Knight Esquire ya-2

by P. S. Power

  Some were simple canvass, about the size of his hand, each seeming to have about a dozen gold coins in them. Others were fatter, but held more silver and even some copper coins, the amounts varied in each wildly. One of the nicer bags, a blue silk, a color that would have made a pretty dress for Trice, held nearly a hundred gold coins all on its own. In the upper left hand side of the trunk there was a bag that held plates and amulets. It didn’t look right to him at first, since he knew that he’d given them both more than that over the last months.

  It took a second, but he finally got it.

  “They kept the flying gear and shields?” His fingers shook as he pointed at the pile of devices. “And the poison detectors?” Tor heard his voice break, crack and pop, both from the damage of nearly dying and because he just sounded like a little kid whose puppy had died.

  “Even after all this… they still try and rob me?”

  Closing his eyes he took a deep breath, dropping into a deeper mental state than he normally maintained while trying to interact with the world. Those were just things. Junk, he’d heard it called. Let it go, he told himself — several times — inside his head.

  Be at peace.

  He didn’t open his eyes until his breathing had slowed to something approaching normal and his mind had — cleared was an overly ambitious description — but become something less volatile and potentially violent. A little less.

  “Tor… I need you to promise me something.” Rolph’s voice was more serious in that moment than Tor had ever heard it before. Darker. Even when he’d been in a near combat rage he’d sounded happier somehow.

  “What would that be?”

  “Don’t… don’t kill anyone over this. Not for at least a month. After that, if you have to… promise me you won’t let any innocent people die because of it. Please.” There was clear pleading in the prince’s voice. Simple and raw.

  He didn’t answer right away. Sitting on the edge of his bed it felt like he was going to fall through the bottom of the world. It was a place that he didn’t even know could exist, that place so deep inside of him it would have been frightening if Tor could have cared anymore.

  The end of everything.

  Tor nearly told Rolph that he couldn’t do that, couldn’t promise not to simply kill the whole world in his rage. It was that close. A hair breath away from losing everything and simply taking out all the people that had hurt him, which in that moment, felt like the whole world, even though that really couldn’t be the case. Most people in the world hadn’t even heard of him, and he’d only met a tiny portion of them. The world was big and he was small. People were many and he was just one.

  That thought, that he wasn’t that important, that the world didn’t know, or care, about him that much at all, that’s what did it. He felt like he hit the bottom of himself then. But rather than crack into a million pieces, or even rise and start killing everything around him like a spoiled child with too much power breaking all the world’s toys, Tor felt himself sink through it.

  It was an odd, gradual feeling. It really felt like the bottom of the universe was passing through him, slipping past him somehow. Then, without warning, the world, the universe itself, opened up inside him.

  It was huge. Vast and important. He almost laughed with awe and relief. His problems hadn’t gone away, of course, but he could see how unimportant they really were now. He sighed and opened his eyes.

  “Right. Well, I’m not going to hurt anyone over being put down. Not even by someone I kind of loved and thought at least liked me a little as a friend.” He took a deep breath and smiled. It had to be a sad thing, just because the blind rage was gone and he could tell that he wasn’t the center of the universe now, that didn’t change things, did it? It colored it, reshaped it a little, but nothing was shifted yet. If he wanted things to be different, he’d have to make it happen. That was always the same, right? Change started with yourself?

  Rolph went white for a second, an actual change of color.

  “Um, what?”

  “I said that I’m not going to hurt anyone over this. I’m mad and upset, but I won’t let anyone else pay for my hurt feelings. That would be wrong. I agree with you and…” It took him several deep breaths to get the words out.

  “And I’m trying to let this all go.” Even though it ached horribly inside.

  “Seriously? I mean, that’s great… But you’re going from “how many can I take with me” to “let’s be reasonable” inside ten minutes, that’s…”

  Shakily Tor made himself laugh, it nearly came out as a sob. Sitting on the edge of his drab little student’s bed, wearing his old and worn brown clothes he must have been a sight. Right, like little Tor the sap could have ever been a threat to anyone? What Rolph was getting at was clear though.

