Queen suddenly jumping out and doing battle with them. It involved a lot of swirling of skirts and hair pulling. Possibly some biting. Not that the woman wouldn’t know how to protect herself for real, she was probably better trained than he was, it was just funnier the way he thought of it.
Smythe certainly didn’t like the idea at all, so maybe she was more dangerous than Tor thought?
“Your majesty! I assure you such extreme measures aren’t needed…” The older man said, his cream and yellow colored robes drifting slightly in the breeze.
Connie glared again, but it was the King that spoke.
“Obviously they are. In my entire reign, no one at this palace has been attacked while a guest here. Not in my name at any rate. Now my own staff is taking it on themselves to decide who should be assassinated? I think not. Guards, please escort the counselor back to his rooms and ensure that he stays there pending the decision of the council.”
Tor just stood, not really knowing what was happening. Queen’s protection? So was he being adopted as a pet or something? He had to ask out loud, because he kept coming up blank on this. It had never, at least to his recollection, been covered in the little schoolhouse in Two Bends. Everyone gave him a look that he interpreted as “silly bumpkin” but that didn’t tell him what he needed to know.
“So what is it? This Queen’s protection. Don’t I get to know before I accept it? Because if it means I have to become a eunuch or something I think I’d rather just go hide out in the woods.” After all, just because women didn’t like him, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t have sex ever, did it? There were professionals for that kind of thing, and really, it wasn’t like he was disfigured or diseased so if he had the money, they might not say no. The ones in the Capital had seemed willing enough and were even nice to him when he told them he didn’t have the money at the time. That they worked for gold was, well what made them professionals, right? Everyone worked for coin. He wasn’t that awful… was he? The idea left him feeling a bit dirty, an artifact of his early upbringing, but it was something to cling to at least.
Rolph ducked his head and turned away. After a few seconds of shaking shoulders Tor got that the big guy was laughing at him, but no one else spoke. What he needed right now was… Varley. She’d tell him what this was. Eye narrowing he asked where the girl was, so that he could get some answers. Rolph finally got his laughter, if not his face, under control enough to explain.
“Tor, it’s not that big of a thing, just, well historically speaking the Queen’s protection has only been used to protect the Queen’s lovers from a jealous husband. So if they announce this it will basically be taken as everyone admitting that you and mom are, you know, together.”
Ah. Tor frowned. Well he wouldn’t let her do it, would he? Let them do it. He had too much respect for them both, for all of them, to let that happen. Even if they didn’t like him at all. Connie’s name couldn’t be linked to someone like him, he told them, his voice going soft. Then he went inside the guest house to get his luggage. Running off and hiding would be way easier with some gold on hand, plus he had his working supplies and some things he promised to do, like those rivers for Afrak and building a wall for Ellen Ward.
When he walked out everyone else had gone into the palace, so at least there wouldn’t be a scene. He took it as a sign that everyone kind of approved of his plan. Well, at least they weren’t going to insist on his ruining Connie’s good name. Better he die alone and forgotten than that, right?
The only real problem was that it was starting to get dark and he didn’t have anywhere planned to stay yet. Really, even though there were supposed to be some good inns around the Capital, he had no clue where they were at all, or even what such a thing might look like from the outside. He’d never stayed at such a place, even while traveling to school.
Debbie might have been willing to put him up in the little back room for the night, but tracking trouble to her door would be poor repayment for her previous kindness. Maybe he could camp outside the city for the night and then figure things out in the morning? He used the Not-flyer to get to the main gate, but the guards wouldn’t let him out. They claimed he wasn’t a prisoner, just that he hadn’t been given permission to leave.
Right. Permission? To leave? He needed permission to leave now? Who needed permission to leave? Oh, right. Prisoners.
This whole situation was just getting ridiculous. It took Tor about thirty seconds to set everything up, moving slowly, pretending to just check the luggage, and acting like he was about to go back to the guest house. Then, guards watching as if they expected him to explode at any moment, or try and fight his way out, Tor simply rose into the air and left.
