The pair were out of bed before the fifth bell. Gregory felt a little decadent missing another day of meditation, especially considering how he’d spent the last hour. His gaze drifted to Mindie while she got dressed, a pleased smile on her lips.
A week of not meditating won’t stop me, and it’ll be months before I see her again, Gregory told himself as he got his own kimono on. Taking the time to indulge a little is fine. We’ll meditate later, and between that, the Peaceful Fist, and studying, we’ll still have plenty of time together.
“Dear one?” Mindie asked as he paused.
“Sorry. I was thinking about what we’ll be doing today.”
“We should go ahead and order the naginatas for your men so they’re ready before the tournament,” Mindie said. “I hope to get a walk through the garden park with you, too.”
“At the very least,” Gregory smiled at her. “Maybe I can persuade you to play for me again?”
Mindie’s cheeks heated, taking what he’d said a different way. “Well… I don’t mind if you watch.”
Laughter bubbled up from Gregory, his face flushing as he understood how she’d mistaken his meaning. “I’ll agree to that, but I meant your flute.”
“Oh!” Mindie giggled, covering her face for a moment. “That, too.”
“The day is going to be fun,” Gregory chuckled as he crossed over to her, pulling her into his embrace. “Both of those sound lovely. I enjoy them, and I want this week to be filled with love.”
“Me, too,” Mindie murmured as she kissed his chest.
Fifth bell began to chime, and the happy couple left the room.
Flopsy stood in the hall, wearing a maid’s uniform, and bowed to them. “Mistress, master, I’ll straighten your room while you dine.”
“Thank you, Flopsy,” Mindie said. “We’ll talk later about exactly what you want in life. That’ll help me find the right person for you.”
“As mistress wishes.”
The walk downstairs to the dining room was quiet. Mindie was thinking about how to best find a good owner for Flopsy, and Gregory wondered again if he’d done the right thing for the maid.
~*~*~
The couple left the house shortly after breakfast. Gregory doubted the weaponsmiths would be open, but he thought the walk through the flower garden park would be a good start to their day.
“My first real date with you…” Mindie murmured as she walked beside him.
“It is. Honestly, I owe Jenn one, too. Yuki’s the only one who got a real date with me before we married. Odd, now that I think about it.”
“Our love is older than we are,” Mindie smiled.
Taking her hand, he raised it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “True, my star-eyed healer.”
Mindie giggled happily. “You love looking into my eyes… I’ve always worried they were weird. I was heckled for them in my youth. Mom alw…” Mindie trailed off, her smile fading with her words.
“Will you tell me about her?” Gregory asked softly. He didn’t let go of her hand as they walked— he didn’t care if it flaunted his love for her.
“She was a good woman. She had the ears, but also a tail and small tufts of fur around her ankles. She showed her eurtik heritage more strongly than I do. Dad only ever loved her, which gave me hope to find a man like you for myself.”
Gregory’s mind supplied the image of Mindie with a tail and bands of fur around her ankles. He pushed those away, not wanting to imagine her mother.
“We mostly kept to our section of town with the other people of mixed blood. Dad worked as a laborer on the docks… honestly, he was a foreman of a crew who did the work. He was human enough that he got better deals for them.”
“He was a eurtik, too?”
“Yes. A touch of bull, he always said, but he never showed any signs of it.”
“How did they meet?”
“They grew up together, met during school. Dad was always the one to drive the worst away from her. Mom loved the way he protected her and, when they reached their age day, he finally asked her to court. She’d been hoping for years, so she agreed without hesitation. Less than a year later, they married, and two years after that, I was born.”
Gregory didn’t really know how his parents had met. He knew it was when his father had left the village just after his age day, but it hadn’t really been talked about.
“Mom was always helping our neighbors. They’d give back what they could,” Mindie squeezed his hand lightly. “It was a good life, probably like what you had.”
“Except for the hatred…” Gregory murmured.
“The worst was at school. Other than that, I just stayed near Mom and we didn’t face much. I don’t know how she got sick, or even what it was… I just know that she started feeling ill, grew tired, and slept a lot after that. Dad tried to get a healer to help her. He bought a lot of herbs from the local apothecary, but none of them worked for more than a day or two.”
