The Aide, Bella Esnion

Thanks to the cover story I'd spun at the banquet—that I'd gifted the Saintess a vial of Snow Lotus Essence because she seemed to have depleted her mana—I'd managed to snuff out the trashy gossip on the spot. With a perfectly legitimate pretext of repaying the Saintess who had reinforced the barrier, there wasn't a soul who would dare pick a fight with the Grand Duchy's heir.

The real problem, however, came after the banquet ended. Elysia had gone and raked both families over the coals without a shred of mercy.

She'd sat there in silence while other men called her fiancé a barbarian and a dog. But the moment I looked after the Saintess at the banquet—handing her a mana recovery ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠potion and my coat—her temper had well and truly snapped. For a woman who had spent her entire life as the heroine beloved by the whole Empire, watching her fiancé care for another woman was an unbearable humiliation, and a threat.

It was hypocrisy of the purest kind, but Elysia's tears were more than enough to shake a Grand Duchy that had staked its neck on its relationship with the South. My father and the family's old men, already on edge from having to tiptoe around the South's grain-hostage play ahead of the spring famine, were of course furious.

The result was an immediate sanction, levied on the grounds that my pointless behavior had shaken the alliance with the South.

I stared at the disposition order sitting on my study desk and let out a hollow laugh.

Three months.

Until the spring famine passed and the grain imports from the South were wrapped up, I was supposed to sit down and shut up. It was unspoken pressure to play along with Elysia until summer, one way or another.

Did they really think that squeezing me like this would make me bow my head the way I used to and go back to playing the South's dog?

It didn't matter. I hadn't moved without expecting at least this much.

I was planning to recruit the Academy's key figures within the semester anyway, and to build my own underground network and alternatives capable of standing against the South's grain-hostage play. Frozen personal operating funds? I'd just raise the money myself. If anything, it had handed me a plausible alibi to keep the South from getting suspicious—a net gain, from where I stood.

And more than anything, making Elysia taste a dose of her own medicine and sending her into a proper fit had already been a better harvest than I'd expected.

In the end, if I was going to smash this engagement to pieces, I needed to raise hell of my own on a regular basis. If I behaved quietly and reasonably, neither Elysia, nor the Count's house, nor our own old men would ever quietly accept a broken engagement. I had to keep stacking the grounds for a breakup so that when I detonated everything in the finale, they too would realize this engagement was hopeless and let go.

So this Saintess incident was nothing more than the opening move in the hell I intended to raise from here on.

The only real snag was that a bothersome piece of luggage had attached itself to me on the way back to the Academy.

The woman sitting beside me in the carriage right now: Bella Esnion.

An aide the old men and my father had forcibly assigned to me—partly to pressure me, and partly to put on a show that the family had the Grand Ducal Heir under control. The daughter of Baron Esnion, a house that had served the Hartelion Grand Duchy for a long time, and a second-year at the Academy just like me.

Aide in name, but in practice she would be glued to my side inside the Academy, watching my every move and reporting it all to my father. That much was obvious.

A neatly combed blonde bob, and jade-green eyes that held a distinctly Northern chill—nothing like Elysia's green. Bella had the delicate look of someone born to a family of aides, but she also had the Northern habit of keeping her mouth shut unless she had something to say.

"...."

I liked that she didn't talk more than necessary. But she was, first and last, my father's eyes and ears. And she seemed like the type who, true to her aide-family blood, would say what needed saying without a hint of reading the room.

Bella opened her mouth, her voice quiet.

"His Grace the Grand Duke instructed me to deliver this exactly as spoken."

"...That is all."

Having delivered my father's threat-laced message word for word, Bella closed her mouth again and resumed a proper posture.

So if the engagement breaks, I'd better brace myself. Is that it?

A warning to sit quietly at the Academy—and a declaration that they would use Bella's eyes to break me in completely.

I let out a short, dry laugh, propped my chin on my hand, and looked out the window. If I'd intended to quietly fall in line with my father's will, I never would have started this in the first place.

"Baron Esnion's daughter."

"Yes, my lord."

"I've heard my father's message. Whether I carry out his words as spoken, however, is entirely my choice."

At that cold remark, Bella's eyebrows twitched, just slightly.

A chilly silence hung in the carriage for a while, until Bella's restrained voice cut through the air and broke it.

"I do not understand, my lord."

Bella looked at me steadily with those clear green eyes and continued in a dry tone, as if discussing the weather.

"Even if Lady Florence is not to your liking, is that not the nature of a noble political marriage? You ought not to put your feelings first. You should think of the territory's future. And... should the Saintess have caught your fancy, would it not suffice to take her as a wife as well?"

"...What?"

