Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 4.3 - Chapter 4

The End of Winter and the Summoned Merchants

“Damuel, prepare to leave for the hunt. We will gather in this room when ready and then depart for the training grounds. Rozemyne, wait here!”

Only adult knights could participate in the Lord of Winter hunt, so apprentices were not taken along. Angelica, despite being permitted to accompany me to the temple, was also instructed to remain behind.

Having been told to wait with my apprentice guard knights, I sat back down in my chair and waited for Rihyarda to return with my warmer clothing. Giebe Illgner and the others had long since left the room.

“I think the apprentices in the Royal Academy would learn much if they were allowed to watch,” I mused aloud once Rihyarda had returned.

“Something so dangerous would never be allowed, milady.”

“I suppose so. The knights will already be carrying extra luggage, and it would be dangerous to place even more of a burden on them.” While it was true that the apprentices had much to gain by watching the impressive coordination of the Knight’s Order, it wasn’t wise to bring meddlesome students to such an intense battle.

If only we had video cameras or something...

Ferdinand and Damuel soon returned wearing their armor and capes.

“I see you waited,” Ferdinand said. “Good. We must depart for the training grounds.”

I opened Lessy so that Rihyarda and my guard knights could climb inside; then we raced through the intense blizzard, focusing on the colored capes ahead of us so that we wouldn’t get lost.

When we arrived at the training grounds, the knights were already lined up and waiting. Karstedt, Eckhart, and Lamprecht were among them. I waved, and they looked at me with surprise.

“Apologies for the wait,” Ferdinand said, spurring everyone to kneel. I climbed out of my highbeast and stood next to him. “It seems that the Saint of Ehrenfest wishes to pray to the gods and give everyone a blessing.”

I stepped forward to the kneeling knights and took out my schtappe. I then thrust it up into the air, pouring in enough mana to bless as many people as possible as I prayed to the God of War.

“O God of War Angriff, of the God of Fire Leidenschaft’s exalted twelve, I pray that you grant them your divine protection.”

A familiar blue light shot out of my schtappe and rained down over the gathered members of the Knight’s Order. The prayer had taken more mana than I had expected, presumably because of all the people here, yet I didn’t feel as tired as I had during the previous Schnesturm battle. I absolutely had more mana now that the jureve had melted so many of the mana clumps inside of me.

“We owe our thanks to the saint for her blessing,” Ferdinand said. “Now, do not leave the northern building until the hunt is over. Apprentice knights, keep a close eye on her. Is that understood, Cornelius? Rihyarda, I entrust you in my absence.”

“Yes, sir!”

“I understand, my boy.”

Having been told to head back to the castle first, I once again climbed into Lessy, this time only with Rihyarda. My apprentice guard knights would be taking the lead on our return journey. As I flew up into the air, using their capes as my markers, I heard a shout for the knights to stand at the ready.

Charlotte and I were forbidden from leaving the northern building until the hunt was over. This was because the bulk of the knights had departed, leaving fewer guards, and the northern building had a protective barrier that would keep us safe. That was fine with me, since it meant I could read or have tea with Charlotte. In fact, my time in the northern building was the most relaxed I had been since waking up from my coma.

I was midway through having tea with Charlotte. I certainly couldn’t have refused, given how cute her invitation had been:

“Despite having finally returned from the Royal Academy, you departed for the temple right away. And then you were busy with socializing. I want to have a tea party with just the two of us, dear sister.”

Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t had a private tea party with her since the time Wilfried had interrupted us two years ago.

“Both Father and Mother stay in their rooms until the hunt is finished, so I have always looked forward to the Lord of Winter appearing,” Charlotte confided. It seemed these were the precious few days she was able to spend with her parents during winter socializing. She told me a lot about her life, and while she often brought up Melchior, Wilfried basically never came up; he had been raised not here in the northern building, but in the eastern building where Veronica lived.

