There Are Bad Dogs in This World - 3
The nobles' attitudes were remarkably submissive. It helped a great deal that quite a few of them were still agonizing over whether to attach themselves to Yuria.
After all, by this point there were already those who had reached out to me—
Those who couldn't clearly read which way the wind was blowing had much to fret over.
"I, for one, would like to see Young Lord Robert become the head of the house."
"Words like those haven't been easy to come by of late."
The noble who had approached me murmured quietly, as if confiding a secret.
"In truth, many nobles besides myself feel the same. If Lady Yuria becomes the head, what follows is as plain as day."
"In what sense, if I may ask?"
"We love peace, you see. That is, in fact, why we opposed the southern subjugation. Wars invite bloodshed, and we had hoped this contest for the headship would end as gently as possible... though I suspect it won't?"
"That remains to be seen. It may end more easily than you'd expect."
Loving peace, my ass.
He simply had no wish to commit his private soldiers to a war.
My ties to the imperial family were already public knowledge, which meant he wanted the southern subjugation delayed for as long as possible.
Well, there was no need for me to promise I wouldn't do it.
I took the noble's hand and shook it with a firm grip.
"I will press forward in whatever direction you desire. Assuming, of course, that I do become the head of the house."
"I will help you in every way I can. For the prosperity of Taylor."
Whether it was truly for prosperity's sake or not, I couldn't say—but words like those did lend me strength.
Not everyone came to me so docilely, though.
Some opposed cooperating with me right up to the bitter end. More than once, I'd had to draw the sword at my hip.
"A-are you threatening me with that sword?"
"No, I don't care for threats. You know that well enough, Your Grace."
"Then why in the world are you holding one? Even the Young Matriarch never went this far!"
"Yuria? Oh, please."
Yuria was, if anything, worse than I was—hardly a woman to be trifled with.
The noble's face went deathly pale as I swung the blade in lazy arcs. As the distance between us shrank and his complexion drained white, I let out a soft chuckle—and at last the man yielded, all but shouting his answer.
"F-fine! I'll cooperate! Isn't that enough for you?"
"You should have said so from the start. You'd have spared yourself the trouble of scurrying about like this."
Only after the sword had vanished did the man—who had torn up his contract with Yuria right before my eyes—finally manage to catch his breath.
There was no need to be gentle with everyone.
Among the nobility were some truly vile specimens, and most of them were not the sort to follow obediently.
They were people I would have to deal with eventually, one way or another.
Had I been kind to such men, there were plenty who would have looked on it poorly.
"Didn't you say you hate threats?"
When Arwen, watching me steadily, asked that, I chuckled and shook my head.
Hate threats? Well, if they're necessary, better to use them, I'd say.
The only reason I'd said otherwise was to rattle him—there had been nothing deep in it.
"I like them, actually."
"...Now that I think of it, you were much the same when we first met."
"I don't recall making any actual threats back then."
"I would appreciate it if you gave some thought to how I felt in that situation. Do you have any idea how startled I was?"
When I first met Arwen—she most likely remembered the occasion as the day I came back from killing assassins, smeared with blood from head to toe.
With Adele down below, she probably hadn't even had time to think, but had I been in Arwen's position... I imagine I'd have been quite startled myself.
Come to think of it, hadn't she fainted that time too? When it came down to it, the situation wasn't so different from a threat.
I had barged in out of nowhere declaring I was going to kill the Crown Prince—of course she would assume that refusal meant her own death.
As I smiled awkwardly, Arwen heaved a long sigh and turned her head away. We were now on our way to the last of the nobles.
Winning this one over would resolve a great deal, but it was a place I found myself reluctant to visit.
I stared at the paper bearing the name Eugris, then quietly exhaled.
"Are you quite all right?"
Renald's voice reached me. If anyone, Renald would know the reason I was like this.
He had served as butler of the house since I was a child; he understood full well why that name gave me pause.
Arwen wore a puzzled look, but she was hardly unobservant—she seemed to sense there was something behind it.
"This place matters most of all, after all. I'll simply have to bear it."
At those words, Arwen's expression wavered faintly.
She seemed unsure what to make of the name Eugris, but she appeared to have recalled what it meant.
Eugris was the family my mother had been born into, after all.
It was, perhaps, a house I needed to win over at any cost—and at the same time, one that deserved to be called the most important of them all.
Eugris was not a house of great power.
Measured from the capital it lay at quite a distance, and in political terms its influence could hardly be called substantial.
But that was only how things stood now. In the days when my father became head of the house, it had been quite prosperous indeed.
The family's decline had come only after my mother's death.
"We have arrived. The Eugris County Estate."
At Renald's words I lifted my head, and a building that looked rather shabby beside the ducal mansion came into view.
Once thriving and splendid, it now wore a somewhat tarnished light.
Stepping through the gates, a sigh escaped me unbidden. Even across all my regressions, this was a place I had deliberately never visited.
