The Dark Half of the Sun (The Young Ancients: Timon) (6 page)

At least this time, when it served them. They probably wouldn't like it later, when someone hired him for something they wanted to know about, only to find that he didn't have a clue.

Of course they weren't going to pay him for it, since technically speaking Royal Guards didn't make enough for his rates. He was doing it as a favor, based on... Well, honestly that was harder to figure out. He didn't know them and while he might suspect that this was for the King, he hadn't been asked personally, had he? Maybe they really
were
just going to have a midnight romp. It didn't seem likely, but what did he know? Well, it wouldn't hurt to be on good terms with people like them, would it?

Kara seemed to pick up part of what he was thinking from his face then.

"Thank you. It means so much that you're supporting us in our love." She batted her eyelashes and the man put his arm over her shoulders possessively.

"I thank you too. So few understand how hard it can be for those in our position to make solid long term connections."

That decided, Timon went inside and managed to convince the head cook that a picnic lunch instead of dinner would be most welcome. Oddly the woman, Glaren, seemed happy enough to oblige when he hinted it was for a secret meeting of two lovers.

"Don't tell. Our secret." That was the rule for such things after all. You didn't give away what others were doing if you didn't have to.

She patted him on the arm, her face still pretty even though she was older than his mother. Not that his mother wasn't good looking. All the women in his family were. Most of the men too. Lately his ma had taken to only looking about nineteen or so, which meant it really wasn't a fair comparison.

She bustled for a few minutes, getting two other cooks to help prepare the two baskets, one being for him, since he just needed food, the other with a large and soft blanket strapped underneath, a red and white one used just for that purpose, and filled with candles as well as a bottle of wine. His little basket started to get one too, but he shook his head.

"Sorry, can't. I'm piloting." It was a rule after all, for his new business. You couldn't let yourself be impaired and fly. You could end up on the wrong side of the world that way. It would be embarrassing.

"Oh? Indeed then, we have some nice apple juice, would that be suitable?" Her voice was questioning, but he nodded. He liked juice alright. It was a child's drink, but that wouldn't stop him. He'd had wine and cider before, several times, but this was about work, not him getting to play at being grown up.

"Sounds good, thank you. Small bottle, if it's all the same." He was just one person and if they were gone too long he'd finish it all, out of boredom.

The rest of the food was basically a modified version of what dinner was going to be for everyone else. On the good side, as soon as the baskets were ready, he was able to put his things in one of the upstairs rooms, the red carpet of the large hallway broken up with gold tables every fifty feet or so. Collette took him up herself, walking ahead of him a few steps the whole way.

"That was a nice thing you did, giving those devices to be sold like that, for those children. Not everyone would have thought of it at all and most that did wouldn't have sacrificed anything to make it happen. Alyssa is a... I think she doesn't really feel like she's married yet. There were some hard things in her past. It really isn't an excuse, but she wasn't trying to force you to do that."

Timon blinked and tried to think through the whole thing again. It had never seemed to him like she was. Why would Collette even say that now? To plant seeds of doubt? To what end? If Ali had wanted him to do that, if she thought he even had the means, she would have simply
asked
, wouldn't she? They were family...

Which was a thing that she probably didn't trust in nearly as much as he did.

Then he got it. Collette didn't understand why Ali had done it either. Not really.
She
would have gladly used Tor's funds for the project and not thought twice about it, even if she wasn't his wife. That Alyssa hadn't didn't make any sense to her.

"My brother isn't here to care for her right now, that means that the rest of us have to. You too. I mean that the rest of the family is here for you as well. Don't forget that. I couldn't name where you'd come in on the list of family members, but I know that you count." It was real enough but the woman looked at him with a look that was both baffled and slightly pleased.

"Oh? Aren't you a little young to be caring for me? Not that it isn't appreciated, but shouldn't it be the other way around?"

"Certainly. Which is why you're setting me up with a room."

It was a deflection, but thankfully it worked, so she just smiled a little at him.

Timon knew he was strange, and that only a few people got parts of why he was like that, but a big portion of it was simply that he felt older than his years. His intellectual ability was pretty high functioning, which meant he understood things faster than a lot of people did. Not that he also didn't have gaps in knowledge. Everyone probably would, since new things were always coming into being, but he could learn and did, really fast, which meant that his body's age didn't really express what his mind was doing at all. It hadn't for years.

He didn't really think that anyone understood that about him, not yet. Even the other Ancients had treated him as a smart child, rather than as a person that merely wasn't that old yet. On the good side they'd done the same thing to everyone under a few hundred years old, so he hadn't been alone in their disregard that way. It had made his mother less than pleased, to say the least.

The woman sighed and smiled, not unhappy it seemed, which was a good thing, as far as it went. Tim couldn't do much for her really, if she was feeling bad. Still, he'd meant what was said. She was, by some method he didn't understand, family. If he could help her, he would. They all would. Even if they were fighting and mad at each other at the moment. It was what you did, after all. The odd thing there was that she didn't seem to understand that it should apply to him just as much as the other way around. Of course he was just as responsible for her that was the only way such things worked. It was most likely the age thing again.

"You're a lot like Tor, you know that?" She opened the door to his room, after touching it with a hand for a second, making his name appear on the outside of it in fine, but large, handwriting. "That's the kind of thing he'd do, giving away his entire fortune to those in need when he needed it for something else. I admire it, but it also makes life harder if you aren't careful." There was a message in the words, which he picked up on as she walked in, waving for him to follow.

"I'm
not
my brother." His feet scuffed slightly on the deep brown carpet under then as he followed her. She was still in the black outfit from earlier, which showed that she had a nice figure. He was too young to have relations, it was true, but not so much so he couldn't tell that she was very well put together. Blushing he looked away, knowing that this was his brother's...

