I will VERY TEMPORARILY share the fidelgard chapter
FIDELGARD OF CORBOROUGH IS ALSO HERE
My name is Fidelgard of Corborough, and I love my body. It’s long in the leg and back, spry enough to twist into several crucial stances, and many, many doublets are tailored to its contours.
As to that last point, my reasoning is thus: I grew up clutching the skirts of my aunt, who looked enough like me to have convincingly birthed me. Around Florine and me, she spoke sharp as glass. And she wore almost exclusively scarlets – a dye imported from hotter climates, ground from the bodies of thousands of insects. My aunt owned more land than anyone, save the King and Queen, and operated it cleverly enough to threaten even their wealth. And, when around men, she pitched her voice up, wrapped her thoughts with cotton, nodded and hunched most pleasingly, and allowed her words to be drowned by rum-soaked idiots on the basis of their testicles.
Upon her death, Florine inherited her dresses. I inherited her anger. And I took from the men their swordplay, and learned it better than they did, and I took their fashion, and wore it better than they did – and now, wonderful day, I was taking their army.
Knights shouted greetings as I circumvented the camp on the back of Sebastian of Corborough, my shining white stallion (who had, perplexingly, been born a cherry-brown. Apparently, horses did that. On occasion they just picked a new colour to turn.)
“Be blessed,” I called to our yellow-robed priest, and received a muttered be blessed in return.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I called to a knight, Sir Wentzel, who I rather liked the look of, and who might be invited into my chambers, provided we did nothing that lead to pregnancy. Which still left a fair many options. His answering grin, as I trotted away, let me know that he’d be amiable.
“Ho,” I called to a group at rest, who jumped to their feet and resumed an anxious labour, unpacking the chickens to be slaughtered for tonight’s feast.
I nodded my satisfaction, before sliding down Sebastian’s muscular side, giving his neck a pat-pat-pat, and handing his reins to pimpled squire. “You’ll be whipped if he isn’t groomed to shining,” I said cheerily, waving them both goodbye as I trotted off.
The men under my command obeyed me readily. This was despite the fact that, as a woman, it wasn’t enough to be twice as good at everything. Luckily, I was three times as good, and four times as rich.
“Sister,” said Florine, sidling beside me in her burning red gown. “You look like you’re thriving.”
“Oh yes,” I said, wagging a finger at a knight we passed, who hurriedly hid his gambling dice.
“Have you skinned anyone yet?”
“Not yet,” I said, flashing a smile and dipping a bow to a woman carrying the poles of a tent. “And you know that was a one-off. Very rarely are you needing to skin someone.”
Truthfully, it made my belly ache when I recalled the wet slosh of falling meat. I hadn’t needed to be present, but what was the point of going to that length to secure a reputation, only to abdicate at the clinching point? It helped that he’d been a rapist, worth less than the dirt beneath his nails – though in official terms, I hadn’t been punishing the crime, I’d been punishing the disobeying of my order (which had been: leave the fucking village alone.)
At my side, Florine sighed, which I allowed. On the second sigh, I realized she was trying to do something. On the third sigh, I snapped. “What?”
“It’s my beloved. I have apprehensions about him. He doesn’t look at my bust at all. Fi . . .” She glanced at me, in a manner she thought was coy. “Is this how you feel?”
A storm entered my skull. I loved Florine, but sometimes she failed to understand that I was not less than her. “Flor–”
“OH, it’s him! Should I hide? I’ll hide. Then, I can surprise him.” She hid her mouth with a long draping sleeve, giggling in a manner that I recognized as performative, and dashed, faster than you’d expect, to disappear behind a tent.
Good reflexes, I thought. Excellent speed.
The Prince from Another World stood beside a taller, but far less confident man. I halted, wanting to eavesdrop.
“What’s all this?” the prince said, in a cold, nasal tone that so poorly suited Adelmar’s melodic voice. The man he spoke to look as confused as I felt, until the prince gestured a hand to the field beside our camp site. The field was partially shorn, though sections of it remained tall, thick with gold, furry stalks.
The prince jabbed his finger, more insistently, and understanding bloomed in the man’s eyes. “That?” he said. “You mean the wheat?”
“Wheat,” the prince repeated, thoughtfully. “Hmm.”
The bizarreness of it made my skin crawl. I stepped in, before anything further could be said. “Already making friends?” I boomed with false cheer, allowing the man the chance to scuttle off.
