FSW Chapter 4

Sympathy

"The Snow Empire is the wealthiest and most powerful empire on the Teyl Continent, thriving under the watch of the spirits and the protection of the imperial family—their descendants."

Carlos, Nishina's Imperial Studies tutor, pronounced this with great and personal pride.

It's wealthy, certainly. Most powerful is more debatable.

"In terms of military strength alone, wouldn't the Wind Empire—a dedicated military state—rank higher?"

Nishina murmured this in a voice that expressed no particular investment in the outcome.

Carlos had served as a royal scribe since the previous Emperor's reign; he was loyal to the empire and the imperial house to a degree that occasionally exceeded what was useful. This was one of those occasions. Self-praise had its limits. She had been the one to say the obvious thing, and somehow she was the one left feeling as though she'd committed a small social offense.

Carlos, apparently interpreting Nishina's flat expression as something else entirely, pushed up his thick glasses and arranged his face into the appropriate sternness.

"Your Highness, I am aware you have been out of bed only a short time—nevertheless, lessons must be attended to properly."

"Yes…"

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

As no Crown Prince had yet been formally designated, Aiden and Nishina received the same education. To ensure neither was given preference in instruction, even the subject-specific tutors were the same. Which meant the tutors had formed a habit of invoking the other's progress to sharpen their student's focus.

The technique was meant to provoke her competitive instinct. Instead it only deepened a different kind of curiosity, which was entirely pointless.

'What expression does my brother sit through this kind of lesson with.'

Does he hide his contempt with the same careful blankness he turns on her? Or does he quietly push back, as she does?

The option of simply accepting the content at face value never made the list. Aiden was a sharper mind than she was, by a considerable distance.

The political theory and statecraft tutor in particular never ran out of praise for Aiden—partly because he genuinely was exceptional, and partly because Nishina's attitude in that particular class was not ideal.

She knew perfectly well that the attitude wasn't right. But she couldn't help it. A class that taught methods for grinding people beneath you was, without question, a hundred times less interesting than an Imperial Studies class whose objectivity had been fed to the dogs.

'Which is exactly why I should pay attention to this one.'

Nishina brought her eyes, without protest, back down to the map spread open on the desk, and put on the face of a student attending carefully.

Taking the renewed interest as a cue, Carlos pointed to a large empire positioned in the map's northwest and continued.

"That said—fully two hundred years since the Wind Empire's desertification problem first emerged, more than half their western territory has become dead land, and their crop yield has fallen to roughly half of what it once was. They have been steadily provoking our empire, casting their eyes toward Dryad Forest."

The Teyl Continent held exactly two empires: Snow and Wind. For generations they had kept a wary distance without crossing the line between them—but as the desertification within Wind deepened into crisis, tensions had steadily grown into conflict.

The particular problem was geography: the region where the two empires met was Dryad, the vast spirit forest. The forest stretched wide across the continent's northeast—four-fifths of it falling within Snow's territory, one-fifth within Wind's. For Wind, rapidly losing its land, the life-filled spirit forest was a matter of desperation. Wind's knights came raiding to seize it; Wind's citizens, too desperate to remain citizens, crossed the border in growing numbers to become raiders themselves.

"Of course, the mercenaries and knights deployed to the border zones have been holding the empire firm—but recently the number of raiders crossing through the Rain Kingdom has increased considerably, which is becoming a problem."

"The people living in those areas must be suffering significant harm."

"Yes. The families who govern territories adjacent to the border—House Skophe, House Campbell, House Russell, House Cavendish—have been working to maintain order and protect their people, but the incursions and threats continue."

All of the families Carlos had listed had distinguished themselves in past wars between the empires. They governed the borderlands and worked to protect the empire's people. In recognition of that effort, the people called them Guardians of the Empire and praised them openly. The Emperor, too, valued them.

With one exception.

As the others grew their names in renown, House Russell's standing had faded with each passing generation. The previous head of the family had still held the position of Imperial Third Knight Order Commander—but his son, the current lord, had unfortunately been born with no talent whatsoever for the sword.

Once even that tenuous title was gone, the political footing went entirely.

A declining family, with nothing left but a name from the past. That was what House Russell had become.

"House Russell…"

Carlos must have heard her murmur, because he added:

"In fact, House Russell lost even the right to the Guardian title some time ago. Had the second son not distinguished himself at the border two years ago, they would have had the peerage stripped by now."

Two years ago. The Emperor—unwilling to forget an old loyalty—had taken pity on them and granted them the chance to recover their honor. As raiders who had been causing problems at the border escalated into a full-scale incursion, he assigned House Russell to lead the response.

The Count, however, had sent neither himself nor his elder son—eighteen at the time and still young—but his younger son. Thirteen years old. Untrained. He pushed the child out onto the battlefield.

It wasn't even the family's own territory at stake. He hadn't wanted to risk himself—but he couldn't refuse an imperial order. Better a small child die in his place than take the death himself. That was the calculation.

