You Only Bought the Chador
Damien looked extremely displeased at having to share the carriage with the count.
His face was always expressionless, but Arian had somehow learned to distinguish the different kinds. There was the pleasant kind, the irritated kind, the reluctant kind, the flustered kind….
And the expression Damien wore right now was unmistakably the ‘I’d love to kill you but I’m staying expressionless’ variety.
Count Serpine, for his part, paid Damien no attention whatsoever. His interest was fixed entirely on Arian.
Inside the carriage, which had been treated with every possible spell to eliminate even the slightest vibration, he asked with a gentle smile.
“You’re twelve this year, with no fiancé… and you’re capable of receiving divine revelations?”
The difficult questions had started from the very first sentence.
Arian chose her words with extreme care, answering in the most cautious manner possible.
“It’s not so much that I receive divine revelations myself. It’s simply that by serving the saintess, I’ve come to understand a very small portion of the will that Gerka bestows upon her. I am nothing like the saintess.”
The count let out a soft snort of laughter.
“If you say so.”
Arian bowed her head with an obedient expression. Inside her mind, however, her thoughts were spinning wildly.
Why doesn’t he believe me? It was clear the count hadn’t bought a single word of her deflection.
She quickly retraced her own actions, wondering if she had made a mistake somewhere or gone too far, and took a moment for self-reflection.
But she had behaved appropriately. She had only pushed things to the minimum necessary to secure ten thousand gold. Was wanting the money itself the problem?
What Arian had completely failed to calculate was that Treven Serpine, having once been Pythia’s betrothed, knew her personality all too well.
Pythia had been educated as the kingdom’s heir. Even if she died and came back to life, she could never do something like trading a single bunch of chador for ten thousand gold and then throwing in the name of a god on top. She had received far too traditional an education for that.
Therefore, this little stunt had to be the work of this adorable young lady.
When she had first brought up the “divine revelation,” he had naturally assumed it was an excuse. But the moment this child saw the box that was short on the promised amount, she had pointed it out immediately. And then she had made that enormous box vanish in an instant. That was clearly not a human ability.
If it had been a scam, it was even more impressive. A noble daughter capable of deceiving him in a way that looked like the power of the gods? Such a woman would suit House Serpine perfectly.
“What do you think of Serpine?”
“It is a magnificent territory worthy of Your Lordship’s great name.”
It was a polite way of brushing the question aside. But the count smiled and pressed further.
“And what did you think of my son, who was raised in that magnificent territory?”
For a split second, Arian nearly asked, “Which one? The worthless eldest who already has a mistress he got pregnant before marriage, or the cowardly second son who gets beaten by his older brother every day but still can’t say a word to him, yet growls at outsiders?”
Instead, she barely managed to bite her tongue, swallow the words, and conjure up Pythia’s smile. She offered something close to that harmless expression.
“How could someone like me possibly dare to comment on the sons who carry Serpine’s blood?”
“As a potential spouse, I mean. I’m asking about my youngest son, Gautier.”
“Marriage is something that follows the wishes of one’s parents. I simply obey.”
Arian Danier told a bare-faced lie without so much as a flicker of hesitation—the kind of woman Count Serpine had never encountered before.
Just then the carriage arrived in front of the main temple and came to a stop. The servant who had been sitting beside the coachman opened the door. The count stepped down first and turned back to look at her.
“I see. It happens that your father is here as well, so we can discuss your bright future together.”
Cough—hey, what the hell are you saying?
She wanted to stop the count in a hurry, but he had already left the carriage.
From behind her, Damien asked, “No?” The short question, which omitted both subject and object, made her turn and glare at him.
“Of course not! Do I look like the kind of person who would obediently marry that idiot?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Exactly!”
“But that idiot’s father is the man standing right there.”
“So what? Your father is Hamilcar.”
Serpine was certainly wealthy. Of course, Count Serpine was a powerful lord. Unless one possessed a title and lands on the level of Duke Aud, there were few nobles who could act as his equal.
Her own father was little more than a candle before the sun in front of Count Serpine. It was no coincidence that the count’s son had called another man’s father “the king’s dog.”
But Hamilcar was a different story.
Was it as rich as Serpine? No. But Hamilcar possessed stronger border defenses than Serpine.
It was only after becoming a medieval person that Arian realized how vague the concept of a border had been in this era.
In modern times, borders were clearly defined from point A to point B. In the Middle Ages, it was more like, “Well… for now let’s call it Morihan, but it’s not permanent? If I get pissed off tomorrow it might become Amaine? But today it feels closer to Morihan?”
A situation that would have made her scream “What, are you managing a fishing border?” in modern times was actually the norm for every border region.
In fact, even places that weren’t borders worked that way. Since the entire territory from here to there belonged to Morihan, it was entirely possible for a fief in the middle to suddenly declare, “I don’t get along with the king. I’d rather swear fealty to Amaine.”
