The Builder (The Young Ancients) (31 page)

“So he approached her and started saying the words, a simple invitation to consider going to the party with him, if she wasn't already engaged or busy that night. No presumption that anything more would happen or hint of anything untoward. Really, it was nearly perfect. Leaving her a hundred ways out if she didn't want to go with him. She could have said that she couldn't go due to a previous arrangement, or that she was engaged otherwise. She could have offered a friend that she felt would suit him better, you know the obvious stuff, or even...”

Rolph took a huge breath and continued, obviously angry, even after nearly two years.

“Or she could even have simply told him no.”

Sara winced and Trice reached out and touched Tor's arm, which caused him to jump away from her a little bit. He instantly felt bad about it, since she was just trying to be nice, but it had startled him, being unexpected.

“What...” Sara looked at Rolph hard, not looking towards Tor at all. Her gaze felt conspicuous in its absence. “What did she do?”

Tor dreaded this next part. Did Rolph really want to humiliate him so badly in front of these two? They were practically the only girls not related to him that didn't try and run away screaming. OK, no one had ever actually run away, but close enough.

The Prince grimaced.

“She... was vile. Evil to him, for simply asking if she'd consider possibly, maybe, going to a party, in public, with him. She screamed, called him names, said he was worthless, dirty and probably had diseases she didn't want to catch. She accused him of having sex with animals and probably men to boot. She went on and on like that for at least six minutes, and would have probably kept going in that vein to this day if some older girls hadn't pulled her from the room by force. That was... bad. But what she did next...”

This caught Tor by surprise, there was more? He didn't remember anything else, except everyone turning on him for a while after that. Glaring at him mostly.

“She started a campaign of rumors, one in which Tor was the villain of everything wrong that could be imagined. He didn't know about it, because he wouldn't leave the room for nearly three weeks. They almost had to kick him out of school then, and send him home. I actually had to contact my parents to intervene for him, which they did without question, Tor, based only on what I'd told them before. For a while the faculty was afraid he'd kill himself if he knew what was being said about him. I won't repeat any of it, even now. Let's just say that the reason Kolb started training Tor to fight and protect himself was directly related to that... and no Tor, it wasn't a mistake, and no one put him up to it, Kolb chose you for training personally. That's why you're never getting out of it now, even after everything has died down. I think he views it as a personal challenge. You aren't exactly huge after all.”

He continued on, telling them how Maria was recalled home for some reason, what he hadn't known at the time. He'd thought that her family had caught wind of what their daughter was doing and sent her away in shame, at least to another school, if not to live with Howard Turnbull on his country estate.

Trice nodded then. “I see. I'd wondered at the meeting why Tor looked so upset. That explains it. I'm surprised she even dared show her face! Can you believe that Sara?”

“Maria who? Is she... a servant at the palace? Or...” Blond hair flopped just a little as she shook her head.

“No... She married a Count. Count Ward to be exact. Vile bitch. No wonder the Count chose to sleep with Ursala, who isn't half as pretty, instead. That's... well, she wouldn't have tried that if she knew who Tor was going to be, I bet. That's why there are rules about such things! What if Tor decides to make war on Ward?”

Trice moved closer to him and hugged him awkwardly from the side. He wondered what the heck she was talking about, but enjoyed the attention for a bit, even if she was being silly.

Him make war?

Maybe, if he got lucky, he could be a minor inconvenience to someone like Ward personally, trip him or something if he caught the man off-guard. Duck down behind him and get someone else to push him over maybe. But war? His army would just destroy him.

That... sounded better than the facts would really allow for, he knew. A few men from his army would destroy him. The rest would probably hold a picnic while they waited for the two or three men it took to finish up. They could hold games and eating contests while they waited. What was he going to do, bring his brothers in to fight an entire county?

That, oddly enough, the idea of Torrence Green Baker personally going after county Ward in retaliation, was a fact not lost on the King and Queen according to Rolph. That Tor might take it in mind to do battle, alone, against the Count and his army.

“When we fought, the Count and I, both in full battle rage, Tor simply stood between us Sara. Ward pounding him from behind and me trying to work my way around to get at the louse. When I tried to strike, he'd jump in the way, taking the blow instead. We both tried direct effect too and were blasting aura the whole time, and it did nothing. It was like a mountain had been placed in front of us for all that we could get at each other. It's the shield he made of course, but no one in the world could really take those away from him, he could just make more. Notice how even that buffoon Ward stepped into line after that? It was especially impressive when Tor had just been standing there taking a beating intended for me from the man and started talking, casually, about who we could get to marry Ursa. Of course wearing my old court livery really worked out there. To Ward and Thorgood both it was as if the King himself had stood there and commanded us all to heel to his will... Kind of enforced it too. Then he just walked away as if nothing happened, not even out of breath, not holding a grudge or even calling us to task for it, which would have been within his rights.”

Sticking out his tongue, Tor gave the opinion that Ward hadn't even noticed him, and that Maria obviously either didn't even know who he was or didn't care. Fair enough, all things considered. He wasn't a very important person after all. Why should she even remember him?

