Kingdom of Stars (The Young Ancients: Timon Book Three) (12 page)

Monroe spoke with a lot of energy then.

"To see if she's actually Gray? That seems pretty
likely, given all the others. I'm surprised no one checked for that yet. I can
work up a brain scan, if I have the right materials. It will take a few weeks,
since we should work on the micro-plasma problem first. Unless it's an
emergency?"

This time Tiera spoke, her voice making it clear she wasn't
giving up on her attempt to live in a trance, even if Tor wasn't around. It was
the only way for her to get good enough in time for it to be useful. No one
needed to explain that to him. Really, he should probably do something similar
himself, if he could muster the will to try. There weren't a lot of other
options, if he was going to be the go to person for building now. Especially if
he had to outcompete his brother.

It was a good enough reason, and he tried to hold his mind
still, sensing all the patterns on the ship. All the fields of mind and magic.
It took work.

"We can check for that directly. Using magic. It's...
Well, no one really wants it to be true, so we've all been putting it off. What
if she is? What do we do? Kill her? She's our
mother
. Lock her away?
We'd have to do something, and that would just be cruel, since she's immortal.
No one knows how to remove a Rhetistic set at all yet and never has. Unless you
do?" There was a bit of hope in the words, but Monroe dashed them
instantly.

"Not at all. As far as I know it's never been done.
Still, each new technology lends hope to it being doable. Maybe this magic is
the key? Or something else. I agree however, that she shouldn't be harmed. Make
her a home on the moon or something? Do we have an active moon base? No one
mentioned it."

"Just the old lunar base. I was there a few months ago,
with the Blues. It's not that nice. There's a lot of space up there though.
Since we can make gravity and everything, we should consider it. Put a few
million people up there so that it will be harder to kill us all, if we
fail."

That made sense. Enough that Timon let the idea spin in his
mind for a while. It would take a lot to get it done, but they had the
resources, or could, as long as no one killed most of the planet off. The hard
part would be water, since they couldn't take it all from Earth. They'd need to
learn how to make it. If that was possible.

The idea would be a hard one to crack. Not impossible he didn't
think, just really tough. He'd seen some of the Lairdgren Group's latest work
and they were making things like soap and toothpaste that could be used on and
in the body, and did its job. Water wouldn't be that hard, to mimic, he didn't
think. The trick would be in making it last. When you turned off the soap
amulet, the soap vanished. If the magical water were a part of a person and it
got turned off... That would
not
end well. The idea was an interesting
one however.

Not that he had an idea as to how it could be made to work
yet. Ideally he'd run it past his brother, but that wasn't going to happen.
Instead, well, he'd have to figure it out for himself. That, and do some other
things that would be less than fun, most likely.

"I'll work on that. Can you get us a ship from Orange?
A crew too, if possible?"

That started a conversation, with both Tiera and Timon in a
trance, listening more than speaking the whole time. He tried to make himself
seem more normal externally, so that he wasn't flat affected the whole time. It
would be too creepy otherwise.

Tiera actually thought she could work that all out inside a
day, even going off to Vagus first. Everyone tried to sit and converse for a
while, but finally gave in to boredom and went to rest. Monroe wasn't given
clothing yet, but his invisible cell area was made larger and a bed put in it,
so he could rest too. The only ones left upright were himself and his sister,
who, he realized was taller than him again.

She moved to sit next to him, staring out at the black sky
in front of them, not speaking at all. It wasn't that hard to put up with,
since he was holding his own mind still the whole time, trying not to think,
except about flying as well as possible.

"Everything is going to change. Again." She
sounded a bit sad about it. Subdued and soft. "Tor, Mother, who knows who
else is going to die, or turn out to be working against us in all this?"

"I know. It could be anyone. Especially the Ancients.
All we can do is read everyone constantly and watch for irregularities. Be
careful and trust no one. That's less than perfect, since we can't let them
know we don't trust them, just in case they really aren't on our side. On the
good side, no one noble will really notice it, since they live that way all the
time." Tim smiled gently, trying to make it seem real, like he meant it.

