Knight Esquire ya-2

by P. S. Power

  “One of the men here told me about how there was this Count from down south, who’d challenged a little noble boy to a fight to the death, just to punish the kids da, and Master Tor went and made him fight him instead and humiliated the man into apologizing to the boy, just by pointing at him. How fierce and powerful a man do you have to be to make a Count grovel just with a hard look and some gestures? Makes me shiver just to think of.”

  Tor nodded. It did sound pretty bad, when put that way. It wasn’t that he’d just pointed at the man, he’d had weapons in his hands, they were just all on copper tubes, and smaller than the normal ones, so that they’d be cheaper. That could have looked a bit like he was just pointing to some of the rich people that had been watching, used to seeing large silver weapons as they were.

  Further down, in what must have been the last tub; a more familiar voice spoke quietly.

  “S’Tor’s n’s hi’s… Tor… is… nice. He baky, baked… with me yesterday.”

  Sorlee.

  Well, that made it even more important that he keep his eyes closed, didn’t it? He’d see her in a little while off in the kitchen, and have to be able to look her in the eye. He’d already probably blush.

  One of the women in his tub spoke then.

  “What’s that Sorlee? You baked with him? Is that a country euphemism for fucked? I guess I can see it, the whole “bun in the oven” thing, baking… I kind of like it!”

  The girl down on the far end chuckled.

  “Na… real baking. Making the meal bread and desserts. I didn’t know it was… Master Tor. It is why the food was better. The master is also a real baker, not just a wizard. He went later to house and lady bow and lower to him. Set it up so I do both now, practice up like last night an larn… And learn to take a large man without pain. The nice women wot d’Prince… The ladies of the Prince? They came and gave me hints for sex.”

  Sorlee spoke slowly and had to get some help with words every now and then, but the other women were certainly being kind to her about it, even taking pains to help her learn it seemed.

  “And… then the big woman told me about using oil so I won’t hurt too much. I don’t know her name…”

  “Ursala. Countess Thorgood.” Tor spoke, keeping his eyes closed tightly and head tilted towards the ceiling, in case his eyes opened by accident or something.

  “Hey, you speak! I thought you might be being all hoity and saying you were too good for us, refusing to even look our way and all even. Didn’t jump out like were tainted at least, so that’s something. Some get like that around whores.” This came from the woman to his right. Her voice didn’t sound angry about the perceived slight. Sighing he figured he’d better explain so he wouldn’t offend them by not looking at them. Moving to a cave suddenly started to make sense to him; all these social rules were hard.

  And annoying.

  “It’s not that. Nothing like that at all. I just have to keep my eyes closed so that I won’t give offense, looking at you naked. I didn’t realize that you all used the bath house this time of day and was just getting ready for work myself. So, I figured that I’d just sit here with my eyes shut so that, you know, we preserve your dignity and all that.”

  The room went silent.

  After a few seconds everyone laughed. It wasn’t an upset sound at least. His right arm was suddenly nudged a little from the right.

  “You’d worry about preserving the dignity of a bunch of whores?” At least the voice was amused sounding.

  The question baffled him at first. He thought about it for a few seconds and then felt even more confused. Tor tried to explain, knowing he’d probably sound like a hick again. At least he could get the accent right, he figured, so made an effort to sound quick proper about it all.

  “Well, you aren’t at work right now… Why shouldn’t your dignity be as important as anyone else’s?” He said quietly. Suddenly something warm and soft pressed up against his arm and he felt a kiss on his cheek.

  “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 th
ink 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.

  The men might want to peek up her skirts he knew. Tor did, as inappropriate as it would be, so who could blame them for just glancing up? She went to change and apparently had to dig through her own trunk to find something that would work. It took a while at least. It wasn’t until they got outside that he realized she was clearly scared half out of her mind.

  “Oh! You rode in the transport so well yesterday that it didn’t even occur to me that you might be afraid of heights or flying… I…” Tor didn’t want to shame her in public or anything. She should learn to fly anyway, it was a good skill to have, and when you noticed a fear it always paid to face it down, but maybe they could go a ways beyond the wall to practice, so no one would hear if she screamed or cried or something.

  “It’s not that. It’s just… I know I kind of said that you needed to pay attention to people that were making overtures towards you but I didn’t mean you had to give me a gift like this. It’s… Thousands of golds worth of stuff Tor. I just meant that you should flirt back a little, or have sex with a few people. Or at least hint that you might be interested… Give out a few more hugs or something.”