Of course, doing so was geographically disastrous, so it rarely happened, but it wasn’t unheard of.
Conversely, land that had once belonged to Amaine’s vassals could gradually become Morihan’s through clever politics, leaving one or two of Amaine’s fiefs stranded like lonely islands in the middle of Morihan territory.
In short, the concept of a border was never clearly defined to begin with.
That was why Serpine and Hamilcar represented two completely different kinds of borders.
Both were border territories facing Amaine’s vassal lands. But Serpine’s land was mostly flat, and no matter how you looked at it, it lay in the north—close to the king’s direct domain.
Therefore, no matter how bad relations between Serpine and the king became, they were still bound together as part of the northern alliance. The people of that region, even if currently divided between Morihan and Amaine, often shared the same historical roots.
Many families had ancestors intertwined through marriage, and mixed unions were always possible.
The north was magically inclined and far more civilized than the south. Their cultures had diverged. Thus, Serpine’s northern border could be called a “middle zone.”
Hamilcar, however, had fundamentally bad relations with the king from the start. It wasn’t the kind of political rivalry that existed with Serpine; they simply could not get along on a basic level.
The geographical difference between south and north, combined with the fact that they had historically been different ethnic groups with inherently different natures, made fusion even more difficult.
The very name of the kingdom of Morihan meant “the land of the Morihan clan,” and that clan had originally been based in the north.
In other words, the south consisted of other clans that had fought Morihan for over a thousand years before being absorbed. How could relations possibly be good?
Moreover, Hamilcar possessed the Mount of Light—a sacred sanctuary where the gods had descended. And the Mount of Light itself formed a border with Amaine.
Although things were quiet now, Amaine and Morihan had always fought over that sanctuary in the past. It had been a battlefield for centuries.
These days the conflict had shrunk to the level of localized skirmishes, but the fighting had never truly stopped. Unlike Serpine’s friendly border, where merchants from Amaine could enter freely and festivals were held, this was a real border.
It was an intensely contested frontline. The border of Serpine and the border of Hamilcar were nothing alike.
This was impossible to understand through a modern, centralized lens. It might make more sense if one thought of each fief as a character with its own distinct will.
In any case, that was why Serpine had money and Hamilcar had military strength.
Even Count Serpine, who often sneered at the king, treated Hamilcar with respect. Hamilcar possessed something the king did not: raw military power.
That power had been cultivated over hundreds of years. Countless kings had tried every method imaginable to bring Hamilcar’s might under their control. The most common method had always been marriage.
But medieval people never forgot their roots. The women of the royal family had wanted to offer Hamilcar to their own houses, and each time Hamilcar had resisted fiercely, eventually solidifying its current policy of internal marriages to maintain unity.
“That’s right. I am Hamilcar’s heir and a mage. My conditions are far superior to Serpine’s second son.”
Damien spoke slowly from behind her.
What is he even saying? The moment Arian, who had already stepped out of the carriage, tried to turn toward him—
“It’s time to show them a miracle from the gods.”
Standing before the wide-open doors of the main temple, the count spoke to her. The unspoken threat was clear: if no miracle appeared, she would die today.
Priests stood on either side of the temple doors. Their faces showed they had no idea why the sacred main temple—where the heir’s wedding would soon be held—needed to be opened at this ungodly hour.
“No one is allowed to enter.”
At her words, the count gave a light nod. But Arian wanted to block any possibility that either the count or the temple might try something.
“Damien, make sure no one peeks inside the temple.”
She had said it so confidently, but what if he couldn’t do it? She hadn’t asked because she hadn’t expected him to come along.
If she had come alone as originally planned, she had intended to check every corner of the enormous temple by calling up the Status on everything.
But if Damien helped, she could finish the task much faster. The quicker it was, the more it would look like a true miracle from the gods.
“Count to ten once I go in and the door closes.”
At Damien’s instruction, she nodded and walked steadily inside.
It suddenly occurred to her that this was the very path Izabo Aud would walk today.
After she finished everything and lightly knocked on the temple door, the doors of the main temple opened once more.
Count Serpine, who had been waiting outside, widened his eyes at the sight behind her.
The man who had once cried out to the gods over a single chador was now completely overwhelmed by nearly ten thousand of them.
He walked slowly forward and reached out with a trembling hand to stroke the petals. After confirming they were real, living flowers, he turned to look at her.
“The god has chosen.”
Whether he was speaking of the chador, himself, or her, she couldn’t tell. Perhaps even he didn’t fully realize who he was referring to.
She curved her lips into a smile for him.
“I offer my blessing upon today’s wedding.”
I won’t tell you who the recipient of that blessing is, dear customer. What you purchased from me was the chador, not a blessing, wasn’t it?