Everyone had clicked their tongues at the shameless Count and mourned in advance for a child headed for a meaningless death. But the child had survived, contrary to every expectation. He had survived, and earned a name while doing it: the Winter Demon.

A dark reputation—but a name was still a name. A son returned from a war with recognition attached to him was useful for raising the family's standing.

That was the reason: two years after the child barely made it back alive, the Count had enrolled him as an apprentice knight in the imperial order. The family title was empty, but it was still a Count's title—and a boy who had made himself known on a battlefield could not be turned away. If he grew his ability further and was fortunate enough to catch the Emperor's attention, there was even a chance of reclaiming a Knight Order Commander post.

With that in mind, the Count had pushed the child into another unfamiliar place.

He was young enough that a formal knighthood was out of the question—so he had come in as an apprentice. But having accumulated more real experience than most formal knights, he carried none of the rawness or naivety the word apprentice implied.

And the reputation had isolated him. The other apprentices kept their distance; even the knights were reluctant to be near him. A knight was meant to protect—not to kill. But the sword this child had learned on a battlefield existed for only one purpose: to end lives. After the first sparring session, the knights had avoided him as if his sword were a mark of shame on the order.

That was probably why Richard had hesitated. What this boy's sword was—it would have seemed unsuitable for a princess to be exposed to.

Nishina thought about the swordsmanship teacher she was about to meet after this lesson ended.

The Winter Demon who wielded a blade built for killing. And the still-young boy who had learned, somewhere along the way, to keep his eyes on the ground.

She couldn't tell which of the two she needed to receive sympathy from—or which of the two she was, against all sensible intentions, already offering hers to.

In the shade of a large tree at the edge of the training hall, Nishina crouched down, her gaze fixed on the ground.

On the dirt below her lay a dragonfly, giving off the faint smell of something already dying. Its tail was still moving, just barely—so it hadn't stopped breathing yet. But the ants that had caught the smell were tearing at it without mercy.

She watched with empty eyes as the thin wings were stripped away first. The ants were not offering cheap pity to the dragonfly's meaningless struggling. They were simply following their instinct, filling themselves one piece at a time.

An ant could only carry away one fragment. But when hundreds became thousands, the dragonfly would soon be gone—not even a corpse left behind.

Like him, consumed by hundreds and ending without a body to bury.

Lavis Russell. When Aiden came to find him personally—at seventeen, an age when most knights had barely earned the right to call themselves one—he would look into those eyes that held no more life than something already dead, and make an offer.

Dull eyes. If you have no reason to keep living, use that dull life for me.

From the moment he clasped that extended hand, he would become the prince's sword, refusing no task too dirty. The victories in the wars, the successful overthrow—both owed a great deal to his strength.

He is not afraid of death. It was his greatest weapon, and also his most fatal weakness. Without hesitation before death, he would follow his lord's orders and die in their service—inevitable as water running downhill.

It had been a death like the dragonfly's. Leaving nothing. No family to grieve. No friend. No lover. When the remains that could barely be identified as human became a handful of ash and dispersed, even the thin proof that he had lived in this world was gone.

He had refused, always, the family name, the wealth, the title. Perhaps he had been preparing for it—for the end that would finally allow it to be over.

A shadow fell suddenly across the procession of ants. Nishina raised her head.

He was still looking at the ground—but because she was crouching, his face was visible from her low angle. He had come straight from training; the hair at his forehead was damp.

From this height, their faces should have been nearly level—and yet he had his head bowed, eyes lowered, even now. She watched for some time as those cool eyes settled, with something close to a pathology, on a patch of ground near her feet. Then she stood.

"I apologize for being late."

"I was just early. So—where do we begin?"

"I understand Your Highness wishes to learn swordsmanship in order to build physical strength."

"That's right."

"To lift a sword, however, one requires basic strength first. For now, I believe it would be better to begin with light exercise."

Learn swordsmanship to build stamina—first, build the stamina to lift a sword. She hadn't expected to hold a weapon from day one. She had heard that even Aiden had spent roughly two weeks focused on physical conditioning when he first began.

"That works for me."

"As it's the first day, let's keep it light. Ten laps to start."

A light proposal with a rather heavy interior.

'What did I just hear? Ten laps?'

Something close to horror filled Nishina's eyes, which had gone quite round.

The training hall they were in—set aside for the imperial family's exclusive use, though so rarely used for that purpose—was as wide as the knights' own ground, despite having far fewer people in it at any given time.

'Two laps of this and I'd probably pass out…'

Before he could take another step, she called out quickly to stop him.

"W—wait. Russell—ah."

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

Forms of address ran rapidly through her mind. Apprentice knights didn't technically receive the honorific sir, but the address young master wasn't used either—there were even some commoners among the imperial order's apprentices.

A brief deliberation, and then she called him by whatever felt most natural on her tongue.

"Sir Russell. One moment, please."

"You may speak plainly to me."

"You're my teacher—I couldn't possibly."

At the word teacher, his head came up for the first time all day. He looked genuinely startled—his eyes had gone wide with it, meeting hers before he could pull them back.

What was plainly visible in those red eyes was confusion.