Now it made sense why this was a locked door meeting, even though the door was guarded during a regular meeting anyhow, and they were never open to the public, or even uninvited Nobles.
The mere fact that someone had managed to get close enough to severely wound the Crown Prince within the castle, and that it was a Nobleman that they had trusted enough to be in a private meeting with, would have everyone on edge for months under normal circumstances.
But during a time of war?
Dominic wouldn’t be surprised if the state of readiness in the palace ramped up to something bordering paranoid.
The meeting didn’t last long, as the situation hadn’t changed much over the course of the previous day. Troops were already en route to the affected areas, the prevented drops were great, but limited, and so the day’s battles went on as usual.
The major difference was that when Dominic left the meeting to go see his tutors, there was a much larger stack of books on Lady Camilla’s end of the table than usual.
"Advisor, welcome back to your lessons. I have adjusted your training program. You know, it really is a challenge to maintain my duties when the programs continue to change." Lady Camilla greeted him.
"My apologies Tutor. It was somewhat unexpected to be called upon as an Advisor." Dominic replied.
The normally stern former Governess smiled gently at him. "It probably shouldn’t have been. Most of the Royals have a magic user as an advisor. You’re the talk of the Palace, and it was bound to be heard by the Royals eventually."
Dominic nodded. "Especially as I have met the twin Princesses before."
Miss Lucy, the Arcane Engineering Tutor, snapped her fingers as she remembered the gossip. "So you are the one who went with Princess Elanor on her most recent escape attempt, and then to dinner with the twins and the Royal Guard."
It was a statement, not a question, and Lady Camilla’s change of posture showed her immediate recognition of the situation.
"So, you weren’t just along with the Princess for the investigation and subsequent battles, you had been selected by her for the trip. And then you saved her life by revealing that the Archmage was a fake."
Dominic smiled. "When you put it that way, it sounds much more heroic than I remember it. But isn’t this rags-to-riches story somewhat backwards? I’m quite certain it’s supposed to be the heroic orphan girl saving the Prince and then being taken in."
Both elderly women giggled a little at the reference to a popular Cygnia romance trope.
Miss Lucy winked at Dominic and spoke in a dry tone. "Unfortunately, there are precious few chances for the Princes to rescue secretly stunning orphan girls with hidden foreign Royal bloodlines. Instead, it’s more likely to be a borderline suicidal soldier or tradesman rescuing a Princess with his delusions of being a noble Knight.
But soon, you will most likely become one, and the training is already in your lesson plans for the morning, before you begin your Arcane Engineering work with me."
But those stories were children’s fairytales, and didn’t have the sort of spicy ending for the hero that the Romance novels did.
Dominic settled in to spend the majority of the day on the new rules that he would have to learn as an advisor, but Lady Camilla was prepared for his learning methods this time. Not only did she have all the textbooks ready for him to study, she had made a summary cheat sheet with all the most important parts.
Dominic memorized them first, then got to one of the bullet points and wondered if he was reading it wrong.
"Wait, it says here that someone is challenging the Princess I am supposed to throw a glove at them and then slap them across the face? That can’t be right. That sounds like the opposite of how Nobles do things." Dominic asked.
The tutor chuckled. "It is the initiation process for a formal duel. It will make sense when you hear the details, but in short, if the Princess were to be challenged to a duel, your duty as advisor, if there is no Champion present, is to defend her honour and step in on her behalf to issue the challenge.
Normally, that duty falls to the leader of her Royal Guard retinue, so you are not the first option, or likely to be the closest to her during such a scenario, as they are most often issued during public events, when nobody is wearing armour or combat spell gems.
Challenging a lady is considered extremely crass, but if the other party throws his glove at her, you pick it up and slap him with it. That is how you accept as her champion.
They are traditionally fought to the death, so they don’t happen often, but it is important to know."
Now, Dominic was far from a pacifist, but he had certainly never thought that there was an official mechanism by where it would become legal to simply kill people in public.
Even if it was a formal ritual.
However, the vast majority of the rules were much less interesting than the initiation of a formal duel. Where to stand, when it was appropriate for an Advisor to address the whole room, or where their ranking was among the Nobles based on who they were assigned to and the duration of their service.
It was all very complex and formal, to the point that Dominic was actually relieved every afternoon when they moved on to Arcane Engineering, where Miss Lucy was teaching him the basics of creating a Magitech Orb.
That was deemed to be the most important first project for him, as they could be integrated into new weapons for recruits, and improved as the soldiers finished their training and gained promotions.
The most important lesson that he was learning so far was that the more complex the Magitech Item, the more valuable steady hands and an excellent microscope became.
If you didn’t have both, there was no way that you were going to be able to make a Magitech Orb with more than one or two enhancement effects, much less a whole spell effect or a complex magical inheritance like the Trade Skill Cores.