"What a shame. I was hoping the Gale Knight would stay with our family a while longer."
"Your eldest brother will be staying for the time being, so you won’t be lonely, sister-in-law."
"That’s the most dreadful part of it, brother-in-law."
Hmm, I’d meant that as a comfort, but Margareta’s expression turned venomous. Margareta hated how her older brothers still treated her like a child. From where I stood, her reaction looked more like sulking.
Michael seemed to enjoy getting that kind of reaction out of her. Even if she was the head of Radensdorf’s new political power, a little sister was still a little sister, apparently. In any case, I owed her.
She lent my men and me an entire annex, assigned retainers to us, and helped in all sorts of ways. Knowing how busy I was, she even handled the ransom negotiations on my behalf and briefed me on Radensdorf’s inner workings.
Of course, it wasn’t a one-sided relationship in which I only took. The reason Margareta was so kind to me was that I was a knight of rising renown, and a prince besides. If I’d been some noble of no consequence?
I’d have gotten the same treatment as Michael.
Family by marriage, but a nuisance to have underfoot. That sort of thing.
Margareta was a very clever woman. She’d taken firm hold of the Baron Sinclair family and harbored the ambition of becoming the most powerful political force in Radensdorf.
The civil war broke out at just the right moment. Predicting that the grand duke’s army would win, she cooperated from within and earned merit by opening Radensdorf’s gates. She had secured the strengthened Military Department and an up-and-coming princely family as her backing.
With all that behind her, who would dare stand against her?
Even I wouldn’t dream of fighting her. She scares me.
Some nobles balked at a baroness overpowering the family head and seizing control, but grumbling was as far as it went. Now the only thing left for the Sinclair family was to soar.
Meanwhile, most of the factions that had sided with the duke were ruined.
Having little interest in court politics, whether Radensdorf’s or Breisburg’s, I had no reason to oppose Margareta’s ambitions, so I simply regarded her as a good partner for making deals.
Still, I was truly grateful for her help.
It isn’t easy to find a place in a foreign land that feels like your own nest, and in Radensdorf, this annex was as good as home. To express my thanks, I gave her a pouch of pepper as well.
"Sister-in-law, thank you for everything. Here’s a small gift."
"Heavens! Something this precious! This is absolutely not a small gift!"
Margareta was delighted.
To a baroness, this pepper was worth far more than jewelry. It was a luxury good perfectly suited for showing off. There’s a reason nobles hoard pepper and flaunt it.
If it were something anyone could easily get, pepper would be nothing more than a way to mask the gaminess of meat. But with the Ottomans choking off trade with the East, it had become worth its weight in gold.
"I wish my brothers would learn from their exemplary brother-in-law!"
And then she tore into Michael, who hadn’t given her a gift. Her brother-in-law had given her something this precious, she said, while that so-called brother of hers shamelessly helped himself to the guest wine stored in the cellar.
I got Michael chewed out without meaning to.
Maybe the best I can do is advise him to stock up on plenty of Boden wine while he’s staying in Schafen and fill the Sinclair family cellar with it. That’s about what it would take to quiet Margareta’s grievances.
My father-in-law was a famously hard man to get an audience with.
Seizing control of Radensdorf’s military was all well and good, but he had never imagined the Military Department would end up administering the whole of it. So he’d been working Michael to the bone, until Michael fled to Schafen.
That was my doing, since I summoned him. I gave him his excuse to run, but I had no choice. I assumed that was why my father-in-law was in such a sour mood. It turned out to be something else entirely.
It seems Hilda had sent a letter to my father-in-law as well.
"Son-in-law, Hilda is counting the days until you return."
My father-in-law always did dote on Hilda. And that fearsome presence of his, like a war god out of legend, made even me flinch, and I’ve walked through my share of hell. Is a son-in-law doomed to be forever weak before his father-in-law?
"That’s why I’m preparing to return as we speak."
"Good, then. Don’t go piling up pointless work."
"It was pointless work, but it did bring a modest return."
