Chapter 58:

Back in the city of Alaric, I waited in the receiving room of the keep. I was slightly frustrated that I had to be here and a little bit nervous, as there was a lot more riding on this than I was comfortable with. I still had almost two full months before my quota came due, having filled this month's quota early. Having a war scheduled to start on the second to last day of the next month gave me hope of completing the eighty-soul requirement in time, as long as my being nominally in charge of the soldiers counted as practically being in charge. If it didn't, well, I was probably done here anyway. If it did, well, at least I had an extra month or two. Hopefully, the heat down in Valhalla had cooled off, and I would have the ability to find someplace there and maybe see how Bjorn and Astrid were doing.

But now, I had to receive the Duchess. She had arrived earlier this morning and had taken her time coming through the city. Currently, she was refreshing herself after a long day of travel. It was actually kind of surprising that she had come to me. Still, as I was the one who was actually commanding the soldiers, it made sense. If we did end up going through with this marriage—which I was absolutely not going to let happen—I would be the one who was technically in charge. I still wasn't sure how she felt about that. Maybe slighted, maybe resigned. But we did have a lot of planning to do. Despite her only nominally being in charge, she would have a lot of political influence, and I wanted her to be aware of my plans. I also needed to know exactly what forces she was going to be leading and what the king was providing.

The doors opened, and my guards stepped aside, allowing in a procession of similarly clad guards and a young woman. She was pretty enough, I supposed, but nothing special. Short. She was short, maybe no more than five feet two, coming up to about my collarbone. Her dark hair was cropped in a stylish pixie cut that barely covered her ears. With every step she took, she bounced as if she were full of energy despite her cavalier walking speed, which was unlike the grace of any lady I had seen in court. Her face was set into a considering mask.

I bowed low in greeting. "Greetings, my lady."

She gave me a curtsy a little deeper than our respective ranks demanded. "Count Alaric," she said, her voice relatively low for her size and age, almost a contralto, with a breathy quality that reminded me of a much larger person. Then she flashed me a dimpled smile that looked surprisingly genuine.

"You're better looking than I had feared," she said, and I couldn't help but let out a true laugh. Just a quick, short burst, but surprisingly, I felt at ease. At first, I had been questioning whether her age was actually eighteen or whether someone had been lying to me. Still, the intelligence behind those eyes told me that they were. She definitely had matured.

"Very well," I said. "Would you like to retire for tea and speak privately?" I offered.

"I would enjoy that very much, Count," she said, and I dismissed the guards with a wave. She dismissed hers as well, and we walked over to the side where a table was set up. Some maids quickly brought in a cup and a few refreshments that I had waiting off to the side in case this was necessary. We settled in across from each other, watching each other's faces as we dressed our tea how we wanted. She put a surprising amount of honey in hers.

Her mask started to slip, and the carefully controlled features broke into a rather expressive young woman. A determined air was about her eyes, but an easy smile when she took a sip of the tea gave me an interesting insight into her personality. She seemed fierce and determined but still innocent and plucky almost.

She set the tea down and sighed. "I thank you for the hospitality, Count Alaric."

"Please, just call me Alaric," I interrupted, and she nodded.

"Very well. Call me Alana. I'm not the most excited about this arrangement either. From what I have heard, the king practically had to strong-arm you into this."

I gave a small smile and a self-deprecating laugh. "Well, maybe if I had known what you looked like, I might have changed my mind," I said, trying to put her at ease.

She waved. "Oh, you don't have to do that. This is more than I had hoped in some ways," she said. "My entire life, I have been prepared to be married off for my family's gain. But my older brother died from the same sickness that is taking my father, and all of a sudden, I was set to inherit. I have neither the training nor interest in ruling.

"Frankly, I'm far too busy to get into the politics of it, and I had asked my uncle to situate me such that I wouldn't have to care about it. But getting anyone competent or politically minded usually meant a weasel or an old man. Neither of those were things I particularly wanted. I wanted someone dashing and competent but young and youthful. My uncle was apologetic, but that I would have to not be the holder of my title was exactly what I wanted. Besides, duchesses with the title generally tend to not fare as well as duchesses without. It's a cultural change that is slowly shifting, in no small part due to my aunt, but I don't care to be a part of it. I have far more interesting pursuits."

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That was the second time she had mentioned her pursuits. "Pursuits? You've brought that up a couple of times," I said. "It seems you are rather passionate about them."

She blushed. "I'm sorry. My father tells me I talk about them too much for someone of my station."

"I would like to hear about them, though, at least to know what I'm getting into."

"I love the way the world works," she said.

I cocked my head. "Um, so... it's a puzzle, figuring out how to describe the world in numbers and formulas."

I blinked. "Like physics?"

The Duchess cocked her head. "No, physics is the study of how the world is." Realizing I didn't quite know the definition, she added, "Like motion, projectile dynamics, Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism."

She looked entirely confused. "You know something of the laws of nature?"

"Uh," I said intelligently, "I know a little. I might be able to advise, though I do not have the mind for figuring any of this stuff out," I said, thinking back to my ninth-grade physics class that I had barely passed. I supposed it was more than some of the knowledge they had back several hundred years before, but this was actually a different world. I wasn't sure if they had invented something like calculus yet.

She leaned forward, excited. "Oh, if you can help me with my projects, I don't care if you're not even attracted to me. I will marry you no matter what the king says."

I looked up at her in shock. "Not attracted to you? Well," the king said.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "No, you are plenty attractive. That is not an issue."

"Are you sure we don't—"

"It's okay. Many marriages are more like friendships in the nobility. You know this."

I waved my hands. "No, that is not the issue."

"Well, then what is?" she said, slightly hurt but also at the same time blushing.

"Be assured, you are plenty attractive," I said, trying to figure out how to voice my objections to her being too young for me, with my apparent age being barely older than hers. Back on Earth, it would have been a little bit borderline but totally legal. Still, I was suspicious for the first couple of years of a relationship between our ages. Still, if you took into account my actual age, well, that would be creepy, and I just wasn't into it.

"Honestly, it has more to do with the distractions. I do not have time," I said. "But I suppose that doesn't matter now. We might as well get to know each other if we're going to be spending so much time on a campaign together over the next couple of months, preparing to defend the kingdom."

She nodded. "I know little of war," she said, "but it appears that you have become an expert when no one was paying attention."

I shook my head. "I'm no expert, but I do let the experts do their thing. I don't know tactics or battle command or anything like that, but I know people who do, and I let them do their own thing. You could do much the same, I imagine. Really, the problem with nobility is nobles assuming that they know things they shouldn't."

Alana nodded fervently. "Oh yes, that's the case with people who are trying to understand how the world works all the time. If I have to explain to one more person that mice don't just appear out of thin air when you leave spoiled food around, I think I'll tear my hair out."

I laughed. "Uh, how have you determined that?"

She went on to explain an experiment that rather closely followed the scientific method for how she determined that insects and mice and such do not spontaneously manifest near things but rather come from outside. "Currently, I'm working on problems with trebuchets. I should be able to perfectly describe the projectile's speed at any given point of the arc. Still, I am struggling to understand exactly how to do that."

I blinked, considering the problem. "Hmm, you might need to take a derivative," I said, looking at the equation she had scrawled out on the napkin. "Right here, you have a position, but the rate of it," I said, pointing to a variable.

"Yes, that is the position on the horizontal plane," she looked right at me. "A derivative? What is that?"

"Hmm, how to explain this... It shows you the rate of change over time or something. Or is that the area under the curve?" I mumbled, trying to remember the three-quarters of calculus I had been forced to take forty years ago.