We fled the imperial encampment as if we were running away.
We set up our baggage on a low hill about a twenty-minute walk away.
“Move quickly! Set up the tent where the young lady will sleep first!” said the knights as they hurried soldiers from place to place.
A familiar but unwelcome face approached me then.
“Lord. Would you help move the young lady’s luggage? Two women can’t manage it alone.”
She wore white, wrinkleless clothes, a white, wrinkleless headscarf, and had a white, wrinkleless face — the woman I’d looked across at inside the carriage every day for the past month.
She would normally never dare step on my shadow by bloodline, but now, as someone serving the same young lady, I couldn’t flatly refuse her request.
I took a large leather bag from the baggage wagon and carried it into the big tent.
“Shall I put this bag here?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
We scraped the grass away, smoothed the dirt floor, and layered a woven straw mat, animal hides, and a rug in order.
We opened a folding bed in one corner and placed several high-quality leather bags with metal rings here and there.
“Please handle those bags carefully.”
“Are there jewels inside?”
“The young lady’s corsets are inside.”
I shoved the bag toward the maid as if passing it off.
“How can a maid entrust the young lady’s clothing to another’s hands?”
“I apologize.”
She apologized to me in a flat tone.
Her voice made me feel that nothing I said would make a difference.
I left the tent as if escaping.
“Take care of the arrangements. It looks like there are things I must not touch.”
“Yes. I will. Thank you for your help.”
Just as I was stepping out of the barracks, the maid who had followed called to me.
“Young Master Anplus.”
Her tone had clearly changed from when she had addressed Knight Anplus.
“I know you are to see Miss Ribelia tonight.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You and the young lady must be tired. I advise you to take a deep sleep.”
“Didn’t you say you didn’t know what I meant?”
“Now that you have come this far, everything has already been decided. No matter how much quick wit you show to muddle through this once, nothing will change.”
Her voice contained the calm resignation of someone who had given up.
“Shut your mouth.”
The maid added, rhythmically as if reciting a poem.
“You cannot go against fate.”
A dusky evening fog rolled in from the east where land reclamation hadn’t finished.
It was a dense fog so thick you couldn’t see an arm’s length ahead.
***
“Don’t talk about fate like that.”
Late at night, I crawled out of my small tent and muttered.
If I had wanted to live according to fate, I would have taken my life that night when I was fifteen.
But I had stubbornly clung to life under persecution, met a fine adult who taught me the sword, and ultimately, as a knight, was thanked by an officer-mage.
“Fate…”
I kept muttering that word because, besides my own case, something about it bothered me.
Blue bloods did not like the word fate.
Only lowly red-blooded commoners who could not wield mana knuckled under to fate; those with blue bloods, who bend mana to reshape the world by will, rule fate.
That was how the blue-blooded nobles saw the world.
That view strengthened the deeper the blood.
For someone of that maid’s tint of blood, the word fate would be enough to provoke a sneer.
Something unknown to me was at work.
It was unpleasant not to know things from the standpoint of a guard.
Avoiding the soldiers’ eyes, I headed to the back of my sister’s tent and crawled under the heavy cloth.
“Brother. You came.”
Ribelia lay on her side facing away from the tent entrance.
Her bright gray eyes were like our father’s, and her hair was raven-black.
She was a girl with a suppressed expression, like a bird of prey trapped in a cage.
“Your quick thinking earlier was appreciated. Thank you.”
“Hitting someone is not an easy thing. Now it’s just the two of us, so speak informally.”
I awkwardly let my speech drop.
“My cheek still burns. You have a talent for slaps; don’t let that talent bloom recklessly.”
“Brother, you are such a troublemaker.”
She smiled shyly.
At that moment, the maid who had been dozing in the corner shifted.
She hastily pulled the blanket up to cast a shadow over me.
This was not a moment for long conversation.
Time to get to the point.
“What is going on with this territorial negotiation?”
“I don’t know either.”
Ribelia’s smile hardened as she answered.
Her face showed how bleak even thinking about it made her feel.
“What?”
“The imperial side came here and delivered their stance.”
“So Father sent you to the border without any preparation? What kind of territorial talks are held like that?”
My voice rose at the absurdity of the situation.
