Noble Beginnings

by D. W. Jackson

"I suspect I'll continue serving here, my lord," she said firmly, tugging at one of his pillows before getting up and smiling politely at him. "The Duchess is kind and generous to those in her employ, and I cannot think of anywhere else I'd rather be." From most people that line would have been an indication of a boring person, but Myriel said it honestly and with a surprising amount of vigor. Dorran was a bit taken aback at the time.

  Even after such questions as these, though, she would return quietly to her tasks as soon as she sensed he had run out of ideas of what to say to her. He had the feeling he should try a different approach. He tried idle observations and even questions about irrelevant topics like music or plays, but these topics yielded the same result: responses that were short and to the point, with no indication of being relevant to affairs in the castle.

  Finally, he decided to take the direct approach and simply ask her.

  "Myriel," he asked on the fourth morning she arrived, "I'm running out of ideas on how to improve my knowledge on affairs of state...do you happen to have any ideas?"

  She answered him as promptly as ever, but instead of a polite answer, he got a polite question. "What sort of things do you want to learn, my lord?"

  "Well..." he thought it over, remembering the topics he'd felt particularly ill-prepared for. "Local politics, agriculture...and maybe history would be good places to start."

  She looked thoughtful for a moment as she considered his question. "I believe there are several books like that in the Duchess's private library," she answered, as she took a rag from a large pocket and starting in on dusting the vases on the mantelpiece. "I've only seen the titles briefly myself, but as her son, I'm sure you'd have permission to peruse them. Have you taken a look at any?"

  It was only the lightness of her tone that stopped him from feeling frustrated and rebuked. When she said it like that, it seemed odd that he hadn't thought of something like that before.

  "You're right," he said pleasantly, "that's a good idea. Thanks, Myriel."

  She smiled at him over her shoulder, still dusting. "My pleasure, my lord."

  After that, he took to asking Myriel's advice whenever he got the chance. It was awkward at first, both for him and from what he could tell for her as well, but her responses slowly got more detailed and open-ended, and he soon started learning to ask better questions.

  He took to going to the Duchess's library for an hour or two a day; as Myriel had expected, he had full access as her son. When the guards had come to perform their evening rounds, they had been perfectly cordial when they found him starting to nod off over a book on agriculture. Dorran took to bringing a volume or two back to his room at a time, and would occasionally discuss their content with Myriel. She claimed that she had never spent much time reading, but she always seemed to know far more about anything he decided to study than he could learn from a simple book. He didn’t want to admit it to himself but he always felt as though he had a more solid grip of the material after discussing it with her.

  He also found himself enjoying her company for other reasons. For instance, he hadn't realized quite how annoying some of the female servants were at first, but it had slowly dawned on him exactly how many of them were trying out their feminine wiles on him. It was quiet and subtle but the more he paid attention the more obvious it was. Thea demanded decorum among her personal attendants but; like most rules they could be pushed to the edge of breaking as long as you were careful. He could still feel some of them watching him out of the corners of their eyes, smiling winningly at him and throwing him charming looks whenever they could. He often couldn't tell whether it was ambition or the shortage of young men in the area around the castle that drove them, though he suspected the latter. Either way the more aware he became of the fact the more uncomfortable they made him feel.

  He was used to the women from the barracks they were generally more interested in their fighting skills than anything else, though they would complain amongst themselves about the lack of proper males without caring if they were overheard. It was a little off-putting from time to time, but in the end it wasn't too hard for him to accept that they would want to talk about something that was troubling them. He'd even had courted one or two of them when he was younger, before considerations of what they might do to him if he slighted them not to mention a quiet but firm lecture from Adhara and a few disapproving looks from Edith had convinced him that it might be wise to back off. Still, at least he knew that those women respected him as a fighter, that they didn't see him as little more than a means to their advancement in power.

  Men were a rare commodity in Farlan, and every male he knew had his own way of dealing with that. He thought briefly of Marcus, and wondered how many years it would be before the kid was the cause of his own bout of rumors. Then again, maybe Marcus would be smart and learn to keep his head down quickly, as Dorran almost hadn't.

  He found himself asking Myriel one morning what she thought of some of the other servants; her responses were diplomatic, but she didn't sound as though she were very close to them. From there, though, the topic somehow shifted to women, and Dorran found himself explaining the way he felt around women. "Do you think I'm shy?" he asked.

  She didn't look up from the area of the floor she was sweeping; in the corner some rags and a bucket waited for her to finish this task. "I don't know if 'shy' is the correct word," she said diplomatically.

  "Really? What would you call it, then?"

  She cocked her head slightly to the side and gave him a wry grin. "Call what?"

  "The way I feel around women."

  "You feel that they want something from you." She bent down with a dustpan and took the broom near the neck, sweeping dust and stray hairs into it. "Feeling nervous around people like that isn't shyness, it is simply having good sense."

  When he didn't answer right away, she smiled up at him briefly, then continued with her dusting. "So...I guess," He considered, "by that argument, I should feel nervous around every single person in the duchy.”."

