Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 4.3 - Chapter 2

Mother and Printing in Haldenzel

“Now, let us hurry and get you changed,” Rihyarda said. “Lady Elvira is waiting.” She speedily started removing my warm layers of clothing the moment we returned to my room. “Once we have gotten you changed, we shall go to the parlor in the main building with the box containing a gift for Lady Elvira. Everything has been prepared ahead of time.”

Elvira and I would be discussing books that needed to be kept private, so I was bringing only Ottilie as my attendant and Angelica as my guard knight. Ottilie was on good terms with Elvira; they were friends who often met in private, and it seemed Elvira had personally asked if she would become my attendant when I first came to the castle way back when.

Rihyarda, meanwhile, had to stay behind and put away all the luggage I had brought back from the temple. Ferdinand had instructed that Hirschur’s things be stored in my room.

“Rihyarda, these boxes have been processed, while these have not.”

“Do not worry, milady. I can tell that from the tags on them.”

“Thank you for having me,” I said as I sat down.

Ottilie smiled in response. “This tea party was permitted so that you might find comfort in your family, so do feel free to be more casual,” she said.

Once Elvira had sipped her tea and taken a bite from each type of sweet, our meeting could finally begin for real. When I met her gaze, I noticed there was a sparkle in her dark-brown eyes.

“Rozemyne, have you read my books yet, pray tell?”

“Not entirely, I’m afraid. I’ve completed only one knight story. I have not yet spent a full day in the castle, and there was a note saying that I needed to keep them in my room,” I said, indicating that I had followed her instructions to the letter.

Elvira nodded in satisfaction. “Keeping them secret is what matters most. The public must not learn of them.”

“I did thumb through them, though, and I must say... Mother, you found an excellent illustrator. The art truly took me by surprise.”

By which I mean, Ferdinand was much too sparkly. I smiled, keeping my thoughts secret.

Elvira’s face positively lit up at my words. “Ohoho. I did, didn’t I? I ordered those pictures as soon as I found the illustrator. No love story is complete without illustrations of such beautiful people.”

It seemed that Mother had been motivated to make a collection of romance-focused knight stories after seeing my own collection, in particular the illustrations modeled after Ferdinand that Wilma had provided.

“But Mother, since you need to hide these books from Ferdinand, aren’t you limiting who you can sell them to? Did Giebe Haldenzel give permission for this despite knowing it would harm sales?”

“The books I gave you were specially made for my friends. Those sold in Haldenzel contain illustrations by another artist, so there is no problem whatsoever.”

Wait... So they’re the same books, just with different illustrations? Is it just me, or would that be a real pain in the neck for Gil and the others to work around...?

As far as I was aware, the Rozemyne Workshop had handled the first batch of printing to accommodate Elvira’s needs. I had been given a report that said she had taken all the evidence for herself, leaving not even the messed-up printing mistakes behind, but I hadn’t heard about them struggling to deal with two separate sets of illustrations.

“I received no reports of there being two sets of illustrations,” I noted, “even when I spoke with those from the workshop directly.”

“I made sure to emphasize to the Plantin Company that this information was not to be leaked under any circumstances. I was curious to see how well they could protect their secrets, and I am pleased to see that the Rozemyne Workshop has quite faithful workers indeed.”

After sipping her tea with a satisfied smile, Elvira continued. “I knew that the Plantin Company took keeping their customers’ secrets seriously, but it was impossible to say how long that would last with those in the temple workshop not reporting matters to Lord Ferdinand. But for them to have not told you either, Rozemyne, I can be sure they will take the information to their graves. That is quite the relief.”

Elvira went on to praise my subordinates as being quite excellent.

“Haldenzel’s entire printing industry might collapse should Lord Ferdinand learn of these books. Goodness, my brother would never let me hear the end of it,” she said. It turned out that the love stories printed in Haldenzel were selling even better than the giebe expected, so he intended to keep pushing the printing industry further. “I hope to next write a book about Lord Ferdinand’s days in the Royal Academy. I fear that even deceptive illustrations will not be enough to cloak their nature, however, and so I have been too afraid to begin.”

