The Runaway Young Lady Wants a Home (2)
"Bardo! Why is that Silvia bitch still alive? Didn't you say you'd kill her yesterday?"
"I broke into her bedroom last night, but she was already awake. Who the hell expects someone to be up at three in the morning? She'd even charged up her lightning magic. Crazy woman. Her paranoia is clearly getting worse."
Silvia's birth father, Bardo, and her stepmother, Leonore, were talking.
It was a conversation so vile no one could ever mistake it for ordinary parental chatter.
Paternal love did not exist in Bardo so much as a speck of dust.
"If that Silvia bitch is out of the way, you'll make my son the heir, won't you?"
"Of course. The rest of the children are nothing but half-witted idiots. Without Silvia, no one will be able to complain if I name your son as successor."
The root of everything was the succession.
Seven half-siblings.
Stepmother Leonore wanted her own son to become duke.
That Silvia bitch just needs to disappear.
Fortunately, her son was capable. Far smarter than the other children — and handsome, too.
The problem was Silvia.
Hah. Academy genius mage? The Empire's most brilliant jewel? I will never understand how titles like that got stuck on a girl like her.
Silvia was simply too outstanding.
Next to her, Leonore's son was little more than a pebble by the roadside. If succession were decided by ability alone, Silvia would take first place without question.
Ordinarily, a title passed by birth order. But the eldest was a notorious wastrel who'd been expelled from the Academy, and he had no talent to speak of. No one wanted him to inherit.
In the end, the title would go by merit — and that meant Silvia was the problem.
"Bardo. You don't actually need to kill her yourself, do you?"
"No one in this house would ever suspect me. It's cleaner if I handle it personally."
"Haa… Fine. I'll leave it to you. Just kill that Silvia bitch as soon as possible."
"I will. You sit tight and wait."
Leonore left. Alone in the head of the household's chambers, Bardo remained.
Leonore. Face and figure are excellent, but that personality is filthy. I don't like the way she talks back to me.
Bardo leaned into the chair back and sorted through his thoughts.
I'll keep playing with her for another two years or so, then kill her.
A cruel psychopath. To him, every person other than himself was a disposable commodity.
The moment Bardo grew bored of Leonore's body, she would be discarded the same way as Silvia.
I can hardly wait for the day I kill Leonore. Fruit only grows sweeter the longer you let it ripen. First, though — Silvia.
He rose and stepped out of the room, then summoned a servant and asked where Silvia was.
"What? Silvia left the house?"
"Yes, my lord. The young lady departed immediately after breakfast."
"Do you know where she went?"
"I—I'm afraid I don't know her exact destination. Only that she headed east."
Her paranoia must be flaring up again. Being awake at dawn yesterday, and now this — damn her luck. This just got annoying.
Bardo's face twisted. He hated tedious work.
"Find out where Silvia went, immediately. I want answers as soon as possible."
"Yes, my lord!"
The servant hurried off.
Ordinarily I'd handle this myself, but under the circumstances I'll have to send people.
Actually, this was better. Kill her inside the house and the cause of death became hard to fake. Kill her outside, and any excuse would do.
Cause of death… murdered by bandits after her noble wealth. That'll work.
Bardo decided to hire bandits to kill Silvia.
"Sir Rix… What are you saying? That Father killed my mother…"
"Exactly what I said. Your birth mother was murdered."
Silvia's face went white. Her lips parted as if to speak, then closed again without a sound.
"Hard to believe, I'm sure. But the truth is often cruel."
Duke Bardo Robbins's crimes poured into her mind. She finally understood how a man with seven half-siblings had never drawn public scorn for it.
"Every woman your father ever took produced one or two children, then died. Did it never strike you as strange?"
"I—I just thought Father was unlucky…"
Bardo always married nobility. He selected a beautiful noblewoman, married her, fathered a child — and roughly two or three years later, the wife was dead.
