Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 4.3 - Chapter 18

The Book Fair and the Follow-Up Meeting

A great number of customers came to and made purchases from the book fair this year. The most notable attendee to all those present was no doubt my great-grandfather, who had been at the very front of the customer line. He had recovered since his collapse during my mana compression lecture and, to everyone’s surprise, arrived with his caretakers. Upon tottering to the stand with his walking stick, he had bought one of every book.

I heard Benno and the others inhale sharply at the sudden huge sum of money. There hadn’t been many books when we had initially started the fair, but now there were a variety of types available. No other customer bought one of everything.

“Great-Grandfather certainly is rich, isn’t he, Rihyarda?”

“He wanted to purchase one of each, considering that his descendants—you and Lady Elvira—published them, milady. He has only just recovered, so Count Leisegang was quite worried about him coming.”

Um, Great-Grandfather?! You’re pushing yourself way too hard! Isn’t there a good chance you’ll collapse again?!

I watched over him anxiously until he eventually left the room, all the while empathizing with those who had to watch over me in the same way.

Ngh... This is bad for my heart. No wonder everyone yells at me to keep calm. I need to search for the self-restraint I abandoned so long ago...

As I passed the nerve-racking time, newly baptized children came for karuta and playing cards, while adults came for books. There were many female customers, and our best-selling fiction book was the collection of romantic knight stories Elvira had written. Once again, love stories set in the Royal Academy were proving popular. They were based on tales she had heard from women across many generations so that people of all ages could read them and enjoy both savoring their nostalgia and sharing theories on who a particular character was based on.

With that said, the best-selling product across all types was the star of this year’s book fair: Rozemyne’s Ravishing Recipes. It was our first color book and the product of many people’s labor. Hugo and Ella had selected their simplest, easiest-to-make recipes; Nicola had done her best to write them all down; Wilma had drawn the art; and Heidi had created the colored ink that had made the coloring possible in the first place. Incidentally, the final page included an advertisement for the Italian restaurant.

We were able to produce color books through mimeograph printing. It was exceedingly time-consuming and expensive compared to printing in black and white, and it was extremely hard to keep the overlapping colors from mixing together. Gil had informed me as such, slumped over in exhaustion at just the thought.

The recipe book was slim with only ten recipes in total, but it was our most expensive book yet. Even so, because it included recipes for consommé and pasta dishes, nobles who had eaten the meals prepared by the castle chefs over winter socializing bought it in droves. The cooking style was quite different from local traditions, so it was yet to be seen whether their chefs would actually be able to make proper dishes from the recipes alone. Ella and the others had said that one would still need to get used to balancing the heat and the timing and such.

Of course, instructions to make natural yeast were not included, so the castle remained the only place where one could eat fluffy bread.

“We will return to the temple after breakfast tomorrow,” Ferdinand said. “The Plantin Company will be there, but only for our meeting. Know that we will be returning to the castle by dinner.”

“Understood.”

We had a meeting with the Plantin Company scheduled in the orphanage director’s chambers, where we were going to discuss what to print next and the upcoming Haldenzel visit. I was completely ready to meet Lutz and Benno again after so long. I had given them an official summons during the book fair and slipped a letter to my family in the list of things we would be talking about.

“I would like to participate in the meeting as well,” Hartmut said to me.

Please, no...

Hartmut being there meant I would need to dress up my words just as I had done when writing the letter. Was this just going to be my life now?

And I was finally going to get to meet everyone again too.

Due to having brought him to the temple before, there was no reason for me to refuse him this time. But as I regretfully went to give him permission, Ferdinand shook his head with a frown.

“There will be a meeting two days from now with the scholars recommended by the various giebes. It is then that work for the printing industry will be officially distributed. The aub’s permission shall not be granted before then, so now is not the time for Philine or Hartmut to come to the temple. Instead, I would advise them to prepare documents to be distributed to the scholars regarding the steps and materials necessary for building paper-making workshops and printing workshops,” he said.

“As you wish.”

Ferdinand silenced any potential protests by giving my apprentice scholars work to do. I did feel a little bad for Hartmut, but I was super relieved that I wouldn’t have to bring him or Philine with me—so much so that I wanted to pray in thanks for Sylvester working so slowly that he hadn’t given Ferdinand permission yet.