“Yes.” The prince visibly gritted his teeth as he faced me, forcing Adelmar’s delicate, near transparent skin into new lines. “I’m learning so much.”
About. . . wheat? I maintained my smile, though a sinking sensation had developed between my shoulder blades.
“Is there a fire?” He rubbed at his arms, squinting at me. “I’d like to learn about fire?”
“Is that your way of saying you’d like to sit by one?”
His squint deepened. “Yes.”
Both people and animals parted naturally for us as we trotted through the camp, pausing their activities. Those without the luxury of a personal wagon pitched tents among the cleared wheat, crunching stalks underfoot. Someone had the bright idea to scoop up armfuls as fodder for the fire. It smelled earthy as it burned.
“We’ll be slaughtering birds tonight, to celebrate our first night ‘roughing it’!” I waved him toward the fire, treating him to one of my special smiles. “And while that’s being sorted, we can move through your introductions! And your, ahaha, re-introductions. Hello, sister!”
The Prince from Another World turned around, and screamed.
Florine showed little reaction. She skipped closer, beaming, and hugged him even as he writhed. “Hello Addy!”
“What is she doing here?” he gasped, clawing his way free.
Again, Florine paid little regard to his horror, instead shimmying the front of her gown so that twin wedges of breast protruded modestly.
“Is this allowed?” The prince jabbed a finger at her.
The sinking sensation had evolved into a full plummeting. “Is what allowed? Florine was one of Adelmar’s personal guards. I offered you the chance to meet them all before setting out. Of course, you will have no need of protection once your gift fully manifests, but before then—”
“But she’s a woman! Everyone else is a man!”
Florine covered her mouth as she snickered, her eyes finding mine. I was too busy clenching my jawbone until it cracked to properly reciprocate.
These Princes from Another World had played an important role in our development, socially. The last prince to arrive had been aghast, and had insisted that the Goddess delivered with him, not only the task to slay the demon king, but a message of love and peace and equality–especially between the sexes. He insisted women be allowed to vote (nobody knew what this meant) and maintain their armpit hair (they already did) and serve equally in combat and governing roles. After a hushed confluence of our clergy, adjustments had been made, and since then, there had always been one queen and one king, ruling side by side.
Some suspected that his instructions had come, not from the Goddess, but from his own personal agenda - but too many noble women fought for the idea for it to be properly contained.
Of course, claiming equality didn’t actually mean that things were equal. It just meant that when you complained, you got someone saying, “What do you mean? Things are equal now. Don’t keep living in the past.”
But, for this newest prince to speak in this way. . . the damage he could do, and the change that he could undo. . . my hand inched, almost without thought, toward my sword.
“Proculo,” I said slowly, “Look around you. Half of these people are women.”
Prince Proculo did as instructed, almost to a comical degree. He swiveled, gaping at those who passed, and those who’d stopped to eavesdrop. His eyes passed over several sizable busts, seemingly without registering them. “But,” he said, “Shouldn’t they be in dresses?”
Florine’s laughter rose until it seemed to choke her. “Proculo,” she managed, in between gasps for air. “What – oh, my – what do you think Fidelgard is?”
I levelled a look of warning at her. She was enjoying this far too much.
That same, strange shameless looking was applied to me now, with the prince tilting his head this way and that, like some sort of confused dog. I decided to end this misery for all of us. “I’m a woman, Proculo.”
He scuffled at the ground with a foot, looking miserable, but possibly not contrite. “It’s easier when you’re colour-coded.”
I had no idea what that meant.
Florine, though, had recovered from her giggling enough to speak again. “Maybe—if you wore red like me—he would know what you are.”
“Then, you’re allowed to fight?” He’d raised that look of misery to us now, looking back and forth.
I was terribly conscious of the people who’d stopped to listen. “Proculo. A woman can do anything a man can.”
He had to nerve to appear frustrated with me. “Of course I know that. I just thought, because it’s medieval times. . . my mother is going to be prime minister of Kanadah. Obviously, I know that. And we haven’t found any evidence in the brain of cognitive disparity between the sexes. I’m not a misogynist.”
“Just a blind man, apparently.”
“I mean, for crying out loud, my name is Fidelgard.” Even with a resolution seemingly at hand, anger burned hot in my throat. I had little desire to swallow it up and smile.
