The Eccentrics of Winterhome (2)
"Whoa."
Karem let out an involuntary gasp.
It wasn't a positive one. If anything, he was thoroughly put off by the sight before him.
"Pardon me."
The moment they reached the office door it burst open, and a servant emerged with an armful of heavy documents, bowed hastily to the group, and sprinted off down the corridor.
Through the open doorway they caught a glimpse of the interior. With only a slight stretch of the imagination, it was the exact same nightmare Karem had seen in Catherine's office the previous winter.
Mountains of books and paperwork packed the room so densely there was barely space to breathe. Literally.
"Regarding the Deep Rock Mort—ah, you're here. Come in, come in."
The familiar voice from inside made it obvious who the words were meant for.
Leaving the servant behind, Karem followed Catherine into the office.
Piles of documents and tomes of every possible material filled every gap without mercy, turning the Duke's ordinarily modest study into something far closer to a library archive.
"We'll take a short break. While we're at it, we can have a late lunch. It isn't dinner, but go ahead and use my name at the kitchen and help yourselves to whatever snacks you like."
Seated at his work desk and surrounded by scrolls and stacks of paper, Alfred rose with exhausted eyes, clapped his hands once, and dismissed the remaining servants from the room.
"Well. Sorry for calling you so suddenly."
"Not at all, my lord. This is your busiest season, after all."
"Come, have a seat first."
Catherine swept the office with a look of pure disgust. Memories of the workload she had been forced to clear the previous autumn and winter came flooding back.
"Even so, you look far too busy. Has some large-scale territorial war broken out somewhere?"
"I wish it were a territorial war. Year-end settlements and festival preparations have piled up on top of each other, so the work is pouring in. No need to worry."
"I never was worried, for the record."
"Still holding a grudge over last year?"
Catherine's face made her feelings crystal clear.
"Wouldn't you?"
"Watch your tongue."
Catherine glared at Alfred with a touch of genuine spite. Alfred, with the hardened heart of a superior long accustomed to subordinates' resentment, let it roll right off him.
"Karem. Something on your mind?"
"By festival, do you mean Winter-Ascend?"
"What? Winter-Ascend?"
For the first time, Karem saw Alfred's face contort as if he had just bitten into something foul.
Alfred waved both hands as though to banish the very idea.
"Just imagining it is horrifying. Having to hold Winter-Ascend every single year? I can't even begin to guess how much extra work that would dump on us."
"Oh, so it isn't an annual event?"
"Of course not. You can't prepare a festival honoring the gods half-heartedly, but preparing one every year is an entirely different story. What we're preparing now is the memorial service we hold every autumn."
"Memorial service?"
Alfred shuddered hard enough that his short beard visibly trembled, having missed Karem's question entirely.
Catherine's hair gave a little shiver of its own.
If Alfred failed to finish the work… the answer to how far that disaster would roll downhill was obvious.
"That said, there is one thing I ought to thank you for."
"Surely the things my lord has to thank me for aren't limited to one or two?"
"Indeed. Including the matter of Sir Stark, no less."
When Alfred first heard that the Bolton territory had been utterly devastated by a swarm of Grizzly Beavers, he had briefly lost his mind. And the man who delivered that news had been none other than Gordon Stark himself—the very person who was supposed to take up the barony.
"If you hadn't cleaned that up, I would have been drowning in overtime right up until the festival started. Of course, I'm already pulling all-nighters as it is."
"There's no need to thank me that much. And it isn't as though new work isn't still landing on your desk."
"Even so."
Alfred let out a short sigh of relief.
"Being able to put an end to it before the situation grew any larger is entirely thanks to you."
"…"
Karem felt a strange sense of déjà vu. In this very room, last winter. The atmosphere had been different, but Alfred's tone was exactly the same.
Catherine seemed to sense it too; Karem immediately noticed the sour look that crossed her face.
"Don't tell me you're about to dump another job on us?"
"I'm truly sorry to bother you at such a busy time."
A chill ran down Karem's spine. He reflexively grabbed Catherine's arm.