“It is so sad for siblings to be kept separate,” I said.

“This is all I have ever known, so I have never found it particularly sad. That said, Grandmother was always so kind to Wilfried despite being so harsh with me, and I found myself painfully jealous of that.”

Veronica had apparently been quite harsh to Charlotte, displeased that she resembled Florencia so closely. I didn’t have much to say in that regard, since I had been raised in the temple. The story was that Ferdinand had looked after me at Karstedt’s request, and that I had gone to the temple at such a young age that I didn’t even know what my mother looked like. I answered in as few words as possible, conscious that saying too much would result in me letting something slip, which Charlotte thankfully interpreted as me being hesitant to speak of painful memories. She changed the topic out of consideration.

“Let us speak of the temple another time. More importantly, dear sister, what would you want to do upon becoming archduchess?”

“What a strange question. I am not going to become the archduchess, remember?”

“As an exercise, one of my tutors has asked me how I would rule the duchy were I to become archduchess myself. I am simply curious to know how you would answer.”

Oh, is this like when kids talk about what they want to be when they grow up? Nothing politically serious—just hopes and dreams. Okay. Well, there’s only one answer I can give!

“I would make the duchy a paradise for readers. It would become the capital for books, one filled with printing workshops that would receive and print manuscripts from far and wide. It would be a duchy of joy where every workshop would produce new books every day of every month, and there would be a law that a copy of every book must be donated to the archduchess so that I could read them before anyone else. My library would steadily expand, to the point of additional buildings needing to be constructed. All the people would be taught to read and to love books, and everyone would be able to read as they pleased. Aah, how wonderful! How blissful! That would be my paradise.”

Eep! Oh no! I’m weirding her out!

Charlotte was gazing at me in complete bewilderment. It seemed that I had gotten a little too heated.

“B-But that is just a dream, of course. I do not expect it to come true anytime soon. Though I will spare no effort to make it a reality one day...”

“You truly do love books, don’t you, Sister?” Charlotte giggled, looking at me with the gentle smile of one who felt the need to be mature around their quite strange older sibling. My apprentice guard knights and attendants seemed to be barely containing their laughter, while Rihyarda wore a look of complete exasperation.

Aaah! Nooo! I messed up! I should have said something cooler! Not that any cool answer comes to mind, but still... Someone, give me a generic cool answer to say!

We continued having tea despite me having embarrassed myself. I spoke of all the progress the Better Grades Committee had made in the Royal Academy, while Charlotte told me how the winter playroom was doing this year.

Rihyarda must have sensed that I would try my hardest when Charlotte was around, as she made arrangements for us to practice harspiel together, as well as for us to sew and make lace, which were both important bridal practices. I was being handily manipulated by those around me, but there was no helping it; I just wanted Charlotte to admire me as her older sister.

It’ll happen one day! “You’re incredible, Sister!” she’ll say! “Ohoho! You can count on me, Charlotte!” I’ll reply!

Making flower embroidery while daydreaming about books reminded me of my Urano days—even my old mom would tell me to stop reading and start embroidering. I recalled that, at the time, I had thought there was no real point in it; we mostly bought our clothes, sewing machines could do automatic embroidery anyway, and fabric that already had printed patterns on it was easily available.

I really never thought all her weird arts and crafts projects would end up being so useful...

After several days of a lifestyle which could be described as both leisurely and monotonous, the Lord of Winter hunt finally ended. The sky cleared up before my very eyes, and the knights came home looking absolutely exhausted. Several more days passed after Cornelius told me they were getting some time off.

Once everyone was back on their feet again, I wrote a letter to the Plantin Company. I mentioned that Giebe Illgner had agreed to provide his assistance; that the only printing workshops established this year would be in Haldenzel, but that he would need to prepare the Gutenbergs to eventually establish more in other provinces; that we needed documents to lay out the preliminary foundations for the printing workshops; and that Ferdinand wanted nanseb paper from Illgner. I gave the letter to Rihyarda, requesting that she have the scholars send it alongside an invitation to the castle.

