“Really, are people so vain that they think the Queen’s present need their approval to be of worth?” He whispered this, not wanting to give offense, but an older man, who looked incredibly bored and oddly out of place, snorted about five feet from them.
“Of course they do boy. If they didn’t try to tear your gift down they’d be forced to stand around in awe, gibbering in disbelief. That doesn’t make anyone look attractive, so they cover it up by pretending disdain. That or contempt. Plus, who can match it? I mean the set of gold napkin rings me and the missus brought kind of pale in comparison, don’t you think?”
The man looked familiar. Right, they’d met before, worked to put out the fires in County Ross together. Tor bowed.
“Varley, I… I’m ashamed to say I don’t know who this man is by name, but he’s one of the hero’s that helped save County Ross. Without him I don’t think Rossalynd would have been saved at all, he personally kept everything together.” Tor bowed again low and humbly. With a little hindsight and a slightly better mood than he had at the time Tor could see just how much the man had actually done. Even staying calm when Tor personally was acting like a complete moron and threatening people in a way that had to be terrifying.
Chuckling the elderly man bowed back, just as low. Tor winced when he saw the move. No old man should ever feel like he had to bow that low to someone like him. Gardner or not.
“Count Ross. The second Count Ross, so Scotty’s adopted father. I don’t want you getting confused or anything and think I’m secretly much larger than I look.” The man smiled and stood a little stiffly, Tor held his own bow as a sign of respect for a few seconds longer than that, then stood up straight. He had to fight off the urge to grovel a little, because he’d spent three or four days treating the man like the head gardener. Still, Tor’s upbringing had saved him a little. He was polite to people like gardeners, since that was an important and useful job after all. His father would have whipped him sore as a child if he wasn’t. At least that was always the threat. His parents had never gone in for beating the kids much when it came down to it.
The old man, wrinkled and slightly stooped, hands still rough and hard looking glanced at the Princess and winked.
“Don’t let the boy fool you girl… We were a half day from losing everything when he and his friends swept in. Even then it was a hard battle, which shows just how desperate it really was.” He told the tale as if it were an epic battle, instead of a fight against a fire.
The man spoke of the smoke coming in waves, choking the city sometimes, so that no one could breath hardly at all, smelling like burning wood and heat, even when the fire was miles away. How children cried and women readied their families to run as well as they could and the old men and women selected knives and sharpened them, so that they could kill themselves before the fire caught them. No one wanted to burn to death, better the sharp touch of the knife to the side of the throat or wrist than that.
Then like angles or gods they came, flying through the air to save them all.
“You’ve seen people fly, maybe even done it yourself, being a Princess, but you have to remember that most of us hadn’t seen it at all before. Just one or two people at a time at most. It was like the heavens themselves had opened up and started raining down warriors. Except for one. One of them wasn’t a warrior at all, but looked like a little boy instead. The Wizard Tor.” An old finger weathered and rough pointed at him.
People had started to gather around to listen. The old man really could tell a story. If he hadn’t been there himself Tor would have felt a thrill of the epic battle against the forces of nature and how bit by bit, desperately, they started to win the battle for the city, but not yet the war.
Then to Tor’s embarrassment Count Ross told how he’d lost his temper and almost gotten into a fight with the giant Countier first. Scottland Ross. Tor blushed a brilliant red, but couldn’t argue with the rebuke that would be coming for his actions. He’d been wrong, and acted poorly. All he could do now was acknowledge his error and strive to fix it. Before the man could finish the story Tor stopped him. This wouldn’t be fun, but it had to be done. Tor spoke words of apology for his poor behavior. More, he probably needed to find the Countier soon and apologize to him in person for his lapse. When he’d finished the old man bowed low to him again. Then he finished telling how Tor had simply pointed at a far off field and made it explode, shaking the very foundations of the city itself from nearly ten miles away. Causing a cloud of dust and smoke to rise like a mountain into the air.
“And then… The Wizard Tor… let it go. And now he apologizes for his lapse with humility and honor, even when that apology might better be left to others and no one in the world would expect such. I for one feel humbled.”
For some reason everyone listening suddenly bowed towards him, as if not being a jerk was something special. He was already blushing as brightly as he could, so doing more wasn’t possible. That bowing saved most of their lives when the bomb went off.
It wasn’t that the explosion was so large, it just wasn’t. A mere pop and a scattering of smoke. What saved them was that, surrounded as he was by low bowing giants, Tor could see that the smoke from it didn’t look right. It wasn’t black and oily, or white and soft. It was silvery, a glittering thing that he almost took to be a party favor of some kind at first, except for when he saw who stood nearest it. Burks Lairdgren, and he was fighting a familiar looking man with strange eyes. Black and staring.
Burks yelled loudly.
“Nanos! Death dust, don’t let it touch you, be careful, it’s a trap of some kind, the Larvals always have a plan within a plan…” He fought as he spoke, his voice loud but not hurried sounding, both men fought hard, but it was clear that Burks was the superior fighter. Vastly so in fact. Better than anyone Tor had ever seen at least.
Well, if you had thousands of years to get good at something it would hardly be surprising that you might be a bit better than average. Tor focused on the smoke, the “death dust”. So… this was made of those tiny machines he’d heard about? Tor hadn’t built shields to withstand that kind of thing. Dust could be stopped, but this stuff was tiny to his mind when he reached out to it. Like air itself. Even if he had, most of the people around him didn’t have a shield on. Could he do anything about it? It was, oddly enough, slowly moving towards the people, even though the breeze should have carried it away at about a thirty-five degree angle.
Crap.
So, could he stop it? If he had an air choke, he could, Tor thought. But all he’d brought was his shield, which uselessly enough, Connie had right now and his temperature equalizer. Well, he also had his poison detector in his pocket and one that looked like it around his neck, but both were sort of not needed at the moment. People started to run away, but for some reason Burks called for them not too. It was a trap. It turned out that the ancient was right. More of the little death dust bombs started going off, six in all. Surrounding them.
The people nearest them started to go down. They just… died.
Other people started fighting, a man with black eyes for each bomb somehow. Not different men with strange eyes, the same man. Exactly. Like twins, only more of them and even closer to each other in looks somehow. With the exception of Burks, each of the others on their side that fought was being beaten easily. One of those, he saw, was familiar. Short hair in a white blond bob, fuzzy now, rather than curly locks. She wore a very light pink dress that was almost white and had a knife in her hand, being hit over and over again as she tried to hold her ground. Blood already pouring from her nose and face.
Trice.
Rolph and the gate guard were barely holding against their man even though they made him looked like a dwarf between them. A woman in a Royal Guard outfit fought too. Right, Wensa. She went where the Prince did. For a half second it made Tor wonder if she’d worked the whorehouse too, in order to stay close to Rolph. It wouldn’t have shocked him if she had. She’d do anything to get her job done after all.