Unruly Summon Chapter 6: Audience (Patreon)

I sat at a plain wooden table in uncomfortable silence, peering at my stew. I'd tried to eat it, but I wasn't really hungry. Being summoned at nearly midnight and ending up in an early afternoon caused one hell of a bout of jet-lag, and bits of my body were insisting it was around 5am and far too early for breakfast. It was surprising I hadn't fallen asleep in the middle of my training session, but between the excitement and exertion, it made some sort of sense. Now that I'd stopped, though, I was really feeling it.

Of course, the other part of my lack of hunger was that I was sharing the table with a princess, king and queen. The overall concentration of royalty was significantly above anything I'd consider comfortable. Christine and Mary stood against a wall behind me, while a couple of knights stood against the opposite wall, behind the royal couple, their faces and features hidden beneath full helmets and plate mail.

I wasn't too sure about the use of plate mail for bodyguards. Wouldn't it impede their ability to react quickly? And when were Christine and Mary supposed to eat?

I'd been picturing King Edward as tall and regal, wearing those posh medieval clothes with far too many ruffles. In fact, he was wearing the same sort of armour as Christine, except that his was less dented. Seemed an odd choice of clothing for a dinner table, but given their concern about assassinations, I could see the logic. Unlike me, the king wasn't exactly a secret. In a nod to his status, he did at least have a circlet of metal on his head, like some sort of casual-wear crown.

I hadn't pictured Queen Victoria at all, because I hadn't known she existed. Logically, given the existence of Stephanie and her siblings, there must have been a queen or mistress of some sort around somewhere, but no-one had mentioned her, and I hadn't given it any thought. Now that I saw her, she was almost the spitting image of Stephanie. Very similar features, the same hair, matching eye colour. Even their clothes were similar. She was simply Stephanie with a few extra wrinkles.

"Is the food not to your liking?" asked Stephanie, despite the fact that she wasn't exactly attacking her own, either. "I apologise it's vegetarian, but given the limited available fertile land, it's been a long time since we've had the leeway to raise livestock for food."

"It's fine, I'm just tired."

"That's not a surprise, after the afternoon you've had," responded the king. "I'm impressed you were able to keep up with Christine. It's a good sign."

"Oh, yes, that too, but mostly it's because you summoned me in the middle of the night."

"Oh! Why didn't you say?" exclaimed Stephanie. "You could have slept rather than trained this afternoon."

"Nah. The best way of dealing with jet-lag is to work through it."

Stephanie nodded, leaving me wondering how my divine powers had translated jet-lag. I'd seen no signs they'd invented jets, but everyone had nonetheless understood what I meant. Given the existence of magic, maybe they had a teleportation equivalent.

The brief burst of conversation over, I returned to prodding my stew. It wasn't just me and Stephanie, but the king and queen weren't exactly eating with gusto, either. Was this not the normal mealtime for them? But if this was set up specifically to talk with me, there didn't seem to be much talking, either. Maybe they were both just stressed?

Personally, I was—to make a bad pun—stewing over whether to ask for more details on the war. If I did, would they be suspicious that I was suspicious? Or would talking about it be the natural thing to do if I wasn't suspicious, and therefore not talking about it was suspicious? Why did my divine gifts not come with social expertise?

"So... I wanted to apologise," said the king, interrupting everyone's stew-poking. "Saying that we've inconvenienced you for our own ends barely even scratches the surface, and yet you've still agreed to save us. For that, I can only bow my head in thanks."

He did indeed bow his head. The thin metal circlet he was wearing on his head—which wasn't fixed in place by anything—fell off. It landed in his stew with a plop, showering him and the table with gravy.

This was not a man used to bowing his head. Also not a man who apparently knew how to react when he was showered in gravy.

The queen's lips twitched, and she covered her mouth with a hand, but she wasn't fooling anyone. Her shaking shoulders gave away how hard she was trying to stifle her laughter.

Stephanie didn't bother hiding it, bursting into riotous laughter. "Father!" she exclaimed.

The door of the room clicked as Mary rushed out, hopefully seeking either help or a towel.

King Edward himself appeared to have no idea how to react, staring down at himself in silence, waiting for his brain to reboot. I was in much the same condition. Would it be lese-majesty to laugh at him? Should I be doing something to help? Averting my eyes? It was only the surrealness of the situation that stopped me immediately matching Stephanie, but I could already feel the corners of my mouth edging upwards as my brain insisted it was funny.

I copied the queen, hiding my mouth behind a hand.

Impressively, Christine didn't even twitch. Nor did the other two knights. Maybe they weren't even real people, and this room just happened to be decorated by a couple of suits of armour.

"Err..." said King Edward.

"I apologise for my clumsy father," said Stephanie, still giggling. "I'm sure Mary will be back soon with a cloth."