Florine curled slender fingers about my arm, compressing my puffed sleeves. “Come on, Fi. He’s from another world! Of course he’ll have some strange ideas.”
“Yes!” the prince agreed, in a near shout.
His desperation soothed me. Gradually, my hand removed itself from my scabbard.
Florine tittered again. “This has been fun, but I need to get changed for dinner. Even if we are roughing it, I couldn’t possibly join a meal in my riding clothes. Would you give me a kiss?” She angled her cheek toward the prince.
Florine had spoken with unnecessary volume, clearly intending to be overheard. The eavesdroppers, in accordance, abandoned any pretense of subtlety, elbowing each other and grinning.
Prince Proculo answered at a similar volume. “No.”
Florine froze. For a moment, she kept her cheek turned to him, and a smile plastered across her face. Then, her paralysis broke. Gathering her skirts, she hurried from the group that had grown around us. My heart ached for her as I heard laughter.
A man from the crowd clapped his hand on the prince’s shoulder, sending a reverberation through his tiny frame. “Good on you,” he wheezed, with the smell of tooth infection carrying even at this distance. “We take ‘em when we want. Not on their terms.”
I maintained my stiff smile as I analyzed his features. I’d seen him before, travelling at the edge of Bertegar’s party. If that drunken moron had sewn my army with his foul seeds. . . a weeding would be required. And a hasty one, before anything had the chance to sprout.
The red-faced man didn’t quite have the nerve to level a full leer at me before trundling off. Trundle on, I thought. I’ll have your throat slit before sunrise.
Before another could take his place, I stepped in, towering over Proculo. “Come with me.”
From his grimace, he looked disinclined to obey, so I seized his wrist as I would a child, and set off, pulling him through the crowd. Stunned faces met us. That did not matter.
I yanked him between two carts, and bent myself to his ear. “I can withstand your comments about my person. But is there a reason as to why you would humiliate my sister?”
“Ah. . . you wanted me to kiss her? But I didn’t want to!” He stretched his mouth at me – it was a smile, I realized, but an awfully performed one. “And I don’t know how. I can’t remember. Maybe you could show me—”
“Do you think you’re funny?”
This only paused him briefly. “No. But my. . .mother. He told me I was funny, sometimes.”
That sense of wrongness pervaded again. Just looking at him made hairs all over my body stand on end. “There is something terribly the matter with you,” I said, and marched away, leaving him alone in the crevice between wagons.
My teeth ground. Why couldn’t it be a princess from another world? Take Florine – even with her deficits, and I had to admit, they existed, it would bring me the purest delight to take her by the hand and guide her through the demon-infested wilds. Perhaps shielding her eyes with my cape as I whipped about my sword, skewering. . . anyways.
The problem when dealing with any man was that he largely thought himself both intelligent and important. The latter was unfortunately correct, simply because other men would give him that importance. But the intelligence. . .
I didn’t mind a stupid woman. Mostly. But stupid men made me want to tear down every brick and board of the world our parents built and start again, fresh from the rubble. Better the apocalypse, then for men like Bertegar to grow old and fat all while thinking themselves witty. The thought made my skin break into a rash.
And my growing suspicion was that Prince Proculo was a very stupid man.
A fantasy still existed – twin to the one I’d shared him, in his caravan. That we could be brothers in arms. Equals, almost. Me, his right-hand man, or rather, woman, the one he trusted above all else. His guide, his sword, spitting blood together and clapping each other’s backs, then getting properly drunk by a campfire. That he’d already engaged himself to Florine only solidified this possibility – how could he ignore the bonds of his new family?
But if any hope of that remained, he’d have to put into his place.
I didn’t walk for long. Just enough to access my caravan and grab a second sword. On my return, Prince Proculo had once again surrounded himself with admiring men.
“Watch it,” said one, “She’s coming back for another round.”
“Proculo. Show me how well you fence. I’d like to see how men fight, in this ‘other world’.” I tossed him a sword, which he caught with a look of undisguised surprise. Without letting him answer, I scouted for a suitable clearing, the onlookers parting for me like water. “Here,” I called. “This will do. Draw your weapon.”
An odd sound squeezed its away from him. Something between a groan, and a cheep. “Fidelgard. I’m supposed to fight your demon king. Yes?”
“By the Goddess, Proculo, it’s only a friendly match.” I drew my blade with a hissing rasp and arranged myself, tucking one foot behind the other.