"That's true." She leaned forward a bit and
pointed at a red glow in the night, one with small white lights around it, like
a city. A real one. "Is that Lyn's?"

Timon nodded.

"A bit more official looking now, but yes, that seems
to be the mage school location. Someone has been making lights using magic, it
seems. Here let me signal them. Could you connect with Red? She has a
device." Mark, Trice's older brother, had brought her one, weeks before.

Tiera didn't ask why and pulled her own communications
device out to do it instantly, working efficiently. It took a minute for the
thing to pick up, but the woman herself was on it, meaning she hadn't handed it
off to a minor official or someone else to take her messages yet.

"Lyn Red, how may I serve you today?"

Tiera looked at the device blankly.

"By not being too shocked that we're coming to visit?
We'll be there in about ten minutes, if we slow down enough. We have some
guests. Julie White, Kolb and... Monroe."

The device made a strange noise, but the leader of the
largest land on the planet didn't sound out of sorts after that.

"I understand. If you could orient on the Mage school
and land on the river side, facing the building, to the left of the water
feature?"

Timon could see it already, since it was a glowing red
stream of water that ran both to and from the glowing dome. It was really the
water for the structure, but there was no reason for it not to be pretty too.
He had a silver glowing river that surrounded his own place at the Capital, for
the same reason.

Tiera waved to the right spot, but without saying anything.

"We'll be there directly. Thanks for having us."

"Well, thank you for coming. We don't get a lot of
visitors here. Dorgal will be pleased, I think."

Then, with a bit of polite and flowery speech that would be
more in line with visiting dignitaries than pushy relatives bringing problems
to her door, the Ancient broke the connection. That gave her just enough time
to get outside, along with her husband and an honor guard of twenty red-robed
mage students, who all clearly had force lances hidden in their sleeves. Timon
felt them the instant he stepped off the craft, scanning the crowd. Red didn't
hold back, nearly rushing them.

"Tim! I didn't know you were here too. So is this
actually a more relaxed visit than I was led to believe? If you've taken
prisoners..."

He shrugged.

"Well, we haven't. Julie, as you know, was taken
herself and locked in a small dark room for weeks. Alone." That meant
something, since Red hissed at the idea. She wasn't big, and looked about
twenty right now, with Asian features that matched the rest of the crowd around
them. When they'd first met he'd thought her a little funny looking, but now
she seemed pretty, in a way. Not like Julie, but then no one was really.
Compared to the mage women around them, she was cute. The men were harder for
him to judge, not really being a thing he considered at all.

They all stared at Julie when she came out, and most of the
surrounding mages suddenly flared with shields that went up. That was a new
thing, but made sense. Mages. They made things like that after all, or at least
copied them.

Timon spoke in his still slightly broken Cantonese.

"You should all be shielded. There is not great
physical threat, but I cannot promise that none exists at all."

That got the rest of them to go, including Dorgal, who moved
in carefully, and bowed. First to Kolb and Julie, but then Tiera and himself.

"Baron Kolbrin is a friend I recognize from school, but
I don't believe I've met this lady before?" He meant Julie, who bowed
back, getting protocol and things like that, due to long practice.

Timon moved forward, since they needed to be introduced.

"This is Julie White of Soam. She leads there. You know
my sister Tiera, but may not have heard of her recent acquisition of County
Morris? Now County Baker." That part wasn't a big deal, except that Dorgal
was a merchant, by blood. "Also your cousin, I believe? It came as a bit
of a shock to us too, but it turns out da is a Sorvee relation. In the
old
family business."

That got a reaction from the man in front of them, who
looked the same as always, except that he was wearing a rust colored robe,
instead of his Noram style clothing.

