The Builder (The Young Ancients) (32 page)

Rolph was unusually cuddly, so he had to keep throwing the other boy's arms and legs off of him as he slept, but at least the amulet he wore kept things from getting too warm, or later when all the covers got stolen in the middle of the night, too cold.

The morning light came through the curtained window waking him up slowly, over the course of minutes, rather than all at once. That was fine; he needed to get up before everyone else to work anyway, so that he could make breakfast in a few hours for the others. They were going to leave in the afternoon, late though, since they could be back in the Capital pretty quickly.

If nothing else the flying devices were good for vacations. He probably wouldn't have gotten to go back home even, with only a month for him to travel, and Two Bends was only five hundred miles from the school. It had taken half a month nearly to get to school by wagon, so he only went home on the long breaks so far, spending a month home and traveling for a month. Now he could make the same trip in a few hours.

While he'd slept Rolph had wrapped an arm over his shoulder, and pressed up against him from behind. Looking away at the wall he raised his eyebrows, or at least tried to. Laughing he pushed the arm off and slipped out of bed. Something he'd learned from growing up in his house, when you shared a bed with other people, you couldn't get overly sensitive about personal space issues. People did strange things in their sleep and really, they couldn't help it. They weren't even aware of what they were doing.

It wasn't until he was half dressed that he noticed it wasn't Rolph in the bed at all, but someone with long brown curly hair. Who snored softly. He blinked. Rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. She must have gotten confused and found the wrong bed. Well, that happened sometimes. More than once his own sisters had ended up sleeping in a pile of their brothers when they were little and they hadn't even been drunk. No harm done. It wasn't like he'd touched her or anything. Except to push her off.

Of course if her parents found out they'd probably insist that he and Trice get married, or at least that Tor be beaten publicly. He chuckled to himself then sobered, remembering they were royals. From what he'd been told the day before, they might not care if he had slept with their daughter. Even having sex, not just sleeping like they had.

Either that or they'd call for his death. It was still a gray area for him, really. Did their strange rules apply to him or was it just something they thought he needed to know about for the future, since he was in the Capital and all? Near the Prince and the girls, who those things did apply to?

He took an unmarked copper plate from his trunk and worked his way outside, trying to be silent. He'd planned to do the work in the bedroom, but the sand would be comfortable enough for him, so Tor didn't bother with a blanket, just sitting down on the beach, well away from the water line.

The work was easy, compared to the day before, but when he opened his eyes the water had moved. The tide, he remembered having been told about the phenomenon. How the ocean, vast as it was, shifted around twice a day. Right. So the field would need to stretch far enough out into the ocean so that it never ran dry. How far out did it need to go, he wondered? An extra five miles should do, he guessed. It really didn't seem to have moved too much today, if this was normal that should be fine. If not... well, he'd make it ten just to be certain.

That was just extra work and good placement of the final field, which he could trust to someone else, probably. If not he could fly in and do it himself, he guessed. No big thing. He had time for now and after break, well, by then someone else would have taken over or, if no one else cared to, he could fly down to check on things every week or two on his off days. For now he had to walk nearly to the water to try the field out. A simple half loop of salt water since it didn't need purification to test this; it was just a flow test after all. The line formed easily coming out of the water about five feet above the shore line, just hanging in the air like it was supposed to and looping around to spray back in the ocean about two hundred feet further down. Holding his breath he tapped the plate, causing the whole thing to stop, but only after emptying everything at the far end first.

He checked it a few times just to make sure it worked right, but it did, thankfully. He headed back to the house with a grin. Now he could get cleaned up and make breakfast.

Yay.

This was real progress, now all he had to do was manage things well enough to not die while trying to make the super-massive field and this might even work.

He'd planned on corn bread, but found sugar and a large jar of honey as well as soft wheat flour and rising agent. He collected a little salt water to use instead of granules, since there was an awful lot of it outside, right there in that giant puddle called the ocean, and made sweet fried corn cakes instead as a special treat. A bit of jam on each and they'd have half of a meal.

The rest would be pan fried potted meat, of course. He was a Baker, after all, not Tor Cook. Luckily he had a bit of skill there too, because in a family the size of his, everyone had to pitch in where needed. He could chop down trees, build a house or barn, tend chickens and change a baby's nappie at need. True, half of what he knew how to do was “woman's work” but it was, oddly enough, proving useful anyway.

On this trip he'd had to cook twice, but hadn't cut down a single tree yet at all for instance, or had to hunt wild animals for food either.

He just had the corn cakes coming out of the pot of oil when everyone started emerging from the bedrooms. Perfect timing. They were best warm.

Rolph needed to shave still, so did Tor come to that, but Sara emerged looking fresh and lovely. Tor kind of thought she'd gone to the bathing room to clean up already. He'd heard something, but didn't check closely, in case it was something he wasn't supposed to notice. Girls had rules about that kind of thing and he didn't really know them all. Even his own sisters were like that. Better to be careful with these highborn ladies.

Patricia came out looking tousled and disheveled, her eyes half closed still, stumbling a little bit, like the floor still moved under her feet or the room spun. Tor noticed that she looked cute in a grumpy way, sort of like a sleepy child. She shook her head, and walked to the table, plunking down in a fairly unladylike fashion.

