The King's Offer
In which our protagonist becomes a Royal Advisor, negotiates his terms, and Elara is given a sword.
The morning after the trial, the king made Kenji an offer, and the offer was simple, and the simplicity was, in the driest possible language, the most dangerous part.
They were in the small audience chamber again, the one with the table covered in papers and the single chair. The king was tired. He had been tired for twenty-three years. But he was also, Kenji saw, hopeful in a way he had not been before. The trial had gone well. The audit had been validated. The kingdom was, in a way that no one in the room had dared to hope for, at peace with itself, and the peace was the kind of peace that comes from a system that has been debugged, and the debugged system was, in the driest possible language, the most expensive thing the kingdom had ever built.
"I want you to be my Royal Advisor," the king said. "On magic. On systems. On the things I do not understand. I want you to be the person I come to when there is a problem I cannot solve."
"That is a significant position, Your Majesty."
"It is. It is also a dangerous position. The last Royal Advisor was murdered by a noble who did not like his advice. The one before that died of natural causes. The one before that is still alive, in a monastery, where I sent him to keep him safe."
"You have a track record."
"I have a kingdom. The track record comes with the territory."
Kenji thought about it. He thought about the through-line. He thought about "any sufficiently well-defined problem is solvable." He thought about the fact that he had, in the last three months, debugged a clock, an aquifer, an iron mine, a siege, a treasury, an assassination attempt, a frame-up, and a trial. He thought about the fact that the kingdom was a system, and the system was broken, and he was the person who had been asked to fix it, and the system was, in a small way, ready to be fixed by someone who understood it as a system.
"I will accept," Kenji said. "On three conditions."
"Name them."
[Compiler note: this is the senior engineer who has been asked to onboard a junior. The system is, in a small way, paying attention.]
"First, I keep my autonomy. I will advise. I will not be commanded. If I think you are making a mistake, I will tell you. If you do not listen, that is your prerogative. But I will always tell you."
"Agreed. I do not want a yes-man. I want a debugger."
"Second, I keep my team. Elara is my bodyguard, not the palace guard. Lian is my apprentice, not the academy. Pip is my familiar, not a state asset. We are a unit. We work together or we do not work at all."
"Agreed. The Strange Captain, the apprentice, and the dragonfly. I have heard stranger things."
"Third, I want one day off per week. Sundays. I will not work on Sundays. I will sleep late. I will not cast spells. I will not debug anything. I will sit in a chair and read a book."
The king stared at him. "That is your third condition."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"You have just saved my throne. You have identified and prosecuted a traitor. You have exposed a cult network. And your third condition is that you want Sundays off."
"It is non-negotiable."
The king laughed. It was the third time Kenji had made the king laugh, and it was, like the first and the second, a real laugh. "You are the strangest person I have ever met. Agreed. Sundays are yours. I will even give you a chair."
He stood up. He held out his hand. Kenji took it. They shook. The deal was done.
Then the king said: "There is one more thing."
"Your Majesty?"
"Elara. The Strange Captain. I am making her your official bodyguard. Royal decree, effective immediately. She will report to you, not to the palace guard. She will have the rank of Captain-Commander, which is a rank I just made up, but which gives her the authority to do whatever is necessary to keep you alive."
He opened a drawer. He took out a sword. It was a beautiful thing, slender, with a hilt wrapped in silver and a blade that caught the light in a way that said "this is not just a sword, this is a tool."
[Object: royal sword, formerly property of King Aldric the Just]
[Status: awarded, with the king's personal seal]
[Compiler note: this is a system upgrade, not a gift. The system approves.]
"This was my father's sword," the king said. "It has been in the royal armory for thirty years. I want her to have it. As a sign of the kingdom's gratitude, and as a sign of my personal trust."
Kenji took the sword. He carried it to the guard house, where Elara was waiting. She was, as she always was, cleaning her own sword. She looked up when he came in. She saw the sword. She went very still.
"This is the king's father's sword," she said.
"The king wants you to have it. As a sign of his trust. And as the official weapon of the Captain-Commander of the Royal Bodyguard."
"There is no such rank."
"There is now. He just made it up. For you."
Elara took the sword. She held it for a long time. She did not cry. She was not the kind of person who cried. But her eyes were very bright, and her hands were not quite steady, and when she finally sheathed the sword at her hip, beside the sword she had brought from Oakhaven, she said: "I will not let him down."
"I know," Kenji said.
She kissed him. It was not a quiet kiss, like the one in Oakhaven. It was the kiss of a woman who has been given a duty, and a rank, and a sword, and a man she loves, all in the same morning. It was the kind of kiss that made Pip orbit a little faster, pulsing, amused, the pulse feeling like: "Finally. Both of you."
Kenji sent back: "Yeah. Both of us."
The day went on. The kingdom was at peace. The court was adjusting. The cult was quiet. The king's offer had been accepted. The Strange Sage was now the Royal Advisor, and the Strange Captain was now the Captain-Commander, and the apprentice was still the apprentice, and the dragonfly was still the dragonfly, and the kingdom was, for the moment, working.
That evening, the king held a small dinner for the four of them in his private quarters. The dinner was simple. The conversation was quieter than Kenji had expected. The king asked Elara about the guard rotations in Oakhaven. The king asked Lian about the academy. The king asked Kenji about Tokyo, and Kenji told him, in the driest possible language, about the legacy payroll system he had once been asked to debug, and the king laughed in a way that said, very clearly, that the king understood, in his bones, what it meant to be given a system that no one else wanted.
"I am glad you came," the king said, when the dinner was over. "I am glad the Strange Sage of Oakhaven turned out to be a debugger. I am glad the Strange Captain of Oakhaven turned out to be the kind of person a king can give a sword to. I am glad the apprentice turned out to be the kind of person who learns faster than her teachers. I am glad the dragonfly turned out to be a colleague. I am, in the driest possible language, glad."
He raised his glass. They raised theirs. The toast was short, and the toast was, in the language of the system, the toast of a king who had just acquired, in a small way, the team that was going to debug the kingdom.
[Compiler note: the developer is, in a small way, learning to be a colleague. The system approves.]
Pip pulsed, very softly, and the pulse felt like: "Important. Important. Important."
Kenji sent back: "I know. We are all, in a small way, important."
The night went on. The kingdom was, in a small way, at peace. The system was, in a small way, working. The team was, in a small way, ready for whatever the system was, in a small way, going to ask them to do next.