by P. S. Power
It could also be that they didn't want him around, being so much younger than they were, or just too strange and new. That wouldn't be the first time in his life that had happened. It was the kind of thing everyone went through at times, unless they lived alone constantly. It took time for people to grow accustomed to you being around. Normally about half an hour. At least that had been what he'd noticed in life.
As he floated back around the side of the large tan wall, Dare thought. Mainly about what he needed to fix the next day for Kolb. That had been a bit unexpected for him. For some reason when people had spoken of tutors, he'd imagined maths and reading. Possibly history, or even learning how to make things with his hands. Things in wood, or focus stone. Good things to know, but different than being hit by a large and powerful man.
At the end, going up the walkway, he had to hurry along, since a large orange vessel was landing. It was huge, but coming in very slowly. It settled on the left hand side of the port, closer to Sam Builder's new home than anything else. Dareg had put the palace there so that it would be away from everything else. The Ancient of Noram probably wouldn't need the players house to be in his front yard after all. Not that he had a lawn, as the giant glowing ship was proving to Dare at the moment.
In fact, it was so neatly aligned that he had to float over to the the new palace itself, in order to meet the people coming to work.
They were led by a very, hugely, tall woman. She was a dirty blonde, and a bit mannish looking in her black uniform, with its four orange stripes. She had enough of a bust line to show that she was a lady however, and collar length hair, which had a bit of natural curl to it.
Dareg bowed to her, since she had the most markings on her. Even if she wasn't the oldest person around. That got her to move over and bow back, going low and matching him at the same time.
"Fleet Admiral second, Judith Press."
That got him to nod, inside his head, a thing he prevented from showing too much. Not that the message wouldn't carry to the lady in front of him. Of course she'd be high ranking though.
"Dareg Canton. Space Port Commander."
To her credit the tall woman didn't say he was a liar. She didn't even let her eyes narrow at him.
"Is this your place? I thought it seemed to have pride of place here." She nodded at the mansion, letting him know what she meant.
"This is Sam Builder's new palace. The Ancient of Noram. I have a tiny pod on the other side of this, over by where the interesting things are. We're a bit light on entertainments yet, but we have a bath house, two inns, and a restaurant, though that probably won't be up until tomorrow. The whore house should be ready by tomorrow however, as well. We're just opening things up. Alice Orange mentioned you might have some workers?"
The tall woman winked at him.
"A hundred hand chosen people from the crew. I didn't know that we'd need whores. Have your people ask first, before assigning them there? Some of the people from Afrak might not take to that kind of thing too well, and Austrans can pretend to be a prudish. They really aren't in the main. You have the ships? I was led to understand that we were trading?"
That got him to pull his back pack off and rummage through it. Really, he probably could offload the little jug now. Toss it in a hopper when he got back to his pod for reuse. It took a minute, standing there, to pull the bag with the amulets, but he carefully counted out twenty of them, took the one that was for him, and passed the rest to the Admiral. That was in the bag, which was just rough canvas, but also wasn't a payment.
Judy hefted the white tiles once.
"Thank you. Where do you want the helpers?"
That took him a second, but he looked across the way to the side by the houses, where a single man in a white robe was putting up a focus stone building.
"Over with that man? On building, unless they want to try out one of the other places? As long as they're working, it counts. I'll get them their own palace for the week. I want to leave the inns open for visitors. Maybe on the other side?"
That got a chuckle from the woman, who bowed again a little, then tapped a tile on her throat.
"Volunteers please come to the port side hatch. Report to duty. Repeat, report to duty at this time." Then she tapped her throat again, and smiled at him. "It will be a few minutes. I need to get these to Alice now. Don't spoil them too much, or they'll jump ship and leave me feeling all lonesome."
He could see that. They were there to work however, so he doubted it would be that much fun, over all.
It really did take a while, about twenty minutes, for all of the people, dressed in similar outfits, with different markings on their sleeve, to get there. It was a mixed group, made up of more different types of people than he'd ever seen before. Holding up both of his hands he yelled a bit, so everyone could hear him.
"I'm Dareg Canton, the Space Port Commander. We're going to get you set up across the way for the week. Over by where that man is working? Follow me!" Then like he'd done earlier, he started to give a little tour, mainly pointing at different places.
When the list was done, they still had walking to do, so he added the rest of it.
"No one is going to track your every move. Just find something useful to do, and things will work. For right now, I'd like most of you to spend some time with the useful man, doing the building over here? He seems to know what he's doing, and that will be part of the long term infrastructure here. Try to spell people at all the other places. You don't get paid, so remember that when it's your turn at the whore house. Every two days, you get a half day off, since this is a celebration week. Try not to do that all at once, unless you run out of work. You have your own structure, so use that while you are here. If you have any problems, then come get with me." Stopping by the man in white he gestured. "Or High Servant Erid. Speaking of which I have some tools and things for you. The digging and compressing units? I should go set up housing for these people, next." It was strange, but instead of going with him, all of the space fleet people stayed to help the man in white, leaving him to dig out the equipment then running off to see to the place they were staying.
