Envoy to Earth (24 page)

The whole thing felt like he was
literally flying from one task to the next, not taking a real break at any
given point, even when he sat for a while. He traded off with Erid and Wallace
on piloting duties, going over how to control the ship, just in case it came
up. Erid had a good grasp of the idea already, but Wallace had never even been
at the controls of a Fast Craft. Not even a regular magical carriage or a
little Tam-Craft.

The boy didn't seem ashamed of
the lack either.

"Those are all hard to get,
aren't they? You can't
buy
most of them, and I don't have the kind of
contacts needed to get one as a present. Maybe I should suggest to Queen Tiera
that she and I date sometime?" He was joking and smiled, more than a bit
sheepishly, as the words came out. "I'm sure what she really needs in her
life is a rather plain looking Baron First making offers like that."

Gerent had to think about that
for a bit. The boy wasn't that great looking, it was true. A bit big in the
ears, and as he'd mentioned, plain through the face. No worse than Gerent was
however. Even his new and vastly improved face, when reflected in the few
mirrors he'd noticed, was serviceable, but not attractive really. Better than
he'd ever even bothered to hope for, but that had been because of where he'd
started in life.

So Wallace was a bit normal
looking, but only that. Not ugly or strange. His hair was short enough that it
seemed well kept, and his skin an even tan that was a bit lighter than Gerent's
own. Not a lot however. There were no pocks on his face, which anyone that had
ever touched a healing amulet was free of too, but he didn't smell bad and
seemed to care for his teeth.

What else was a man supposed to
do about his looks? A disguise amulet might help, but like the expensive and
hard to get craft, there was almost no way for the man to even earn one of
those.

"That sounds like a good
idea. She won't be mean to you about it, so it's worth suggesting. Even if you
just use the date as an excuse to talk about politics. True that won't get you
a ship like this, and might not earn you a place in her bed even, but if
I
were your father I'd figure it a job well done to try. Just having her as a
friend would be useful." That got him thinking about Patty, who, he knew,
was sort of the same kind of thing for him. Except that they were supposed to
be friends already. They
were
.

He knew that doubting that was
just him being sulky, since she didn't love him. Knowing that didn't make the
pain go away, but he'd lived with pain of all kinds forever. One more barely
made a difference to his life. Or it wouldn't if he made a point of setting it
aside.

Count Sinclair was about as
unpleasant a person as Ger had ever met that wasn't busily kicking him, or
trying to stuff something into his behind at the time. The man was about forty,
or perhaps a bit older, and looked like someone had told him that Gerent wanted
to have sex with him, against his will.

Sour and more than a little
scared at the edges.

"What is this now?" He
waved at the large craft floating over his Capital with disdain, which got
Gerent to bow, but before he could explain the aid that was being delivered the
man started waving them away.

"Leave. I... Don't want you
here. You'll frighten my people and they've already been through enough! Go! I
command it." The words themselves were pretty reasonable seeming, but the
tone was snooty and annoying enough to wash the rest of it away.

He nearly just got back in the
smaller vehicle that he was using for deliveries and flew off, but Wallace
bowed and forced the man to do it back, which set Erid and then him into
motion. After about two minutes of various bows, they all seemed to agree that
they were at the end of the chain and he managed a smile.

"Forgive us! We don't want
to frighten anyone. We have an aid package, from Queen Tiera of Harmony. Food
making devices and transport craft. Some other things to help with the coming
troubles. You
want
us to unload them." It wasn't a question, and
the man looked ready to tell him to stuff his presents up his behind, when Erid
cleared his throat.

"That... Might be for the
best, Count Sinclair. From what I can tell, things are only going to get worse,
over the coming years. Besides, Prince Gerent came all this way just to give
you things."

That got the man's attention, and
he worked out who Gerent was pretty quickly on his own, and what it meant even.
He tried to soften his words, but it didn't work very well, the man still
coming off as a
hole
.

"Ah? I was unaware that
Queen Tiera had a child yet. Such a tall and healthy one, too. Or are you
her..."