“This feels like they’re just setting you up to fail. Is this—are we supposed to hand over land while awake?”
“Yes. I do not know what Father Lord thinks. He is not the sort to give impossible tests.”
The word test crawled into my ear.
“A test?”
Ribelia glanced at the dozing maid and answered.
“They give various situations and missions… and watch how you solve them.”
“How long is this test supposed to last?”
She swallowed and replied.
“Until you fail.”
So that’s what made you like this.
I clenched my teeth.
Rage rose against a father who entrusted such responsibility to one barely sixteen.
But Ribelia shook her head as if she knew what I was thinking.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
Without waiting for my reply, she continued.
“Father loves the family more than anything.”
“Then is it okay to push you like this?”
Ribelia’s small, trembling voice replied with strength in each word.
“He pushes himself the same way. He has that right, and he must be so.”
I was speechless.
To die and live for the family was honor and common sense among the nobles of this world.
What could a former heir who had once feasted as I had say about rights and duties?
I was torn between the anger that this was wrong and the obligations that came with being an heir.
The dozing maid shifted greatly.
I turned and watched the maid warily.
“That maid is not a wax maid. Rest assured, the night is dark but safe.”
Ribelia said urgently.
“A wax maid?”
“The one they call ‘that’ maid. They call her that because she’s expressionless like a wax doll. Father himself nicknamed her.”
The Lord was hardly idle enough to meddle in a mere maid’s title.
She was probably not a real maid but a watcher or examiner.
A few branch families I learned about as a child flickered through my mind.
A branch that handles external information, one that manages family secrets, one that deliberately mingles with commoners to supply an adequate number of mages to the main house…
They were all as much limbs of the Lord as anything else.
“What does the wax maid do to you? Why have you shrunk like this in just a few years?”
Ribelia did not answer.
She merely smoothed the barely-visible line of her thigh and calf under a thin nightgown as if stroking them with a fingertip.
“Perhaps my learning speed didn’t reach up to yours, Brother.”
She murmured bitterly.
“Both the tutor, the Lord, and the wax maid have spoken often about you.”
A resilient blue-blooded body leaves no scars.
But the way she looked at her own body carried a faint fear.
I had once worn that face when I looked at Temeratia’s thorn-pierced instep.
“I’m sorry. I have something to say…”
“You’re not the one who should apologize. If I had awakened my magic that day, everything would have gone smoothly.”
I couldn’t forget the words.
She was desperately filling the space where I had been.
Footsteps of soft pattering came, stopping at the tent entrance.
Ribelia hurriedly pulled several papers from between the blankets.
“These are documents from the imperial family; read them. The tone is not good.”
“Alright. Be careful.”
The tent flap was brushed aside and I rolled quickly out under the tent.
***
“Aaaah! Aaaah!”
A half-blood royal with brilliant blond hair and cool blue eyes, Sormanzer, let out a passionate scream inside the tent.
There was none of the arrogant posture he had shown toward Ribelia earlier.
A letter written on fine paper was crumpled in his hand.
“The delivery is complete; my business here is finished.”
The officer-mage who had accompanied him answered bluntly and left the barracks with an equally blunt step.
Sormanzer, left in the room, leaned on the desk with his elbows and covered his face, sweating.
“Those damned main-house bastards! If they’d demanded the possible things, we could have at least tried.”
A blue vein stood out sharply on his forehead.
The half-royal drew a rough breath and smoothed the crumpled letter.
[The six great houses all eye the imperial land, hoping to carve it up. Negotiations with the Intezeruto will set a precedent for them.
We will not concede an inch. Offer up developed land with your own body.]
“They live as they please because they call themselves pure-blood royals; has all sense of reality sunk into a grave?”
Just hearing it, one would think he had already given up on the negotiations.
Yet Sormanzer could not bring himself to tear the letter to pieces.
Because of the word devotion.
Those born enjoying privileges valued their own lives above all.
Blue bloods did not call what they gave a sacrifice.
Red bloods devoted themselves to blue bloods, blue bloods to deeper-blue bloods.
They called giving away property and life not a sacrifice but devotion.
So when a pure-blood royal wrote devotion to him, it meant bring the developed land even if it costs your life.
And the hidden meaning of that instruction was that failure to bring the land would mean death.
