She stopped when he did, raising an eyebrow at his stomping foot. He really was in a foul mood, to have got this babyish. It only proved to her that he was beyond negotiating with, especially when he threatened to have her fired. Her lips pursed thoughtfully, the green eyes looking down at him filled with genuine regret.
"Were that possible, it would, indeed be a terrible shame... this being your first year of eligibility to enter the Tournament and me being the reigning champion in most of the events you like, after all." She gnawed the inside of her lips, looking him over in the manner of assessing the value of an expensive thoroughbred, not threatening him but neither telling him anything he didn\'t already know. "Still, if you want to be trained by someone lesser, I can arrange that also. I\'ll pick my best - Lieutenant Frederickson - and you can see what he can do for you. He\'s nearly my match in all the jousting events, archery, armoured fighting and running at the rings. I don\'t enter any of the others, as you know, so his inclusion in your training schedule was always going to happen. If you like, I could hasten the process?"
Wilson wasn\'t at all angry at him for striking out towards her, she realised how frustrated he was with being inside, studying away the winter - she\'d felt it too, at his age. She was, however, beginning to seriously doubt that he was ready for the Tournament of the Corn. She hoped that he would be able to display a more even temper on the battle field, where he would be beaten relatively quickly, simply due to his size and inexperience, if he didn\'t. She\'d made no bones about this fact (which hadn\'t pleased him but she was honest and willing to bet that, with some dedicated work, he might at least place - though she told him nothing of her secret hopes, so as not to bolster an ego that would only suffer further if she was wrong).
He was obviously having one of his more frustrated moments. He knew that she was unlike other women and they usually treated one another with the utmost respect, simply because she was the absolute best at her job and she could teach him like no other in the surrounding counties could. His own father had made this perfectly clear in his lengthy introduction (including every act of prestige and honour she\'d ever garnered) of her, the first time she\'d begun training Franz nearly two years before.
Franz\'s behaviour now didn\'t alter her respect for him - everyone was entitled to a slip every now and then, after all - but it did make her wonder what was going on in his mind, if he had definitey lost sight of just how important she was to the cause of his betterment. Sixteen was the minimum age for entry into the Tournament that would take place in a few moons and most royals didn\'t enter until they were at least eighteen (because they had more of a chance of avoiding humiliation by this stage, and the entire process would be safer for the monarchy), but she\'d agreed to Franz\'s insistence that he wanted to try it, wanted to enter early, and he was certainly very skilled. She\'d been very eager to take him on the day-long countryside ride next week, just the two of them, pushing the animals and themselves to the limits through melting snowdrifts and up inhospitable cliff faces that served the two-fold purpose of encouraging discrimination in hand holds and increasing body strength. And, of course, they would actually have hunted this time, putting his long hours with the bow to use and testing his skill at tracking and killing a moving animal.
No, Franz\'s behaviour now didn\'t cause her respect for him and his skills to falter; but it did make her think seriously about having a quiet word in his father\'s ear about his lack of equilibrium... and the potential it had for disaster on the Lists.
