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Magnus leaned forward and gazed at you questioningly. “You’re not interested in marriage, at your age? I’d say you’re ready.”
You grit your teeth and didn’t look at him. You didn’t want to tell <span class="mu-i">him</span> why you didn’t want to get married yet. Why you were afraid of it, of it becoming an inescapable prison when the world and the hunt for glory still called to you. Not when, out of anybody who was still around, he was pretty high up on the list of people you’d want to bind yourself to forever. “I don’t wanna talk about that.”
Magnus crooked his eyebrows at that, unsatisfied, but he shrugged. “Very well.”
Anything to get away from this topic. “So your family fled Ellowie when they deposed the King,” you recalled, “But that means they could just move out of Netilland again. So could you. So why did the silver haired bitch make you promise to fight for a place you may as well have left? I get why your oath’s important t’ you. What’s Netilland’s importance to her? They do her any favors?”
“Hmm.” Magnus put a finger on his chin, “How much do you remember of what I told you, of Palatenhugel?”
“The basic idea.” It was a rural Netillian borough- a town built around an ancient Nauk fortress. It was an old, old settlement, yet it had retained some measure of self-governance throughout the years. Much like a city-state of the wastes, though in much more pleasant lands. Over the centuries, it became part of Ellowie, then part of Netilland. “One-Notch’s family owns it, yeah?”
“One-Notch?” Magnus furrowed his brow, “I won’t ask. Yes, the Sanmorzas have ruled Palatenhugel since its founding, though they haven’t been nobility for some time. The Netillian Republic allowed them to retain rulership, but they are not considered nobility, but rather the de-facto Burgomeisters. In spite of all of its history, Palatenhugel is rather small and irrelevant on the greater picture.”
That wasn’t the answer you anticipated. “So they’ve got no reason t’ care about Netilland either, not really.”
“Yuliana always had an outsized sense of justice,” Magnus explained to you, “Even if she isn’t very important, she’s tried to be as great as she could be, and as she has claimed me as her knight, I followed her cause. When the nation fell to infighting, she called upon me, to fight for her cause. To topple the Military Council and free Netilland. Perhaps to free Palatenhugel too.” He frowned, “Even if she herself felt she could not do that with her own power…”
You squinted at Magnus, clicked your tongue. “Tch. So she uses you because she can’t fight her own battles?”
“She has been my moral guidance for a long time,” Magnus said, “She guided my ambition. When I left her, even though she was most upset with my departure, it was because she inspired me to be a person of lordly caliber, deserving of both my legacy and my place in her future both. To leave a boy, and return a knight.”
