I Swear I'm Not A Dark Lord!

Redecorating

"What is all this?" Kistur gawked at the thick binders of decorative samples piled on Taylor's desk. "And who are all these people in your house?"

"We're redecorating," Taylor moaned through his mask, "and it's awful."

"You could just paint the place."

"Not good enough. Not according to Jane. And not according to Mister Bonce, who thinks we need mana wire in every room."

"You do need it in every room. Everyone else has it."

"Really?"

"Really, Bilius. It's the legate's mansion, and you don't even have central mana. They built this place when the empire was new. Haven't you ever been to someone else's house? Of course you haven't. You have exactly one friend. Are we going to fight today, or what?"

"I have to pick a color palette for the guest rooms. Which one of these do you think is best?" Taylor laid out eight boards, each with several colors of paint on them.

"That one." Kistur pointed.

"Why that one?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "It's the closest one, and I'd rather be sparring."

"You're no help." Taylor wrote 'guest room' on the board and put it in a tray marked 'decided'. "If Father hates it, I will blame you."

"Right," snorted Kistur, "like he's ever going to see a guest room."

They took up their wooden weapons and headed outside, passing workers as they went. The upstairs rooms were in such bad shape the floors had to be pried up and thrown away. Nobody had slept in those rooms in nearly a decade. When they got to the practice yard, they discovered it was full of all the upstairs furniture still fit to keep. They said their prayer to the gods, then hopped the wall to practice on the forested hill. They chased each other back and forth, weaving through the trees, taking and giving high ground, and, more than once, tumbling down the slope in ignominious defeat. The laborers stopped and stared, unsure if they were witnessing a duel or two boys having fun.

By the time it was over, both of them were covered in forest debris. They had to bathe before Chambers would let them in the house, in basins and cold water at the paved laundry station, back to back so Taylor could take off his mask. The heat and dirt flowed away, leaving them clean, standing on sun-warmed stone.

Kistur was two years older and already growing into his manhood. His training had melted away the last of his baby fat. There was very little about him that said he was a child.

"Selection is in two days," he said out of nowhere. "I have to get a class. If I don't, I'll just end up like the rest of my family, a farmer or laborer or something. I couldn't stand it."

"If anyone deserves a class based on talent, it's you. I used to beat you all the time, but now we're even. You're growing faster than I am."

"I know that much. I just …" He kicked over the basin and let it flow into the drain. "It isn't fair. Did you ever hear the story about how Curator Jane got her class? She didn't even want it. The church had to send people to her parents to convince her it was worth pursuing. I mean, I get it. It's just Scholar. But still. You get people like me who want it, who work for it, and it's all left up to chance and nepotism. I bet you get a class because your father is a legate."

"I would turn it down, actually."

"Says the boy who always had everything. You can afford to hire half the town to redo your house. What do you need a class for? I deserve it!"

Taylor rinsed his mask and put it into place, then went to find his clothes. Chambers had come and gone so deftly, he only knew she'd been there because his clothes were clean and hanging out to dry. She'd done Kistur's, too. He dressed in silence while Kistur's anger slowly cooled.

"If you don't get a class, I can help you develop innate magic. It won't be easy, but it's possible."

"You can't teach innate magic. It's innate."

"People just say that because they don't understand it."

"And you do?"

Taylor didn't answer with words. Instead, he took his wooden sword and ran his palm along the dull blade, changing it.

Kistur was unimpressed. "It's blue and shimmery. So what?"

"Can you explain why it's blue and why it shimmers?"

"Magic, duh!"

"Right. Most magicians know as much about innate magic as you do about regular magic. They don't know how it works, so they shrug their shoulders and say, 'innate, duh!' and leave it at that."

"But Bilius d'Mourne knows the secret, and will teach it to me."

"Could take a few months, but yeah."

"Well, forget it." Kistur whipped his clothes from the line. "We don't have a few months. There's a big push to retake the Garem-Da and we're getting called up early. Midway deploys in three weeks. I'm not supposed to know that, so keep it to yourself."

"Three weeks? That's right before the festival! I was counting on us going together. You're going to miss it!" The Harvest Festival was the one day of the year everybody wore masks. Taylor's big plan was to attend incognito by wearing a different mask than usual.

"My class problem is a little more important."

"It is. I just don't know how to help you with it."

Kistur sat with Taylor for a late lunch in the dining room too big for two, like they usually did on sparring days. Instead of returning to the garrison that night, Kistur was due at his parents' house in town.

"I'd be a jerk and invite myself over but," he pointed at the line of workmen carting demolished flooring and whatnot through the house.