“Erm, I do think he would notice that. It’s much too dangerous.”

The legends about Ferdinand’s time in the Royal Academy contained so many shocking twists and turns that they were almost hard to believe. It would make an excellent book for sure—an excellent series, even—but there was no way the man himself wouldn’t recognize his own life story.

“Ferdinand continues to be brought up at the Royal Academy even today. He is no doubt a frequent topic at tea parties, though at the same time, there are some who dislike him being mentioned. I gathered information on it, Mother, if you would care to look,” I said, having Ottilie bring out the box that would serve as my gift. Inside were the collected tales about Ferdinand, which Roderick had desperately organized together after everyone worked so hard to gather them.

“Oh my!” Elvira exclaimed. “What a splendid gift.” She opened the box at once, wasting no time in looking over its contents.

You know, I want to read Mother’s books too. Though preferably without the Ferdinand illustrations.

Elvira truly did love to learn about Ferdinand. As she read through the data, she made comments like, “Oh, so this is how that event is spoken of in the records,” and, “The romance is the most important part, yet there is no mention of it here!” She speedily organized it all into information she did and didn’t already know.

“Most of what I know about Lord Ferdinand comes from Eckhart, so I do enjoy seeing how other duchies speak about him,” Elvira said after finishing her initial glimpse over the papers. As more and more time passed since Ferdinand’s graduation from the Royal Academy, the tales about him grew more and more exaggerated, which made for some especially interesting stories.

“This information was put together by a first-year named Roderick,” I said.

“Would that perhaps be the mednoble from the former Veronica faction who tricked Lord Wilfried at the hunting tournament?”

“I’m impressed you remember, Mother.”

I really hadn’t expected her to remember Roderick. I blinked in surprise, which gave Elvira an opportunity to set down her cup and look at me with concern.

“Rozemyne, you must not forget your enemies. They are dangerous.”

I knew that Roderick himself wasn’t dangerous, and this seemed like my best opportunity to convince Elvira to change her mind.

“Roderick is not malicious. He was simply misled by his parents.”

“Oh, yes. Certainly. But the most dangerous people of all are those who bring you misfortune with no malice. It is much easier to defend against clear enemies with blatant malevolence, but the world is rarely so simple,” Elvira said, her tone like that of a parent lecturing a stubborn child. “Mednobles and laynobles will come flocking our way for their own benefit once they confirm we have grown in size. Protecting themselves by clinging to more powerful forces is their way of surviving. I have no intention of criticizing this behavior, but it is the reason they cannot be trusted.”

Considering how dramatically status changed the way one was treated in the world, it only made sense to look for safety by clinging to the most powerful faction possible. Mednobles and laynobles simply thought differently than the archducal family and the archnobles, who instead had to strive to be leaders and trailblazers.

“Rozemyne, you often base your decisions not on what is best for you, but on your feelings. You have taken your favored laynobles as retainers, but I am deathly afraid they will betray you if the balance of power were to ever shift again.”

“They would never... Damuel and Philine both serve me well,” I said. Neither of them were the type to betray the one they served. Damuel especially had risked his life on multiple occasions to protect me; were he the type to even consider betrayal, I would already be dead.

As I shook my head in their defense, Elvira nodded. “I know. Damuel and Philine are truly loyal to you. I gathered enough evidence to leave no room for doubt there,” she said.

I widened my eyes. She had somehow gathered enough intelligence to prove Philine’s loyalty despite me having only taken her as an attendant after leaving for the Royal Academy.

Elvira gave me a very noblewoman-like smile. “You mustn’t underestimate my information network, dear.”

“Lady Elvira was quite a skilled scholar in the past,” Ottilie explained, also smiling as she exchanged a glance with her friend.

I thought back to how the apprentice scholars in the Royal Academy were pulling out all the stops to gather and organize information. It was a bit late for me to be realizing this, but only now did it strike me just how skilled Elvira was at gathering intelligence from tea parties and all sorts of other places.

“I imagine that, unless you commit some terribly offensive blunder, Damuel’s and Philine’s loyalties will never wane. However, you must not think that mindset can be applied to other mednobles and laynobles.”

