Unruly Summon Chapter 32: Treason (Patreon)

"Do you want to run away?" I asked as we followed directions in an attempt to find our new home. The aide who had supplied us with them had also given me a small bag of gold coins, which cheered me up somewhat. Fantasy money! I almost wanted to squee again.

Christine or Wendy hadn't thought much of it, though, so it probably wasn't very much, despite the gold colouring of the coins.

"Pardon?" asked Wendy.

"Run away. It's a simple concept. We could leave Odimere. Leave Ricousian. We could go visit the elves or dwarves. I'm sure they'd love to host us, and we'd have the advantage that their leaders don't hate our guts."

"I will not betray my kingdom," flatly stated Christine, ever the loyal dog.

"Even when your king has explicitly expressed a desire to use not-legally-mind-control on you?"

Wendy snorted.

"I'm glad you think it's funny, but no, not even then," said Christine.

"It won't happen," said Wendy, waving a hand at Christine dismissively. "By the time harvest is over, the idiot will hopefully have mellowed out a bit. Even if he hasn't, I can't imagine Thomas allowing it. And if it somehow does happen despite Thomas's wishes, I have full trust in him not to take advantage, and at least two-thirds trust that he'll attempt to reverse it at the first available opportunity."

"Only two-thirds?" I asked.

"Mary's obviously still not quite right, and you haven't done much about it."

"I did try, actually. She told me quite clearly and explicitly to not pick at scabs."

"Oh? Weird, but in that case, I'll upgrade you to four-fifths. I wouldn't actually mind going through it, as long as I knew I was safe and that it would be magicked away afterwards. It would be an interesting experience."

"You're taking this remarkably well."

Wendy shrugged. "His grumpy highness can strip me of my family name and demote me to commoner or slave, but he can't order my family to stop caring about me. He can fire me from my position of court mage, but I took up that position with the intent of solving the miasma problem, and there is no better place to do that than remaining by your side. I'm not attached to noble luxuries. Mostly. I am going to complain about loss of access to the castle baths. Your new house better have one, else we're building one."

"What about you, Christine?" I asked, but I got no answer.

Wendy may not care, but Christine had taken it far worse, and the king had taken obvious glee in rubbing salt in the wound. Frankly, while I much appreciated having Wendy around, Christine was something of a liability. She had tried to murder Mary because the previous king told her to. The new king blamed me for the loss of his family. He couldn't publicly do anything to me, but if he ordered Christine to carry out unofficial acts of revenge, there was a horrible possibility that she would. If she was going to stay with me, breaking her loyalty was a must.

The fact that she'd just tried to murder King George was a damn good start... Her loyalty was to the kingdom, not the king.

"Well, here we are," declared Wendy, stopping in front of a huge, two story wooden structure. Not quite a mansion, but the window count made it clear it was more than a simple family home.

"Doesn't look like he skimped on accommodation," I observed. The place was far too large for four people.

"Don't count your chickens yet. There must be a reason it was empty and available at one day's notice."

"There is," said Christine. "It belonged to the Scarthchild family."

"The who? I've never heard of them."

"I suppose you wouldn't have, but I served under Graham Scarthchild for a while. His latest posting was as a captain, serving in Fort Mertti. His wife was an army healer, also serving in Fort Mertti. Their eldest son was a soldier there. I don't know if they had any other children, but if so, it's unlikely they'd be able to maintain this place."

... So, the previous owners were dead. I wasn't sure if that was better or worse than some of the alternatives I'd been imagining.

"We can't maintain this place with the pittance that miser gave us," complained Wendy.

"You're going to need to teach me the value of your coins," I said as I pushed open the front door. "Hello? Mary?"

"Master?!" came a shout from upstairs, followed by a clatter and hurried footsteps. Her face appeared from around a corner, staring at us with wide eyes. "You aren't supposed to be back until tomorrow!"

A tension I hadn't even noticed relaxed as I saw her safe and well. If King George really wanted to mess with me, there would have been no better target for him than her. Thankfully, angry as he was, he apparently still had enough self awareness to not kick that hornets' nest.

I did note she was out of her posh uniform and back into an old, lower quality one, though. Again, that was perfectly understandable; it had been the castle's uniform, after all. Nevertheless, it still felt petty.

"Hug," I demanded.

"But I'm all dirty."

"Don't care. Hug," I repeated. I'd been wearing my robe for two days straight, most of which was spent travelling along dusty roads. It wasn't as if I was clean myself. Heck, I'd been wearing the same underwear for two days straight. I agreed wholeheartedly with Wendy's thoughts on baths.

Mary shrugged and complied.

"What?" I asked in response to Wendy's judgemental gaze.

"Nothing. I just thought you were acting out of character. You don't generally do touchy-feely."

"Hey, this is the longest we'd been separated since my arrival."

"... Less than a week ago."

"It still counts! Besides, Mary's hugs are good for stress relief, and I'm bloody stressed."

"Language!" complained Mary.

"Oh? So this isn't the first time?"

"The second dragon dream."

"Ah," said Wendy, then sniggered.

"What? What's funny about that?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking something inappropriate again."

I peered at Wendy suspiciously, failing to see what was inappropriate about chasing nightmares away with a hug.

