“Pull her out from under him? Oh, that’s funny…” She wiped at her eyes a little.
Sara tilted her head down a little and shook it slowly.
“No, not that, we all got that you weren’t taking it seriously then, or even that you might be putting us off, but just didn’t want to be rude. Calling yourself a troll like that… well, “you’re too good for me” is an excellent way to stop someone from pursuing you, very polite even in a way, taking the blame for why it wouldn’t work, but I told them that you just were a little down on yourself. I just didn’t know why back then.
“Then Rolph said we had to go through his mother, so we sent off the papers on it that night. It was accepted at the gate but then we never heard back from you at all, and you never mentioned it to me. Not even a note about it, or a go between, if you couldn’t bear to do it yourself. Then, you know, a week later, well two weeks, but it felt almost instant and you were getting together with Trice. She’s my best friend, so I made myself let it go, even if it hurt a little. But my family didn’t. I figured you just didn’t like me that way, so, you know, I tried to hide it. Or, well, I did kind of sleep with Rolph on the beach trip and I… I thought you might be mad about that. You’re rules, the ones from Two Bends are just so different than ours.”
Ah. That had been why they’d been afraid the sweet fried corn cakes were poisoned? But, he’d never heard of a marriage proposal at all until the one from Meredith Sorvee. What, he wondered out loud, had happened?
Rolph ducked his head under the water, and came up grinning; it was a guilty seeming look somehow. Not just a little either.
“Um, well, this is awkward isn’t it? You see, I kind of had the gate guards pull anything that came from Debri house, you know, just in case it was a love letter or something I wouldn’t want my mother to read in public. Aaaand long story short, I didn’t open my mail until the night before we left to go back to school, I figured, you know, if Tor already had something arranged, then it was a moot point…”
Tor started to get mad, but then busted out laughing instead, and covered his face with both hands. Of course that would happen. Well, he certainly would have married Sara, he would now, except that Varley got there first, but until the wedding took place he wasn’t going to count on that one either. The options for a Princess were too great, and face it, he told them all, Princess Veronica was very good looking. Plus she had that rumored chance with Varro the Gardener.
The odds of her sticking with the engagement had to be less than certain.
“I don’t know Tor. Karina is scrambling to find a husband now, because of this. She has to get married first by tradition, if possible, and she doesn’t really like the one my parents have arranged for her. Count Peterson? He’s the one in charge of the flying school and that department?”
“Oh… Yes, he seems nice… but, um, intense looking. As in scary. Well, I’m sure something will turn up. She’s cute too and has that whole Princess thing going for her. I’m… I don’t want to sound backwards, but I still have some problems with the “everyone has lovers” thing. I still feel like Rolph’s going to come hack me up one night over Ursala as it is, you know?”
“What?” Rolph burst out, smiling and calmly interested, not angry, as far as Tor could see.
“You two? That great Tor. I mean if there are two people I want to see happy you know?”
Ursala chuckled.
“Oh, well, don’t get too excited yet, we’re going slowly. Both recovering still. But there will definitely be more going on, I’ll just have to alternate nights with Sara. Well, I guess I can put up with a little future hubby action on those nights, if you can stand it.”
Everyone laughed, including Tor. This he got, was a joke.
Except it wasn’t.
Later that night he made a light on the focus stone, which took him about ten minutes longer than on copper, and a deeper working state, but captured a nice clean field. One that he knew would last for a long time. Things on stone did after all. Sara came over to his bed to look at it and then hit the lights. She turned the focus stone light on and off, then asked Tor to turn his shield off. When he did she turned the light in her hands off and let her lips gently meet his. He figured that she’d kiss him, maybe a couple of times, then call it a night. Instead she lay next to him and kept kissing for a long time, finally her hands started exploring his body.
She assured him when they were done that nothing they’d done had been sex. Which thanks to Ursala, he already knew. But all of it was fun, if a little confusing. She kissed him for a while longer and then went to find her own bed. It had been interesting to say the least. He kind of wondered if it was a onetime thing, like maybe she was proving a point or something. Then he decided to try not to worry about it and just enjoy what there was. That there was a trick or set-up in it was kind of implied, right? After all, he was involved. It was probably just a joke or a weird kind of high society teasing he didn’t understand. No big thing.
After all, the next day he had to work on making enough copies of shields, flyers and weapons to outfit a small army, just in case they had to take on County Ward head on. Plus the King’s army needed more of everything. It wasn’t going to be fun, but if he started early enough, maybe a good start could be made. Copying was so boring though. What if he increased the number of devices per batch? Ten was supposed to be near the top of what could be done, but then most people took a lot longer trying to get even those finished well. What if he just did more? Could he? He’d never tried.
At school they’d said ten was tops so Tor had just accepted that, and made it his standard. Well after he slept, he’d give it a go. What was the worst that happened? He failed and looked retuleous, wasting a bunch of metal? Really though, as long as he remade the same field on it, even a botched device copy wouldn’t hurt anything. All he could really lose was a little time then. The chance of success was worth the risk of a few hours of wasted time.
In the morning he tried a batch of fifty before breakfast. It definitely took longer, sitting in place on the covers of his bed, the frame solid and unmoving but the mattress filled with something halfway soft, instead of straw, which had a tendency to poke through while you slept no matter how thick the covering material was. You got used to it, but it was never all that comfortable.
He dropped low and deep, like when he’d tried to cut that dark paving stone with a hastily built field over and over again. That kind of focus. Then he drove into the glassy blackness inside his mind, until even that went away, leaving only the idea. The field. From memory he transferred it over and held it in place until it locked onto each bit of metal in front of him.
An hour and twenty minutes. Good enough, if the devices actually worked. It took longer to test them all, shield devices as they were, than to build them. Two full hours. They seemed strong enough and the field didn’t fade at all. Good sign.
Now he had to wait at least six hours all told, so another four at least. If it held then, it could be a new and much faster way of getting things done. If not, well, back to regular methods. Tor ate breakfast with everyone else, eggs, bacon and a sweet roll that had been half butchered. It tasted fine, but whoever cut it hadn’t had a clue what they were doing at all. Sorlee should have caught that, but maybe she didn’t want to say anything for some reason? The girl may be selling sex for a living, but she could still get oddly shy at times with strange things, like giving giant men orders.
Since he was just waiting anyway and everyone else had other things to do in the morning, Tor decided to go and see what was up in the kitchen. Sara, of course, worked, supporting the war effort with her deliveries. Ursala took correspondence from her County and then checked on the girls of the station, since that was her job now too and she took it very seriously. Rolph had to go and check in at the palace since he was only supposed to be gone to help Tor write the letter to Trice. He got to wait all alone today, so he might as well be useful.