by P. S. Power
Technically they both had to get permission from their Counts, because duel or not, it could start a war, in potential, but Tiera had been right there. Technically they should have contacted the Baron's people too, but... Oops?
She ate the last of her pancakes. The Dean however looked at the scene and then, without hesitation, walked straight over to her. As if she was the one in charge or something?
"I don't suppose you know what this is all about, Countess Baker?"
She was about to get all defensive, but realized that her previous thought was simply correct. No one there had any hold on Terry in particular that she knew about, except for herself and possible Havar. However that worked.
"Oh, yes, I do. It's an incredible tale, I think you'll find. Baron First Williams assaulted a young lady, Maggie, in the dining room and then mocked her over it. It was clear provocation, so Countier Baker, Terry, challenged the man to an unencumbered duel, to protect her honor. The Baron kept his clothing amulet though, so Terry asked, very properly, if he was certain he didn't want to meet without them, and recommended it. That technically gave them weapons, but it was the Baron's choice, so had to be allowed. Then Terry helped to correct the man's behavior and provided bandages for him after, so that he won't bleed to death. I think that about covers it, right?" She looked around and saw that Karen was actually nodding along, as if that truthfully was, indeed the case.
"That's about it, Dean Hardgrove. I hate to say it, but that was the second insult to this group of visitors this morning too. I won't mention who did the other one, to allow the saving of face, but we are not looking good here, as a group."
The Dean looked around and then pointed at a group of school students. "Take Boris to the nurse's office please, for treatment? The rest of you, kindly pass the word that anyone insulting any guest here, at any time, will be expelled immediately from this point forward. We're lucky that no lives have been lost today."
Then the man, not even waiting for anyone else to do anything, turned on a heel and stomped away, clearly angry about the whole thing.
Which got her to shrug.
"Everyone back to the dining room. We have people to feed. Kolb, get with Terry and go over what mistakes he made, please? Everyone else, stay with your adult buddy for now." She didn't tell anyone watching that they had to pass the Dean's words along, since the man had done that already. It would, no doubt, be the main topic of conversation for the day.
She was about to head back and keep working herself, when Kolb waved at her, he looked incredibly relaxed as far as that went.
"Tiera, you and your two need to see to making those amulets? We'll all go with you when you're finished, so meet us in the dining room. Say in, fifty minutes?"
She grimaced, but actually did the math and shook her head.
"Say in two hours? I might make the copies in an hour, maybe, but I need to make up some new tiles for it first." Which wouldn't take a whole extra hour, but she wasn't above sneaking in some extra time for work, if she could.
The boys and her ran then, back to her room, and then behind the building she lived in, to collect and cut up some little focus stone tiles. They weren't big things, but she managed to have the boys help her scrape the surface with a cutter, making two notches in the front of each. That really did take nearly half an hour. Then, not knowing what else to do, she started working, just leaving the kids sitting there, watching her.
Time passed with decent quickness then, since she drove herself pretty deep. The fields were decently strong, and when she opened her eyes she noticed one of the little boys was at the door, holding one of her new weapons. The other, Clyde, was at the back of the room, near the far wall. Guarding her. Probably because they were buddies now. She'd said so, several times, hadn't she? It made sense.
She nodded at them both.
"Those are new weapons, and take some skill to activate. They're potentially deadly too." She tested the big pile of fields in front of her, with Lewis, who was at the door, and then got a cloth bag made of canvas, to hold everything. She technically should have used something nicer, but she was out of velvet bags that were large enough. Sighing she pulled fifty of the things and put them in another sack, which was smaller, but nicer, and then did the same with the rest. One was in velvet, one in silk.
When she stood, she looked at the kids, who, being clever, had simply put the weapons away, as if they owned them. It was thievery, pure and simple. But cute anyway. Rolling her eyes at the ceiling she wondered how many they'd already tucked away out of her things. She didn't bother asking, knowing that it was going to be more than two. Not even just two each.
She held out her right hand.
"You can have one, each. Give me the rest." Her eyes probably looked hard, but she was fighting a smile at the same time. The boys both looked so very guilty after all. Like little kids with their hands literally in the cookie jar still.
Lewis shrugged and passed over six of the things. "We were taking them to share with the rest of the group."
Clyde had six as well, and she pretended to be counting on her fingers.
"That's fourteen. There are only ten of you."
Lewis rolled his own eyes, which she suddenly realized was incredibly rude. Here she'd been doing it most of her life. No wonder people thought she was stuck up.
"Ma'am? Two for each of us, and then two for Mr. Havar."
It made sense to her, but if they were doing that, why not two for everyone? She got the big canvas sack out again and filled it up. It made a nice clanging sound really, as the wands danced against each other.
"One each for now. At Baron Havar's discretion. That part is important here, in Noram. If someone has a title and isn't a close friend, you should use it. Make certain to learn them before you talk to people, when possible. Some nobles can be picky about things like that."