Coming here made me think of my mother, and my heart grew weak.
Now, I had to overcome it.
Walking forward with that resolve, I saw a man grayer even than Renald approach and bow his head.
"We meet for the first time, I believe. Might I ask what business brings you here?"
"This is—"
"No, it's all right."
I waved Renald back before he could finish. From here on, at least, I wanted to walk in alone.
I didn't mean to attach any special meaning to it—but if this was courtesy, then courtesy it would be.
The butler studying me seemed to have already guessed at least part of who I was, but he smiled quietly and parted his lips.
"Please inform the Count for me."
With a heart beating just a little faster, I wondered: what did the man who was to be my maternal grandfather make of me?
That curiosity bloomed all at once.
"Tell him his grandson has come to see him."
It was the first time in my life I had stood face to face with my maternal grandfather.
That was what political marriages meant, after all.
A bride became an outsider the moment she wed—my mother had had little contact with her own family ever since.
That I had only now come to find him left a small knot of guilt in my chest.
I should have come sooner.
Just as my brow creased under the weight of that long-held guilt, I sensed a faint presence nearby.
"...So you have come all this way after all."
"Disappointed it isn't your granddaughter?"
"That is not it. I simply hoped never to lay eyes on you. And I take it the purpose of today's visit has nothing to do with Serena, either."
The old man made his displeasure glaringly plain, then slowly lowered himself into his seat.
His attire was impeccable, but his wish to be gone from that chair was written all over him.
I regarded him for a moment, then opened my mouth with care.
"I have nothing to say to you. Not on any subject."
"Then may I take my leave?"
"...Do you despise it that much? Enough to refuse even a few words of conversation?"
"The problem, I'm afraid, is how much you resemble her. It has been a full twenty years since I last saw my daughter. And now a grandson appears out of nowhere—do you truly call that a considerate act?"
So I had been hasty. I smiled bitterly and shook my head.
Being told I resembled her did not sting as it might have. If anything, I had wanted to resemble her.
I couldn't know what he saw reflected in me, but his words had, in truth, eased the turmoil that had been churning inside me.
"I came today to ask where you stand. I heard you were cooperating with Yuria—but you didn't strike me as the sort who would."
"That is merely the Young Matriarch's own presumption. I have no wish to take part in this contest for the headship, so if you came hoping to gain something from me, you have wasted your time. Besides."
Something unusual stirred in his green eyes.
Those aged eyes bored into my chest, as though trying, even for a moment, to read every feeling I harbored.
Swallowing hard, the old man spoke. Or rather—Count Eugris parted his lips.
"I doubt you are truly prepared to become the head of the house. A man who, mere months ago, possessed no faction at all—do you believe that challenging now will see him through?"
"I do."
"On what grounds?"
"Because I did not spend those months at leisure."
The paper I laid on the table bore the seal of the North.
It was a letter I had received directly from Adele, and when I drew out its magic, the divine power bound within it released a brilliant white glow.
And when the Count saw the artifact I drew from my breast—the one stamped with Mirajane's seal—a dry laugh escaped him.
"...So it would seem. But I trust you have considered that if these factions intervene, House Taylor's good name could suffer for it."
"The reason I brought these factions to my side is to prepare for what comes after I become head. So that once I hold that seat, nothing will be able to shake House Taylor."
"And in the meantime?"
Instead of answering, I held out the papers stamped with the nobles' seals. The Count, who had been examining them closely, looked up at me once more.
The hollowness in his gaze, which had drifted over empty air, had deepened.
Apparently intrigued, the Count smiled faintly and spoke.
"You were a better man than I took you for. Though I suppose that is only to be expected, having learned from the Duke."
"I didn't learn it from my father."
My father would never have thought to win people over this way.
He had reigned from on high from the very start; where others might be courted, he would have chosen to crush them underfoot.
Yuria had moved the same way, which was why I was deliberately moving in the opposite direction.
Even when I mixed in the occasional threat, I made dialogue my primary instrument; where others coerced, I drew people in.
If asked whom I had learned it from, I could think of only one person.
"I suppose I learned it from my mother."
Trusting people to the point that others called me a fool—that, too, was a lesson that came from you.
Never giving up until the very end, and hesitating at cruelty even while resolving to harden my heart—that as well.
All of it, I had learned from my mother.
I did not believe every one of those lessons was right. But I knew their roots bent close to the truth.
And so I could choose, gladly, to be a fool.
To offer an embrace instead of force, to draw out cooperation instead of sowing division—that was how I had chosen to move.
Did this old man know that I was walking a path the exact opposite of Yuria's?
I watched the old man fall into silence, and before long the Count smiled quietly.
Unlike before, it was a gentle smile—the sort one gives while watching a small child's endearing antics.
"I believe I would like to hear a little more."
"I think you'll find it quite interesting."
As I smiled, the Count smiled in turn.