by P. S. Power
It wasn't that at all.
The woman, who had slightly blue hair, which had to be some kind of dye used to hide the white of it, cleared her throat and shuffled slowly to her sitting room. She didn't seem either happy or comfortable, and if she were normally chatty, that function was failing her at the moment. Ger's own ability that way had seemed to have temporarily fled, he'd noticed, so didn't blame her. The air inside was close, feeling like it hadn't moved much that day, and smelled a bit of heavy spices. Cinnamon and a few others that he didn't recognize, not having been around that kind of thing enough to have learned.
After the woman waved for them to sit in various chairs, she directed Gerent to a specific one, it was just right for him, meaning made for a medium sized giant, and had a soft red pillow on the seat. It was attached somehow to the polished wood that made the frame. It kept him from sliding. An old and wizened finger pointed up at the wall across from him, where he noticed a rather plain looking older man in a painting. He wasn't good looking, and even the artist that had done the work couldn't make his loopy grin into anything that seemed sane, apparently. The eyes weren't vacant, but they held a strange sense of madness. The tightness around the lips was what really sold the whole thing.
Whoever the poor man in the picture had been, he was either hated by that particular artist, or he was more than a little unbalanced. At least looked that way. It could happen. Like a man that Gerent had once met that looked mentally slow, but had actually been hiding a keen enough mind underneath his dumb looking face. Perhaps this fellow just gave the impression that raving was a pastime he solidly endorsed? He wasn't planning on talking about it, not that portion of things at any rate.
Gerent smiled however, since he was supposed to be looking at the picture and other than the strange subject matter, it was well done.
"Is this your own work?" He didn't know if that was polite or not, but the woman winked at him, her face pleased that he'd gone there, it seemed.
"It is! I did this one about forty years ago. This man was a cousin of mine. Daniel. Harris of course, but so far out of the line that we didn't even have to make excuses as to why he lived off on the country estate. Not... well, our Daniel. A good enough man, most of the time, but prone to the bad rage." She looked at the others, so Gerent did too, following her eyes. Erid winced at the last bit, but Wallace simply nodded slowly. Neither spoke at all.
She looked back at him, and finally nodded.
"Combat rage. In about one in every fifty people that have it, the condition is overly developed. Daniel spent about half his time in that state. It warps a person, to live that way. It was peculiar for him, since he could feel it coming on, and move away from others the vast majority of the time." She rang a small bell, and when a woman bustled in she gestured to the guests. "Tea, please, Matilde? Perhaps some of Cook's delightful biscuits?"
The lady, who was dressed in a gray uniform that had black shoes to go with it, bobbed in place a bit. Not a curtsey, but something that seemed like the woman wanted to do that, but didn't have the time.
"Coming shortly, ma'am."
"Thank you, dear." The tone sounded like she was speaking to a child, but the woman had to be nearing fifty. There was a quality to the words that made it seem like she actually liked the serving woman.
The old lady looked back at the picture and went back to her tale, for some reason. It might have simply been that she wanted to talk, but that didn't explain much.
"Now, where was I? Ah, certainly, Daniel... When he raged it was legendary. We had, it was actually my uncle Maurice that did it, had a special room built to keep him inside. He was locked up there most of his life. We all tried to visit and make the rest of his time as pleasant as possible, but he really wasn't fit for human company.
"The odd thing there was that, in those moments when he wasn't foaming at the mouth and trying to rend holes in the walls with great blasts of force, he was a sweet enough man. That's where the trouble came in though, wasn't it? Him being polite and charming enough that the serving girl his father hired gave in and became his lover."
The others listened aptly enough, and Gerent tried to imagine what that would have been like. Not the sex parts, but the idea of being locked up all the time, or most of it. Hidden away from the world and told you weren't good enough for anyone else. It wasn't hard, but growing up he hadn't been a noble. Seldom locked in a cage either. That had happened, and more than once, but not for too long at any given point. He hated being locked up though. It left him feeling slightly bad for this man, Daniel Harris, who'd never done anything wrong, except what his own body forced him to.
It was enough, of course. You didn't have to be evil for people to act that way about you.
Gerent let himself nod, to show that he was listening, because people liked that, in general.
"It must have been very challenging for everyone involved." He spoke the words calmly, his face probably a bit bland. It would have been worse than that, but he didn't want to push the woman into tears. Or a rage of her own.
If her cousin was prone to it, she might be as well, if not as sensitive.
She clapped once. It was a dull and muffled thing, since her old hands just didn't produce much speed or power.
"Yes. That is merely the truth. Poor Daniel. Poor Leslie, too. She had you, about five years after they'd taken up together in secret. She was of merchant stock, but it took all of us by surprise when you were born with those problems. You weren't a healthy child. Maurice was content enough to host you on the country estate with your parents, but over time things went... Wrong. Daniel simply went into a rage and never came out of it, dying several days into the thing. Six, I think. Leslie... Well, it would be romantic to say she died of a broken heart, but I can't say as I know that much about the story. It was reported to me that she'd taken ill. Then Maurice died and left the estate to me." She smiled and shook her head.
