The House of Aepheros (7)
Chirp! Chirp!
"Mm... huh?"
Woken by the sparrows heralding the morning, Harnie—who had slept buried beneath her covers—rubbed her bleary eyes and sat up. She stared blankly at the sunlight streaming in through the window, and the moment she registered that morning had well and truly arrived, a hollow breath escaped her.
I overslept!
She had only meant to lie down for a little while. And yet here she was, having slept soundly clear through until morning. She couldn't lift her head for shame.
Burying her face in both hands, Harnie let out a silent scream. What am I supposed to do...?
She carefully retraced the events of the previous day. Hiding from the Marquisate's eyes by staying in Ruthmeier had been fine in itself, but Barak had said there was no spare room to offer a guest. Yes—up to that point she'd thought, fair enough, nothing to be done. All they had needed was to inform Karsein and arrange some solution.
But the solution he'd proposed had been far too extreme.
"I'll just sleep outside, obviously."
How could he make his own guest sleep in the room while he went out to sleep in the open? Her hands had shot out on their own—such an outrage simply had to be talked down.
"I would never make you sleep outside!"
"...Then what do you suggest? We can't exactly sleep in here together."
And so, quite naturally, things drifted toward the two of them sharing the room...
"Y-You take the bed."
She had steeled herself to sleep on the floor if it came to that.
And then.
That was probably where it began—the warmth that had long since been lulled to sleep suddenly beginning to seep out of her, little by little.
"Then let's change the terms. If you insist on staying in this room, then I'm the one sleeping on the floor."
"If you don't like it, I'll go outside instead."
It had struck her as unbearably high-handed—but had it truly been? Yes, they helped each other now, but strip that away and theirs was merely a relationship bound by a contract engagement. Sooner or later, they would return to being complete strangers. And yet he had shown her such kindness. Genuine kindness—the kind she had never once received from anyone else.
So Harnie had blurted out the question, carrying a faint hope within it, half-conscious of an answer she wasn't sure she dared want.
"Why... exactly?"
Karsein considered it for a moment, then gave her his answer—and warmth began pooling in her body all over again.
That hope. The answer she'd been half-bracing herself against. The foolish fear that it might be snuffed out the instant she heard it—it all came flooding back.
"If I have to watch you sleeping on the floor while I work, I won't be able to concentrate either."
After hearing that, Harnie had buried herself under the covers on the spot. She'd declared she was going to sleep first, but sleep refused to come. She turned the meaning of his words over and over in her head; every time the thought completed another circle, heat flickered up through her, until she was hiding beneath the blanket like a fugitive, desperate not to be caught wearing that expression. And so, covers drawn over her head, her eyelids had finally closed in the darkness—
—and morning had arrived.
Harnie grimaced and shuddered at the memory, her cheeks already flushed hot. This isn't something to agonize over, Harnie! Wringing her hands over it was pointless; the water was already spilled. Parting her fingers just slightly, she stole a glance toward the floor where Karsein ought to have been sleeping.
But Karsein was not asleep on the floor.
By the time she registered that, both her hands had already sunk below her chin.
"...You actually slept like that? Because of me?"
Clutching the blanket, Harnie muttered, visibly displeased. She herself had slept well—in the bed, very comfortably, a genuinely deep sleep. And precisely because of that, her conscience gnawed at her. For there sat Karsein—not even stretched out on the floor under a blanket, but dozing upright in a chair, arms folded, eyes merely shut.
"And there's only... one blanket on him..."
Now that she looked, the blanket was folded double. One layer had covered her; the other should have been covering him. The instant that uncomfortable truth landed, Harnie shot to her feet. Gripping her blanket in both hands, she went to him, meaning to drape it over his awkwardly sleeping figure so that at least a little of the chill might fade.
But alas—just as she moved to cover him, Karsein, sensing her presence, opened his eyes.
"If that was meant for me, there's no need. I've only just woken up."
"You're... done sleeping?"
"Yes."
The sheer nonchalance of it exasperated her. Fine, she could accept that he'd fallen asleep in that posture with little more than his coat thrown over him—but judging by the documents she'd glimpsed, Karsein must have been awake until at least the small hours. She was a guild master herself, the very top of her trade. Faced with a workload like that, he couldn't have drifted off before four o'clock at the earliest. In other words, he had likely slept less than three hours.
This she could not simply let pass. Harnie grabbed Karsein's arm and hauled him toward the bed.
"Harnie?"
"Stop talking nonsense and lie down. You barely slept at all."
"I slept plenty."
"And when, exactly, was that?"
"Hmm. Around five, I'd say."
Good grief. Even being generous and calling it four, that came to barely three hours. Falling asleep at five meant he'd had two.
Harnie's grip tightened.
