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344-345 M.E.
Border forts were fascinating at first glance. And at second glance, too. Indeed, they were so interesting that they could sustain an ambitious young Myrcian knight’s interest for at least a month or two. But Alfred Estnor had spent six months traveling up the River Darunadi, stopping to tour every single fortress, blockhouse, or forest outpost on the Annenstruker side of the river.
His journal entries, which had begun with full diagrams and shorthand interviews with engineers and officers, were now reduced to a few spare lines recording the weather and the name of the closest town. He also had been keeping a running countdown to show how many days it would be until he could leave the Darunadi and return to Hovedby.
Sir Viktor Simonsen, his mother’s Annenstruker cousin, met him just south of the Pumeetnada River, as near to the northern edge of Annenstruker territory as one could possibly go.
“So, what have you learned so far?” Sir Viktor was a reserve colonel in the army engineering corps. He had been the one who had arranged for the long tour of the border forts, so Alfred didn’t want to be rude.
“I’ve learned a lot about how boats and land fortifications can work together for mutual support.”
He didn’t mention that he had learned this in the first month of the trip.
“Very good, very good,” said Sir Viktor, beaming. “Well, now it’s off to Hovedby. Fortifying a city is entirely different—entirely different! I think you’ll love the contrast!”
Sir Viktor took him west first, overland to the River Bewerian and the Myrcian border. They took boats where they could, and carriages where the river was too shallow. At Taftnes, where the Norden River flowed into the Bewerian, Cousin Viktor pulled some strings to let Alfred see the castle and the city walls.
“These are all well and good,” Viktor said with a twinkle in his eye, “but they’re nothing compared to Hovedby.”
When they reached the confluence of the Bewerian and the great River Trahern, they stopped to tour the huge Myrcian fortress of Broderick Fastenn, which had been built almost two hundred and fifty years earlier.
“The fortifications would have been stronger if they had employed Annenstruker engineers to help build them,” Viktor whispered to Alfred during the tour.
Alfred didn’t think it was likely anyone would have hired Annenstrukers, since the whole point of Broderick Fastenn was to protect Myrcia in case there was ever another war between Myrcia and Annenstruk. But he nodded and smiled, anyway.
After that, Alfred and Cousin Viktor took a barge nearly 300 miles down the Trahern to Pileborg, where they transferred to a different ship going up the Piletre River. And finally, after six weeks of travel, Alfred was in Hovedby, the wealthy, riotous, exciting capital of Annenstruk.
“You are here to learn,” Viktor said, “so of course I’ll try to spare you from all the parties and such at the castle.”
“Um...thanks,” said Alfred, who didn’t really think a few court parties would be all that bad.
But then Viktor introduced him to some of the officers of the castle garrison, and they adopted Alfred like a long-lost cousin of their own. And soon, Alfred didn’t have any choice at all in the matter. His new friends would turn up at his inn at all hours of the day and night and drag him out to parties, balls, and soirees of every kind. He went to theatrical premiers. He went to stag nights at the officers’ club. He attended charity balls for causes he didn’t even understand.
In theory, he was still studying fortifications and engineering, but those studies took up only an hour or two per day. The rest of the time, he was either sleeping off the excesses of the previous night, going to lunch with his new officer friends, getting fitted for new clothes, or going to parties.
Around the Solstice, at a huge party at the royal palace, one of his new friends, Lt. Solberg of the royal engineers, said he wanted to introduce Alfred to “an old friend of mine.”
Gently elbowing his way through a crowd of other officers, Solberg led Alfred up to a group of young women in bright silk dresses. The center of the group—and the center of all the male attention—was a pale-skinned, petite girl with bright blonde curls, almond-shaped green eyes, and a strangely knowing smile.
“Miss Borten,” said Solberg, “allow me to present Sir Alfred Estnor, visiting from Myrcia. Alfred, this is Miss Norah Borten.”
“From Myrcia?” The girl looked Alfred up and down. “I never would have known it. You look almost civilized, Sir Alfred.”
“Do I?” he said, to general amusement. Blushing, he added, “I’m trying my best.” That earned him even more laughter.
“You’re simply charming,” said Miss Borten. “I assume you want to dance. I assume you’ve learned how to dance, haven’t you?”
Alfred assured her that he had, and he led her through the crowd of nobles and knights and ladies to the dancefloor.