"Damn. I should have invited you. Like, lots of times. I have no friendship skills."

"That's fine. I'm only interested in fighting, anyway."

"What about fishing? We could hit up the stream tomorrow."

"Can't. Sorry. My parents are making me spend a bunch of time with them."

"Must be inconvenient, having parents who like you."

"Shut up."

With Kistur gone, Taylor was alone with his stacks of samples and too many rooms to make decisions for. Mister Bonce, his chief advisor for the project, found him agonizing over some nice upholstery fabrics.

"If you're having trouble, maybe you should set up a statue of Moya. She's the goddess of … "

"Hospitality," Taylor finished for him, "and interior decoration. She's not someone I normally pray to. I'm not sure if I should intrude." What he meant was he'd try to talk to the gods and make sure they were okay with it. They had always appreciated his attention before now, but he didn't spend a lot of time in Moya's domain.

"It's not an intrusion! Go ahead!" He was in the void again, with several of Craft's subordinate gods gathered at a long table. They were drinking, and no wonder. Their little throng included the god of alcohol. Moya had something wickedly green in one hand and a cheery glint in her eye. "Imagine what I could do with Bonce if he prayed to me every day!"

"You're just popping into my head at home now?"

"Have a drink!" She gave him the glass of vivid green liquid. "Your house is practically a temple now, so why not enjoy the perks? And do keep pressing on with the renovation. I know it's hard, but so is any skill when you're first learning."

Taylor downed the drink and exhaled a curl of green flame. It went down weirdly, through his lungs instead of his guts. He forgot about his doubts and let the gods' concoction work on him, warm his veins, and seep into his flesh. Colors sharpened like knives. Textures graced his tongue. Moya was the goddess of hospitality. Surely, she wouldn't poison him.

"That's the spirit, dear."

The other gods cheered him as his consciousness was shoved back to Aarden like a barstool drunk out of drinking funds.

"Mister d'Mourne? Are you all right?"

"Your idea has been approved. Bonce, you wouldn't happen to have some choice material for said divine statue? It should be somewhat special. If you bring enough for two, I'll grant you one in exchange."

"Right away, Young Master!"

Taylor kept at the samples while he waited. His biggest immediate problem was his desk: it was too small to see everything at once. He scooped up sample books by the armful and hauled them to the dinner table whose size would finally be put to some advantage. He opened as many of them as he could and laid them flat: woods, paints, fabrics, wallpapers, and little models of furniture arrayed like a doll's moving day.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Bonce returned with a heavy block of marble. That's not to say he carried it. He had people for that, four of them, carefully stepping through doorways with a three-foot-tall column of stone. It was rough cut, but Taylor could see exactly why Bonce held on to it and carried the heavy thing around on jobs. Year after year, he must have hoped to find a truly great use for it. Workmen brought in a sturdy wooden stool to use as a stand, and they set the marble block on top of it.

"I've been hauling this around for years," Bonce began.

"And you never understood why until now." Taylor put his hands on it. It was so obvious what had to be done now, but he couldn't start just yet. There was the matter of exchange to be settled. Even when a job is worth doing for free, one should get something out of it. Making artifacts willy-nilly and just giving them away would have all kinds of bad side effects, not least of which was taking his abilities for granted. He'd seen what could happen when capable people were too giving, and everyone around them felt entitled to their power.

"She's in there, I know it!" Bonce waved his hands expressively. "At the workshop, we put this on a pedestal when we're not on a job. She'll look magnificent there. I know you're expecting half the material, but I want her to be two feet tall."

"That could be a problem, Mister Bonce. I normally charge five gold to make a divine statue nine inches tall. The difficulty grows with the volume of the image, understand?"

"But is this not a perfect material, Mister d'Mourne? White marble with gold veins. Timeless and elegant! It'll polish up beautifully. She is speaking to you like she does to me. I can see it!"

"It's perfect," he agreed. "So perfect, the goddess will shape herself. But the mana costs will be extreme. If you let me keep the top third from this point, where it narrows, I'll uncover your goddess for forty gold. It's less than half what I'd normally charge but," Taylor ran his hand over the stone's rough surface, "she truly wants to come out for us. For you."

Bonce looked like he would cry for joy. "Let's not miss this opportunity!"

Taylor began by separating the section that wouldn't be part of Bona's idol. Then he carefully removed the largest pieces that were in the goddess's way, flaking them away as scree that piled beneath her. When he stepped back to look at her, the shape beneath the stone was obvious to anyone. She was almost bursting free.