Gerent didn't let him fill
anything in, in case the next words were as bad as they seemed like they might
be. It was as if the man was spoiling for a fight, or would have been if Ger
was as petty as most of the Noram nobles. He just bowed slightly, and explained
the whole thing, the man sniffing at him as if being a noble by appointment or
adoption didn't really impress anyone.

He held his tongue in the main,
since his duty was delivering aid, not feeling good about himself. It hurt a
bit, being treated like that, but again, it wasn't his first time. Just the
most recent one. Taking the things back because he felt a bit put out would be
hurting people that weren't even there. This man, the Count, seemed the sort to
eat well, even if children starved next door. Not that he was fat, but once
they got things going out and others came to get food and devices for delivery,
it was clear that a lot of them were simply starving in truth. How things had
gotten that dire for them, he wasn't certain, but this place was pretty far
north, so losing even a single growing season might be enough to really hurt.

The man did soften a bit when he
realized what had come in. Food for all his people, without end. No matter how
poorly things went in the future, everyone would eat, and it was good food too.
Made from magic, but filling and tasty enough. The little ones would have milk
and bread, meat and vegetables, as well as a slice of cake or two, eventually.
They could make staples for cooking, and whole finished products just as
easily, for emergencies.

"Thank you. I was a bit
abrupt, perhaps, when you arrived. I feared the King had rescinded his word to
protect my people. It's good to know that he's allowing this."

Wallace looked around and then
back at the man, who was taller than he was, being about the same size as
Gerent.

"This is part of the
shipment meant for the
rebellion
, Count Sinclair. The King... Didn't
stop us from coming, but I'm not all that certain what he knows. I thought you
should know that." He didn't seem happy to be saying the words, and they
came out as if he expected a rebuke.

Ger just shrugged.

 "Part of the price of
getting the aid was that it be shared with everyone. It was simply decided on
that it might work best and most efficiently if not all the food devices and
healing aid was left in the hands of a man at war. Hence us coming to you
directly. I don't know that this wouldn't have been delivered to you all
evenly, but just in case..."

It was the truth after all, and
even Erid nodded to the man, confirming it. Then, his family, at least his
Aunt, who seemed to love him, was on the rebellion side. It might have made a
difference as to how he thought about the whole matter.

They bowed at each other for
longer on the way out than the way in, since it was clear that he was kind of
important, adopted into titles or not. Then, after getting all the helpers back
to the ship, they moved up and over to Harris, which, from the air, was mainly
forest, with a few vast tracks of open farm land. There was a small portion
that touched the ocean, but it wasn't much of the coastline. Most of that was
owned by Ford in the south, and Lairdgren to the north.

Gerent wouldn't have known that,
but Wallace pointed it all out to him, having memorized the map of the Kingdom.

"When you don't have
friends, it's important to keep busy." The words were deep and dark, but
not muffled.

Pointing, the younger man had
Gerent fly to the Capital there, Boggston, almost directly. It didn't take too
long to find, and they managed to land outside the main city without settling
on anything, wanting to avoid any menacing hovering, since the last noble had
sort of complained about that. This, Gerent decided, would have to be the last
of the day's trips. He'd get back to the Capital of the Kingdom that night, and
first thing in the morning, get everyone back to their own homes. True, not
everyplace had all their deliveries yet, but he could hire some of the work
done.

The Two Bends Fast Delivery
service would give him a good enough rate, he was willing to bet. It was a
business still run by the family, which in that part of the world really meant
something. All of Lairdgren was like that too. Family first wasn't just a motto
there, but a way of life. Harris, as a whole, was influenced by that, but he
hadn't really noted the feeling as being half as strong, when things came down
to it.

Then, he wouldn't have, would he?
Left in the care of an uncle, if the man had really been related to him,
instead of anything more familial.

He didn't stand on a lot of
ceremony, just setting up the last load, and taking Wallace and Erid again, for
extra clout. They were both clearly nobles, and known to the rebels. Wallace
seemed to have been so far at any rate.

He went to the largest house,
figuring that it would be the right place, but it turned out that it wasn't,
being the Dowager Harris' keep, instead. The butler informed him of this rather
curtly, but managed a smile if a dry one, for Gerent anyway, saving the words
from being rude.

