Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) (14 page)

              “What about tents?” Gronir asked. “If you want them to be able to march anywhere the cold is going to be as big a threat as the monsters.”

              “The vehicles should work for that,” I said. “Each squad is going to have an armored vehicle, like a transport but made of iron, and probably floating like the barge we escaped Lanrest on. Put a heavy flamer on top, mounted so it can swivel in any direction, and big doors in the back so the men can load or unload quickly. So they can travel fast, and always have shelter and a little fort to fall back on if they run into trouble.”

              “Sounds like fun,” Cerise commented.

              “Effective,” Marcus agreed. “That will let us carry a lot of supplies without loading the men down. Can we afford proper chain mail for armor?”

              “We’ll see. Avilla, are there any problems with moving the forge up to the top level of the keep instead of hiding it in the basement?”

              She frowned. “There’s room, but the noise will be a problem. I was hoping we could use that area as guest quarters, so we can invite nobles or wizards to visit. We’re hoping to recruit some people like that, right?”

              “You’re going to be doing some more construction anyway, right Daniel?” Cerise put in. “Maybe you should go ahead and raise a small island in the river, and put up a building that’s actually designed as a place for craftsmen to work? We’ll want a tannery too at some point, and you sure don’t want that in the keep.”

              “We’ll need to buy the armor in town either way,” Oskar pointed out. “We don’t have a real armorer, and even if we did making a hundred suits of mail would take months. I was just thinking a smithy would let us do our own repairs. But, ah, you can conjure up iron now? Real iron?”

              I nodded. “Yeah, it’s real. It’s actually a nickel-iron alloy, basically the same stuff as meteoric iron. But I imagine you could make decent steel out of it.”

              “In that case I think I can solve the armor problem. There’s a big arsenal over at the east end of town that equips the royal army, and normally supplies most of the arms merchants in town. They’re not selling anything right now because they’ve just about run out of bar stock, but if we can supply them with a few tons of iron I expect they’ll be fine with turning some of it into arms and armor for us.”

              “Excellent. I can turn out a cartload of iron bars in a few minutes. In that case I think your answer is we can go as heavy on the armor as you like, Marcus.”

              He smiled. “Good to hear. Let’s go with full helms and chain hauberks, then.”

              “I, um, uniforms will take some time,” Avilla offered, a little nervously. “I need to find another four or five good seamstresses first, and we’ve got some urgent needs to take care of for our people. But if you give me, say, another two days to set things up, I think I can provide five or six complete outfits a day. The real problem will be boots. We don’t have any cobblers, and I can’t do them all myself.”

              “At that rate it would take a month to outfit the unit,” I pointed out. “Take an extra day to set it up, and hire twice as many people.”

              “Alright, Daniel. But I’m a little worried about our provisions. Food prices in Kozalin are already outrageous, and we only have so much coin.”

              “That shouldn’t be a big issue,” I told her. “We can make money. For starters, I’m sure we could sell extra iron to the arsenal for cash. Someone would buy the old transports, too, and we won’t need them for much longer. Hmm. Maybe there’s a nervous grain merchant who’d like to live in a climate-controlled fortress?”

              “I’ll take that angle,” Cerise offered. “I’m trying to make contacts in town anyway, and I’ve got some ideas on how to lure in rich guys.”

              That was a surprise. Cerise has always been pretty outgoing, though, and no one else was likely to have time.

              “Go for it,” I agreed. “As for the boots, I’m sure a city this size has a cobbler’s guild. We’ll just have to buy them.”

              There were a lot of other issues to discuss, but most of them were easily solved. Oscar wanted the battlements finished, so he could start working out how to drive off an attacking force instead of just closing the gates and waiting for me to fix things. All three officers had long lists of minor equipment and supply issues that needed addressing, and Gronir wanted to start sending out scouting parties to keep an eye on the local monsters.

              I pointed out that Kozalin’s defenders were likely already doing that, since they had wizards and a company of griffon riders available. We just needed to get plugged in to whatever system they had for distributing intel, so I put that on my own to-do list.

              After the meeting wound down I still had most of the afternoon to kill, since the Red Conclave made a point of starting their meetings at sunset. They were wizards, after all, not mere ordinary folk forced to retire to bed by the fading of the light…

              Yeah, I got a laugh out of that the first time I heard it. To think that having artificial lights was a major status symbol.

              At any rate, it gave me time to finish up more of the detail work on the keep. I made the battlements a fairly complex design, with a fully enclosed inner walkway and a more exposed outer one that had plenty of arrow slits and murder holes. The roof got a similar enclosed walkway around the edge, with a sloped roof and gutters laid out to ensure most of the snow that landed on it ended up in the cistern. Keeping that filled was a bit of a project, so I also installed a small winch in one corner that the men could use to haul up buckets of ice and snow.

              When I went to dress for my trip to the Conclave I was surprised to find Avilla waiting for me, with a new outfit she’d somehow found time to assemble for the occasion. A black shirt and pants of much finer material than I was used to seeing here, embroidered with gold lightning bolts at the cuffs and collar. There was a leather belt with a sheath for Grinder, new boots, and a heavy furred cloak that I was pretty sure had come from one of the felwolves we’d killed on our journey.

              She smiled at my expression. “I knew you’d need to look your best for this. We can’t have anyone thinking you’re just a hedge wizard, right?”

              “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Avilla,” I told her. “What about you and Cerise?”

              She smiled mysteriously. “You’ll see. Maybe you should make yourself a staff while we dress? I’ve heard these wizard’s meetings are all about who has the most impressive one.”

              I chuckled. “Maybe I will. If people think I actually need one, it will give me an advantage when the inevitable assassination attempt happens.”