“If you insist...”

I had wanted to justify taking Roderick as a retainer by striking Elvira at her weakest point—her love for the legends of Ferdinand—but that had evidently backfired. She had instead warned me not to trust others so easily, reinforcing that I was not to take him as a retainer.

“Furthermore, it is tradition to pay those of an opposing faction about sixty percent of what you would pay someone of the same faction,” Elvira said. “This amount is then slowly raised in accordance with their efforts.”

“Wait, what?”

“You symbolically demonstrate fairness by paying those of opposing factions while nonetheless showing favoritism to your own, putting people in a position where they feel changing to your faction is in their best interest. There is no point in professing membership to a faction if everyone is treated the same. Not to mention, none of your allies will delight in being treated the same as your enemies. You have little appreciation for your faction, but if you do not learn the ways of politics, you will make your existing allies very displeased.”

Just how much of my Royal Academy antics were leaking out? Neither Sylvester nor Ferdinand had lectured me about this.

“Are you thinking it is strange that I know about your time in the Royal Academy? Rihyarda gave her reports after you left for the temple. Given Hirschur’s constant absences and unreliability, we are discussing whether we should send someone else to help manage the dormitory.”

“A manager...?” I asked.

Ehrenfest had garnered very little interest from other duchies in the past, so its leaders had predicted my products would hardly spread at all during my first year, no matter how hard we pushed them. And yet, my blunders had resulted in me forming surprising relationships with all the most powerful and influential people in the Royal Academy: professors, archduke candidates from greater duchies, and even royalty. Ehrenfest needed as much information as it could get on higher-ranking duchies before the Archduke Conference, but with Hirschur so fervently researching Schwartz and Weiss, she was completely useless.

“Someone eventually suggested that we might need a person in the Royal Academy to report on your every action,” Elvira noted. “That someone being Lord Ferdinand, of course.”

Is that the “marginally crueler” contingency plan he was talking about?! Assigning someone to the Royal Academy specifically to control me?! That’s not marginally crueler; that’s way crueler!

As I cradled my head with despair, Elvira dropped her eyes back to the papers detailing the legends about Ferdinand and let out a dreamy sigh. “Still, to think this much information about Lord Ferdinand still lingered in the Royal Academy...”

“Indeed. I was as surprised as you are,” I said. “According to those who gathered the intelligence, the current situation is that people from other duchies know more about Ferdinand than those from Ehrenfest.”

As it turned out, not many people in Ehrenfest had openly discussed Ferdinand since he went to the temple. Damuel respected him, but most students nowadays didn’t even know he existed. Most students in the Ehrenfest Dormitory viewed the legends about Ferdinand with skepticism, asserting that they were exaggerated or even misattributed. I had to admit, not even I could tell whether the stories were true.

“Why do they know so much more than we do?” I asked.

“Lord Ferdinand’s grades were so high that he earned Lady Veronica’s wrath. All those in Ehrenfest feared to speak about him,” Elvira said, looking down joylessly.

Ferdinand wasn’t Veronica’s son by blood, but he had been baptized as the archduke’s son and made an archduke candidate. Veronica’s two daughters had already been wed to other duchies by the time he was baptized, leaving only two candidates in Ehrenfest. Ferdinand would be the next archduke by default if something happened to Sylvester, and even if something didn’t, his grades were impressive enough that his name was known across all the other duchies. Sylvester, meanwhile, had zero motivation and generally left his work to Ferdinand.

In other words, there was more than enough reason for Veronica to fear Ferdinand rising to power.

“She treated Lord Ferdinand viciously ever since his baptism, but her cruelty only grew worse when the previous archduke fell ill. The more excellence Lord Ferdinand showed, the harsher she treated him. Nobody could interfere to help him either. Eventually, Lord Sylvester recommended that he flee to the temple.”

That reminded me—I had heard that, since Ferdinand had entered the temple a short while before his father passed, he hadn’t been able to attend the funeral as his son. The thought that he hadn’t even gotten to see him one last time really made Veronica seem unreasonably callous.

