The Builder (The Young Ancients) (16 page)

A slow cord over the neck would take him out right now or a pillow over his head while he slept. She might be big and strong enough to do that to him.

So fix it. The thought practically rang in his mind for a few moments.

Right. Don't be a crybaby, just get ready and do what could be done. It was all he really had after all.

Torrence knew that he couldn't afford to wait for her to come after him. He had to find out how she'd attack, and defend against it first, because she'd be too good to let have the upper hand. Most of the teachers had left, so he asked the people remaining how they thought Wensa would come for him next. Rolph looked angry and started to reassure him, but Kolb put out his right hand in a gesture meant to get him not to speak.

“Right now? Well, she had to have noticed the suffocation problem when she used fire. That has to be addressed. Also, the slow field passage is a gap you can't afford, but I'm betting you already saw that. If you don't fix that one, all the combat instructors will use it against you. Mental forces would be next after that I'd think. We didn't test them, but off the battlefield they aren't often used as weapons. She'd have to import something, but that could happen, she has the resources, so I wouldn't leave it long.” He tapped his fingers on his chin.

“Some of the Austran weapons use incredibly tiny machines, and illnesses, so things to defeat that would also be good. I don't know if she can get those, but I don't know she can't either. Other than that...” He spread his hands as if to say he didn't know.

Count Thomson stepped towards him with a nod. “Poisons. Normally a Royal Guard wouldn't bother, but it's not totally unheard of. Something to watch for if she can't get at you any other way. If I can think of it inside ten seconds, she can do it in three.”

The idea made Tor want to faint. He had to eat in the dining hall. He couldn't afford anything else. He didn't see the food being prepared at all; it just came out through a window at him three times a day. How could he protect himself there? As an instructor she could just walk in and add poison to his food without anyone even trying to stop her or crying foul. Then as a Royal Guard she could walk away chuckling about how stupid he was. Totally unpunished for killing him.

From the back of the group a cluster of combat giants pushed Petra forward suddenly and she spoke, her voice surprisingly soft and kind sounding.

“What about electrical weapons? Those haven't been tested for yet... Or light based ones?”

That sounded highly likely. All of it did. Especially since he hadn't even known that half those things existed at all.

“Of course...” The Count looked at him seriously his eyes dark for a moment. Then suddenly he smiled. “I do know a certain Count that could simply order her not to kill you. She can't countermand that unless the King orders it done you know. That should at least buy you a little time. As long as you don't make the King mad at you, and he's a decently level-headed person.” The blond giant man winked at him knowingly.

“In fact, if you ever meet him, I'm sure the two of you will be fast friends. He tends to like people that actually manage to get things done. So that has you written all over it.”

“Would you speak to her? Just knowing that she didn't plan to kill me in my sleep would be a relief. Or poison my food. I could probably put up with the rest if I could get those...”

Smiling the man nodded and said he'd see what he could arrange directly. It felt like a heavy weight lifted from his shoulders. Of course, just because she wouldn't be trying to kill him, that didn't mean she couldn't just get someone else to do it. He had to make what preparations he could fast. It was like the Count had said, if he could think of a way around it, so could she. It was her job after all. Only a fool would underestimate her.

Carefully Tor walked back to his room with Rolph and the girls, watching carefully as he did. After a few minutes Trice asked why he was being so paranoid. He blinked. Had she not been paying attention at all?

“Um, let's see, a crazy woman just used three weapons trying to kill me and two of them weren't anything I'd ever seen before. The shield wasn't even supposed to be able to stop anything like that. If I hadn't just guessed that something like that might happen, I'd be dead right now. I know the Count said he'd give an order, but... Really, Royal Guards aren't well known for being sane? She could just decide that her dying was worth it, in order to take me out... Why I don't know, but her thinking I'm a threat doesn't make any sense at all either. Insane doesn't always have a reason that normal can understand, right?”

He glanced at his friends and they all looked a bit worried. After all, he had a point, didn't he? Trice put her arm across his shoulders, or at least tried to. The action from walking kept the shield pushing her arm away from him. She laughed and told him that no matter how pissed Wensa was at him, she wouldn't dare kill him with a Ducherina on his arm. Too great a chance of accidentally getting her instead.

Grudgingly he disabled the field so he wouldn't look stupid. The girl put her arm over his shoulders protectively, as if he were a little kid that needed her to save him. He considered that for a moment, and tilted his head. That was about right, wasn't it? If nothing else he could always pretend she was trying to tell him she liked him. It wasn't true of course, but he could imagine it. Well... if he tried really hard at least.

That night, instead of eating, giving that a pass at least until he had word that Wensa had orders not to poison him, Tor decided to make more copies of things instead. It would take a few days for him to work up to his next project anyway. Rolph and Sara wanted more clothes dryers and the first batch of the food ones for testing. Trice suggested he put out a good bunch of shields for the school, even if he was going to make better ones soon, because that would spread good will. He sent Rolph out to get more copper plates and acid for etching then got to work.

For the next week he spent most of his free time making up field copies, which oddly enough kept his instructors happy, so he didn't even have to do out of class work for any of them. Kolb made him run and practice every day for two hours, but that wasn't new or anything.