He watched in stillness, those intense grey eyes only magnified by glass circlets he wore before them, then copied my posture, awkwardly.
As he did, cheers broke out from the crowd. “Show her what’s what!” someone called, with others hooted.
It wasn’t just Proculo who’d be put in his place, at the end of this demonstration. I danced toward him, my long legs eating up the distance beautifully, all while he stared and gaped. Then I was upon him, my blade jabbing out. He screeched, flinging himself back.
This shocked me enough that I froze – just for a moment.
I darted again, meaning to cut him non-lethally. And again, he flailed backward, tripping himself, his knee crashing against a palette with a crunch. “Ahhh,” he moaned.
Then, something horrible happened. In little gurgling gasps, he began to cry.
“Proculo,” I hissed. “Prince Proculo.” Sheathing my sword, I moved to stand between him and the crowd, shielding his sobs. “Compose yourself!”
“What—hah—is—hah—happening?” He wiped at his hands, and stared at puddled moisture in his palms. “I’m—hah—crying?”
“Yes. And I’d like you to stop.” My heart pounded in time to his sobs. Reinforcing my authority was one thing, but I couldn’t have the troops lose faith in him – for fuck’s sake, not within the first day!
“I see.” He straightened, frowning. Mucus was flowing freely from his nostrils into his mouth. “Will I cry every time I get hurt?”
“I certainly hope not.” I swept a glare around our audience, letting them know that it was time to disperse. Meanwhile, the prince crouched over his knee, examining the tear in his leggings. He dipped a finger into the blood. “Do you cry too?”
“No. Could you stop that?”
He obeyed, though he didn’t stop his staring. Mucus had circumvented his mouth by the point to freely drip from his chin. Really, he looked like a. . .
Oh, Goddess. Oh, no. She couldn’t have been this cruel. Could she?
Proculo didn’t look up as I approached, still absorbed in prodding at his wound. I lowered a careful hand onto his shoulder. “Could you come with me, please? Atta boy.” I helped him rise, gripping his armpit. “There you go. I wouldn’t like us to be overheard. Over here?”
He blinked tears from his eyes, his lips slack with stupidity, and my heart twisted in on itself. My suspicion was right. It had to be.
We walked over flattened husks of wheat as the sun lowered into red clouds. A copse bordered the field, collecting dusky shadows beneath its branches. As we neared, the carts and horses grew sparse, until we stood alone.
“Proculo,” I said softly, as he batted a gob of spiderweb off his elbow, “How old were you? In the other world, before the Goddess took you.”
“How old. . .?” He wrinkled his nose in concentration, finally taking the initiative to pick at some of the dried snot. I waited, resisting the urge to draw out a handkerchief and scrub at his face, but no answer came.
I bent, in a way that a grown man would find condescending, to bring myself closer to his height. “You don’t want to say. But Proculo. . . were you young?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I was young.”
“Oh, Goddess.” I’d thought my hear couldn’t feel any tighter, but somehow it managed to squeeze into a denser knot. How old could he be? Nine, ten? Certainly no younger than seven, he spoke too clearly for that. “Oh, Proculo, this isn’t good for anyone. But you’re in the body of a man now. You’ll have to act like it.”
I couldn’t bear to see his bland, strange expressions on Adelmar’s face. Nausea swelled in me, and I paced, my hands clenched. When I felt ready to face him again, I tried to arrange myself more gently. “Have you used your summon from the Goddess today?”
“Maybe you could request a sweet. It might help with the pain in your knee.”
“A nerve block would do a better job of that.”
“When I banged my knee as a child, my mom always gave me a spoonful of honey. Perhaps you could—”
“Oh, fine. Goddess, one Wendy’s Frosty.” He stuck his hand out, and something materialized in his grip. A glass of mottled white and brown, with a gorgeous cyan banner wrapped about the middle, and a stick of the same colour sticking out the top. He latched his mouth to this and sucked. And sucked. And continued sucking, as the fluid drained, until it turned to rattling gurgles. Then he tossed the precious thing at a tree trunk.
I winced, expecting the glass to shatter, but it only bounced and rolled.
“That was good,” he said. “Very wasteful use of this ability, but good.”
I tore my eyes from the cup for long enough to smile at him. “My prince, I’m glad to hear that.”
His answering grin was almost cute. Almost sweet, in a childish, underdeveloped sort of way.
Oh Goddess, what have you gotten me into. . .
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