Kingdom of Stars (The Young Ancients: Timon Book Three)

by Power, P. S.

  Which Petra noticed right off, being good at her job.

  "Full force, please, gentlemen."

  That led to grunting and Timon at least calling out in pain several times as the bigger man pummeled him. He was still being nice about it and it ended up with them exchanging blows full out, the meaty slapping sounds of it catching everyone's attention for a bit. It might not have been artful on his part, but Tim was stronger than he looked. Maybe even as strong as the giant in front of him.

  Finally Petra called a halt to it.

  "Thank you Karl. Timon. Let's go over this now." She wasn't kind about it either, pointing out every flaw that both of them had made, as they stood there, bleeding from several places.

  At least it shut up the entitled brat woman that had been giving Petra trouble. Of course that could have just been because Karl had mentioned that she was Conserina Ward. Timon had to ask several questions not knowing what all the new words meant exactly, which had Karl demonstrating things for him as everyone watched.

  Then after that was done, Petra winked at the watching students.

  "We're at war, ladies and gentlemen. At any time you might be pressed into combat duties. I know, you're probably thinking that it can't happen, that children don't go off to war, and that you'd be the last ones called if needed. I'd like to point out that the kids at the Lairdgren school have seen combat. Not just the fighting students either, but homemaking and singing students. In the battle for the Capital all sorts saw action, and repelled over eight thousand men and women who were under arms from the walls." She stood, her hands going behind her back in a military fashion. "It was two girls from the music section that guarded the wall itself, as the last line of defense, holding the breach that had been blasted in it using a magical house created by Tor. We don't have time to stand on titles or ceremony, I'm sorry to say. Things have been lax here, since Countess Printer didn't have a full time Instructor for you. That's her fault, and mine for taking so long to get here. You've had Assistant Instructor Karl however, so I expect you all to report here tomorrow morning, ready for some real work. Right now..."

  She looked around and sighed, her face set.

  "Right now I can't stand to look at you. Get out of here. If you want to keep working, do it, but show up tomorrow ready for something a bit more... difficult than this. If I find any of you playing games again, I'll make you eat them."

  It was telling, who stayed and who left. Timon was really tempted to take off himself, but settled for using the healing amulet on the bench near the wall, where he'd left it. Mindy followed him, and made a face as he picked the thing up and tapped the silhouette of the man on the front. It was glowing, and on focus stone, so it looked like the ones Tor made. It was just a copy though. No one else could make them glow like that yet.

  "Damn, you really do have a healing amulet? I don't suppose that you'd make one for me? I can't pay for it though." She looked away, but smiled charmingly enough when she looked back. "I can borrow yours though, right? Since we're such old friends now?"

  Timon blinked. It was, though the girl had no clue she'd done it, just about the best way of putting something like that to a boy from Two Bends like he was. She'd proclaimed herself his friend. He wasn't so tied to tradition that he couldn't break free of it, but there was no harm in the idea either, he didn't think.

  "My oldest school chum by far, being the only one. Well, you and Karl, of course. After all, we've spent all that quality time together. Bonding and all that." He smiled. It was a genuine enough thing, at least in looks. He'd suffered enough over the last year or so for it to take work, but he'd practiced it in the mirror, so he'd look right in situations like this.

  Standing next to him, Mindy laughed a little.

  "Ah, I should take advantage of you then, before all the other girls get a chance to steal you away. You're fourteen, right?" She probably wasn't much older than that herself, from her looks, but Tim shook his head.

  "No, twelve. I'm here on early admission. Actually, I'm not really here at all, since I came in late for the year. I had a scholarship, but Countess Printer pulled it when a certain relative of mine mentioned that I should be able to afford it on my own. It made for some problems, but here I am, only half a year late. I wanted to get out of the Capital for a bit. I have a house there. We can go on our off days?" It was a bit of a nasty thing for him to do to poor Mindy, since he'd both proclaimed himself too young for her, at least for anything fun, and then announced himself rich and a good catch, having his own home.

