at the stone floor. He had spent a year and a half studying the workings of imperial law at Oxford. While the laws pertaining to dueling were his principal interest, he knew very well that theft—even theft of a valuable springbow—was not a matter for a city to involve a duke in. Two dead noblemen, only one accounted for with a public duel, however… Simon bit his lip and looked back up.

Sunlight shone in many colors through the stained-glass windows of the militia chapter house, gleaming brightly on the gilded decorations on the duke’s breastplate and nearly equally brightly on his silver skin and hair.

“Given that the whole Taylor family is presently under investigation by the ducal guard, being identified by Beatrice Taylor wasn’t sufficient to obtain your release,” the duke said, the slit pupils of his golden eyes narrowing as he stepped more fully into the tinted sunbeam. “In the absence of any more reliable witnesses, I decided to confirm your identity myself.”

“I’m pleased you came yourself, Your Grace. You do recognize me from the hunt, then?” Simon straightened up, brushing his hair away from his face. “You strangled a werewolf in his beast form with your bare hands. I was there, and so was Beatrice.” He was glad he’d not been asked to identify Beatrice Taylor; the dark-haired girl had come up to his holding cell wearing three layered spiderweb-styled veils over her face and a faded tight-fitting gown with a spiderweb top.

“I recognize that I hunted with you, but to be clear: Tell me that you are indeed Sir Simon, son of Sir Thomas, lately staying at the Golden Fleece here in York.” The duke’s inhuman eyes focused on his, and he pointed with a finger tipped with a talon filed to a blunt point.

Simon gritted his teeth angrily. “I am Sir Simon, son of Sir Thomas, brother to Gelle, and I stayed here in York at the Golden Fleece.”

The duke nodded. “You are his heir, then? Did you wish your family’s bodies sold to the York Textile Company and placed into the hands of the Taylor family for processing?” He held up a finger. “Answer each question separately.”

“Yes, I am his heir; and no, I most certainly did not and will not so wish.” Simon’s face flushed with outrage as he imagined the outrageous spectacle of his sister’s bones stripped of flesh and laid out on a slab for animation as a common factory skeleton. No wonder Beatrice had not wanted to look him in the eyes, face to face; the girl must have felt horribly guilty about the crime committed by her family.

The duke nodded. “I expected as much. Now, tell me what you know of the Earl of Greystoke. He was staying with you at the Golden Fleece, and you named him as a close friend who would vouch for your character.”

Simon took a deep breath. “The Earl was wealthy and much interested in business; he came from Cumbria with two separate hopes, marrying off his eldest daughter and finding new business partners in York. His eldest daughter, Ivette, was by his first wife; after she died, he remarried a woman named Colette, but Ivette and Colette did not get along very well. He has… no, had two younger daughters by Colette,” Simon said. Then a fact popped into his mind, and he blurted it out without thinking. “In Cumbria, though, a daughter would not be named heir.”

“Is there more?” The duke stepped closer, gleaming brighter in the sunlight.

The gilding on his right shoulder caught the light at just the right angle, reflecting the sun straight into Simon’s eyes, and Simon stepped back, averting his eyes as he stepped backward out of the reflected glare.

“Yes,” he said, licking his lips as he desperately searched his mind for the answer to a question he could only pose to himself silently. Why had the force of Providence put that fact at the forefront of my mind? His conversation with Zephyr. Staring at the duke’s armored boots, Simon swallowed, and steeled himself to tell a lie. It was a forgivable lie, he thought.

The duke’s foot tapped once, a sign of impatience.

“He named me his heir,” Simon whispered hoarsely, unable to give his full voice to the sacred lie that Providence had inspired in his mind. A cold wind whistled through the chapter house, and Simon looked up, seeing the duke’s face twisted with anger.

“Clear the room,” the duke said.

“Yes, Your Grace,” said the militiaman standing next to him, who started to jog the exit.

“No, take those others with you.” The duke gestured at the other holding cells. “I would have speech privately with Sir Simon.”

The militiaman swallowed nervously, pulling a key off his belt. “You mean to have the rest of them released, Your Grace?”

“You can put them back after. I’m sure they won’t be any trouble.” The duke gestured negligently; a pair of wolfhounds trotted into the chapter house accompanied by a liveried guardsman.

The other prisoners—a drunk, a thief, and a man whose reason for detention remained unclear to Simon—did not test their luck, walking meekly out of the chapter house. The duke did not say another word until the great door boomed shut, the sound echoing off the high vaulted ceiling of the barracks chapter house.

“You lied to me. But it is so unusual of a lie, and so bold, that I wish to understand the reason for it.” The duke’s golden eyes fixed on Simon’s.

“That is… I think he would have wished me his heir. That, if he did not die, he would have made me his heir. Because…” Simon did not say he was a fisher like the baron, and unlike the baron’s legal Cumbrian heir. Thoughts of the beautiful Ivette flickered through his mind. A tear rolled down his face. “I cannot say the reason,” he whispered, then cleared his throat, regaining strength in his voice as he looked up, staring up at the stained glass windows high above and focusing on a singular figure, one he could imagine was blessing him. “But I have faith that this is so.”

The duke hummed thoughtfully, a curious little surprised sound. “So you do.”

Simon pulled his eyes away from the vaulted ceiling of the barracks chapter house. “Does it matter?”

The duke stared at Simon for a long moment without saying anything, slit pupils slowly dilating as the shadow of a cloud dimmed the room. His mouth opened silently for a moment, revealing a forked tongue poised to speak. Several tense heartbeats passed before the tongue moved. “I have decided that it does.”

The door creaked open. The liveried guardsman was back, carrying Simon’s silver sword by its sheath in one hand and a familiar-looking key in the other.

He speaks with a literal forked tongue, Simon thought to himself, then swallowed nervously. What have I gotten myself into?