Knight Esquire ya-2 Read online

  The man next to the first put in a request for as many lights as Tor could make. No time limit, no upper cap. Just lights. The goal was to get one to every man in the military, not just the King’s service, but even the County troops, in case night attacks came from the Austrans. The man wasn’t fat, but had that obnoxious kind of beefiness that some men got from a sense of entitlement, taking just a bit more than their actual share at the table each time. His blue uniform had bright red trim and shiny buttons of silver that were probably supposed to look impressive, but made him look like a children’s entertainer instead. Tor decided not to like him. They wanted a half million lights or more? From him, personally? That was… insane.

  The final man was short. Only an inch or two taller than he was and maybe in his mid-twenties by look. Instead of asking for something first, he stuck out his right hand and shook country fashion, leaning in from a good ways away, nearly six foot, as was proper when you didn’t already know someone. He wore a nice outfit of heavy canvas that reminded Tor a bit of student browns, except that it was a deep green that pushed into the territory normally held by black. If the others in the group looked a little scary or obnoxious, this man looked efficient, and like he was supposed to be out in the middle of nowhere like this, not getting ready to walk into an audience with the King himself. The properly sized man grinned.

  “I’m not here to ask for anything, just thought I’d stop by and say hi. I’m, well it gets complicated, but basically, for all intents and purposes, I’m your uncle. Dan Green. Laurie is my vastly younger sister by the way. By about three hundred years. Dad asked me to handle this little war thing for him and represent County Lairdgren in the council and all that. Finds all this war talk tedious. I can see you’re busy, but remember not to work yourself to death. Trust me; you have time to do things later. If you get a chance, in a few months or so, come by the Capital at Grenwyn and visit your family. Everyone’s curious about the fabled Tor already. Of course I can see why. I was warned, but… Yes, you really do look exactly like him, don’t you?”

  “Um, not to sound brilliant, but whom am I supposed to look like?”

  Uncle Dan grinned.

  “Your grandfather. My dad? Your both… well, I’ll let him explain it, but let’s just say that you have his looks. More closely than anyone could really describe fairly. Don’t let it worry you. I’m sure you’ll both get along famously.”

  His smile widened and his eye twinkled as he said all this. Tor just had to thank him, very humbly, and with real feeling, for not asking for anything. It was probably just from being tired, but for a brief moment he really felt like running away and hiding somewhere that no one would be able to find him. The men went away then, laughing, after Rolph told them that he’d been awake and working for nearly four days and so had Tor, and that work had been harder than the Prince getting water and food by far.

  “So, not to be rude, but go away. Shew. Shew. Don’t make me… Well, I’m too tired right now to think of something not to make me do, but I’m sure you can all come up with something appropriately menacing.” He pointed a finger towards the little group and gave them a playful look that said he wasn’t really kidding, even though he was.

  Dan Green chuckled and started to walk away, calling out for them to not be strangers. The man seemed nice enough at least. Tor hadn’t even known he had an uncle on that side of the family. Then again, what he knew about that side of the family ended at them all mainly having two arms, two legs and a head. That and they weren’t all overly huge.

  The pillow nest in the back left hand corner invited him and he couldn’t resist it, falling asleep so fast that he kind of surprised himself. It was light when he woke up, but when he stumbled outside he saw that it was morning and not sundown at all as he’d half wondered when he first saw it. The little hut he’d built, the size of a decent house really, kept out all the light from outside, cave dark he liked to call it when they turned the lights off. It still didn’t have a front door, just his windy privacy entrance, so he nearly walked into Sara as he came out.

  She stood there looking anxious, her hair had been cut a lot shorter than he’d seen it before and looked lighter in color. It was cute on her, but he didn’t comment on it, not sure if he was still mad at the girl or not. Tor looked around, first for Trice and then for the trap. He didn’t actually see either one, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. No matter what else, Trice was crafty and could probably think four steps ahead of him in intrigue. He was still sleepy after all, so maybe more than that. On the good side women were so rare here that you could spot them in the distance just by how they walked. She stared at him shocked. He couldn’t imagine why though. It was, for lack of a better term, his house. Why shouldn’t he be there?

