“Look at the rest of it… Little kids stuck down in a collapsing pit and you climb in after them knowing it was collapsing. You. Personally. You didn’t try to order someone else in, or just stand and watch. Don’t think I didn’t hear that workman tell you that you could lose your foot either. You did it anyway and never even complained about the pain from the break. I would have been demanding drugs and crying into my pillow for half a month if that happened to me.
“Then with Duke Winchester, everyone else was too afraid to try and do anything, even me and the Royal Guards. You waded in and made him let Lady Priscilla go, even though I know that you fully expected to die for it. No one else got that Tor, they thought you were just being brave, doing something a little dangerous, but that you knew you could handle even with a broken leg. I saw the look on your face afterward. You handed me your shield as a sign that you were willing to go to your death for having saved her. I know you too well to not get that stuff now.”
Rolph didn’t look at him, facing forward. The only sound he made for a minute was breathing. A bit heavy, not exactly a sigh though.
“You always do the right thing, the brave thing, no matter how hard or how unfair it is that you have to do it. So yeah, inferiority complex big time. Worse, I know, somewhere inside, that in most of the cases I’m talking about I could have done the same thing, but didn’t because I was too afraid.”
“You’d have never fit in that hole.” Tor said seriously. Getting a strange look from Rolph. It was a slightly sad look, one that said he felt mocked. It wasn’t meant to be at all.
“As to the rest, well, you did what you had too. If you started fighting with Winchester to save Priscilla, you probably would have killed him, or just as bad, the Royal Guard would have gotten involved to protect you and they would have done it. Besides, I’m not really certain that “too stupid to know better” is the same as brave.”
The laugh that came out of the other man was dark sounding.
“Great and now you feel like you have to make me feel better about myself. You get my point then?”
Ducking his head Tor wondered what he could say. There just wasn’t a real comparison between them. He did some cool things occasionally, maybe, but Rolph was that way all the time. Really, by definition he was the standard for the term as it applied to men. At least in Noram. Probably a few other places. Not Afrak maybe, but that was what it was and Tor wouldn’t be accepted over there either. Wrong gender for it he suspected. He stumbled over trying to explain this until Rolph finally sighed loudly.
“Oh, I’ll live Tor. I can’t even hold it against you, I mean you really are just that great, you know? Let’s stop the whole bit about how I’m god’s gift to women too, huh? Oh, true, you and I go to a tavern and I walk out with more women, hands down. Being Prince has its perks. But what about the women we know? I bet if we gave Sara and Ursala the choice between spending the night with me or with you, they’d both argue to get into your bed. Maybe even both at once. Notice how I never give them that choice?
“Sara didn’t come here, join the military and take a job as a goods shipper just to have me warm her bed you know. She came for you. I’m pretty sure she didn’t even know I was there. The look on her face when she realized… Oh, true, she didn’t turn me away, but did you see how she looked at you when she found out you saw us having sex? I thought she was going to cry, and trust me, that is not what women normally do after having sex with me.” Looking towards the front almost stiffly Rolph smiled.
“That’s usually more like… “Oh, Alphonse, I love you… no other man could ever compare to you, marry me…” which I know isn’t really about how great a lover I am, just girls trying to get into a position of power, but it really is good for the ego.”
It took only a few more minutes to land and get back to the little hut, which looked a lot more like a simple shed now than it did before, the compound having grown around it in shining focus stone, glittering a little in the sunset like a jewel. It was kind of pretty. More than just a little, he realized, really nice. Well, it was probably just as well that he was living in what looked like a storage building then. No one would think that he was taking all the best for himself at least. He didn’t even get his own room.
When he and Rolph got to the front of the hut a curtain had been hung up over the door. It was a heavy canvas piece in green. He hadn’t put it there, so couldn’t explain it to Rolph. A door, obviously, but more than that he didn’t know. Cautiously they worked their way inside, leaving their shields on. Not that assassins would come and make improvements to their dwelling normally, but just in case, they wanted to be ready.
The scene inside was odd. Possibly even stranger than if assassins had come to redecorate.
The place hadn’t been changed or anything like that, but all the chairs at the table were in use, there was a nice wooden box on the top of the focus stone table they used for eating and Sorlee was crying softly with Ursala patting her back.
Sara looked up when they came in eye getting big.
“Tor, good! We didn’t know where you were. Um, a letter came for Sorlee and she started crying but we don’t know why. She showed us the letter, but none of us can read it…”
Next to the chest was a letter that had clearly been scratched out in haste or by someone that had pretty poor penmanship. It took a minute but Tor realized what it said. It was just written phonetically and in backwoods, not standard. Easy enough once he got the idea. Tor read it out loud.
“Dearest Sara Lee,” He had to read slowly because the writing was sort of hard to make out at first. “I write with dark news. Due to bills from the doctor and the rent on the farm coming due to the Count, we will be dispossessed at the end of the month, if we cannot come up with a sum of seventeen golds. Your brothers have all gone to look for other work for the winter, but it does not seem we can manage this in time. If possible, I will write again soon and let you know what happens to us all.
“A nice young man from the Two Bends fast delivery has agreed to take this message to you for free, because it is close to where he has to take another package. Know that we love you. Mother.”
This started a round of back patting and hugs for the girl. The woman next to her wasn’t anyone Tor recognized, but since she wasn’t a giant he figured her for one of the other industrious women and left it at that for the time being. She was pretty enough in a girl from down the lane kind of way. Feeling awkward he got Rolph to help him pop the box open, which turned out to be the first payment from Sorvee house. Timely as promised. The box didn’t have a lot of gold in it, just forty, but it did kind of provide an answer to Sorlee’s problem, didn’t it? Almost like an omen really, showing up at exactly the same time as the letter did.
Plus he was supposed to be bad with coin, giving it away and everything. This was almost perfect for that, wasn’t it?
Without thinking about it Tor counted out seventeen gold and put the stack in front of the girl, then as an afterthought put another one beside the taller stack. She’d have to pay to get it there in time after all. Sorlee had her head buried in her arms on the table, but the women next to her gasped suddenly and clutched at the girls arm.
“Sorlee look…” The voice held awe.
That he could get. Seventeen golds was a big part of what a farm would bring in during a year. He didn’t know what the women made working as they did, but it didn’t seem to be that much, if the other woman’s response was indicative. She got moist eyed, but smiled at Tor as she shook the smaller girls arm gently.
“S’wha?” The girl, small and brown haired, red shot eyes and running nose looked up, but it was like she couldn’t see what was in front of her at first. The woman next to her had to point and finally put her hand on the stack before the girl understood.
“To save the farm? But… this is too much. I won’t ever be able to repay this. Not even if I spread my legs for the entire military here for years!”
Tor answered her in proper speech, which only they could understand at the table, since it was the way she’d spoken to him anyway.
“Well, I don’t think that’s actually right, if you got all the men to sleep with you, it should be possible, but we can’t afford to lose you from the kitchen for that long, so this is a gift.” He laid his hand flat on the table, fingers spread, a single, well defined movement, to show that the matter was finished. She glanced at the hand and given that they came from places with similar customs actually got what the move meant. So a first for the last few years of his life.
“There are no debts between friends.” He said softly.
Crying softly the girl stood and put her hand out to shake, leaning in from a far ways away.
“There is no debt between friends.” She answered back, her voice thick with tears still.
No one else really got what was going on until Tor asked if anyone knew the fastest way to get the money to