  The girl shrugged again. It was almost as bad as being around his brother, Tor, or Count Lairdgren. They both did that all the time too.

  "That sounds fun. Do you live with your parents?"

  It was a polite enough thing to ask really. Kids did call their parents house home after all, and that sort of made sense, him being so young.

  "No. With my wife. The place is mine however. Smack in the middle of the battlefield that Petra was just talking about. Haunted, I'm sure, but so far I haven't noticed anything. We should get back to work. There are exercises, right? Running and that kind of thing? We skipped that, but my sister Tiera is always going on about that. Pells and stones?"

  That got him introduced to even more pain. It wasn't so bad when Mindy started showing him things, since it was just exercise, but after a bit Petra sent Karl over and they picked up a different girl, named Bethany, who was frighteningly huge and a bit shy seeming. Then they lifted heavy rocks, swinging them all around, before bashing a poor log into oblivion.

  "It makes you wonder what it did wrong." He spoke softly, but the new giant girl, Bethany, grinned at him.

  "I always think that too. Beaten so severely and all." She was older, but not ancient, being about eighteen he thought. She was actually cute, in a round faced kind of way. Not fat at all, but a lot of the big women had square jaws. She did too, but her cheekbones worked well to soften the look, so it wasn't manly. Her hair was short and jet black, like his own. She had to be over seven feet tall however, which kept sending a chill down his spine. It seemed to show on his face, because the girl stiffened a bit, and looked away.

  "I know that I'm only a Baronetta..." Her words were soft enough that he could have ignored her, pretending that he lost them in the constant thumping on the pells. He kept making his own strikes, using the one between Mindy and Bethany, and decided it would be better if the girl understood what was going on than not. Insulting people led to problems in the long run, he'd noticed.

  "It isn't that. Not at all. I..." He didn't really want to talk about it, and nearly just said that, but it wouldn't help anything. He hadn't done anything wrong, and hiding from the very thought of it wasn't going to make him any better, in the long run. "I was kidnapped, about five months ago. Tortured. It was bad. The person that did it was a tall woman, with dark hair, and I..."

  There was no answer and the woman at the pell next to him kept hammering away at it. Finally she stopped and turned to him.

  "I'd heard about that. I'm sorry. She... Countess Alan was my cousin." The woman looked away, and cringed a little, as if expecting him to send her away, or scream at her. Or... Maybe she just didn't know what he was going to do? He didn't either, so that made two of them. He wanted to be the kind of person that didn't blame others for things they had nothing to do with however, so tried to work from there.

  "Ah. Well... Mindy and I were planning on going to the Capital on our next off day. Would you like to come along? You too, Karl." It wouldn't hurt to make friends fast after all. Yes, it was using his position and wealth to do it, but he was twelve. He had no illusions that he'd be easily making fast friends at the school. It wasn't even the plan. He was mainly there to use it as a remote base of operations in the real war that had started. The War against the Ancients. At least some of them.

  Remote from Tor, who was, it turned out, infected with the mind of their enemy. King Cordes the first. Since his brother could read fields, which basically meant mind
reading, and Timon couldn't be trusted not to think about things, that being what he did in the main, it made sense for him to stay well away from the man.

  Tiera was still at the school, with their brother not a half mile away, which was dangerous. She was managing it the hard way, by learning to control her every thought. That meant it was up to him to set the real plans in motion. He was pretty close to the only person that really could, for the time being.

  It was what he had planned for after class, or at least luncheon. They'd started at nine and would run for three hours. At least the people that had stayed would be. Over half the class had taken off, which didn't bode well for the next day, he didn't think. Petra acted like she didn't mind it, but she also looked at the backs of each student that had gone away when she said to. Memorizing who they were.