While I was at it, I went ahead and wrote a report for Sylvester covering our temple meeting and our discussion with Giebe Illgner. Ferdinand had probably updated him on the situation already, but communication was important, and it was possible that my report would provide a unique perspective due to my merchant mindset. Not to mention, Benno and the others probably wouldn’t be permitted to speak in the meeting due to being commoners; if they were going to be ordered around, it was crucial that Sylvester knew what they were capable of so that he wouldn’t push them too far.

If Sylvester does his usual and pushes Benno and the others way too hard, their inevitable failure won’t just affect the merchants; it’ll affect the entire duchy.

The situation wasn’t like before, when nobles could simply dispose of unsuccessful merchants and destroy their stores to replace them with new merchants and new stores. If we failed with royalty and with Klassenberg then it was Sylvester whose neck was on the line.

Eep. Talk about scary.

With all the knights home, normalcy returned to the castle. It was one full week after I had given the Knight’s Order my blessing that I was permitted to enter the main building again.

Sylvester had summoned me to his office to discuss my reports. “Rozemyne, when it comes to socializing matters, you make everyone want to leap off a cliff... but you’re not bad at this merchant stuff,” he said.

“We all have our strengths and weaknesses,” I replied.

In truth, I just have a better time in the lower city where everyone can speak their mind. Communicating as a noble is hard.

Nobles relied on euphemisms so heavily that there were still many things I didn’t understand properly or would subtly misinterpret. This was especially apparent during my post-tea party discussions with Elvira and the others, when my disjointed perspective would mess with my understanding of certain things. It was scary how a conversation between two nobles using euphemisms could result in neither person truly understanding what the other was saying.

“Seems like we can only sign with two duchies here. Is there any way you can increase that number?”

“There have been new rinsham and hairpin workshops made in Ehrenfest due to the increased demand for those products, but we have no idea how many new customers we will receive when signing with a greater duchy.”

I had made some estimates based on the ratio of students in the Royal Academy, but with so few duchies being signed with, there would be a lot of merchants who would want to monopolize the scarce goods to make as much of a profit as possible.

“We will only harm ourselves if we sign with too many and do not have the product to satisfy them. Not to mention, because of the magic contracts that bind plant paper, no new workshops have been established to produce it. If too much trade builds up at once... won’t you end up needing to cancel a contract with another archduke?” I asked.

It seemed that my indirect message—that overreaching here would result in Sylvester being criticized at the next Archduke Conference—had been conveyed loud and clear. He and the scholars he would most likely be bringing with him all nodded in understanding.

“Alright, I see why we need to keep the number of contracts down. Moving on. About your suggestion of adding an information gathering post in the lower city for the Archduke Conference, since the merchants are the ones actually doing the trade...” Sylvester trailed off, looking like he didn’t really want to talk about this. “I agree with what you’ve written here, but the scholars say they’ve had no problems just ordering the merchants and leaving it at that. They don’t want to gather information in the lower city.”

“Only a truly bizarre scholar would actively want to go to the lower city—that much is true.” I only knew one scholar who actually liked going there, and if you counted Sylvester, that made for two nobles in total. This sweeping hesitation was completely understandable too, since the lower city was disgusting and smelled terrible. “That is why I think we should organize a government-run project to beautify the lower city as soon as possible. We know from the traveling merchants visiting the Rozemyne Workshop that our lower city is filthy and unattractive, even compared to the lower cities of other duchies.”

“You’re saying the lower cities of other duchies are clean and appealing?” Sylvester asked, scrunching up his face in disbelief. The scholars beside him looked equally skeptical. They all surely understood that filth was inevitable in the lower city, since commoners would always bring filth with them.

“I cannot say for certain, considering that I have never visited another duchy, but the traveling merchants certainly say so, and it is unlikely to be a complete falsehood.”

