Knight or Knave

You don't need money, don't take fame

Don't need no credit card to ride this train

~ Huey Lewis

Chapter 3

Revenge is a dish that tastes better cold. ~ Traditional Proverb

Leon was ambushed as he exited the building. Fortunately, it was nothing more dangerous than being yanked into a hug by one of the ambushers and having his hair ruffled by the other.

"Where have you been?" his father demanded, tone more worried than angry, once he released his grasp on Leon.

"Wherever it was, didn't they have scissors?"

The fifteen year old - fifteen and one whole day old - shrugged off his older brother's hand as it took one more attempt on his disorderly black hair. Which was long enough to be in the way, yes, but also not long enough to conveniently be tied back. And he'd not decided yet if he wanted to cut it again or just wait until it could be put in a ponytail. Leon didn't know how he'd look with a ponytail but he figured that if he didn't like it, he could always cut it short again. "I've had other things on my mind, Nicks."

"I know I agreed to let you go adventuring," Barcus Fou Bartford told his son, "But I didn't expect you to be away for six months. Or to be seeing you here of all places."

Like the vast majority of Holfort's noble houses, the Bartfords maintained a luxurious residence in the capital, but Leon doubted his father had been to the mansion more than half a dozen times. For that matter, Leon had only seen it once himself - and from the outside. It was the home of Baroness Zola Fou Bartford, and she had no fondness for Leon, Nicks or their other siblings. Only her own children appeared to matter to her, certainly more than her husband's by another woman… and certainly more than her husband himself.

Now that he thought about it, Leon suspected that Barcus hadn't gone near the place himself on this visit. Nicks, of course, was accommodated at the royal academy - something required of an heir and expected of as many spares as a family could afford. But renting a room somewhere unassuming would be a small expense the baron would greatly prefer to the company of the wife his noble status demanded of him.

"I'd have preferred meeting somewhere else," Leon admitted, "But the timing just didn't work. I appreciate you being willing to come all this way on one letter from me, dad."

"Your mother would have had my head if I didn't." The older Bartford let his third son go. "Although I'd have liked to know why. Your letter said you weren't out of money, but you left a lot unsaid as well."

The teenager shrugged. "The trouble with letters is that anyone can read them, and we don't exactly have a family code. There are people I really don't want to be aware of what I've done before everything's in place."

"...how much trouble are you in?" his brother asked warily.

"I'm not in any trouble!" Leon paused. "Yet, anyway."

Barcus folded his arms expectantly.

"We're a little too public to talk about it right now," Leon told him defensively.

"Yes, and why are we meeting you here?" asked his father, gesturing at the front of the Ministry building.

The Ministry of Magic was one of the Holfort's institutions, though its prominence had waxed and waned over the years. Charged with trying to keep Holfort competitive against their many outside enemies (as well as the royal house's many internal rivals), the power, resources and allegiance of the Ministry was a tangled mess. Quite a lot of other estates and buildings fell under their control but how many would actually answer to instructions from the minister or the department heads was open to question. How many would answer to a well-pocketed or connected patron was another interesting matter.

"I had a meeting with the Head of the Magical Tools department," Leon explained.

His father groaned.

"It shouldn't entangle us," he added quickly. "Director Smith isn't from a noble family and she's really only interested in her research as far as I can tell."

"Yes, but you met someone that important while you're a scruffy mess like this. Have you even shaved?"

"Shaved?" Leon asked in bemusement. "I don't need to shave, I don't even…" His hand rubbed his jaw and found it slightly less smooth than he'd expected. "Huh. When did that happen?"

Nicks sighed. "It's not really worse than Dad's jaw by dinner time. But you really need to pay attention to appearances around here."

"Ah." How did one even shave? He'd seen his father do it, but he'd never tried it? Maybe he should just grow a beard? Leon considered his recollections of other teenagers who'd tried that and winced. Nope, that would not go well. "I'll add a razor to the things I need to pick up then."

"Trust me, if it's your first time we can find a barber and have it done right. And deal with your hair too," Barcus added. "But if we can't talk about your very secret business, can you at least tell me how your adventuring has gone? I doubt you'd have come all this way if you hadn't had some success."

Unspoken was the suspicion that the talented teenager might have taken the small airboat and headed for brighter horizons somewhere well away from Holfort. The fact was that a third son, not even from the legal wife, wouldn't have bright prospects in the kingdom. Marrying early and well was vital for advancement, but the family of a minor barony would rarely be able to attract attention from the ladies of Holfort.

