Slave Line (The Young Ancients) (34 page)

"Let someone else have a turn."

He smiled, a grim thing that he didn't feel, but this was way deeper than just a prank or something like that, and a lot of it was confusing, which probably meant they were all being led around by someone that had taken a lot of time to plot it all out.

Ali ran to him, looking at his arm and face, eyes horrified.

"Tor! Here..." She had a healing amulet ready to go and tired to touch him with it, getting him to float away from her. It left her eyes looking hurt, like it was a rejection of her aid, or worse, her. Tor understood now why she hadn't said anything earlier, it made a lot of sense. He'd been angry and violent, which caused her to lock down her own expression, even if he wasn't mad at her. Even Trice had probably been doing something like that, since they'd had some issues with her not treating him as a real person in the past. That wasn't Ali's intent at all. Tor got that now. Or rather the Ancient in his head did. Cordes, for all he'd gone crazy at the end seemed to be a well balanced and nice person over all.

One good enough to try and keep his Rhetistic programing from effecting Tor too much.

He shook his head and tried to look sympathetic toward his wife, speaking in a soft tone.

"I can't use that for healing yet love. Remember the damage to my pattern? I'll have to heal up from this the old fashioned way I think."

"Oh..." She went blank again but put the amulet away. "What do we do then?"

He didn't know, his medical knowledge was pretty scant. The bleeding nose had stopped at least. His mother snorted from behind him, in the door way.

"Set the arm girl, and fix the broken nose. Stupid boy has gotten himself hurt. No doubt fighting when it wasn't needed. It's what men do for fun. That and exploit nature." She looked young... and wasn't his mother at all.

She was taller for one thing, and looked younger. That plus the fact that his actual mother was standing across the room was a good sign that it was his grandmother, Lara Gray.

"Shut it granny. You don't have all the information yet, so you need to collect that before running your mouth. We were attacked. Austran craft firing missiles. The Fast Carriage I was in got hit by three of them. This place weathered the attack well enough it seems. It's basically a shield anyway. Right now we need you to go over to Orange there for questioning, since you and Black are the most likely suspects, having not been here for the attack itself." He looked at his wife and smiled.

"Ali dear? This is my grandmother, Lara Gray, would you be so good as to provide Orange with a Truth amulet and help her use it for the questioning? I probably shouldn't recommend beatings for family members just yet. Even the annoying ones. Shields on everyone. She's a master of contagions and what not, so we might need to filter those out if she is the responsible party, here for clean-up."

That got action and for some reason his wife suddenly seemed happier. Still frightened, sure, but she didn't seem as stiff. It was the kind of thing he'd have missed before, he thought, thinking she was mad at him or hated him now.

There was an apology needed after all. Not to her, because he hadn't wronged her. Or his mother. She'd made her own pie and could taste it first.

But he hadn't apologized to Denno yet, even though the man had been cleared of wronging him with his own Truth amulet. At least for the reason Tor had beaten him. It might not work on the man, but Tor kind of thought it probably would. He hadn't been ready for a real one to be used after all. There was still the question of how Kara the Royal guard had gotten to see the scene of Brown and him, but Tor thought he knew and didn't want to ask in public. It was likely that Brown had mentioned what Tor had done to the King and Queen and actually given them proof somehow from Austra, since the Ancient wouldn't have believed Tor could pull it off at the time. Then one of them had let some of the guard see it, probably not thinking it was anything other than heroic on Tor's part. Or possibly just interesting being different than the magic they were used too. It didn't really matter though. The people he didn't want to know about it, his own family, did. The rest was just embarrassing, but not something for him to get worked up over.

Still, he'd wronged the man without cause. Nearly killing him for it in fact. You didn't get a lot closer to that than hanging a man from a magical carriage for all to see while falsely accusing him. More, he was the leader of a foreign land. It was a huge problem and went beyond mere family issues.

Tor used his own healing amulet, one of the many sigils on what he considered his second set, handing it off as soon as Brown woke up and pointing to show which brightly colored glowing sign to hit. The green one that looked like the outline of a man.

Then he laid on the floor on his stomach, gasping as his broken arm tried to take his weight briefly, nearly passing out from the pain. He panted for a second while everyone looked at him funny. Well, most of the Ancients did. The people with him, Trice, and even his mother got it. It was the noble tradition when apologizing for something when you knew that you were fully and truly wrong. The kind of thing where you knew you were guilty, on a basic level, of a thing no one could, or possibly should, truly forgive.

"I cannot beg forgiveness for the wrong I've done you brother. I cannot make true reparations, but offer you all I own, past what is needed for upkeep of my Lady wife, including my life if it is required. All lands, titles and concerns are yours. I know this isn't enough, but please be satisfied with retribution against myself. I acted for no other and no one else deserves punishment for what I did. I shall accept your judgment in this even to mortality." He stopped talking, not knowing what Denno would do or really caring. It probably wouldn't be death, but the man could order him into exile with a clear conscience, or to slave away for the rest of his life on projects for himself and Austra. If he was actually guilty of trying to kill them he might even order him to try and kill all the others.

Tor wouldn't do that though. There was honor involved, but it had to have limits or it just became an excuse to be petty and cruel to others. If he sent him away though, or into slavery or torture, Tor would just have to go. He waited while the Austran Ancient looked baffled, then worried.

There was a gasp behind Tor, that sounded like Ali, and a rustling of fabric as someone knelt beside him, then laid on the floor. At first he figured it to be his wife, but looked over to the right, which hurt like heck, to find it was his mother. Her cheek was on the floor as well and somehow Laurie managed to sound actually contrite when she spoke.