  "That doesn't sound wrong," Myriel agreed. She carried the dustpan over to the balcony, balancing it carefully, and then tilted it out the half-open window, letting the contents fall to the cobblestones below.

  "So, then...maybe the noblewomen won't be as intimidating when I actually know what they're talking about." He sighed, looking over at the stack of books at the foot of his bed. "I don't know how many years they spent learning all of this, though."

  Myriel continued cleaning the floor in silence, and since Dorran didn't ask her a question, he readied himself for their conversation to die out. But instead,, she unexpectedly asked, "Did you not study all of this before?"

  He'd gotten so used to Myriel's innocent tone by now that the sting against his pride he would have felt had someone else asked him this question was entirely absent. He repeated his story of his father's final advice to heed his mother, and his grandfather's reinforcement of the same statement. "It made me think that all I had to do was follow my mother's orders and keep my ears open for advice. Now, though...I'm beginning to think that I was very wrong about that."

  "I don't know," she said mildly, walking to the corner to fetch the bucket. "It's obvious that you are extremely loyal...but doesn't that just make you a good son?"

  "Maybe," he replied, frowning. "But I shouldn't ignore the fact that up until now, I've only been training myself to be a good soldier."

  Myriel gave him a look that he would almost call approving as she rolled up her sleeves. "I'm sure your mother will only approve of your dedication," she said.

  "Maybe." He stood then, waiting to catch her eye before smiling at her. "Want a hand?"

  She blinked at him. "What?"

  "A hand, with the floor. I've done this at the barracks before, and even with a full team of people working together, it's quite the chore." He pulled off his boots and socks, pushing them under the bed. "My room is smaller, but it's still a lot for one person by herself." He walked over and held out a hand f
or one of the cloths. "May I?"

  Her dark eyes searched his for a long moment, and he did his best to meet her gaze unflinchingly. Then she smiled, looking away, and handed a cloth over. "Try not to get your breeches wet, my lord" she replied seriously. Dorran could feel her eyes on him as he made his way over to the bucket with the cleaning cloths in it and he could have sworn a small smile crept onto her stoic face.

  He took the still-dripping cloth and wrung it over the bucket before kneeling on the other end of the room to begin. As a noble he never had been forced to work they had servants to do all the cleaning work but he had often taken the chore on himself as a way to strengthen himself as well as perform a useful action. Out of everything he had done to try and get closer to Myriel the simple action of helping her with her work had been his biggest success.

  CHAPTER VI

  As time passed Dorran found himself finally starting to grow comfortable with the councils. Although he still didn't understand the finer points of what was being discussed he was not as lost as he had been only a short time beforehand. He knew he still had a long way to go, but at least his improvement was noticeable. He caught his family's eyes on him frequently, though he wasn't sure what they thought of him, he knew it couldn’t have been as bad as it had been at first.

  When Thea occasionally detained him to ask his opinions on various matters of state, he was able to give a more detailed answer every time. His conversations with Myriel definitely helped with this, since she could round out what his mother's book said with knowledge of current events and common opinions among the nobles. He found himself wondering how she knew all that she did, but valued the information too highly to be willing to pry and risk the fragile relationship they had built.

  With his education progressing and his mother's permission, Dorran slowly began increasing the amount of time he spent in the barracks. Several weeks after they had last spoken, he came across Edith in the training hall, fighting one-on-one with the best peers in the group. He was more than a little surprised to see that she held her own admirably, fighting two or three of them at once. He watched her for a while before joining the group. She looked tired, with sweat beading on her forehead but she continued to push herself and was fighting harder than ever.

  "Edith," he called as she rounded up a simulated charge, neatly disarming her final opponent and touching her blade to his chest to signify his death. "Mind if I join the next run?"

  "Not at all," she said, running a hand through her matted hair to push it out of her face. "How does a four-on-one melee sound? Take your pick of teammates."

  Dorran stared to argue but decided against it and instead he called for Marcus and Iain and gestured for Kell to join in as well. The three of them came over and listened as he outlined the strategy for the battle. He had wanted to fight Edith head-on, but this was an important exercise as well and one he did not plan on losing.

  "All right, here's how this will work," he said. "Iain, Kell, you two try working together. I want you working as a unit or not at all. Kell, that means protecting Iain from hits, and Iain, that means focusing as much on Kell as on the enemy. It'll be an exercise in following another fighter's lead."

  Kell looked at Iain and smirked. "You got that? Try not to get killed, and this should go just fine."

  Iain squared his shoulders. "Sure, and you make sure to actually hit more than air with that stick you call a sword."

  Dorran turned to Marcus. "As for you...with your abilities, it'd be good for you to practice taking advantage whenever the opportunity appears. Stay close to the action, but try to stay out of her clear view of sight. Your main purpose is to Interfere where she least expects it, get a swing in whenever you think you can reasonably expect an opening. But don't get caught, or she'll have you on your back faster than you can blink an eye. Got it?"

  Marcus's eyes were glinting with excitement, and Dorran reflected that he was looking forward to seeing how the youth performed in the exercise. "Understood."