On the sixth day a rare spring time freeze happened, catching everyone off guard. It wasn't just chilly, the ground actually froze solid outside, a bitter cold that made it hard to sleep, even under thick blankets, filled the rooms. The fires could be started down on the lowest levels, but by the time his and Rolph's room warmed up, it probably wouldn't be even cold anymore. The school wasn't even going to bother with it, figuring that it would be largely wasted effort.

Could he use a field device for that? It would have to be huge, but...

Tor started drawing up the plans. Halfway through he started laughing. Couldn't he just reverse the process in the summer and cool down a house or room as well? The idea was simple enough, pull heat from the ground, deep down where it was warm, when cold weather came and then do the opposite in hot weather, which should keep everything roughly in balance in the ground over time even. He smiled. It shouldn't even be that hard. That was basically how he'd built the shield to defeat extreme heat after all, so he already kind of knew what to do.

Two days later, still incredibly cold outside, he hit the warming sigil and waited, the room grew toasty, and then after a few hours, almost too warm. He turned it off to see what would happen. The heat left slowly, just like from a fire. Unlike a fire, the whole room was warm, no cold spot by the door particularly or along the back wall away from the fire. Heh. Worked.

Later that night everyone came to his and Rolph's room to hang out, mainly to talk business. Sara jokingly asked him to marry her when he explained the field to them. He laughed, but no one else did. Trice shook her head, arms crossing playfully, then looking directly at her friend.

“Sorry Sara, I saw him first. Anyway, how many of these can you get going by tomorrow?”

The answer varied, based on how much sleep he'd be willing to do without. The answer that satisfied everyone was twenty. Sara acted like even that was nearly impossible, but it wouldn't be that hard, maybe taking three or four hours, tops. The girls waited while he made the first batch, each of them taking one and putting it in their coat pockets when he had them done. Sara pulled the rest of them to take with her and urged him to start the next batch, which she'd be back for in the morning, she promised.

Rolph stayed quiet and mercifully didn't tease him about the girls mocking him earlier about marriage like that, after they left, allowing him to get right back to work. He turned his light off so that the other boy could sleep and finished an hour before midnight. As long as he didn't toss and turn, he could get nearly eight hours sleep before he had to be up in the morning for meditations. Yay. That had worked out at least. It was a lot easier to sleep in a warm room than freezing cold.

The next morning Sara came for the next batch just before he had to go to breakfast, the girl didn't follow him, having promised the heating and cooling plates to some of her friends already. Well, at least they'd all sleep warm that night. He didn't really think about anything but school work for a while after that, except for making incremental shield improvements. He came up with a breathing tube function that would let him go underwater at least a bit. He still got wet, but air went into his mouth and nose as long as he didn't go deeper than three feet. At that depth he couldn't force his lungs to draw the air in for some reason; it felt like the air just wasn't thick enough. Not that he planned on trying that anytime soon, but it was nice to know he could if someone managed to throw him in the pond.

It wasn't until a few weeks later, when Kolb presented him with his next assignment of “insane combat giant” building that things really started to get shaken up. Sara had collected the templates and sent them off to her mother, so his personal copy work had ended for the time being. She gave out a lot of the fields he'd made to people at the school, which didn't bother him at all really. If they could use them, why shouldn't people have them? Tor didn't get the whole pretending they were being sold thing himself, maybe that was just a game rich people played or maybe Sara wasn't as good at selling things as she pretended? It left him more time for Kolb's new project, which was something that he'd never even thought of before.

“Wait... You want me to make it so a man can fly?”

The weapons instructor just nodded as if it wasn't a totally crazy idea. People didn't fly, did they? Could they?

“It can be done; the Austrans do it all the time. In fact their ability to move people by air is pretty much the only thing that lets them really challenge us in direct conflict. They fly over and drop chemical explosives on us from great heights. Our shields and weapons are as good or better on the ground, but as often as not they simply won't close with us for that reason. I won't tell you how to get it done, but if you could have that for me in say... a month?” The man winked at him. It was a happy thing that said... Not a lot more than that. The weapons instructor just wasn't sane.

Tor had suspected it for a long time now, this just proved it.

At first he just shook his head. The idea was ridiculous. Just crazy. Except... well, he'd seen a man fly hadn't he? The Count could do it. So could the Austrans apparently. If they could, then why couldn't he build a device for it?

A field that told the smallest portions of a person which direction to move... Well, that could be done. It was a huge field for that type of thing. Vast, which meant it would have to be strong, massively so, but basically, telling the little things to move is all a cutter did. Organize them all in a single direction, say up, harder than the downward force, and the person or object should float. Then move the field, tilting it in the direction you wanted to go to move around...

Finally Kolb shook him and asked him if he was alright. Tor nodded and walked away, not bothering saying anything. He only had a month after all. In a lot of ways this would be way harder than just shielding from things, especially if he wanted to keep it low in energy use, which was pretty much inherent in the idea. If it took too much personal energy the whole thing just wouldn't work. You'd get a few feet in the air and then freeze to death or die of exhaustion.

First he had to test the basic idea itself.

Back in his room he carefully built a small field into a wooden block that simply told it to go up in the air. Tor felt a sense of excitement when he hit the tiny sigil he'd put on the bottom. It floated up, to the ceiling of course and didn't come back down. It wasn't strong enough to make him rise, so he could hold it on the table while deactivating it. Good, it would have been embarrassing trying to explain to Rolph why a block of wood the size of his foot was stuck to their ceiling.