Dare made sure it was a very plain tan colored building. He gave it an all orange roof to mark it for them, and had five stories to the thing, with fifty small single occupancy rooms per floor, after the first one. Then he set up a Tiera food device in the kitchen. Swallowing, he wondered if he was ever going to see it again.
When he got back, the first ship was gone and the next one, which was a little smaller than the Ranford, and had a black strip down the middle, settled into place, meaning he needed to meet that one too. The Captain was a man, a huge noble, which wasn't that shocking, but he didn't get jump ships so wasn't certain why he'd been ordered to bring people.
Not until he looked around. Then the large man nodded, and even smiled at him.
"Good! Things are looking up here already. Jose Peterson, Captain of the Midlist. Countier Third, Peterson." There was a bow with all that, which Dareg matched.
"Dareg Canton, Prince of Harmony, Dolphane really, if that means anything to you? Countier Thirteen Lairdgren, Countier Seven Baker. More importantly than any of that for you, and your friends here, Space Port Commander. Which pretty much means that if you have any problems here or need anything, it's totally fair to come to me about it."
The large man bowed again.
"Impressive. So I have a hundred bodies for a week. Work details? I wasn't told if this was hard labor or not, so I told them all it was a punishment." He was fighting a grin, while the people behind him, in five rows of twenty each, all seemed a little blank.
That got him to nod.
"Some of that. See you in a week? Everyone, come with me, please?" The giant let them go, waving the people on, as he covered the whole thing again.
When he got to the work zone, he waved Erid over to stand by him. The man was sturdy looking. Like hard labor wasn't at all outside of what he normally did, day to day. He had medium short, brown
hair and blue eyes. His skin was decently tan, and smooth looking.
"This is High Servant Erid. Right now the crew from the Ranford is helping him, so the rest of you get to go and put up lights. Who wants to be in charge of that?" He waited for a bit, until a woman who was kind of plain, stepped up and stuck her hand in the air.
"I can be, sir?"
"Thanks! Here..." He pulled the bag, which had lights and palaces in them, which made their own light on command. He took the remaining ones of those that he had, and gave the rest of the full bag not to her, but to Erid. He was a High Servant after all.
"There are things in this. Lights, pumps... And I don't know what else. From the Wizard Tor. This lady is in charge of the lighting plan. Sorry, miss, I didn't get your name?"
"Mindy Demic. Lieutenant Second." She seemed pleased with the title, and had the most orange stripes on her sleeves of anyone there, having two of them. So she was probably in charge of the whole thing.
"Dareg. Anyway, I'll leave you to this part. I need to get to bed soon. I have to be up at dawn. If there's a problem, come pound on my door? The black and white pea pod looking place at the very front? Oh, also, let people know that they can get food and drinks from the Tam-units. The blue box things? If she tells people to do something, they should. Eventually she's going to be in charge of all the world's ports." If that was possible.
Then, working together, they could hold them all, even in different lands.
People let him get away, like he wasn't being lazy. That meant he could hobble, feeling a bit like he was going to be crippled in the morning, to his tiny house.
At first light, which poured in through the walls and windows, he got up, showered and started running, wondering if Kolb was going to come back at all.
He did, and was waiting for him when he finished the slow and limping run.
"Sit-ups first. Ward got in touch with me, and can't make it today. Not that she won't be practicing, just not with us. That's fine. She's a good instructor, but a bit hard on the new people. We'll save her for when you know something."
The man did the exercises with him, and seemed to give no care at all to how much it all hurt. In fact he smiled when he noticed how Dare was moving. Happy about it.
"That will go away, but it's good to learn with a bit of discomfort at first. Really all the time. It's just hard to maintain, so few manage it. Fighting hurts. Fighting correctly hurts less." There were lectures while they exercised, but very few once the actual fight practice started.
When the first bit was finished, after two hours, with several new moves being shown, the man smiled at him.
"Now we go over what you did wrong. Refreshingly, most of it isn't the same as yesterday. Keep that up. Learning is about facing the mistakes and fixing them. It's like pulling teeth to get most to accept that. If you can learn that one thing, you can be a great person." Then he covered twenty separate problems that he'd noticed.
Some of them were things he'd done the day before, he realized, once he thought about it, but that hadn't been mentioned.
After that the man went behind his little house and came back with finished sticks.
"Today we work without contact. That will change tomorrow. Keep that in mind. If you start to trigger into a rage, the goal will be to stop it, for now. Later we'll work on that, so you can use it or not, during a fight. Ready?"
It was a lot more fun to hit things with a stick than to wrestle with the man. Not that he did a lot better, but on occasion he could see himself eventually being able to make contact without the bald fellow letting him on purpose. Oh, not that day, or the next, but sometime in the far future, when he knew what he was doing. In a decade or two.
Then, after he was given his shield back, and they reviewed everything again, Kolb having him repeat it all out loud, the man nodded.
