Noble Beginnings (5 page)

"All right..." he said slowly. He hadn't
suspected that Myriel was more than a servant, albeit a very
reliable and talented one.

She shook her head at him. "I hope it's not
her station that's making you reluctant. You have friends in the
barracks, don't you?"

Dorran was too busy processing this to be
offended at her assumption. "Of course, but I barely understand
politics myself. It's not like I would ask them about it."

She shrugged. "Well, trust me you're going to
need every ally you can get." The words were cryptic, and her eyes
were more so; they gave away nothing he could make out. "Talk to
Myriel, brother. I'll arrange to have her take over some of your
duties so you have an excuse to spend time with her."

Then she turned and disappeared, leaving
Dorran to stare blankly at the wall, wondering about the
significance of what had just happened.

CHAPTER V

Having Myriel assigned to his chambers turned
out to be an anticlimactic change. At first it felt a bit strange
to talk to her, given her connection to the scolding he received
the previous day, but she was so even keeled that he found himself
overcoming the residual embarrassment quickly.

She arrived at various times at least once a
day to tidy up and bring meals or messages, but she remained silent
unless he brought up a topic of conversation. These conversations
were a bit awkward at first and incredibly short. As he got used to
coaxing Myriel into talking. Her responses were so polite and bland
he wondered whether she was even aware of the reason she'd been
sent to work for him.

At first, he tried to convince her to open up
by asking her about her own life. "When did you come to the
castle?" he asked, figuring it would be good to know more about
her.

"When I was five or six. I was raised by the
kitchen servants," Myriel answered efficiently as she folded down
the duvet on his bed and straightened the hangings on the canopy.
"I don't remember living anywhere other than the castle."

"I see..." Dorran said. "Do you have any
plans for the future?"

"I suspect I'll continue serving here, my
lord," she said firmly, tugging at one of his pillows before
getting up and smiling politely at him. "The Duchess is kind and
generous to those in her employ, and I cannot think of anywhere
else I'd rather be." From most people that line would have been an
indication of a boring person, but Myriel said it honestly and with
a surprising amount of vigor. Dorran was a bit taken aback at the
time.

Even after such questions as these, though,
she would return quietly to her tasks as soon as she sensed he had
run out of ideas of what to say to her. He had the feeling he
should try a different approach. He tried idle observations and
even questions about irrelevant topics like music or plays, but
these topics yielded the same result: responses that were short and
to the point, with no indication of being relevant to affairs in
the castle.

Finally, he decided to take the direct
approach and simply ask her.

"Myriel," he asked on the fourth morning she
arrived, "I'm running out of ideas on how to improve my knowledge
on affairs of state...do you happen to have any ideas?"

She answered him as promptly as ever, but
instead of a polite answer, he got a polite question. "What sort of
things do you want to learn, my lord?"

"Well..." he thought it over, remembering the
topics he'd felt particularly ill-prepared for. "Local politics,
agriculture...and maybe history would be good places to start."

She looked thoughtful for a moment as she
considered his question. "I believe there are several books like
that in the Duchess's private library," she answered, as she took a
rag from a large pocket and starting in on dusting the vases on the
mantelpiece. "I've only seen the titles briefly myself, but as her
son, I'm sure you'd have permission to peruse them. Have you taken
a look at any?"

It was only the lightness of her tone that
stopped him from feeling frustrated and rebuked. When she said it
like that, it seemed odd that he hadn't thought of something like
that before.

"You're right," he said pleasantly, "that's a
good idea. Thanks, Myriel."

She smiled at him over her shoulder, still
dusting. "My pleasure, my lord."

After that, he took to asking Myriel's advice
whenever he got the chance. It was awkward at first, both for him
and from what he could tell for her as well, but her responses
slowly got more detailed and open-ended, and he soon started
learning to ask better questions.

He took to going to the Duchess's library for
an hour or two a day; as Myriel had expected, he had full access as
her son. When the guards had come to perform their evening rounds,
they had been perfectly cordial when they found him starting to nod
off over a book on agriculture. Dorran took to bringing a volume or
two back to his room at a time, and would occasionally discuss
their content with Myriel. She claimed that she had never spent
much time reading, but she always seemed to know far more about
anything he decided to study than he could learn from a simple
book. He didn’t want to admit it to himself but he always felt as
though he had a more solid grip of the material after discussing it
with her.

He also found himself enjoying her company
for other reasons. For instance, he hadn't realized quite how
annoying some of the female servants were at first, but it had
slowly dawned on him exactly how many of them were trying out their
feminine wiles on him. It was quiet and subtle but the more he paid
attention the more obvious it was. Thea demanded decorum among her
personal attendants but; like most rules they could be pushed to
the edge of breaking as long as you were careful. He could still
feel some of them watching him out of the corners of their eyes,
smiling winningly at him and throwing him charming looks whenever
they could. He often couldn't tell whether it was ambition or the
shortage of young men in the area around the castle that drove
them, though he suspected the latter. Either way the more aware he
became of the fact the more uncomfortable they made him feel.

He was used to the women from the barracks
they were generally more interested in their fighting skills than
anything else, though they would complain amongst themselves about
the lack of proper males without caring if they were overheard. It
was a little off-putting from time to time, but in the end it
wasn't too hard for him to accept that they would want to talk
about something that was troubling them. He'd even had courted one
or two of them when he was younger, before considerations of what
they might do to him if he slighted them not to mention a quiet but
firm lecture from Adhara and a few disapproving looks from Edith
had convinced him that it might be wise to back off. Still, at
least he knew that those women respected him as a fighter, that
they didn't see him as little more than a means to their
advancement in power.