Permission indeed. Did the morons not realize he could fly?
He got about an hour north before he had to land because he was losing the light. Landing in the dark was just too dangerous, even in the flat wasteland he found himself. He set up a little camp, really wishing he’d thought to buy a blanket or bedroll while he’d been in town. His shield would protect him from attack, not all, as he’d just learned, but most. His skin still felt burned and sore, but that wasn’t anything to major. He’d had worse sunburns. Still, it had hurt enough to distract him, which had been the plan he guessed.
The temperature wouldn’t be a problem, warm enough still for sleeping even if he didn’t have a device that made that a moot point. He even had lights for safety and comfort in his case. But nothing he had would keep him off the ground at all. Or, and this was a real enough consideration as the day wore on, hide him while he relieved himself. All the camping out he’d ever done before was in the woods. This area was wide open, dry and scrubby looking, with a lot of exposed rock, some of it red and very flat on top. On the good side, no one seemed to live out here either, and even if anyone flew over they wouldn’t be able to see him in the middle of the night.
The idea hit him all at once. He had equipment that would let him make a sturdy little shelter and lights that would let him see well enough to work. All he had to do was find the little stream he’d though he saw before he landed and he’d have almost everything he needed. Then again, working in the dark would be hard, even if he used his artificial lights. Instead he decided to just wait until morning. Then he could see about building a proper shelter.
If anyone owned this land, they obviously didn’t care a lot about it, and really, how long would he be there anyway? He didn’t even have food or anything and doubted he could find any out here. Of course as far as Tor knew he wasn’t kicked out of the Capital or anything, so maybe he could go there for supplies? It might work, for a while at least. He curled up and tried to use his arm as a pillow. It didn’t work very well, being too hard and bony for comfort. Sleep didn’t come for a long time, but it did arrive, finally, after several hours of pitch blackness.
When morning came and Tor sat up he had a horrible crick in his neck, it hurt just to try and look to the right, as if someone had kicked him in the neck as he slept. It might have been damage from the fight the day before. If him running around being hit with weapons like that was to be considered such, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be counted as fun. He got up and walked towards where he thought the stream might be, feeling tempted to just fly the distance, but realizing that getting too lazy wouldn’t help his health long term, he needed to walk, and even, if he could manage it, run, as much as possible to recover what he’d lost, especially if he was going to have to fight commando squads now. Flying was better than nothing, but he couldn’t just float around all over the place if he wanted to keep himself from falling apart.
The water wasn’t that far away, and as he lay on the bank scooping it into his mouth, tasted clean and pure. First he needed to get some kind of shelter, a roof and four walls would do, it didn’t have to be fancy, or even large. There was just one of him after all. How much did he really need? He paced out a square that was twenty by twenty paces or so and marked the corners with some rocks he’d found. There were no trees, which felt wrong and a little off-putting to him, but he wasn’t here permanently anyway, so worrying about it would be a waste of time.
The soil was a red brown dirt that was dry, except for right by the water. The lack of trees at least meant that he didn’t have to deal with roots in the soil, so he used one of the excavation rigs to spray the dirt out of the square he’d marked off and then used the compressor to turn the floor and the inner walls into a hard red black “tile” about a foot thick. Actually he couldn’t decide if it was red-black or a deep brown black. It was kind of pretty either way. Shiny and a little like glass. This made a solid and not too ugly pit about six feet deep. Laughing he realized that he hadn’t put in any stairs, so he had to fly out of it and use dirt from about fifty feet away to add the needed steps near where he wanted to put his door. Tor could have used the dirt he’d piled up from the inside of the hole, but he wanted to save it all for the walls and roof, didn’t he?
Then he used that dirt to make the walls, which went up about eight feet, so that it would look like a proper house from the outside, if little. Not that tiny really, since it was about a fifty foot square at the base, big for one fairly small person.