"I'm begging you—lie down and sleep right now. I stole your blanket and your bed, and I feel so terrible I could die."
"What? I was planning to wake up around this time anyw—"
"Make sense, please! What kind of person runs a territory on two hours of...! Enough. If word gets out that the lord slept two hours, the whole territory will be in an uproar trying to stop you."
"There's really no need to go that far."
Trying to wriggle out of it, is he? Then she had an answer ready for that too.
"I am your fiancée, you know."
A shameless excuse—but none better existed.
"Am I supposed to stand by in silence, knowing the man I'm engaged to is running his body into the ground?"
"..."
The moment his expression suggested he might argue back, Harnie spun toward the door and shouted.
"Everyone! Your lord here intends to work on two hours of sleep, so what should we— mmph!"
"All right. I understand. I'll sleep."
The townsfolk would raise utter havoc if they caught wind of it. Karsein had no choice but to yield to Harnie's stubbornness.
Climbing onto the bed as though resigned to his fate, Karsein was tucked in by a grinning Harnie beneath both layers of the blanket.
"...One hour. I will sleep exactly one hour."
"No. Two—no, three more hours. What you did in that chair barely counts as closing your eyes."
He wanted to retort to a fiancée issuing decrees with folded arms, but Karsein was fated to surrender to sleep.
"The rest of the work is just the aggregate price adjustment—I can handle those myself. Not that it matters, since I have to verify whether you're actually sleeping or not, so I'll be standing guard with both eyes wide open, you know?"
Karsein sighed, muttering that he still wasn't used to this.
At that very same hour, nobles were gathering at the House of Modrich. Every one of them was clustered around Waglu Mountain—men who had schemed to carve up the land of Ruthmeier for themselves.
Yet at some point, that project had ground to a halt. True, the land prices of isolated Ruthmeier were laughably cheap, and they had simply waited for its collapse so they could swallow it whole without spending a single coin—when out of nowhere, a man had appeared, buying the land outright to become its lord. Right up to that moment they had dismissed him as a fool. Even if the land was cheap, there was no conceivable way to revive it; whatever money he spent would inevitably flow back into their own territories as he purchased goods from the surrounding estates—or so they had all assumed.
But Ruthmeier, now under a lord, did not waver even when they manipulated market prices to squeeze it. As if he had somehow foreseen the coming price surge, the man had bought up every necessity in advance, and on top of that, he was now collecting tolls from the nobles themselves, prompt and punctual. And so the disgruntled nobles had converged on the House of Modrich—the family that was surely entangled in this whole affair.
"Count Modrich. Why should we be paying tolls to the likes of them?"
"Explain yourself. What in the world happened, that we should be paying tolls of all things?"
"And they stocked up on everything they needed as if they knew prices would climb. How do you account for that, might I ask?"
"No—the proper one to question isn't the Count but Hemnon Modrich. Explain to us how this was managed."
"W-Well, you see..."
Before the nobles descending on him with bared fangs, Hemnon could not bring himself to speak. He wanted to offer some excuse, any excuse, but no words would come.
"Do you intend to sit on your hands with no countermeasure at all?!"
"C-Count Retelvick..."
"Then explain. We must pool our opinions, must we not? If we're to keep them from sustaining themselves, you had better confess every last cause of this right here?"
Under the murderous pressure of Count Retelvick, Hemnon squeezed his eyes shut and spilled everything that had happened that day. The nobles clicked their tongues, one after another.
"So. Not only did they fail to extract a single coin of compensation from Ruthmeier—they paid restitution down to the last Pecel, and even pressed money into the villagers' hands on top of that?"
"Y-Yes..."
"Does that make any sense at all?!"
Count Retelvick slammed his fist down on the table.
"Who is this lord of Ruthmeier? Did the Imperial Family intervene?!"
"Impossible. How could the Imperial Family intervene? We made certain the land's value was thoroughly crushed!"
"Then the man must be in league with someone."
"N-No! Never that. It's only..."
"Only... what?"
Hemnon swallowed hard.
"He is difficult to touch. The man is... a Bagrand..."
"...A Bagrand, you say?"
At the mention of the Bagrand Ducal House, every brow in the room twisted. If the ducal house moved, it was self-evident that Hemnon—a mere count's son—was no match for them. And it was not Hemnon alone. Every man gathered here, together, would find the Bagrands untouchable.
And yet.
There was one contradiction buried in that premise.
"Hah. What conceivable advantage could Bagrand possibly see in buying that territory?"
"They know perfectly well their tax rate climbs with every territory they hold. Why on earth purchase a worthless plot like Ruthmeier?"
"It isn't a land worth having to begin with. All it has is a rocky mountain—what possible reason is there to buy it?"
No matter which reason they weighed, the answer came out the same: there was no reason for Bagrand to buy Ruthmeier.
