Rexi and Talon

By Onyx Tao

Jack: Rexi and Talon by Onyx Tao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://onyx-tao.sofurry.com.

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9. Rexi

He'd just gotten to bed; or at least it felt like that, when somebody -- Donal -- was shaking him awake. "Uncle Rexi! Uncle Rexi! You have to wake up! Uncle Rexi!"

"What?" Rexi said groggily. "What's wrong?"

"He -- Master Zackton! -- he wants you! Now! Immediately! He's really angry, Unc, you gotta come right away! He's right outside his room, naked! He's gonna smash a mirror, Unc!"

That caught Rexi's attention. "What? No, fine, just let me grab a robe --" The halfling rolled out of the bed, shoved his feet into sandals, and pulled the robe around him. "Did he say why?"

"No, Unc, but he's really, really mad!"

Rexi sighed. "Then the faster we get there the better, eh?"

Apparently Zackton had gotten a dressing robe on himself; dark blue silk embroidered with snakes and elaborately feathered birds that Rexi didn't recognize. He hadn't smashed any mirrors, but ... that was the mirror from his room, leaning against the wall. Rexi hurried a little more. "Master?"

"Ah, Rexi," said Master Zack, not sounding angry at all. "Excellent, Dodonal, thank you. I'm sorry to rouse you, but something's ... come up. A wizard of my acquaintance has been ... making free with the mirrors in the house. As your highest priority, please detail a crew to go through the house, and make sure every reflective surface is covered or against a wall. This mirror," Zack said, indicating the mirror in the hall, "should be taken to ... hmm, we haven't opened a study, have we?"

"No," said Rexi.

"Is there something like a study off the main hall? Do you know?"

"Uh ... there's the library ..."

"Absolutely not the library. The last thing one wants to dangle in front of a wizard is a library," Zack said.

"I'll find something, Master."

"Yes ..." said Zack thoughtfully. "Well. Find something like a study, near the front hall, and open it. I'll have guests there, probably tomorrow morning. I want the mirror placed in there, and covered, with a sheet or something, not reversed against the wall. Return to your rest, Rexi, as soon as you can." The half orc looked stern. "Delegate. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Master Zack."

The half-orc just shook his head. "Again, I am sorry to disturb your rest, but ... please set this in motion quickly. I dislike being spied upon."

"Yes, Master Zack."

"And -- do remind me -- I need to meet all the servants. So far I think I know Sassie, Dodonal, and you."

Rexi paused, and looked askance at Zack. "Who? Dodonal? Do you mean Donal?"

Zack looked at Donal. "Did I misstate your name?"

"Uh ... yes, Sir," Donal squeaked. "I'm sorry ..."

Zack held up a hand and the little halfling froze. "Then I apologize, Donal."

Donal just nodded, a little stunned. Rexi tried to remember the last time one of the Equelles had actually apologized, much less worried about getting a name correct, and failed.

"I see," said Zack, sounding regretful. "Then I am returning to bed. And perhaps we can get some additonal curtains in my room, and make it truly dark."

"Yes, Master Zackton," Rexi said quickly. "I'll get on that right away."

"No," Zack demurred. "That is not a priority. Please set in motion only what I asked, and then return to your own well-deserved rest. Thank you, Rexi," the half-orc said, and stepped back into his room, and the door closed softly after him.

Rexi thought about what Master Zackton had ordered. "Donal, go find Harald, and have him meet me in the Great Hall -- I'll be there, or in one of the rooms. He's with, uh ... tell the rest of them to keep working. All I want is Harald. Got it?"

"Yes, Uncle."

Rexi stared at the lad for a moment. "What are you waiting for? Go!" Rexi sighed, and headed off to the Great Hall to find a study. Guests, Master Zackton had said. Probably tomorrow morning. That would mean food -- probably breakfast. For how many? Ah, he'd already sent Cialle to the market, so ... he just had to find a room, and get everything set up. He turned, and realized there was no way he'd be able to move the mirror by himself.

Well, he'd have Harald and Donal move it, once he figured out where to move it. Rexi trudged down to the Great Hall, to start looking for somewhere to have Master Zackton's guests. There were a couple of rooms that would do; Rexi chose what had been clearly been a music room. He left some instructions on airing it out, finding matching chairs -- how many "guests' was Master Zackton expecting, anyway? -- he wondered. And should there be a table? Or just the chairs? Rexi snarled in frustration; if he hadn't been so sleep-fogged, he would have asked all those critical questions.

He added to the instructions, specifying that they should pull both sets of furniture out. He could find out tonight, when he got back up -- he'd ask Master Zackton then. There was so much to do ... but Master Zackton had been very clear: do this, no more, and go back to sleep. Which meant Master Zackton would be expecting him to be rested and fresh this evening ... and the only way to do that was to be rested and fresh.

It was hard to get back to sleep, especially with so much happening, but some time later his niece Sassy was shaking him away. "Rexi!"

