temperature regulated.
“When Maria was at school, when she said those things to you, and those older girls pulled her away? Well, they didn’t just pull her out the door. Apparently they beat her pretty soundly for being so vile to you. One of the other girls was poisoned too, her husband died, but she survived. A Countess. Um, Printer I think?”
Maria? But… why? Yes, being beaten was no fun, but to come back years later and try to kill them over it? For that matter why go after Ursala and her family at all?
Maybe Ursala read the look on his face or maybe she was just filling in the blanks for him, the she seemed to follow his train of thought either way.
“It makes sense in a warped fashion. She goes after the girls that beat her, the woman that got pregnant by her husband, a Count that had thwarted her husband in business and so on. Nothing really deserving of death, unless you’re a self-serving little bitch that’s jumped over most of her family and friends through marriage, and bristles at the idea of the whole world not worshiping at your feet. Then it starts to make a bit of sense. In an insane and illogical way. But insanity and logic don’t always go hand in hand.”
That got Tor to start nodding a bit, slowly, thinking hard.
“Then when I was attacked and poisoned earlier this year…” It made sense. Not because he’d be any kind of special target for the Wards himself, just because he was an easy test subject, someone to practice on.
That was where Sara differed from him in opinion, she laid out a very different scenario without waiting for him to say more.
“Yes, you had to have been really eating at her for a while now. First, not only did you manage to recover from her insults all those years ago, the slanders and attacks she put out about you, you became, well… Tor. The Tor. Then suddenly you turn out to be a Squire and a Countier, with your fortunes growing to a point where even a Count might be jealous. On top of that, you’d offered to marry Ursala when she was in trouble. You didn’t mean it that way, but it was a slap in the face to Maria most likely. That story made the rounds, and really, a lot of people still talk about it. It’s the kind of thing that starts legends you know. A good man stepping in to make things right when a less noble one won’t even try… And in this case the less noble man is her husband and a Count, so…”
Tor laughed. Not a big laugh, but a dark one that might as well have been crying. He wouldn’t go into how little it had done for him with Trice. This situation was way to serious for him to dwell on that kind of crap. It was bigger than him by far.
“OK, so what’s the plan?” Tor waited, but neither one spoke to him for a minute, finally Ursala gave him a vague answer that caused more questions than it answered.
“I can’t say much here, but Tor, the King already has agents in place with Ward. It wasn’t easy to get them in and I was only told because of my parents. So that I didn’t launch an all out attack yet. I can’t say any more, sworn to secrecy on the matter, but if there’s any way to get at this we will. I know you must be angry about them hurting you but-”
He snorted. Angry?
“It’s really just as likely that Trice did it. She really didn’t want to be married to me. I didn’t go after her for it, why should I go after someone that I’ve already, I don’t know, forgiven is wrong. I haven’t forgiven Maria. Come to peace with? I don’t blame her. I just learned that I wasn’t worth very much. I mean the girl was a stupid fourteen year old at the time for god’s sake. With Trice, well, that was way worse. Even if…” He shrugged. Nothing else he could say would help and it would just distract from the situation at hand.
Both of them seemed awfully sure that it wasn’t Patricia Morgan behind the attacks on him, so he let it go. The girl was obviously at least known to both of them and they didn’t want to think that ill of their friend. Well, he didn’t want to think it either, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of choice. At least Trice should have left off trying to kill him, now that the engagement had been broken. He hadn’t even pursued her parents in his anger, or her for that matter.
Probably because he lacked a spine. But yet, here he was, walking upright and everything.
He let it go. The fact was, Tor had a lot of work to do and needed sleep to do it. A deep work state may keep the need for sleep in abeyance for a while, just like it lowered his need for food and water, but it didn’t eliminate it all together and now that he’d eaten, he was exhausted.
It took him a few minutes to explain, but he got into bed after that, letting them know that when he woke up he’d probably be taking a break for a few days if he could. He slept deeply for a while, then had troubling dreams of women saying things to him that he didn’t understand. Telling him that they were innocent, but he didn’t know what they were supposed to be guilty of. Trice he kind of understood, but Maria Ward was there too and… Connie.
It was dark when he woke up. Pitch black. That didn’t mean it was night, but that seemed likely, since he could hear deep breathing in the room with him. Not wanting to wake anyone he tabbed the light next to his bed to the lowest setting, a bare glow that was just enough to see the hands of the clock by. Four-eleven in the morning. Well, if he was on to bake that day he needed to get up and go to work.
He went and cleaned up, putting on his oldest pair of school browns before heading to the kitchen, walking slowly still. He’d need more exercise before he’d recover enough for speed he knew. Way more.
In the kitchen, on a blackboard, written in bright white chalk, there was a list of what was needed for the day. Fifty loaves of bread, assorted sweet rolls and some cookies. It didn’t describe what kind of cookies, so he figured that it was up to his discretion. Bread first of course, since it would have to rise. He had to make ten large batches of dough, but at least they had the bowls for it. Huge things made of the glossy compressed dirt substance that everything seemed to be made of here.
While that was rising he worked on dough for the rolls, sweet rolls for desert, and then got the bread into the baking pans for the second rising as he started to work on the rolls themselves. They didn’t have a lot of cinnamon, so he used orange peel instead, as well as a hint of clove. There was plentiful sugar and butter, which was kept in the big cool room. Just as those where going into the rack near the ovens to rise he decided to start getting the bread in.
It was about six-thirty when the room started to fill up, the bread not yet out, but plenty of space left for the rest of the food. Even if some of the ways they were cooking looked odd to him. Bizarre really. They boiled water for the eggs by putting big pans in the oven on the side away from the bread, which he got to pull out about then anyway and put aside into racks for cooling. That was good, because the water vapor would have made the bread crust chewy, not a horrible thing, but this was the wrong kind of bread for that. The rolls would just have to wait. Chewy sweet rolls would suck. His were meant to be light and fluffy, with a flaky crust. He hoped they wouldn’t over proof in the mean time.
Nothing was fried, because there wasn’t a stove top in the room, all they had were ovens. Tor hadn’t thought about it before, but of course a griddle or stove top could be done easily enough. Those could even be turned on and off. The oven plates needed to be inside the ovens and were too hot to touch… because, Tor realized, he was a moron. Oh, it worked out all right with these huge things that took days to get up to temperature, they’d have to stay on anyway.
Smaller units could have controls on the outside, and so could griddles and warming pots. He’d already done things with remote activation like that. The control for the flying rigs for instance. The actual flight field was on the amulet worn around the neck, not the one on the hand used for control.
As Tor lamented his own stupidity and lack of forethought, the man he’d talked to the day before wondered in to the kitchen looking blurry and tired. He had a cup of something in his hand that smelled familiar, the same stuff that he’d been given for combat rage reaction. This guy just looked hung over to his untrained eye. Maybe it worked for that too?
“Hey. New guy, you actually showed? And did something useful? Smells good even. I don’t suppose that the military would let you out of whatever you’re doing now so you can come work here each day, would they? What do they have you doing anyway, building furniture?” The last bit was, Tor realized, almost like asking people in the country what they did for a living… farm? Everyone around here built furniture, or other needed supplies, so of course Tor would too, right?
“No, I build field devices, magic, and I really think that the military would whine if I tried to stop doing it. I don’t actually work for them though, unlike most of the people around here. I decided to take a break for a few days and they can just deal, you know? Anyway, we need to get the sweet rolls in as soon as the pots of water come out, or they’ll over-proof. Sure, that’s no great horror for this type of product, but too much and it will destroy the texture. I’ll start on the cookies next.”
The man took a sip of his beverage and grinned.
