Magic of the Marriage Market

Just under a month after being attached and Hida was back to training with her cohort. As she'd told Farran, the Information Bureau had conducted their interviews, and once the Truther used their magic to verify who was lying, Hida had been righteously declared the victim. She knew Alaric had pushed for the maximum punishment allowed against children, 10 lashes and a complete expulsion from the Knight's training. That wasn't exactly what had been granted though, as the tragic death of Celinia Lazzarini at the start of the Season still bought the family some mercy. His behaviour was declared an outburst of misplaced grief, and he was given 5 lashes and had to voluntarily withdraw from the Knight's training for this year. But he'd be allowed to join next year's cohort even if he would be Debuting.

Alaric had been enraged at the supposed failure of justice, but Hida wasn't bothered by it. If the Truther had determined that Fabrizio's actions could be pardoned with these punishments, she'd be satisfied with it. In the end, all he'd been able to do was cut her up a bit and ruin his own reputation; Hida would rather focus on herself than spend energy worrying about him.

Especially as there was a new Knight Instructor, and this one seemed to have a full jousting lance shoved up his back end.

It'd started the moment Hida had arrived to her first day back. She'd realized that three of the female commoner cadets had dropped out as the rest of her cohort came to welcome her back. And both Antonia Fidalgo, who was pregnant, and Adessa looked beaten down.

"And here I thought I'd cut off all the dead weight I could," the new Knight Instructor called out, everyone looking tired at his arrival, even Anton who was top cadet.

If the man wasn't so obviously trying to provoke a response, Hida would have commented but she held her peace. The Knight Instructor could make nasty comments all he wanted, Hida just had to learn what she could from him anyways.

Pain and endurance, that's what Knight Denerim was teaching them.

Every class started with a full sprint until someone slowed down; whoever failed first was subjected to verbal abuse and automatically volunteered to be his demonstration assistant for the day. That often meant having to let him beat the daylights out of you while he demonstrated the proper techniques. And he seemed to take extra time and creativity to break down the female cadets, endlessly criticizing their weaker bodies and emotional minds, and he seemed personally offended by Antonia's now obviously pregnant belly. He couldn't physically target her, but his venom was expressed verbally and with purposeful silences; Hida saw how he could punish her by simply acting like she didn't exist in his lessons, her whole cohort learned and did what they could to undermine his wrath. It didn't matter that he was giving them tasks and skills to try and master that were for advanced classes, using their inevitable failures as proof of female inferiority; and as much as he ignored Antonia, Hida found herself a direct target as he often called her a literal baby with a sword. She was the youngest, shortest, and since she'd been off for the three weeks of investigation and healing, he'd deemed she was the weakest too.

Even when she could beat everyone else consistently except Anto and Bruno. It didn't matter that she had consistently outpaced Ghanam, Andre, Cosmo, and Baltan; instead he used her success against them for failing against a little girl. According to Denerim, it should be easy to beat Hida because she could never match their natural strength, meaning he believed they were letting Hida, Antonia or Adessa beat them because otherwise it'd be impossible. They boys weren't spared his poor attitude, if any of them dared try defending the girls, they'd be given an immediate demonstration. Bruno was Hida's dear friend, but after he'd had his arm nearly broken by Denerim in the last demonstration, she'd told him to let the man be vile and just ignore it.

"How are your so untouched by it?" Bruno demanded, looking ready to try and use his size to beat an adult man into respectfulness.

"On day I will be a Knight," Hida shrugged, "I will need to learn to ignore this kind of thing, so all Denerim is doing is helping me build my mental fortifications against it now."

"That's fantastic, can I steal that?" Anto asked, all the cadets cleaning and maintaining the equipment after their Instructor had left for the day.

"I'm not sure I can fake not caring that much," Bruno remained far too honest for his own good, and Hida knew the irony of her believing that.

"I think Brijani, Delta, and Calypso may have had the right idea when they dropped out as soon as Denerim started instructing," Adessa had been one of the four female commoner cadets but now she was the last.

"Given what my pa says about him, I may still drop out, but its only a little longer until a new Instructor starts," Andrea admitted.

"Ma just says to keep my head down until he's gone," Baltan added in.

Knight Denerim was a commoner born Knight, a City Guard that Hida's commoner cohort would have encountered far more than any of the noble born would have. "The fact that he had such obvious prejudices hadn't stopped his Knighting at all warned about older habits still having their claws sunk deep. "What does your father say about him?" Antonia asked Andre.

