Major Fraser completed the handover at the Pioneer Fortress with the intelligence officer who had come to relieve him. Then, looking thoroughly relaxed, he slung the luggage he had packed more than ten days ago over his shoulder and left his quarters.
Starting today, he would enjoy his first vacation since the end of the war.
Though his originally promised three months of leave had been cut down to two, the major had no complaints. With the Black Calamity looming, it was an honor to fulfill his duties. Besides, as His Majesty's eyes and ears and the heir to the Capet family, he had to make a name for himself and prove that his success did not depend solely on his noble birth.
Even so, Major Fraser, upright as he was, had to admit that his surname had played a major part in how smoothly his military career had gone.
The Capet family had been a prominent house in Anjou even back when it was part of the Seland Kingdom!
Thanks to Fraser's grandfather making exactly the right bet in middle age, the family had risen to become a major force among the royalists. When reforms began in the Seland Kingdom, they built factories across the country. Then his father hitched his wagon to King Louis and, for a time, monopolized supplies for the Royal Guard.
After the Plantagenet Kingdom was established, King Louis had showered the family with titles and rewards, elevating the already powerful Capets to the status of a "pillar of the nation."
An ancient lineage, an enlightened education, and a steady stream of money—that was the family Fraser had been born into.
The joke fate had played on the Capets was that, among the children born in his generation, whether in the main line or the