Gregory squeezed her hand to give her support.
“A couple of months… that was all it took for her to go from vibrant and alive to passing in the night,” Mindie sniffled. “The town healer scoffed openly at my father when he complained. He wasn’t a magi, but he knew about medicine and could’ve helped, but didn’t.”
“Because of her heritage?”
“He never stated, but I think it was because she’d refused him before marrying Dad. My father mentioned it once during the wake. She’d been half the healer’s age and loved my father, so she rejected the healer.”
“Bastard!” Gregory hissed.
“I try not to think about him. What about your mother? I know she died when you were young.”
Gregory swallowed the lump that suddenly filled his throat. “I was a child…” He trailed off for a moment, as they’d reached the flower garden. “I’m not sure how they met, but they met and married outside of my village. When Father returned home, he brought her with him and she was already carrying me.”
He told her about his mother and, at the end, how he’d found her in the forest. Mindie sniffled, pulling a handkerchief to dab at her eyes and his. He hadn’t realized he’d been crying, but he knew when she removed his tears.
“I’m sorry, dear one. I had no idea it was so traumatic,” Mindie apologized.
“It’s fine. The memory hurts. I know she would’ve welcomed you into the family. She’d have laughed and told each of you how happy she was to know I was loved.”
“Like my mom would have,” Mindie sniffled, wiping her eyes again. “They would’ve been a force together.”
Gregory chuckled weakly as he imagined his mother and Mindie’s both helping those around them. “The empire itself might have trembled before them.”
Mindie let out a small laugh. “Brought low by the love of two mothers.”
“That just wanted their children to know love,” Gregory added.
“We’d make them proud.”
“Every day, we do just that.”
~*~*~
The weaponsmith they went to was one Egil had suggested to them during breakfast. There was a distant hammering sound from the far back of the building, indicating the metal being worked. The front room held various weapons secured to the walls, giving a representation of what could be produced.
Behind the counter, a man wearing a leather patch over his left eye nodded to them. “How can I help you, Magi?”
“Naginatas. I need thirty-five of them,” Gregory said, then pointed to one attached to the wall. “At least that quality.”
Nodding slowly, the man looked back at Gregory from the weapon. “That’ll take a couple of months to produce them all.”
“I’ll be back in a couple of months, so that would work.”
The man’s brow furrowed. “If I might ask, Magi, why are you outfitting your entire unit with naginatas? The standard is a stabbing sword and shield.”
“My men wanted to train the way I do,” Gregory replied. “They’ll keep the swords, but in place of a shield, they will carry a naginata.”
“Hmm… it’ll give them reach over other units if they can learn how to defeat a shield.”
“There are many advantages. Are you sure you can complete the order?”
“Yes, sir. We have a stock in the back, but not that many. Two months from now will give us enough time to fill the rest.”
Gregory summoned a coin purse from his ring, setting it on the counter. “Half now?”
“That would work for us, Magi.”
Gregory counted out the vela the man had asked for before returning the purse to his ring. “A pleasure doing business with you. I have a question: which bowyer is the best in the city?”
“You’d want Fair Fletched, sir. Two blocks east and one north. If you tell Marta that I sent you, she might even give you a discount.”
“That would be good,” Gregory smiled. “Thank you.”
“A bowyer?” Mindie asked when they left the shop.
“One of my squads is good at scouting. I want to get them trained on bows so, when they scout, they have distance weapons and can hunt if needed.”
“That makes sense.”
“I didn’t think about it earlier. Sorry for the extra stop.”
“It’s to make your men better, which keeps you safer,” Mindie said. “I’ll not complain about that.”
“Thank you. I just want to get everything out of the way today so we can spend the next few days without errands.”
“That I approve of,” Mindie smiled.
“After the bowyer, we’ll go to the tavern Yuki took me to yesterday for a midday meal.”
“I enjoy the food there. Then back to the manor?”
“To listen to your music before we get into other pleasant distractions.”
Mindie blushed but smiled brightly.