"I expect that level of attention all the time from now on. Not that you've been doing bad. In a week I'm going to have you practice with your Aunt Tiera. You'll need to get a healing amulet, if you expect to survive. That isn't a joke either, you might want to find one, if you can. Put a word in with Tor or Tim? Or Tiera, but she's so busy that I wouldn't bother her unless you have something useful to tell her first. Presents or offers to practice? Most won't with her, anymore."
It was a funny thing to say, and clearly not a joke at the same time.
Then, instead of leaving like the day before, the man sat in the pod house while Dare showered, then did the same himself. After that the guy just looked at him, expectantly.
Dareg felt kind of awkward then, not knowing what he might want. It wasn't sex, or he would have joined him when his clothing was off. Or tried to. That wasn't a big deal, but he really didn't think that way himself. A lot of nobles did, which could have made it the case this time.
At least that was the kind of thing that was said about them. That they all had insane amounts of sex, with all comers. So far he hadn't seen that one for himself. Really the ones that he'd met had been like people, if larger than most.
Looking at the big man, he gave him a nod.
"I was going to go and check the workers. Make sure they have everything they need and all that. I need to take the pod house down, so no one will steal it."
The weapons master smiled then, and didn't speak during the five minutes that he took to take the whole thing down and pack everything away. The piss jar went into the Tam-unit finally, and then they were able to get something to eat. A dish that Kolb recommended, being eggs and sausage wrapped in flat bread. That way they could walk and eat at the same time.
The building project was already underway for the day, and there were at least ten of the Dirt Children collecting trash and moving waste into piles. They'd gotten the brick idea, probably instructed by the Tam-units, so while nice square piles were forming, the world got cleaner.
In one morning the lights looked to all be up, and while it was faint, the river around them was glowing. At first he didn't understand how, but there was only one way for that to work. The thing had always been able to do it, he'd just failed to set it properly. It was a faint purple with gold swirls in it. Mixed, but in an artistic fashion. It would he thought, be impressive at night.
The food in his hand was warm, but not too hot, so he was able to observe rather than speak the whole time. Along the far side of the rim, inside of the river, there were five new buildings going up. Large ones, each with several stories to it. All in shining tan stone.
The workers, most in light tan work clothing, instead of shipwear, were all over the new things, causing them to come into being in an efficient manner. Led by the single fellow in white. Erid.
That got him to jog over, slowly, with a smile on his face through the pain. It probably looked to everyone else like he'd taken it up the hind end earlier that day. Given Kolb was right there, that would be who they guessed had done it too, he didn't doubt.
"This looks amazing, High Servant Erid. I figured that it would take me months to get even half of this done. It hasn't even been a day yet! That's an accomplishment."
The man looked a bit rueful, but nodded then.
"Now if we could only get the High Servants to work like this. It's their duty, their sworn duty, but only a few truly look at it that way. I think that Commander Derring was correct about that. We should have killed the first batch for dereliction, and started over. There are supposed to be two here working with me, and I haven't seen them in the two days I've been here."
It took a few seconds, but he got that one, he thought.
"When I first came here, they sort of tossed me out a bit forcefully. I was trying to get passage to Harmony, but the new immigration rules say you have to be sixteen unless you have parents with you. Which I didn't. They found out about the rest of it later, after I did. The Prince thing? I'm not holding a grudge, since the men apologized at the time, and it was a mistake, not intentional violence, but that might have something to do with why they're hiding? That's better than th
em being too lazy to bring water to the workers or whatever, isn't it?" He smiled then. "Well, or they've been shaking people down for passage to the Moon, when it was supposed to be free. They didn't mention that to me, but it had been pretty clear that I didn't have anything of value. We should ask some of the people that came from here about that."
It was probably likely, but also a joke. To him. Kolb took a deep breath, then nodded, and got his own communications unit out. After a moment, he started speaking.
"William? Can you see if any of the recent people moving through the port outside the Capital were shaken down, or had to bribe their way onto the ships? It's hopefully nothing, but we're missing the two High Servants in charge of that here, and as was just pointed out, hiding from a few days of fairly easy work seems a bit much."
There was a pause, and some rustling, which sounded like a man getting out of bed.
"I'll see to that now. I needed to get up early anyway. Trying to get my hours back to Noram time. I'll call with a report if I can find anything at all. It might take a while."
High Servant Erid shook his head, but got his own Communications device out, and looked through the names on it. It was white too, and smaller, but seemed to have almost no names on it at all. Which given that the name being looked at was Johan, and nothing else, it probably showed that it was a private thing.
Erid seemed somber however.
"High Servant Johan? This is High Servant Erid. Are you in the Capital of Noram right now?"
The voice that came back was very deep, and the face on the device had the look of a person who was no stranger to work.
"At my parents. It's King's week here, so I was invited down. Do you need me? I can try to book passage at the port there."
"No, you really can't. Which is why I have to bother you. We're missing our people here. I hate to disrupt a pleasant family holiday, but we could use you, if you can get away without giving offense?"