“If only he had stayed in the castle for a bit longer, he could have been there when his father died...” I sighed. “I feel so bad for Ferdinand.”

Elvira paused for a brief moment before responding. “He likely did see him. The official announcement was not long after Lord Ferdinand entered the temple, so we can conclude that he actually climbed the towering stairway sometime before then.”

It turned out that funerals for archdukes were carried out after the Archduke Conference. Their deaths were reported at the conference, and their funerals were held after the next archduke had been selected and returned to their duchy. Neighboring archdukes and nobles would come to attend the funeral, so time-stopping magic was used to preserve the corpse. This resulted in there sometimes being sizable gaps between the death itself and the date of its public announcement, which was why Elvira presumed Ferdinand had been able to see the body.

I sure hope so, at least.

“And now Lord Ferdinand can live to his fullest, without hesitating in the public eye,” Elvira said. “That is all I could ever ask for.”

“Why are you so invested in Ferdinand, Mother? Things may be different now, but was it not dangerous to publicly support him in the past?” Assuming that Veronica had indeed ostracized Ferdinand as harshly as everyone said, showing him any support at all was surely enough to earn her displeasure.

“Perhaps I should explain. It is not particularly a secret, but considering that Lord Sylvester and Lord Wilfried are involved, I do not know whether I should speak so freely. Oh dear...” Elvira said, placing a hand on her cheek and tilting her head.

Ottilie took this opportunity to say her piece, sadly lowering her eyes while refreshing our tea. “Lady Elvira was likewise ostracized by Lady Veronica.”

“You were?” I asked.

“My mother was Lady Veronica’s older sister, you see, though they did not share mothers.”

“You mean my grandmother on your side?”

I had been given a list of noble names to memorize before my baptism, but it hadn’t specified how they were all related. Plus, the only family tree I had seen was centered around Karstedt’s side of the family. My knowledge about Elvira’s side was painfully scarce as a result. At most, I was aware that Veronica had been on very bad terms with her half-brothers and sisters, to the point that they had refused to take her younger brother Bezewanst’s possessions following his death. It had never even crossed my mind that Elvira might be on that side of the family.

“The fourth archduke’s son was my grandfather. His marrying Gabriele, the Ahrensbach archduke candidate, is widely considered to be the root cause of this current dispute.”

Gabriele had fallen in love with Elvira’s grandfather after he had treated her kindly at the Interduchy Tournament. She had an unfortunately small mana capacity for an archduke candidate of a greater duchy, but since Ehrenfest had even less influence then than it does now, that didn’t matter. She had used her father’s authority as the archduke of a greater duchy to force the marriage to happen whether Elvira’s grandfather wanted it or not, which ultimately resulted in his first wife—Elvira’s grandmother and the daughter of Count Leisegang—being demoted to his second wife, despite the fact they already had two children together.

The fourth archduke feared the consequences of such an insult, particularly with Count Leisegang having been the leader of the most powerful faction in the duchy during the rule of the fourth archduke. He was likewise concerned that Ahrensbach’s influence within the duchy would grow large enough to cause problems. It was for these reasons that he removed Elvira’s grandfather from the archduke candidacy and awarded him the title of Count Groschel, while choosing Bonifatius’s father as the next archduke. Count Leisegang’s fury was subsequently contained when Bonifatius wedded another of his daughters.

Ngh. I’m literally drawing out the family trees here, but they’re just too complicated. My head’s starting to hurt. The bloodlines are getting all mixed up.

Ironically, it seemed that Gabriele found living in such a backwater countryside duchy unbearable, and she constantly yearned to go back to Ahrensbach.

Gabriele bore three children in her lifetime. Her first was a boy who ended up having the most mana of all his siblings, and due in part to support from Ahrensbach, he was praised as a potential candidate to succeed Count Groschel. Her second child was Veronica, whose mana capacity was extraordinarily greater than the low average in Ehrenfest. It was only natural that she would be raised to serve as the first wife of the next archduke. The third child, whom Gabriele birthed while ill, had much less mana than one would expect of an archnoble. He was unable to rely on Ahrensbach’s support, and so he ended up being sent to the temple.

It was during this grueling third birth that Gabriele ultimately passed away.

