by themselves?
They were the hero's of the day, but they couldn't be. It wasn't fair.
Tor took a deep breath and caught Kolb's eye.
“Um, Instructor Kolb, sir?” He said softly, humbly and as if he was trying to avoid real attention.
The King and Queen both looked at him then, and that meant everyone else would too. Grand.
“Yes Tor?” Kolb said in a more gentle voice than he normally used with him.
“Um, well sir, did you bring these instructors and students from the school to act as messengers to other cities? Most of the Counts are here, but I can see that people would want to know about this. It's an excellent plan.” But it would help if someone would catch the hint and help. Tor couldn't say that though.
Richard, bless him nodded.
“A wonderful service to our nation Sir Martin. Thank you all. I won't hold you, since you seem eager to spread the news. I would like to have a private audience with Dennorian Brown, Kolb would you attend as the Knight of record here? Karen Derring as well please?” He waved his right hand regally.
“Everyone else, spread the good news and celebrate!”
That got a cheer too. Even Tor cheered along.
“Except you Tor. If you'd see to getting the word to other parts of the kingdom as soon as possible?” The man smiled at least. As if it would be a treat or something.
“At once Sire.” Tor did too, pulling his little hand unit, he started getting in touch with each capital. Most of the time he got either no answer or a servant, but funnily, the second he told people that the war was over and Rolph got on with him saying it was true, the people on the other end did most of the rest.
The streets were packed, so once that was done, an hour later or so, just as it was starting to get dark, Tor set up a carriage to get everyone going back with him to his house. The combat giants didn't get sent off on errands yet, because they all needed to sleep and rest first. The public transport people did it instead. Not all of them were even ladies of industry any more, Tor noted, as the word spread and the drivers came running to fly off and get the word out. From there word spread pretty well.
Tor just had to get to dinner then and make sure Lyn was provided for and all that.
Everything else was done.
Ali sat next to him, beaming happily as they flew back to their house along the river.
“Does this mean you can just work on what you want now and not do shields and weapons all the time? We could go back to school maybe or rehabilitate the Wildlands?” She sounded so excited he couldn't help but grin himself. She'd spent most of the day just sitting quietly and hardly doing more than looking his way every now and again. This was much nicer.
It was the violence earlier of course. Her whole life told her that violent people would hurt her. He wasn't like that, but she had no way to know that yet, did she? He'd killed a man. That idea was one that would be with him for a long time, of course, but he hadn't realized when he'd done it that it would be with her too. After he landed he heard more voices, in his head, not just Count Derring and Baron Rochester either. Daria and Glost were in his head too.
Seriously?
He sighed. Yeah, that made sense, didn't it? He'd set up the deaths himself, hadn't he? It had even been his idea in a very real way and he intended for them to die when he did it. Well, that wasn't good. Was he becoming some kind of evil murderer? He'd have to watch that.
No one liked the bad guys. Too much more of this and people would think the whole troll thing was real.
On the good side the Serges were just rambling as far as he could tell and the words barely made sense at all. Kind of soft and mumbled.
If he had to make up his own ghosts, that was the way to do it. Much better than the dreams would be no doubt. It was a little odd, to tell the truth. Actually, it was incredibly strange, that every time he killed anyone his brain would provide ghosts for him to deal with as a punishment, but that wasn't what caught his interest. No, it was that, as far as he knew, Afrak style genetics shouldn't be able to do something that specific.
Make him more prone to simple guilt? Yeah, that made sense, but this very high level, specific kind of thing almost had to be magically based. Only, from what little Burks had said about it all, the old Ancients didn't have magic hardly at all. Some field reading, but even that was looked down on. It had taken hundreds of years for Burks to come up with the first workable magical techniques that anyone could learn. Before that Noram was mainly just mud huts and decaying old style “technology” like what they used in Austra.
In the moment though, his little wife was probably more than a little scared of him. Tor put his hand out to her, which she took easily enough, and led her inside. The place was… a mad house, of course.
“Woooo!” A large form, Johan the combat giant, Gersh's brother, ran up to them and hugged Tor, spinning him around, then he did the same with Ali.
“We won!” He ran off, a little drunk already.
Collette was the only one not looking happy, standing in the center of the room, hands at her side. She was crying. For half a second Tor wanted to just ignore it and pretend he hadn't seen, but that made him feel too low, so stiffly, taking Ali's hand again, he walked to the pretty blond and hugged her too.
“Alright love?” He whispered into her ear, Ali joined in, and kissed her cheek gently.
The woman nodded, “I… just, if the Austrans killed Ginger and now we have peace, she'll never be avenged, will she? I know it's selfish of me, but…” Tears fell hard enough to hit the floor.
He straightened. Right. He hadn't thought about that at all, had he? Distracted by being happy. To buy time he hugged her again, then took a deep breath.
“I need a room. Something quiet?” He tried to look confident and smiled at her a bit grimly.
“I… know that it isn't fair to you right now Collette, but we need you to manage this mess, Lyn's people are coming at nine, and I invited Debbie and her brother Box to dinner, just the one for everyone else. I know holding two meals like this is a lot of work, I just…” Hadn't been thinking about anyone else? Was that true? Tor kind of feared it had been. Well, that wasn't really true, he’d thought about a lot of people.
Just not her.
He drew another breath, but didn't bow to apologize. He hadn't failed her yet. He didn’t intend to either.
She dried her eyes and took her own big breath, and gave him a hard look. Not stern, but confident, like a person readying for a battle, but knowing they could possibly win.
“I'm on it. Quite right. I shouldn't have let my emotions get the better of me.” She sounded a little sad, but did point the way to the same quiet room he'd used with Lyn a few days earlier.
He made a chair, a soft and comfy thing that was sized to him and covered in soft fabric that would have been impractical if it had been real. It would tear and stain far too easily and wear poorly over time. But it wasn’t real, so it worked. For a second he was tempted to make it purple, but opted for black instead. Deaths color. This was serious business, not something for his enjoyment.
Then he pulled his communications device and signaled the Palace. Not a second later a voice came into the room, almost startling him.
“Tor?” It was Richard. “I was just hitting the plate to get with you.”
“Oh? Good. Um, I… Would it be possible to talk with you? It won't take long.”
“I can have the room cleared at once… If…” From the background he heard a lot of voices, most sounding pretty happy. Tor felt like a heel, having to bring everyone down. He sighed though, which obviously carried into the room because the King made a noise in return.
“Is everything all right?” This came over at barely above a whisper. Tor doubted that the room there heard it even, unless they were trying too.
“I was just talking to Collette Coltress and she expressed concerns that the investigation into her sister, and the other murdered ladies deaths, would stop, and that if the perpetrator is an Austran agent they will escape punishment.” It was high handed of him to even question it, he knew, but the room on the other side of the device went silent.
“I… don't know honestly, Tor. I can I get back to you on that? The peace is new and fragile; we may have to eat the deaths as part of it. I don't…” It was rare for Rich to actually sound like he was both upset and uncertain, but in that moment both things were clear in his voice.
“If I may your Highness?” A voice spoke softly and no reply was heard from the King.
“Tor, Denno here. I can assure you that no Austran agent did this under any kind of official orders. They
