by Power, P. S.
The man moved to go get the amulets, at least Tor figured that was the case, but he stopped him, touching his arm gently.
"I'm sorry, I don't know your name. Are you in charge of the Royal guard for this mission?"
"Carver sir. I won't be in charge one the mission itself, since we'll have protected individuals on board. That will be handled by their primary watchers." He bowed and left before anything else could be said.
Wracking his brain led to nothing though. The Royal guard protected the royal family and the high ranked nobles... Oh. Burks. He was a Count, as well as the Ancient of Noram. That made sense at least. He looked at the man down the way and waved to him a bit.
"Shall we get to plotting then? I don't really know how to do this kind of thing, but maybe if we seal the room to keep spies out? I take it no one here is in the employ of Carol Coltress directly? If so, let me know and I'll pay you double not to mention any of this to her." He tried to make it sound light and playful, but half the room stiffened. They didn't glare at him though, in fact the Baron himself started to nod.
"I see. You mean to have her killed then? I understand, given the threats she made toward you. Thank you for not taking this to war. I... can't really say I blame you. I wish it could be done in some other way however." There was real diplomacy in the man's voice, especially considering he thought that Tor wanted to kill his wife.
"What?" OK, he sounded shocked, which got everyone to stare a bit.
"I'm not plotting her death. Sure, she made some threats, but she was just worked up. I can't really blame her for it given everything, it was a horrible situation. I stole part of her vengeance from her. I understand I'll probably have to pay for that someday. This isn't about that. This is about something different altogether. I don't know exactly what to do about it, but I recommend we look to something other than death. Mainly because I've had enough of that for the time being."
People just kept watching him, so he explained, his eyes looking at each of the people involved in turn.
"Alright. So, Burks here is getting married to Bonita. That was set up the other day and as far as I know is still planned?" He looked at the two in question, who both smiled. Bonita took the Ancients hand, which sent a pang of jealousy down Tor's spine. He really liked her after all. It was why he set them up in the first place. He probably would have married her himself if he hadn't been needed to see to Ali first.
The thought made his blood run cold for a second though. She was his wife, and a good one. Dwelling on what might have been wouldn't help anyone. They'd never even been engaged for goodness sake, Nita and himself.
"So, I noticed that Carol was being a little reticent the other day, trying to stop that from happening, because, at least she said, that she feared Bonita was being played with again. That this was some kind of trick to break her heart, like had been done before." He stood then, and leaned forward for affect. It hurt but was worth it.
"Except when I risked reading her field I could tell she knew for a fact that wasn't the case, because she hadn't hired it done, like she had all those other times." He hadn't meant to growl the words, but he did anyway. Nita was his friend and it burned through him how badly mistreated she'd been.
No one said anything, but Nita turned a beet red color. It wasn't shame either. Tor had just never seen her actually get angry before he realized. The Baron was holding his breath and Collette actually pulled a weapon and put it on the table. One of the new multi-weapons too. Not one he'd made either, though from the style it was clearly a copy. It was about ten inches long and made of brown focus stone, looking glassy and sleek. It had the same glowing sigils on it, so someone good had made it. Most of the kids didn't bother with that at all, since it was extra work, nearly as hard as making the field itself in some cases. Tilting his head Tor got the idea. It wasn't made by the kids. Burks had done it. The third and fifth designs were green. The Ancients favorite color. On Tor's they were purple, for the same reason. It translated when the work had been done. If Lyn made it they probably would have been red.
He didn't shrug, but did nod toward it.
"Put that away Collette. You won't need it, I don't think. We need to... Simply instruct the Baroness that doing such things to her own family isn't allowed or proper. Any idea as to how that would best work?" He sat then, hoping he hadn't just stared a war. After a few seconds he realized they might not believe him. He'd have wanted it confirmed if someone had said that about his own mother or another family member.
He hit his truth amulet with a single tap on the front of his black shirt, causing a cream colored aura with two horizontal golden rod stripes to appear, making everyone but Burks and Weasel jump.
"I affirm that what I said is true and correct to the best of my ability to understand such things." The field didn't change, of course, because he was telling the truth. If he tried to lie, it would have turned black. He wasn't in a position to fake it either right now, since he couldn't build anything to save his life at the moment.
Bonita got what it meant, she'd seen the trick before. In fact she probably had her own Truth amulet. Tor hadn't remembered giving her one, but Trice liked her and made sure that the important people got one of everything, didn't she? His friend was squeezing Burks hand so tightly it turned white, her own fingers red from the pressure in places.
"It makes sense. She's always hated me. I... Kind of suspected it was her for a long time, but I never had any proof. Well. I'll just call her out and have this done then. No need for anything fancy Tor. I'll handle it." She stood, as if to storm off and challenge the women, her own step-mother, to a duel to the death right then, but Green wisely pulled her back down, shaking his head.
"Calm love." His voice was almost bored sounding it was so relaxed.
