Tyranny of Steel

After getting reacquainted with one another's bodies in the Royal Bathhouse, Berengar and Honoria departed from their isolation and entered the dining hall where the King's growing family had gathered for a family meal. 

Upon witnessing the Byzantine Princess return from her voyage, Berengar's other brides had varying expressions. As for Hans, he quickly jumped up from his seat and approached the young woman. 

"Mommy Honoria is back!" 

The Third Queen of Austria smiled lovingly as her husband's eldest son approached her with glee. She quickly picked the boy up and swung him around as she plating a kiss on his forehead.

"My baby boy is growing up so fast!"

In response to this, Linde merely sneered in disdain at her rival before making a comment on her choice of words.

"Your baby boy?"

It had been a while since Honoria had verbally sparred with Linde, and thus she put on a devilish smirk as she made a comment that made the redheaded beauty's blood boil.

"Of course, I consider all of Berengar's children to be my own, even if they were born to another woman. After all, no matter how much of a bitch his kids' birth mothers' might be, it is not a fault of the child. All I see is the offspring of my husband, which I hope grows to be plentiful. Speaking of which, Yasmin, you should be due soon, should you not?"

Before Linde could respond to Honoria's snide remark, she had shifted the conversation to someone else, thoroughly cutting her off from retorting. As for the woman in question, she smiled as she rubbed her pregnant belly before nodding her head.

"Yes, however, this little bugger appears to be taking his sweet time..."

Adela immediately raised her brow in displeasure as she heard this remark and immediately questioned the Granadan Princess.

"How do you know it is a boy?"

Yasmin glanced over at the overly pious woman and made a snide remark of her own.

"Because his father's seed is strong, and I have no doubt that Allah will bless me with a strong and cunning boy much like his father."

The mentioning of the word Allah immediately made Adela's skin crawl as she looked towards her husband for a response.

"Berengar, my dear, are you willing to let such heresy be spoken in your court?"

The Austrian King chuckled in response to his High Queen's assertion before lecturing her on a lesson of tolerance.

"Adela, darling, it is not my place to judge Yasmin for which God she worships, that is between her and her deity. Besides, I think your faith has blinded you. She is not a wicked woman like you perceive her to be. If you put aside that overly pious attitude of yours for a moment, I think you would realize that the two of you have much in common."

Adela did not take this remark lightly, and instead refused to meet her husband's gaze. The fact that he would take this heathen's side instead of hers infuriated her. When Berengar witnessed her furious expression, he merely sighed in defeat. It was impossible to please all of his wives completely.

However, he would not bend the knee to Adela's religious persecution simply because she was a devout christian. Thus he shifted the topic to Honoria's journey in an attempt to establish a degree of cordiality between the women. 

"Tell me Honoria about your expedition to the new world. What did you see? What information have you gathered for me?"

Honoria smiled as the conversation shifted back to her. She happily recounted her tales of what she had discovered.

"Well, where I landed was far different from New Vienna. It was a mountainous region that took a lot of climbing to discover anything of value. However, I made sure that my cartographer had created sufficient maps of the land we uncovered.

What was interesting was that there was no attempt by the natives to contact us. Instead, they immediately ambushed us during our climb. We had fought fiercely with them, however, no matter how many times we pushed them back, they came back for more. Their hostility and willingness to enter our gunfire to drive us out is something I have not seen before. 

We eventually began running low on rations, but rather than head back to the ship and call it quits, my scouts spotted a village which we seized for ourselves with limited struggle. We ended up using the locals to build a small timber star fort around the village and regularly sent out scouts to map more of the region.

As for what we discovered, unfortunately there was no silver or gold, however we found a new food product that was really tasty when cooked properly. We piled the village's entire stockpile of these vegetables onto our cargo hold. Before we returned to the fatherland, they should be arriving by rail car soon. In the meantime, I have a sample!"

After saying this, Honoria reached into her satchel and pulled out a rather large potato before setting it on the table. Berengar's eyes grew wide with shock as he witnessed this. It had been roughly six years since he first reincarnated into this world, and until now there were two things he missed from his daily life. That was potatoes and chocolate. With this discovery, Berengar could finally make many of the great German dishes that his Kingdom was missing.

The young Austrian King had to take a moment to collect his thoughts and calm his voice before he questioned Honoria further on this matter.

"Just how many of these foreign vegetables did you bring with you?"

Honoria thought about it for a moment before giving her husband an estimated figure.

"Thousands, as well as the means to grow them, the villagers didn't understand our language, but force was enough for them to teach us via gestures how to grow these things, so we brought back the means to plant them in our fields as well!"

It stunned Berengar to hear this. He felt like he was about to have a heart attack from sheer excitement. He spent a few minutes to calm his nerves, which did not go unnoticed by his wives, especially Honoria. She could tell that despite never seeing this vegetable before, he knew exactly what it was.

However, she did not know how he knew, and she also knew he would not enlighten her on that subject. Thus, she was forced to smile before covertly trying to coax some answers from the man about his secret.

"So, what should we name these things?"

Berengar pretended to think about it for a moment before giving them the same name from his past life.

"How about potatoes?"

Honoria's brow twitched as she heard this. She did not know what potatoes were, or what the word meant, but it didn't sound like a German word. This instantly made her more curious about whatever Berengar was hiding. However, she knew better than to question him openly and instead nodded her head in agreement.

"Very well, we will call them potatoes. How much do you estimate they are worth?"

The Austrian King was not stupid. He knew Honoria had suspected he knew more than he was letting on, and how he knew these things, thus he attempted to throw her off the trail by not giving her an immediate answer.

"We will have to experiment with these potatoes to see their most effective use, but at the very least I can give you fair price of Austrian Thalers for them, if they prove to be worth more than we initially inspected I can pay you and your crew a further installment on the newfound price."

Honoria smirked as she heard her husband's response. He was very good at pretending, like he didn't know the answer to her questions. His statement was also quite reasonable. If she did not know him so well, perhaps she would have bought his line.

However, she knew Berengar better than most, perhaps only Linde, Adela, and Henrietta knew his mannerisms, and thought process better than her, and thus she, as well as the others at the table, knew he was hiding something.

Despite this common sentiment from the women gathered at the table, none dared to question him about this obvious attempt to deflect from his hidden secrets. The last thing they wanted was to corner Berengar and have him lash out at them. 

With a simple smile on Honoria's face she prodded Berengar's chest, and change the subject. She had gotten all the answers she could glean for now, thus there was another matter on her mind.

"Daddy, will you spend the night with me? I missed you so much!"

Berengar chuckled as he heard this, he had spent more time with his other wives lately, and though he had just been intimate with Honoria in the bath, that she had brought back potatoes put her in his good graces, and he was more than willing to reward the woman for her efforts, thus he nodded his head before responding.

"Of course! After all, I need to reward you for your efforts."

With this said, the King's other brides instantly became jealous, all of them besides Yasmin. She knew how to share a man, and if she was being honest, she had become physically exhausted from all the intimacy she had spent with her husband over the past few weeks. The man had the stamina of a lion, and she could not satisfy him all by herself. 

Thus, after finishing the meal together as a family, Berengar and Honoria would abscond to the Royal Bedchambers, where they would engage in all kinds of intimacy.