Men were a rare commodity in Farlan, and
every male he knew had his own way of dealing with that. He thought
briefly of Marcus, and wondered how many years it would be before
the kid was the cause of his own bout of rumors. Then again, maybe
Marcus would be smart and learn to keep his head down quickly, as
Dorran almost hadn't.

He found himself asking Myriel one morning
what she thought of some of the other servants; her responses were
diplomatic, but she didn't sound as though she were very close to
them. From there, though, the topic somehow shifted to women, and
Dorran found himself explaining the way he felt around women. "Do
you think I'm shy?" he asked.

She didn't look up from the area of the floor
she was sweeping; in the corner some rags and a bucket waited for
her to finish this task. "I don't know if 'shy' is the correct
word," she said diplomatically.

"Really? What would you call it, then?"

She cocked her head slightly to the side and
gave him a wry grin. "Call what?"

"The way I feel around women."

"You feel that they want something from you."
She bent down with a dustpan and took the broom near the neck,
sweeping dust and stray hairs into it. "Feeling nervous around
people like that isn't shyness, it is simply having good
sense."

When he didn't answer right away, she smiled
up at him briefly, then continued with her dusting. "So...I guess,"
He considered, "by that argument, I should feel nervous around
every single person in the duchy.”."

"That doesn't sound wrong," Myriel agreed.
She carried the dustpan over to the balcony, balancing it
carefully, and then tilted it out the half-open window, letting the
contents fall to the cobblestones below.

"So, then...maybe the noblewomen won't be as
intimidating when I actually know what they're talking about." He
sighed, looking over at the stack of books at the foot of his bed.
"I don't know how many years they spent learning all of this,
though."

Myriel continued cleaning the floor in
silence, and since Dorran didn't ask her a question, he readied
himself for their conversation to die out. But instead,, she
unexpectedly asked, "Did you not study all of this before?"

He'd gotten so used to Myriel's innocent tone
by now that the sting against his pride he would have felt had
someone else asked him this question was entirely absent. He
repeated his story of his father's final advice to heed his mother,
and his grandfather's reinforcement of the same statement. "It made
me think that all I had to do was follow my mother's orders and
keep my ears open for advice. Now, though...I'm beginning to think
that I was very wrong about that."

"I don't know," she said mildly, walking to
the corner to fetch the bucket. "It's obvious that you are
extremely loyal...but doesn't that just make you a good son?"

"Maybe," he replied, frowning. "But I
shouldn't ignore the fact that up until now, I've only been
training myself to be a good soldier."

Myriel gave him a look that he would almost
call approving as she rolled up her sleeves. "I'm sure your mother
will only approve of your dedication," she said.

"Maybe." He stood then, waiting to catch her
eye before smiling at her. "Want a hand?"

She blinked at him. "What?"

"A hand, with the floor. I've done this at
the barracks before, and even with a full team of people working
together, it's quite the chore." He pulled off his boots and socks,
pushing them under the bed. "My room is smaller, but it's still a
lot for one person by herself." He walked over and held out a hand
for one of the cloths. "May I?"

Her dark eyes searched his for a long moment,
and he did his best to meet her gaze unflinchingly. Then she
smiled, looking away, and handed a cloth over. "Try not to get your
breeches wet, my lord" she replied seriously. Dorran could feel her
eyes on him as he made his way over to the bucket with the cleaning
cloths in it and he could have sworn a small smile crept onto her
stoic face.

He took the still-dripping cloth and wrung it
over the bucket before kneeling on the other end of the room to
begin. As a noble he never had been forced to work they had
servants to do all the cleaning work but he had often taken the
chore on himself as a way to strengthen himself as well as perform
a useful action. Out of everything he had done to try and get
closer to Myriel the simple action of helping her with her work had
been his biggest success.

CHAPTER VI

As time passed Dorran found himself finally
starting to grow comfortable with the councils. Although he still
didn't understand the finer points of what was being discussed he
was not as lost as he had been only a short time beforehand. He
knew he still had a long way to go, but at least his improvement
was noticeable. He caught his family's eyes on him frequently,
though he wasn't sure what they thought of him, he knew it couldn’t
have been as bad as it had been at first.

When Thea occasionally detained him to ask
his opinions on various matters of state, he was able to give a
more detailed answer every time. His conversations with Myriel
definitely helped with this, since she could round out what his
mother's book said with knowledge of current events and common
opinions among the nobles. He found himself wondering how she knew
all that she did, but valued the information too highly to be
willing to pry and risk the fragile relationship they had
built.

With his education progressing and his
mother's permission, Dorran slowly began increasing the amount of
time he spent in the barracks. Several weeks after they had last
spoken, he came across Edith in the training hall, fighting
one-on-one with the best peers in the group. He was more than a
little surprised to see that she held her own admirably, fighting
two or three of them at once. He watched her for a while before
joining the group. She looked tired, with sweat beading on her
forehead but she continued to push herself and was fighting harder
than ever.

"Edith," he called as she rounded up a
simulated charge, neatly disarming her final opponent and touching
her blade to his chest to signify his death. "Mind if I join the
next run?"

"Not at all," she said, running a hand
through her matted hair to push it out of her face. "How does a
four-on-one melee sound? Take your pick of teammates."

Dorran stared to argue but decided against it
and instead he called for Marcus and Iain and gestured for Kell to
join in as well. The three of them came over and listened as he
outlined the strategy for the battle. He had wanted to fight Edith
head-on, but this was an important exercise as well and one he did
not plan on losing.

"All right, here's how this will work," he
said. "Iain, Kell, you two try working together. I want you working
as a unit or not at all. Kell, that means protecting Iain from
hits, and Iain, that means focusing as much on Kell as on the
enemy. It'll be an exercise in following another fighter's
lead."