It was the morning of the first day after the Duke of Frostspear died.
Emily solemnly handed Louis a document sealed with red wax and addressed, "To be opened personally by Louis Calvin."
"Father wrote this himself. He said to give it to you after his death."
Louis slowly drew out the thick sheets of paper.
There were more than ten pages, as neatly arranged as military dispatches, yet every word had been written in the duke's own hand:
The opening covered methods for dealing with the Northern Frontier's changing seasonal disasters.
The second page detailed the deployment procedures for Frostspear's three armies, along with brief assessments of their commanders' temperaments.
The third offered meticulous strategies for maintaining stability, rather than balance, among the nobles.
The fourth directly identified the weaknesses and ingrained flaws of several noble families in the Northern Frontier.
More than ten pages in all, filled with his experience in politics and military governance. Toward the end, there were even feed-ration tables for warhorses and draft regulations for inspecting military grain supplies within the fief.
On the final page, however, he abandoned all formal language.
There were only a few scrawled lines, each stroke clearly written with painstaking slowness:
"These are merely my personal experiences. They may be outdated, or hidebound. Follow your own judgment... and take care of Emily and Isaac for me."
Louis remained silent for a long time. He read through the entire letter, page by page, then read it again.
Some of the methods of governance were too antiquated: conservative, cumbersome, and deeply marked by the Empire's old nobility.
One page even described "how to distribute stewed meat during festivals to appease the populace," leaving Louis unsure whether to laugh or cry.
But when it came to military affairs, he admitted he