FSW Chapter 4

"The Snow Empire is the wealthiest and most powerful empire on the Teyl Continent, and has achieved an age of great peace and prosperity, tended by the spirits and guarded by the imperial line descended from them."

Carlos, Nishina's imperial studies instructor, declared it in the most self-satisfied tone imaginable.

'Wealthy, yes. Most powerful—that's another matter entirely.'

"By military strength, wouldn't the war-state Wind Empire come out on top?"

Nishina muttered it, sour-faced, unimpressed. Carlos had served as a senior clerk since the reign of the previous emperor, and his loyalty to the empire and the imperial family ran deep enough to become a fault. Self-congratulation has its limits. And he's the one who started it—so why is she stuck feeling embarrassed?

Whether he'd misread her expression or simply chosen to ignore it, Carlos pushed his thick spectacles up his nose and adopted his sternest look.

"Your Highness, I am aware you have only recently risen from your sickbed, but even so—lessons must be conducted properly."

"Yes…."

"His Imperial Highness the Prince is already more than three times ahead of you in the material."

Since an heir had not yet been named, Aiden and Nishina received identical educations. To prevent any disparity in instruction, their subject-by-subject tutors were the same as well. Perhaps for that reason, the tutors made a habit of citing the other's progress when they wanted to motivate either of them.

'Trying to light a fire of rivalry under me, I guess. Competitive spirit, my ass—all it's lighting is a question I never needed.'

What face does her brother even make, sitting through these rigged, one-sided lessons? Is he hiding contempt behind his face, the kind he turns on her? Or pushing back quietly, the way she does? The option where he simply accepted it without protest wasn't even on the list. Aiden was far sharper than she was.

The instructor who taught sovereignty theory and the art of rulership in particular praised him until his mouth practically wore out from it. Partly because Aiden genuinely was exceptional—but more because Nishina's attitude was just plain bad.

She knew that attitude wasn't right. But she couldn't help it. A class on how to grind other people underfoot, versus imperial studies where they'd tossed "objectivity" to the dogs—please. The latter, a hundred times more fun.

'So I'd better pay attention to this one, at least.'

At the sight of Carlos's expression settling into full gravity, Nishina set aside her resistance and dropped her eyes to the map spread across the desk.

As though encouraged by her renewed interest, Carlos pointed to the large empire in the northwest corner of the map and continued.

“But the desertification crisis in the Wind Empire has been building for two hundred years now. More than half of its western territory has become a land of death, and grain production has fallen to roughly half of what it once was—so they have been making steady provocations against our empire with their eyes on the Dryad Forest.”

Only two empires existed on the Teyl Continent: Snow and Wind. They had kept a wary eye on each other for a long time without crossing any lines, but as Wind Empire's desertification problem grew severe, conflict between them had steadily deepened.

The particular misfortune was that the region where the two empires shared a border was the vast spirit forest, Dryad. Of the Dryad Forest's sweeping territory in the northeast of the continent, four-fifths belonged to Snow, and one-fifth to Wind.

For an empire losing ground at that rate, a forest teeming with living things was a desperate need. Wind Empire's knights raided across the border, and its citizens—ground down past the point of survival—were turning to banditry and crossing over as well.

"Of course, the soldiers and knights deployed to the border are holding the line against all of this—but in recent times, the number of raiders coming through Rain Kingdom's territory has grown and become a problem of its own."

"The citizens living in those areas must be suffering."

"Indeed. The families governing the territories adjacent to the border—House Skophe, House Campbell, House Russell, House Cavendish—have been doing what they can to maintain order and protect their people, but the incursions and threats continue."

Every family Carlos named had distinguished itself in past wars between the empires—long traditions of service. They governed the border territories and strained to protect their people. In recognition of those efforts, the citizens called them the Guardians of the Empire and praised them without exception. Loyal to crown and empire like faithful dogs, they earned the Emperor's favor too.

With one exception.

House Russell.

While the other families only burnished their names with each passing generation, House Russell's reputation had grown dimmer with every one.

As recently as the previous head of the family, the house had maintained the position of Third Imperial Knight Order Commander. But his son—the current Count—had been gifted with an almost spectacular lack of talent for swordsmanship.

Once the title was stripped away, they lost their foothold in the political arena as well. A fading family with nothing left but the reputation of earlier generations: that was House Russell.

"Russell…."

Nishina murmured it almost to herself, and Carlos added to the explanation.

"House Russell lost even the title of Guardian long ago, in truth. If the family's second son hadn't distinguished himself considerably on the border two years ago, they would have had their nobility stripped by now."

Two years prior, an Emperor who had not forgotten that earlier loyalty took pity on them and offered them a chance to restore their honor. When the raiders who had been causing trouble at the border began an organized offensive, he gave the Russells command of the response.

But the Count sent neither himself nor his eldest son—still young at eighteen—but instead pushed his even-younger second son, only thirteen and entirely untrained, onto the battlefield.

It wasn't even their territory at stake. The Count had no desire to risk his own neck. But he couldn't defy an imperial command. Rather than die a dog's death himself, he shoved his own child forward to die instead.

