side of his body touching Sara. Tor smiled. It looked like fun, but if Maria had taught him anything it was that women didn't like him that way. It didn't matter. He'd learned to be happy with his work. It wasn't the same as being loved, but it was all he really had. Well, that, and his friends now. Rolph really had been there for him, after all.
Curious, he asked who Doretta was.
Trice looked at him and gave him a gentle look.
“Oh… that… makes sense, it's probably not a story you were told as a kid. OK, short version, since the rest of us all know it. Um..
“A long time ago there was a shopkeeper, a humble young man that sold goods in a decently large city. He worked very hard and was successful, being smart and clever. A woman came in regularly and they'd talk, in a friendly way, so one day, working up his courage, the man finally proposed marriage to her in the street in front of the shop. The woman spurned him publicly, since she was of noble blood, if not very highly placed. The daughter of a Knight or something; it varies depending on who's telling the tale. She told him no, and suggested he should have known better than to reach above himself, and dare imagine he was worthy of someone as grand as her.
“So the shopkeep, despondent and humiliated, joined the army, seeking his death in combat. That way he could redeem his honor you see, wash the stain of humiliation away in his own blood. Years passed, and he proved to be a good fighter, eventually saving the life of the Prince himself, who became his good friend…”
Trice gave him a significant look her eyes darting several times between him and Rolph. A soft snort escaping her, she continued.
“As unlikely as that always seemed to me… Time passed and the shopkeep was made a general, then, eventually a Count.
“After a time, over twenty years later, he found where the girl lived, her having married a Baron, and took his army to meet her husband in battle, and slaughtered him. Killed everyone in the Barony, including the woman's entire family. Then he had her put on a small island so that she could slowly starve to death, reflecting on how her own actions of spurning him so cruelly had led to all that death and destruction.”
It wasn't, they assured him, a real story, just one used to teach kids not to be like that. There was even a phrase they used, “don't be a Doretta.” as a warning when someone was about to step out of line or hurt someone else's feelings too much.
Tor shook his head at the very idea.
“But that would take a minor personal matter and make it lethal for a bunch of people that hadn't even been there! What kind of monster would do that? Not me. Maria could have been a thousand times worse and I wouldn't even go after her, much less those around her that just have the misfortune of knowing her…” The idea made him shudder a little. Trice moved in and held him for a while, getting a grin from Rolph, even though Sara kept giving him uncomfortably nervous glances. Probably because a Ducherina was sitting too close to him and he was only two steps above a pig farmer in the social scale. He knew enough not to think it was anything more than, oh, a lady petting her dog. Trice just wanted to reassure him, that was all.
The talking continued then, moving to different and less embarrassing tales, at least for him personally, but Tor's mind escaped from the awkward conversation into solving the water flow problem. It wasn't that hard, he just had to keep the field from shutting off with water in the force line itself. Basically what would happen with the fountain in the pond garden. It took about two hours for him to figure out how to do that, but he thought he had a solution when Rolph stood, stretched and announced that it was bed time. He gave Sara a hand up and dragged her away towards the house, both giggling like little girls.
That left him and Trice to put out the fire, which they did using big handfuls of sand, finally kicking large drifts of it over the fire. Nothing glowed on the surface at least, so it should be good enough he figured. It might smolder in the sand for a while, maybe even a day or two, but with nothing else around to burn, that wouldn't make any difference at all.
Then he shook out the blanket the other two had used and got Trice to help him fold it. She wasn't very good at it, but she picked the idea up quickly, and when they did the next one she moved in almost perfect unison with him.
They made their way back to the cabin well enough, the light of the more than half moon making it possible to see the trail at least. A light colored strip with darker vegetation on either side a few feet off. Trice held his hand for balance, but ended up keeping him upright at least as much as he did her. She was simply bigger than he was, so her stumbles rocked him, pulling him into a full awkward tilt, where his barely budged her. She was lean and tall, he noticed again, at least a full head more than he was, more than that, a full foot. He knew he must look like a little boy next to her when they walked this way. It was dark and anyway, there was no one to see them stumbling along so it didn't really matter if he looked silly, did it?
After a while Tor began to understand that his friend must be at least a little drunk. Not sloshing, falling down drunk, but a stage past tipsy at least. Her pale arms and legs flashed in the moonlight, his own nearly invisible in his full brown students outfit. When they got inside she hugged him close to her suddenly and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
When she spoke her words slurred a little bit.
“Don't worry Tor. Not all women are like Maria. Most aren't even. Be willing to give some of us others a chance and you might be surprised…”
Then she made her way to the room she and Sara were sharing. His room was first, so at least he didn't have to grope as far along the hall. He undressed, down to underclothes, some nice things that Rolph had gotten him for the trip, in case they went swimming in them. It was that or skinny dip, the Prince had told him. So far they hadn't swum, the others splashing and playing in the water near the shore while he worked. Tor knew he'd been less than fun or interesting, but it was an important problem he was trying to work on, and the King had asked him to, right? That meant he kind of had to pay attention and work fast.
Five minutes later the door opened slowly, then closed with a firm, sudden bump. A form crawled into the bed and tucked under the covers next to him. Tor was half asleep, so didn't think anything of it, drifting off easily, hoping to get up early, so that he could try to build a new water transfer field that wouldn't kill thousands of people if it shut off.
Rolph was unusually cuddly, so he had to keep throwing the other boy's arms and legs off of him as he slept, but at least the amulet he wore kept things from getting too warm, or later when all the covers got stolen in the middle of the night, too cold.
The morning light came through the curtained window waking him up slowly, over the course of minutes, rather than all at once. That was fine, he needed to get up before everyone else to work anyway, so that he could make breakfast in a few hours for the others. They were going to leave in the afternoon, late though, since they could be back in the Capital pretty quickly.
If nothing else the flying devices were good for vacations. He probably wouldn't have gotten to go back home even, with only a month for him to travel, and Two Bends was only five hundred miles from the school. It had taken half a month nearly to get to school by wagon, so he only went home on the long breaks so far, spending a month home and traveling for a month. Now he could make the same trip in a few hours.
While he'd slept Rolph had wrapped an arm over his shoulder, and pressed up against him from behind. Looking away at the wall he raised his eyebrows, or at least tried to. Laughing he pushed the arm off and slipped out of bed. Something he'd learned from growing up in his house, when you shared a bed with other people, you couldn't get overly sensitive about personal space issues. People did strange things in their sleep and really, they couldn't help it. They weren't even aware of what they were doing.
It wasn't until he was half dressed that he noticed it wasn't Rolph in the bed at all, but someone with long brown curly hair. Who snored softly. He blinked. Rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. She must have gotten confused and found the wrong bed. Well, that happened sometimes. More than once his own sisters had ended up sleeping in a pile of their brothers when they were little and they hadn't even been drunk. No harm done. It wasn't like he'd touched her or anything. Except to push her off.
Of course if her parents found out they'd probably insist that he and Trice get married, or at least that Tor be beaten publicly. He chuckled to himself then sobered, remembering they were royals. From what he'd been told the day before, they might not care if he had slept with their daughter. Even having sex, not just sleeping like they had.
Either that or they'd call for his death. It was still a gray area for him, really. Did their strange rules apply to