"Um... Welcome? I... Did not know that. I would have...
Honestly, if that situation is what I think it is, then I would have said
nothing, even if I knew. It probably means I have some groveling to do with
Tor." He smiled about it, as if trying to let them know he didn't mean it
in a bad way. "Welcome, Countess Baker. It's so nice to have some people
from home around. I need to get over there soon and visit, or everyone will
forget about me. We need to work out some kind of trade between our two lands.
Perhaps some of the others as well? I've spoken to Mark Morgan about the idea,
but he doesn't seem to have the needed power to set that sort of thing up on
his own."

"But
I
do." Timon smiled. "We need to
set up space transport anyway, which is a lot faster than anything else. Tiera
will contact Alice Orange to see about that. You can have a port here, if you
want? I don't think anyone else has one yet, not even Austra. It would pay to
be the first." Timon wanted to sound like a merchant, but it didn't really
work. His voice was too bland for it. It lacked the excitement they always had
when it came to making coin.

That reminded him to focus at least, which was helpful.

Dorgal looked considering and then gave a sidelong look at
his wife. It was clear that they'd already had an issue on the topic.

"I don't know. We can't really afford that kind of
thing yet. Perhaps in a few years?"

Timon moved with the flow of the words, and then smiled at Red,
who was nearly as blank as Tiera was at the moment, nothing coming off of her
field at all. She actually tried to read him while he was sneaking a peak at
her inner self.

Brilliantly creative of her, really.

Watching
him
like that.

"Fine. Lyn, can I lease some land from you? Just
outside the city here? We can trade goods for it. Or services. Gold too, if you
want to collect some for dealings with Noram."

The woman looked at him as if he were food, and then smiled
at him, her head nodding a bit.

"A quarter mile square of poor farming land? It can't
be used for grazing, but is nice and flat and only about half a mile from the
river. Just keep the flow steady or bring in more from the ocean. Does that
sound good?"

"That... Does. How much? If it looks like it will work
I mean?"

"Hmmm... She looked at Julie, and her eyes twinkled a
bit, as if she were going to play games with him. "Let's call it... Fifty
gold? That's the
annual
land rent of course. A real bargain, considering
we don't have the concept of land ownership here and you could just put up
structures and no one would mind." She grinned then, her joke plain at
least.

He smiled at her and wrinkled his nose.

"Twenty-five gold, annual payment, but I'll make
certain there are at least twenty-five gold or trade equivalent in goods worth
of jobs for people in the area."

Normally the woman would have just let him have it he knew,
but he'd started negotiating, which wasn't a mistake. People from Noram would
eventually want to do business there and if they started out getting things for
free, the nobles would march all over the people there. Economically at least.

"Thirty gold for the land, twenty-five in jobs, or the
trade equivalent of gold, and I want one of your new ships. You made this one,
didn't you? Can we copy it?" The last was a simple request, and really,
Lyn could.

He didn't think he could stop her for one thing, and she had
the personal ability.

Tim shook his head.

"You can
have
one, but you need to rebuild it
and make them your own. Improve on the idea in some fashion. This is a school
after all. Not doing that would just be lazy, and should get people low marks."
He was half kidding, since they didn't have marks there, but one of the mages
bowed to him, clearly understanding what he'd been saying. It was a young man,
who looked to be in his early twenties or so, and had a stupid wispy mustache,
that was, he realized after a moment, a copy of Dorgal's. Hopefully they
weren't starting a trend.

"The Great Brother speaks truly. Wise one." There
was another bow, and Lyn sighed.

"You do. When did you start growing up?"

Timon smirked, and shook his head.

"It was either when Countess Alan was torturing me, along
with the Larval Assassin, or earlier today when Remy Seventeen declared me a
dead man. Take your pick."

Lyn made a face, then looked at the others, stopping to
stare at Kolb, for some reason.

"Well, that's not a gentle thing, is it? Are you
certain?"

The weapons master shook his head.

"Not personally, but it has the right sound to it. We
should set things up here, if you don't mind. Get Orange in, if you can put up
with her, and possibly Green. Tim's already got a plan, but you don't need to
know about it yet." He put out his right hand gently, but half the crowd
reacted, as if he were going to physically pound their Great Mother.