What Happened at the Marquess's Estate (3)
The next morning, in the garden.
Morning sunlight filtered through neatly trimmed rose bushes. The Marquis's garden had a different atmosphere from the Grand Duchy's. Unlike the Grand Duchy's garden, forcibly planted inside a military fortress, this space had been designed from the very beginning to welcome guests.
Being invited here meant I'd become someone important, I supposed.
Two teacups sat on the round table. The Marquis had arrived first, and the herbal aroma of freshly poured tea drifted up from his cup.
"Sleep well?"
"The guest room was very comfortable."
"As it should be. I spared no expense on that room."
This man felt no shame talking about money. In noble society, obsessing over coin was considered vulgar, but to the Marquis it was a point of pride—befitting the head of a family that leveraged its capital to pressure the Emperor himself.
The Marquis sipped his tea and gazed out over the garden, in the direction of the Grand Duchy's lands.
"Have you thought over my proposal from yesterday?"
An alliance.
"I'll be honest with you."
"Good. I like honesty."
"I cannot give you an answer at this time."
The Marquis tilted his head. His expression told me he'd read it as a deferral, not a rejection.
"The Grand Duchy hasn't even gotten back on its feet yet. If we discuss an alliance now, we would be the one leaning on the other. Alliances between unequal parties never end well."
Something I learned from working life. The contract of the weaker party.
The Marquis set down his teacup, studied me for a moment, then smiled.
"So the idea is we talk again once you're on equal footing."
"Precisely."
"Heh. You've got more nerve than your father, I'll say that. Duke Theodor drew his sword in meetings like this one."
The Marquis rose from his seat and gave my shoulder a light pat.
"The promised day has come, so I'll hand Volph over. Take your time thinking about the alliance."
Then he paused mid-step and turned back.
"Just one more question. What do you plan to do once you've restored the Grand Duchy?"
An odd question. Moreover, he stated it as fact that I would revive the Grand Duchy.
My answer was already decided.
"I want to live comfortably."
The Marquis blinked. Apparently it wasn't the answer he'd expected.
"...Comfortably?"
"I'll pass the title of Grand Duke to my younger sister and live out my days leisurely somewhere quiet."
"Hahahaha!"
The Marquis laughed in disbelief, his face genuinely dumbfounded.
"That's the sort of joke that would make the late Duke Theodor spring right out of his grave."
He doesn't believe me. And I'm dead serious.
As he walked away, the Marquis spoke without looking back.
"Today you're free. Wander the castle as you please."
I'm not sure how much freedom is worth inside someone else's house.
Late morning, in the western corridor of the Marquis's estate.
The moment I was told I could roam freely, one place came to mind.
The Marquis family's library.
In the original novel, House Lawrence was the greatest commercial family in the empire. If records of logistics, ports, and mining rights were kept in that library, there was bound to be information I could use to rebuild the Grand Duchy.
As I walked along the corridor, Claudia came toward me from the opposite direction.
Deliberately timed, no doubt.
"Your Highness. Where might you be headed?"
"The library."
She was watching me whether it was officially surveillance or not, so honesty was the better policy.
"What business do you have in the library?"
"Reading. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm fond of it."
I am fond of web novels, after all.
Claudia started walking a beat later, taking the lead.
"I shall escort you."
Surveillance, repackaged as an escort.
The library was larger than I'd expected. Thousands of books packed shelves that reached all the way to the ceiling. Where the Grand Duchy's study had centered on swords and military strategy, commerce and law dominated here.
Imperial trade route maps, cargo volume reports by port, legal compilations on mining rights.
Ah, this is it. Information the Grand Duchy doesn't have. If I want to revive the territory's economy, this is exactly the kind of material I need.
I pulled out a trade route map and spread it open. Three routes connected the northern territories to the empire's heartland, and one of them cut straight through the Grand Duchy's lands. Even properly collecting just the Transit Tax on that route would transform our revenues.
"You have an interest in trade?"
Claudia was leaning against the neighboring bookshelf. She didn't even bother hiding the fact that she was watching me.
"It's necessary for my family."
"Even in the late Grand Duke's day, the Grand Duchy's trade was never vigorous. Your military might was absolute, but commercially..."
She let the sentence trail off, but the meaning was clear. A family that was all brawn and nothing else.
"Which is exactly what I intend to change."
"All by yourself?"
Claudia studied me for a moment.
"...There's a registry of imperial merchant guilds on that shelf. It should prove a useful reference if you mean to begin trading."
"Thank you."
I pulled out the guild registry and skimmed it. Of the sixteen merchant guilds operating in the north, not a single one traded directly with the Grand Duchy. All of them funneled their goods through House Lawrence.
If the Grand Duchy opened its own trade routes, the Marquis's monopoly would break. That was probably one of the reasons the Marquis proposed an alliance—the judgment that binding us as a partner beat having us as a competitor.
"May I ask you one question?"
Claudia looked up from the shelf across from me.
"Why is it that no guild trades directly with the Grand Duchy?"
I threw the fastball straight down the middle.
Claudia regarded me for a brief moment, then closed her book.
"Because my father blocked it."
Not the answer I'd anticipated.
"There was no need during the late Grand Duke's life, and afterward, my father cut it off. You understand, of course, the effect trade would have on the Grand Duchy's revenues."
This woman is telling me her own father's strategy. Is she doing it on purpose?
"You're candid."
"It's information with no reason to be hidden. Anyone in commerce knows the state of the trade routes."
True enough. She'd only given me information that couldn't be concealed anyway.
But the act of handing over even that carried meaning. At the very least, it was a signal that she wasn't hostile.
My relationship with this woman is getting complicated.