“Hm...”

“Ehrenfest is seldom visited by the nobles and merchants of other duchies, and those who do visit already know of our current state. However, when merchants from Klassenberg and the Sovereignty arrive, who can say what they will think?” I asked. I was implying that having such a poorly kept lower city right beside the Noble’s Quarter would harm the reputation of our products, but the scholars didn’t quite seem to understand.

“The lower city is separate from the Noble’s Quarter,” one scholar said. “Can we not just accommodate any guests in the Noble’s Quarter as we usually would, Lady Rozemyne?” He spoke as though this was the most obvious thing in the world, but Sylvester seemed to understand—he had actually been to the lower city and seen what things were like there.

“Imagine scheduling a meeting and then being greeted by poorly dressed attendants,” he said with a grin, gazing across his scholars. “You ordered goods from them but didn’t get the service you were expecting. There was even mud from the garden tracked all over their entrances and corridors. What would you think of the lord of the estate? Could you really ignore everything else and evaluate him based only on his own nice clothes and well-maintained parlor? That is what Rozemyne is asking.”

Sylvester’s precise analogy made the scholars freeze in place. Visitors from the other duchies would need to pass through the lower city, and while locals considered it completely separate from the Noble’s Quarter, outsiders would simply view it as another part of Ehrenfest.

“I understand now. We must beautify the lower city at once.”

Yup, yup. I’m glad you understand.

“Shall we expel all the commoners for a day and rebuild it?”

Um, wait... What? What did you just say?

“We don’t have the mana for that,” Sylvester replied, “but we can start by drawing up what we would change if we did.”

Oh no. I’ve got a feeling something really, really bad will happen if Sylvester and his scholars are left to their own devices here!

“Hold on a moment,” I said. “Let us begin with more feasible solutions, like paying commoners to scoop up the waste and clean away the grime. Perhaps you could make it a necessity for them to clean themselves up through bathing and washing their hands.”

“Makes sense. Rozemyne’s right—this mana shortage is a real pain. We don’t have the leeway for any major rebuilding projects.”

Um, no... I wasn’t talking about mana at all.

Thanks to the mana shortage, the lower city was spared from an excessively sudden and dramatic overhaul in favor of minor and steady improvements. I let out a relieved sigh. Never had I thought that my suggestion would lead into something so extreme.

Whew... This was one step away from becoming a repeat of the Hasse monastery incident.

Several days had passed since my apparent success in getting the scholars to care about the lower city. The merchants were due to come at third bell, though the Plantin Company in particular was going to arrive earlier, since I wanted to look over some of their documents before our audience with the aub.

“Rozemyne, some scholars are going to attend your preliminary meeting. They want to see how you interact with the merchants,” Ferdinand said. They apparently knew it was important to gather intelligence from the lower city, but since they had only ever ordered merchants around, they weren’t sure how to actually go about doing it themselves.

“I imagine they also wish to confirm that the merchants are not taking advantage of your apparent youth,” he muttered to me. “Accept their request, as refusing their participation would be unnatural, but take care to maintain firm control of your expressions and emotions throughout the meeting. The lower city is your greatest weakness; I cannot predict what will happen if they target it and you lose control. Do not reveal your true relationships as you did when telling Elvira you did not wish to cancel the magic contracts due to the amount you valued the connections they provided—doing so will only expose those you care about to danger. You understand what would happen if someone malicious were to detect a weakness, yes?”

I nodded.

“Ensure your emotions are kept under control until we return to the temple,” he concluded.

“...Right.”

Ferdinand and I brought our retainers to the room where the Plantin Company was waiting. Four scholars were there already, as well as Giebe Illgner and Viktor, who were sitting down. We exchanged the customary lengthy greetings; then, I accepted the documents I had requested from the Plantin Company and started to look them over. Meanwhile, Ferdinand purchased the nanseb paper he had wanted.