"Isn't it possible, then, that Hemnon Modrich is lying to us after all?"
"I-It's no lie! The lord of that land holds a certificate bearing the Imperial Family's seal."
"Then tell us. Who is this lord who ordered us to pay that absurd toll?"
Hemnon bit down hard on his lip, then released it and answered.
"K-Karsein Bagrand."
"What? Karsein Bagrand?"
"Not Lady Isabella, or one of the sisters?"
"...No."
A ripple ran through the room at Hemnon's confirmation—and then it flowed straight into laughter.
"Karsein, of all people? Then there's hardly anything to worry about."
"Clever of him to stockpile goods in advance, I'll grant—but how far can that possibly carry him?"
"Hemnon Modrich. How much did you pay out to Ruthmeier?"
"Around 10,000 Pecels..."
"I thought I'd need the exact figure, but it seems I needn't have bothered."
Count Retelvick snorted.
"Whatever little tricks that whelp pulls, at 10,000 Pecels their resources will run dry within the month. All of you—you know what must be done, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then seal the gates tight."
Sealing the gates—the slang known only to the nobles of the Waglu region meant handing over not a single item to Ruthmeier and letting the place wither and die.
"Even if demonic beasts appear, each of you will refuse them—politely, of course. After all, weren't they so insolent as to collect tolls from us?"
The nobles agreed with wide, slick smiles. This was karma for Ruthmeier's insolence—and a thorough retribution, delivered through perfectly legal rights.
And so the meeting, all bluster and no substance, came to an end. Far from worried, the nobles received the news as a godsend and dispersed to enjoy the rest of the party—never imagining what enormous upheaval this arrogance would one day bring crashing down upon their heads.
Three days had passed since that day. Three days—she had stayed in Ruthmeier for three whole days. And in that time, Ruthmeier had accomplished everything I'd ordered, and splendidly so.
"Young Lord Karsein!"
Barak came hurrying up to me all at once. Not "my lord," but "young lord"? Still, it made a certain sense—after all, such a magnificent tunnel had been completed. Even so, some things simply had to be verified.
"How is the safety? That's the most important part."
"No problems whatsoever. You know who we are."
Barak thumped his own chest twice—a gesture that seemed to say, don't you go forgetting who we are.
"For sculptors, the balance of a structure is the single most critical matter of all. That tunnel could hold several thousand imperial citizens at once and never so much as crack."
"Haha. Is that so?"
"Of course it is!"
"And the mana-stone lighting I asked for, so people can pass through at night?"
"Already installed! We took the liberty of refining the design while we were at it, so there's plenty there to feast the eyes on, too."
His "no problems" had evidently not been idle talk. Of course, the fact remained that several more tunnels had yet to be dug—but as of today, this place would likely become the most vital strategic point in the empire. First, though, I would need to head somewhere to gather the funds for excavating the rest.
"By the way, my lord... are you quite all right?"
Barak asked, his brows knitted with worry.
"All right with what?"
"Well, it's just that you, my lord... no. Forgive me. It's nothing at all."
Whatever he had meant to say, Barak shut his mouth.
"Harnie. When were you planning to head back?"
"..."
"Harnie?"
"Y-Yes?"
She startled as though jolted awake.
"Is something the matter?"
"Oh, no, nothing at all. I was just... thinking about something. What did you ask, again?"
"When you planned to return. As it happens, I'll be stopping by the Marquisate of Aepheros on my way, so if you wished to go home, I intended to escort you now."
"In that case... I'll come along to the Marquisate of Aepheros as well."
"You as well?"
"Yes. I have no intention of returning to the Theresia Marquisate anyway."
Besides, she had spent three days here without the slightest discomfort, and apparently she had some purpose of her own to pursue.
Well. I suppose she had her reasons.
I climbed into the carriage the ducal house had sent for me separately.
"You... what on earth have you been..."
"Pardon?"
"...Never mind. I have some business to attend to first. We'll depart after that."
Hearing Harnie's murmured words, I asked whether there was something she wished to say, but she gave no answer. Instead, I took Barak—the man I had just been speaking with—aside.
"Barak. Could I have a word? Come with me a moment, won't you?"
At this distance, Karsein's ears surely could not reach. The villagers still seemed unaware of the truth, but Barak, it appeared, already knew. That was precisely why Harnie had brought him here. Turning her back to him, she fixed him with a grave expression and spoke.
"I lead a merchant guild, so I understand these things. Which is why I'll ask you point-blank. Karsein... how many hours does he sleep in a day?"
Barak let out a long, deep sigh. And then—
"...Just as you suspect, my lady. The young lord's sleep is drastically little. Two hours a day—no, perhaps one. And even that is only snatched in brief naps."
A shadow fell over Harnie's face as well.