Everyone who saw it clicked their tongues at the shamelessness of it and mourned in advance for the boy who'd surely die a dog's death.

The child did not die. He lived, against all expectation. He came back with an infamous name: the Winter's Demon.

Infamous or not, a son who'd made a name for himself, however dark, was good raw material for rebuilding a house.

Two years later, that was exactly why the Count had immediately pushed the boy who had barely survived into the palace guard as an apprentice knight. The family name might have fallen, but a Count was still a Count, and a boy who had built a reputation on the battlefield could not simply be turned away. And if the boy sharpened his skills further and was lucky enough to catch the Emperor's eye, he might eventually be given command of one of the imperial knight orders again.

With that in mind, the Count had once again pushed the child into unfamiliar territory.

He was too young for a formal knighthood, so he had entered as an apprentice—but with more battlefield experience than most fully ranked knights, there was no clumsy naivety left in him, no boyish green.

And the infamy had isolated him even among the apprentices. The knights proper kept their distance as well.

A knight's purpose was to protect, not to kill. But the sword this boy had learned on the battlefield was a sword built entirely for killing.

After the first sparring session, the knights treated his blade like a disgrace to knighthood itself and gave him a wide berth.

That must have been why Sir Richard had hesitated. A sword like his was, by any measure, unsuitable for a princess to be taught by.

Nishina thought of the swordsmanship instructor she would meet once lessons ended.

The Winter's Demon who swung a blade made for killing. And still just a young boy who kept his eyes trained on the floor like a reflex.

Which of the two deserved pity—or whether she'd already started pitying one of them without meaning to—she couldn't say.

In the corner of the training ground, beneath the wide shade of a large tree, Nishina crouched down and looked at the ground.

On the dirt lay a dragonfly, stinking of corpse. The faint twitch at the end of its tail said it hadn't died yet. But the ants, drawn by the stench, were tearing it apart without mercy.

With numb eyes she watched the thin wings get mercilessly stripped off first. The ants were simply obeying instinct, filling their stomachs—they owed no cheap pity to the meaningless thrashing beneath them.

Each ant carried only one small piece. But when that number reached the dozens, the hundreds—soon the dragonfly would be gone without leaving so much as a body behind.

Like him. Eaten alive by hundreds, in the end not even a corpse left behind.

Lavis Russell. When he had become a knight at seventeen—unusually young—Aiden sought him out personally, looked into eyes that held no more life than a corpse's, and made his offer.

'Worthless eyes. If you've got no reason to live, then waste that worthless life on me instead.'

From the moment he clasped that outstretched hand, he became the Prince's blade—carrying out every kind of dirty work without complaint. The victories in the war, the success of the uprising: much of it rested on his strength.

He did not fear death. That was his greatest weapon, and his greatest weakness. Unhesitating before death, he obeyed his lord's commands to the last, dying as though following a script written for him from the start.

A death like that dragonfly’s. A death that left nothing behind. No family deep in mourning. No close friend. No lover. His body—broken past recognition—reduced to a handful of ash and scattered, and the moment even that was gone, the faintest trace that he’d ever lived in this world vanished with it.

He had refused titles, refused estates, refused everything. Maybe, all along, this was what he'd been preparing for. An ending. Finally, an ending.

Beyond the ants' procession, a shadow fell without warning. Only then did Nishina lift her head.

He still had his head lowered, but Nishina was crouching, so his face was visible to her. He had come straight from training—his fringe was damp with sweat.

At this height their eyes should have met easily enough—yet there he stood, head practically driven into the dirt, gaze still pinned to the ground. For a long while she watched those cool, distant eyes fix—almost morbidly—on nothing more than the toe of his own boot. Then she stood.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

"It's fine—I arrived early. So. What do we do first?"

"I was told you wished to learn swordsmanship for your health."

"That's right."

"To hold a sword, a certain base level of strength is required first. So it might be best to begin with something lighter."

In other words: if you want to build up your body with a sword, first build up the body that can hold one. She hadn't expected to go straight to a blade from day one. She'd heard that Aiden himself had spent the first two weeks on fitness training before anything else.

"All right."

"Since it's your first day, I thought we'd start lightly—just ten laps."

'Light,' he called it. Ten laps of light.

'Wait—did I just hear that correctly? Ten laps?'

Nishina's eyes went wide.

This training ground was for imperial family use only, but it was every bit as large as the knights' regular drill field—which was saying something, given how few people used it.

'Two laps would probably finish me off….'

Before he could turn and set off without waiting for an answer, Nishina scrambled to stop him.

"Ah—one moment. Sir Russell—um."

'Sir Lavis. Sir Russell. Young Master Russell?'

A rapid cascade of possible addresses ran through her head. You didn't give a "Sir" to apprentice knights who hadn't taken their formal oaths yet, but "Young Master" wasn't right either—the palace guard apprentices included commoners among their number.

After a beat of thought, Nishina settled on whichever came most easily.

"Sir Russell. Just a moment."

"You may speak informally to me."

"You're my teacher, all things considered. I couldn't possibly."

The word teacher made his head lift for the first time. Startled, it seemed—his eyes went round, and met hers in one sudden snap.

What was plainly written in those red eyes was bewilderment.