Don’t worry—I’m not actually praying. Though I may be grinning a little.

After breakfast the next day, I departed for the temple with Ferdinand. Damuel and Angelica were accompanying me as guards, while the underage knights remained behind as they had before. They would be spending this time participating in Bonifatius’s apprentice training.

“Hurry back soon, Lady Rozemyne. For their sakes. I am terribly worried about how excessively motivated Grandfather seems to be. The apprentices might even be worked to death,” Cornelius said as he saw us off. His mental scars from his time being trained among the archducal family’s guard knights were evidently long from being forgotten.

I really don’t think my return will change Grandfather’s inability to control himself...

Upon arriving at the temple, Ferdinand went straight to the High Bishop’s chambers and held a pre-meeting for our talk with the Plantin Company, which was scheduled for fourth bell.

“I suppose this will have to do...” Ferdinand said once our preparatory discussion was over.

“Indeed,” I replied, still writing down what he had said on my diptych. “I imagine they will have many questions, concerns, and requests regarding the cleanup of the lower city and the selection of scholars, which will need to be settled through a meeting with the aub.”

“I will arrange that at once,” Justus replied. He wasted no time in getting to work.

Now that our pre-meeting had concluded, Fran brought in tea and sweets. We were having crepes again, since Damuel had tragically missed his chance before. These crepes were especially fancy, with parue juice having been mixed into the batter.

Ferdinand didn’t like his sweets to be too sweet, so his crepes had lots of rumtopf and a conservative amount of cream. In contrast, mine had parue chunks mixed in and extra cream. Juice from the parue chunks filled my mouth with joy. It was a delicious winter flavor, but parues were now out of season; this would be my last opportunity to enjoy them this year.

“...More new sweets, hm?” Ferdinand observed.

“The crepes themselves have been around for quite some time; these are just made with slightly different ingredients,” I replied.

Once we were done, Ferdinand took out the sound-blocking magic tools. I gripped one, and that was when I noticed his expression twist slightly with what looked like sympathy for me.

“Scholars will henceforth accompany you to the temple,” he said. “This will be the last time you can use the hidden room here.”

I had known that this day would come eventually, but his words hit me like a truck nonetheless. The presence of scholars meant I wouldn’t be able to clear my chambers and bring only specific merchants into my hidden room. I was feeling the same sadness I had momentarily felt when Hartmut had asked to come. It was all over.

“Did you stop Hartmut from coming so that I could have time to say goodbye to Lutz and the others...?” I asked.

“I imagined it would be better for you to finalize matters yourself, rather than have everything so abruptly taken from you.” Ferdinand lowered his eyes and then slowly exhaled. “The plan was for you to stay with your family until you entered the Royal Academy, but you ended up being taken from them all the same. I have turned a blind eye to this hidden room business to help ease your fears and anxieties, but you are now a student. You will be attending all future meetings with scholars at your side, and they will not be so willing to overlook such things.”

“Indeed...” I replied. Ferdinand had kept this going for as long as he possibly could, probably at some personal expense. Knowing that, there was nothing more I could say.

“Most importantly of all, your engagement to Wilfried is due to be announced during the feast celebrating spring. It would be unthinkable for a commoner man to enter the hidden room of an engaged woman. Such a controversy would even damage the Plantin Company’s reputation, and you certainly would not want that, would you?”

I shook my head. Benno had desperately expanded his store to accommodate the unreasonable demands of the nobles, plus he was running all across Ehrenfest with Lutz and the other Gutenbergs. I couldn’t undo all of their efforts for my own selfish reasons.

“Justus is going to accompany you into your hidden room today,” Ferdinand said. “He knows of your circumstances and already has connections with the Plantin Company. You will find his presence much easier to ignore than mine, I imagine.”

I apparently had to bring at least one scholar with me. This was because we would be talking about things that needed to be mentioned at the upcoming meeting with the scholars, but it was also presumably his job to make sure I said my farewells for real. Otherwise, there wouldn’t actually be a reason for me to bring him to my hidden room in particular.

“Very well,” I said after a reluctant pause. “I shall bring Justus.”

And so, I moved to the orphanage director’s chambers with Justus and my attendants to await fourth bell. We were going to be talking leisurely over lunch.

“It was Ferdinand who chose this meeting time, right?” I asked Justus. “Isn’t fourth bell a strange time for a meeting?”

