proper bed early. You know that we each get two beds here? One for work and one just to sleep in? None of the other girls have ever had that before. I didn’t know it was strange till earlier when they told me. I’m getting more used to that standard talk. They’re all helping me now that the others know that I’m not all polly priss on em and just need to get my legs under me a bit.”
The whole thing still left Tor feeling a little odd, sending the girl back to a whorehouse for her “real” job. A matter of honor for her though and, his backwoods morals aside, why shouldn’t she make coin that way? Her honor was just as valid and his and besides, men were willing to pay for the service, so that meant it was legitimate, right?
The idea that Two Bends wasn’t the center of the world or the only measure of what was right wasn’t that new an idea to him. He’d been away at school for a couple of years at least, before he had to consider this in the here and now. It was a good thing really. If he’d walked straight out of Two Bends to this situation he wouldn’t have been nearly as able to adapt.
Trying to be kindly, he patted the girl lightly on the back, not making contact, because his own shield stopped him. She seemed to get the general idea. Just to save everyone time he took luncheon in to Ursala and Sara himself, only to find that Sara had left to go out on a delivery. It was, he knew, kind of her job, getting large cargo loads off to the Capital and various bases around the area.
Technically, even though she slept in Tor’s place with the rest of them, she’d joined up with the military. She was actually Sergeant Sara Debri now, given that high of a rank because of her level of schooling, and the fact that she’d brought her own flying gear and shield. When the military had less than two thousand people outfitted like that, anyone coming in already knowing how to fly and with their own gear kind of got to ask for what they wanted.
She wanted to be here for some reason.
As they ate cold sandwiches and boiled eggs, Tor got to thinking about Ursala. She really should learn to fly, if she was going to be way out at his house like this. What if she needed to go somewhere, or just wanted to get out for a while? As they finished eating he packed away the dishes in the compressed earth box the meal had come in, to go back for washing. Then he dug into the chest of fields kept under his bed. Pulling out a flying rig and shield Tor handed them to her with a little grin, hoping she wouldn’t be offended by it. After all, giving a woman a present that a lot of people considered valuable, while they were alone like this, could be taken as being an invitation to something very different than what he currently intended. Someday he’d try to work up the nerve to think about intending something like that with her, if he could. Maybe. Just thinking that made his face warm a bit, but the new beard helped to hide it, he hoped.
“Flying rig and shield. Both yours. That you don’t have them already was an oversight on my part, sorry about that. Do you want to try it right now?” He said shortly but with a smile, knowing that she didn’t exactly have anything else to do, but might want to change first. Trousers really did work a lot better than skirts for the purpose after all, especially with all the men at the base. Even the Princesses wore pants for flying, he told her.
The men might want to peek up her skirts he knew. Tor did, as inappropriate as it would be, so who could blame them for just glancing up? She went to change and apparently had to dig through her own trunk to find something that would work. It took a while at least. It wasn’t until they got outside that he realized she was clearly scared half out of her mind.
“Oh! You rode in the transport so well yesterday that it didn’t even occur to me that you might be afraid of heights or flying… I…” Tor didn’t want to shame her in public or anything. She should learn to fly anyway, it was a good skill to have, and when you noticed a fear it always paid to face it down, but maybe they could go a ways beyond the wall to practice, so no one would hear if she screamed or cried or something.
“It’s not that. It’s just… I know I kind of said that you needed to pay attention to people that were making overtures towards you but I didn’t mean you had to give me a gift like this. It’s… Thousands of golds worth of stuff Tor. I just meant that you should flirt back a little, or have sex with a few people. Or at least hint that you might be interested… Give out a few more hugs or something.”
Tor shrugged.
“Relative value Ursala. To me what you’re wearing represents about a quarter silvers worth of materials and about twenty minutes worth of time, once I break it all down. A few pennies of leather and some twine. Less than that really. A nice flower arrangement would cost about the same or more in the Capital.” He grinned.
“Besides, if you’re willing and Sara isn’t back when we finish up you can explain some of this sex stuff to me. That’s certainly worth this little bit of junk, information is priceless after all.”
For some reason that Tor didn’t understand, his attempt at “playing back” got a low and meaningful chuckle from the girl.
“Alright. I think we can work something out in… trade, that way if you want.”
Tor didn’t know for certain, but he suspected she wasn’t talking about the same thing he was at all.
Chapter fourteen
Ursala wasn’t bad in the air, once she’d agreed that trading whatever it was she intended as an exchange, was of equal value to what he’d given her. To distract the Countess he told her about how he’d managed to get himself trapped in a tub earlier with two of the women of industry.
“Ha! Oh Tor. You told them that? I…” She laughed a little as she floated in the air about five hundred feet up. They’d already made a large circle of the area, practiced turns and landed several times for the exercise of it. This hovering was mainly so that she could get used to just being up in the air. He’d found that raw time was the best thing for getting people used to being up high and trusting the gear.
“That’s really sweet… Um, who’s that?” She started to point with her left hand and shot forward and down a little bit before she recovered, nearly half a mile away. Unconcerned, Tor followed. Ramming full speed into the ground would suck, but she pulled up well enough before anything could happen. Ursala even slowed down smoothly enough that the whole thing probably looked like she’d done it on purpose from the ground. Tor grinned at her back.
While they’d been circling a decently large group of people had set down in front of the large gate. They’d probably flown in, Tor realized, because if they’d been in wagons or walking he would have seen them on their last pass, probably all their passes. Out here any movement on the ground kicked up dust, even a group of people walking.
They were all large, and wearing half a dozen different kinds of clothing, mainly types of fighting leathers. The man in front was slowly walking forward towards Godfrey, who’d come out to meet him, backed by about fifty men in black military uniforms that all had excavation units on, holding them like they were weapons.
They wouldn’t make wonderful projectile devices, but then anyone holding a metal object towards you with a field on it could be ready for anything. He still had a “poison detector” that would make any sane person run in fear if they knew about it. Or soil themselves. It was around his neck on a cord if he needed it. Right now though, strangers or not, politeness seemed to be in order. After all, if they were as big as they all looked, and flew in, they’d have to be nobles.
As he approached, wearing the old student browns he’d put on to go and bake earlier, he waved the much more attractively dressed Ursala to set down behind him. He hoped he didn’t have to tell her to keep her shield on right now. She wasn’t stupid, but there was an off chance that she might think of the shield as being something only for flying. Rolph always kind of did, and Tor had flat out told him to start wearing his shield most of the time. Fake masked Wensa had taught Tor that lesson well enough at least.
He was out of line of sight when he set down, just inside the wall. That way he could walk out and not spook anyone overly, dropping on them from above. When Tor got about fifty feet away he caught the sound of a familiar voice, even if the face was obscured by black cloth covered backs of the men standing in a long single line in front of him.
“We mean no harm and only wondered if you might have food or water that we could buy. We don’t have vast resources right now, so anything would help. Thank you.”
Tor patted one of the men on the shoulder so that he’d step out of the way, looking a little scared he looked down and seeing who it was smiled.