“Morning.” She yawned making Tor and Sara both yawn as well. He laughed about it and smiled at Trice, glad for about the six hundredth time that he didn't drink. She looked like she felt awful. How people could wake up the next day and think they'd had fun, feeling like that, Tor didn't know. Did they rationalize it into being different than reality or something?

The blond girl wore a very nice, pale pink shift of shiny material, that didn't hug her body, but kept bumping against what was under it, showing some interesting things in outline. Tor tried to ignore the effect, since it wouldn't be proper to stare at her when she sat in a chair on the far side of the table. He figured that she'd either cling to Rolph or make fun of Trice, since the girl had shared a room with him, which probably really was actually kind of funny from everyone else's perspective, but instead she very studiously tried to avoid his gaze for some reason.

Was she feeling ashamed?

The night before she'd seemed fine with the idea of going off with Rolph and, after all, from what he'd gathered it wasn't the first time, or against their societal rules or anything, so probably not buyer's remorse or anything silly like that. Rolph didn't seem to be having a problem at least.

The red haired giant sat on the opposite side of the table from Sara, smiling and seeming... normal for him. Nice and friendly. He accepted a pile of sweet corn cakes and some fried ham and put strawberry preserves on when Tor instructed him to. Rolph waited for everyone else to get theirs and then hesitated to eat, waiting for some reason.

So did everyone else. Right, they'd never had these before, most likely. Good, but simple country type food that it was. Tor took a big bite and smiled. They were good. A childhood favorite of his that they didn't normally get at home. Breakfast was normally a pot of oats and some day-old bread. This kind of sweet food they got a few times a year, normally around holidays. But hey, it was vacation, the nicest one that he'd ever been on in his life, so it seemed appropriate.

Trice took a bite next, chewing carefully and swallowing as if it were dangerous or too hot for her still.

“This is really good! I mean, you could serve this to Uncle Richard and he'd probably request it again. Really I can't believe I've never had this before. Sweet corn cakes?”

Giving him a strange look, Rolph went next as if corn cakes would be some kind of dangerous adventure. He took a bite seriously and looked like he had to choke it down. The smile that followed seemed a little forced. Didn't he like them? Trice seemed to be eating with vigor after the first bite. Sweetened fried batter. Who didn't like that? Maybe it was too rich for him, but... Half the food served at the palace had been as rich, or more so. They used cream in more ways than Tor had thought could exist, including as part of sauces for meat, of all things. It would probably even taste good on this, a thickened and sweetened cream. He didn't know how that was done. If he could find that cook again, the one that gave him food that one time, he'd have to ask.

Sara looked terrified when she took her first bite, almost literally shaking in fear. What the hell? Had he done such a horrible job with dinner that his cooking scared her now? He reviewed everything and then it clicked in place.

“Hey!” He said, feeling put out, “why are you all doing your “see if he poisoned my food” thing with me? No one did it last night and we're all still alive. I'm not that bad a cook. Am I? I thought it was fine...” Tor stared at Rolph first, but the man just looked down and took another bite.

“This really is quite good. I have to agree with Trice there.” The Prince said, giving all his attention to his food.

Sitting next to him Trice chuckled and nodded, then turned to him.

“Oohhh! I get it... you don't get it... Of course, because in your world, we're all being morons. OK. Let's see here... So, Rolph and Sara, you know, in the room last night? Obviously they weren't just there to avoid our snoring, right? Even though that would probably be fair. But, you see... Someone whom I won't name,” she pointed behind her hand at Sara, a mock gesture since the girl could have easily seen it if she was looking up, even though she wasn't at the moment.

“Is supposed to be making arrangements to get married to a certain someone else, and now she's afraid that her spending the night with Rolph might ruin that. Still, Tor won't poison us, that's silly. He probably doesn't even know what kinds of things would be poisonous anyway. A magical trap or maybe a super-weapon, sure, but poison? Now me, I know how, and so do you, Sara, but these guys? No chance.” Her look included Rolph, who nodded, a little slowly at first, but faster after a few moments' thought.

Ah. So Sara was feeling guilty, because she was supposed to be marriage minded right now, not having casual flings with guys she could never marry at all. Still, Tor didn't know how that translated to her thinking he'd poison her. Trice was right there, in that he really didn't have a clue how that would be done, even if he wanted to, which he didn't. Why would he?

Tor didn't ask. These people...

They were his friends, sure, but sometimes they just did weird things that didn't make sense at all.

Looking up finally Rolph mentioned that they'd heard him go out early, at first light. It didn't sound like a leading question at all, but he had a suspicion that the Prince was fishing for information. Was he expecting a pit trap in the front yard? At least that was something he could have actually done, having hunted boar that way a few times with his brothers and dad. Probably not in the soft sand out front though. The sides would keep collapsing. Now if he could shore that up somehow, with timber or stone...

Tor told them all about the new field he worked on, designed to shut down in stages so that it wouldn't flood the world underneath it, as Sara had demonstrated the day before.

“It's kind of cool looking really, I'll show you all later if you want?” Tor smiled, feeling happy enough about the work, even if everyone else was being moody.

The girl looked half in tears as she ate, still not looking up. She finished the food on her plate at least, so hopefully she liked it. Then she excused herself and went outside, rushing as if something was wrong. Trice chuckled and told them that she'd take care of it, while they cleaned up. Was this all a plot to get out of clean-up then?