"Sassy?"

"He's up," she whispered. "And he's with those ..." she made a disapproving frown, "hobgoblins."

"Careful, Sass," Rexi warned her. "They've been easy to please. Let's not go borrowing trouble just yet. What are they doing?"

"He called them "limbering exercises,'" Sassy said, which meant nothing to Rexi. "And he's got that poor Talon there, too, with a goblin working him over."

Rexi's eyes narrowed. That didn't sound right. "I'll go take a look ..."

"No, he doesn't want to see you until breakfast," Sassy said with another disapproving frown. "Which is to be ready when he's done and bathed -- in an hour or so. But he did ask for you to join him there. It's a wretched thing, Rexi, to be serving breakfast at this hour!"

"He sleeps days," Rexi said.

"Decent people sleep at night," sniffed Sassy.

"Sassy," Rexi said, more than a little alarmed, "don't ever repeat that. Ever. He's a little ... different, I'll grant you that. But we're together, still a family, and he's our Master now. He doesn't seem to mind spending on us -- once the house is fixed up, we'll have better quarters than we did before, we're eating just as good as he is -- Master Zackton, even if he is orc, has been damn good to us. We can't be saying things like that, to each other, or anyone else." Rexi made a show of looking around. "Think, girl! What if he heard you?"

Sassy looked a little embarassed, but only a little. "Well, it doesn't change the matter. It's still true."

"Even if it were true," Rexi said sternly, "it's not our place to say it, or to listen to it. You understand me?"

"Yes, Uncle. But ..."

"No buts," Rexi said, cutting her off. "He's our Master now, and we have to make the best of it. And that means acting like he is our Master, and that means making his life easier. How can we do that if we're whispering like laundry-folk gossips that he's not decent?"

"Sorry, Uncle."

"See to it that everybody knows better than to say a thing like that. It would embarrass me, Sassy, very much, if he were to ask me just why his own slaves were whispering behind his back that he wasn't decent," Rexi said, not mentioning the thought that Master Zackton, however restrained he had been, might well decide that Raxi had already failed to deal with it. Master might have been extraordinarily generous in delegating responsibility -- but Rexi was clear that Master had delegated it. No, Rexi was certain he didn't want to know how Master would respond to whispers. But that wasn't something he wanted anyone to focus on -- not yet, not while they were still feeling their way into a new situations. "I think the Family has a good chance here, and I want to make the most of it -- and we can't do that unless we can show the Master just how good a decision he made to buy us." Rexi forced a smile that he didn't feel onto his face. "We can do that?"

"We can do that," said Sassy, apologetically. "Sorry, Uncle."

"There's a good girl," Rexi said. How many others were thinking something similar, Rexi worried, and then it hit him.

Oh no!

Rexi's thoughts stuttered back to that strange request of Master's. I need to meet all the servants... He wanted to meet all of them. Why, why, why ... could he have already overheard something? Rexi felt suddenly sick to his stomach as he went downstairs to inspect the work he'd ordered.

At least that was in hand; the music-room had been cleaned, the floor mopped and polished, the windows un-boarded and opened to freshen the room. Chairs, their upholstery hastily dusted and the woodwork freshly cleaned and oiled, lined the otherwise empty room. It needed some instruments, Rexi thought. A floor harp, at the very least. The walls were papered, and they, too, had been freshly dusted, but the papers were a very dated pattern of roses twined with acorns, and Rexi would have wanted to replace the papers even if they weren't faded and -- he let a little groan -- peeling in places. The halfling moved a stepladder, and got up to inspect one of the edges gently separating from the wall, and he tested it cautiously. Brittle. No, he couldn't just glue it back down, drat, and even if there were some matching papers in the attic or basement or somewhere of this pattern, they wouldn't have the same fading and they'd look like the hasty half-done repairs that they were. Drat, drat, drat. He couldn't have guests in here, not like this ... wait, the Master had ordered the mirror moved in here.

Well, it could cover this ... Rexi looked around the room, and flinched again. One, two, three ... He'd have to hang a lot of paintings, and in some odd places, to cover everything, and Shelyn Herself only knew if there were enough paintings about that ... ah, Harald had been making that list for Master!

Harald was -- unsurprisingly -- in the kitchen, where he was having dinner, and Rexi almost grabbed the list from him, scanning down it. "Yes," he said, taking Harald's charstick, and making a neat smudge by the descriptions that seemed suitably innocuous. "Harald, go get all these pictures, and move them to the Music Room. We'll put them up to cover all the bad places on the walls."

"Frame to frame, you mean?" said Harald. "That room needs to be ..."

"I know," sighed Rexi. "But it's in the best shape. We only need to comver the really bad places, where the paper is peeled. It's too brittle to glue back down. Trim all the ruined paper off, and put something over it. And put that mirror up there too." Rexi paused. "And take a few more pictures, too ... try to make it look like the paintings belong there, and we didn't just slap them up because we were ashamed of the walls."

