Hohenfels

“I want to fight her,” Friedrich claimed. Anticipation. Curiosity.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No!”

“Why?!”

“If Lady Katharina was interested in combat, she’d be here,” Arne sighed, gesturing around. The two of them were currently waiting for the combat instructors, having stepped away from the cluster of students so they could talk freely.

“Well, she came to the training grounds yesterday!”

“Only to mess with you.”

“...I think I handled her pretty well.” Indignation. An undercurrent of sulkiness?

“You only think that because you haven’t spent enough time around her. Lucky you.”

“Bah, she’s just doing silkling stuff, who cares. But you know what? Her aura control was crazy. Like, woomph!” He wildly gestured with his hand, imitating a blade cutting through the air.

‘All the more reason to be wary of her,’ Arne thought. ‘I knew she was skilled from her probing, but if even Fritz is impressed…’

“Are you sure she only asked about my parentage and Lisa?”

“Yeah, at least I think so? She was doing exactly what you said she would. Never asked anything outright, except for the question about that bitch.”

“Hmm, that is suspicious,” he mused, then frowned, then grinned. “Actually, if she approaches you again, just ask her what she is up to, all right? That will make her nervous at the very least.”

“Sure,” Friedrich grinned back. “But I still want to fight her.”

Arne’s exasperated response was cut short by the arrival of the four instructors leading today’s single combat exercise. They returned to the group just in time to hear the opening speech of the lead instructor, a flamboyant man dressed in the frilly and colorful style preferred among Francian nobility. It was all the rage in the western duchies these days. Arne got a headache just looking at it.

Friedrich did not seem particularly impressed, either. Feelings that quickly turned into dread when the instructors drew smallswords in unison and began demonstrating their fencing skills.

“They won't make us use those flimsy things, right, Arne…?”

“They will. Kiss your saber goodbye. Today, we’re stabbing each other with toothpicks.”

The following lesson was thoroughly underwhelming. It was clearly tailored towards inner nobles who had never seen battle in their entire lives, focusing on unnecessarily fancy movements and flourishes to look good in the arena while completely ignoring practicality.

Princess Klara seemed to share the Hohenfels cousins’ misgivings, since her angry glares shifted from them to the teachers over the course of the lesson.

When it was finally time to put the semi-blunt practice swords to the test, one instructor wisely decided to separate the combat-proven students from the rest. Arne found himself paired with Leonhardt von Wessen, which was unlikely to be a coincidence.

It was, if the trace amounts of spite in the instructor’s aura did not mislead him, a reminder that he, too, was ‘merely’ the son of a margrave.

He did not know a lot about the Westmark heir. He had light brown hair, almost reached Arne’s considerable height, and carried himself with the poise of an experienced soldier. Arne was not particularly familiar with Westmark’s military insignia, but if he had to make an educated guess, he would say they mirrored his own, denoting the rank of captain.

They carried out perfunctory greetings, neither man particularly interested in this encounter or each other. Westmark and Hohenfels were situated on opposite ends of the Empire, and they had few common interests. Even worse, Westmark was firmly aligned with Sonnenfeld, while Hohenfels had strong ties to Falkenstein.

Both of them looked rather awkward preparing to fence with their too-small weapons. Arne took solace in the fact that Friedrich was looking several times more hilarious, the tiny blade and his giant form contrasting like night and day.

“En garde!”

At the instructor’s order, all fighters moved to their designated positions.

“Prêts?”

Arne took up a defensive stance. The smallsword felt wrong in his hands. Thankfully, Leonhardt seemed to suffer from the same issue, readjusting his grip repeatedly.

“Allez!”

One quick step carried Arne towards his opponent, stopping just in time to swat aside a stab and countering with a quick swipe at Leonhardt’s face. It was parried in a similarly nonchalant manner, and the duel continued in a seemingly endless cycle.

Arne found it dreadfully boring.

He was not particularly fond of direct combat under the best of conditions, but the sad excuse for weaponry and the instructor-mandated ban on magic and body contact made it much worse.

Finally, Leonhardt landed a stab on Arne’s shoulder, and both of them jumped on the excuse to end the farce. The instructor had no major outward reaction, but disapproval permeated his aura.