  “Tor! My god, what have they been doing to you? You look… Half dead to tell the truth. Have they been starving you or something?” She blurted all this, her voice sounding concerned as if it were a real emotion for her and not an act.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. Watching carefully he kind of wondered how the men had let her get past the fence line, or more likely, since she wore a flying rig, over it. They…

  What were they supposed to do? Jeer at her menacingly? They had a few weapons, but nothing that would touch her if she wore the shield he’d last given her and she was a moron if she wasn’t, with a war on and all.

  Tilting his head he regarded her carefully.

  “Someone had to take up the slack that Debri house left in the orders. What the hell is with that? The whole retooling barely coming up with two hundred fifty units per month on the flyers? About four hundred shields? You should be doing that per day. Or… I don’t know, are you guys hiding them or selling them at inflated prices to the black market or something? The military said they’re still willing to pay the same for them, no matter how many are produced, so I don’t think it’s a great strategy if you’re sitting on them. Plus, with the war, we all need to be doing whatever we can, not worrying about making gold, yeah?” He didn’t really expect her to answer him. On the good side, unlike that last time they met, he didn’t sound angry, just exhausted. At least part of that was because he hadn’t really woken up yet for the day. If she had a problem with that, she could try showing up at a more appropriate time. Not that he really could call this early, since it was light out.

  She blinked rapidly, changing thoughts in mid stream if he still recognized the look. If he’d ever really known what it meant to begin with. His eyes finally focusing he noticed that the hair cut wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Instead of student brown, or in her case black, she wore a dark leather outfit, a brown that should have been so dark as to look black, but was scuffed and covered with dust so as to look a much lighter. She had soft looking boots that hit past her ankles, also dyed to match the outfit she wore, but made, he saw, of heavy material, only the soles were leather, or at least something like it.

  “Tor… only you would look at the largest device manufacturing effort in history and put it down as not good enough. Just because you can work yourself to death and past it like this over and over again doesn’t mean regular people can. Anyway, I didn’t come to talk business… I came to see my friend…”

  That got his attention.

  Of course, he hadn’t been thinking about anyone else in all this, just himself and Trice. Rolph and Sara hadn’t been able to hang out for months because of him making her go away. It had been a little thoughtless and cruel of him. Well, a lot more than just a bit. Duh. Well, he could fix that.

  “Right. One moment. I’ll get him.”

  Rolph woke up grumpily, throwing a pillow at Tor that hit him in the head, uncannily accurate considering the plates had only been turned on enough to dimly light the cavernous space within the hut. Laughing Tor jumped in and grabbed an over-sized arm, pulling on his friend to very little effect.

  “Hey, you have a visitor! Get up before she goes away and you’re stuck with only me for company aga
in today.” He added in a few playful pokes to the ribs just for good measure. Rolph didn’t like to get up sometimes and had to be prodded into it.

  It was enough to get his attention and only three minutes later he stumbled out into the bright light. He straightened up and smiled when he saw who stood waiting for him. The wall of red hair and lanky muscle slid towards the girl smoothly, taking her up in a hug that was returned joyfully enough. As they made happy sounds at each other Tor made his way off to the restroom that everyone staying at the little compound shared. It was big enough for about twenty people, but they never had more than a half dozen around at any one time now. Most of those were just people coming in for a single night to pick up devices or make materials deliveries.

  They had a cook too, or at least he thought they did. He’d never seen the man, or woman, but the food had suddenly gotten a lot better a few weeks back and stayed that way. Not palace level maybe, but not hunks of day old bread and hard cheese either. It was also just possible that someone flew food in from the Capital instead of wasting a whole cook just on them. He hadn’t asked, because there really didn’t seem to be any reason too. They had food, it was good enough.

