How likely was that?
Not very.
Tor had talked to both of them at length and not only had they seemed like good people, they seemed intelligent to him. Even if they were secretly evil poisoners, that would have taken a lot of acting talent to pull off, and they would have had to know to set the ground work by trying way back then. That turned out to be too hard to convey with his nearly illegible handwriting at the moment. Darned shaky hands. The tremors seemed worse now than they had been when he’d started writing as if all the stress was making it even harder. Of course, for some reason as he wrote and the shaking got worse Trice cried harder and Sara started in too.
At least the tall blond did it quietly.
Across the room Rolph prowled, looking alternately angry and guilty, finally, Tor wrote down one word on the note pad, then underlined it and held it out for his tall friend to read.
What?
Sara and Patricia didn’t get it, but Rolph certainly did. They’d just known each other too well for too long for him not to. The Prince sighed and sat down with a thump on his own bed, which got the girls attention, even if it wasn’t enough to stop the crying.
“Well… both my parents have sworn to me that they weren’t behind this in any way, and that they’ll lay down their own lives to catch whoever did this to you. Even if it was the Morgans…” This pronouncement got a panicked wail from the normally emotionally solid girl. “However… They could both be lying about it. I mean, you were snubbed at the palace gates not once, but twice. That doesn’t happen by accident, at least not that I’ve ever heard. Sure, mom cried about it for days and even locked herself in her room over it, but dad just got kind of flat like he does. It’s the same if he’s angry, sad… I don’t know what all, because it’s just so expressionless, right? I thought he was upset about it at the time, but what… what if he was just mad at Tor?”
That got everyone’s attention and except for the occasional sob, much lighter than before, everyone focused on Rolph. Maddeningly the Prince didn’t say anything else. He scribbled at first, then realized that he couldn’t make out the words he’d just written, so Tor started over and tried for clarity. It still looked like a seven year old had written it.
‘Why would he be mad at me?’
It seemed a trifle excessive if it was all about him calling the King “Rich”, wasn’t it? Oh, sure, having him turned away from the palace, that would be fair enough. If someone ticked you off regularly, there was no reason you had to invite them into your home. Or invite them to your birthday party. But having him killed? Plus, would the King’s assassins have failed? The idea didn’t add up right. If the guy didn’t like how Tor spoke to him, he could just order him to fix it, right? Or even just suggested it in passing.
His tall red-haired friend raised his eyebrows as if Tor was being purposefully dense.
If he was, it wasn’t on purpose. He held his hands up and shrugged, asking for an explanation. It was still shaky, but easier than writing it all out.
“Well, let’s see, sleeping with his wife, and her being far less than subtle about it in public? He really shouldn’t blame you, since you were always trying to play it right, but mom, well, let’s just say she could have done a better job of being discrete. It wouldn’t be a huge issue normally, he’s not the jealous type, but clearly you have a larger impact on mom than most of her “friends” do.”
No one else in the room looked at him, which meant he had to wave the pad around to get their attention when he finished writing.
What? Never slept with Queen! Who said?
Sara looked at the note and then him. Then frowned, and did both again.
“Everyone is saying it Tor. It’s all over the Capital. I even heard it from my own mother, who normally doesn’t like to gossip, but felt I should know, in case it impacted business with you. We’ve kind of tied our horse to your pack train, so mom’s working to keep tabs on you, probably a lot more closely than you think.” She took a deep breath and continued, soldiering on, or so it felt to Tor.
“It could have been you seeing Collette Coltress too. You were good enough about it that no one knew, until you were both turned away from the gate like that. The Queen might have felt slighted that you were seeing someone younger and even prettier than she is.”
It felt like it took forever before he got the message written, it took a page and a half of the notebook, because he had to write big in order for the words to make sense. He explained that Collette was going just as a friend, mainly so that her half sister, Maria Ward, wouldn’t make fun of her for not being invited. Maria’s name got underlined several times.
The bitch probably had fun with the whole being turned away at the gate thing, Tor bet. It was part of why he’d given all that stuff to Collette, as poor as his little trinkets were, he felt like something had to be done to boost up her spirits if an onslaught was coming from that quarter.
He drank more water, checking it for poison first. His friends all looked at him, a little hurt, but he shook his head. From now on, anything that he ate or drank got checked out. Period. It just looked too stupid, him being laid up from having been poisoned like that. He wrote that all out for them, which got a tired laugh from all three.
On the third day he got out of bed and went to class in the morning, not waiting for permission. He felt sick still, weak and shaky, but lying in bed wasn’t helping him anymore, it didn’t seem. His voice was cracked, sounded broken and strained, but that could be lived with. No one really wanted to listen to him anyway, did they? In the afternoon he couldn’t go to weapons practice or exercise on his own, so he sat in his room making copies instead. He tried for six hours of copy work but had to stop at five. His control just failed after that. Basically, he just couldn’t pay attention any more.
Thoughts of who might have come after him plagued his mind day and night. He had dreams of Rolph strangling him in his bed, only to wake up and find his friend soundly sleeping. Other dreams about the Morgans coming in and stabbing him or once Davie Derring just hacking him apart in practice. It was hard for him to focus, but he made a point of doing it anyway. Six hours a day until he could do it without needing a break. Tor tried to look at it like exercise. Slack off and you lost what you had.
It took almost two weeks for people to start showing up to “visit” him. His mother and father made sense; they were just worried about him. He didn’t mention that the juice that had been tainted was a gift from the Morgans. If there was something to it, then it would be hard enough for his mother to handle later, when it had been proven. If there wasn’t, then making a big issue of it would just color their friendship in a negative way. They’d all just gotten that back and it felt wrong to damage it now.
A lot of the others made much less sense.
Dorgal Sorvee came and knocked on his door one evening, which got Rolph to let him in, along with his friend Marco. Rolph stood by warily, ready to intervene if need be. To fight. Dorgal and Marco didn’t get it, but Tor did. His giant friend had a force lance clutched in his right hand ready to go at a moment’s notice. One of Tor’s too, so that it could stay hidden, since they were smaller than average. Neither man had a shield on that Tor could sense, so if they attacked it would probably be about the last thing they did. He remembered how Wensa had gone through the wall, which had been repaired really fast, now that he thought about it. Almost scary fast to tell the truth. Benefits of having the Prince sharing his room? Probably.
Dorgal managed to sound almost like a real person when he spoke, rather than someone planning to take advantage of Tor’s weakness.