letdown really. She nodded and stared for a bit, but it was a calculating look.
“Obviously this comes with strings.” The Countess said, softly, her voice odd, as if far away, drifty and a little sing song. It was weird.
Tor almost denied that totally, but he realized it had to, didn’t it? He nodded instead, which made her flinch.
“Right. Obviously. You kind of have to agree not to go to war with the kingdom of Noram using this gear, right? I mean, not that you were ever planning to, but if you do, you kind of need to do it without the stuff I made for you, alright? And then, I believe the tradition is that half your well armored and armed troops support the war effort directly. It shouldn’t cost that much though, because that’s only food and housing for them right? You’d need that even if you sent unarmored troopers. If you think it’s a good idea you could start a support group, kind of like the one here, to make needed things. Dams and bridges, roads and houses. Oh, and a transport squadron. If I were you I’d snap up Sorlee Farmer to head that up before the King’s army does, or at least as someone to train your transport drivers. And I’m saying that because she’s good, not just because I’m trying to get her out of being a whore.”
Out of all that the only thing that got a response from the woman was the last word.
“You said whore. I don’t think I remember you ever saying that before.” She was blinking strangely.
Tor just shrugged.
“Lady of industry. Sorry, my backwoods roots were showing for a minute there.” He grinned.
So did she. But then, without speaking, she refastened the cases and pushed them back into place, then walked to her bed area and didn’t come out for the rest of the night. Tor heard a scratching sound that he recognized as pen on paper. He felt a little bemused, but let it go. Apparently weapons of war didn’t make that good of a present for a lady? Well, he’d have to do up some flowers or something with the second part. He decided to keep that in mind for Connie’s gift. No weapons and nothing too practical? That could be done.
The next day, sitting on his bed, lights dim and Ursala primed to feed him and lead him to the restroom if need be, he started working on the Queen’s birthday gift. What he had in mind, well, it was about useless really, but he hoped she’d like it anyway. Being careful not to tell anyone what was up, he worked non-stop, building the field one piece at a time, so that he could eat dinner each night and sleep for a few hours before getting back up. It was a bit of a complicated field device, but it wasn’t massive in any portion, well, not too massive, compared to a thousand mile long river or something, so he didn’t have to risk dying to do it. He even ate and exercised enough that Kolb didn’t yell at him overly. Instead the bald man just gave him hard looks and raised his eyebrows a lot to try and get him to do more.
It did let him get ready for the trip to the Capital a little, practicing his fighting about an hour per day, running too. He didn’t rest enough, but something had to give in his schedule and he did sleep some. So it was better than a lot of the work he’d done over the last year that way. He didn’t even come close to dying for instance or even scaring anyone overly.
The trip to the Capital was uneventful, thankfully, though Tovey came to get him and had Sorlee fly him down rather than letting him just fly himself. Then, as if trying to make him seem a near invalid, two of the combat giants carefully helped him out of the back section of the craft, nearly carrying him to the carriage, for the ride to the Thomson place. It was David Derring and Petra that were tasked with helping him, which was fine, except that Petra kept grabbing his behind and making him laugh. He had to drop into a trance just so that the chuckling wouldn’t make him seem too lively.
That didn’t stop her, but she did shift where her hands went a little, enough that Tor began to suspect that the girl might actually like him or something. Finally David whispered at her to stop, his voice low and dangerous sounding.
“Petra, give it a rest, at least till we get in. Tor is supposed to be near death, not getting ready to bed every girl in the Capital…” David glared at her a little but Petra yielded and started treating him like a revered elder, too sick to stand on his own.
They made it in finally, the house nice and cool at least, Tor had left his equalizer off, so that he’d look slightly distressed. Acting had never been a real skill of his, but letting himself suffer in the early spring heat would get the job done. That and the fact that he always looked a pale compared to most people, especially if he stood next to someone like Petra with her smooth dark looks. It probably worked, at least from the worried looks the staff was giving him. They offered to carry him to his room even. Tor nearly lost it then, barely keeping the laughter in.
Did he really look that bad? Apparently. Tor insisted on shuffling in under his own power, hamming it up for them, barely lifting his feet.
The next days he spent doing nothing more than copying fields for a military that had more shields now than they ever had before. It wasn’t a vast number, but instead of nearly ten thousand with shields of one sort or another, he had them up to nearly twenty-five.
Still, he had nothing else to do and no one would let him even leave the house. That was a good plan, he knew, since he needed to be available to be killed and all that. But it wasn’t exactly interesting. He couldn’t even work in the kitchen or clean rooms, or have interesting visits with Ursala. So he worked and pretended that was all he was interested in doing.
Nothing happened of course. No, that would be too exciting by far. No one even made noise in his section of the house. They even under-spiced the food, so that it wouldn’t be too much for him.
For two days the only thing that kept him going was an hour long afternoon visit with Petra, who sat with him underneath an invisible silent dome in his room. They couldn’t do anything, of course, because, well, first, it wasn’t that kind of relationship, bored or not, though by a couple of days in Tor didn’t doubt that even his natural shyness would fold under the desire to do something. Second, there were eyes on them constantly. The boredom was bad enough that he could have let go of worry about being watched by Tovey’s people, that was what it was, if they wanted to watch him have sex, more power to them. But if any of them were spies, vigorous activity on his part might give the plan away, right? That also took out weapons practice for the same reason.
So instead, they sat and talked.
It wasn’t inspired for the most part, talking about new types of devices Petra thought she’d like, some of which Tor thought he could actually do, like a device to merge cloth together without sewing, it would take some practice, but if the fibers could be coaxed to move together and intertwine… Well, that was doable, he thought.
They chatted about what she did for fun, which lately had, oddly enough, a lot to do with clothing styles of all things. The large girl that he’d never seen in anything but fighting leathers or real student browns that he remembered, not silk or velvet certainly, had a keen fashion sense and enjoyed designing her own outfits. Her family, well, the ones that talked to her, didn’t have a lot of money, but she used a bit of her pay each week to buy up material from the Capital, mainly the fine stuff from Afrak and Tellerand. Finally, on the third day, they talked about where she’d grown up.
That was enlightening to say the least.
“Um, well, most of my life I lived in Warden. The County Ward capital, of course. That was back before my dad died, you know? Once Marvin married Maria that was pretty much done. She’s too jealous to let anyone else be around that might influence him at all. He’s… look, Tor, I know that it’s likely that Maria’s behind the attacks on you, and that it’s probably my fault, but Marvin isn’t a bad guy, or at least he wasn’t before she came into his life.” Petra sighed and shook her head slowly while Tor looked baffled and just tilted his head at her, at least it got her to keep talking.
“A lot of people think he’s just dumb, but he’s… Well, he’s just really trusting, not stupid. The problem is, when they got married a few years ago, she started telling him that we were all out to tear him down, to destroy him and put James or even me on the seat instead of him. But neither of us really wants the job. James is a bit like him, not slow, but too trusting by half. The only plus there is that his wife is really smart, and a good person. As for me… Well, I like to think I’m bright enough, but really nothing special in the brains department, you know? My mom’s pretty smart, but dad was always, well, he was a Count and a good man.”
Ah. Tor had to piece a lot together then, so he started to ask some questions.
Petra smiled at him and nodded while she sat cross legged on his bed. Her clothing was all tough looking tan and cream leather with brown boots the same color as his own shoes.
“That’s right, Petra Ward. Ellen’s my mom, I’m kind of a late in life child, she was nearly fifty when she had