"Tor already asked that we don't spill blood over this. Besides, we can hold that in reserve, in case we feel she's too great a nuisance later. I'd rather you not have to kill anyone, if possible."
Nita made an angry sound and Collette stood, weapon still out, because she was nearly as upset as her sister was. Tor didn't blame her of course, but seriously, this wasn't where he'd thought they'd all go with it.
"Right. I'll challenge her and then Bonita won't have to bother with it. That evil... vile woman. Do you have any idea how much harm she's done to my sister over the years? Hiring people, actors mainly no doubt, to court her, then mock her over it, cruelly, to a point I was almost certain Bonita was going to end her own life more than once." She gasped then, looking at her sister and trying to apologize, but she didn't need to it seemed.
"It was close. More than once." It was a dark admission. The kind of thing most people wouldn't have made at all in front of people they didn't know.
Tor was surprised when his younger sister Tiera started talking, nearly as angry sounding as Collette, once she heard everything. As far as Tor knew she'd never met Bonita before. That didn't seem to matter to her however.
"OK. So... We should punish her by taking away her most prized possession then. Anyone know what it is? I mean, just to start with. Then we should take away all her friends and move outward from there. Destroy her good name with the public and all that. Have some plays written that show her in a bad light?"
Tor blinked.
"You know, Tiera, you sound evil when you talk like that." She did too. Scary even. He nodded, trying to make sure he never wronged her to the level she had to come after him. She was immortal too, so she might just be around for a long time. It paid to be careful around people that could back up a threat hundreds of years in the future.
His sister laughed, a dark thing that didn't make her words seem better at all.
"Well, you don't hurt my family or friends, do you? Not ever. So what's her main focus in life? Her children? Horses? Um... books?" Tiera was obviously floundering now, but the Baron shook his head.
"No, she only prizes her own beauty and appeal toward others. She's lovely and knows it and uses it as a weapon. I should h
ave never married her. If it wasn't for the fact that her father would have gone to war with mine I'd have stayed married to Glaren. We should have just fought the war." He sounded miserable, but probably didn't mean it. No one sane wanted battles fought and lives lost.
Tor's mother, Laurie shook her head too.
"That's in the past now. We can only deal with today. So, we set up an attack and have her face cut up? That sounds like an act worthy of war itself if not done carefully. Safer to just challenge her to that duel."
Everyone agreed to that, but didn't have any better ideas. Tor just sat quietly, thinking. If it were up to him, he'd just create a field to change her looks. They already had disguise amulets that could do it, the trick would be making her wear it somehow. One preset to look how they wanted.
Burks looked at him and nodded, as if having an identical thought. That was probably likely, wasn't it?
"We could lock the field to a very tiny ceramic sliver, one so small that she wouldn't even realize that it had stuck into her skin. We fix the field to make her look the way we want and then lock it so no one else can change it. We need to do that, else her own will would eventually do it, no doubt, being a narcissist as she is."
Tor nodded.
"We can get that done tonight I think, if you can get the needle ready? I can't do the transfer or the new work on it myself, but the basic field already exists and you're The Green man, so I'm willing to bet you can figure something out. Then we just have Collette or the Baron deliver the jab with a pat on the back or something..."
Burks stood and bowed to Bonita.
"I'll have that before we leave in the morning. Off to work then. I need to collect some things first, then I'll come back here, if that's permitted Tor?" He looked at the younger version of himself as if he'd say no for some reason.
"Of course it is. I wasn't mad at you really, just the foolishly complex and annoying rules of the Ancients as a whole. They need to overhaul their system, but given everything that would probably take decades to work out, wouldn't it?" He was joking, but sounded pretty dry about the whole thing. Like it was just so likely even his voice wouldn't let him try to say otherwise.
"About like that." Burks waved and walked out, turning to smile at his fiancé.
"This will work much better than simply killing the woman. It might even get her to eventually learn something."
After he left everyone turned to stare at Tor, waiting. It took a while but he eventually got it, they wanted to know what the plan was. Burks and he hadn't actually explained had they? It just seemed like it to Tor, who thought in a very similar fashion.
"We're going to put a tiny disguise amulet in her skin, one so small she won't know it's there. One preset to make her look the way we want. Then we can work on the rest of the plan. I kind of like the idea Tiera had, with the play. You know... we should get that Gala girl to write it. Heather? No... Meryl. I'll have to check on that. She did a great job writing the one where I'm a troll that had to be begged to save Galasia. I mean it was a kids play, but it worked pretty well, didn't it? Half the people in Noram think I'm a mean little man with warts on my nose." Thankfully he didn't even sound bitter about the idea. Suddenly it seemed almost... cute. The girl had tried to make him out to be a magical creature, probably because she didn't think a mere person could do what he had.
It could have been taken as an insult, sure, but he thought he understood it all now. She'd been horribly afraid of all the death that had happened when the plague had hit her city and needed something that was more than what she knew to cling to... So she invented a magic troll that could be bargained with, if with difficulty. An imaginary protector that could be bought, even if a person didn't have a lot of gold. She'd also kind of made Sara Debris into an almost mythic protector...
