The morning sun seeped through the castle windows in long, pale ribbons, catching the fine dust that drifted lazily through the air and laying gold across the cold stone floors. It was the first proper morning of spring. Even inside the palace walls the change announced itself in the quality of the light, in the faint warmth carried on the air where weeks prior there had been only cold, in the particular restlessness of a building that had held its breath through winter and was only now beginning to exhale.
Outside, the city moved with the full, bustling energy of a territory restored to its strength. Many demons had emerged from hibernation in the days prior, shaking off the long stillness and returning to their posts with the focused purpose of people who had rested long and were ready to work. The streets and courtyards of Valekor hummed with activity, voices and footsteps and the sounds of work resuming in earnest. Among the many things now underway, one matter moved through conversations across the estate with particular weight. Preparations for next year's great hunt had already begun.
"Arden, what is this great hunt?"
Andreas walked beside his butler through the corridor, small hands occasionally trailing along the stone wall beside him, dark eyes moving over everything with the quiet thoroughness of a child who files away whatever he sees for later consideration. He had heard the phrase pass between servants twice already that morning and had been turning it over ever since, waiting for the right moment to ask.
"Every ten years, young Master, the monster population dwelling within the great forest nearly quadruples in perceived threat — sometimes considerably more," Arden said, settling into the measured and unhurried cadence he reserved for explanation, the voice of a man who has answered ten thousand questions and found genuine pleasure in every one of them. "The monsters driven out of the great forest by competition among their own kind spill outward into our territories and into the human territories on the other side. Rather than wait to be set upon, we ride out to meet them. We hunt them, so that we are not the ones being hunted."
Andreas stopped walking. He stood completely still for a full minute, staring at nothing in particular, thinking with the focused intensity of someone pulling a thread and following where it leads.
"Why do they increase so much?"
"It would be more precise to say, young Master, that they do not so much increase as reveal themselves. The child beasts, those too small and too weak to be counted among any threat, finally grow to adulthood. Truthfully, were one to count every creature in the forest before the great hunt and then again a year after, the numbers would not differ so greatly. The apparent surge exists only because we do not count the weak offspring while they are weak. When at last they reach adulthood, we count them, and the numbers seem to us a sudden and alarming thing."
"Then why don't we hunt them while they are weak?"
"Because we are not the aggressors, young Master, but the defenders. The great forest is not our domain. Were we to venture inside it with the intent to hunt rather than to stand at our own borders and defend, we would be annihilated to the last."
Andreas thought about it again, that same still, inward expression settling over his face.
"Then how can we win when defending but not when attacking?"
"Because to defend behind fortified walls and prepared positions demands a fraction of the strength that open assault requires. To march into the great forest and emerge victorious, we would require at minimum five times our current military strength, young Master, and that estimate accounts only for those creatures driven out by competition, the weakest among them, those who trouble our borders. To contend with the full population of the great forest, those who have never been driven out because nothing within it can drive them out, we would require more than twenty times our current power before such an undertaking could even be seriously considered."
Andreas thought about this for a long time. There were moments where something else seemed ready to surface, a different question forming and rising behind his eyes, but each time he gave his head a small, firm shake and pressed it back down, staying with the thread he was already pulling until he had followed it all the way to its end. Arden walked slowly beside him and said nothing and waited, as he always waited, with the patience of a man who has learned that the best thing one can do for a thinking mind is leave it alone.
After nearly ten minutes, something in Andreas's expression settled. The thread had reached its end.
"Thanks Arden, I understand."
"I am most glad to have been of assistance, young Master."
Andreas continued his tour through the palace. It was a thing he did most mornings, this wandering, and it rarely looked the same twice because his attention caught on different things each time. There were moments when he saw something unfamiliar being carried down a corridor, or heard an exchange between servants that contained a word he didn't recognize, or noticed something about the architecture of a room that struck him as worth understanding, and each time he would ask Arden about it and Arden would answer fully and completely. He was well accustomed to this rhythm. He had raised the current lord in much the same fashion, question by question through these same corridors, and had come to believe that there was no finer education available to any child than a patient ear and an honest answer.
As they passed through one of the main corridors, a pair of maids caught sight of them approaching and their faces warmed immediately. They greeted Andreas with genuine kindness, heads inclined, small smiles offered freely and without reservation. Andreas returned the greeting with the bright, uncomplicated openness of a child who has not yet learned to be careful with his warmth, who gives it the way children give everything, without accounting for it first.
Further along the same corridor, another group of maids caught sight of them. Several averted their eyes. They found reasons to look at the floor, at the walls, at the linens folded over their arms, at anything that was not the young master walking toward them. The warmth that the first pair had offered so easily was simply absent, and in its place was a careful, deliberate looking away.
It was not subtle. Andreas noticed. He noticed most things.
"Arden, why do those maids avert their eyes while the ones before didn't?"
Arden was silent for a moment. Not because he lacked an answer, but precisely because he possessed one, and the possession of it sat uneasily in him.
"They must be nervous, young Master."
"Why would they be nervous?"
"There are any number of reasons that might account for it. Perhaps they have been neglecting their duties and have no wish to draw attention to themselves. Perhaps some private embarrassment weighs on them. Perhaps they were simply startled by our approach and did not compose themselves in time."
Andreas stopped. He thought about it again, that familiar stillness descending, his eyes going to the middle distance where the answers to things apparently lived.
"Hmm."
Arden watched him. He could feel the shape of the next question already, the way it was forming, the direction it was moving. He did not want to answer it. Not today, not on the first morning of spring, not while Andreas still had that particular quality of light in his face that appeared less and less often as the months passed and that Arden had quietly, privately, begun to treasure each time he saw it.
"How about we train our spearmanship today, young Master?"
The effect was instant. The contemplation dissolved entirely, replaced by the bright and uncomplicated excitement that still lived close to Andreas's surface in those days, easy to reach, easy to ignite, filling his whole face at once.
"Quickly, let's go to the training grounds then!" He was already moving, already several steps ahead, small feet carrying him down the corridor at a run, the unanswered question left behind him like something set down and forgotten.
Arden followed at his customary unhurried pace, hands clasped behind his back, watching the young master run ahead through the mor
ning light.
He did not want to answer that question.
Not yet.