"The wrong done you was due to my... error. I cannot allow my child to take responsibility for it alone."

Tor noticed she didn't offer anything up, but then Denno should be pretty happy with having everything Tor had. It might bankrupt Noram if he packed it all off to Austra though. Hopefully Burks could talk the man into spending some of it in Noram? Maybe buy goods with it or something.

Instead the man laid on the floor too.

"It is I who should apologize Tor. In my absent mindedness I allowed a thing to be seen by many in my land, without taking time to consider that it might be harmful to you. It is the curse of being old. After enough time things such as embarrassment and even anger lose their sting. You forget that others feel things more acutely than you do yourself. I promise that I'll do what I can to make sure the device you used to save me is removed from public view and that people understand the harm it does you. I... cannot take it away from all that own it. That isn't possible at this point, but I promise I'll do everything I can."

Then he stood.

"Notice I didn't absolve you though Laurie? There won't be beatings or taking of all your worldly goods, but we
will
be having a talk about this later. With Lara and Burks. I know I expect more from my own niece and I imagine they will have similar feelings about their child." He moved to help Tor stand up, but he activated his Not-flyer instead. It was still agony getting to and upright position, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been.

No passing out for instance.

Orange let Ali help her do the questioning, which had Denno cleared of any obvious wrong doing pretty quickly, though even he had to admit that the technology seemed Austran in nature and that he might have been influenced by some means he didn't understand yet. Things got a lot more interesting when they started with Gray though, the woman telling a lie right off the bat.

"I know nothing about any of this." It was a broad statement, but an untruth. She knew something at least, or thought she might. It took a while to get it out of her, since she was being cagy about it all.

Orange nearly slapped her after about half an hour of it, and stopped only because Alyssa put her hand out and moved in front of the woman, cringing as she did. The blow stopped in the air, a scant hair above the girls shield, not engaging it at all.

"Wait. I think I know what's going on here. May I try asking some questions? I don't know if it will fix it all, but I've seen this kind of thing before." She held her ground bravely enough then, as Orange stepped back, a smile on her face.

"Can't do worse that I have. Do it. Make her talk."

Ali did.

"Gray... I need you to be very specific in your answers now. Do you know who
exactly
attacked us today for certain?"

"No. I said that earlier." She sounded peeved, but then she normally did.

The field didn't go black though and Ali smiled.

"The questions left things too vague, so you didn't actually say that at all. Do you think you
might
know whose may be behind this attack today?"

The woman froze, her familiar looking face going so still she didn't look alive for a moment, even her loose gray robe stopped moving.

"I... Have a guess. It may not be correct." It was true, at least to the best of her knowledge, which was made clear by the nice strong cream and yellow glow.

Ali nodded, as if trying to encourage her to go on, but she didn't. Finally Burks raised his head and walked over, looking a little annoyed.

"Who then Lara? No need to keep us all in the dark. This is obviously something fairly convoluted."

"Fine... It's... I think it might be... Cordes. I know that seems unlikely, but hear me out..." She stopped talking, and found that no one was trying to stop her.

Tor nodded and so did all the Blues.

"That makes sense. Whose head is he in?"

Lara went wide eyed and tried to pace, which got Orange to take her arm and growl at her as if she might be getting ready to flee. There was no word involved in the action, but it worked to get the Ancient woman that looked like a girl to hold still. When she spoke her voice shook softly, something that Tor wouldn't have thought she could manage for real. It was nearly fear based, as far as he could tell.

"Heads, plural. It... About a thousand years ago... no, wait, I'll start at the beginning. Four hundred years after it happened and society failed all over the globe, the cataclysm, Cordes came to me in Afrak and gave me a nano hive with an imprint of his mind in it. He said he was afraid he was dying, if slowly, and wanted to make sure that Noram was provided for in the future. This was before Green stepped in to guard the place, so it was a real enough fear. He just asked that I see to placing it in a proper host if the need ever arose.

So... after he was killed I left it for some time, not finding anyone worthy of it, besides, Green was in charge of Noram and while it changed he seemed to do a good enough job aver all. A little too violent and not controlled enough, but decent. But then he came to me about a thousand years ago and asked if we should be thinking about protecting the future. After all, we've lost many in the last three thousand years and don't breed fast enough to replenish our numbers. Not even close. So we started a program to try and make copies of ourselves that would work within the treaty." She looked around at everyone, and got a nod from Burks. He chimed in, his voice calm.

"Yes, we held to the letter and I believe spirit of it. Laurie and Tor aren't clones, they're guided in development but natural offspring. I created a field to try and hold the pattern as closely as possible, which got Laurie to be born."

Gray nodded.

"Only she wasn't me. She was genetically, but she lacked my Rhetistics. Anyway, that's later in the story. I knew that we might fail when we started, so I set the nano colony loose... in Denno's Larvals. They used a similar system to pass information already, so for generations they've been carrying the Cordes consciousness within them. It shouldn't have woken up unless they were placed under vast stress, but they are used for assassinations and other dark works. If they woke up at any point, even in one of the clones, well, he'd be there with all of them. I kind of suspected that he would have come forward though, if that happened. Cordes was a fine man before he went insane. Why wouldn't he make himself known?"

It made some sense. The Larval weren't immortal, but they shared all their conscious information and it built up over time, carrying from one generation of the things to the next. Tor grimaced as the Cordes in his brain started screaming. He seemed to think that was a horrible idea. So did the rest of the Ancients, except Gray.

Tor looked at them and sighed.