Up close, she was not nearly as pretty as some of the other girls in her little group. But she had a kind of presence about her that made people treat her as if she were a great beauty. Alfred could sense the other men watching her, and he could feel the envy of the ladies as Miss Borten swirled by them in her bright dress, giggling. He felt extraordinarily lucky to be her partner.
He danced with her twice more that evening, and sat with her at supper, and brought her drinks when she looked thirsty. That night, when he finally retired to his inn, he dreamed about her and the way she laughed.
Later that week, he saw her at the theater, and then again at a feast thrown by the colonel of Solberg’s engineering regiment. He danced with her and brought her drinks and sat hanging on her every word.
He asked her to go riding that Sunday morning, and she laughed. “If I am awake early enough, then yes, I would love to go riding with you.”
There was something quite severe and cold about her when they went riding, though. She had on a dark gray riding habit and kept frowning at everything along the path. He assumed she was still feeling poorly after the party, and asked if she wanted to postpone their ride until after lunch.
“No, there’s no point,” she sighed. “I’m thinking about how I’ll be leaving town for a few months. I have to go stay with some relations in the country.”
He expressed his dismay at this news.
“You know, you shouldn’t fall in love with me,” she said softly. “I’m not a very good girl, even when I try.”
She gave him the address where she would be staying, however, and she had barely left town when he started writing her letters nearly every day.
As it turned out, his time in Hovedby was coming to an end, as well. Sir Viktor, perhaps thinking that Alfred needed to apply himself a little more to his studies, announced that he had found “the most singular opportunity” for his cousin. One of the engineering companies that built, maintained, and operated the army’s huge Trollmet trebuchets was going to the countryside north of Hovedby to train new recruits.
In truth, this really was an amazing opportunity. Foreigners were almost never allowed to see the great trebuchets, except of course from the receiving end in time of war. Trollmet, or Trolldommen metallisk, to use its full name, was found nowhere else on earth except in the mines of Roligsby in Annenstruk. The strange reddish-bronze metal had magysk powers, and depending on how it was worked, it could be lighter, stronger, and more flexible than steel. Trollmet gave the Annenstrukers the most powerful catapults in the world, and Alfred was truly grateful for an opportunity to see how they worked.
Except, of course, that Norah Borten wasn’t writing back to him. Each day in the countryside, after dutifully working with the engineers, he raced to the nearest post town to see if there were any letters for him. He found messages from Sir Viktor at least once a week. And there were occasional notes from his parents and sister, as well. But nothing from Norah.
At the end of summer, he returned to Hovedby. But Norah wasn’t there, and Solberg’s regiment had moved on to a different assignment. The fancy parties seemed stale and boring now. In desperation, Alfred arranged to take lessons in physics and natural science from a professor at the university. Throwing himself into his work to forget his disappointment with Norah, he learned a great deal more about advanced mathematics in a few months than he had in four years at the Atherton School.
In the cold, wet days of autumn, the court and most of the “best” people left Hovedby to go hunting at their country estates. Sir Viktor took Alfred to a few shooting parties, but mostly, Alfred continued studying at the university. He walked around town, even in the rain, and made drawings of the towers and bastions of the city walls. When he saw that one of the towers of the great North Gate was being repaired, he befriended some of the stonemasons and gained some insight into how fortifications were actually built.
One night, as he happened to look back through his diary, he saw a mention of Norah, and he realized he had gone almost an entire week without thinking of her a single time.
After New Year’s, Sir Viktor announced that Alfred was becoming, “A bit too serious for his own good,” and said they were going to spend a couple months in the famous spa town of Sydensby. At first, Alfred actually resented the interruption of his studies, but after a day or two on the boat heading south, he realized he probably did need a bit of a break. His hair had grown wild, and he had a scraggly little beard that caused the captain’s wife to ask if he was a philosophy student. He got his hair cut and started shaving again immediately.
They arrived in Sydensby in mid-January to find the town packed full of people, “taking the waters.” Virtually the entire court was there, including King Galt V and Queen Margaret. Even so, in spite of the vast crowds, Alfred kept seeing people he knew from the previous summer. The very first time he and Viktor went to the baths, they ran into Lt. Solberg, who had taken leave from his regiment for the care of his weak lungs, or so he claimed.
