“Alright, so tell me what you’ve learned,” I ordered, and picked up my wine goblet. The tavern we were at was a lovely thing. Something like a cabaret diner, three stories tall and overlooking the sea. It had a circuitous nature to it, some floors stolen from the adjoining buildings and doors cut through them with bridges. A splendid mess of construction if I ever had seen one. And that meant hardly anyone could ever look at us.

Not that there was anything wrong with a nobleman dining before setting sail, or of a southern lord meeting with one of the king’s engineers.

Lucius swirled his goblet. It was his second, and I think bits of cork had fallen in. In a way, it mirrored life. A wonderful thing to indulge, if you don’t mind the unpleasantness. “It’s easy to be a spectacle when nothing is happening, and that a good spectacle makes as many enemies as it makes friends.”

I nodded. “The trick is befriending the people who matter.”

“I hope I did.”

“Perhaps you did. Time will tell. I’ll see what I can do to help the fortunes of those favorable to you.”

“And those like the prince?”

I grinned a toothy grin. Lucius tried to grin back at me, but he was young. He didn’t have the experience to give him confidence like I had. Then I had to wait, because our meal was brought out. A wonderful platter of roast duck over a bed of mirepoix. We each grabbed a leg and twisted, shredding the savory limbs off. It was a bit light on the salt as I recall, but heavy on the butter. After feasting with the king, Lucius was respectful enough to push over the rest of the bird to me.

“Managing the islands will be more a feat in governing than in soldiering,” I said, one cheek full. “However, it is a rich colony clogged up with quasi-rebellions and insubordination that has choked out the revenue. The king has asked you to untie a knot that you can cut through with a sword.”

He swallowed. “Unless Aillesterra attacks.”

“If they do, you should rejoice, because you’ll become even more famous for fending them off.”

“If I can.”

“You must.”

“I’d need reinforcements.”

“There’s always mercenaries.”

“You can’t trust mercenaries.”

“You can, if you use them right. Vassermark will be in no position to help you, come springtime. What choice will you have?”

“Retreat?” He offered, and gave a dry grin that he washed down with the last of his wine.

“How is your handwriting?”

“My what?”

“Your ability to write letters. That’s what will matter most, your reports to the king.”

He frowned, as if I didn’t know he wrote and destroyed letters back to his parents. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“If it’s no good, get that redhead to take them down for you. Remember, everything is a success. Slay more enemies than exist, reinvest money you don’t have, and hide your defeats.”

He didn’t listen to me. The moment I said redhead, his mind was gone. He rose and tossed some coins on the table for the meal. “Look forward to hearing from me,” he said, and bolted from the table.

His ship wasn’t set to depart until the next day, but the crew was already stocking it with provisions at the king’s order. Not as fast as Captain Bodin’s ship, but larger. Everyone in his entourage would have a room this time, and he had realized that he needed to not have his to himself.

He needed to share it.

From my perspective, this wasn’t just about him becoming that much more of a man, but it was an indication of prowess. He was young. He was leading grown men into battle. They gave him leeway for his noble status, taken as it was, but would only extend that leeway so far. The worst possible thing would be if someone spread a rumor that he was incapable of getting a lowborn girl he desired.

A cuckold can’t lead an army.

I don’t think his mind was able to go that far ahead at the time. Such thoughts were my concern, not his, and they weren’t even concerns I voiced to him. Telling someone about a manly image they need to inculcate just causes stress. Teaching a boy what it is to be manly is much better for everyone involved.

He made it one step out the door of the restaurant before he spun about. He purchased a bottle of wine from them and proceeded on. Along the way, he tried to stop at a certain food stall, the one which had been frying the strings of honey the day of their arrival. He did find it, but boarded up and locked down. No fire, no sizzling oil, no way to bribe Aisha’s stomach but with the wine.

One hand empty, he returned to the seaside inn charged with putting them up the night before departure. It was almost a castle unto itself, with stone walls and plentiful guards, and a little tower garden where he found Aisha alone. The northern climate had prompted her to change to the local fashion, garbing herself in a woolen dress that clung to her chest and hips such that he forgot what he had been planning to say.

“You’re back already?” she asked.

“It was hardly important.”

“And sleeping before the trip is?”

He grinned and held up the bottle. “I might not have been planning to sleep either. Care for a drink?”

She hesitated, then smiled. Her lips took on a gentle curve he could barely look away from. “With my hero? Defending my honor by beating up the crown prince? Only if you stop stooping.”

“For you, I’ll stand up right…”

Both of them blushed and laughed. In a moment he had pried the cork free. He looked around for cups, but she just took the bottle and drank from it. With a gesture to the other seat at the edge of the balcony garden, he joined her. She passed the bottle back and he drank enough to strengthen his courage.

“So…” he said.

“So,” she repeated back.

“Us.” As though there were someone spying upon the two of them.

“Yes?” Aisha leaned on the table, bringing herself close enough they could smell the wine on one another’s breath.

“Well, I’m rather certain that… you’ve been implying things without using your words.”

She smiled and laughed. She teetered the wine bottle as she batted eyelashes at him, and said, “You’re not sounding like yourself, Lucius. You’re all tongue-tied.”

“Funny how you do that to me, isn’t it?” He grabbed the wine and took another bracing finger of it. It hardly helped. The alcohol could hardly compare to what she was doing to his insides.

She huffed playfully and turned up a hand. “And yet you were all prince charming for some other girl you’d never met before.”

“Oh, come on. You know that was nothing about her.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

The hero of Rackvidd shook his head and settled into his chair. “Well then, let me make it up to you.” The liquid courage was warming his belly, at least giving the illusion of strength.

“And how are you going to do that?”

“Don’t come south with me as my… diplomatic ward.” Even to him the words sounded crude and ugly and unromantic.

Aisha laughed. “Is that what you call what I’ve been so far?”

“Come as my woman.”

“Your woman?” She twisted the word in her mouth, pouting at him but with a smirk.

He grinned. “Yes, as mine.”

“Well, that’s a little chauva–”

Lucius didn’t let her finish her playful jibe because he leaned across the table and stole her lips with his own. They lost balance, knocking the table over as they grabbed onto one another. The wine spilled, tumbling across the ground as they got to their feet. They embraced, body to body, arms around one another.

And so, I won a bet with Dr. Samson over how long their will-they-won’t-they phase would last. He should have never doubted how well I knew my own pupil. I, however, will not be detailing anything behind closed doors. I will of course chronicle the births of his various children, so I leave it to you, the reader, to deduce the coupling. You may look forward to the third act of this epic, which will quickly gallop across several months wherein Lucius was very busy with the mundane affairs of learning just how dire the situation was in the Misty Isles before bringing it all to a head.