"That he's a brigand with rank to back him up," Andre quietly described. "He's know to instigate issues, but when questioned claims a Knight's word outranks a commoner's and since being honest is one of the values a Knight upholds, he's gotten away with a lot of immoral actions."

They all fell quiet at that. Both commoner and noble born cadets would swear upon the same vows at their Knighting. A Knight upholds the weak. A Knight wields truth and honour along with their sword. A Knight serves justice and peace by using the tools of war. A Knight is a representative of their Kingdom and belongs to their Kingdom, serving until released from their duty by decree or death. At the Knighting ceremony the all hoped to one day participate in, they'd each take a knee, announce that vow to Queen Akiyama, and offer their non-dominant hand to their Sovereign. When she accepted them as her Knights, she'd cut the back of their hand, the blood spilled sealing their oath. The noble born would then be placed in different units of the Royal Guard while the commoner born would be likewise split amongst the City Guard. Both Royal and City Guards had a Captain leading them, wit sub-ranks supporting them.

With her skills and future vision, Hida knew she'd eventually be assigned to Lieutenant Ott's units, the Knight's responsible for protecting the Queen and other high ranking dignitaries, but there were also two other Lieutenants she could serve under; her very distant cousin Lt. Aero Briggs who's Royal Guard patrolled the halls and walls of the Castle, ready to react to any signs of violence, or Lt. Carmine Kaura who's unit defended the Royal Treasury against interlopers. The City Guards were slightly different, they had a Captain but each major City was run by its own Lieutenant. For every Lt, there was a supporting second-Lieutenant, or 2Lt if one wanted to be brief.

Unfortunately for them all, Denerim was the Capital City's 2Lt, leaving only his Lt and Captain above him in any position to reprimand him. Basically meaning that Hida expected his brutality to continue until his time Instructing them was up. Until then, all Hida could do was control her own emotional state when Denerim started to try and break her spirit. When she proved to be just fast enough or durable enough to not stop the run first, he altered how he selected his demonstration assistant.

He'd declared that the loser of the first match would be his assistant, and then declared that it'd be Hida against Anto. She could out shoot everyone in her cohort, but of course Denerim wanted this to be a knock down, drag out fight. Something Hida really couldn't win at yet. And if Anto tried to throw it, Denerim would punish them both for it. That would just be letting him win twice, something Hida knew Anto understood so she also knew to expect a real fight.

They stared at each other, both stripped of protective gear and given a dull sword to attack with. As a first year cohort, they weren't supposed to be sparring without protective gear yet, and certainly not with dull blades, but Denerim had backhanded Cosmo when he'd pointed it out and warned them all that while he was the Instructor, they were supposed to do what he said without question. So Hida carefully shifted her weight, on bare feet, feeling the heat of the day soak into her soles from the hard packed ground. In front of her Anto was trying to see what her opening move would be, his natural talent and reflexes almost always enough to assure it went in his favour. Hida had been training harder than ever before, but Anto had been too, and although he was her friend, he had no more desire to be Denerim's assistant than Hida did.

Despite being dulled, their blades could still hurt as they were full weight swords, and they wore no protective gear. Although neither was bleeding, both bore dark welts where contact had been made; but that wasn't good enough for Denerim as he screeched at them about pulling their hits. He wasn't going to be happy until bones broke or someone bled, and both Hida and Anto were good enough fighters to keep that from happening accidentally. Still, Denerim wouldn't call the match over, even after the standard fifth strike rule was met. He wanted blood and pain, and as Hida and Anto circled each other she could see the understanding reflected in Anto's eyes. At least he wouldn't hold back with her, given the circumstances that was just inviting more pain for both of them so they fought as hard as they could.

And then it happened; Anto swung just a little too hard, extended himself just a fraction too far but Hida was able to take immediate advantage of it. She stepped into Anto's reach, using the hilt of her sword to bash his grip loose from his sword and ended the fight with her blade against Anto's neck; only his knuckled bloodied.

"I win," Hida declared, less triumphant sounding than expected as she breathed hard after all that exertion.

As expected, Denerim launched right at Anto about how he let a girl beat him, and how embarrassing it was to throw as fight so a little girl could girl like she actually won for once. No one dared argue with him about it either, they all knew that would just get them struck and then punished some more, and Hida forced herself to look calmly at the ground so Denerim couldn't declare that she had disrespect in her eyes.

Even if she absolutely did.

But what Hida didn't know, and her shadows hadn't deigned to reveal to her either, was that today was going to be a very special day.

