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Chapter 7
Envoys from Her Mother’s Country (4)
“Is there some particular reason these unfamiliar people have joined the delegation?”
The Emperor’s sudden question startled Count Casella, and he looked up.
Since the Emperor was speaking Ausian, he was clearly asking Casella.
Casella managed to form something resembling a smile.
Everything inside the Empress’s Palace felt threatening to him.
Even the Princess whom he had once considered little more than a bite-sized morsel.
Even his own daughter.
He answered as politely as he could.
“His Majesty the King has sent Your Majesty, his esteemed Empress, several gifts. Her Majesty the Queen also misses her daughter very much and wished to—”
“So that’s what they say.”
“He certainly has a long tongue.”
Count Casella flinched.
The Empress was saying something in Mun’s language, and the atmosphere had suddenly turned icy.
Did I say something wrong?
As he went over the few words he had spoken in his head, the Emperor asked again.
“So, in other words, you came merely to convey their regards?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Then once you have exchanged your greetings, you will leave safely.”
At the Emperor’s words, Count Casella silently lowered his head.
He had no intention of answering, but when the Emperor pointed out, “I asked you a question,” he was forced to open his mouth and confirm it.
“We intend to leave after conveying everything Her Majesty the Queen wished to say to her daughter, Her Majesty the Empress.”
“Of course.”
The Emperor smiled.
After finishing his tea and setting down the cup, a senior court lady of the Empress’s Palace silently approached and refilled it.
“The concern a mother feels for her child is only natural. Without such feelings, she could be neither a mother nor a human being. So do not worry. You may convey her feelings.”
You may convey her feelings.
The implication was clear enough: But nothing else.
Casella could say nothing. He merely lowered his head once more.
After that day, it became difficult for Count Menios to approach the Empress.
Count Casella had an easier time of it, while Count Molina came and went every day.
A somewhat different balance of power was beginning to form from the one they had expected when they left Ausis.
Count Casella began paying more attention to Molina than to Menios, and even Count Menios made an effort to speak with Molina.
“How was Her Highness the Princess’s mood yesterday?”
“Her Majesty the Empress is always merciful and generous.”
But the conversations went nowhere.
Count Menios wanted a genuine conversation, but Count Molina always gave him the same formulaic answers.
Even when Menios badgered him, saying, “Empress, indeed. Just speak honestly,” Molina merely smiled bitterly.
After they had spent several days staying in the city of Yeongyeon, Count Molina even moved his lodgings for an entirely reasonable reason.
“You’re going to stay in the Empress’s Palace?!”
“Yes. There is a great deal of work concerning the Trininad territory that has piled up, so Her Majesty ordered me to do so.”
“That’s absurd. You’re a citizen of Ausis. You staying there could become a serious matter—you could be taken hostage.”
When Count Menios grew angry, Molina looked at him as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“We are already in Yeongyeon. If the Mun imperial family wished to take us hostage, you know perfectly well that it would make no difference whether I stayed here or in the Empress’s Palace.”
In fact, the Empress’s Palace might even be safer.
Unlike the others, Count Molina was an important person to the Empress, so she would certainly protect him.
But if Molina disappeared from this house, only Menios and Casella would remain.
The Empress would not protect them.
Well, perhaps she would protect Count Casella.
After all, he had a daughter who had established herself in this country.
But Count Menios had no one.
“B-But still…”
“Count, I may be mistaken, but don’t you have something you need to do?”
Count Molina looked directly at Count Menios.
Before leaving for Mun, Count Menios and Count Casella had met several times with the Duchess of Ariella, a close confidante of the Queen.
Through the Duchess of Ariella, the Queen must have given them some kind of instruction.
And it was probably related to the King’s illness.
When no answer came, Count Molina spoke gently.
“Do what you came here to do, Count. I will do what I came here to do as well.”
With an elegant sweep of the hat in his hand, Count Molina bowed, then walked past Menios.