  Unlike at Lairdgren, there was no wall around the practice area at the Printer school, so people stopped occasionally to look at them. It was a bit annoying, but one of the boys that stopped about them looked a little familiar, his thin frame looking slightly more gawky as he stretched a little more, growing fast, like nobles did. He needed a haircut, but otherwise seemed to be in good health. Wallace, Timon recalled.

  Timon waved, and got one back, which was noticed by Bethany, who cringed a little.

  "Fucking traitor." She blanched a bit and looked at Timon hard. "A friend of yours? Or, a relative?"

  "Customer. Or, well, his father has been in the past. I run the kingdom's Fast Transport Service? Well, I own it at least. Right now my wife, Patricia, is running it. You know, since I'm here." Plus business had been a little slow. It was picking up at least, as the rebellion limped along.

  That got several of the people to stop and look at him, and it wasn't with doubt or even shock this time. Karl let his laugh rumble as he saw it happen, and moved closer to them.

  "All right everyone, just because our new class mate has a Fast Carriage, that doesn't mean that you all get free trips everywhere. Just me, Bethany and Mindy here." He said it with a straight face, as if it actually had been agreed upon already, which got Timon to chuckle.

  "If you want free trips, get with Karl." Tim tilted his head a tiny bit and winked. "I'll lend you a craft for it. If you take paying work, you have to stick to normal rates though. Accepting it means you work for me, by the way, but so far no one has complained about it too much." It just meant Timon still owned the craft and not be out competed too much.

  It was a strange thing, but giving free rides had generated more business than anything else so far. Once people got used to getting places fast, they really didn't want to go back to the old ways and take weeks or months to do it anymore.

  His words though, got a laugh, which was a good natured one, and from just about everyone in the area, including Karl. Who rubbed at his shaggy red hair and sighed.

  "Ah, that would be nice, now wouldn't it?" Then he acted as if it hadn't been a real offer, but just light teasing. Timon thought he got the idea. The man wasn't stupid, but taking that kind of a deal, while in public, might make it seem like he could be bought. Petra had just named him her assistant, which would mean that some of the students might want him to be on their side, so they wouldn't have to work as hard. Given the pain that Tim had gotten from him earlier, it seemed like a good idea to him, come to think of it. Maybe he'd take one in private? Or something else. A shield, perhaps? Everyone should have one of those.

  That of course, would both be useful and probably something that Petra was going to insist on for everyone. That and flying rigs. If he were older, and not her friend, Timon would have at least insisted that she sleep with him for that sort of thing. As it was he didn't actually want to do that with her. She was just a bit on the large side for that. He'd done some things with his wife, since it was kind of required by law, and she wasn't all that large herself, but Petra...

  Well, they could work out something else. It was nice to be paid for his work, and he didn't have so much gold that a little more wouldn't be a good thing, but Pet was just drawing her allowance from home, and whatever Countess Printer was paying her to teach. It wasn't going to be near enough to outfit her entire fighting section in the same fashion that the Lairdgren school was. They didn't even have real practice weapons yet. Not magical ones.

  Timon shook himself a bit and smiled, "well, I'm sure we can work out a special rate for the students here. Anyway, what's next?" They had an hour left and Karl decided that showing off how good he was at teaching was a plan, which meant trying to instantly transform Tim into a hardened warrior, it seemed. Thankfully he did most of this by going over the suggestions that they'd gotten earlier, and he was allowed to try most of the unarmed stuff on Mindy. It was easier to pull off than with the much larger man really. For one thing he could aim blows at her face without jumping. He was about five-six now, so she was taller, but not so much he couldn't reach that high.

  It was one of the things that Tor had done to him, making it so that he'd grow taller than he might have otherwise. It was mainly that, and giving him a conscience like a normal person. Unless there was more that had been hidden from him that he hadn't guessed yet. Technically that second part was only half of what a normal person had. It... still wasn't easy to deal with. Guilt, shame, embarrassment, these were things that had only been a faint glimmer before for him. Now, ever since his brother had changed him in his sleep one night, near Noram Day, Tim had been dealing with new things that he wasn't ready for.