  “Yeah, that’s either insane or a lie most likely. But I just realized how small I am, my life, my existence, not my body. I was just sitting here thinking how much I hurt and what I’d do about it, when I finally got that I’m just not that important. That sounds wrong…”

  His hands clawed at the air a little bit as he spoke, trying to scrape words into existence.

  “It’s… I’m not less important than anyone else, just that I’m not any more important either. Not when you stand back and see the big picture. Reality is vast compared to our tiny worlds. For me to take anyone else’s life away from them would be wrong, no matter how much I hurt or suffer because of what they do.”

  Then the laughter, real laughter, broke through. He laughed until tears came and then he cried for a long time, knowing that it wouldn’t matter how stupid he looked. Rolph would still be his friend at the end of it all. Finally after about twenty minutes he stood up, legs shaking and mind still fuzzy, but clearer than it was before.

  “But, right now, I can’t be here. I may not be important or anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel this… shame. The embarrassment of all this. I have to leave.”

  Tor felt sad about it, but there was no way he was going to brave the looks of revulsion from the others on campus, or, just as bad, pity. Rolph tried to talk him out of it, but eventually had to see that Tor couldn’t stay there any more as well.

  Everything was finished.

  He repacked the trunks slowly, so that he’d have room for supplies to take with him and so that he could give back Sara’s trunk. A thought occurred to him as he dumped the coins out on the floor to be counted up. There seemed to be an awful lot of them.

  “Did… Sara take out her percentage yet?”

  “I doubt it. She’s really scared that you’ll just ruin them all Tor, I don’t think she stopped to even consider it. Does it matter though?”

  Tor looked at all the gold and silver on the floor and winced a bit. It was more money than he’d ever seen in one place in his life, and he hadn’t even unpacked half the trunk yet.

  “I don’t know why they tried to keep the money from me Rolph. I mean, wouldn’t they stand to make a lot more from my stuff if they were just fair and honest with me? Over time I mean? Hell, I’d have given them the money if they’d asked for it. Why do all this? And… why not take what was owed out before sending it along? I… don’t understand at all.” He sounded baffled and sad again. But didn’t let it bother him. If he wasn’t like that for a long while, he’d be surprised.

  The Prince plunked down beside him and started dumping out bags of money.

  “Well, what Sara told me, before, and don’t get too mad at me, but yes, I knew that the money was being kept back like this, was that she was afraid that you’d just give it all away to people in need or something if you knew about it. With most people that would have been, well, trying to rob them. Sure. But with you it kind of makes sense. You’re generous, to a level that few ever approach at all. I think that idea kind of scares the merchant in Sara’s heart, to tell the truth. And… notice, the gold’s all here. It hasn’t been spent or anything. It doesn’t exactly all add up, but last night Sara did mention that h
er mother suggested she hold it back, even though she didn’t know you were there, right? So maybe she wasn’t in on… I don’t even know what to call it. Trice isn’t normally like that!”

  Meaning what, Tor wondered? That she was being reasonable and that he was just that awful? It was probably true. Mainly at least. Tor finished counting up and then got Rolph to help him figure out how much twelve percent was.

  “The deal was for ten percent though, wasn’t it? For everything she sold?”

  Tor shrugged.

  “Yes, but I’m a moron, remember? I’m sure I don’t know the difference. Besides, this way she can’t claim that I ripped her off later. Not with the Prince and heir, her own boyfriend, doing the counting of the actual coins himself and putting in an extra two percent. I don’t want any mistakes here. I don’t want anyone coming back later and saying I cheated them or acted unfairly.”

  After they reloaded Sara’s trunk, Tor asked Rolph if he’d return it for him, so that he could avoid seeing Trice for one thing and so that he could get into town before the shops closed to get supplies and what not. He didn’t know where he was going, but he’d need materials for new projects at the very least. It was kind of all he had left after all, work.