  "Good. I'll be trying to make things harder for her, working with you two for the most part and playing off of Marcus some of the time. Don't worry about what I'm doing, it's my job to focus on you." He hefted his sword. "In battle, talented fighters like Edith are important to wipe out as soon as possible. Let's see how quickly we can put her down, shall we?"

  They nodded, and his small knot of soldiers broke, moving to their starting positions. Edith raised her sword and crouched, anchoring herself in the ground. She wasn't planning on retreating in this fight.

  The plan worked well, though not quite as well as Dorran had hoped. Edith had eyes in the back of her head, and the power of their superior numbers was impeded by the fact that Dorran and Kell spent most of their time trying to coordinate smoothly with the two younger, inexperienced swordsmen. Edith only had to worry about herself and didn't take it easy on any of them. As always, she fought with a fierceness and drive of someone with something to prove. Dorran took some touches trying to draw her away from the others, but they managed to avoid getting hit for the most part.

  Edith knew that in a real battle scenario, she would have only a few minutes at most before she would be overwhelmed by yet more enemies, so as the battle continued, she started to pick up her pace, taking more risks. In the end she lunged just a bit too far in an effort to separate Kell and Iain, and Marcus jumped in for an opening. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and corrected her lunge in a near-impossible feat of flexibility.

  Dorran, watching, realized what was going to happen a split second before it did and moved on instinct. The next thing he knew, Edith's sword was poking hard into his side, but his was in a swing towards her throat. He carefully twisted the blade at the last second so that the flat of it smacked against her skin. The rest of the fighters froze on instinct, waiting for the communal verdict.

  "Hm," he said, trying not to gasp from the pain that throbbed from the hit that would turn into an ugly bruise in a few hours. "Mutual kill?"

  "Probably," she admitted. "Certainly, given this one..." She indicated Iain with her head; the youth was frozen in a lunge with his blade aimed for Edith's heart, with Kell covering him, ready to parry or counterattack. "I'll have killed you first, but I'd follow you right after."

  Dorran grinned and stepped back, hissing a bit as he fingered the few layers of broken skin where the edge of Edith's sword had dug deepest into his flesh. "Well, I'm just as dead either way. I guess that's a draw."

  "A draw with three more fighters on your side," Edith pointed out, a small smile gracing her fine features. "Not really that impressive on your part."

  "You know that isn't how it works," Dorran retorted casually, but he wasn't really interested in the argument at this point. "I think I made a decent team player, and you did very well on your own." Edith shrugged, and he continued, forcing himself to keep the casual tone. "Want to try a different style?"

  She shrugged and settled into stance, the hint of a smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. "One-on-one?"

  "Your wish is my command," he replied quickly, then looked over his shoulder at the others. "You may want to get back I think she wants to prove a point and whoever gets in her way might need a bandage or two."

  About an hour later, both of them were slick with sweat. Dorran could feel bruises blossoming in half a dozen spots across his body, and suspected that Edith was in similar shape or a part of him at least hoped she was. Edith wasn't the kind of fighter he could afford to pull punches on, though he did try not to be unnecessarily forceful. "I think you win," he admitted with a shaky grin. He brought a hand gingerly to his hip, where a particularly nasty hit of hers had landed squarely on the bone.

  She shrugged. "What did you expect? But it was a good fight. You done for now?"

  "I think so, yes." She was just as calm and composed as she always was after a fight, Dorran noted, and suddenly he was overwhelmed with the desire for matters between them to be normal or at least less contentious. "Walk with me?"
/>   "Sure." She waved to the others with him and followed him out.

  "So," he said, holding the hall door for her and shutting it behind them. "How have you been?"

  "Fine. Busy." She examined a couple of knuckles that had been scraped in one of the skirmishes, then shook her hand out. "Too busy to come out every day like I used to, actually, so it feels like every time I do train I have to work twice as hard to avoid falling behind. I feel like I'm slipping out of shape."

  "You're only getting better, as far as I can see." Dorran rubbed his still-sweaty hand absently on his tunic as they walked down the halls. "Look, I'm...I'm sorry for getting angry at you before. Is there any chance you can tell me now what you have been so busy with?"

  She gave him a pointed look. "No."

  He held up his hands. "All right, all right, I was just checking. I won't press from now on, I promise." He cast about desperately for a change of topic. "You want to go bathe?" was the first thing that came to mind. "I haven't had much chance to train, and today was unseasonably muggy so, I know I could use one right now."

  She considered the suggestion, then said, "Sure." And then it was like they were small children again, as Dorran led her down to the servants' bathing rooms, which thanks to ever-running fires, were always ready to accommodate two more guests.

  As they set out their respective tubs and retrieved several buckets of water from where they waited over the embers, Dorran certainly remembered that they were no longer children. He averted his eyes as they stripped and sank into the small tubs, no longer anywhere near as luxuriously large as they had once felt. But after that he did sneak a glance or two at her bare body.

  A raised eyebrow on her part ended up deterring him from this, however. He'd figured she wouldn't be interested in anything of that nature. While he suspected that Edith did enjoy her own time with men, she seldom had the patience for even flirting when her mind was elsewhere. And he'd been right, he noted; she had a fair share of welts, the same as his.