The mid-morning sun was pouring in through the windows of the small dining room where Mouse sat sipping a cup of thin ale and gnawing on a tough end of bread. She was attended by the General and Lady Margarethe’s five youngest children, and apart from the servants, was the only grown-up person in the room. The eldest of the General's two children, Bertram and Inga, were absent, as they were both of an age to be elsewise engaged—Bertram as a page in his father’s household, and Inga, no doubt, in practicing needlework or some other ladylike pursuit. And though Ladies Agatha and Signy had been meant to join them, Agatha had still been in bed when Mouse had left, and Lady Signy had not yet returned from fetching her.
The children, Mouse was pleased to find, were all lovely and fair and mild-mannered besides. The eldest in attendance, Maria, was nine years of age and tall for a girl of her years, while the smallest, Juda, was so young that she had hardly outgrown her nurse. Mouse watched with a smile on her lips as elder children shoved honied bread into their mouths while the little ones tugged on the sleeves of their maids.
When Sir Conrad had proposed over supper the evening before the idea of Mouse's meeting the children, she had imagined that the man himself might be in attendance, or perhaps even the General, but as it was, neither of the men had appeared. It was yet too early in the day for such men to sit down to table, Mouse supposed. But all the same; it was a great deal easier to maintain the illusion of regality in the company of people who could not yet tie their own trousers.
The idea of Mouse's meeting the children had arisen from her desire to meet one in particular, namely Leopold, the Generals’s second oldest son. It was on the boy's behalf that Sir Conrad had invited Mouse to dine with him, asking whether the child might not be allowed to accompany her back to Kriftel. Leopold was nearly of an age to become a page, and Sir Conrad had expressed a deep concern that were the boy to remain at Pothes Mar, he would forever live in his elder brother's shadow, unable to inherit and prevented from distinguishing himself by a sense of familial duty.
Mouse found it curious that Sir Conrad should take it upon himself to forward the boy's cause and plead his case, and this curiosity was only increased by the knight's attempts to make the matter seem secondary when Mouse could see clearly that his heart was in the thing. Furthermore, Mouse had seldom heard of a knight being given permission to dine privately, especially when serving in someone else's household. Such a thing would certainly never be allowed in the capital, and Mouse wondered that it had not been arranged through some sort of deception. Who was Sir Conrad, she wondered, that he should take such liberties?
However, Mouse had been quite sympathetic to the idea overall. Perhaps it was because she had a keen sense of what it was like to live in someone else’s shadow, how crippling it could be to one’s own sense of worth to forever be in servitude to one who was, by nature, in every way superior. And though the thought had not occurred to her, as she had agreed to Sir Conrad that she would gladly accept the boy, contingent upon meeting him, she had wondered later, as she lay awake in bed that night, how much more severely such a wound might sting if the one whose greatness had oppressed had in fact been her own sibling.
But before the thought could unfurl itself further, she had rolled over onto her side and turned her thoughts elsewhere, to Sir Hugo. Though it had only been a matter of hours since she had spoken with the knight, she was eager to receive his answer. How wonderful a thing it would be for her to ride back with him a member of her retinue. Even if no one were to rejoice upon Mouse's return to the capital, they certainly would to see Sir Hugo; the man was little less than a national treasure.
It was perplexing to Mouse how one of the Empress's men should end up here under the misguided impression that he was no longer wanted in the capital. It was either a grave misunderstanding, thought Mouse, or the General was capable of far greater treachery than she had imagined.
Mouse had drifted off to sleep with a hundred different questions on her mind, not just about the mysterious figures of Pothes Mar, but also as to what might be passing miles away in her absence.
Had the Chatti arrived in the capital, she wondered, and Lord Marius? In what sort of state would she find the Council when she returned? And what of Jasper? Was the stable boy still confined somewhere under lock and key, or had Ulrich finally seen reason and freed him?
That night, Mouse did not dream of Foilund and Kingfishers' Bridge. She did not dream of the might Manau or the house with the half-moon painted on the door. Instead, she dreamed of looming mountains, their peaks reaching so high into the sky that they covered all the surrounding land in shadow. She dreamed of figures hiding in the trees, slinking unseen through the conifers and concealing themselves in secret passageways carved into the face of the mountain.
She dreamed of the moon, bright and yellow, hanging in the sky, dangling as if from a string, a scythe waiting to fall and cut down whatever lay in its path.
She had woken with a shiver in her drafty room just as the first fingers of morning light were beginning to creep under the bed curtains. Agatha had not climbed into bed until well after Mouse had fallen asleep, but somehow in the course of the night, she had managed to pull all the blankets from Mouse's side of the bed onto her own, and any attempt Mouse now made to wrest at least a portion of them back were met with little success.
Eventually, Mouse had relented to the chill of lying exposed upon the feathers and risen, dressing at once in a gown of wool to warm herself. And it was not long after this that a knock had come at her door and the invitation to break her fast with the children and Lady Signy had been issued.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Mouse sat now in the dining room, ribbons of warm light dancing across the table, observing little Leopold. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the boy as far as she could see, nothing that should make one more sympathetic to him than to the rest. He looked no different than most children his age, and there was nothing in his manner to suggest he might be especially promising. But these were all superficial observations, Mouse supposed, just as the notion that there something in his face, something about his sandy blond hair that seemed, in a way, almost familiar.