  He went to his little cabinet in the bathing area, a separate facility from the restrooms and took out some clothes and his cleaning gear. The other men had to keep their clothes locked up, so that people wouldn’t “borrow” it when they ran out of clean clothing between wash days. Tor didn’t have to worry about that yet, even though someone had brought him a shipment of nice things, silk and soft leather stuff, along with a pile of much more practical green canvas that he suspected came from Dan Green or that side of the family, since it looked like the outfit that man had worn. No one else could have fit in his stuff, not here at least.

  Not wanting to make a poor impression, since Sara was likely to tell Trice about how bad he looked anyway, Tor made a point of dressing nicely. Not the best clothes he had, but a nice deep green silk shirt, leather trousers and a vest that nearly matched the pants. He had to slip the soft brown shoes back on, because they were what he had. It was the best he could manage, even if the face in the mirror didn’t look good enough to go out in public. Tor shook his head and stopped the thought in place.

  That wasn’t really fair he knew. He looked normal enough, thin and small maybe, but he had clear skin and good teeth, his hair was longer than it had been, but not so much that anyone would think he was a girl yet or anything like that. He certainly wasn’t any worse looking than average, just smaller and that only here.

  All the people that came through were those that had flying rigs and that meant, by and large, royals or military elite. Both groups tended to be tall.

  Taking a big breath and letting it out with a blubbering of lips he walked back to his hut. If he was lucky Sara would have taken off already and he wouldn’t have to talk to her. He really didn’t want to go over everything and discuss how he felt. It should be clear that he felt bad. Other than that, what did it matter, since he couldn’t do anything about the situation at all?

  Well, he had work to do anyway, so at least there was that. If you can’t be happy, be busy.

  Sara and Rolph weren’t out front of the hut when he got there, so he walked in wondering if they’d gone inside to talk and wait for him.

  In the low light he saw instantly that they weren’t talking at least. Blushing he backed out of the room. There had been too little clothing in that scene for his mind to really process, but he had a general sense of what they were doing. Definitely not chatting.

  Fine, but did it have to be done in his work space? Not, he knew, that they had anywhere else to do it, but… He felt jealous and a flash of bitterness passed over him for a few moments. Tor worked himself half to death and what did he get? More work.

  Rolph sat and brought him water and food occasionally and had women showing up to do things that they’d never even consider doing with Tor. It softened the blow a little that Rolph was the Prince and heir, of course women would want him, but Tor had an odd feeling that it would have been happening if Rolph just been a merchants son too. His big friend had always been popular, even with people that didn’t know he was the Prince of anything. Tor on the other hand, had always been avoided by women, or at least ignored. Unless they wanted something from him.

  Well. Tor didn’t know what to do, but figured that he shouldn’t go back for at least an hour and even then he did he should probably call out first. Sara was good looking, but seeing Rolph’s hairy butt pumping in the air didn’t thrill him at all. The image hovered in front of his eyes still, burnt in place in a fashion that it wouldn’t have been if it Tor had wanted to remember it. He sighed and started wondering around. He wasn’t dressed for running and didn’t feel like changing yet, and while he could eat it was likely a bit before any food would be ready, early as it was. So, instead, he walked around looking at what had sprung up when he wasn’t paying attention.

  The big buildings made sense for the most part, barracks, a dining hall, furniture shop and so on. Tor chuckled then. They had a furniture shop right here, but he didn’t have any furniture? Couldn’t they at least lend him some? Walking in he saw that no one was working yet, since it was early and nothing probably really started until after breakfast. There was a sheet that was put up for people to request furniture pieces or things for different buildings. Tor blinked. There were a lot more than a half dozen names on the list. Were they covering other places too? Or, could it be that the buildings hid a lot more people than he’d thought? He hadn’t been getting out much and most of his runs had taken place near dinner time. Heh, yeah that could skew his idea of how many people were about.

