learn, but even your dad thinks it will be useful for you. I'll try to get Kolb to take you on as fighting instructor. He can help teach you not to suck so bad at it.” Tor was teasing her, not that working with Kolb wouldn't help, but the Princess didn't suck at fighting. Not at all.
It was dark in the room, so she couldn't see his smile, but she inhaled suddenly, a real sounding thing.
“Do you think he'll be as hard on me as Rolph says he is on you?” It was half whining, and sounded a little worried.
Tor snorted.
“Of course not. He'll probably be two or three times tougher on you, since you have all that natural talent for it. Me, I have to practice running away all the time, more now even. Burks recently showed me how much I suck at it. And at fighting. But yeah, if you want someone to coddle your feelings and pat your fanny when you fall down, we could import someone maybe… but you won't find them at Lairdgren, Princess or not.”
It wasn't Karina that answered, but Ali who said something shocking.
“Can I try too, I mean, is it all right? If I learn to fight?”
Tor nearly said no, since she was his wife and he was supposed to be the one to protect her. Always. But that wasn't real, was it? He went places and left her alone for instance, and what if she ran in trouble when he was just in class or working, and she wasn't? The same was true of everyone else too, wasn't it? All the new kids at school, the builders. He was turning them into a real threat to Austra, making them valuable in their own right, including to some bad people and had left them defenseless, except for their building skills.
“Yes. In fact I'll see to it as soon as we go back tomorrow. It's mid-term, but it's a good idea, even if it's not a graded class. School isn't about grades, it's about learning. The grades are just there to make sure you keep trying.”
It rankled that he couldn't be there for her all the time, but it was the truth, wasn't it? Him trying to act the big tough man would leave her vulnerable to attack. That couldn't be allowed. Not at all.
He half crawled over Karina and kissed Ali deeply.
“I love you little wife.”
She told him she loved him too and seemed genuinely happy to hear it. Before Karina could sulk about it he kissed her too.
“I love you too, rather tall Princess.” It wasn't true, but like with Ali, it made her feel better to hear and he could live it, even if it wasn't his true feeling on the matter. It was better to lie and make them happy and secure than telling them the truth, that he really just liked them as friends and lovers, but didn't feel much more for them than that. It hurt to think about. He should love them after all. They were good people and worthy of it, but his feelings were what they were. Tor wouldn't let them down or hurt them, not if he had anything to say about the matter at all.
Tor nestled into Karina contentedly. A liar he may be, but that didn't mean he couldn't be a good one. A lie lived well enough was the truth, he'd once heard someone say. His mother come to think about it. Back then he didn't realize that she'd been living a lie herself, hiding away in a small village as a poor baker’s wife for decades. It kind of proved the point though, didn't it? Live it well enough and it was made real.
For his friends he would do that. No matter the cost.
Even if it meant his life or sanity. The sanity was the big threat right now, since Tor didn't know how much more of all this he could take. Everything falling in on him constantly, making him struggle to get past it just to glimpse something normal.
Most days anymore he wasn't even getting close enough to normal to wave hello it seemed.
Chapter Eight
“Baker!” The voice was angry, really angry, and not one that he recognized at all. A male voice accompanied by pounding feet and a flash of purple and black Royal Guard livery.
Thankfully that man wasn't attacking him in the palace hallway, not yet, but it was a close thing. The guy, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, about six foot ten and had to weigh nearly three hundred pounds, all of it lean and hard looking, took a partial fighting stance in front of him. The fellow wasn't someone Tor recognized, but that didn't mean much, not with the guard here, they came out of the walls and sometime, when you least expected it, could go crazy like this.
“Um… hello?” Tor said, keeping his voice soft. He had a shield and was armed, but short of using a lot of force, he really doubted that he could take this guy. More to the point, he didn't know why he should have too. Had he done something… or insulted the man?
The man explained as he sidled closer to him. Moving deliberately so that he could attack.
“Are you trying to get her killed? Is that your plan you little useless pace of shit? Take her off to that school and let the Austrans just have her? Fuck! If you want to do that so bad, why don't you just put her on a ship? Did they turn you somehow over there? Is Austran pussy that good? Or is it your new lover Brown? I should kill you right here and make the world a safer place.” The man didn't clench his fist, and had yet to produce a weapon, so Tor guessed that this wasn't an actual death threat, but just this man’s way of letting off steam.
His scary, frightening way of letting go of things.
Tor hoped so anyway and hoped that it didn't really involve too big of a beating for himself in addition, just to help with the venting.
“Ah, well, I didn't have sex in Austra or the way over or the way back, so rest assured it wasn't their sexual wiles or me being turned somehow. I just… you've seen Karina, right? I mean you know what's been happening with her?” It was a good question, since the guy may be… Tor looked for some way the man could have missed what was going on and none of them fit.
The huge man stared at him hard for nearly twenty seconds, just when Tor thought he was going to move in for the kill, he spoke, sounding no calmer, but not actually raising his voice.
“So? Girls get moody! Her friend was killed and she's sad. She's tough, she'll snap out of it on her own in a bit.”
Ah. Well, Tor didn't think that was the case, but didn't really want to fight about it. Then again, did he have a choice?
“OK. So… your wrong. She isn’t snapping out of it and she needs her friends, all of which I took off to school with me, or, well you know the rest. So, I don't know, how do we do this? Are we supposed to wrestle for her now or something? Go outside and fight until I'm a puddle of mush? Debate in front of a judge to see who's right?” Tor was trying to be playful and shake the man's anger a bit, but that, obviously, wasn't going to work. Great.
“Fine,” The huge angry man said through his teeth, short blond hair making his head look nearly bald from Tor’s perspective.
“We'll meet out back over it.” It felt to Tor like that meant something other than sitting in the shade and having some juice, calmly discussing things. Too bad, he really thought he had a good argument or two on this one.
Was it a duel? What did he do now? Tor nearly panicked as the man stormed off, wondering if running away would be a valid option. The stone floor was shiny here, well polished and dark. Tor noticed that when he heard the footsteps behind him, there were six of them. All Royal Guards, all looking at him blankly. Great. So the idea was that he fought one of them, or six? Well, that was a fun option. None of these were as big, but the day Tor could beat six men and women, all bigger and stronger than he was, in a fair fight, he'd…
Tor didn't have anything that he'd do then, it had just never come up as an idea. It would be something though. He just wasn't that good. They took him out back, half leading, half following, probably to prevent escape. There was a hedged area that Tor had barely noticed before and never been into, near the wall around the palace. It stood ten foot high and was paved inside, about a hundred foot square. The Royal Guards practice area? It made sense, they had to have something, right? One of the guards, and older man, came and stood in front of him.
“The tradition is that no shields, armor or weapons of any kind are used.” George told him softly.
Darn. They had an actual tradition that basically said he had to have his butt beaten by this giant? That was hardly fair. Why couldn't they have a traditional bake off instead, like at a country fair? That would be better for him personally. Pie making contest? Or a foot race, he was tempted to make the counter offer, but the second that he