There was a chorus of yes ma'am from her friends and more eye rolling, since even little kids from Austra knew that being a nobleman couldn't mean all that much. They'd lived with that being the case all their lives so far after all. It was probably true, but when in Noram, it was best not to goad the people with armies of their own.
She got them jogging to the dining room, which meant going several buildings over and up a nice stone staircase. When they got to the door, the place was packed with people, but they didn't have to wait very long, since Karen, Havar and Kolb moved their people out, and Sam stood to leave, only to be followed by six other people.
She recognized them all, of course, but it was a bit of a strange group. Some of them however, were friends of hers, she realized.
Ali, her sister in-law waved to her, and Sheri Bonner saw what was happening and ran from the back of the room. Oddly enough, to a person, all the little kids that noticed her saluted. Which she did right back. That got some stares, along with Farlo Ross, Judith Kerry, Mark Sorenson and Guide. It was, for a group of school kids, kind of an impressive bunch.
Five of them were in the Lairdgren Group after all. Ali was too. It was, in a very real way, a nice percentage of the world's most powerful wizards, standing right there with them. They may not be Tor, but they were all in the top few hundred anyway. Maybe higher than that, when you got right down to it.
Havar looked at them, and nodded to Farlo, Judy, Mark and Ali. Then, almost as if he had to force himself to do it, he nodded to Guide as well. It wasn't grudging though, just an afterthought.
"We're making a delivery out to the Space Training Center. I didn't know we were going to have this many with us, but I believe that the new devices need to be tested up there?" He pointed at the ceiling, in case anyone didn't get it.
Judy smiled.
"I might be able to arrange that. I'm supposed to take my crew up in a few hours anyway. I just came by to see who was around, since I was in port. What's the test for?"
Sam suddenly looked like he was the inventor of bread and waved at Lewis, who was holding the deep blue silk bag in front of him. The boy liber
ated a few of the tiles and handed them around to various people. It was interesting to see who he picked too.
Terry got one, and so did Havar, Judy got hers with a little bow that was actually almost correct, given that the boy was giving her a present. It wasn't his to give, but Tiera didn't mind. She didn't get one at all, but he held his up to his throat, which got Sam to do the same, and then the boy walked from the room before speaking. She could hear what was said just fine.
"If you hold one of these to your throat, anyone with another at their own can hear you. It works up to fifty miles away from each other. They're for space walking." That last term was a new one to her, but Kolb smiled at the use of it.
Judy quickly slapped hers into place. "Dang. Now that is amazing. We need this pretty bad. Right now we have people going out into the big dark trying to communicate with hand gestures. That don't work so well." A bit of a Printer County accent crept into her voice, which Tiera assumed meant she actually felt at least a little impressed.
Without asking, Farlo took the one Sam had and tried it with a happy lilt to her voice.
"This would work on the battlefield too, I bet."
That started a discussion, but they were all just standing around in the dining room, the wooden floor needing to be swept and the first years that had that duty looking at them as if they badly wanted to leave, but didn't want to run screaming at the little kids with waving brooms. Since that might well start a fight, Tiera thought that was both a good, and polite, plan.
She just walked out, and felt surprised when anyone at all followed her. Clyde and Lewis both did however, sticking with their buddy, like they were supposed to. It was going to make going to the restroom later a bit awkward, she decided, but didn't make a big deal of it.
Instead she listened to the others talk as she slowly made her way toward the practice area. Really, she needed the magical weapons range, but that was about three miles away. Judy waved at Kolb and then spoke, her voice a bit rougher than it had been.
"I really can't stay. I need to get back to the ship for lift off. We leave in three hours, so if you all can be there an hour ahead of time, that would be good. If you don't show, you don't go. We leave at eleven sharp, regardless." Then she walked away, taking to the air as if it wasn't any kind of big deal at all. Since she had a new shield unit, she didn't have to use her hands to do it either. It was, Tiera decided, very interesting to look at.
She hefted the canvas sack and looked at Kolb.
"Two whole hours to practice with the new weapons? Eh? Eh?" The man actually looked around at the group, and sighed.
"This is a decent team for the first batch. Let's all head out to the range. Kids..." He didn't say anything else, letting Havar take over.
"Three miles from here, slightly to the north east. We'll fly in a loose formation. Five sections of four. Keep your current groups, and you new people can work into the ones that already exist." Then looking around he fixed his gaze on Guide. "You can join with us, Eastgreen." He didn't wait to see if Guide was going to say yes, but Tiera was still impressed. She hadn't been aware that Havar knew the man's name at all.
She ended up with Ali, which was a comfortable enough match. She was family after all. She was also Karen's sister, so that would have worked too. The girl simply bowed to Clyde first and then Lewis, who both looked completely at a loss as to what to do. Etiquette wasn't something that had been covered a lot where they'd been, it seemed.
"You want to bow back. If a person is of a higher rank than you are, you need to go lower than they did. There are more rules to it than that, but in this case you want to go pretty deep. What you did earlier, Lewis, when you gave that device to Judith? That was pretty much a bow between equals. Since you were handing her an expensive gift at the time, it pretty much meant you were planning to ask her to get married. That would be a catch too, since she's currently the heir to a County." She was trying to tease the boy a little, but Ali smiled hugely and nodded.