Mary did indeed turn back up very quickly. Thankfully, most of what hit the king had ended up on his breastplate, from which it was easily wiped off, and some amount of dignity was restored. Nevertheless, it did a wonderful job of framing him as a fallible human and not some sort of unapproachable monarch, and the discomfort that had been hanging around the table was washed away. We soon got chatting properly. Not about the war, but I learned the names and ages of Stephanie's siblings, that Queen Victoria wrote romance novels, and that King Edward would much rather be in the countryside fishing than stuck in the castle. They might be royalty, but beneath that, they were just people. Just like me.

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After Thomas left, escorted by Christine and Mary to ensure he didn't get lost—or deliberately go exploring, and see something he shouldn't—Stephanie peered suspiciously at her father.

"Was that deliberate?" she asked.

"Err... As much as I want to claim it was a deliberate tactical decision on my part, no. No, it was not. My usual diadems are enchanted to not fall off, but they were all too gaudy for today."

"It was a resounding success, though," opined Queen Victoria. "You really got him to open up. A most promising young man, I thought. It's a shame that summoned heroes are automatically returned home once their tasks are complete, or else I'd be giving thought to what to do with him after he's dealt with our demon problem. What do you think, Stephanie?"

"Even if we could keep him, it wouldn't be feasible. Our illusion of destitution will be relatively simple to keep up for as long as all he sees is his corner of the castle and the battlefield, but not beyond that. There's no way he could move freely around the kingdom and interact with nobles without realising he'd been fooled. Even if we could keep up the illusion somehow, I'm not eating that gruel forever."

"Indeed. I'm surprised he took your claim about livestock at face value. There is land that is only lightly corrupted by miasma, yet not suitable for growing food crops. We're hardly going to ignore such land in the midst of a food crisis. Isn't it natural to fill it with grazing animals?"

"He's no farmer," shrugged Stephanie. "I probed his knowledge a little beforehand, so I knew I could get away with it."

"Even if it's not long term, has he formed any other attachments to the kingdom?"

"Yes, actually. I'd say things are going even better than expected. The harem idea seems to be a bust: we've given him a slave who would enthusiastically fulfil his every whim, however depraved, but he won't even let her see him naked, let alone take advantage of her in other ways. But frankly, I think what he is doing is even better. Rather than shallow relationships based on pleasure and sex, or even trade or mutual advantage, he actually seems to care about people. At least, once he gets to know them. And now you two have added yourselves to that list."

"I think it's too soon to draw conclusions on the nature of his relationships; he hasn't even been here a full day. But yes, it's looking promising. The more he cares about us, the more likely he is to act to defend us. It might be worth making use of that..."

"How so?"

"We initially discounted the idea of faking an assassination attempt by the demons to bias him against them. If we arranged for him to be attacked directly, if we staged it early, it would be more likely to scare him off than enrage him, and if we staged it late, the chances of him seeing through the deception would be too great. If he wasn't attacked directly, the impact wouldn't be great enough to warrant the effort. But if he's already forming real bonds with people, the calculus has changed. Make some noise out in the corridor. Have Christine 'defend' him, to stop him leaving his room. The noise outside stops, we tell him we killed a couple of demon infiltrators, but Mary was hurt in the process."

"Hmm... But Mary isn't privy to any of our secrets. She can't be, for as long as we have her consider Thomas a submaster; the conflicting interests would break her. We could withdraw his authority, given that he's openly stated he doesn't wish to be anyone's master, but even then, thanks to her slave training, she'll never be able to deceive him effectively. She wears her emotions on her sleeve."

"True, but while we need to worry about a hero seeing through disguises or magical influences, there are no such concerns surrounding Mary. Her naivety could even prove an advantage. Hurt her for real. If she legitimately believes she was attacked by demons, she has no need to act, and the play will be all the more convincing."

"Yes, that's a good idea. My only concern is that should Mary get hurt, I suspect that Thomas will get angry. There will be a real risk of him immediately rushing to the battlefield."

"Then best we do this late enough that it's believable the demons were able to prepare it, but soon enough that Christine is still able to restrain him. The day after tomorrow, perhaps? And make sure Mary isn't too badly hurt."

Stephanie stared at her father in silence, but when she opened her mouth next, it wasn't to accuse him of callousness. "No. She should die in the attack. It's the best way to ensure Thomas never learns the operation of her collar."

"If you're concerned about Thomas acting out of anger, going that far sounds ill-advised. Could we not simply claim she's alive, but unable to continue her duties?"

"What about letting him see her on her deathbed, and having her beg him not to do anything rash?" interjected Queen Victoria, joining in the plotting without showing even a shred of indignation about the suggestion to murder an innocent slave simply to drive their summoned hero to hate demons.

"He's already learnt Sanatio. We'll have to be careful that he doesn't heal her, but otherwise, yes. That could work, and in terms of psychological impact, I can think of nothing better."