In fact, Solberg seemed to be determined to spend as much time partying as he possibly could. Most of the city seemed to be of a similar mind, with the exception of a few elderly invalids who really had come to Sydensby for their health, and were an object of some curiosity to the rest of the visitors.
One day at the baths, Viktor introduced Alfred to a septuagenarian countess, whom he claimed was some distant relation. The old lady wanted to play cards, and Alfred politely agreed to join the game. The fourth was to be the countess’s granddaughter, and to Alfred’s shock, this turned out to be Norah Borten.
“Hello, Sir Alfred,” she said with a cheery smile. “It’s been too long.”
“Entirely too long,” he said, with a stiff, overly formal bow.
Through the whole game, he refused to speak directly to her. But she appeared to take no notice of this, doting over her “dear old grandmama” and flirting outrageously with Cousin Viktor. At last, when the countess announced she was tired and wanted to return to her inn, Viktor escorted her to her carriage, with Norah and Alfred following behind.
“You seem a bit distant,” Norah chided him.
“Do I? You never responded to a single one of my letters.”
“Oh, but there were so many,” she sighed. “And I told you before: I’m not a very good girl, even when I try. But we’re still going to have fun this winter, aren’t we? I’m having a party tomorrow at my inn, and I’d simply adore it if you could be there.”
He couldn’t say “no” to her. She simply had this manner that made her impossible to refuse, like she was the solution to some complex mathematical theorem, and to refuse her would only expose his ignorance of how the world worked.
The next day, he went to her party and discovered that she and her grandmother had rooms in entirely different wings of a large old inn. No one at the party was older than 25 or 26. Norah had a massive bar with a dozen whiskeys and two dozen wines, along with cold ham and chicken and a table of sugary pastries. She had also hired a small troupe of minstrels to play music. There was dancing and card playing and far, far too much drinking, until Alfred happened to look at the gilded clock over the mantel, and was shocked to see it was half an hour after midnight.
Thinking of how Viktor had wanted to go riding early the next morning, he went out to the hall and started trying to find his cloak among the piles of winter wear.
Norah intercepted him there and asked, “Are you really leaving so soon?”
“I suppose I could stay a little longer,” he offered.
“Good,” she said, moving closer. “Because I have something bad I need to try.” Then she went up on her toes and kissed him hard on the lips.
He kissed her back, though he could tell she knew what she was doing, and he didn’t. He had only kissed a couple girls at Atherton, and those had been quick, relatively chaste kisses compared to this one. She dragged him into a darkened, disused parlor, where they kissed again, and their hands began to wander.
Abruptly, she pulled away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. He wondered if he had been too forward, and quickly apologized.
“No, it’s not you,” she said. “You’re going to hate me, but I simply had to do that. And now I’m going to be leaving in a few days.”
“What? Are you serious? Where are you going?”
“My grandmama is finished with her ‘cure’ here. She wants to go home, and she wants to stop in with some friends along the way. Don’t worry—they will probably all be just as ancient as she is, if not even older.” She stroked his cheek with her fingertips. “I’m trying very hard to be good, Alfred.”
“When do you leave?” he asked.
“On Monday.”
It was Friday night, or rather Saturday morning.
Alfred left the party, feeling despondent. But he saw her at the baths the next afternoon, and at the levee in the evening. They danced together, but there was no repeat of the kiss, obviously, since they were in public.
On Sunday, they were supposed to go riding together, and he had visions of taking her to some secluded glade in the woods, where they could kiss all they wanted. But Norah’s “grandmama” wanted to ride, too, so the three of them ended up taking a carriage along one of the canals outside of town. It was fun, after a fashion, but it was not the fun he had envisioned.
He retired early that evening—earlier even than Viktor, who went to a play with some old army friends and their wives. As he lay in bed, despairing over the injustice of life, he heard the click of a lock, and he looked up to see a hidden servants’ door open next to his fireplace. He was about to tell the housemaid to go away, because he had enough towels, thank you very much. But then he took a second look, and she dropped her cloak, and he recognized Norah.
“What in the Void are you doing here?” he gasped.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said, “and there’s something else I want to do. Something that’s very, very bad indeed.” She unlaced her bodice and crawled into bed next to him.
She started removing his clothes, kissing his neck and chest. He tried to finish undressing her, but he mostly got in her way. Soon, though, she was entirely naked and pressed against him.