"But we are ..."

"Yes, but it doesn't have to look like it," Rexi said with a certain amount of exasperation. "This is our House, now."

"It's our Master's house," said Harald somberly. "And when he's done with us ... it's back to the auction house."

"Then all the more reason to give him a reason to keep us," Rexi said. Drat, drat, drat.

Harald shrugged. "I wish I had your optimism, Rexi."

"Well, pretend that you have it," Rexi snapped, and then he sighed. "I know he's ... different, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. And ... can I take this list? I'll bring it back. I just want to show the Master where we are."

"Sure," said Harald, taking another bite of stew. "Go for it, coz." His eyes narrowed. "How bad can it get?"

Rexi shot him a worried look back as he went towards the salle. Harald was a strange one, certainly, even if he was generally reliable; it was just that Harald always gave Rexi the impression he knew something he didn't, something vaguely ... Rexi wasn't sure, and although he fretted over it until he reached the salle, he put it out of his mind as he watched Master Zackton and the three hobgoblins contorting themselves into ... into what he would have thought were impossible positions.

The half-elf, Talon, was desperately trying to mimic them, and as Rexi watched, the hobgoblin nearest Talon unbent himself to assist the half-elf into ... not the position he'd just been in, but something closer to it. What in Shelyn's Name ... he watched for another five minutes, as they continued the stretches and poses, and just as quietly, stood upright.

Apparently Master Zackton had been aware of him for some time, because he came straight over, wearing nothing more than the simple trousers and shirt that the hobgoblins were in. "Ah, Rexi, good evening. What do you have there?"

"Sir?"

"The paper?" Master prompted.

"Ah, oh, yes, of course, sorry, Master," said Rexi, presenting the paper to him. "This is the art we've found so far ... it's not finished, but I thought you might like to see what we've found ..."

Master Zackton had already taken the paper, and was quickly reading down it. "Yes, thank you, Rexi, that's ... what are these marks? By the ... paintings, I think?"

"That ... I need to explain a little, Master. You ordered a room opened for guests, last night?"

"I recall."

"Yes," said Rexi. "We opened the music room, the floor suffered the least damage."

Zackton nodded. "A fine choice, I suppose."

"But there's not enough time to repaper it, Master, and ... the papers are old. Faded." He swallowed. "Peeling. I ... I'm ashamed to have put guests in there, Master, so we'll use the paintings."

The half-orc stared at him for a moment, a faint hint of confusion and then it cleared. "Over the bad spots, you mean?"

"Yes, Master."

"Excellent, well done," said Master Zackton, looking back down at the list. "It looks like you've gone through about a third of the house so far ... excellent progress, excellent progress, Rexi," and he handed the list back. "Give a thought to what statuary we might move to the front hall, would you?"

"Yes, Master. I had a question about your guests?"

"Yes?" said Master Zackton.

"How many? For the chairs, and food -- will you want to serve just light refreshments, or will they be having a meal? Will you need a table in the music room?"

Master Zackton nodded. "I'll be inviting several members of the Scourge -- probably between two and ten, depending on how many they bring. No chairs; it would only encourage them to sit down. I don't want them comfortable; it might encourage them to stay longer. Food ... they're just coming for a brief discussion. Could we offer merely tea, and still be welcoming enough for propriety's sake?"

"Ah ... I suppose," said Rexi. "But ... no, yes, I mean, of course we can, Master."

"A large worktable, and a tablecloth, if we have such a thing. I went rummaging for linens when I just moved in, and I didn't find much ... I'm not sure what we have. Perhaps we can get one?"

"Ah ..." said Rexi. Dining linens? He hadn't had time to look at dining linens ... "I'm so sorry, Master, I don't know ..."

The half-orc shook his head. "Rexi, I've given you a thousand things to take care of. I placed no special priority on household linens, so if you haven't gotten to that yet, you haven't gotten to it yet. I know you will. I doubt the silver's still here, either, now that I bethink me ..." he paused, thinking. "Nor any good dishes, neither. Don't order silver just yet. Iron will do. And the current dishes will do as well; we'll order something nicer at some point. But some napkins and sheets would make the place nicer ..." he paused again. "What are you servants doing for linens and clothes?"

"We've got some, and we're buying more, Master. That's all in order. There are sheets for our beds, and we've ordered some more, I'm just not sure what we should get for you?"

"Rough silk, like what I currently have."

"Yes, Master. Will there be anything else?"

The half-orc gave the list a long, searching look. "No, thank you, Rexi," he said, and handed the list back. "I look forward to seeing this completed."

"Yes, Master," said Rexi, trying to think why Master Zackton might sound ... disappointed.

"Dismissed."

_ Huh. Was it just his imagination,_ Rexi wondered, or was Master Zackton looking for something on that list?