thought at least liked me a little as a friend.” He took a deep breath and smiled. It had to be a sad thing, just because the blind rage was gone and he could tell that he wasn’t the center of the universe now, that didn’t change things, did it? It colored it, reshaped it a little, but nothing was shifted yet. If he wanted things to be different, he’d have to make it happen. That was always the same, right? Change started with yourself?
Rolph went white for a second, an actual change of color.
“Um, what?”
“I said that I’m not going to hurt anyone over this. I’m mad and upset, but I won’t let anyone else pay for my hurt feelings. That would be wrong. I agree with you and…” It took him several deep breaths to get the words out.
“And I’m trying to let this all go.” Even though it ached horribly inside.
“Seriously? I mean, that’s great… But you’re going from “how many can I take with me” to “let’s be reasonable” inside ten minutes, that’s…”
Shakily Tor made himself laugh, it nearly came out as a sob. Sitting on the edge of his drab little student’s bed, wearing his old and worn brown clothes he must have been a sight. Right, like little Tor the sap could have ever been a threat to anyone? What Rolph was getting at was clear though.
“Yeah, that’s either insane or a lie most likely. But I just realized how small I am, my life, my existence, not my body. I was just sitting here thinking how much I hurt and what I’d do about it, when I finally got that I’m just not that important. That sounds wrong…”
His hands clawed at the air a little bit as he spoke, trying to scrape words into existence.
“It’s… I’m not less important than anyone else, just that I’m not any more important either. Not when you stand back and see the big picture. Reality is vast compared to our tiny worlds. For me to take anyone else’s life away from them would be wrong, no matter how much I hurt or suffer because of what they do.”
Then the laughter, real laughter, broke through. He laughed until tears came and then he cried for a long time, knowing that it wouldn’t matter how stupid he looked. Rolph would still be his friend at the end of it all. Finally after about twenty minutes he stood up, legs shaking and mind still fuzzy, but clearer than it was before.
“But, right now, I can’t be here. I may not be important or anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel this… shame. The embarrassment of all this. I have to leave.”
Tor felt sad about it, but there was no way he was going to brave the looks of revulsion from the others on campus, or, just as bad, pity. Rolph tried to talk him out of it, but eventually had to see that Tor couldn’t stay there any more as well.
Everything was finished.
He repacked the trunks slowly, so that he’d have room for supplies to take with him and so that he could give back Sara’s trunk. A thought occurred to him as he dumped the coins out on the floor to be counted up. There seemed to be an awful lot of them.
“Did… Sara take out her percentage yet?”
“I doubt it. She’s really scared that you’ll just ruin them all Tor, I don’t think she stopped to even consider it. Does it matter though?”
Tor looked at all the gold and silver on the floor and winced a bit. It was more money than he’d ever seen in one place in his life, and he hadn’t even unpacked half the trunk yet.
“I don’t know why they tried to keep the money from me Rolph. I mean, wouldn’t they stand to make a lot more from my stuff if they were just fair and honest with me? Over time I mean? Hell, I’d have given them the money if they’d asked for it. Why do all this? And… why not take what was owed out before sending it along? I… don’t understand at all.” He sounded baffled and sad again. But didn’t let it bother him. If he wasn’t like that for a long while, he’d be surprised.
The Prince plunked down beside him and started dumping out bags of money.
“Well, what Sara told me, before, and don’t get too mad at me, but yes, I knew that the money was being kept back like this, was that she was afraid that you’d just give it all away to people in need or something if you knew about it. With most people that would have been, well, trying to rob them. Sure. But with you it kind of makes sense. You’re generous, to a level that few ever approach at all. I think that idea kind of scares the merchant in Sara’s heart, to tell the truth. And… notice, the gold’s all here. It hasn’t been spent or anything. It doesn’t exactly all add up, but last night Sara did mention that her mother suggested she hold it back, even though she didn’t know you were there, right? So maybe she wasn’t in on… I don’t even know what to call it. Trice isn’t normally like that!”
Meaning what, Tor wondered? That she was being reasonable and that he was just that awful? It was probably true. Mainly at least. Tor finished counting up and then got Rolph to help him figure out how much twelve percent was.
“The deal was for ten percent though, wasn’t it? For everything she sold?”
Tor shrugged.
“Yes, but I’m a moron, remember? I’m sure I don’t know the difference. Besides, this way she can’t claim that I ripped her off later. Not with the Prince and heir, her own boyfriend, doing the counting of the actual coins himself and putting in an extra two percent. I don’t want any mistakes here. I don’t want anyone coming back later and saying I cheated them or acted unfairly.”
After they reloaded Sara’s trunk, Tor asked Rolph if he’d return it for him, so that he could avoid seeing Trice for one thing and so that he could get into town before the shops closed to get supplies and what not. He didn’t know where he was going, but he’d need materials for new projects at the very least. It was kind of all he had left after all, work.
The shop in town where he normally bought his copper pieces was still open and would have been for hours Tor saw when he looked at the clock on the wooden wall beside the window. It wasn’t even noon yet. Tor had gotten so disoriented that time didn’t mean anything, it seemed. That could happen in deep working states he knew. Really, it always happened. Hours melded into each other and lost meaning. This was just worse than normal.
It was tempting to buy everything he’d ever wanted from the place, solid bars of copper, silver and even a few tiny ones of gold to put fields on. He kept his purchases sensible, not because of the gold, which for the first time in his life he had enough of for what he wanted to do, but because of the space. He had room in about half of one of his trunks, if he left almost all the extra devices he made behind. Tor could get an extra piece of luggage, or even just convert and old wooden crate for the purpose, but he didn’t feel like bothering. What should he do with them when he left, he wondered?
Giving them away to people just seemed like it would help validate what Trice had said about him. He didn’t want to stick around to sell them all either. Just leaving them there would mean that someone had to clean up his mess and dump them or find a place to store them out of the way.
Well, he’d deal with that when he got to it. It really wasn’t that important after all. They could just go in the trash bin.
The canvas bag he’d brought to carry the heavy bits of metal and jars of acid in kept slipping slightly in his grasp as he walked. It would have been easier to take the trunk with him and use one of the follow along floats, but he hadn’t thought of that at all. It probably showed how out of it he really was at the moment. Well, he’d get through this. It didn’t feel like it, but nothing in this situation would kill him. For one thing he’d learned to check all his food for poison and walk around with a shield on most of the time.
On his way across the commons Kolb, Karen and Davie Derring came running up. As impossible as it seemed Davie looked to have grown at least another inch since Tor had last seen him. It boggled the mind more than a little. It had only been a few days. The large bald weapons retuletor spoke to him first.
“Tor! We’ve heard some troubling information…”
Great, so everyone knew about it already? Well, that was inevitable, the reason he needed to leave this place now.
“If what you heard is that my engagement with Patricia Morgan is off, and that I’m a moron that’s too short and ugly to live, then your halfway up to date. I’m also leaving — in a few minutes — and in a few days, if the palace actually lets me in for the dinner I’ve been invited too, instead of snubbing me again, I’ll be resigning my Squires position. If not, if they don’t let me in, well, I’m still resigning, they’ll just have to collect the letter from the front gate. The whole thing was just a fiction so I could Marry Trice anyway. No need for it now.” He meant to say it in a friendly manner, and would have settled for a raspy and sad lament, but he sounded like he was going to rip