  The shop in town where he normally bought his copper pieces was still open and would have been for hours Tor saw when he looked at the clock on the wooden wall beside the window. It wasn’t even noon yet. Tor had gotten so disoriented that time didn’t mean anything, it seemed. That could happen in deep working states he knew. Really, it always happened. Hours melded into each other and lost meaning. This was just worse than normal.

  It was tempting to buy everything he’d ever wanted from the place, solid bars of copper, silver and even a few tiny ones of gold to put fields on. He kept his purchases sensible, not because of the gold, which for the first time in his life he had enough of for what he wanted to do, but because of the space. He had room in about half of one of his trunks, if he left almost all the extra devices he made behind. Tor could get an extra piece of luggage, or even just convert and old wooden crate for the purpose, but he didn’t feel like bothering. What should he do with them when he left, he wondered?

  Giving them away to people just seemed like it would help validate what Trice had said about him. He didn’t want to stick around to sell them all either. Just leaving them there would mean that someone had to clean up his mess and dump them or find a place to store them out of the way.

  Well, he’d deal with that when he got to it. It really wasn’t that important after all. They could just go in the trash bin.

  The canvas bag he’d brought to carry the heavy bits of metal and jars of acid in kept slipping slightly in his grasp as he walked. It would have been easier to take the trunk with him and use one of the follow along floats, but he hadn’t thought of that at all. It probably showed how out of it he really was at the moment. Well, he’d get through this. It didn’t feel like it, but nothing in this situation would kill him. For one thing he’d learned to check all his food for poison and walk around with a shield on most of the time.

  On his way across the commons Kolb, Karen and Davie Derring came running up. As impossible as it seemed Davie looked to have grown at least another inch since Tor had last seen him. It boggled the mind more than a little. It had only been a few days. The large bald weapons retuletor spoke to him first.

  “Tor! We’ve heard some troubling information…”

  Great, so everyone knew about it already? Well, that was inevitable, the reason he needed to leave this place now.

  “If what you heard is that my engagement with Patricia Morgan is off, and that I’m a moron that’s too short and ugly to live, then your halfway up to date. I’m also leaving — in a few minutes — and in a few days, if the palace actually lets me in for the dinner I’ve been invited too, instead of snubbing me again, I’ll be resigning my Squires position. If not, if they don’t let me in, well, I’m still resigning, they’ll just have to collect the letter from the front gate. The whole thing was just a fiction so I could Marry Trice anyway. No need for it now.” He meant to say it in a friendly manner, and would have settled for a raspy and sad lament, but he sounded like he was going to rip someone’s head off if they tried to stop him.

  Like he could.

  Kolb froze in place, started to say something, but then didn’t at all, his mouth moving a bit like a fish. It was Karen that spoke, her voice a lot softer than he’d heard it before. She wore the kind of brown silks that a lot of the rich kids did for classes, he’d never seen her in anything but canvas like what he wore, he realized suddenly. Not even at the duel. Of course that had been a fashion statement of its own and a show of support for her brother, who’d dressed like a regular school kid to shame the Count. But yeah, she was one of those rich royal kids too, wasn’t she? For that matter, so was he, royal at least. For all the good that had done him.

  “Tor! That’s awful, my god… But no, that’s not it… There’s a fire burning half of County Ross, in the middle of the kingdom? Mainly grass fire, it’s… really bad. A few of the guys wanted to fly over and help fight the fire, but the school won’t let us use the flying rigs or shields, because they don’t belong to the school really, being on loan from you, so we need your permission to take them. I have the one you gave me, and so do Davie, Petra and Kolb, but we need ten others…”

  Ah. Tor laughed. Everyone looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, which of course, he had, most likely. Just for a minute there. He grabbed his face with his hands, making the tan bag slip a bit and groaned loudly. A frustrated sounding thing. He was, obviously, a moron. A self important one at that.