The sheer absurdity of it pulled the retort out of me before I could stop it. If you didn't like the fiancée you'd gotten from a political marriage, don't bother chasing a broken engagement—just bring in more women? It was not a remark I'd ever expected to come from a woman's mouth, least of all from the aide sent to watch me.

When I stared at her, speechless, Bella added calmly, her expression as composed as ever.

"His Grace the Grand Duke himself took Her Grace the Grand Duchess in a political marriage, then later brought in four additional wives, did he not? You would be well aware of this, my lord. Even should you take several wives, no one in the North would find fault with it."

She went on as if reciting a self-evident proposition.

"Even a Southern house is well acquainted with Northern custom. So long as you do not cross the line in an official setting, they will say nothing if you take several wives behind closed doors. The reason they have reacted so sharply now is that a fish they have yet to land became entangled with a figure of the Saintess's caliber before the other houses. Once Lady Florence has firmly claimed the seat of Grand Duchess, they will no longer concern themselves with it."

Then she looked at me and added, almost as an afterthought.

"It is, after all, the natural duty of the Grand Duchy's heir ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to sire as many children as possible."

It was an utterly Northern, utterly pragmatic string of statements. To a modern mind it was an outrageous way of thinking, but this was precisely how the barren North survived.

The North was where every monster wave began, a land with a survival rate more brutal than anywhere else in the Empire. The Grand Duchy's blood, as the North's rulers, always had to stand at the vanguard of the front lines, so their survival rate was even worse. That was also why I had been designated the Grand Duchy's heir.

The children my father had with five wives numbered a full fifteen. But over the past fifteen years, three monster waves had claimed five of them, and the monstrously violent wave two years ago had taken every last one of the remaining nine—everyone except me. I had seized the heir's seat as the sole survivor of fifteen. I couldn't exactly fail to understand the Northern survival strategy of scattering as much seed as possible to keep the bloodline alive.

Yes. Intellectually, I understood it perfectly. If Elysia hadn't had that greedy Count's house behind her, I too would have treated this as a trade of grain for the Grand Duchess's seat, and been scheming to bring in the women I actually liked as additional wives, just like my father.

But the other party wasn't just any house. It was the sly Count Florence's house.

I stopped tapping the window and met Bella's clear jade-green eyes.

"Bella Esnion."

"...Yes, my lord."

"As you say, I could follow my father's methods to the letter. But you're overlooking the most important fact. My mother, the Grand Duchess, is from the West. Not the South."

"...."

At my low, coldly settled voice, Bella's head tilted slightly.

"...You're speaking of a hundred and fifty years ago."

For the first time, a crack appeared in Bella's indifferent expression as she said it.

"That's right. When the most powerful monster wave since the Great Upheaval was ravaging the entire North. When the North's knights and the Grand Duchy's ancestors were throwing themselves like moths into the oncoming tide of beasts to protect the Empire—what were the Florence Count's house and the Southern nobles doing?"

I could see Bella bite down hard on her lip. Before she was a cold-blooded aide, she was a Northerner too.

"The South didn't send a single soldier. Not one. This while the Imperial House, the East, and the West were all dispatching their knight orders. The moment those bastards confirmed their own territories were safe, they stalled the administrative process for troop support and made a show of taking on rear-line logistics instead—food and supplies. Then, just like now, they used grain as a hostage and jammed a straw into the North. The ones bleeding are the North. Then and now, the South puts on airs of refinement and tosses us a few crumbs of bread."

Bella's hands, resting on her knees, were trembling finely. The blood had drained from her clenched fists until they were white. I watched her reaction from the corner of my eye and went on.

"And that's not all. Eighty years ago, during the succession dispute for the throne, the South seized the central government and ostracized the North as 'barbarians.' Thirty years ago, when the North's Saintess died under suspicious circumstances, they were involved in that too. ...And before my brothers' blood had even dried, they pushed this engagement through."

Each one was a history of humiliation that would set a Northerner's teeth grinding. Exploiting the North's desperate need to survive monster waves for profit, treating them as barbarians in politics, economics, and culture alike—it was all still ongoing.

"And what? You want me to continue the bloodline with the blood of that greedy, ungrateful Southern house?"

"...."

"Begging Florence for bread and becoming their dog is an insult to Hartelion's ancestors."

Bella could no longer open her mouth. My rebuke had brought the Northern pride buried deep in her chest to a boil, and she couldn't come ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up with a single meaningful counterargument.

A heavy rattle ran through the carriage as it came to a stop.

Looking at the Academy's scenery beyond the window, I straightened my collar and rose from my seat.

"Report my every move to my father if you like, Lady Esnion."

Hand on the door handle, I murmured one last thing to her.

Leaving Bella's frozen silence behind me, I threw the carriage door open without hesitation.