Catherine shot him a look that clearly said, What are you doing all of a sudden?
But Karem could not let go. Same season, similar situation. Catherine had a track record.
When he felt resistance in the arm he was holding, Karem only tightened his grip further.
And after the next words left Alfred's mouth, even Catherine found herself unable to relax her own hold.
"Ordinarily I would have simply sent the Chief Seneschal, but he had rather a serious accident not long ago, didn't he?"
Ah. Well, that can't be helped.
Catherine was forced to accept it. Objectively speaking, Iona was old. No—honestly, there was no telling when or how he might drop dead. He was at the age where he could take a short nap and simply never wake up again.
His pure white, faded beard and the three generations of service as seneschal to the Dukes of Iceland proved it.
Even so, someone present still found the idea hard to swallow.
The distance had been a bit of a stretch, but Karem had seen it with his own eyes: Iona ripping a massive tree out of the ground bare-handed, casually swinging it around and hurling it away, then beating a bear-sized Grizzly Beaver to a pulp with nothing but his fists.
He eats roughly his own body weight in food and wields holy power on top of that—there's no way he dies that easily, right? I mean, honestly… looking at that chubby—no, that impressive physique, maybe adult-onset disease could take him out…
The expression on Karem's face must have been far too obvious, because Catherine flicked him hard in the forehead with one finger.
"Kid. That's rude."
"Mm, my apologies."
"You're not going to correct the thought itself?"
"No, I mean… honestly. Lord Iona?"
Catherine swallowed a low groan. Deep down, part of her shared the exact same doubt.
"But you still shouldn't say it out loud."
"…Atanitas. You just said it yourself."
"Oh, damn."
Some of the more particular nobles might have made an issue of it. Alfred, however, was not that sort of noble. And frankly, he agreed with Karem.
"Even so, I'm still uneasy about sending Iona out into the provinces just yet. To be honest, I would prefer he remain in Winterhome at least until next spring."
"So it truly can't be helped."
"If it weren't that urgent, I wouldn't have summoned you in such a rush."
Catherine barely resisted the urge to claw at her own scalp. She already had work piled to the ceiling, and now she was supposed to put it all on hold and head out into the sticks.
But as previously established, it really couldn't be helped. He was at an age where death could arrive at any moment, after all. Still hard to picture, but that was the reality.
"So what exactly is the job that requires me to go in person?"
"The work itself isn't particularly complicated."
Professional, businesslike language began to flow. Even Karem, who had been a complete amateur at business in his previous life, could follow along; Alfred's explanation was that concise.
In short: introduce the completed cold-resistance potion, open markets for it, hire local labor, and lay the groundwork for production.
And yet—
"This doesn't really seem like something Lady Atanitas needs to handle personally."
"True enough."
It wasn't even a job that required someone of Iona's caliber. More like hanging a noble figurehead on the project and sending actual administrators to do the real work.
"You're not wrong."
"In that case—"
"If the person you needed to meet wasn't the Margrave of Hadrianus."
"Ah. So right now there's no one else available except me or the Chief Seneschal."
Catherine understood the situation in an instant.
Karem had no idea who this margrave even was, but the two of them kept talking regardless.
"I feel bad for you, so I'll attach as many people as I can manage."
"Hm? What on earth does that—"
"Look around you."
"Excuse me?"
What is that supposed to mean?
Yeah, what is he talking about all of a sudden?
Karem looked around the room—and then it hit him. Catherine, who had been just as baffled, followed his gaze a beat later and finally understood.
The countless mountains of parchment and books filling the office. Every last one of them was related to year-end settlements and the festival.
The answer had been there from the very beginning. The busiest season of the year, and a festival on top of it.
"If someone of your or Iona's stature were dispatched, the related negotiations would essentially be settled the moment you arrived. But to put it bluntly, we simply don't have the people right now."
"Then perhaps you shouldn't have started so many projects all at once."