  “Sorry. I have some other rigs in my room. I’ll just give them to people outright, so this doesn’t happen again. I think I even have enough for everyone plus a few. About fifty. I’m, the disaster isn’t funny, I just… I assumed you were coming to talk to me about other stuff and then…” He kept chuckling. “Sorry. The size of my own ego seems to be the theme of the day. Let’s go get people set up.”

  He handed the bag off to Davie without asking, just holding it out to see if he’d take it. Not only did he, the boy carried it without perceptible effort. Tor wondered if that’s how the whole Squire thing actually started originally. Some guy like him not wanting to carry the heavy gear. It worked for now and sped the whole process up a good bit. They got to the room a lot faster than Tor had been walking on his own, the seriousness of the situation hurrying all their steps. He gasped for air at the top of the stairs but didn’t stop, since he had to trigger the door lock himself or it wouldn’t work. All the plates were still on his bed as well as the amulets, so he didn’t even have to search for anything.

  “Right. Flying rigs, shields… Um, here, try these,” He handed over a clutch of copper weapons to Davie. “Those are the ones that choke off air.”

  Karen gave him a quizzical look and a head tilt, so he shrugged and explained quickly.

  “Um, fire needs air. Take the air away from an area and it can’t burn. That’s basically what happens when you throw water on a fire too. I don’t know that it will work fast enough, but it’s worth a shot.”

  Tor looked at what was in front of him. Water pumps, yeah, those might help. Temperature equalizers. He didn’t know if it would do much, but just in case he gave them all that he had. Lights? Well, the fire wouldn’t stop at night. It should be bright enough, but what if it wasn’t in the right places? Really they needed so much and he couldn’t tell what might be useful sitting here, or off in Two Bends.

  “Um, I don’t know if I can actually help fight a fire or anything right now, but maybe I should go along, in case you need a field made or copied maybe? If, I mean, I won’t just be in the way? I wasn’t doing much anyway…” Tor swallowed, expecting them to all chime in that they didn’t need him. He was barely able to climb the stairs after all, so it was a valid argument as to why he shouldn’t go. Instead Kolb clapped him on the shoulder.

 
; “Good, saves me from having to ask. We’re all staging in the weapons square right now. Davie, run get us a trunk or two so that we can bring all this with us? Might as well take everything we can, no telling what will come in handy.”

  Tor loaded up his own trunks, not leaving anything personal behind. He doubted that he’d ever be coming back this way. Sighing he tried to let go of it all. It was sad and he kind of wished he could have finished school, but maybe that had been a stupid dream all along? Would he have been happier if he’d just stayed in Two Bends and been just another baker? Well, life happened, so he had to keep going from where he was at the moment. That was all he could do after all. Even magic wouldn’t change that.

  Davie came back with two large trunks, both without flying plates, which only made sense, as no one was making those except him and he’d never sold any. He also brought large young man that filled the doorway as he held the second trunk. At first, in silhouette, it looked like a royal man of about twenty, but when he walked closer and Tor could see his face clearly it was obvious that the boy was even younger than he was, about Davies age of fourteen or so. Face still rounded with baby fat, even though that should have been impossible given how large he was.

  The kid must eat like a horse, Tor thought, good thing he was a royal, or his poor parents wouldn’t be able to keep him fed.

  They didn’t have time for introductions, as Tor started pointing at things and giving orders, his breathy voice so raspy that he wondered if flying into a fire would be wise for him right now. Then again, if he died… he died. No big loss to the world. Even less to the universe. He kept pointing at things.

  “Just use the straps to hold the float plates in place. Normally, if we had time, I’d nail them on, but this will work. I flew to the Capital and back using the same technique once. Just stack the devices in, then the amulets, try to keep them a little bit separate, so that we won’t have to fight to figure out what’s what in the weapons court. Their all metal, so don’t worry about breaking them.”