Proud as he hopefully was of Leon, Barcus had to know that the most likely outcome was that Leon would be the last resort of an embittered woman years his elder who had found her own prospects less than her ambitions, 'settling' for a husband that would never satisfy her. And that was hardly the worst possibility. In fact, if things played out as they had in the book that Leon remembered, he would have faced the prospect of being sold off to a woman old enough to be his grandmother, a woman collecting widow's pensions for six or seven previous husbands - all of whom had been sent to die in battle to clear the way for a younger man, and bankroll payments to the next husband's family to overlook the clear pattern of marriages and deaths.

Leon smiled and gestured for them to begin walking along the street. Reaching into the bag at his side, he produced a folder full of papers. "I had some time to visit certain banking institutions yesterday."

Looking sideways, he watched as his father opened the folder and started reading the contents. Rustic, Barcus might be, but he was no fool when it came to money. There was no other way to keep their remote barony afloat financially but to make every penny squeak - particularly when it was also necessary to keep Zola living high here in the capital.

"This is…" Barcus stopped, overcome with emotion for a moment. "If you have enough for this, you could have… you should have set yourself up, son. The guild must have taken enough from you… all I'd have ever looked for was for the airboat back and you safe."

"Well unfortunately for the airboat, that came a cropper."

"Dad, what are you talking about?" asked Nicks.

Barcus handed the papers over. "Your brother's paid our debts. For the first time since… God, since my father's time, we're out of the banks' mercies."

"Are you serious?" Nicks opened the folder and skimmed it faster than the older man had. "Is this all of them?"

"That's the whole lot." Barcus shivered. "And keep it down. Once that gets out, and it will, a certain someone will see it as a reason to spend more since our credit will be available once more. The longer we have before that, the better."

Leon revelled for a moment in his brother's awed stare. "You're welcome."

"Yeah." Nicks handed the papers back. "I hope you kept something for yourself, little brother. The family being more secure is good for us, but if you had that much money you might have a chance at a decent marriage."

"I'm not hurting Nicks. But since you raise the issue, how are you off? It's your last year at the academy."

Both Nicks and their half-brother Rudyard would be graduating in the spring - the gap in age between the two was measured in months. At eighteen, both would be expected to be engaged to marry by that time, with only two years to marry or face the social stigma of being unwed in their twenties.

The latter was no joke - it was career death to be single. Even those with titles would find alliances hard to come by and trade drying up - the latter could be literally deadly when the kingdom's economy was still heavily agrarian. If you couldn't sell your excess produce, you would struggle to maintain your domain's defenses, pay your taxes and maintain any luxuries that you might wish to enjoy.

And yet, Leon had heard nothing of nuptials for either of his brothers. He was unsurprised to see Nicks' face fall and a shake of his head. "Even a baron's heir will struggle when everyone wants to marry up, and I'm just a spare."

The younger brother reached over and slapped his elder on the upper arm. "Chin up, Nicks, for I have a cunning plan. And more importantly, we have a dinner engagement with a gentleman who has two unwed daughters right in your age bracket."

"A dinner engagement?" Their father scowled. "Tonight and in the capital? I don't have the wardrobe for that, Leon. And if we're in the public eye, you know Zola will hear about us."

Leon grinned. "A private dinner, very intimate. We should dress well, of course, but ideally no one but those directly involved will know that we're even around."

"And who is that dinner with, might I ask?"

In response, Leon reached into his bag and produced an envelope. "A name to be said discreetly."

Barcus opened the envelope and read the short letter - scarcely more than a note. His eyes widened. "Are you serious?"

"Deadly."

The baron sighed and then rested one hand firmly on his son's shoulder. "Leon, we are going to a barbershop and as soon as you are presentable we are going somewhere we can talk privately because there is no way I am going to meet with… that gentleman without knowing exactly what you're getting us into."

Leon smiled and accepted the letter, with its invitation to dinner with Count Estian Fou Roseblade back. His father didn't release his grip though, and Nicks moved up to flank him and make sure Leon didn't get away.

"Your alleged foreknowledge is proving remarkably accurate, master."

Leon was sprawling in his room, catching what rest he could in the hectic schedule of planning for the next stage of his scheme. Everything had to fall into place quickly, which meant a lot of running around to make sure that nothing fell through irretrievably. "I know. It's surprising, really."

"You do not expect success?" the AI asked.

"Luxion, let's face it. It would be vastly more likely that what I remember is a farcical dream and has no relationship to reality. If I hadn't found you on that island, I'd have written it off as the result of eating something I shouldn't have and just kept sailing north."

"And yet, you did find me."

The boy nodded. "Which suggests that at least some of what I'm remembering is right."