"Do you gentlemen require
aid? I'm sure we can task a boy to take you to the needed-" He was cut
off, when a
very
elderly looking woman, who had to be nearly a hundred,
patted his arm, moving the servant out of the way.

She didn't speak, for a long
time, just staring at him directly, her eyes bright and curious seeming. She
seemed to be thinking about something, and finally came to an internal
conclusion. She nodded at him at least, and then looked away.

"I'd wondered if this day
would come while I still lived. Well, don't just stand there boy. Come in. We
have much to speak of, you and I." She wasn't commanding about it, seeming
embarrassed instead. Still after he didn't move, his mouth working for a while
she smiled. "Don't worry, Gerent, I won't bite."

"Ah..." He said,
wondering how she knew who he was at all.

Then he went in, because running
away didn't seem a viable option at the moment. Unfortunately.

The scene inside was as normal as
any other very old, but nicely put together dwelling would have been. It was a
large place, being about half the size of the King's Palace in the Capital, and
done in the traditional wood and stone inside. The big difference here was that
this lady, the Dowager Harris, seemed to love carpets. There wasn't just a
carpet in each room they walked through, but barely a single spec of the stone
floor underneath could be seen.

They were all in red and gold
too, but had an aged sense about them, with the centers being worn down
compared to the edges, after hundreds or thousands of people had walked on them
for decades. He didn't judge however, since the rest of the place looked
expensive enough. What the carpets were for he didn't know. Or ask about. He
was a bit more concerned with the fact that this lady, a noble, knew who he was
by name.

In the last week he'd met with
over half a dozen people that he'd known before who could barely make out who
he was, even after being told. How had this lady, a stranger to him in every
way, looked at his face and instantly make out who he was supposed to be? There
was an easy answer of course, in that one of the other people that he'd visited
in the last days had simply communicated ahead. Probably with her Count, but
that didn't mean the information hadn't been passed to the man's mother in
conversation. Gerent relaxed, since that made more sense than anything else
would. So much that it nearly
had
to be true.

It wasn't that at all.

The woman, who had slightly blue
hair, which had to be some kind of dye used to hide the white of it, cleared
her throat and shuffled slowly to her sitting room. She didn't seem either
happy or comfortable, and if she were normally chatty, that function was
failing her at the moment. Ger's own ability that way had seemed to have
temporarily fled, he'd noticed, so didn't blame her. The air inside was close,
feeling like it hadn't moved much that day, and smelled a bit of heavy spices.
Cinnamon and a few others that he didn't recognize, not having been around that
kind of thing enough to have learned.

After the woman waved for them to
sit in various chairs, she directed Gerent to a specific one, it was just right
for him, meaning made for a medium sized giant, and had a soft red pillow on the
seat. It was attached somehow to the polished wood that made the frame. It kept
him from sliding. An old and wizened finger pointed up at the wall across from
him, where he noticed a rather plain looking older man in a painting. He wasn't
good looking, and even the artist that had done the work couldn't make his
loopy grin into anything that seemed sane, apparently. The eyes weren't vacant,
but they held a strange sense of madness. The tightness around the lips was
what really sold the whole thing.

Whoever the poor man in the
picture had been, he was either hated by that particular artist, or he was more
than a little unbalanced. At least looked that way. It could happen. Like a man
that Gerent had once met that
looked
mentally slow, but had actually
been hiding a keen enough mind underneath his dumb looking face. Perhaps this
fellow just gave the impression that raving was a pastime he solidly endorsed?
He wasn't planning on talking about it, not that portion of things at any rate.

Gerent smiled however, since he
was supposed to be looking at the picture and other than the strange subject
matter, it was well done.

"Is this your own
work?" He didn't know if that was polite or not, but the woman winked at
him, her face pleased that he'd gone there, it seemed.

"It is! I did this one about
forty years ago. This man was a cousin of mine. Daniel. Harris of course, but
so far out of the line that we didn't even have to make excuses as to why he
lived off on the country estate. Not...
well
, our Daniel. A good enough
man, most of the time, but prone to the bad rage." She looked at the
others, so Gerent did too, following her eyes. Erid winced at the last bit, but
Wallace simply nodded slowly. Neither spoke at all.

