Author's Notes: Sorry for the delay, I was travelling the week before and planned to post a new chapter on Monday as per schedule, but then one of my connecting flights got cancelled and I got stuck in an airport overnight. Sleeping on airport benches trying not to get pickpocketed is not fun and conductive for writing haha.
Anyhow, about the story. Since we reached 20 chapters (wohoo!), I decided to change things up a bit and expand the world a bit beyond just Karl and Paul. Karl will return next week, but in the mean time, this week will feature 4 vignettes so you can see what other people have been up to while Karl is doing his thing. These were all stuff I wanted to include at various points in the story, but felt they would be too disruptive as stand-alone chapters and would intrude onto Karl/Paul chapter dynamic. Instead, I plan to have a few of these every 20 chapters as a balance.
Without further ranting from me, enjoy the first of 4 ♡
Marie always hesitated in front of the door.
When she was younger, it was because being summoned to her father's chambers meant she had done something wrong and was in a lot of trouble. Like that time she had split Ludwig's cheek open with a knitting needle after he ruined her hard work. She was hauled here by the ear, sobbing that he had started it, but was punished all the same. A lady did not strike. A lady did not snivel about it afterwards, either.
However, as her father’s face got more wrinkly and pale, and his step unsteady, her fear changed, too. It was not fear of a punishment but that when she knocked on the door, there would be no answer from the other side. That the coughing sickness finally stole away her father’s last breath.
Still, she knocked.
The news the scouts had brought was far too important to hesitate.
“Enter.”
A thin voice replied after several tense moments.
Marie let out her breath and stepped inside, gently closing the heavy oak door behind her.
Inside, the fire had burned low, casting shadows across her father’s face. These shadows pooled in the lines around his mouth and gathered so thick in the sockets of his eyes that for a moment he hardly seemed a man at all—more a thing carved from old wax and left to soften by the hearth.
“You stand there breathing at me like a winded horse,” the Duke said, eyes still closed. “Either come in or let the draught finish me.”
“Forgive me, Father.” She crossed to the bed and took up the bowl warming by the coals. “You should eat first.”
He suffered her to lift two spoonfuls of broth to his lips before turning his head aside. "Enough. Read me their letters instead. I can feel your fret, and it sours the broth worse than the cold."
She had hoped he would ask. The packet had come up from the lowlands that morning, seals cracked and travel-stained.
“Brother Friedrich writes from Mündeck,” she began, and could not keep the warmth from her voice. “The trade is recovering. He has taken control of the failing local guilds and sends a hundred gold pieces toward your physicians.”
“Brother Wilhelm has hanged the brigands attacking the farmers off the Ostmark road and brought the villages back under local control. Golden wheat once again grows in the valleys.” She smiled. They were doing as sons of Austmark ought: building, controlling, sending coin and honour home. “He also asks after your health in every line.”
“Good boys,” the Duke murmured. “Steady boys.” The firelight caught a small smile across his face. “And the third?”
Her smile thinned.
She had been waiting for this, if she was honest. Savouring it. She still remembered Ludwig at fourteen—reeking of wine, him and his grinning friends cornering her in the orchard, the laughter, the hands snatching at her hems while she shrieked for someone to come. She had bloodied his face for it. And yet she had been the one made to apologise.
“Ludwig,” she said, the name like a stone spat from the mouth, “has disgraced us.”
The old man opened his eyes at her words.
“He writes no letters and the reports are confused, but they agree on the shape of it. He killed the bailiff you sent him to help and took up with poachers and runaway serfs. He armed them. And then marched the rabble on Castle Hohengrenzberg. Worse yet, he somehow took it, they say through some kind of Hollow sorcery. A duke's son, leading peasants against a sworn count and working with Hollows. They are calling him a madman in every hall from here to the capital. And cursing your name.”
The fire popped. A knot of shadow leapt across the ceiling.
“And Adalbert?” he asked quietly. “I don’t see him tolerating this.”
She faltered. She had left that for last.
“He didn’t write any letters either. Some say he was killed protecting that bastard.”
For a long while her father said nothing. The wind pressed at the shutters. The second Sun slipped behind the peaks, and the room dimmed by a degree, the firelight rising to fill what it left behind.
“Thirty years,” the Duke said at last. “The only man living who could keep that boy out of a cup.” A slow breath. “A good servant. They come rarer than good sons.”
She braced for the rest. The fury. The courier sent galloping to the capital to scratch Ludwig from the family tree before the shame could spread. She had pictured it so many times.
However, no such order came.
Instead, her father laughed. Laughed.
“You expected me to rage.”
“Of course! That drunkard just declared a war on one of our most loyal vassals. Not to mention his proclamation of abolishing serfdom put a sword in the hand of every serf who hears of it. Our enemies are certain to use this against us.“
“Perhaps.” He sounded much too carefree about all this. “Marie. Why do you suppose I sent three sons to the furthest corners of the Empire and told each he would die unless he made something of nothing?”
“To find the worthiest. To name the heir that will lead our house into the brightest future.”
“Bah.” The Duke scoffed. “I can tell you right away which one of them would be the most worthy to lead. None. Friedrich is a greedy scoundrel who would sell his own sister on the slave market if it got him more coin. Wilhelm is a bonehead who seeks to spill blood to make him feel worthy. And Ludwig is a drunkard whose only ambition is to govern a whorehouse.”
“That isn’t—“
“However, my sons are of Austmark’s blood, and they may reach where my hand can not. And whatever a son of mine takes is taken for Austmark.”
He laughed, low and pleased.
“But it is dishonourable!“
“It is useful.” He turned the word over as though tasting it. “If they win, the gains are Austmark’s to keep. And if they fall, what is a fickle boy to a grieving father? I shall weep at the Emperor's feet and disown the corpse.”
Marie stared at him.
“You truly do not care which of them it is."
Karl Friedrich. Karl Wilhelm. Karl Ludwig.
“I care that the house stands when I do not.” He had already begun to drift, settling down like a man easing into a warm bath. “The rest, child, is for songs.”
The last of the fire collapsed into embers. The shadows climbed the walls and folded over the bed. Marie sat beside her father, the cold broth forgotten in her hands.
She understood for the first time that she had no idea at all whose daughter she was.