With that, I held out a silk pouch.
My father-in-law had looked unimpressed until the moment he checked the contents. Then his expression changed.
"Ahem. Well, this much is hardly pointless. Hilda will understand completely."
My father-in-law cleared his throat and changed the subject. The power of pepper truly is something. He couldn’t hide his satisfied smile, saying his son-in-law had him living in luxury. Heinlein saved my skin without ever intending to.
I gave a pouch of pepper to Ulrich as well. With that, I’d handed out gifts to the War Minister’s entire family, except for Flora, Hilda’s second-oldest sister, whom I had never once met.
Even Ulrich, who seems above material things, looked pleased.
"A precious gift from my brother-in-law."
"Even the Bible has a verse about sharing joy with one another."
"Thanks to you, Marz is in a better mood too, which is a relief. Honestly, she had a great deal of pent-up complaint in her. You wouldn’t have felt it, but our elder brother and I had to walk on eggshells the whole time."
Siblings not getting along seems to be an eternal, unchanging truth.
Michael and Ulrich seemed to find her temper endearing, but Margareta was thoroughly sick of the two of them.
"Let me offer you a strategy. Send her some good wine or jewelry, even now."
"You know more about women than I expected. You could give a womanizer a run for his money."
"Don’t say such a thing, even in jest. For me, there is only Hilda."
Ulrich grinned and shook his head.
Hmm, that’s the look you give a hopelessly devoted husband.
Between playing the womanizer and dealing with the headaches that come with it, I’d choose being a devoted husband every time. Since time immemorial, a noble who is careless with his lower half ends up tangled in complications.
Everything I know about women, I owe entirely to Hilda’s influence. Believe it or not, I had been single since birth. I firmly believed my destined partner was waiting for me in another world.
Hold on. Let me wipe away a tear.
The moment I decided to return to Breisburg, the number of people I needed to bid farewell to grew considerably. The western princes seemed to be planning to stay in the east for a while and greet the new year at their leisure.
Count Euz entrusted everything to Fried, and Count Essenbach seemed to think wintering in the comparatively warmer Radensdorf wasn’t a bad idea. What else would you expect from the eldest of the old men?
Count Belfort appeared to be clashing frequently with the Count of Ulm.
Apparently, Belfort’s Hildenberg family and Ulm’s Delich family had been bitter rivals for generations.
Why the far west and the far east became enemies is beyond me, but the Count of Ulm was deeply displeased over the ducal army’s invasion of Schafen, and Count Belfort fiercely condemned him for that stance.
They say it nearly came to a duel of honor.
But when Count Belfort named me as his champion knight, all that talk vanished. There wasn’t a knight in the Duchy of Beren with the nerve to fight a champion’s duel against me. It must have been infuriating for the Count of Ulm.
I was secretly hoping for that champion’s duel, though.
I’ve wanted to fight at least one duel between knights with a noble’s honor on the line.
In any case, I handed out pepper pouches to the western princes too. We might clash someday, but they were comrades-in-arms who had fought beside me in this civil war, and they had pulled strings behind the scenes to help me become a prince.
It was a calculated move to strengthen the western faction, certainly, but the fact remained that I had become a prince, and that had brought me enormous gains, so giving them something in return was only natural.
These pepper pouches are earning their keep.
"The Baron has given us old men a precious gift."
"We’ll get to taste schäufele and choucroute tossed with heaps of pepper."
"Hohoho, I prefer sprinkling it over Flädlessuppe loaded with meat."
"That sounds like a delicacy too."
Count Euz and Count Essenbach were already deep in discussion about which dishes to smother in pepper. I suppose even old men like their food spicy and salty.
From there, they moved on to which wines to pair with it all.
For nobles, fine dining is one of life’s indispensable pleasures.
They probably couldn’t care less whether their subjects eat oat gruel (oatmeal), but I at least want my own people to be able to eat bread. I’ve seen oat gruel before, and that stuff is not fit for human consumption.