Something or other.

To cover he kept talking, as Collette spun, her face slightly shocked at what he'd said.

"I was six when he left home. I remember him, but he's changed a lot over the years. He was always nice and kind, but..." How did he explain it to her? It almost sounded like a story to him and he was part of it. "I guess it's the whole Ancient thing. He was built to be Green's replacement. A caretaker for Noram. I'm just another of my mother's children. I got the trait that will make me live for a very long time and a few other things that are nice enough, some extra intelligence and some physical things that are useful." Like the fact that he couldn't get sick. Brown had told him about that one evening at the summit a few months back.

There would be no illness, he was most likely a lot harder to poison than most people and there would be some improvement in strength or speed, though it would be hard to tell which for a while, until he matured. Out of all of them it was Brown, his "Uncle Denno" that had told him the most. Green might be his grandfather, but the man hadn't been that interested in visiting with him. He hadn't been rude, but was distant and really focused on other things. It wasn't a huge problem for him, thankfully. Tim didn't really care about the man much at all either. Yes, they were family and he'd help if it was asked of him, or needed, but other than that it wasn't worth worrying about.

It wasn't lost on Tim that Tor and Tiera both had been offered positions at the Lairdgren school, but none of the others had been at all. Maybe it would have happened for him, when he was a little older, so he could let that part go, but what about Terlee or Todd? They were both smart. Terlee was a good percentage of the way to being as smart as anyone in the world, even if she wasn't going to live forever. Not having her to the Counts school was a waste.

No it had only been offered to the "special" ones. The favorites.

That wasn't how you treated your family. It wouldn't even have cost the man much, since he owned the place. That was part of the reason he was insisting on going to Printer. There were other institutions of course, but it was about as far from the man's control and influence as he could get and still be inside Noram.

He kept speaking, his voice dry and with most of the emotion suppressed.

"I'm different I think. Not special, just... I guess I'm whatever I can make myself into, like almost everyone else. It isn't a bad thing, but from the little I know about Tor, he didn't get a lot of choice in the matter, until recently."

She nodded, knowing that he was talking about the thing on the ship, which was something the woman shouldn't have known about at all. No one in the world that was there for it should have told her. Only one of them really had the chance. Ali. She'd agreed that it would be best to keep it secret however and that part didn't feel right.

Unless of course Green told the King, and he'd mentioned it to her for some reason? He could only think of two possible circumstances for that, and while they could be lovers, that seemed a little farfetched.

After a few seconds of thought, watching her walk around the room, lingering and fluffing pillows that were always perfectly plump, being magical in nature, Timon sighed.

"So you're a spy for the King. Anyone else? You get what I mean about family, and a lot of the nobles kind of pick and choose that way... So is it a family thing? Are you working with Sara too?" It came out in a rush, sounding younger than he would have liked, as if it was just silly speculation. It all was after all, until she stiffened and spun on him again, her eyes wide.

"What do you mean?" The words were right, the body language all wrong. It practically screamed that he was right and that she was lying.

"What I said Collette. It isn't a debate and I'm not wrong. What I'm asking is, what conflicting interests do you have? You're clearly working for more than one person and have a lot of other things going on in your life. So tell me, are you a danger to my family?" Waiting, he held his breath. He had on a shield and it was a good one, but she could just scream and claim he attacked her, or even tried to molest her in some way, which would have him kicked out fast enough.

She didn't do it. There was a long, slow breath, making her breasts heave a bit, which he took as being on purpose, even though he locked on to her eyes with his own and didn't let himself be distracted, as tempting as it was. What she said next surprised him a lot, since it was almost certainly just the truth.

"I do work for the King. Also for my family, and myself. I sell information at times, or trade it, to help further my position. A lot of people do that. About a third of the lower nobles. It's part of how my family has stayed afloat for a long time. Favors and bribes, that kind of thing. It's why I originally tried to pick up your brother. He really did win me over, which surprised me. I went to school to learn how to resist things like that. Falling in love... Pretty poor spycraft don't you think?"

She didn't look away from him, which meant she noticed when he started nodding, a few seconds later. Her eyes widened just a little as he did.

"Alright. I'll be having a talk with the King about all this. If he says you're not a threat we'll be fine. I don't want to doubt you, but I couldn't help but notice you were flirting with
me
earlier too. Also that you didn't mean it. I... Don't know what you meant by that in particular."

She blinked and then... Blushed. It looked real enough and wasn't that dark, but that could be faked too, by forcing blood into the face, tightening the stomach muscles and sucking them in at the same time. The kids in the village practiced it during the winter since it also helped to make your face warmer.

"Oh, you noticed that? I... Well, you are cute..."

"And too young for you. Too young even if you were going to be creative as to how you counted age." Some parts of the Kingdom counted you as a year old when you turned three months. It was that plus the pregnancy. It meant they could get rid of extra mouths earlier, marrying them off at just over thirteen. "So it wasn't that, I figured that you were trying to see if I knew something, but I couldn't figure out what. I have more information now."

Not answering she smiled a little and bowed. This one was a little ironic. The facial expression gave it away.

"You do? What information do you think you have then? Impress me with your data." Her tone was playful, but he noticed that it was creeping up on twilight as they spoke, early yet, but if the Royal Guards wanted him to take them in a Fast Carriage that meant that it was something very covert, that the King's secret elite forces weren't in on. It had been so obvious to him that that's what the students from Lairdgren that hung around with Tor were that he hadn't known it
was
a secret at all to begin with.