“Are you...are you really sure about this?” he gasped, as she climbed on top of him.
“I’m not going to lie,” she said softly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. But then, you know I’m not a very good girl, even when I try.”
He wanted her to stay all night, but she slipped away after barely an hour, leaving him feeling spent and heartsick and exhilarated all at the same time. He never managed to get to sleep that night, but instead he stayed awake, drinking fortified wine and reveling in what he had just done with her.
Sometime around dawn, he came to the conclusion that they had to get married. As a gentleman, it was his duty to offer, since he had taken her.... Well, apparently he hadn’t, but the principle was still the same. He had to make the offer. And the more he thought of it, the more he felt, instinctively, that she would be the finest wife and partner a man could ever have.
He jumped out of bed, dressed quickly, and ran to her inn, only to discover that she and her grandmother had left an hour earlier on a barge heading north. He thought about following her, but he knew Sir Viktor would be annoyed if he simply disappeared. So he went back to his inn and drank half a bottle of wine for breakfast.
The rest of his visit to Sydensby seemed pale and lifeless compared to those first few days. Sir Viktor introduced him to all sorts of nobles, including some very eligible young ladies. Through Lt. Solberg, he met other girls, some of whom had no qualms about making their desires clear. But Alfred ignored them all. He managed to find the address of Norah’s grandmother, and sent a number of letters there. But to his shock, they were returned a few weeks later, unopened.
At last, with the Sydensby “season” coming to a close, he and Viktor left the resort town and headed north again. Viktor had pulled some strings with high-ranking friends in the government, and he had gotten permission for Alfred to visit the mines of Roligsby, where the Annenstrukers obtained the Trollmet for their weaponry.
Alfred knew he ought to have found it all fascinating, but his time in Roligsby was pure torture. The mines were hot and dark and dangerous. The huge smelters on the shore of the lake belched out soot and ash, covering everything in town with a fine layer of reddish dust. His eyes watered constantly, and he couldn’t stop sneezing. He knew this was an opportunity that few Myrcians had ever been offered, but all he wanted to do was leave.
He wanted to find Norah and tell her that he loved her. He wanted to ask her to marry him.
In June, Viktor finally came to fetch him, and Alfred felt as if he was being released from prison. They went to Hovedby, where Alfred was to resume his private studies with the university professor, focusing now on the science of metallurgy. He didn’t really care about that, however. He just wanted to see Norah again.
But he couldn’t find her. She wasn’t at any of the parties he attended during his first weeks in town. When he asked people if they had heard anything about her, they shrugged and looked away, as if they had never heard of her.
One Saturday night, Viktor took Alfred to a ball at the palace. They saw a great many people they knew from Sydensby, which was pleasant. But Alfred was still scanning the faces of all the ladies for the one he most wanted to see.
A baroness who had been staying at the same inn back in Sydensby took charge of Alfred, introducing him to a parade of pretty girls. But he didn’t care.
Then suddenly the baroness said, “Oh, do you know the new Viscountess of Bergfalk?”
“I don’t believe I do,” said Alfred, still only half paying attention as he looked around the room.
“Well, she’s just back from her honeymoon. Here she is.”
Alfred looked around to see Norah. His Norah. In silk and furs and a little tiara with diamonds and a ruby necklace.
Her smile nearly faded, but she rallied herself and said, “Oh, Sir Alfred. How good to see you.”
He bowed. “Lady...Lady Bergfalk. What a...surprise.” He was saved from having to say more when the music started for the first dance, and someone else—possibly her husband—swooped down to take her to the dancefloor.
Alfred didn’t ask anyone to dance. He went and found a quiet corner, half-hidden by a potted fern, and drank several glasses of wine in quick succession.
She found him there an hour later. “You must think the most horrid things about me,” she said.
“I’m not sure what to think, Norah.”
“I honestly didn’t know my grandmama had this match in mind when she took me to Svartstein—that’s my husband’s estate.”
“Are you happy?” he asked.
“It’s not a matter of being happy or not,” she said. “It’s a matter of being a viscountess. I’m afraid I have a weakness for titles. What can I say? I told you when we first met that I’m not a good girl, even when I try.”
“I know.” He stood and turned away, heading for the door. “I just wish you had tried a little harder.”