Under normal circumstances the ducal castle would never be short-staffed. For all that Iceland looked like a backwater, it was still a place people gathered. A shortage of civil officials under a duke would have been bizarre.
"You just had to launch both the spice business and the mass-production potion project—two massive undertakings—right in the middle of the busiest season."
And when the boss makes a mess, the subordinates clean it up. Alfred had brought every bit of this on himself.
Further discussion followed, but in the end it was decided that Catherine would set out on the journey as soon as possible—ideally within a few days.
On the walk back to the Mage's Tower, the atmosphere around Catherine was murderous. It could hardly have been otherwise. Karem understood perfectly well why: she was already drowning in work, and now another major assignment had been dumped on her.
The only reason she wasn't immediately storming off the way she used to was that even Alfred truly had no choice this time. Wait. No choice?
"So who exactly is this Margrave of Hadrianus?"
"Hm? Who is who?"
"What sort of person requires either Lord Iona or Lady Atanitas herself to handle business with them?"
Alfred was a duke. In the entire Seophon Kingdom only one person outranked him, and even across all of Europa there were probably fewer than a hundred nobles of comparable standing. That meant the ranks of his direct Chief Seneschal Iona and his supreme magical advisor Catherine Marigold Atanitas could not possibly be low either.
So just who was the Margrave of Hadrianus that someone of her stature had to meet him simply to discuss a potion business?
Catherine made a peculiar face.
"Don't tell me… you actually don't know?"
"Excuse me? Am I supposed to?"
"…Stop focusing only on cooking and pay a little attention to the world around you."
Catherine shook her head as if she had given up on him. Her golden hair, fine as silk thread, rippled like an aurora with the motion.
"The Margrave of Hadrianus is the great noble who rules the largest territory in Iceland after our lord himself."
"Ah, right—he did say 'margrave.'"
"He is also the Grand Knight Commander who, as our lord's deputy, stands at the head of every knight in Iceland."
"I think you once said that rank was equal to yours."
Karem muttered as a vague memory surfaced. Catherine nodded as though he had gotten it right and continued.
"And he is our lord's father."
"Hmm, I see? Wait, who did you just say?"
What did I just hear?
Our lord's father? Then that means…
"The previous Duke of Iceland?"
"He holds that title as well."
That explained a great deal—though not everything. Of course even Alfred would feel awkward about casually ordering his own father around.
Then Karem's jaw dropped at what came next.
"Richard Felwinter. Commonly known as the Great Demon of the Lady of Winter. In less polite terms, the moment our lord came of age he shoved the dukedom onto him, grabbed the margravate and the Grand Knight Commander's authority, and ran off to the north."
"…Leaving aside the dukedom, what was that about the Grand Knight Commander's post?"
Isn't the Grand Knight Commander the one who can summon every knight in Iceland? How do you just take that with you? And more importantly, wouldn't the other knights have something to say about it?
The answer turned out to be surprisingly simple.
"When the strongest man in Iceland—both then and now—throws a tantrum, who's going to argue with him? Especially when that man is the former duke."
"Even if this place prioritizes ability, that can't possibly—"
"They say he beat every single objector into the ground until the words stopped working."
"And that made the opposition understand?"
"That's what they say."
So this is what they mean by the border between civilization and barbarism…
Karem regarded the whole story with a lukewarm stare of pure incomprehension. Catherine found it just as hard to grasp. Neither of them yet possessed a proper Icelandic sensibility.
"Well, since things have turned out this way, you should get in some training too."
"…Please tell me you don't mean cooking training."
"Of course not."
"Ehhh…"
Wait a second.
"Who am I training under?"
"Who else? The mercenary, obviously."
"Gordon? The guy who just got a temporary job?"
"Someone of his caliber satisfies both the combat-power and escort requirements."
"I don't think His Lordship will be very happy about that."
"I'm dragging him along on an official mission personally issued by our lord. What exactly is the young master going to do to me?"
"…You just don't want to watch the two of them being lovey-dovey, do you? You're already in a foul mood and now you have to head north."
Catherine's silence was as good as an admission.