Because she had a lot in common with her. It was a way of making herself into the hero of the story after a fashion, showing that someone like her, just a normal person, could affect change that helped others. He'd never thought of it that way before, just thinking the girl had been confused or something, but it might not have been that at all.
Collette nodded happily enough and moved to sit next to Bonita. Ali got up and moved in on her other side, holding her hand. She was good about comforting people that way. One of the reasons that everyone liked her.
"Don't worry Nita. Tor and Count Lairdgren will handle this, along with the rest of us. We'll all help. I don't know this women, but I won't let her get away with this."
That got a general murmur of agreement from the table. Glaren was the only one that didn't seem to think it was good enough. She didn't say anything, but she looked ready to kill over it. Nita had probably meant it when she said she'd challenge her step-mother to a duel, but it was a momentary thing, said in anger. The same was probably true of Collette, though she might actually do it if it turned out to be the best option. There was just a difference in temperament. Bonita was nice and sweet all the time. Collette was too, but she could turn it off if needed. It was part of her training as one of the King's spies no doubt. Technically she was probably spying on Tor, but he'd already told Richard not to bother. It wasn't like he had secrets to keep. Not from the King. Just from Baroness Carol Coltress.
Nita's mother shook her head slowly though as he stared at her.
"That conniving bitch nearly made my daughter kill herself. Master Tor... This cannot stand." She didn't scream the words or cry she didn't even say them loud enough for most of the table to hear, but there was a deadly air to her. The kind of thing that Tor hadn't seen in women a lot. It wasn't even real anger, just a certainty that this person that had harmed her little girl would die.
"I know Glaren. But give us this chance first? We aren't stopping with a few wrinkles here. This is going to be something deep enough that Carol might just reconsider her own way of life before it's all over. If it doesn't, if we have to kill her... then it will be done. It really can't support that yet, if we can help it."
The woman didn't seem happy with that answer, but then why should she be? Nobles almost always got away with whatever they wanted, didn't they? As long as they outranked the person they wronged, almost anything went. The only reason this plan wasn't an act of war was that no one was actually being physically harmed. Even then it would probably have repercussions. Tor just couldn't stomach the idea of that harpy living in his head for any length of time.
The woman was pretty, perhaps one of the best looking he'd ever seen that wasn't an Ancient, but it wasn't enough to hide her personality. Even her own daughters hated her. Not just the step kids either, but children that had come from her body.
That didn't say good things about her.
They chatted about what to do for hours after that, longer than Tor had thought possible for such a clear cut issue. They had a plan, but almost everyone had an idea they wanted to try out, including hiring actors to act horrified by Carol and children to run screaming from her in horror. That seemed a little over the top to Tor. Not wrong... just like it would make things too obvious. The woman had made certain the Bonita didn't know who was taunting her all those years. Shouldn't they be at least as subtle?
Of course the second that she changed appearance everyone would have to suspect him or Burks. No one else would care enough to bother, would they? The device they were using wasn't even on the market yet and would have cost more golds than having the woman killed would have. Who just used magic like that in the Kingdom? It was pretty much just him. Even Burks was more careful than that, not building all that much at all, even though he could have. For a few seconds Tor wondered why that was. The Green man didn't hide who he was, though almost no one knew it anyway, but he was the inventor of their magical system. Even if, as Lyn had hinted, Tor was better at building than he was, the guy was still really good. That and he'd had thousands of years to make stuff. Why didn't the people have a lot more of what he made?
It was almost like he was keeping it back from them on purpose.
Tor loved the process of magic and the fact that it let him be good at something that almost no one else bothered even trying, but if it was going to be a bad plan in the long run, well, maybe he could do something else? Learn to be a fisherman or a farmer maybe? Burks wanted him to take over his duties as Count eventually, in about fifty years or so, but Tor already knew enough about leadership to understand that would be a chore, not something to be sought out. Only a fool would want to lead other people.
Oh, the basic allure was there, the drive to be important and loved...
But people didn't love you just because you were known. In fact a lot of them would hate you for it, even after you helped them over and over again. They might not spit on you in the street, but that didn't mean that just being in charge would make you feel better about yourself as a person. It probably shouldn't. Anyone hanging around the palace for a while should have picked up on that. It seemed like a good thing, being powerful, on the surface, but when the day was done Richard and Connie both looked tired and worn as often as not. Like their spirits were being ground down by the burdens they were forced to carry.
That was something Tor could happily avoid.
So, fishing. he liked fishing. At least the easy kind where you sat by a stream and dangled a line in the water. The kind done on the ocean was different. Harder and holding less of a margin of error. Technically he owned a few fishing fleets, renting out the magical boats used. Not that he could have done it himself. He didn't know enough about the process for that. Maybe if he worked for someone else though? Hauling nets and cleaning the decks, that kind of thing?