A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Oliver laughed. "They're boxes, Harmon, we're not exactly digging latrine pits. You needn't be so put off."

The smith eventually acquiesced, and pointed them to a downstairs room that was packed full of boxes, all the way from floor to ceiling. A man couldn't even walk in through the doorway without removing a row of boxes first.

"I'd be careful, Sers," Harmon said. "They're heavier than they look in place. Some of them have got my tools in them, some of them have got some of the storefront pieces in them that I'm still hoping to sell…"

"We'll see to it," Oliver said. "You go and get yourself ready."

Harmon dipped his head, and hurried off. He seemed to be practically sprinting so he could get back and help them with the task.

Oliver grabbed up the first of the boxes, straight from the top of the pile, expecting it to be a lighter one, given the height it was stacked at – but it was just as heavy as Harmon had warned. If not for his Fourth Boundary strength, it might have begun to present a challenge. What Oliver worried for, though, was the carriage, and whether they would be able to fit it all on.

Piece by piece, they began to move. Oliver looked over his shoulder, and saw Lady Blackthorn lugging a box just like he and Verdant were. Her face betrayed no emotion, but he reasoned that it ought to have been heavy for her, even being in the Second Boundary as he was. Her brute physical might had never been her strongest attribute, after all. She'd had to make up for it in other ways.

"You do not need to keep an eye on me," Blackthorn said, as they deposited the first load in the carriage. "I can quite well manage."

"Hm? I suppose you can. But it's not only you I'm keeping an eye on. These streets are busy, and these crowds are full of people. Now I suppose I understand why Greeves was uncertain his men could see them adequately defended," Oliver said. Any man could blend in when there was such a thick crowd for him to hide against.

The eyes weren't enough to ascertain any potential threats. He borrowed the vision of Ingolsol to augment them.

"…What have you been doing in my absence, Ser Patrick, that Ernest has suddenly become such a perilous place?" Lady Blackthorn said.

"I wonder," Oliver grinned.

"This is why you cannot be left alone," Lasha sighed, hurrying ahead of him, as if he were some invalid that could not be trusted. He wondered why it was that her look of disappointment seemed so much like a smile when viewed from the side – but of course, the likelihood of it being what he hoped it might be was infinitely small.

The three of them carried the heavy boxes without complaint. Verdant, in particular, was like a mule. He moved at double the pace that Oliver and Lasha had managed. Oliver would have said that he had an excuse – in that he was keeping an eye to the street – but he thought that Verdant was moving particularly rapidly, almost as if he was sprinting across the floorboards with the boxes.

"Errr, you'll want to get that between two people, Lord Idris," Harmon said once he'd returned, wearing a sturdy set of clothes meant for travelling, with shin-high boots to go along with them. Their removal of their boxes had seen a particularly large one revealed. It wasn't made of wood, like the other chests and boxes had been, but solid steel, as big as a coffin.

The thick lock it had on it made it seem a valuable storage spot.

However, for all the warning he gave, Verdant did not appear to be convinced. He gave the smith an appraising look, and then the box, and with a singe hand, he tested its weight, and gave himself a nod. Before the smith could think to stop him, he'd raised it up off the floor, and was hugging it to his chest in a bear hug.

"Watch the top of the doorway," Oliver said, unable to hide the grin that he wore in seeing the way Harmon gawked. Verdant ducked ever so slightly to pass under it – not being able to see its height himself, with his luggage – and gave a muffled thanks to his Lord.

"I thought the Idris men were meant to be more a… bookish House, no?" Harmon said, completely bewildered.

"I suppose he's like an oxen with an interest in reading," Oliver said. "You needn't worry, Harmon, we'll make short work of these boxes. Another fifteen minutes, and it'll all be done."

"Thank you, Ser," Harmon said. "Truly. I've been worried about this. About all sorts of parts of it. Thought I was being daring, but my courage quickly ran out. I didn't think it had a chance of going smoothly… But now I reckon it might.

My wife must have been crazy to think it'd only take us fifteen minutes to get ready, though – she was lucky Lord Idris had the grace to correct her, before she went too far. You and your men look out for your lessers, eh?"

"You're an important piece, Harmon," Oliver told him, plucking up his next box. "I don't think any man with wisdom would call you a lesser. There wouldn't be any tension if we were competing with the Guild for a lesser, would there?"

With every trip that Oliver took to the carriage, he spent an increasing amount of time looking through the crowd, filtering them as if they were a bucket of sand, trying to find the sole shard of glass intent on stabbing them. It was a difficult problem, even with Ingolsol's vision to lend him aid. It was hard to locate an individual with intention amongst them all.

He wasn't even sure if there was anyone with such intents there.

His attempts at locating them with his eyes, and with vision, quickly grew to be more futile than anything else. It was the hairs on the back of his neck that told him to keep looking. A certain feeling of unrest, of imbalance, of the floor that he was standing on not being quite right.

It was as if he was looking at the picture of a peaceful scene, rather than the peaceful scene itself – but that could quite well have been its paranoia.