"That's right. She's really nice too. You'd have to get a title of some kind first though, and that can take some doing. Right now I'd get with Timon Baker and see about working into his lunar colony project. That way you'll be on hand to claim an early title, if there are any."
It wasn't a horrible idea, except for the fact that the kid was maybe eight. He seemed to be taking her seriously though. At least his answer sounded like it.
"I have to kill those Ancients first. The ones that killed my parents. When their kind is wiped out, I can see about other things." There was a dead tone to the words, as if he might just not actually be a little kid anymore, inside, no matter what it looked like from the exterior.
Tiera looked at him, debating what to say. Finally she just went with the truth.
"Not all of the Ancients are bad people. Brown of Austra isn't bad, for instance."
The boy looked back at her, his expression clearly saying she was a moron of the highest caliber.
"He's a Revered One, not an Ancient. They're different. Ancients are evil. Revered Ones help you."
It seemed a funny way to split the difference, but she wasn't going to argue the point with him. For all she knew everyone in Austra just agreed with him. Could she blame them? The Others had stepped right over into the realm of evil a while ago and she didn't think they could ever come back from it. In fact, she knew it. She was going to kill them all. If Lewis and these others didn't get to them first.
She went on, ignoring the potential insult. The boy didn't know that she was an Ancient too, after all. Or that Kolb was.
"This is Alyssa Baker. Conserina Four, Derring. She's Tor's wife." She was about to explain that, when one of the other kids rounded on them, his eyes going wide.
"The Tor? From the dimensional play?"
Tiera didn't really know about that, but Ali nodded. It was a thing, it seemed.
"That's him."
Then, almost as if to distract them, Kolb flew off, toward the range. They didn't go really fast, but three miles was still only about a minute away, even at half speed. When they got into place, Kolb grabbed one of the softly rounded styluses, and pointed it down range.
He didn't need to be told how to make it work, just rocking the central stone target with it, then moving to the side and barely thwaping one of the wooden targets, making a rewarding thump and not much else, except some rocking. Then he waved the others back and aimed at the target in the field next to them, making the weapon go up and down in power. After that, rather meanly, he turned and pointed at Karen with his index finger.
"Shield up?"
She tapped the front of her shirt, "I'm set." She was too. It was pretty clear she expected the weapon to either not do anything, or to rock her back hard, but she blinked and after a bit tried to touch her other hand.
"Um, my shield's off." She slapped it again, touched herself to show it was on and Kolb turned it off again.
The only thing left of course, was for him to demonstrate removing a field from an amulet. She sighed as he simply took one of the tiles that she'd made that morning and melted it, right there in front of everyone. Farlo got the idea first, taking one of the other white weapons out and closing her eyes, which got the rest of the builders to do the same thing.
Mark whistled, then pointed the thing down range and ran it through its paces himself.
It was cute, but Sam explained to the kids how to use it too, instead of claiming they were too young, and soon they were all using them pretty well. They weren't hard to use, you just had to know what you were doing first. Most weapons were easier, since all you had to really do was aim them correctly.
After a bit, Farlo turned her weapon on Tiera and hit her with first a tiny little flick of pulsed energy, then a solid beam of it, that got harder until her shield turned on.
"I see. So it can pass the shield, at least at low levels? Tiera was that enough to do anything to you?" She seemed interested, rather than anything else, which was decent of her, since they didn't a
lways get along perfectly.
"I don't know. Try aiming for my eyes." They needed to know after all. A second later she had her answer.
"Ouch! All right, that hurts. I don't think it would keep me from fighting, but it would be hard to run straight into that either. Not that I couldn't just turn my shield on manually, but people forget that."
Terry, who'd been standing back, very quietly the whole time, after his little event earlier, bit his upper lip. Finally he looked around and walked over to her, acting as if she was scary or something. It wasn't her new growth, she didn't think, because Havar was about as tall as she was.
"Tiera, can I get one of these?"
She nearly just nodded, but then remembered what she'd told the others.
"At Baron Havar's discretion only. If he decides you check out on it, and can handle it, then yes. The rest of your group too."
That actually got the large man to glare at her. "We're inside Noram right now. It's illegal for commoners to have battlefield weapons."
That got Guide to clear his throat, which earned him an immediate glare from the big man.
"Not if the Builder that made them gives them away. Then it's legal. That isn't too fine a point either. They can also have them if they're part of a military. Or, I guess at least, if they become guardsmen somewhere. At least in their own areas. I don't really know on that one though. It seems right."
Havar looked ready to snap at the much younger man, but stopped and then looked at him.
"Are you giving them to my section here then?" It was a bit sly suddenly, as if he was almost certain he might have figured out a way to get gear for free.
Guide looked away, and shook his head.
"I can't. They aren't mine, clearly. These feel like..." He held it in his hand, opened his mouth to speak then frowned and looked at her. He did this twice more and finally stared. "Countess Baker. These feel like her work."