Years went by, and the first son passed away also. Veronica began keeping in close contact with her fully blood-related younger brother in the temple, doting on him and developing a relationship in which they both completely relied on one another.

“Lady Veronica became the first wife of the sixth archduke, and it was then that she truly began abusing her half-siblings. Though it was certainly easier for her to target her young nieces and nephews than her older brothers and sisters. My brother and I suffered greatly through a variety of creative means.”

For the most part, Veronica couldn’t be too blatant in her abuse—after all, they were still children of Giebe Haldenzel—but she would invite Elvira to girls-only tea parties and harass her in a variety of awful ways.

“My grandfather regretted this state of affairs, so he tried to protect me by wedding me to Lord Karstedt. This in turn granted me independence from Veronica.”

It was thanks to the marriage that Elvira had been able to make a faction composed of those ostracized by Veronica, protect Florencia when she was wedded from Frenbeltag into the family, and support Ferdinand when he was abused for being the son of a mistress.

“When the previous archduke climbed the towering stairway, Lady Veronica’s treatment of Haldenzel grew even harsher, since it is ruled by my older brother. Do you recall that Haldenzel is the northmost province in the duchy? The winters there are much harsher than the ones we experience here. Raised taxes are a matter of life and death for its people.”

Despite the entire duchy having been drained, Haldenzel alone received no exceptions whatsoever. It suffered far more than any other province in the duchy, even when taxes were raised for everyone.

“My brother says you have saved him and his people, Rozemyne.”

It was only after I joined the temple as an apprentice blue shrine maiden that Haldenzel started receiving chalices filled with mana, which increased crop production throughout the province. Veronica and Bezewanst were then punished for their crimes, and the Florencia faction—led by the giebe’s younger sister, Elvira—became the most powerful faction in the duchy. New life had truly been breathed into Haldenzel.

“On top of all that, the books my brother helped to make in part out of gratitude alone have sold much better than expected,” Elvira explained. “He now wishes to spread printing all throughout Haldenzel.”

“That is quite exciting to hear,” I replied.

However, as obvious as it was, one needed paper to print things. They had planned to make plant paper workshops along with the printing workshops, but my falling into a coma had prevented them from doing so. The same went for other giebes who had heard of the success in Illgner and wanted to try paper-making themselves.

“Not to mention, the magic contracts bind even the sale of paper, no?”

The magic contracts for merchants I had signed worked only within Ehrenfest, but with the exact limits of the magic being fuzzy at best, people had no choice but to sell through the Plantin Company. That worked decently enough at the moment, given that there weren’t all that many books, but it couldn’t last forever. Elvira also wanted the magic contracts nullified, and when I realized that, I unconsciously clenched my fists resting atop my lap.

I don’t wanna nullify the contracts I made with Lutz and Benno...

Benno had put his all into thinking of a way to ensure I could meet with them and maintain relationships with the lower city even once I was taken to the Noble’s Quarter. Lutz had likewise steeled his resolve and signed the contracts even though doing so put him in danger. I was really against the nullification, and that must have shown on my face, as Elvira gave me a consoling smile.

“Rozemyne, you have surrounded yourself with people of the highest moral caliber.”

“...Huh?”

“No matter how much my brother interrogated the Plantin Company about the magic contracts, they obstinately repeated that he would need to ask Aub Ehrenfest for details. It seemed doing so was necessary to protect your past, as you signed it while living in the temple as a shrine maiden.”

Benno had refused to speak of the contract even when surrounded by archnobles. Knowing that made me so happy and proud of him and Lutz that I couldn’t help but nod a little.

“However, the contracts are far too small to protect you now. Do you not need new ones to suit your current status, as books and printing spread throughout the country?”

“A new contract...?”

“Indeed. Your relationship with the Plantin Company will not change, even if the former contracts are nullified. Am I not right in saying that you need only sign new contracts?”

My relationship with the Plantin Company wouldn’t change just because the contracts did. I simply needed to sign new ones. Elvira was right about that.

But those won’t be contracts between Myne and Lutz...

I kept those words to myself and merely sighed instead.