"Sometimes he disguised it as illness. Sometimes as an accident. For someone so brazen about murder, he was remarkably good at never getting caught. The power of a duke's rank, I suppose."
Once alone, Bardo took a new wife. He always had some excuse — the need for an heir to continue the line, and so on. He acquired new women the way a man buys new toys.
With the head of the house so thoroughly distracted by women, the family could hardly prosper.
"The Robbins duchy has been declining of late."
"You can even tell that…? You're right. The family's situation has been getting worse."
The causes were many. The seven siblings spent without the slightest sense of money's value. Duchess Leonore Robbins poured funds into bizarre investments and burned through them. The inherited title. The vast inherited fortune. And Duke Bardo himself, who took no real interest in running the house at all.
"There's a saying that a rich man's fortune never lasts three generations. Your father is the perfect illustration."
Bardo's grandfather had built the family up. Bardo's father had barely managed to hold the line. And Bardo was on track to ruin it completely.
"The family's fortunes are collapsing fast. At this rate, House Robbins will lose its standing entirely."
"Th-then what am I supposed to do?"
"That's for you to decide. I don't interfere."
He would not control Silvia. All he offered was the truth. What she did with it after that was hers alone.
"I… I still don't know."
"Think carefully. But the time left to you is not generous."
"N-not much time? Am I going to die? I don't want to die!"
Silvia's attachment to life was anything but ordinary. Of course, few people wanted to die — but few people laid bare their hunger to live as openly as she did, either.
"The longer this goes on, the stronger the threats against your life will grow. That is the fate you were born into. In time, even your brothers and sisters will turn against you."
"That kind of fate… What am I supposed to do…?"
"You have two choices. Accept your fate — or change it."
He studied her face, then flinched in surprise.
She's less frightened than I expected.
He had assumed the shock would leave her hollowed out. Instead, her expression looked set — resolved, even.
Silvia might speak indecisively and pretend she couldn't choose, but the face she wore now belonged to someone who could commit to anything the moment circumstances demanded it.
"One last piece of advice."
"Yes. I'm listening."
"In two days, bandits your father has bought will ambush you. Watch yourself."
"…Thank you for telling me, Sir Rix."
"No need for thanks."
His work done, the Yongwang-shin vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.
The possession ended.
A light wave of dizziness hit me as I rose from my seat.
"Um, Sir Rix."
"…Yes?"
I considered answering casually the way I had been, then switched to polite speech after all. Going from informal to formal felt incredibly awkward.
"Why are you helping me? You were even banished from your family because of me…"
Why I was helping her. She was asking about something perfectly obvious.
"Because I took your divination fee. A job's a job."
"…I see. Heh. All right, then."
Silvia smiled a little. It looked far better on her than grief. If she kept smiling like that, even the "villainess" nickname might disappear.
That said, there was no way Silvia actually knew what a divination fee was.
"Lady Robbins. Do you know what a divination fee is?"
"No. Not at all! But then, there's so much about you I don't know, Sir Rix. I'll just learn it all little by little!"
Silvia answered brightly, stood, and left the restaurant ahead of me.
…Learn it all little by little?
I felt like I'd just heard something strange.
"S-save me! Gyaaaaah!"
"Damn it! How the hell did this bitch know about the ambush?!"
"Everyone run! She's a mage! We don't stand a chance!"
Sword-wielding bandits scattered in total panic.
Crack!
Red Lightning punched straight through the fleeing men.
"Gyaaaaaah!"
"Aaaargh!"
"Save meee!"
Merciless magic dropped the bandits one by one.
Only a single man survived.
Run — I have to run!
The last bandit sprinted for his life —
Crack!
— and a single bolt of Red Lightning struck his leg with perfect precision.
"Ghk!"
He crashed and tumbled across the ground in a noisy heap.
A woman approached the fallen bandit at a leisurely pace.
"Hello there. Shall we take our time getting to know each other?"
Crack.
Red Lightning flared in Silvia's right hand.