“Lord Ferdinand calculated that it would give you marginally more time than a standard meeting.”

“His kindness is roundabout and hard to understand...”

“Surely you are used to that by now. He is roundabout and hard to understand in general,” Justus said with a small smile.

The attendants assigned to Ferdinand after his baptism had all been Veronica’s men. They had taken away from him anything that made him happy and forced upon him anything that he didn’t like. As a means to protect himself, he had learned at a young age to develop a flat expression that hid his emotions from those around him.

“From his perspective, milady, you are a very simple creat— Ahem. You are a very easy to understand individual with clear emotions and no ulterior motives. On top of that, he recognizes that any noble euphemisms will only go over your head and result in problems at a later date, so he has adopted a rather easy to understand attitude around you in turn.”

If that attitude is meant to be easy to understand, what the heck does that say about me?

I pursed my lips, at which point the Plantin Company arrived. Fran brought them up to the second floor, and Nicola brought in food while we greeted each other.

“Mark, Lutz—you may eat with us today. My attendants will serve you,” I said.

Gil glanced uneasily between Justus and me as he started serving Lutz. “Please be at ease. It is an invitation from Lady Rozemyne,” he said.

Lutz snapped back to reality and then gracefully took the seat offered to him. I was told that he had learned etiquette at the temple over the two years I was asleep, and it certainly appeared to have paid off—he really had mastered it. The Lutz of a bygone age who had stuffed his face with food when Benno had first invited us to lunch was nowhere to be seen.

On a similar note, Gil, who was pretty much an adult now, was a perfect attendant. It was hard to believe that he had been the biggest brat and a regular of the repentance chamber when he was a kid. He did his job so well that it was hard to imagine him getting punished for tossing his duties aside.

I had been so busy since waking up that I hadn’t had any time to actually take in my surroundings. Now that I was really looking at them, they had grown up so much. They would no doubt accept the news that we were going to be separated with the utmost calm, without getting all weepy and overly attached like I was. It made me feel as though I were a child throwing a tantrum by comparison.

“The sales were adequate,” Benno began as we ate our appetizers. Most books were sold in the castle, but as the head of the Printing Guild and the Plantin Company, he still handled all the numbers himself.

“Since the recipe collection sold well, might I suggest our next work be a new recipe collection with contributions from Hugo, Ella, and Leise? If we pay them a small percentage of the money we make in return for their input, we might get even more recipes to use.”

“Perhaps, but sales all across Ehrenfest are gradually on the decline. This is likely due to us having reached our entire sales base, but either way...”

Not that many people could afford books, and so it seemed the Plantin Company was looking to expand into new demographics. But that would require the archduke’s permission. As I sipped my consommé, I mentally started picking out which books I wanted to spread.

“I want to maintain our advantage in the Royal Academy, so the bible picture books and the yet-to-be-made textbooks will not yet be sold to other duchies. We will, however, think about starting to sell the other books—that is, the knight stories and the sheet music. Considering the chaos that will ensue from the increased number of duchies doing trade here, we will presumably need to wait until next year for that to begin. We will not be able to handle the demand unless we create more printing workshops before then, so you would do well to plan on building more and printing more textbooks this year.”

Benno gave an emphatic nod and frowned at the word “chaos.” There was no denying that the lower city had been struggling to prepare for a while now.

“Furthermore, it seems that the books regarding etiquette are not selling particularly well...” I said. Tuuli had been the one to suggest that we make them, but there simply hadn’t been much interest. It saddened me a little to see all the unsold stacks.

Lutz, however, shook his head while picking up some fluffy bread. “Oh, those are for a different demographic. We’re selling them to laynobles who cannot afford good tutors, rich families with connections to the nobility, and town chiefs and mayors who deal with nobles. They aren’t selling poorly in the least,” he explained.

As it turned out, they were actually selling rather well. They simply weren’t needed by those in the castle, since everyone there already understood etiquette.

“We sold them on the way to Haldenzel by stopping at towns and cities in the Central District, discussing what had happened in Hasse, and then warning them that they could suffer the same fate unless they worked on their etiquette. We’d made a ton of sales after that,” Lutz said with a proud grin.

