restrictions. Tor isn’t the court jester, as funny as he’s been tonight. He’s… a builder, a wizard. Young, but one of the greatest in our land. He makes field devices, magic we call it. The flying river you so covet? He built it. By himself, alone. In less than two weeks. While lying in a bed with a broken ankle he got saving two poor children from a collapsed well. He nearly died in that event, but he didn’t allow that to prevent him from saving a portion of this land from drought. I assure you, if he says that he can do this for you, man or not, you’d best believe it will be done.”
The Ambassador stood suddenly and bowed to the Queen. Then as an afterthought to the King. At least now that bit of interplay made sense to Tor. In her world a man just couldn’t be in charge, so she had to make herself remember to take the King seriously. Or at least pretend to. It hadn’t come in to play much with Tor, because he just wasn’t in charge of anything. Even him running off to help with the baking had probably seemed normal to her. It was the kind of non-important thing that people that weren’t leaders did, right?
As if seeing to the food wasn’t important.
Tor had gotten along perfectly well without having a King or Queen handy most of his life and had never needed a doctor at all, but he ate several times every day. People really needed to get their priorities straight. Farmers, cooks and craftsmen were at least as important as a King. Not that he’d tell the royals that. That would be stupid.
They had armies, so everyone had to pretend they were important.
After that though, the strange woman took the idea seriously, even if she did keep giving Tor funny looks. Incredulous glances that spoke of her not really believing it all. Oh, well. Maybe she’d change her mind when she saw the rivers flowing into the desert? Possibly not. Cultural expectations could be hard to change, and Tor would still be a man, no matter what he did.
Mutta didn’t have a specific price in mind, but certainly seemed willing to offer recompense for the work to be done. The King informed her that the kingdom itself would allow it without cost as a sign of good faith and peace, but that she still had to contract the work with Tor himself. The serious tone he used made Tor laugh out loud, which made everyone in the room stare at him for a second as he clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just… Been a hard month. Tell you what Ambassador, good faith dealing here all around. I’ll deliver all the things I said I would, make sure it’s up and working and then you can pay me whatever you and your people think it’s worth, alright? You don’t like the work, you don’t have to pay anything. You can’t get a better deal than that, can you? You can all decide to pay with some chickens and a slap on the back if that suits you.”
At that the woman stood, smiled hugely, and bowed to the Queen again, nearly prostrating herself on the floor. Rolph had to hide a laugh himself when he saw the look on the King’s face. When the woman went back to the party, less than half an hour had passed. The King smiled then clearly relieved.
“Well, she’s not good for the ego, not mine at least, but I have to hand it to her, she didn’t stretch things out overly. I half expected us to be in negotiations for months on this one. Can you… really do the work though Tor?” For all that he’d seemed confident a few moments before, now the King looked worried.
It occurred to Tor that these people had to worry about a lot of things, didn’t they? Sure, everyone did, but the King seemed to feel responsible for everything. Kind of the job though, wasn’t it?
“Oh, well, yes. Really telling her that it would take months was kind of a lie. I explained that though… I could have it all to her in a few weeks, I just kind of wanted to have a little time to work on some other things like I said. It’s selfish of me, but there you have it. Especially since I doubt I’ll get paid for it anyway. Still, it really is worth doing. Just to help turn a dessert into something green like that. How could I not help?”
Before he could finished the thought the next group of people was ushered in. His chair wasn’t moved at all, and no one asked him to leave, so he just sat as the people bowed to the King and Queen. For the first time he could remember they all bowed to Rolph to, if not as deeply and even gave him small half bows, looking a little uncertain of his place. Apparently they were important people, because no one bothered to introduce anyone to him, or him to them. That last part made sense, because he intended to just sit and listen anyway. Perhaps they were supposed to be known on sight?
It grabbed his attention when he realized that the people on the right hand side of the row of chairs appeared to badly desire to go to war with the people on the left.
“We demand satisfaction!” The older man on the far right fumed, his face going red.
Then white.
Chapter nine
Tor, wisely, decided to keep his mouth shut. The situation was pretty serious and the angry man that wanted to be satisfied was already half way to combat rage. Stupid ultimately, but that didn’t mean that people wouldn’t end up dying over it. Possibly in that room, within the hour, if it was played wrong. Tor was glad he had his shield on, but as he felt around mentally, he noticed that no one else did. Connie and Rich weren’t wearing theirs at all.
Even if they secretly didn’t like him, they should have worn the shields. Maybe they weren’t nice enough looking? He could, probably, work something into stone or crystal that would work better for them. Rich people did that sometimes. It was harder to do, but fields on stone just lasted longer, sometimes ten times or more. He’d look into it. They were supposed to be friends after all, so if he saw a way to help them, he had to. It was a rule.
The dispute was between a Baron and a Duchess, who were supposed to have been married at one point, but the situation had fallen through when the Duchess decided that she loved someone else instead. Or possibly just thought she had a better business deal set up. Not a good thing, but it sounded like it was handled well enough at the time, go betweens used, and egos soothed enough that no one had been overly angry.
No one had spoken loudly in negative terms about the other in public for instance. No screaming drunkenly in restaurants or anything.
Over the five years since though, things had gotten strained between them, the Baron refusing right of transit across his lands for instance, which was inconvenient for the Duchess and the man she’d finally married, who turned out to be the head of the Lintel Merchant house, since they’d recently set up a new manufacturing concern to replace their lost military shield contracts. Water pumps and temperature equalizers. They needed the route for rapid shipping.
Tor blinked.
Well.
Apparently Sara had actually been busy at least. Maybe he’d been hasty in lumping her and Debri in with how Trice felt about him? The girl wasn’t the one that had said those things, even if Trice was her best friend.
Tor took a deep breath, which made the Baron snap at him. The man was so enraged that he clearly wanted an excuse to lash out.
“What you think that I shouldn’t have the right to manage my own lands?” The tone was angry and sullen and the words clearly directed directly at Tor, which made the entire royal family stiffen in response. Tor shook his head.
“It’s not that, not at all. I was just thinking about a personal matter that, well… your own situation just pointed out to me that I may have lumped someone else in to a personal matter of my own, unfairly. I guess I have to see to fixing that before I hurt people that aren’t involved in other matters.”
“What?” The Baron asked, his face showing that what Tor had just said didn’t make any sense at all.
Right. Why would he know anything about it?
Tor explained the whole thing, knowing that it made him look foolish and stupid, weak and undesirable, but not wanting the Baron to feel like he was being made fun of. When he came to the end of it he had tears in his eyes, and the room was silent, probably wondering how this half mad midget had gotten into the room. The Queen handed him a light pink handkerchief to blot his eyes with, which had to look ridiculous, but at least his nose wasn’t running from it yet.
The Baron looked at the others in the room, the woman next to him, a fairly young and pretty person that turned out to be his wife, now looked at Tor with tears in her own eyes. Was he so pitiful that even strangers felt sorry for him? It almost made him laugh, but he didn’t want the situation to be misunderstood. Laughing at the already stressed out Baron would end badly. If nothing else the giant man would probably challenge him to a duel.