“On what logic do they demand all the developed land?”
Sormanzer slammed papers and an old map on one side of the long table to the floor with the back of his hand.
“Sit. Stand guard.”
The knight who had stood behind him like a statue opened his mouth.
Black hair and golden eyes, a knight with a metal flower on his breastplate — the iron-sword Daiodel.
Hearing his voice, Sormanzer sighed deeply and slumped into his chair.
“We must get her signature. We have to get at least eighty percent of the developed land—no, even seventy percent.”
He muttered nervously.
“I want to kidnap that bitch. If it weren’t for that Anplus bastard, we could have had that signature that day.”
Daiodel nodded.
“Good idea, sir.”
“Why do you answer so seriously?”
“No, truly. Your Highness, didn’t you recently complete the short-range teleportation technique of wind magic?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t the two of you use that technique together?”
At Daiodel’s words, Sormanzer blinked in surprise, then slowly brightened.
Finally he clapped his hands as if his head had cleared.
“If the talks don’t go well, we can snatch her wrist and teleport her away!”
Daiodel nodded silently.
Sormanzer refined the plan.
What began as a simple thought could not remain simple in its stages.
“What if she still refuses to sign and holds out? We can’t just kill her, can we?”
He frowned.
If they went to claim land and returned having given cause for invasion, they might be hanged.
Daiodel answered.
“Give her strong drink and medicines. An inebriated person will obey whatever they’re told.”
Sormanzer laughed.
“You are as clever in the head as you are with your sword.”
“Thank you.”
“While I prepare the magic, you must stop Anplus.”
Sormanzer bit his lip once and withdrew his previous restraint.
You cannot kill her, but a ruined noble doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t need to stop at prevention. Make the heir useless.
Anplus’s words still echoed in his head.
‘The author is not of a stock that can raise his head in front of the young lady.’
‘You expect us to present before our successor a person whose blood you do not even know?’
‘He struts about because he is supposedly pure-blood though he cannot use magic!’
The thought made his blood boil.
Daiodel laughed like a wolf.
“Even a pure-blood will die if his head is cut. If he can’t use magic, no matter how pure his blood, he is no match.”
***
Three days later, a royal messenger suggested a second meeting.
Ribelia emphasized that it would be the first proper meeting and accepted the imperial proposal.
I worried most about being trapped and threatened like the last time.
“How about changing the meeting place? Right out in the field.”
Our messenger added that condition, and the imperial side accepted.
Thus the meeting place was set up midway between the two encampments.
The tent had only a roof; all four side walls were open.
A hundred paces left and right, each side’s officer-mages, knights, and soldiers kept vigilant eyes on us.
No one would be able to hear or read documents, but most would see if one side threatened the other.
Ribelia glanced up at me and spoke first.
“Shall we sort out the order of entrance one more time?”
“All right.”
Now the talks could begin properly.
Of course there was no guarantee the same tricks as last time wouldn’t be tried.
I set my nerves and watched Sormanzer and his knight closely.
“Our house, the Intezeruto, had the Serenus marsh, and the imperial side had the Midus marsh. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“There was a strip of dry land between the two marshes that served as the tacit, practical boundary between the houses. Is that right?”
“Correct. I acknowledge it.”
They confirmed each house’s official position several times.
“Five years ago heavy rains flooded the dry land, and under the Empire’s ‘Lakes, Ponds, and Other Wetlands Management Act’ the two marshes legally merged. Correct?”
“Yes.”
He admitted with his head bowed.
“Again, under the ‘Lakes, Ponds, and Other Wetlands Management Act’, wetlands legally belong to the one who lawfully reclaims them. Correct?”
“Correct. Wait. In this case, what does ‘lawful’ mean?”
The imperial administrator seated beside the half-royal answered.
“In this case, ‘lawful’ means with authorization from the territorial right-holder. In other words, if you had permission from the Lord of each Elector House, the reclamation is lawful.”
I followed the struggle — a fight without swords or magic — in my mind.
Both sides’ main houses, i.e., the Elector Lords and the Emperor, had directed the work, so both began lawful reclamations.
Thus, the side that first reclaimed the dry land could claim not only its original marsh but also the plots the opponent reclaimed.
Ribelia smiled.
It was the smile that resembled our Lord.
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