Chapter 6: Dinner
"Then teach me now!"
Lakyus scrambled to her feet and snatched up the wooden sword. "Teach me how to hit onii-chan!"
Lucian listened to his sister's declaration and felt something vaguely wrong about the situation.
He had no time to think it through. His sister had already hauled him to his feet.
"All right. First tell me: when you charged at me just now, what were you thinking about?"
Lakyus thought it over, raised her sword, and demonstrated. "Just... just like this."
"Did you think about which way I might dodge?"
Lakyus shook her head.
"Did you think about what your next strike would be if I blocked?"
Lakyus kept shaking her head.
Lucian nodded and walked over to her. He took hold of her sword hand and adjusted the angle.
"Now think," he said. "If you were me, how would you dodge that last strike?"
Lakyus paused. Then she looked down at the sword in her hands with genuine focus.
The afternoon sun was warm on both of them, pulling two long shadows out across the grass behind them.
* * *
By the time evening came, Lakyus was finally tired.
She sat in the grass with her face turned up toward the sunset. The orange-red light settled across her features and colored them warm.
"Onii-chan," she said, out of nowhere.
"Mm?"
"Do you think a knight can protect everyone?"
Lucian was gathering up the two wooden swords. His hands slowed at her words.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because in Cecilia-sensei's story, the Silver-White Knight couldn't even protect himself." Her voice was quiet. "He died. But the people I want to protect, I don't want them to die."
Lucian was silent for a moment.
He finished putting the swords away, walked back, and sat down beside her in the grass.
"A knight can't protect everyone," he said.
Lakyus turned to look at him. There was a small confusion in her eyes, and something that might have been disappointment.
"But," Lucian went on. "Protect as many as you can. For as long as you can."
He looked at the band of color along the horizon. His voice was even.
Lakyus watched him for a moment.
Then she smiled.
"Then I want to protect onii-chan."
Lucian blinked.
"And Father, and Mother, and Cecilia-sensei, and... and so many other people." Lakyus counted on her fingers, ran out of fingers before she ran out of names, and gave up entirely. "Everyone. I'll protect all of them."
Lucian looked at that earnest little face and found he had nothing to say.
"Young Master Lucian, Lady Lakyus. Dinner is served." The butler Aldred arrived at exactly the right moment.
Aldred had been with the estate for nearly thirty years, through the old Count's era and on into the present. He was approaching fifty now, and his hair had gone white at the temples, but his back was as straight as it had ever been. His deep grey tailcoat held not a single crease. The face time had carved deeply always wore a smile calibrated to exactly the right degree: warm enough that no one felt kept at arm's length, restrained enough that no one could accuse him of overstepping.
"Coming!" Lakyus sprang up from the grass, seized Lucian's hand, and broke into a run. "Hurry, hurry, I'm hungry!"
Lucian was pulled along, his pace quickening whether he'd intended it to or not.
* * *
The Aindra dining room was not large, but it was precise in all the ways that old-money nobility valued.
A long table beneath white linen. A silver candelabra set with six slender tapers, their flames warm and steady, filling the room with soft light. On the wall hung a tapestry worked with the family crest: an upright black sword, long-hilted, and beneath it an inscription in an old tongue: "Steadfast as Stone."
Father was already at the head of the table.
Alvis Saric Dale Aindra, Count of the Re-Estize Kingdom, was approaching forty but still carried the straight-backed bearing of his younger years. His hair was a shade deeper than Lucian's gold, combed with precise care. His features shared perhaps seven parts in ten with Lucian's, the same lines but set with an adult's composure and a sharper edge to them.
He was reading a thin document, brow very slightly furrowed.
Mother sat to his right. When she saw the two children come in, a gentle smile rose to her face.
Eleonora Alvein Aindra had been, before her marriage, the eldest daughter of the Alvein Viscountcy. None of the overbearing quality that so many of the capital's noble ladies seemed to cultivate. Her expression always carried something quietly reassuring. Light brown hair pinned in an elegant twist, a simple pearl ornament at her temple.