Then the room went silent for a long time. Gerent felt the blood rush to and then from his head, but managed to pull himself together mentally faster than he thought he would. After all, if what this woman had said was real, and he had no reason to think it wasn't, then...
He actually had parents. It was clear that he always had, but this meant that they'd died, and hadn't just sold him into sexual slavery or worse that the man that had abused him as a child and called himself his uncle had been his father all along. That... It was a thing that he'd feared for a long time, and rarely gave voice to. The weight of it lifted from him, and he took a deep breath.
"That... is a tragic tale."
The woman cleared her throat again, and gave him a sour look. Probably for interrupting. Old people did love to tell their stories.
"By the time I managed to get there, some weeks later, it turned out that the huntsman had removed you, and himself, from the estate. We searched for you, for years, but... Well, after a time, we stopped, figuring that you were dead. It wasn't until a few months ago, nearly a year now, that I managed to buy a packet of information from Baron Coltress that contained reference to a Gerent Lairdgren, who was a midget or dwarf, with blue eyes, and had gotten himself adopted by a Count. Since then I've been tracking you, in the missives. I didn't know if you'd remember me, or your parents, but I was honestly planning to let you know about all of this. I swear. I have a letter for you, in with my things, to be broken out when I die."
She grinned, and it was charming in that old person sort of way. Gerent understood. She felt guilty about not coming and telling him immediately, as soon as she worked it all out. Except that he really did understand that a person might not want to find new relatives at her age.
Here he was however, in the flesh and large as life, in her parlor. Annoying of him, he realized.
"That sounds like a good plan. Of course now you're stuck with me. If that wasn't some other midget named Gerent. I can't imagine it's a common name however, given that I've never met anyone else called that. Thanks for telling me. I..." He shrugged
and went silent, but finally smiled at her. "Every orphan child imagines a thousand different reasons why they were abandoned. Was it some shame or scandal? Were they just unloved? In my case, I always just assumed that my mother had given me away, since I was... Wrong. That she didn't want the burden of having me around. Now I can imagine that she'd loved me at least enough to keep me. My father, too. Even that uncle of yours doesn't sound too bad, given everything."
It still might not be his real story, Gerent knew, but he wasn't about to slap a Truth amulet on the Dowager Harris to find out. If she were making the story better for him, to protect his past, or even just so that she wouldn't be linked to something shameful, he was more than ready to let her get away with it. This tale, his father being half mad and his mother a mere servant... It was about twenty times better than most of what he'd come up with himself. His fantasies had most normally been about having enough to eat, not secretly being a Prince that had been stolen away. He'd talked to other people that didn't have anyone, and a surprising amount of them admitted that they wondered if they were part noble.
That had never been a factor for him, being so tiny that even the most common folk looked down on him, day to day. Now, for him at least, it seemed like that old story was true. Gerent had, by birth, been born a noble. Or at least the bastard of one. His mother wouldn't have been married to his father, given what he'd just been told. That was still fine. They'd been together, and he'd been loved. Or at least kept, until Leslie had died. Even past that, by his father's people.
Who could ask for more than that?
Something occurred to him, and he smiled, trying not to let any sense of panic hit him.
"Wait... I showed up in the files of Baron Coltress?" He got the idea, that the man had knowledge of him from his daughter, but why write about him? That barely made any sense.
The woman waved that away, her face pleasant.
"We're all in there, eventually. I just paid attention to your story, since... Well."
He stood up then, and smiled again.
"That is a most interesting bit of story, ma'am. I hate to run, before the tea, but we should really get the food units working. It's why we came here. I didn't know any of this. It's amazing to finally hear, after all this time. Thank you."
They, apparently, were going to sit and have that tea, since the woman didn't let them leave, giving him a stern glance. She finally relented and let Erid go and see to things, being that he was a High Servant, and he literally had a sworn duty to uphold. Wallace seemed torn, as if he both wanted to hear the rest of the information that the Dowager, Mellissa, had for them, but also didn't want to be there in particular. Or leave Gerent to fend for himself. It was pretty kind of him. They'd only met the day before after all, but here he was, sitting with them in this woman's parlor, listening to her awkwardly try to explain how they'd missed finding one of the only midgets in County Harris for all that time.
Ger simply decided not to make an issue of it. If she was willing to claim now that they'd looked, that was good enough. She'd been the Countess back then. The sitting one too, and until she'd given that up for a relaxing retirement, putting her eldest boy in place, she probably hadn't had a lot of free time. Not that finding him would have taken real or direct work on her part. That was silly thinking. As a Countess she could have simply ordered the guard in the area to do it. Sent out a few letters and locate all the children that were both boys and too small, since they'd stick out. Then it would have been a matter of days to locate him. It would have worked for almost twenty years, too. Until he'd taken to traveling up and down the coast with his various acts.
If she needed for him to think she was better than most people however, and had actually tried her best, he could let her have that one. Smiling, he nodded at her tale and didn't tell much of his own, so that her illusions wouldn't be disrupted with the idea that her lack of finding him had meant he was molested and beaten hundreds of times as a child, not having real protection in the world.