Moving back to sit down, Rolph brushed at the blanket as if getting some sand off, then sat back down, the side of his body touching Sara. Tor smiled. It looked like fun, but if Maria had taught him anything it was that women didn't like him that way. It didn't matter. He'd learned to be happy with his work. It wasn't the same as being loved, but it was all he really had. Well, that, and his friends now. Rolph really had been there for him, after all.

Curious, he asked who Doretta was.

Trice looked at him and gave him a gentle look.

“Oh... that... makes sense, it's probably not a story you were told as a kid. OK, short version, since the rest of us all know it. Um..

“A long time ago there was a shopkeeper, a humble young man that sold goods in a decently large city. He worked very hard and was successful, being smart and clever. A woman came in regularly and they'd talk, in a friendly way, so one day, working up his courage, the man finally proposed marriage to her in the street in front of the shop. The woman spurned him publicly, since she was of noble blood, if not very highly placed. The daughter of a Knight or something; it varies depending on who's telling the tale. She told him no, and suggested he should have known better than to reach above himself, and dare imagine he was worthy of someone as grand as her.

“So the shopkeeper, despondent and humiliated, joined the army, seeking his death in combat. That way he could redeem his honor you see, wash the stain of humiliation away in his own blood. Years passed, and he proved to be a good fighter, eventually saving the life of the Prince himself, who became his good friend...”

Trice gave him a significant look her eyes darting several times between him and Rolph. A soft snort escaping her, she continued.

“As unlikely as that always seemed to me... Time passed and the shopkeeper was made a general, then, eventually a Count.

“After a time, over twenty years later, he found where the girl lived, her having married a Baron, and took his army to meet her husband in battle, and slaughtered him. Killed everyone in the Barony, including the woman's entire family. Then he had her put on a small island so that she could slowly starve to death, reflecting on how her own actions of spurning him so cruelly had led to all that death and destruction.”

It wasn't, they assured him, a real story, just one used to teach kids not to be like that. There was even a phrase they used, “don't be a Doretta.” as a warning when someone was about to step out of line or hurt someone else's feelings too much.

Tor shook his head at the very idea.

“But that would take a minor personal matter and make it lethal for a bunch of people that hadn't even been there! What kind of monster would do that? Not me. Maria could have been a thousand times worse and I wouldn't even go after her, much less those around her that just have the misfortune of knowing her...” The idea made him shudder a little. Trice moved in and held him for a while, getting a grin from Rolph, even though Sara kept giving him uncomfortably nervous glances. Probably because a Ducherina was sitting too close to him and he was only two steps above a pig farmer in the social scale. He knew enough not to think it was anything more than, oh, a lady petting her dog. Trice just wanted to reassure him, that was all.

The talking continued then, moving to different and less embarrassing tales, at least for him personally, but Tor's mind escaped from the awkward conversation into solving the water flow problem. It wasn't that hard, he just had to keep the field from shutting off with water in the force line itself. Basically what would happen with the fountain in the pond garden. It took about two hours for him to figure out how to do that, but he thought he had a solution when Rolph stood, stretched and announced that it was bed time. He gave Sara a hand up and dragged her away towards the house, both giggling like little girls.

That left him and Trice to put out the fire, which they did using big handfuls of sand, finally kicking large drifts of it over the fire. Nothing glowed on the surface at least, so it should be good enough he figured. It might smolder in the sand for a while, maybe even a day or two, but with nothing else around to burn, that wouldn't make any difference at all.

Then he shook out the blanket the other two had used and got Trice to help him fold it. She wasn't very good at it, but she picked the idea up quickly, and when they did the next one she moved in almost perfect unison with him.

They made their way back to the cabin well enough, the light of the more than half moon making it possible to see the trail at least. A light colored strip with darker vegetation on either side a few feet off. Trice held his hand for balance, but ended up keeping him upright at least as much as he did her. She was simply bigger than he was, so her stumbles rocked him, pulling him into a full awkward tilt, where his barely budged her. She was lean and tall; he noticed again, at least a full head more than he was, more than that, a full foot. He knew he must look like a little boy next to her when they walked this way. It was dark and anyway, there was no one to see them stumbling along so it didn't really matter if he looked silly, did it?

After a while Tor began to understand that his friend must be at least a little drunk. Not sloshing, falling down drunk, but a stage past tipsy at least. Her pale arms and legs flashed in the moonlight, his own nearly invisible in his brown students outfit. When they got inside she hugged him close to her suddenly and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

When she spoke her words slurred a little bit.

“Don't worry Tor. Not all women are like Maria. Most aren't even. Be willing to give some of us others a chance and you might be surprised...”

Then she made her way to the room she and Sara were sharing. His room was first, so at least he didn't have to grope as far along the hall. He undressed, down to underclothes, some nice things that Rolph had gotten him for the trip, in case they went swimming in them. It was that or skinny dip, the Prince had told him. So far they hadn't swum, the others splashing and playing in the water near the shore while he worked. Tor knew he'd been less than fun or interesting, but it was an important problem he was trying to work on, and the King had asked him to, right? That meant he kind of had to pay attention and work fast.

Five minutes later the door opened slowly, and then closed with a firm, sudden bump. A form crawled into the bed and tucked under the covers next to him. Tor was half asleep, so didn't think anything of it, drifting off easily, hoping to get up early, so that he could try to build a new water transfer field that wouldn't kill thousands of people if it shut off.