"I need cushions in case I faint." In less time than it took him to ask, Bona's crew built him a ring of pillows to protect him from a fall. He put his hands on her again, running them up and down, feeling her just beneath the surface. He let his mana gather, filling himself past the point he thought he'd burst.

He whispered to her privately. "Welcome, Moya, to our home."

"Welcome, Moya!" said everyone in the room, which was everyone on the property. All the servants and Bona's crew had crowded into the dining room to watch, spilling into the rooms beyond and craning their necks to see.

He didn't need to push. She pulled at his mana, pulled hard, and the dross fell off of her all at once and revealed the white-robed woman streaked in gold. She lifted one hand in welcome while her other held a glass, its contents colored gold by an opportune collection of mica in just the right place. For the barest moment before his legs gave out, her stone face was alive. She winked at him.

Hands touched him with concern, an entirely foreign feeling to his Bilius body. "I need a minute." He rested his head at Moya's feet. "Two minutes. Maybe five."

"She's wonderful," said a lovestruck Bonce. "Elegant and welcoming. I'd swear she was alive!"

Everyone started talking at the same time, and the voices reached an agreement. There was an urgent need to celebrate.

"Young Master," said Blake, who knelt beside him, "would it be all right if we opened the wine cellar?"

"The gods are real," Taylor mumbled, "and they like a nice get-together. Go ahead."

He soon found himself seated at one end of the dining table with a cup of strong tea at hand and the goddess facing him from the far end. Everyone wanted to toast her and talk loudly over the samples. When the room got too packed, they carried Moya into the entrance hall, where she could be seen by everybody. They gathered in the hall and on the stairs, flowing in and out of the salon and drifted occasionally to where Taylor sipped his tea while his mana recovered.

The chaos of samples was starting to fit together for him, a little bit like music. He needed a theme, an element that would run through the downstairs where all the public spaces were, and variations for each room. He eliminated materials that were overtly luxe. The man who lived in this house for his whole life and never saw fit to touch a thing didn't need to show off wealth. He pulled forward everything local to their home province of Estfold, especially anything from around Mourne. Forestry and farming were the town's main activities, but there were talented artists who could do accent pieces. The foresters of Mourne pulled in some good hardwood, and there was at least one excellent cabinet maker and his shop of apprentices. Nearby Midway had a thriving little textile business, and they got some of their dyes from Mourne.

By the time Bonce walked in, Taylor had organized the dining table into swatch zones, laid out according to the downstairs rooms. The overseer of Bona's Ventures understood his plan immediately.

"This is good, d'Mourne. Very good." But a few touches later from the hand of the master, a tone change here and an accent change there, and very good became great. And probably still on budget, which was an even greater achievement.

"I'm glad we brought her into it. I never would have gotten this far without the extra help. Normally, none of this makes any sense to me."

They returned to the party together, just in time to see the last drops poured from the last bottle Blake brought up. The end of the wine didn't dampen anyone's spirits, but Taylor's entry sure did. The moment he walked in, he was greeted with instant silence. He checked his mask to make sure it was in place.

"Is there something on my face?" Nobody seemed to get the joke.

There were whispers. He wished he couldn't hear them, but they were all too clear.

"Is he hoping the legate dies over there, so he can keep the house?"

"I can't believe he's charging Bonce forty gold. He barely did anything."

"He's a shut-in, you know. Doesn't even go to school."

"He killed his mother."

"His staff hates him."

"The nursemaid ran off and left him for dead. Too bad he woke up."

Everything was fine just a minute ago, but now he was thinking about which spells to use to defend himself. Taylor turned to Bonce, whose face was screwed up into a sneer. "It's time to take your people home, Mister Bonce. You'll all feel better in the morning. I promise."

He didn't see his guests out, but trudged upstairs to his bedroom, shut the door, locked it, braced it with a chair, and braced that chair with another. Too many people, too close, all at once, for too long. That's what probably triggered the curse so hard that even his mask didn't help.

He didn't know the math on his curse, how it worked, or exactly what it did. He couldn't go anywhere there were people or show his face in a crowd. And forget having a family someday. Who could love a man whose face they could never see without hating him?

He couldn't even have one night. It was a stupid way to live.

After a poor night of sleep and a lackluster workout, Taylor tried to relieve his worries about the curse. His staff were more solicitous than usual, and when he asked Blake to run into town for a few things, the groundskeeper was eager to help. Two hours later, Taylor had a roll of extraordinarily thin paper called rapapi. It was a byproduct of Mourne's timber industry and not considered precious, but there was enough demand to keep making it on a seasonal basis. Painting on rapapi used to be a popular art form — over a hundred years ago.

