Chapter 10
Chapter 10 (Map)
I had been out in the potato field since dawn when a kitchen maid came running up.
"My lady, what do we do?"
She made a fuss, blinking rapidly.
"I went to the greengrocer on Jejel Street, and the price of ingredients is outrageous! All of a sudden they were asking five times yesterday's price for strawberries. And strawberries are expensive enough as it is!"
Instability in the Warp meant instability in the distribution network.
And it wasn't only the Warp—soon monsters would begin appearing along the territory's borders as well. So a further surge in ingredient prices here was already a foregone conclusion.
'It's starting now.......'
Thankfully, I had bought the seed potatoes as quickly as possible.
'In a month and a half, the new potatoes will be ready to harvest.'
Potatoes would provide carbohydrates and vitamin C.
I emptied out my last emergency funds and pressed them into her hand.
"Masa, there's something I need you to go buy right now."
I had been waiting for this moment, when the distribution network began to destabilize. There were things I could buy now at a bargain price.
'I've already secured enough grain from the grain merchant. Even with more people, we can hold out for a month.'
It was just after I had finished giving Masa the relevant instructions.
"My lady!"
The gatekeeper came rushing over.
"Lady Dalia is here! She says she wishes to see you, right now!"
At the name Dalia, the maids' faces all went rigid.
The knights who had been planting seed potatoes all wore expressions that said, "Who's that?"
I narrowed my eyes.
"......Dalia? Now?"
Dalia Sears Hawin.
She was my cousin, and she shared the Sears name.
My father had had a younger brother. Which meant that man was my uncle.
That uncle had distinguished himself in war and been granted the Hawin territory, opening a new line as Baron Hawin.
Even so, he had been unable to give up the name 'Sears,' so he made it his permanent middle name.
He did so even though middle names were normally used by high nobles and royalty, and he was openly mocked behind his back for it.
And House Hawin.......
'Took most of our marquisate.'
On the day of my father's funeral.
Thanks to a contract my father had signed, thoughtlessly trusting in blood ties, Beron Territory and Jejel Street had passed to House Hawin.
In other words, my father had made that absurd contract with his own younger brother.
'Brothers born and raised together in this territory.'
And so he had been able to pick out the choicest land in the Sears Marquisate—Jejel Street and Beron Plain—and take it.
Above all, losing Jejel Street, the central region's main distribution hub and market center, had been a truly enormous blunder.
They would have had plenty of useful seeds and preserved foodstuffs in their various shops, which would have been a great help in an isolated situation.
Baron Hawin had not even offered me comfort at my father's funeral. He had simply gone to Alpheus and pressed him to fulfill the contract.
Alpheus probably hadn't even known the man was his uncle, and had thought of him only as a creditor.
But the fact that it was not the uncle who had come, but his daughter.......
'Why is she here?'
In the original novel, Dalia would come to see me, but about a month later than now.
She would come to find me and the maids once we were worn down by starvation.
"I heard Alpheus even drove out your butler? Good heavens, if you stay there, those knights won't take care of you. You'll all starve to death first. Come to our house right away. That butler is staying at our house too."
She was my cousin, of all people, so I would follow her with the maids and.......
And just like that, we would be loaded onto an illegal human-trafficking ship.
"Goodbye, Brisa."
Dalia would shove me onto the ship herself and say:
"I really hated you."
It had been an unexpected remark.
Hated or not...... we hadn't really had much contact with each other?
Behind her, Baron Hawin would be receiving sacks of wheat as payment for us. They, too, would be suffering because of the isolated distribution network.
But now the situation was different. The full-scale starvation had not even begun yet.
"Let's go."
I rose, taking the maids with me.
The maids grumbled, each getting a word in from behind.
"I don't like that young lady."
"Hmph, she's obviously jealous of our Lady Brisa's noble bloodline."
"The Princess herself educated her, and she even attended Capital Academy. Of course she'd be envious."
Dalia and I had never had much in common.
Before I left for the academy, I had stayed in the territory until I was ten, but I had usually spent my time with my mother.
Because my mother had been my teacher in every subject.
"You can catch up in about two years. You're my daughter, aren't you? Let's enroll you early."
When I took first place at age ten on the Capital Academy entrance exam, even though most students entered at twelve.
I went to my mother's grave and laid down the acceptance letter.
My mother had passed away while I was taking the entrance exam in the capital.
"Don't contact Brisa. It might interfere with her exam."
"You...... you're truly insane."
"Don't make me laugh. I'm not insane."
Those had been my mother's last words, and my father, who had said "You're insane" at the end, had accepted those last wishes and not contacted me.
And so I had not even been able to attend my mother's funeral.
Having lived like that, I'd had no time to spend with Dalia.
But seeing as she said "I always hated you"...... the maids might really have been right.
When I arrived at the reception room, Dalia was sitting there with her brown hair and sky-blue eyes.
"Brisa, it's been a while."
Dalia, who had not even come to my father's funeral, said with a bright smile.
"I heard you're no longer the heir to House Sears. What a shame. I heard your engagement was broken off too."
I frowned.
"Is it true? Wow, you never know what life will bring."
The last time we had met was two years ago.
Dalia had never once picked a fight with me this openly.
Only then did I realize that I had now become someone she could "look down on." And that Dalia had been waiting for this moment all along.
"Hey, you know Luman of House Joachim, right? If nothing comes up, I'll probably get engaged to him. My father visited House Joachim yesterday, and it seems he received a proposal then."
"Ah, Luman Joachim. I always thought he was the most unpleasant of all the central nobles."
I answered indifferently.
"But starting today, I find myself pitying him. Wow, you never know what life will bring. Just as you said."
This level of provocation was easy to brush off.
I nodded slowly and continued.
"House Hawin's territory must have grown quite a bit lately. Seeing as House Joachim, which never takes even the slightest loss, is only now beginning to consider you as a prospective fiancée."
"What?"
"At this point, shouldn't we invite the ghost of my late father to that engagement ceremony? He's the greatest contributor, after all. If it were me, I'd have asked him to give a congratulatory speech."
"Don't be so arrogant."
Dalia glared at me, fuming.
"As if you're in any position to talk, living off the charity of a marquess with commoner blood mixed in."
She gnashed her teeth and retorted with all her might.
"I'm so curious where that half-brother of yours will sell you off to."
"Then stay on my good side."
I lifted my teacup elegantly and said,
"Because if I tell my brother to sell me off to Luman of House Joachim, then a rather significant 'something' will come up and interfere with your precious engagement."
I had never lost this kind of power struggle.
It was just a little boring, so I took a sip of tea and then asked directly.
"Why did you come?"
"......The Warp has been a mess since yesterday."
If I had not come to know the original novel, this was something I would have learned belatedly from the knight who came yesterday.
Dalia continued primly.
"Father quickly made inquiries here and there. The Magic Tower has already announced that it's because of a Monster Wave and won't be easily resolved."
Dalia, perhaps wanting to draw things out, took a sip of tea along with me. Then she smiled smugly and said,
"You don't have much food, do you? Hand over the Erenta Region to us."
As expected.
The western grain merchants' guild leader hadn't singled out the Erenta Region for no reason.
House Hawin must have approached him first. They must have told him they would pay a high price if he took the Erenta fishing rights away from Sears.
The guild leader, desperate for money, had jumped at it.