"You've been running in this heat." She spoke softly and beckoned to Lakyus. "Come here. Let me get that."
Lakyus padded over obediently and tilted her face up while her mother worked at the sweat on her forehead with a handkerchief. Those pale green eyes narrowed with contentment, like a cat being stroked exactly right.
Lucian went to his chair and sat down. He gave his father a small nod.
"Father."
The Count made a sound of acknowledgment and looked up from the document, his gaze settling briefly on Lucian.
"What have you been doing today?"
"Lessons this morning. This afternoon I sparred with Lakyus."
The Count's gaze rested for a moment on that face: young, but carrying a composure that had no business being there at six years old. There were times he wondered whether his eldest son's eyes held more in them than his own. He didn't press it.
"How did she do?" he asked.
"Lakyus has real talent," Lucian said. "Give it a few years and she may well have me beaten."
"Really, really?" Lakyus had just finished being dried off and immediately leaned in. "Onii-chan says I have talent!"
Their mother pressed her shoulders gently, prompting her to settle. Lakyus remembered herself and sat down in her place beside Lucian.
The servants began to bring the dishes.
Roast chicken, golden and crisp. Braised meat in a deep, rich sauce. White bread fresh from the oven. A plate of sliced seasonal fruit. Every dish arrived in polished silver serving ware, set down without a sound.
Lucian looked at the food in front of him and thought, without meaning to, of his previous life: dry bread and nutritional supplements, every spare coin rationed into YGGDRASIL.
Rotten feudal aristocracy. He bit into the roasted chicken with feeling.
Lakyus had already forgotten the conversation in the garden entirely and was applying herself to the braised meat with full concentration. Her cheeks were puffed out, small sounds of satisfaction escaping at intervals.
Their mother watched her with undisguised warmth.
"Slow down."
"Mm-mm."
Lucian ate his own portion, considerably more quietly.
The Count cut his meat, let his gaze pass between the two children, and settled it on Lucian.
"Lucian."
"Yes."
"You spent the whole afternoon on Lakyus's training?"
"Yes."
The Count nodded and was quiet for a few seconds.
"Good," he said, in the same even tone he used for most things. "Don't let your own studies slip. Cecilia tells me you have no aptitude for magic, so put the work into swordsmanship. The Aindra family doesn't need an heir who spends his time playing."
Lucian lowered his eyes.
"Yes, Father."
"One more thing." The Count paused. "Have you been reading any unusual books recently?"
Something tightened briefly inside Lucian.
His face gave nothing away.
"What books?"
The Count watched him, a faint evaluative quality in his gaze. "Aldred mentioned you'd had a number of historical texts brought out. Those are rather beyond your years."
Lucian breathed out quietly.
So that was what this was.
He poked at the chicken on his plate. And then it occurred to him: he hadn't actually been reading anything suspicious this life. So where exactly had that guilty reflex come from?
He worked it out quietly: residual damage, most likely, from the time his mother in a previous life had caught him sneaking late-night gaming sessions he wasn't supposed to be having. Some things survived transmigration, apparently.
"Those books," he said, picking his words carefully. "I only wanted to understand some of the Kingdom's past conflicts."
"Oh?" The Count raised an eyebrow. "And what did you make of them?"
"I learned..." Lucian paused, then said, quite seriously: "That when fighting, you have to make sure no third party can get at you from the side."
The dining room went quiet for a moment.
The Count's hands paused on his cutlery. Something shifted almost imperceptibly in the look he turned on Lucian.
Their mother covered her mouth, a quiet laugh escaping.
Lakyus hadn't followed any of it but nodded vigorously in support. "Onii-chan is right!"
The Count was quiet for a few seconds. He set down his cutlery and touched the napkin to the corner of his mouth.
"Seeing that at six," he said, his tone still perfectly level, though something at the corner of his eyes may have shifted very slightly, "I suppose you weren't reading anything strange after all."
Lucian: "..."
There was something odd about the way that came out.