I spent two hours in the library. Claudia stayed the entire time at the opposite shelf, pretending to read her own book. I knew it was surveillance, but quiet surveillance didn't get in my way, so I left her be.
The Marquis summoned me to his study.
On one side of the room stood a shabbily dressed man, bound fast. Small rat-like eyes and a scruffy frame—it was Volph, the Grand Duchy's former chief financial officer.
"As promised, he's yours."
The Marquis indicated Volph with a tilt of his chin.
The moment Volph laid eyes on me, the color drained from his face. That reaction alone was enough. His eyes said he knew exactly who I was—and exactly what he'd done.
"Volph."
At the sound of his name, the man's legs buckled.
"Y-Your Highness... I, I never..."
"Save your excuses for the Grand Duchy."
Volph's mouth snapped shut.
The Marquis tilted his wine glass and studied Volph. This was the moment he handed over a man he'd once taken in under a promise of protection, yet not a flicker of sentiment showed on his face. To this man, Volph had been nothing more than a piece on the chessboard from the very start.
Once a tool outlived its usefulness, you threw it away without mercy.
"I'll take him off your hands gladly, Marquis."
"No thanks necessary. I'm merely returning a useless man to where he belongs."
The Marquis poured himself more wine as he spoke.
"My offer of an alliance remains open. Send word when you're ready."
Just as I moved to rise, the Marquis added one more thing.
"And Killian."
He called me by name. Not "Grand Prince"—my name.
"You said you'd become my equal. I'll be watching with great expectations."
When I stepped out of the study, Claudia was waiting in the corridor, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. She wasn't even bothering to hide that she'd been waiting for me.
"Are you leaving, then?"
Well, obviously. I can't stand another day in this place.
"I'm taking the embezzler home with me."
Claudia pushed off from the wall and faced me. The gaze of this woman I'd met across dinner tables, libraries, and corridors for three days had changed from that first day.
"...I see."
Claudia stepped aside, clearing my path. But the moment I passed her, she spoke in a low voice.
"Your Highness. I look forward to our next meeting."
What is this terrifying woman planning next?
I gave a silent bow and moved on.
As I passed through the Marquis's castle gates, Hans grinned at me from atop his horse.
"Results beyond anything I imagined, my lord."
"Surprised me a little too."
Volph had been loaded into a carriage. Dragging a fugitive treasurer out of enemy territory by hand was an absurdly unrealistic scenario, yet here it was, reality.
Mounting my horse, I glanced back.
Someone was standing at a second-floor window of the Marquis's fortress. The distance was too great to be certain, but it looked—maybe—like black hair stirring in the wind. Or maybe not.
Not worth worrying about. I've got a mountain of problems waiting for me back home.
"Let's move out."
I pulled the reins.
I took stock of what three days had yielded: Volph secured, trade intelligence from the Marquis's library, the Marquis's proposal of alliance, and a new variable named Claudia.
In the original novel, House Lawrence had been the Grand Duchy's enemy. But in this world, the Marquis had offered an alliance and introduced me to his daughter.
I did that. Coming here in person, showing them my Aura. One thing was becoming increasingly certain: my knowledge of the original novel was steadily losing its usefulness.
I couldn't say whether that was a good change or a bad one. What was certain was that the territory where I'd have to think with my own head, without the original's script, kept growing.
"Two days to the Grand Duchy, my lord."
I nodded at Hans's voice.
"Hans. When we arrive, go through the main gate first and intercept Stella."
"...Intercept the young miss?"
"The moment she sees my face she'll come charging at me. If she collides with me before I've even gotten off my horse, someone's getting hurt."
Hans nodded with utter solemnity.
"...I shall do my utmost."
There was something profoundly wrong with the picture of an Acting Knight Commander being assigned a ten-year-old girl suppression mission.
Occasionally, the sound of sobbing drifted from the carriage carrying Volph behind us. He knew better than anyone what awaited him once he was dragged back to the Grand Duchy.
Two days from now, when we returned, all hell was bound to break loose.
But for now, let me rest a bit. The three days at the Marquis's estate had worn down my mental stamina long before my physical strength.
I closed my eyes atop the horse. The breeze was refreshing.
The farther north we rode, the colder the air grew.
The Marquis's study.
After Killian departed, Claudia came to see her father.
"So you really did hand over Volph."
Marquis Chester toyed with his wine glass as he replied.
"There was no reason to make an enemy of the Eberhardt Aura over a single treasurer."
"Your offer of alliance was refused."
"Refused? No—deferred. That distinction matters."
The Marquis regarded his daughter.
"You saw him for three days, so you must know. What sort of man is he?"
Before answering, Claudia recalled the scene in the library.
The intensity of his focus as he spread out the trade route maps and analyzed every path. The eyes that read the merchant guild registry line by line. An eighteen-year-old Grand Prince, leader of a family on the brink of ruin, studying commerce in his enemy's library.
And those words—I want to live comfortably.
A bearer of the Aura, wanting to live an easy life. It was obviously a lie, and yet, strangely, it had sounded utterly sincere.
"...He was nothing like the reports."
"Be specific."
The answer that left her lips was not what she truly thought.
"He reveals no emotion, offers no information, and answers questions with questions. These are not the actions of the sheltered young lord who used to lock himself in his chambers."
The Marquis smiled. This time it was a smile of satisfaction at his daughter's answer.
"You'll come to understand soon enough."
"Understand what, Father?"
In place of an answer, the Marquis drank his wine.
Claudia knew that expression of his. The face of a man who already had the whole plan in hand.
He was smiling despite being refused an alliance. Which meant he'd thought of a surer method than alliance.
"...You can't mean—surely not marriage."
The Marquis went on smiling.
Claudia's hand clenched the hem of her skirt.