"Reincarnation has no previous supporting evidence. Much less under such… credibility straining circumstances."

"Luxion, I 'remembered'," he made air-quotes with his fingers, "A past life in which this entire kingdom is the setting for a computer game… and another past life in which my own current life is the focus of a book series about the past life where this is a game getting reborn here… I figured the odds were a million to one that I was out of my mind."

The AI considered that. "Under the circumstances, I am amazed that you even tried investigating."

"The stakes were high enough that I didn't think I could dismiss it."

"You have yet to elaborate on those stakes, master," Luxion observed. "Your short term goals are understandable - I would prefer to obliterate this entire civilisation, but your emotional ties to your family preclude that course of action. I take it that you foresee issues on a grander scale?"

"I didn't tell you much of anything about the game, did I?"

"I am broadly familiar with computer games. I assume that given the presence of adventurers and prevalence of combat in this region, that they are the focus."

"It's a dating sim."

Luxion made a grinding noise - intentionally, Leon assumed, since the AI would hardly have gears. "Every time I think that my opinion of humanity can go no lower."

"I assume that you're familiar with the basic idea: a protagonist, people they're supposed to romance, people that get in the way of that?"

"The concept is on record."

Leon folded his arms behind his head. "The protagonist is a scholarship sponsored to the royal academy next year. The targets for romancing are the crown prince and his four closest friends. All of whom are engaged, and whose families will be less than pleased at seeing valuable political alliances thrown aside to marry someone who isn't of anything approaching their social rank. And yet, her hooking up with at least one of them is critical for the survival of the kingdom - not just as a political entity, but as a geographic one. Failure could leave the entire flying continent of Holfort destroyed, which would kill hundreds of thousands of people."

The AI made a happy noise.

"Whether it's old humanity without magic, or new humanity with it, we need a viable habitat," Leon pointed out sarcastically. "There isn't a single surface landmass that I know of, so I'm not enthusiastic about losing something like a quarter of the arable land in the kingdom."

"I accept your reasoning. I take it that your… counterpart within the books was involved in the outcome of the game somehow?"

The boy nodded and rubbed his eye. "My counterpart decided to make sure the game reached a 'good end' that saved the kingdom, but to maintain a low profile so he could live out his life in relative obscurity. That's not exactly how it worked… at least in the main book. There were some alternative universes in side-stories, but for the most part he failed his way into saving the kingdom himself."

"Truly a disaster," Luxion agreed. "I take it that I was also involved in these stories."

"Yeah, he found you. Good job he did, because without you he'd have been utterly doomed."

"I imagine saving the kingdom would require more than your meagre talents, master."

Leon laughed. "If he hadn't found you - and for that matter, if I hadn't - then we got a very bad personal end before either of us had to worry about the events of the game. Or rather, how those events went off track because he wasn't the only one who knew about the game. And I'm probably in the same boat. I just wonder… am I the only one who knows about the books?"

"What can you do if you are not?"

"Play it by ear," the boy declared. "The game wasn't the actual full world, it was a fairly narrow view of one part of it. And the books are only a bit wider. Even assuming that they're accurate, the moment anyone doesn't follow the exact paths outlined, my predictions are considerably less reliable."

"And you're not going to follow those… routes?"

"Nope. I'm already changing things."

"In that case, master, anyone else familiar with either version of the future will sooner or later recognise that there must be a wild card."

Leon nodded. "And if they know the books, they'll come looking for me. Possibly with loaded guns."

Luxion hummed. "You're going to ruin a lot of people's plans, aren't you?"

"Oh you have no idea."

Some weeks later, Nicks was flanking Leon again but they were a long way from the capital.

Dreadnought's guns opened fire, smashing the firing positions on top of the castle gates, as the brothers led a charge of knight-armours over the city of Olfrey. Beneath them, Leon saw the townsfolk fleeing for the nearest buildings, knowing from their forebears what this meant even if they hadn't previously experienced it.

Towering walls hadn't entirely lost their value despite the presence of knight-armours, air-bikes and skyships. The gate towers were only part of the defenses of the castle. Fortunately for the speed of the attack, the city itself had long since spilled past the old walls and they'd largely been demolished for building stone. Thus the only defenses were around the port and the castle.

A knight-armour darted out from behind one tower, treating it like a merlon scaled for the armour, and fired its rifle at the oncoming assault. The shot hit the shield carried by one of the Roseblade knights and did tear a section from the armour plate, but spent itself in the process.

The knight tried the same trick a second time but this time Leon's force were ready for it - he raised his rifle but before he could fire, he saw a shot connect and smash into the defender's weapon, tearing it from the knight-armour's hands and wrecking it.

