“That’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. Acting like were actually people still and all, instead of just something warm to stick a cock into. Well, keep that up and I’ll just have to do you for free.” Her voice sounded bubbly and a little sexy in that saucy kind of way that the street walkers in the Capital had used the one time he’d had any of them speak to him.
He heard a soft padding of feet come towards him.
The words that came were slow again, but this time very near his ear.
“You’d do him anyway Farra… Lady said. This be’sert… I mean this is… Master Tor.” Suddenly in a great rush she spoke in their normal regional dialect.
“Didn’t know you were in here Master Lord Tor! You coming to bake with me today again then? I didn’t know who you were yesterday, I hope it… didn’t offend you or anything?”
He answered the same way, a small smile on his lips.
“Yeah, I’ll be in as soon as I can vacate the tub here. I don’t want to be staring at everyone, it wouldn’t be correct, you know? But I don’t know how long everyone will want to soak, so it could be a bit. Unless you could hand me my clothing? I know that I’ll look like a moron, and probably be laughed at, but as long as everyone else is fine with it? I mean, if they won’t be offended… And we work together and all, so you know, call me Tor. I’m not a master yet, and certainly not a lord of anything.”
Sorlee, slowly but with good humor, made an effort to explain all this to the women in the room, who went silent again. Finally a voice from a few tubs down chuckled.
“Girls, we need to pack it in early today it seems. It’s the only way we can leave the gentleman his own dignity I think, which would be worth doing even if he wasn’t the owner, no? Preserve our dignity? I… honestly, I think I may just break down. In the last five years, I’ve been doing this no one has ever done something like that for me, being concerned with my feelings…” There was a lot of splashing for a while, and then the sounds of drying and dressing, at the door a few of them called out their goodbyes. The last one that spoke said something a little strange, but polite enough, he figured.
“Thank you for your kindness sir.” It was a voice he hadn’t heard speaking in the room before, soft, and almost shy. The woman sounded awfully familiar from somewhere, but he couldn’t place it at all. Maybe one of the girls from the city then?
When he was sure they were all gone he called out just to check. No one said anything at least, so he hazarded opening his eyes. He was, it turned out, alone.
Good. Now he could just start blushing and stroke out in peace from it. That had been incredibly awkward.
As he dried off quickly, Tor decided that he needed to get the women their own bath house pretty soon. What would have happened if he hadn’t been as polite, or even if he hadn’t had his eyes closed at first? Sure, he knew what they did for a living and from what they said they wouldn’t have cared if he saw them, but it was his job to make sure their dignity and even their honor, was taken care of, wasn’t it?
They were, more or less, his guests.
That being the case he really hadn’t done much for them yet at all had he? He lacked time to get to know them and see to their persona comfort individually. That was just a fact. Still, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t try to do right by them…
The baking went well enough, so he had Sorlee start her own loaves of bread, a small batch of ten, when she got in about eleven, looking sleepy and puffy eyed. She needed to get the recipe down as well as the baking times. The young woman did a pretty good job, but the large batches seemed a little overwhelming to her. It was, he knew, just a matter of getting used to it, like most things in life it would be easy to her after a while of doing it. Then he set her to making pies for the afternoon.
Her idea of a pie crust made Tor want to cry.
Seriously just sit on the kitchen floor and sob. It was basically just bread with a little extra sugar in it. It could work, but it had almost no relationship to what most people here would think of as pie at all. He had to walk her through how to use butter, flour and salt, cut with a knife, because they didn’t have a pastry cutter, to make the dough, then she had to learn how to roll it out, not just spread an uneven lumpy mass in the pans.
They ended up working until about one in the afternoon just to get the fifteen pies they needed. They had a mix of apple, pear and berry at least, so there was variety. She did alright, he told her, for her first time, but he expected her to improve a lot in speed, once she knew what she was doing.
He crossed his arms at her for a few seconds, tapped his right foot, and then smiled.
“Right. Tomorrow you do all the pies and bread. Can you get here a little earlier? I know that you’re up late…”
“Same kind of thing there really. If I do up a bunch of costumers quick like at the beginning I can get into my proper bed early. You know that we each get two beds here? One for work and one just to sleep in? None of the other girls have ever had that before. I didn’t know it was strange till earlier when they told me. I’m getting more used to that standard talk. They’re all helping me now that the others know that I’m not all polly priss on em and just need to get my legs under me a bit.”
The whole thing still left Tor feeling a little odd, sending the girl back to a whorehouse for her “real” job. A matter of honor for her though and, his backwoods morals aside, why shouldn’t she make coin that way? Her honor was just as valid and his and besides, men were willing to pay for the service, so that meant it was legitimate, right?
The idea that Two Bends wasn’t the center of the world or the only measure of what was right wasn’t that new an idea to him. He’d been away at school for a couple of years at least, before he had to consider this in the here and now. It was a good thing really. If he’d walked straight out of Two Bends to this situation he wouldn’t have been nearly as able to adapt.
Trying to be kindly, he patted the girl lightly on the back, not making contact, because his own shield stopped him. She seemed to get the general idea. Just to save everyone time he took luncheon in to Ursala and Sara himself, only to find that Sara had left to go out on a delivery. It was, he knew, kind of her job, getting large cargo loads off to the Capital and various bases around the area.
Technically, even though she slept in Tor’s place with the rest of them, she’d joined up with the military. She was actually Sergeant Sara Debri now, given that high of a rank because of her level of schooling, and the fact that she’d brought her own flying gear and shield. When the military had less than two thousand people outfitted like that, anyone coming in already knowing how to fly and with their own gear kind of got to ask for what they wanted.
She wanted to be here for some reason.
As they ate cold sandwiches and boiled eggs, Tor got to thinking about Ursala. She really should learn to fly, if she was going to be way out at his house like this. What if she needed to go somewhere, or just wanted to get out for a while? As they finished eating he packed away the dishes in the compressed earth box the meal had come in, to go back for washing. Then he dug into the chest of fields kept under his bed. Pulling out a flying rig and shield Tor handed them to her with a little grin, hoping she wouldn’t be offended by it. After all, giving a woman a present that a lot of people considered valuable, while they were alone like this, could be taken as being an invitation to something very different than what he currently intended. Someday he’d try to work up the nerve to think about intending something like that with her, if he could. Maybe. Just thinking that made his face warm a bit, but the new beard helped to hide it, he hoped.
“Flying rig and shield. Both yours. That you don’t have them already was an oversight on my part, sorry about that. Do you want to try it right now?” He said shortly but with a smile, knowing that she didn’t exactly have anything else to do, but might want to change first. Trousers really did work a lot better than skirts for the purpose after all, especially with all the men at the base. Even the Princesses wore pants for flying, he told her.