“Right… So, in a few days… a package will come, with Collette Coltress. Stuff for you to destroy or sell or maybe give away. Trash me in front of them, but then you… tell them you’re going to pretend to be my friend and come here, no, Capital, people know you here… Then you try to kill me again. Get help from Wards. Meet you there in a month, no, make it two. I’ve got work to do yet here. Need to heal.”
That, he hoped was clear. Ursala told Trice to fly away as fast as she could, dark or not. Oh. He’d forgotten that part. It was incredibly dangerous to fly in the dark, though good for a getaway. No one could see you to follow.
“Stay up in the air till daylight. Be careful.” He muttered, just before everything went dark.
When Tor came too he had bandages wrapped around his middle and pillows propped under his head. It was his little area of the single room, but the dividing screens had been removed. Kolb and Godfrey rushed over and started trying to question him at once. Ursala had been sitting next to him, but moved out of the way. She looked appropriately white and shaky and Sara, bless her, was fake crying over on the other side of the room.
It actually sounded pretty good, but her real tears came almost silently and this sounded a lot more like what Trice did. It made him wonder if Trice really had been hamming it up all those times? Probably. Who cried like that for real? It was a bit like people that practically screamed and roared each time they sneezed. It kind of had to be phony.
There were seven other people in the room. One the military doctor, or so he was told. The rest were four of Kolb’s men and two of his female instructors. He recognized one of them as his friend, Petra, who looked nearly panicked, he gave her a weak wave to try and reassure her. For some reason she started crying, just a little, real tears streaming down her smooth brown face, and not loud at all. He must look a real mess to make someone cry like that. Well, that should help sell the story at least. Still… It was just a couple of stab wounds. They sucked, but it wasn’t anything truly major and she was, if nothing else, a warrior. She’d seen wounds, even if only in practice, so she’d deal with it soon enough, he figured. Tor felt bad about leaving her in the dark, but it was needed for now.
Tor gasped out the cover story completely, including how it was just the regular whore he had in late each night after the Prince’s women fell asleep. He acted a bit defensive about it. After all, if the Prince could have sex regularly, why couldn’t he, right? Tor owned a whorehouse, it seemed only fitting that he be familiar with the services offered there. He stiffened his jaw as if expecting to be judged. Well, that would probably be coming, but his good name wasn’t going to be worth much soon anyway, so why bother trying to protect it now?
Kolb seemed a little shocked at what he said, but everyone else seemed to just accept it. A few even nodding in agreement with him. Tor would of been more upset by that, but half the men in the room had already used the ladies services too he realized, including Godfrey and Kolb most likely. Right, there was a reason the ladies had been invited originally, wasn’t there? After he went over the same story twice and Ursala and Sara put in their versions of the tale, Sara’s complete with tears and just enough different from Ursala’s to sound real, Tor asked if the room could be cleared.
Then he told Godfrey and Kolb the real tale as Sara sat even closer to the door crying loudly. It was brilliant he realized, giving them almost perfect cover. No one could be listening otherwise, he didn’t think. He whispered anyway, just in case. Who knew what magics Ward had in place?
“So, I need to heal up here for a few days, then go to the Capital to “recover” in a month and a half or so. Trice should lead the killers there. I probably shouldn’t stay at the palace… Maybe Tovey… I mean Count Thomson, would be willing to put me up for a bit? Ursala, would you send off a letter tomorrow and ask? Um, for me and you I think. We need Sara here, since she has a real job to do and I don’t want Rolph near assassins at all if we can help it. Not you either Ursa, normally, but if anyone deserves a crack at these people personally it’s you. Wait… would you ask if we can bring a guard too, given everything? There are a few people here that have nearly as good a claim on these monsters as you do.”
If Tovey said no, then he’d see what else he could arrange. The Coltress family might house them if need be for instance. He could bribe the Baron with apple raisin hand pies. The palace wouldn’t work at all. Trying to kill him there would be insane and no one would even bother setting anything up. Except Smythe, but Tor didn’t really think the man was in with the Wards. Speaking of which, he really needed to get to the build on the shield to cover the palace. Well, he could go out and see what he could learn about blast forces the next day. If he could move at all.
If not he could stay in and make devices all day. The military would like that at least. He had to get what he could done now, because soon, Tor feared, he was going to be busy.
Chapter eighteen
There was something about being stabbed that Tor hadn’t considered at all. It hurt. It wasn’t just the immediate pain, but the lingering follow-on that really got to him. That it would hurt even after the fact was something that anyone would have known. He’d known it. It was just, as he lie on his side in the partial dark of his screened off area, the bed deforming under him, that he hadn’t realized how much it would hurt.
His leg had been horrible when he broke it, but after the initial pain it was more of a dull ache. Constant and never ending, but muted. This was still sharp and biting, even after the doctor had sewn him up. The wound still wept a little, even hours later, and sleep, while it did come, eventually, was weaker than the discomfort. He woke up with a start each time he moved more than a fraction of an inch. Instead Tor opted to make large batched of copies, driving himself much deeper than normal and trying for a batch of one hundred flying units instead of just fifty. He didn’t even really care that much if they worked at all, he just wanted to escape from the pain.
That worked, as long as he kept going at least.
After ten full batches, not even knowing if they’d work, he made himself try a simple-ish novel build. He got food and water while he worked, he thought, but other than that he didn’t notice much for a blissful two days. The build itself was just an attempt to block out sound from a dome about ten feet in diameter.
When he finished he made ten copies of it, just because he wanted to keep himself distracted from the pain. It was probably just that he was a wimp, but hey, if he kept working, who’d complain? Finally he had to come back to the surface and test it though, which showed that the wounds still hurt, if not as badly as they had at first.
Hitting the sigil on one of the copies, all the little sounds from outside the half dome vanished. He hadn’t even realized there was noise before that. Little things like a rustling of cloth and a repetitive clicking from near where the table was set up. Tor nodded, bead work? Well, the little sounds were gone, at least directionally. Now to try the other side of it.
Taking a deep breath Tor tried for loud, but it hurt, causing him to groan in pain instead, a low moan that should have gotten attention from the others, he thought. No one came at least.
“Hey, anyone hear me?” He asked as loudly as he could manage. “Anyone? Um, free gold if someone answers? Um, you’re all over-tall. Eating eels is gross? Anyone at all?”
Nothing.
He dropped the field and tried again.
“Um anyone there?” He said, a fraction of as loudly as before, because yelling hurt and even loud talking was a little much for the moment.