"The little girl will be my assistant today," Denerim declared, despite her having won. "I don't like cheaters and you reek of dishonour."

If she reeked of anything, it was sweat and exhaustion, but she knew better than to voice that. She simply held her blunted sword at the ready, knowing his still sheathed blade had a live edge. In demonstrations before, he'd left it sheathed but hit the cadet with the sheath hard enough to do real damage; if Bruno wasn't the human version of a mountain his arm would have broken. Hida knew any direct hit to her would be catastrophic.

"There is no such thing as a fair fight," Denerim warned the cohort, glaring at Hida as if she personally offended him. "Especially for someone inherently weaker and less capable like you girls. You'll be outclassed against even untrained men, a real Knight like myself would destroy you." Hida barely deflected the blow he stabbed towards her abdomen, sheath still on his blade. "Luck and money can only take you so far until you have to accept reality," he struck at her again and again, Hida only able to barely defend herself and try to retreat as each blow left he arms aching. "That you're simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH."

And as if to drive his point home, Denerim did two very despicable things. One, he pulled his live edged sword from it's sheath to swing it at her. Two, he threw a handful of sand in her face.

The man was actually trying to kill her, and no vision had even flickered a hint that it was coming. Fabrizio's attack had been given to her in detail hours before it had occurred, but the only thing that saved Hida this time was her own instinct. As the sand blinded her painfully, she resisted the impulse to wide her eyes clear and instead held steady on her sword. She felt the impact of Denerim's strike battering through her defensively raised sword, the force of his blow shattering the sword he wielded against her dulled blade. Her hands burned and went numb almost in self defence, a rattling pain that spread through wrists, arms, and shoulders. Nothing compared to her the hot burning tear across her throat.

Denerim had tried to blind and behead her, but thankfully only succeeded at the one goal.

Hida's eyes watered from pain and debris, her sword still held in a defensive hold even as the rest of her cohort tackled Denerim to the ground. He may be a fully grown and trained Knight but there were seven pissed off cadets whaling on him without mercy, while Bruno tried to treat Hida's slashed throat.

At least now she knew where the scar came from.

"I've got you Pinky, don't worry," Bruno insisted, knowing she hated the nickname. She let him bandage her neck anyways, a little afraid to speak and make the bleeding worse.

It felt like the training ground was suddenly swarming with adults, Hida wasn't sure if that was a side effect of shock or blood loss. She finally released her sword into her friend's grip as a field medic pressed something to stop the blood flow at her neck, feeling weak kneed and strangely distant from everything happening around her.

And it was as they worked to stitch the cut on her throat closed that Hida's shadows decided to give her a vision of the future. As if to reassure her that she'd survive this, however unpleasant it currently was.

The shadows showed older Hida again, the hair cut that had seemed so short before now appearing long compared to her nearly bald head. All the scars that were still new on her scalp were hidden, but the bleed at her throat was healed into a pink line on her neck. The uniform she work looked so pristine it had to be new, and although Hida could see years of aging on her face, she still looked relatively young.

And with her was the man she now knew to be Prince Royal Levi Tuccillo, of Cador; youngest brother of King Kai. He work the still extremely foreign looking attire she could now attribute to Cador, and her curiosity at the flesh of his exposed chest was barely concealed. In Taroton, the heat and humidity of the southern and western territories was begrudgingly acknowledged by the shedding of jackets and cravats, or heavy dress layers. It seemed in Cador, the greater the heat meant the less actual clothes they wore.

Given the research Hida had done with Farran's help after identifying him, she knew Prince Royal Levi was nine years her elder, but in the vision they almost looked the same age, which meant that she'd been Knighted and he'd been in Taroton for a few years. It lent credence to her earlier theory that, like Farran, Prince Royal Levi was a participant in the Exchange Project.

"Do you know why I asked Queen Akiyama for you to be my Knight?" he asked, voice accented and slow, as if he had all the time in the world to speak.

"Yes," Hida of the future admitted, likely recalling this very vision years before that Hida of now was just experiencing. "Your magic compels people to tell you the truth when they meet your eyes, but you can also tell when someone is lying to you when they speak. You already know I knew you thanks to my ability to see my own future, and you're curious to see if I'm as unfailingly blunt as all the rumours paint me to be."

It seems that Hida wouldn't outgrow her habit of being terminally blunt. At least she swore less than Blair.

"And do you know what else I want?" he demanded.

The vision collapsed before Hida could learn her eventual answer, pulled to the present as pain burned at her throat.

Someone was saving her life.