Friedrich, while utterly unaccustomed to the smallsword, still managed to cleanly beat his opponent, the son of some southern baron, relying on his talent and reach advantage. Princess Klara was sulking in a corner after the teacher had stopped her duel due to a severe imbalance in skill.

Arne had a feeling that few of the martially-minded students would attend this course again.

= = = = =

“–and then they began laughing like madmen!”

Katharina was listening attentively to the gossip passed around in a group of young noblewomen who had bonded over a shared love of embroidery, of all things. It was certainly not her preferred pastime, but the sheer wealth of semi-reliable information she could gather here was more than worth the hassle.

“Truly? Prince Arnold, of all people?” Lady Antonia, the ‘ringleader’ of the embroidery circle, sounded scandalized.

“Yes! I could not believe my ears!”

Neither could Katharina. Such boisterous behaviour seemed very uncharacteristic for the reserved Hohenfels heir. Perhaps he was the type to unwind when in the presence of family. ‘An avenue to explore?’

Still, the other ladies had completely glossed over a piece of much juicier information from earlier, so it fell on her to bring it up again before their fickle interest wandered off into the next topic.

“Maybe it had something to do with Princess Klara…?” she suggested.

“Oooooh, would that not be most fascinating, Lady Katharina?! Lady Luise, you stay at Eisengrund Hall, right? Did you notice anything that day?”

“Now that you mention it – Her Highness did not visit the refectory that day! And she seemed to be in a particularly foul mood the next morning!”

“I dare not imagine that,” Antonia remarked snidely, causing the others to giggle in the particular way only resentful young women could replicate.

The Eisenberg princess did not enjoy a particularly positive reputation among her peers for a variety of reasons. Her manners were rather intimidating, she had a propensity for outbursts both verbal and physical, she preferred combat over gossiping – and, as Katharina cynically noted, she was a lot prettier than most ladies attending the academy despite categorically refusing to wear makeup.

Katharina had met her years ago at a name day celebration for the second Greifenhain prince, but she doubted that Klara still remembered her. It had only been a brief conversation, since she quickly realized that the princess wanted nothing more than to be left alone. She’d have to approach her in a way that did not rely on previous acquaintanceship.

Antonia waved everyone a little closer. “What if Princess Klara and Prince Arnold were secretly engaged?!” she stage-whispered. “I would certainly not be able to hold back my joy should I be liberated from such a… privilege.”

Suddenly, Katharina could hear nothing but her own heartbeat.

‘Composure is strength. Composure is strength. Composure is strength…’ She desperately repeated her mother’s words over and over again. This was neither the time nor the place for memories.

By the time she was able to ignore the pit in her stomach, the embroidery ladies were animatedly discussing the ramifications of their ‘discovery’. Tomorrow morning, half of the academy would know everything about a failed engagement between Hohenfels and Eisengrund that never existed.

She could already think of a multitude of ways to use this emerging situation, most of them highly destructive and ill-advised. If she considered her current objectives, two approaches seemed promising.

The first approach was to utterly eradicate what remained of Princess Klara’s social capital, and gain Prince Arnold’s favor by essentially removing House Eisenberg from the playing field – at least locally at the academy. The huge drawback was that should Klara ever find out about her involvement, relations between Silberthal and Eisengrund would be forever damaged, which meant giving up the plan she came up with during the ritual lecture.

The second approach was to position herself as a mediator of sorts. She would approach Princess Klara out of ‘curiosity’, and then offer to help clear up the rumors through talks with Prince Arnold. This demanded a lot more delicacy, but promised far greater returns. It would take her much closer to the goal of establishing herself in eastern politics, and it would garner favor from not one, but two major houses.

There was, however, one significant drawback to the second approach. Given the interest in Eisengrund she displayed to both Hohenfels scions yesterday, it was essentially guaranteed that Prince Arnold would suspect her as the source of the rumors. Her plan would, in his eyes, look like a blatant attempt at reaping rewards for solving a problem she had manufactured herself.

Still, she had to try. The prize was just too great to ignore.

Even if it meant ruthlessly suppressing her… discomfort with weaponizing a broken engagement.