She looked back at him, and
finally nodded.

"Combat rage. In about one
in every fifty people that have it, the condition is overly developed. Daniel
spent about half his time in that state. It warps a person, to live that way.
It was peculiar for him, since he could feel it coming on, and move away from
others the vast majority of the time." She rang a small bell, and when a
woman bustled in she gestured to the guests. "Tea, please, Matilde?
Perhaps some of Cook's delightful biscuits?"

The lady, who was dressed in a
gray uniform that had black shoes to go with it, bobbed in place a bit. Not a
curtsey, but something that seemed like the woman wanted to do that, but didn't
have the time.

"Coming shortly,
ma'am."

"Thank you, dear." The
tone sounded like she was speaking to a child, but the woman had to be nearing
fifty. There was a quality to the words that made it seem like she actually
liked the serving woman.

The old lady looked back at the
picture and went back to her tale, for some reason. It might have simply been
that she wanted to talk, but that didn't explain much.

"Now, where was I? Ah,
certainly,
Daniel
... When he raged it was legendary. We had, it was
actually my uncle Maurice that did it, had a special room built to keep him
inside. He was locked up there most of his life. We all tried to visit and make
the rest of his time as pleasant as possible, but he really wasn't fit for
human company.

"The odd thing there was
that, in those moments when he wasn't foaming at the mouth and trying to rend
holes in the walls with great blasts of force, he was a sweet enough man. That's
where the trouble came in though, wasn't it? Him being polite and charming
enough that the serving girl his father hired gave in and became his
lover."

The others listened aptly enough,
and Gerent tried to imagine what that would have been like. Not the sex parts,
but the idea of being locked up all the time, or most of it. Hidden away from
the world and told you weren't good enough for anyone else. It wasn't hard, but
growing up
he
hadn't been a noble. Seldom locked in a cage either. That
had
happened, and more than once, but not for too long at any given point. He hated
being locked up though. It left him feeling slightly bad for this man, Daniel Harris,
who'd never done anything wrong, except what his own body forced him to.

It was enough, of course. You
didn't have to be evil for people to act that way about you.

Gerent let himself nod, to show
that he was listening, because people liked that, in general.

"It must have been very
challenging for everyone involved." He spoke the words calmly, his face
probably a bit bland. It would have been worse than that, but he didn't want to
push the woman into tears. Or a rage of her own.

If her cousin was prone to it,
she might be as well, if not as sensitive.

She clapped once. It was a dull
and muffled thing, since her old hands just didn't produce much speed or power.

"Yes. That is merely the
truth. Poor Daniel. Poor Leslie, too. She had you, about five years after
they'd taken up together in secret. She was of merchant stock, but it took all
of us by surprise when you were born with those problems. You weren't a healthy
child. Maurice was content enough to host you on the country estate with your
parents, but over time things went... Wrong. Daniel simply went into a rage and
never came out of it, dying several days into the thing. Six, I think.
Leslie... Well, it would be romantic to say she died of a broken heart, but I
can't say as I know that much about the story. It was reported to me that she'd
taken ill. Then Maurice died and left the estate to me." She smiled and
shook her head.

Then the room went silent for a
long time. Gerent felt the blood rush to and then
from
his head, but
managed to pull himself together mentally faster than he thought he would.
After all, if what this woman had said was real, and he had no reason to think
it wasn't, then...

He actually
had
parents.
It was clear that he always had, but this meant that they'd died, and hadn't
just sold him into sexual slavery or worse that the man that had abused him as
a child and called himself his uncle had been his father all along. That... It
was a thing that he'd feared for a long time, and rarely gave voice to. The
weight of it lifted from him, and he took a deep breath.

"That... is a tragic
tale."

The woman cleared her throat
again, and gave him a sour look. Probably for interrupting. Old people did love
to tell their stories.