The boy kicked his feet happily as he chewed on a grape and spit out the stone, seeming to take no notice of the fact that Mouse was watching him. What was it about the boy, Mouse wondered, that had so attached Sir Conrad's affection?
It was as Mouse was pondering this that a familiar voice roused her, and she rose from her seat in haste, nearly knocking over her cup in the process.
“Good gods,” said the woman who had suddenly appeared in the doorway, a funny sort of smile on her lips as she looked at Mouse, “is that really what I look like?”
Sir Otto’s black charger pawed at the ground, bobbing his head in anticipation of being loosed. His mane lay against his neck in tightly wound black braids, his dark eyes shining beneath the chanfron affixed to his head as Sir Otto sat composedly atop his mount, his gloved hands resting upon the pommel of his saddle. The gilded gadlings of his gauntlets gleamed in the sun as he awaited his challenger.
At the other end of the list, a flea-bitten gelding threw his head in agitation, stepping back against a bit that pressed too forcefully into his mouth. His rider, too occupied in trying to ascertain whether his spurs had been properly put on to loosen his hold on the reins, cursed in anger at his mount’s rebellion until the groom, a lanky boy of some thirteen years or so, ran over and took the harried creature by the bridle before it could back clear out of the yard.
Mouse tugged absently at the loose end of a thread she had managed to work free with the nail of her thumb, plucking it from a seam in the sleeve of her gown until she had enough to spin it between her fingers.
Sir Conrad leaned toward Mouse, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair.
“All these half lords and hearth sons,” he said, “more often than not, they’re on borrowed horses and in plate made to fit someone else.”
Mouse smiled vaguely at the knight. Though her eyes were fixed on the two men in the yard, her mind was elsewhere entirely.
To say she had been shocked to see the Empress walk into the dining room that morning would be an understatement. There had been no word sent of her coming, and the last person in the world that Mouse had expected to see was the very one she was meant to be emulating. Ever since then, Mouse had found herself out of sorts. She never felt more ill at ease than when the Empress was around; even when she was doing nothing at all, she somehow felt as though she were doing it wrong.
The Empress had interrupted Mouse “holding court,” as the woman had japed, to interview her briefly in such matters as whether she had held an audience with the General and whether she had received the Empress’s letter. And though Mouse had escaped the encounter largely unscathed, pressed only for the simplest of answers, she knew it was only a matter of time until she was properly admonished for her failings. Moreover, it could not be long before the true Empress made herself known and Mouse was revealed as a forgery.
But, Mouse sighed to herself, that time would come regardless of the extent to which she dwelled on it now, so she had better enjoy herself, such that she could, for the present. It was with such a notion in mind that she fixed her attention on the men in the yard, who now stood at the ready, their helms lowered and shields and coronelled lances handed up.
After a brief moment of relative quiet, the marshal cried out, releasing them.
In an instant, the black charger was thundering down the list, his hooves tearing at the earth as he ran, while on the other side, the white rose up momentarily before his feet came crashing back down, a cloud of dirt rising in his wake as he raced forward. Sir Otto, having the advantage of experience and the cooperation of his horse, was the first to couch his lance, and though it appeared for a moment as though the other man might miss his chance entirely, at the last minute, he was able to tuck his elbow into his side, bringing the tip of his lance in line with his target.
It looked, in that moment, as though the points may land in any man’s favor. However, only one of the two was a knight.
Sir Otto’s lance struck the other’s shield squarely in the boss, and rather than knocking it to the side as he might have if the other man had moved to deflect the blow, pushed it up and into the man’s chest, forcing him off balance and knocking him from his horse. The man careened backward, arms over his head as he fell. However, as his shoulders struck the ground, his right foot became caught in the stirrup, so that his horse, reeling from the upset, drug him around the yard until he could at last be caught by a groom.
“I imagine the only humiliation worse than being knocked down on the first pass is having to return home and tell your brother you lost his best mount in the process,” Sir Conrad said, shaking his head as the man was taken under the arms and lifted to his feet.
“At least he’ll go back with his head still on his shoulders,” Mouse said, watching as the man's helm was removed and he was assessed for injury. “I once saw some poor man ride down the lists in a half-helm, and I'm certain you can imagine just how well that went.”
Sir Conrad laughed.
“Indeed,” he said, “I wonder how many enter the lists thinking they'll find glory only to then find themselves lucky to be alive."
The defeated man had recovered himself, and was now making a show of admonishing his squire and spitting on the ground in front of the marshal.
"Tell me, Sir Conrad," Mouse said, turning to look at the knight, suddenly struck by something in his face. His dark blond hair, lightened by the sun, was trimmed short, just long enough on the sides to curl back behind his ears, showing a strong jaw and angular face that starkly contrasted the heavy brow and stubbled face of the General.
Mouse took a moment to recover herself, trying not to let her countenance betray the recognition that had just dawned on her. “Do you never ride in the lists?” she asked. She took note, as if for the first time, of the man's straight back, trim figure, and long fingers. “I should think you a fine horseman.”
“You flatter me,” the knight replied. “I have indeed seen my share of the joust," he said, "but these days my duties tend to be of a more," he paused, a smile tugging at his lips, "administrative nature.”
“Ah,” said Mouse, "far less dangerous but equally thrilling.” She smiled at the knight. “Or is it the other way around?”