  He looked around for a while, seeing how the place had been laid out. Tor noticed that there was a large stack of completed furniture near the back of the space, a rectangle that must have been a hundred feet long and nearly fifty foot wide, as well as a large pile of dirt off to one side. There was a little door that they used to bring the dirt in he saw, only a few feet across and about five feet off the floor, just above his eye level.

  A long work table made of the compressed dirt had been set up with six of the compressors on little flat tables in front of the bigger one. It had large boxes about six inches deep all the way along, about five foot square. It took a second, but Tor got the idea after noticing that there was dirt in each one. You kind of drew what you wanted with the compressor in the dirt, then put the pieces together with more dirt, like how he’d joined the roof onto the hut. Kind of like gluing wood to make furniture. Only way stronger, as well as much faster. No drying time for one thing.

  Picking up one of the variable compressors he put the small square of copper, marked with three light green acid etched arrows that all pointed inward and started to turn it on before he realized that he needed a plan first, or he’d just be wasting dirt and making a mess. Quickly he sketched out a chair back, seat and legs, using a measuring stick that sat next to the table to make certain he got it the right size. It was just a basic chair, sized to him, but he did make the back rounded at the top. He made the back and seat both an inch thick and the legs two inch squares. It would be heavy, but it wouldn’t break easily. He also made the seat extra wide, so that he could sit in it with his legs crossed. It was a comfortable way for him to sit, if not proper. His chair, his rules, right?

  Just as he finished the last of the legs someone walked in, a man, not royal, but still about a foot taller than he was, if Tor could judge such things based on looks, who wore a workman’s drab shirt and brown pants. He was clean shaven and looked to be in his mid-thirties. Reddish brown hair that was shorter than Tor’s, a military cut that reminded him he should go get his own hair done soon and a look on his face that seemed more than a little angry.

  “What,” the man growled, sounding like he was about to physically harm someone. “In the thirty-seven hells, do you think you’re doing?”

  “Um, making a chair?” Tor pointed to the pieces and sta
rted pulling them out slowly, thinking that one of the heavy legs would make a good enough weapon if he had to fight. He didn’t have any amulets on at all, since he’d been working so much he’d gotten used to not wearing them. The man stalked towards him and glanced at what was being laid out on the table.

  “Oh. Well, it’s a little rough… Not too bad though. Done this before?” The man’s voice softened a little as he closed and took everything in.

  Tor set the leg down next to the others and shook his head.

  “I haven’t gotten to try these out yet, I’ve been too busy. I did a little construction, so I get the basic idea, how to make the joins and all. Just killing time really…”

  The man grinned.

  “Ah, so you’re the new guy? The one they’ve sent to do shipments for us? A little young, but if you can fly and run the cargo floats, we can get them loaded for you. How old are you anyway? Fourteen?”

  Sighing Tor started to try and balance the seat on the legs, which got the man to laugh. He moved in and put the seat, smooth and nearly black, looking like it was made of glass almost, flat on the table, set a small pile of dirt in the corners and had Tor compress each while holding the legs in place one by one. It took about a minute for all four. It was a good trick.

  “No, a little older than that. Seventeen. Nearly eighteen now.” Tor, a quick study turned the chair so that it sat flat on the ground and added four little piles of dirt where the spokes of the back would sit, being careful so that the soil didn’t over lap, since that would leave a bulge and not look very nice.

  “Also, I’m not the new delivery person. I think she’s over in the hut, um, occupied with the Prince. At least it makes sense that it would be her. I guess there aren’t that many people that have been flying as long so far. Me, but that doesn’t mean I’m all that good compared to some.”

  The chair, as he suspected, was heavy. Not too heavy to carry though. They had a clock on the wall, which showed that he’d been occupied for a little over an hour already, only about half of it making this chair. That was fast. He could probably make another one in less than ten minutes, now that he knew how.