Benno’s documents were a careful record of what they had done to prepare for building a workshop in Haldenzel, as well as the actual process they had followed. The methodical handwriting distinctively belonged to Mark. If we printed copies and distributed them to the giebes, they would be able to prepare their respective provinces themselves.

“With these documents, we can decide both where to establish the next printing guilds and how the paper-making workshops will need to be prepared,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I am glad to have been of service to you, Lady Rozemyne.”

“The Gutenbergs will move when Haldenzel holds its Spring Prayer,” I explained. “Furthermore, in order to make the paper-making workshops operational, we are going to send three craftsmen to teach in each of the prepared workshops, as well as one person to establish a branch of the Ehrenfest Paper Guild. Illgner, Hasse, and the orphanage will provide the instructors; will you be able to send the individuals to establish the guilds?”

We would be sending the instructors once the plant paper workshops had their tools and such prepared, but getting the suketas made, the craftsmen trained, and so on was not an immediate process. They would probably leave for the paper-making workshops once they got back from Haldenzel.

“Yes. We thank you for your concern.”

I next conveyed that, from the production quantities discussed in the documents, we would only be signing with two other duchies. I discussed this with Benno, all the while feeling the serious looks of the scholars. Most of what we spoke about I had already mentioned in my letters, so the conversation went smoothly... but then Benno hesitantly asked whether the magic contracts were going to be nullified.

“Yes,” I replied with a smile, taking care to not freeze in place. “The industry is going to be spreading all throughout Ehrenfest, and we will need to sell our goods to other duchies, so the contracts no longer suit our situation. The aub agrees.”

The first magic contracts I ever signed were unavoidably going to be nullified. The industries we were trying to spread were intended to serve as important political structures for Ehrenfest; it simply wouldn’t do for my permission rather than the archduke’s to be required to establish a workshop, nor could all sales pass through the Plantin Company where Lutz worked. It would make life much harder for a lot of people.

We went on to discuss the amount of compensation they would receive for their contracts being nullified and how they would be treated in the future.

“Our gratitude for Aub Ehrenfest’s consideration is beyond words,” Benno said as the meeting concluded.

“We will continue to have high hopes for the Plantin Company,” I replied.

Lutz stood behind Benno, his face devoid of emotion. He was looking at me with the blank smile of a merchant.

The afternoon meeting with Gustav, Otto, and the others progressed without issue, since we were purely confirming what we had already discussed. The merchants were not permitted to speak directly, and so they only listened as the scholars listed out everything that had been decided. Still, at least their thoughts had been taken into consideration this time. Rather than being forced into fulfilling unreasonable commands, they were receiving feasible orders that could actually be completed within the time constraints.

“Now sign this.”

At the end of the meeting, we were presented with a sheet of parchment. Written on it was a brief passage about nullifying the magic contracts and the two numbers representing the magic contracts in question. Benno and Lutz recorded their names and stamped them with blood, as always, whereas I signed mine with a mana pen given to me by a scholar. What I put wasn’t “Myne,” the name I had used when signing the other magic contracts, but “Rozemyne.”

Once that was done, the parchment ignited and quickly disappeared in golden flame. It only took a few seconds to burn away completely, and with it went the contracts that had once connected Myne, Lutz, and Benno.

My heart stirred with profound unease. It felt as though I was being pushed away from someplace important to me—like the thin strand connecting me to the people I cared about had been cut. I wanted to ask Benno and Lutz whether our relationship would stay the same even without the contracts. I wanted them to nod and reassure me it would, leaving no doubt in my mind. But I had been told to contain my emotions until after returning to the temple, so I could do nothing but tense my stomach and try to keep myself under control.

“Good. Now the paper-making and printing industries can expand without issue,” the archduke said, relieved.

“Indeed. Now there is nothing stalling the construction of more workshops,” the scholars agreed, their words buzzing in my ears like annoying flies.