"Fine, if you must know, it's that the combination of 'stress relief' and 'maid' generally has a very different meaning. You are just so darn... pure. Or maybe gay. One of the two."

"No, I'm not gay," I sighed, causing Wendy to snort with stifled laughter again. "What now?"

"Oh, I was just imagining the 'harem' Dennis might have suggested for a gay hero, and which prince would have been sacrificed for the cause. Don't mind me; I wouldn't want to taint our pure hero with my wicked ways."

"Look, I'm not some sort of celibate monk. Firstly, I already have someone back on my world. Secondly, I just don't do casual sex. Like you said, I've been here less than a week. That's not enough time to really get to know someone. Besides, we've got one person here who lied to me and misled me, one who not only lied but also tried to murder Mary, and then we have Mary herself, who's in a situation where it's not possible for her to give informed consent."

"She gave that at the point she sold herself," said Christine. "It was no secret what was likely to happen afterwards."

"No. Given her family situation, that was coerced. That's not consent either."

"Hey, Mary? Are you okay?" asked Wendy, reminding me that the maid was still clinging to me, her face buried in my chest. Her whole body was shaking slightly, not enough for me to feel through the thick robes, but enough that Wendy had obviously spotted it.

"Of course!" beamed Mary, unburying herself and looking up, the shaking switching off like a switch had been flipped. "I should get back to work! I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow, so I haven't finished preparing the bedrooms."

"I'm sure we can all prepare our own rooms," I said, rubbing her head. "Is there a bath? I think that's what we'd all like most."

"There is, but the fire and water crystals have been removed. And you can't prepare your rooms! That's my job!"

"You have more than enough work to be getting on with. Get the bath clean, and I'll fill it and heat it with magic."

Mary pouted at having her work stolen, but ran off to carry out her orders regardless.

"Well, I'm no psychiatrist, but given the way she reacted to Christine's comment just now, I think we can make a reasonable guess what her problem is," said Wendy.

"Huh?"

"Oh, sheesh. And you claim not to be a celibate monk... Remember that Dennis had her for a month or so before handing her to you."

"Oh..." The answer was obvious when she pointed it out like that. "You think he raped her..."

"It's not... technically..." started Christine, but this time, her heart wasn't in it, and she didn't even finish articulating her defence.

To the enslaved Mary, it would doubtless be a happy memory. She'd fulfilled her duty, doing what her master wanted and making him happy. She certainly would have been happy about it at the time, and participated completely willingly. But if her mind was restored... She'd remember a man who was probably forty years older than her, taking advantage of her shattered personality, making her do something her free mind would never have willingly done. Could she cope with that, or would it break her?

Or had it broken her already, leaving her in her current state?

Once again, I tasted bile. Letting the demons wipe the humans off the map wasn't a solution; that would harm the victims of the world as badly as the offenders. But there had to be something.

"Not legally rape in exactly the same way as the collars are not legally mind control," I sighed.

"Do you want to change it?" asked Wendy.

"And how is he supposed to do that?" snapped Christine. "Free every slave he can find? Burn down the slave markets? Murder the slavers? Are you trying to give King George an excuse?"

"Oh, no. I'm suggesting nothing of the sort," said Wendy, grinning evilly. "I'm suggesting something even worse."

"Huh? And what's that?" I asked.

"Well, this is just a random question, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the previous conversation, but... how would you like to be king?"

Christine's hand edged towards the hilt of her sword. Wendy ignored her, staring at me intently.

"I can't. Assuming Christine was going all out against Toby this morning, I could probably win against her, but it would be close. I couldn't win against two of her, and those guards that sprung up in the throne room were stronger than her. I certainly couldn't fight an army."

"Today, no. But tomorrow? A week from now? A month? Your mana may not be growing as fast as the first few days, but so what? It 'merely' doubled instead of increasing by an order of magnitude. Keep training. By the time we're done circling the local area, purifying the farmland, I'm certain you could fight an army. That was the entire reason for summoning you! If you couldn't fight the demon armies, what point would there have been?"

"Wendy..." growled Christine, but I noted her hand still wasn't touching the hilt.

"It was just a random question. She said so herself," I pointed out. "We could ask random questions all day without meaning anything by it. For example, is George a good king? Will his reign be good for the kingdom?"

Christine twitched.

"He certainly seemed to have a plan for ensuring a stable food supply, but I wonder who actually came up with it?" I continued. "A king who throws away one of his most promising knights for a reason that was beyond her control... That seemed a poor decision to me."

"No... I should have questioned Mary about the spell that was cast. To not do so was a serious error on my part."

"A simple mistake, then. No-one is perfect."

"He literally only took over today. It's far too soon to tell what sort of king he will be."

"That's true. He certainly deserves a chance."

Christine's hand edged away from her sword.

"Are you... are you serious?" she asked.

"I'm certainly giving Wendy's random question a certain amount of consideration."

Christine slumped. her arms falling limp.

"Please..." she said, in a voice so small I could barely hear her. "If you do this... Please... Save my sister..."

And suddenly, the bee she kept in her bonnet about Mary's sacrifice—and how quickly she was driven to anger at anyone who belittled it—made so much more sense.