Once the door closed, Count Casella, who had been sitting on a sofa a little way off and reading a letter, raised his head.
“Young people these days… How shall I put it? They seem to lack respect for their elders.”
“You certainly have a pretty way of putting things!”
Count Menios ground his teeth.
He was in his fifties, while Count Molina was a young man in his twenties who had inherited his title only two years ago.
Even in terms of their standing among the nobility, Molina had no position from which he could presume to hold his head so high before Menios.
And age certainly wasn’t on his side either.
Yet that young man was so rude and willful.
Count Casella clicked his tongue.
“One here, one there. How long are we adults supposed to keep looking after these stupid, selfish young people?”
Count Menios dropped heavily onto the sofa opposite Casella.
He knew who the “one here” was.
But who was the “one there”?
Interest flickered in Menios’s eyes.
Casella gave a small laugh and handed him the letter he had been reading.
Menios’s eyes quickly scanned its contents, and before long, his brows drew together.
“Is it the young Duke Beltrayeva again?”
“War really is a wonderful thing. If this were a peaceful world, how could a bastard who knows nothing but how to swing a sword ever rise so high?”
The letter contained only trivial matters.
An ordinary person would never have found anything suspicious in it.
But Counts Menios and Casella immediately understood the nuance.
They knew very well that a letter bearing Countess Casella’s name was anything but ordinary.
They had not even been gone for a month, yet this letter had already reached Mun.
That alone was strange.
It meant that someone had urgently searched for a ship bound for Mun and sent the letter aboard it.
Moreover, the sender was supposedly Countess Casella.
But the Countess and her husband were not on particularly good terms.
The person who had physically written the letter was indeed the Countess.
But someone else must have made her write it.
Sure enough, the letter wandered through subjects such as the weather and gossip from high society, but the real message was elsewhere.
Oh, and I heard that the young Duke Beltrayeva has achieved a remarkable victory. Apparently, after becoming supreme commander, the young duke recaptured the Otru Fortress. It was finally a victory after so many battles in which we had done nothing but lose! Everyone is filled with hope that this victory will be the beginning of our winning the war.
The problem was that the commander of those “battles in which they had done nothing but lose” was Marquis Codrit, one of Duke Valiona’s closest men.
While Marquis Codrit had returned home to recover from his injuries, the young Duke Beltrayeva—who should have been reorganizing the front lines until Codrit returned—had suddenly recaptured Otru Fortress and begun building up a glorious record of military achievements.
It was no different from slapping Marquis Codrit across the face.
And although Codrit was the one who had actually been slapped, the person watching it happen was his master, Duke Eusebio Valiona.
“The Marquis must be in quite a mood.”
At Menios’s words, Casella shrugged.
“We, being so far away from home, couldn’t possibly know.”
Casella’s words sounded almost as though he considered it fortunate that they were far away from Marquis Codrit.
For Count Menios, a close associate of Duke Valiona, it was an extremely uncomfortable thing to hear.
He glared at Casella.
His companion remained perfectly calm.
He has the heart of a black snake.
Count Menios clicked his tongue inwardly and rose from his seat.
“Excuse me. I have an appointment.”
“Good luck, Count.”
Casella smiled as he said it.
He knew perfectly well that Menios was going to meet some of the famous physicians of Yeongyeon that day.
Perhaps irritated by Casella’s complete indifference, as though it were someone else’s affair, Menios said nothing and left the study.
Count Casella—Manuel La Repo—remained in the sunlit study.
He leisurely completed his own little tea time: reading letters, leafing through books, and scribbling something on pieces of paper.
When he finally murmured, “That should do,” a man cautiously entered the study.
He was a man of Mun.
“My lord, shall we go? Everything is ready.”
“Shall we?”
Repo looked down at the papers he had written.
Not bad.
Then he blinked once more.
Though perhaps not good, either.
He tossed the papers into the fireplace.
Only after watching the flames eagerly consume them did he finally turn away.