  It had been a chore, though he was sort of getting a handle on the worst of it. It seemed mainly based on lying to yourself. For instance, he'd let thousands of people die, suffocating to death with the Gray plague. He'd taken the healing amulets slated for them, so regular men and women would die. Yes, he'd saved some lives, since soldiers died of it too, which meant he'd single handedly crippled the rebellion, but that wasn't the problem. It was the grannies and children that haunted his sleep. So he told himself how it wasn't really his fault, but the King's, since Richard could have ordered him not to do it. Or Tor's, for not just making some more and fixing it.

  Instead the Ancient King in his brother's head had backed the play, which was part of why Tor had altered him, and left him feeling like he was. All guilt ridden and ashamed of himself. His brother wasn't really in control though, and changing him might have been part of Cordes's plan to keep him from being effective in the war that was just starting. The Ancient war.

  Or, it might have really been his brother doing what he normally did and assuming that having power gave him the right to do whatever he wanted, since no one could stop him. Except... That really wasn't how Tor thought. Even Cordes didn't. No, that was the way Tim viewed the world and always had, at least deep down. It was his way. Take what you wanted to and if no one could stop you, then you had a right to it. Even now, after everything, it made a strange kind of sense to him. Wasn't that the ultimate goal of political and personal power? To gain control over others?

  He didn't like it when Tor did that to him, forcing him to be more like his brother, but Timon understood it. It was up to him to fight against it, and to hold himself as a whole and complete person, not letting shame and all that other emotional garbage influence him in what had to be done. It was hard though.

  Next to him Bethany was talking to Karl, her voice still shy, and her gaze averted. At least that's what he thought was going on at first, until her eyes went far wider. She was looking East, out over the ocean. There was a row of focus stone buildings in the way. In this part of the world it made a white and gray mixed substance that was part glass and another stone. It was pretty enough, and gleamed a bit in the late winter sun. That meant he had to blink for a second when the craft that came over it, growling and roaring at them, came into view.

  Without waiting Timon yelled. It wasn't exactly a manly thing, but it worked well enough.

  "Shields on! Everyone, get back... into the craft!" He had to run to the bench along the low wall thing, which wasn't a real wall at
all, being only a few feet high and made of regular stone. It was a bit rough, as was the shelf along the top of it. It took a bit to get to the amulets, snatch them all up clumsily, and then work a craft up, but he had people loading about the time that the mechanized looking thing stopped near the far side of the space and began to settle.

  Timon didn't freeze, but had to make himself not gape at the thing. It was familiar looking, but Tiera had explained about the clones, and how they could seem like anyone, including people he knew. They might have Cordes inside them, or possibly Gray, which would mean he might be able to tell, if he could read them closely enough. He also might not. It wasn't something that he'd had a lot of time to practice.

  Hopefully this time it would just be a visit from Blue or one of her clones, who except for the dead one, Cordes Blue, were just themselves. His Aunt Cynthia and her kids. The craft seemed right for it, but wasn't one he recognized. It was enough to get him to hold his breath a bit, in fear.

  Luckily Petra had closed the outer door of the big craft, which was silver on the outside, and shaped like a rectangle at the moment, since that was the way he'd left it. The space inside was big and open, since Tim had been using it last to haul lumber for his brother in-law, Tovey. It meant both that everyone fit inside easily, since there were only about twenty of them, and that he could see them all when he turned, just before the thing in front of them opened fire.

  "So, no, probably not the Blue's come to visit." He muttered, holding the craft in place. That part wasn't hard, since the weapons that hit it were based on energy, he thought. Light beams of some kind, by the look of the twin beams. They didn't do anything to his craft, which was basically a shield built in a way that it could be seen. Tor had come up with the original idea, but Timon had designed and made the craft. It held, easily. That was good, since he doubted that anyone but Petra had a shield on them here.