  Tor shrugged.

  “Relative value Ursala. To me what you’re wearing represents about a quarter silvers worth of materials and about twenty minutes worth of time, once I break it all down. A few pennies of leather and some twine. Less than that really. A nice flower arrangement would cost about the same or more in the Capital.” He grinned.

  “Besides, if you’re willing and Sara isn’t back when we finish up you can explain some of this sex stuff to me. That’s certainly worth this little bit of junk, information is priceless after all.”

  For some reason that Tor didn’t understand, his attempt at “playing back” got a low and meaningful chuckle from the girl.

  “Alright. I think we can work something out in… trade, that way if you want.”

  Tor didn’t know for certain, but he suspected she wasn’t talking about the same thing he was at all.

  Chapter fourteen

  Ursala wasn’t bad in the air, once she’d agreed that trading whatever it was she intended as an exchange, was of equal value to what he’d given her. To distract the Countess he told her about how he’d managed to get himself trapped in a tub earlier with two of the women of industry.

  “Ha! Oh Tor. You told them that? I…” She laughed a little as she floated in the air about five hundred feet up. They’d already made a large circle of the area, practiced turns and landed several times for the exercise of it. This hovering was mainly so that she could get used to just being up in the air. He’d found that raw time was the best thing for getting people used to being up high and trusting the gear.

  “That’s really sweet… Um, who’s that?” She started to point with her left hand and shot forward and down a little bit before she recovered, nearly half a mile away. Unconcerned, Tor followed. Ramming full speed into the ground would suck, but she pulled up well enough before anything could happen. Ursala even slowed down smoothly enough that the whole thing probably looked like she’d done it on purpose from the ground. Tor grinned at her back.

  While they’d been circling a decently large group of people had set down in front of the large gate. They’d probably flown in, Tor realized, because if they’d been in wagons or walking he would have seen them on their last pass, probably all their passes. Out here any movement on the ground kicked up dust, even a group of people walking.

  They were all large, and wearing half a dozen different kinds of clothing, mainly types of fighting leathers. The man in front was slowly walking forward towards Godfrey, who’d come out to meet him, backed by about fifty men in black military uniforms that all had excavation units on, holding them like they were weapons.

  They wouldn’t make wonderful projectile devices, but then anyone holding a metal object towards you with a field on it could be ready for anything. He still had a “poison detector” that would make any sane person run
in fear if they knew about it. Or soil themselves. It was around his neck on a cord if he needed it. Right now though, strangers or not, politeness seemed to be in order. After all, if they were as big as they all looked, and flew in, they’d have to be nobles.

  As he approached, wearing the old student browns he’d put on to go and bake earlier, he waved the much more attractively dressed Ursala to set down behind him. He hoped he didn’t have to tell her to keep her shield on right now. She wasn’t stupid, but there was an off chance that she might think of the shield as being something only for flying. Rolph always kind of did, and Tor had flat out told him to start wearing his shield most of the time. Fake masked Wensa had taught Tor that lesson well enough at least.

  He was out of line of sight when he set down, just inside the wall. That way he could walk out and not spook anyone overly, dropping on them from above. When Tor got about fifty feet away he caught the sound of a familiar voice, even if the face was obscured by black cloth covered backs of the men standing in a long single line in front of him.

  “We mean no harm and only wondered if you might have food or water that we could buy. We don’t have vast resources right now, so anything would help. Thank you.”

  Tor patted one of the men on the shoulder so that he’d step out of the way, looking a little scared he looked down and seeing who it was smiled.

  “Thank god. We can let the wizard handle these monsters. What are we supposed to do, build them furniture?” The man muttered softly. Looking down Tor noticed that this man had a concentrator on, probably having scrambled straight from work doing exactly that. Tor nodded and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  “Yes. They’re friends, don’t worry.”

  Ursala didn’t miss a step and walked up right behind him, which normally would have been incredibly stupid, but should work out all right this time.

  Tor didn’t scurry up, as much as he wanted too. Everyone seemed tense for some reason right now, so he ambled slowly a smile on his face. When he got next to Godfrey he nudged the man’s arm slightly with his hand. The guy jumped, but not having a weapon didn’t try to kill him or anything. Good, that would have looked awkward.