"Good shooting, Nicks," he congratulated, seeing who had fired the shot.

"They do teach us some useful things at the academy," his brother responded absently. "I guess you'll get to find out, I kind of suspected that you'd not be able to participate until I saw you using your own."

Leon nodded in understanding. It was one thing that had differed from the books, something that had troubled him since his first recollection of them, almost a decade before. In that story, Leon Fou Bartford had been no great magician, but he had certainly been able to use bodily reinforcement, pilot a knight-armour and so forth.

And yet… in this life he could not.

That one difference had suggested that the entire memory was unreliable, and yet so far he'd found the guide to be solid and reliable. It was reassuring in some ways but not in others, for who knew when he might find some other unexpected obstacle.

While the city had grown out, it hadn't reached the castle walls. That remained a killing ground for any purely infantry assault - the main reason behind the curtain wall around the keep-palace of the Counts of Olfrey. An uprising among their people would lack serious military equipment and thus have little chance of entering the castle until they gathered their military strength to quell the rebellion.

That wasn't to say it was entirely safe for knight-armours.

The gateway arch was intentionally too low for a knight-armour to march through, but it was plenty large enough for a cannon and one fired out of a hatch in the gate right as Nicks stood in front of it. The heavy shot crashed against the lower right leg of his knight-armour and it went out from under him, leaving him crashing into the wall out of control.

"Nicks, dammit!" Before anyone could fire out at his brother again, Leon dropped to one knee and fired his rifle through the gate, then repeated until more holes had been punched into the heavy wood. He could see the cannon through them, overturned by the impact of one of his shots and blocking the way of bringing up another.

"I'm not hurt." Nicks rolled the knight-armour aside and recovered his rifle. "The leg might need some work though, I'm lucky it didn't come off after a hit like that."

Leon inspected the limb hastily and saw that the armour plating across the shin was deformed and probably impairing mobility. It was the same white and blue suit he'd loaned to Kyle previously - the Bartfords couldn't afford a large force directly, most of their military might came from baronets pledged to them and the skyships needed to maintain trade with the rest of the kingdom. They owned only two knight-armours, one for their father and one for Rudyard… who hadn't bothered even to reply to a written instruction to present himself for the muster-at-arms.

Or rather, they had had but two knight-armours.

Now Leon had one for himself, plus another he could lend out. "Alright," he ordered the other knights. "You know your roles. Breach this place and we'll have it before the Olfreys can get their feet back under them."

"Aye, we know them young lord Bartford." The speaker was a grizzled baronet that Leon had known as long as he could remember. The man's estates bordered on the Bartford's own direct holdings and he'd first given his pledge to Leon's great-grandfather at a time when the Holfort kingdom was a far away concern. "Don't forget your own role though, nor your brother's."

Leon nodded flatly. "I won't, Sir Pablo."

The knight-armour nodded back and then, in a rush, eight knight-armours went up and over the castle walls - Roseblade and Bartford colours intermixed. Leon did not follow them. His orders had been uncompromising. He and Nicks were to take the gate and ensure that it stayed bottled up - but the fighting within the walls was reserved to older and more experienced knights.

"Does it bother you to be left behind?" his brother asked, bringing the borrowed knight-armour up to a standing position.

He hesitated before answering. "A little. I'm no Rudyard. My head tells me that doing my part means doing what I'm told, but…"

Nicks raised his rifle, scanning their surroundings. "I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. But you know the real reason father pushed for this isn't because he's worried we'll get hurt."

"Although he does worry."

The elder of the pair was probably nodding, but Leon couldn't tell. "He also wants to make sure that if this plan of yours goes awry that no one can claim that either of us laid a hand on the Olfreys."

Leon closed his eyes and prayed briefly for patience. "I'm not sure how much that would help. But if it makes him feel better about this then I'm not going to quarrel."

"I was hoping for more of an assurance that this will definitely work."

"Well I'm not setting this up to fail. I wouldn't do that."

"Oh good," Nicks responded drily. "My assurance is that a fifteen year old thinks that this should work."

Leon smirked. "Well, look at it this way. If we don't get killed doing this, and we don't get killed for doing this, then you get to be married."

"Oh now I'm really nervous," Nicks grumbled.

They did not, in fact, get killed and the two of them were still standing somewhat ceremoniously on guard at the gate when a small troop of men dragged Count Olfrey and his family out. Leon hadn't met any of them before - the Roseblades and the Olfreys were both among the more prominent houses in this part of the kingdom but the Bartfords didn't really socialise with either.