Taylor and Blake made a thin wooden frame and stretched rapapi across the open space to make a screen. They added feet to create a few inches of gap at the bottom. Taylor stood the screen on his desk. Backlit by his window or another light source, his appearance would be reduced to a mere shadow.

Then, with Blake still in the room, Taylor took off his mask.

"Do you feel anything, Blake?"

"No, sir. I don't feel a thing."

Taylor fidgeted with the screen. It felt claustrophobic, getting hemmed in behind his desk like he was trapped in an even smaller part of the house. It was probably effective, but he hated it.

"I want a bigger one. We'll arrange furniture so I can sit across from guests with a low tea table between us. Make the screen tall enough to clear the table. I want to be able to pass tea and books beneath it without making a fuss. If you build it in sections, we can put it away when it's not in use. I should be able to meet with guests and do business without the curse sneaking up on us."

"I understand, Young Master." Blake lingered uncomfortably while he started on a stack of newspapers. He'd fallen behind lately and wanted to catch up while he didn't have anything else going on. The workmen had yet to appear for the day. Perhaps they'd never return, and last night's inspirations would go to waste.

Blake left in silence and returned a few minutes later with Cook and Chambers. Taylor could feel the three of them, beyond the screen, just standing there. He read the provincial capital was building a pleasure district, which seemed strange to him. Why would they need a whole new section of the city? He'd have to ask the curator about it.

"Is there a problem, Blake?"

"It's about last night, Young Master."

"What about it?" They were going to quit. After months of keeping the curse restrained, the hate was back. They'd quit, and he'd have to find strangers to come in and do their jobs, probably poorly. He would need to change staff every few months. Eventually, he would be known as the impossible client living alone in his dark, partially-renovated mansion.

"We're sorry, sir. It was your first gathering, and we failed you."

That was unexpected. "Tch. I'm not sure what you three did. The curse did what it does, and the party ended. Up to that point, I thought it went well."

"It's what we said, sir. We told people things they had no business knowing. Even if you were a bad person, it wouldn't be our place to say awful things. The curse is a poor excuse for our behavior. Please forgive us, sir." There was a trace of tears in his voice.

Taylor put on his mask and set aside the screen. His three staff members were bowing, which wasn't often done in Gordia. Were those tearstains on his floor?

"You're not quitting?"

"Only if that is what the Young Master desires."

"Young Master does not desire that at all! Stand up and wipe away those tears. Is this why I haven't had breakfast yet? Because you've all been moping about last night? Last night's failure is a chance to learn, that's all. We'll improve, and do better next time. All of us. When you feel the hate of my curse, remember to guide me away from the guests and keep your mouths shut. With any luck, we'll have future opportunities to practice and get better at it."

"Thank you, Young Master!"

"I'll take breakfast in here since the big table is full of stuff and I don't want it moved. Blake, I hate to send you into town twice in one day but I need you to give a message to Mister Bonce. Tell him to have his crew here by noon, or I'm keeping his goddess for myself. Chambers, keep on the workmen at the end of the day about cleaning up their messes. Feel free to scold them if they try to leave without sweeping up."

"Yes, sir!" they said together, then scattered to their tasks.

Taylor went back to his paper, mood much improved. "Honestly, the drama that comes with people."

Bonce showed up with his workers, shamefaced but glad he still had the job, and Taylor got forty gold added to his Merchant card. He spent that day and the next designing the second-floor rooms. Unlike the guest rooms, each had its own character, so Taylor had to spend every drop of Moya's liquid inspiration.

The new mana wiring and guest rooms would be done by winter, but it would take a year to get through the rest of the house. Some materials had to be ordered months in advance, custom furniture took time to build, and there were only so many workmen in Mourne. He needed space to store the materials he received but couldn't use yet, so Taylor planned a new stone building on the grounds. When the remodel was complete, they could finish the storage building as a carriage house and take down the old horse shed.

It was nearly as exhausting as his training trips. But he had a good plan at the end, with dependency trees and specifications in a stack of binders. If he disappeared, the project could still be completed. Taylor suspected Moya's domain included organization. Or, maybe she was drinking buddies with Order or one of his subordinates.

Cook rewarded him that night with wild boar ribs, heavily spiced and slow-cooked, with a polenta-like substance, and a salad fresh from their garden. There was small beer on the side, so weak one would hardly call it beer, but Taylor thought it was perfect for the meal. The servants were done for the day and had gone off to their cottages beyond the wall. For a moment, he was at peace, eating with his mask off, enjoying a breeze that carried summer through the open window. He was there for quite some time, dining at his leisure, watching the stars turn.

The moment ended because someone started pounding on his front door.