              She rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t talk like that.”

              I spent a few minutes experimenting with that while the girls dressed, a process that took a while even with Avilla’s household magic to help. I wasn’t much of an artist, and conjuring gems or precious metals wasn’t really feasible. Finally I hit on the idea of fusing different materials together. I conjured up a dark red and black granite, and joined it with transparent crystal in a spiral like a barber pole. Polish the surface, cap it with a big red crystal, and I had something fairly impressive looking. A little gaudy, but from what I’d seen that was in style here. I laid an enchantment over it whose only purpose was to look like something complicated covered by an imperfect concealment spell. Not bad.

              “Looking good, Daniel,” Cerise said from behind me. I turned around, and had to control the urge to gape.

              Cerise was dressed all in black, but the resemblance to my own outfit ended there. Hers was all leather, and tight enough to make me wonder how she’d gotten into it. A leather miniskirt that barely came down to mid-thigh. A tight leather top that bared her arms and emphasized the curve of her breasts, but failed to reach her skirt by a couple of inches. Black boots with a bit of heel, and leather gloves that left her clawed fingertips bare. Her silver knives were sheathed on a pair of belts at her waist, and a snug black collar bearing my lightning bolt was fitted around her neck. She smiled and did a little spin, revealing that the skirt had a hole in the back for her tail. The long length of whipcord muscle waved about behind her, completely unconcealed.

              In contrast, Avilla wore a red dress of what just might be silk. It was long enough to hide her knees, but any pretense of modesty was ruined by the way it molded like a second skin against her generous curves. Low boots and long gloves embroidered with lightning bolts completed the ensemble, and a ruby pendant on a gold chain gleamed at her throat. A voluminous black-furred cloak of felwolf pelt hung from her shoulders, long enough to almost touch the floor.

              “Wow,” I breathed.

              “You like?” Cerise grinned, and slipped an arm around Avilla’s waist. “Check it out, it’s the sexy sorceress and her badass bitch. I tried to talk her into showing off some cleavage, but my honeydew can be shy.”

              Avilla rolled her eyes. “If I wore what you suggested I’d freeze to death before we were halfway there. The rest of us can’t just ignore the cold like you can.”

              “Spoilsport. Ready to put on a show, Daniel?”

              I nodded. “Let’s do this.”

              We took a transport to the Iron Citadel, which gave me a chance to put warmth enchantments on our new cloaks while Gronir drove. He and Daria were acting as my honor guard again tonight, while a couple of his men had come along to watch the transport while we were inside.

              The Citadel bustled with activity despite the relatively late hour, and there were a lot more guards in evidence than the last time I’d been here. But we had no trouble getting in, and a servant was already waiting to escort us to our place.

              The Conclave’s weekly meetings were held in a large round chamber somewhere in the maze-like lower reaches of the Citadel. The walls and floor were iron, and iron beams rose high overhead to support a domed ceiling set with skylights. A spherical iron cage filled with fire hung from the middle of the ceiling, providing light to the room.

              The middle of the floor was filled with a large oval table, with twenty or so seats arranged along its sides. To either side were rows of raised benches, like a miniature amphitheater. A small throne on a dais sat at the far end of the room, overlooking the head of the oval table.

              Our guide sent Gronir and Daria to stand with the other guards around the perimeter of the chamber, and then led us to a row of benches where a number of people were already gathered. I spotted Carl on the other side of the room, with Mara sitting next to him. He nodded to me, and leaned over to say something to his companion.

              “Ooh, nice,” Cerise commented. “She’s looking extra sexy tonight. Tasty.”

              Mara was wearing makeup, and her hair shone with a fiery glow that had to be some kind of cosmetic magic. But that was apparently normal here.

              Most of the throng that filled the room were men, wearing fine robes and carrying ornate staves that each tried fiercely to outdo the others. The scattering of women wore a bewildering variety of revealing dresses, and adorned themselves with the most eye-catching magic they could manage. Half the accessories in the room glowed, or flamed, or otherwise announced their magical nature.

              “You could say that about most of the room,” I pointed out. “Is there some secret rule that all women who have magic have to be good looking?”

              Avilla giggled. “Trust me, master. If you were a woman with magical talents, that’s one of the first things you’d research. Anything that improves your health will make a noticeable difference. Then there’s glamour, cosmetic spells, alchemical dyes and about a million other tricks.”

              I raised an eyebrow. “Should I be wondering how you know so much about this?”

              Cerise leaned into my other side. “She’s naturally perfect, master. But I had to work for it.”

              “I see. Well, I like your work.”

              The seats at the central table were filling up by then, so I guessed there probably wasn’t time to chat with Carl before the meeting started. But as the crowd of lesser personages hurried to their seats my eyes fell on one figure who didn’t seem to fit. A tall, gangly girl with limp brown hair and a painfully homely face, wearing a simple linen dress that seemed cut to hide as much of her appearance as possible. The parts of her I could see were mostly covered with bandages, and the few patches of bare skin were marred by ugly silver-grey blotches.

              “Any idea who that is?” I asked.

              Avilla shrugged. Cerise frowned at her for a moment, and then glanced back at Carl.

              “I think that’s the healer girl,” she answered. “What was her name? Elin?”

              “Oh! That’s right,” Avilla agreed. “Carl mentioned that. Apparently the monster that almost got her was some kind of exotic golem made of liquid metal, and the stuff infected her when it was broken. That must be what those spots are.”

              “That’s also why no one wants to sit next to her,” Cerise added. “Mara says she can barely keep herself alive with her healing magic, and some of the wizards are afraid the curse might be contagious.”