I couldn’t help but smile; the people had presumably had no choice but to buy the books at that point. Hasse wasn’t the only city that was used to how Bezewanst had once done things, so they couldn’t just pass it off as someone else’s problem.

“Judging by the sales in the castle, Haldenzel seems like quite a melting pot for stories deemed acceptable by the nobility,” Mark reported. “The stories your mother wrote sold more than any other, Lady Rozemyne.” He was eyeing the thigh meat cooked with wine that was sitting on his plate as he spoke.

At the moment, Elvira’s romance stories had firmly gripped the hearts of all the duchy’s noblewomen. Faction politics were no doubt at play to some degree, but the more important takeaway was that a noble was better suited at writing stories that other nobles would enjoy.

“Haldenzel is beating us in sales. We want something that feels palpably more Ehrenfest,” Benno said, his tone polite and formal.

Most children had the illustrated bible, karuta, and playing cards by now, so they weren’t likely to make many more purchases going forward. We were planning to appeal to them with textbooks in the long-term, but Benno wanted something that would bring more immediate profits. I pondered what we could produce while cutting my meat.

“What if we were to focus a bit more on stationery?” I suggested.

“What other stationery exists?”

“Perhaps something like a (file folder) or a (binder) for organizing paper. We could also create standardized order forms for merchants, especially considering that a great number are soon going to be arriving from other duchies. They would be convenient to have, don’t you think?”

Mark nodded in agreement several times as I explained how hard it was to process orders, since they were often written in different formats. It was a grand struggle to get people to write them in a consistent way.

“Speaking of which—the guildmaster had a question. You said there are going to be specific duchies chosen for us to do business with, but how will we determine which merchants have received this permission?” Benno asked, looking at me as he stuck a spoon into the pudding served for dessert. They had thus far been able to do business with whatever merchants came to them, but now they were going to need to restrict themselves to a select few. There simply wasn’t enough product for them to sell to absolutely anyone.

“...That is something we will have to think about. Did you consult Otto for his opinion?”

“His input was that he could say no more than the fact things would likely differ based on the duchy. As a former traveling merchant, he wasn’t particularly informed on merchants doing business on the orders of their archdukes,” Benno replied. If even Otto and Gustav didn’t have any ideas as experienced merchants, then I certainly had no clue either.

“I suppose it would be wise to investigate how other duchies are handling this. Though perhaps the most reliable method would be to make something special in Ehrenfest that other duchies cannot emulate...” I mused aloud.

The first thing that came to mind were red-seal ships—Japanese merchant vessels from the early seventeenth century that traveled with red-sealed letters patent issued by the ruling Tokugawa shogunate. We could probably copy that system by making it so that only merchants with red-sealed letters patent could do business, although I had no idea whether we could actually issue those or whether they would even work in the first place. It was too dangerous to make this kind of decision by myself.

“I will consult the archduke,” I said. “This is perhaps something that will need to be decided at the Archduke Conference.”

“We thank you for your consideration.”

Mm... Food really does taste better when you eat it with other people.

Such was the thought that crossed my mind as I finished the last lunch I would ever eat with Lutz and the others. I could have lunch meetings with Benno in the future, since he was the head of the Plantin Company, but eating with a leherl apprentice like Lutz was simply out of the question. It might be possible ten years from now, but that felt like forever away from where I stood now.

“Lady Rozemyne, here are the documents regarding this year’s sales, the thoughts on layscholars, and the reconstruction of the city.”

“Much appreciated. I will send them to the aub,” I said. “And here is a letter from the aub.”

Lutz held out the documents as Benno spoke. I took them, and upon confirming that there was a letter slid between them, swiftly put them into a box and closed the lid. At the same time, Lutz noticed the envelope I slipped into the documents I handed him and glanced at Justus.

I wonder if this will be our last time exchanging letters too...?

Even after steeling my resolve, that thought still pained my heart. I held back the urge to cry as I ordered Fran to open the hidden room.

“Benno, Mark, Lutz—there is something very important we must discuss. Damuel is going to accompany us as my guard, Gil and Fran as my attendants... and Justus as my scholar.”

Lutz’s eyes widened in disbelief the very moment I spoke that last name. Mark turned his gaze to the floor, while Benno squeezed his eyes shut as if to say, “So the day has finally come...”

I looked at the door Fran had opened and then gave Lutz the best smile I could muster. “It’s very, very important.”