Dawn broke over the manor in bands of copper and violet, the light slanting through tall draped windows and pooling on the flagstones of the veranda. Arsélie sat alone in the chill, dressed only in a light shirt and trousers, her breath visible in faint plumes. She cupped her coffee with both hands. The heat was welcome. The cold was better—it kept her sharp, kept her from thinking too long about the letter lying open on the table beside her.

The seal was Margravine Esterhart's own—the Iron Margravine. Pre-mobilization orders. The princes of Puetzingen, it seemed, had not been satisfied with their victory at Blutmark.

Arsélie had read it three times already. The phrasing was almost identical to the summons her father had received two years ago, down to the curt formula of address: To the Head of House Leufroy, loyal servant of the Crown, greetings and command. Landry had read those words at this same table, in this same early light. He had not come home.

The orders were detailed in the manner of all such letters—thorough enough to technically inform, vague enough to technically deny. House Leufroy was expected to furnish thirty-two lances of light cavalry and accompanying men-at-arms, with provisions calculated for a twelve-day march to the eastern muster at Feldrath. Spring would see the campaign begin in earnest; she had until the thaw to make ready. Half a year. It sounded like a long time until she considered everything it had to contain.

She was to conduct an assessment of the northern road through Vailles—its condition, its bridges, whether the autumn rains had already softened the low crossings into mud that would freeze and thaw and freeze again into treacherous ruts by spring. Her findings were due to the Margravine's quartermaster before first snowfall. Grain stores were to be inventoried and a third held in reserve for crown requisition—a hard ask after a middling harvest, though Leufroy's fields had fared better than most. Fodder for the horses, oats and hay enough to see them through winter and still have beasts fit for hard riding come the melt. A tally of able-bodied men between sixteen and forty-five, cross-referenced against last year's census to account for deaths, departures, and draft-dodgers who had slipped across the border into neutral Kalscheim.

Horses, at least, she had. Her father had arrived on this land twenty-three years ago with a royal charter, a handful of retired warhorses, and the stubborn conviction that he could build something from them. The older families had laughed. Landry had worked. By the time Arsélie was born, the Leufroy stables were producing coursers and rounceys that officers fought to acquire—fast, steady, bred for endurance over rough country. It was why the Margravine's summons asked for thirty-two lances when larger, older holdings owed fewer. The crown valued what House Leufroy could provide.

None of this was foreign to her. She had read Verantus on supply lines before she was twelve, traced the logistical failures of the Alcavar Campaign until she could recite them in her sleep, spent long nights with treatises on cavalry doctrine and the mathematics of feeding an army on the move. The theory was hers. What she lacked was the practiced hand—the years of actually managing ledgers and harvests and men who needed paying. Her father had handled that quietly, capably, while she trained and studied and assumed the knowledge would be enough when the time came.

The time had come. The knowledge felt thin.

Below the veranda, the village was stirring in the grey autumn morning. She watched a pair of tenants make their way toward the eastern fields, tools over their shoulders, breath fogging in the cold. The harvest was nearly done; what remained was the gleaning, the threshing, the long labor of preparation before winter closed its hand. A woman led a mule laden with empty baskets. Somewhere a dog barked twice and fell silent. These were the people she would be responsible for feeding through the cold months and the campaign beyond, or failing. The people whose sons and husbands would fill her thirty-two lances.

Each time she read the letter, the knot in her stomach pulled tighter. She wanted to call it anticipation—a chance, finally, to avenge her father—but the word rang false even in the privacy of her own mind. This was fear. Plain and unwelcome and utterly foreign to a girl who had built her confidence like a castle wall. Fear that she would buckle. Fear that she would fail the duty her father had entrusted to her. Fear that under her command, House Leufroy would become a name spoken only in past tense—a single generation's labor buried alongside the man who built it.

The door opened without a knock.

Her mother crossed the veranda with the brisk authority of a woman who had been awake for hours. Dowager Mistress Héloïse Leufroy did not believe in idleness, and she certainly did not believe in letting her daughter brood.

"Arsélie." A statement, not a greeting. "I'm sure you know why I'm here."

Arsélie did not turn from the fields. "And what would that be, Mother? Surely you don't intend to take my place on the front lines."

"You must get married."

The words landed like a slap—expected, and stinging all the same. Héloïse pressed on: "I don't wish to force this on you. But it is your duty. To the house. To your father's memory. You cannot let everything he built die for the sake of your own selfish—"

"Selfish?" Arsélie's voice stayed level, but she turned now, locking eyes with her mother. The morning light caught her full in the face, sharpening her features. "How Father must weep, knowing his daughter dares to want more than a contract. Forgive me—I forgot my purpose was to spread my legs on command."

"Arsélie Leufroy, you will not—"

"Not what? Speak the truth?" Her voice climbed, brittle at the edges. "You loved Father before you wed. Don't pretend you understand this. Don't speak as though we share the same burden." The next words came before she could stop them, cruel and precise: "If you wanted heirs so badly, perhaps you shouldn't have gone barren after the first."

Silence.

Arsélie regretted it the instant it left her mouth. She looked away, jaw tight, unable to meet her mother's eyes. She knew what that word cost—knew the years of trying, the stillbirths, the grief Héloïse carried in the stiff set of her shoulders.

"Perhaps you're right," Héloïse said quietly.

She left without slamming the door. Somehow, that was worse.

Arsélie stayed on the veranda a while longer, watching the last of the violet bleed out of the sky. The coffee had gone cold. She didn't drink it.

When she finally rose, she made her way down the hall to the far door and knocked twice.

"{{user}}, I have need of your counsel."