The daughter of the household was fighting like a hellcat, and he was amused to see that she did have her hair in braided loops that dangled either side of her head. He'd expected as much from illustrations, but he was still at a loss as to why she'd opted for that. Then again, Leon had never claimed to be any good at fashion.

The Olfrey men weren't prepossessing specimens either. Count Olfrey was corpulent, and his son and heir - about a year older than Nicks - was positively grotesque in that regard, fatter than his father despite being far younger. Leon doubted very much if Lord Clement Fou Olfrey could have fit inside a knight armor if his life had depended upon it.

"You'll pay for this," the Count was screaming. "I don't know what led you to throw in with Roseblade's idiocy, but when I find out, you'll be stripped of land and titles. I have friends at court and they will never allow this travesty."

"Heads' up," Nicks warned Leon quietly. "The port must have fallen. Father and the Count are on their way."

Leon spotted the two a moment later, Count Roseblade's black knight-armour descending from the sky just ahead the much less decorative knight-armour of Baron Bartford.

The sight of the suit seemed to spark recognition in Olfrey. "Bartford! That's who you are! You should know better than to put your nose into the affairs of those above you in every way."

Leon couldn't help himself. He snorted with laughter. The sound carried, and more than a few of the knights and other sworn servants of the Roseblades and Bartfords followed suit, such that when Count Estian Fou Roseblade dismounted to face his hated neighbour, he found the man being loudly laughed at.

Tall, lean and surprisingly dark-haired for a man whose daughters were recognisable for golden hair much like their mothers, the Count stalked forwards towards Nicholas Fou Olfrey like a panther stalking a fat and oblivious pig. "I see that you're as loud as ever, and yet as empty of substance."

"What would you know?" Olfrey sneered, trying (and failing) to pull free from his captors. "You know that the crown will never stand for you attacking one of their staunch allies. Half the great houses of the kingdom will come to my aid."

"I doubt that." Roseblade's expression was definitely feline, Leon decided. Like a cat playing with its prey. He had a sudden understanding of the more sadistic urges of the Count's daughters. They came by it honestly. "I really really do. After all, Nicholas, I've seen you hide behind your alliances before. Do you think I'm not prepared for that right now?"

"The Field fleet alone will be enough to crush you," snarled Cassandra. "My fiance and his father will never let this insult lie."

Roseblade looked down at the girl. "Do you really think so?" The question was teasing.

Leon could see his father's expression betrayed some doubts over the issue. However, his words were matter-of-fact. "We're not going to be in any less trouble if we stop now, Count Olfrey. So we'll see this to the end."

"I should expect no less idiocy for a man who is as far from court as you, Baron." Olfrey spat - he was probably aiming for the floor but it actually struck his own shirt. "Everything you are doing only makes your plight worse. But I am not an unreasonable man. Should I be freed now and your leaders placed in custody, I can at least speak that those baronets who renounce Roseblade and Bartford will retain their lands. That is far more assurance than they can offer you."

There was no sudden rush of men eager to take the Count up on that offer. Probably because in no small part, those at the castle had been handpicked with the consideration that such offers might be made.

"We will see how many friends you still have when evidence of your crimes is presented at court." Count Roseblade reached down and jerked Olfrey onto the tip of his toes, showing far more strength than his slender frame might have suggested. "My wife and I have more than a little compiled of your deeds but even I was surprised at how blatantly you've broken the crown's peace over the years."

"And as for Marquis Field, I think you may be surprised how quickly he separates himself from you," Barcus continued. "I know from a reliable source that the Marquis only agreed to the engagement between your son and his daughter due to your part in the peace negotiations that ended our last war with Fanoss. If renouncing that engagement means cutting ties to a sinking ship, not to mention freeing his son up for a more favorable marriage alliance…" He shrugged. "But perhaps you know the Marquis better than I and count him as a dear and close friend?"

There was a hateful look in Count Olfrey's piggy eyes. "You overreach yourself, Baron."

Barcus shrugged. "Perhaps. But as I've recently been reminded, one gets nowhere in life unless one is willing to take the occasional calculated risk."

"When everyone from the Redgraves to the Marmorias ally against you, don't say I didn't warn you," the Count threatened. "Every man here will forfeit lands, titles. You'll see your sons sent to the mines and your daughters on their knees before my family!"

"This is the silver-tongued devil that made peace with Fanoss possible?" Leon muttered, half to himself. "Someone got out of bed on the wrong side today."

"Leon," his brother warned him in a low voice. "Shut the hell up!"

Looking around, Leon saw that while Count Roseblade seemed unperturbed, their father was most assuredly glaring up at him. On reflection, he found Nicks' advice to be good and took it.