Finally, half an hour later, she let them go, seeming interested in having Gerent come back and talk to her soon. It was, he decided, a good enough idea. After all, no matter what else, this made it pretty clear that he'd had real parents. Not rich ones, and not the King or a Count, but that wasn't the important part of this. Crazy and humble people... that had loved him, until they'd died and couldn't protect him... That left a warm spot in his heart. Even if it had been mere obligation to them, keeping him around, it was enough. He did like the idea that they'd cared, however, and so far nothing the Dowager had told him indicated otherwise.
"Thank you, ma'am. That sounds wonderful. I don't know what my immediate schedule is going to be like as far as visits to people, however. I need to be back in Harmony tomorrow, and after that I have a project that needs to be seen to. I don't know how long that one will take." He didn't explain what it was, but she asked, being a polite person.
"We could help you with it? If you need?" Her voice cracked with age, but her eyes looked pleased with the idea. As if doing something for him in particular would make things better between them. As if being family wasn't enough?
Gerent wanted to blush, or at least seem humble about it, and then refuse, but Wallace nodded, and spoke up instantly.
"We're going to kill the old Count Rodriguez. Torturing him first. He let, or ordered, a daughter of the peerage be tortured for information. His own betrothed at the time. She was rescued, but not until after the guards had brutalized her in a monstrous fashion. Gerent already has the word of the King on it, but is seeking the rebellion too, so that we'll all stand united in this. A collection of Counts, and Dukes, I think, plus some others, like the old King of Vagus, are in on this as well. We're also going to punish the men that did the actual acts. So far no one has tried to stand against the idea. I can't say more, right now, since..." He didn't go on, looking away from the still decently tall old woman, who smoothed her dress and stood, looking down herself.
When she spoke, her voice was firm however.
"I understand, Baron Eager. I'm not the Countess any longer. Once the title is passed, certain aspects of life are closed to you. What I can do is send you to my son with a letter of introduction. It won't take but a moment."
They sat and sipped at tea when she left. It took a lot longer than a moment, but eventually she returned, and handed a folded and sealed paper to Gerent. It had red wax on the back, and an impression in it, on very heavy and fine paper. It seemed important, at least.
"There you go. Now, off with you. Gerent, I expect you to come and see me very soon. I'm old enough that even a few weeks might be too long, so make the effort. As for you other two, I have to say that I'm more impressed with today's youth now, seeing you close up like this. Both of you, off seeing to the world like you are, at such young ages. That's very impressive. Now, out. Don't make me call for a servant to show you the door." There was a tiny grin to go with the words, and she winked at Wallace for some reason.
Then, at the front door, their High Servant friend standing outside for some reason, she patted the Baron First on the behind on the way out, her hand groping a little more than could be called proper really. She was old however, so they both accepted the movement with good grace, and only a bit of jumping, which got her to chuckle, but not comment on it.
When they got outside Erid looked at the other boy, and shrugged.
"Could be worse. She could have been insisting that we all stay the night instead of working. Now, we should get everyone over to the right place. This only took... What, an extra two and a half hours from the day?" He didn't really seem upset however, even if he was trying to be efficient and get the real job done as fast as possible. "Worth it though, if she was being honest about you, Gerent. I... You did want to know about your parents, didn't you? I would, if it were me, but... It isn't, so I don't know if that follows really."
He nodded, as they all walked to the Tim-Craft and climbed in, moved straight up into the air and then
settled at what was the second nicest place in the city. As they floated to the ground, Ger finally broke his silence.
"I think so. It's better to know than not. There were some holes in her story, but it's a good enough one, don't you think? It gives me a family. I mean, one other than the Bakers. It might have all been a lie, but why would she bother?" He couldn't think of any real reason, but Wallace patted his back gently as they all stood to climb back out and go meet the guards that had come into the walled courtyard. They just had spears, so nothing that would harm anyone in their group.
Shields were really nice to have, that way.
Wallace sighed and shook his head a little.
"There really isn't a lot of good reason for something like that, I don't think. She could be faking it all, but telling you that you had a mother and father that were loosely related to her was a risk on her part. After all, what if you blamed her, or this entire county, for not seeing to you better as a child? You've been flying around in a ship that has weapons on it capable of making the whole place a crater, from what I've been hearing. If you took things the wrong way, and really, most would have, then a lot of people might just die because of it."
Gerent could understand that thought pattern. It was a pretty noble one, and not how he thought, but, the woman was a noble. So was Wallace. It was always easiest to assume that everyone else thought like you did. To their minds it would be about the wrongs done, not the adventure of finding out new things like that. For him... Well, he didn't really know yet. It felt like a good enough thing, but that might change, over time. Oh, not into some kind of massive attack or anything like that, but he could feel a certain draw toward just dropping off the amulets, and leaving forever.
The tale he'd been told wasn't too bad, so far. If he left and never came back, then these people wouldn't have a chance to disappoint him, would they? As they got out, a tall and somewhat homely, but very tall, man came out, dressed in a smart looking outfit of black material that seemed ready for war. He was lean, but in a rangy fashion that showed muscle, rather than bone, lived under his skin.