"By the time I managed to
get there, some weeks later, it turned out that the huntsman had removed you,
and himself, from the estate. We searched for you, for years, but... Well,
after a time, we stopped, figuring that you were dead. It wasn't until a few
months ago, nearly a year now, that I managed to buy a packet of information
from Baron Coltress that contained reference to a Gerent Lairdgren, who was a
midget or dwarf, with blue eyes, and had gotten himself adopted by a Count.
Since then I've been tracking you, in the missives. I didn't know if you'd
remember me, or your parents, but I was honestly planning to let you know about
all of this. I swear. I have a letter for you, in with my things, to be broken
out when I die."

She grinned, and it was charming
in that old person sort of way. Gerent understood. She felt guilty about not
coming and telling him immediately, as soon as she worked it all out. Except
that he really did understand that a person might not want to find new
relatives at her age.

Here he was however, in the flesh
and large as life, in her parlor. Annoying of him, he realized.

"That sounds like a good
plan. Of course now you're stuck with me.
If
that wasn't some other
midget named Gerent. I can't imagine it's a common name however, given that
I've never met anyone else called that. Thanks for telling me. I..." He
shrugged and went silent, but finally smiled at her. "Every orphan child
imagines a thousand different reasons why they were abandoned. Was it some
shame or scandal? Were they just unloved? In my case, I always just assumed
that my mother had given me away, since I was... Wrong. That she didn't want
the burden of having me around. Now I can imagine that she'd loved me at least
enough to keep me. My father, too. Even that uncle of yours doesn't sound too
bad, given everything."

It still might not be his real
story, Gerent knew, but he wasn't about to slap a Truth amulet on the Dowager Harris
to find out. If she were making the story better for him, to protect his past,
or even just so that she wouldn't be linked to something shameful, he was more
than ready to let her get away with it. This tale, his father being half mad
and his mother a mere servant... It was about twenty times better than most of
what he'd come up with himself. His fantasies had most normally been about
having enough to eat, not secretly being a Prince that had been stolen away.
He'd talked to other people that didn't have anyone, and a surprising amount of
them admitted that they wondered if they were part noble.

That had never been a factor for
him, being so tiny that even the most common folk looked down on him, day to
day. Now, for him at least, it seemed like that old story was true. Gerent had,
by birth, been born a noble. Or at least the bastard of one. His mother
wouldn't have been married to his father, given what he'd just been told. That
was still fine. They'd been together, and he'd been loved. Or at least kept,
until Leslie had died. Even past that, by his father's people.

Who could ask for more than that?

Something occurred to him, and he
smiled, trying not to let any sense of panic hit him.

"Wait...
I
showed up
in the files of Baron Coltress?" He got the idea, that the man had
knowledge of him from his daughter, but why write about him? That barely made
any sense.

The woman waved that away, her
face pleasant.

"We're
all
in there,
eventually. I just paid attention to your story, since... Well."

He stood up then, and smiled
again.

"That
is
a most
interesting bit of story, ma'am. I hate to run, before the tea, but we should
really get the food units working. It's why we came here. I didn't know any of
this. It's amazing to finally hear, after all this time. Thank you."

They, apparently,
were
going to sit and have that tea, since the woman didn't let them leave, giving
him a stern glance. She finally relented and let Erid go and see to things,
being that he was a High Servant, and he literally had a sworn duty to uphold.
Wallace seemed torn, as if he both wanted to hear the rest of the information
that the Dowager, Mellissa, had for them, but also didn't want to be there in
particular. Or leave Gerent to fend for himself. It was pretty kind of him.
They'd only met the day before after all, but here he was, sitting with them in
this woman's parlor, listening to her awkwardly try to explain how they'd
missed finding one of the only midgets in County Harris for all that time.

Ger simply decided not to make an
issue of it. If she was willing to claim now that they'd looked, that was good
enough. She'd been the Countess back then. The sitting one too, and until she'd
given that up for a relaxing retirement, putting her eldest boy in place, she
probably hadn't had a lot of free time. Not that finding him would have taken
real or direct work on her part. That was silly thinking. As a Countess she
could have simply ordered the guard in the area to do it. Sent out a few
letters and locate all the children that were both boys and too small, since
they'd stick out. Then it would have been a matter of days to locate him. It
would have worked for almost twenty years, too. Until he'd taken to traveling
up and down the coast with his various acts.