Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 5.1 - Chapter 18

Tea Party for Bookworms

“I am surprised to see that you arrived ahead of me, Lady Rozemyne,” Hannelore said. “I specifically left my dormitory early so that I could apologize to the royal family.”

I gave her a stiff smile and replied, “I, too, had something to discuss with the royal family.” It would have been a little awkward to say that it hadn’t been my intention to arrive early and that the royals had specified an earlier time for me to come.

“Um, could it be that I interrupted something...?” Hannelore asked, starting to tremble at the thought of having made yet another mistake.

I shook my head with a smile, trying to calm her. “I simply thought to deliver Professor Eglantine’s hairpin before the tea party begins.”

“Indeed,” Eglantine said, also wearing a smile. “And now that you are here, Lady Hannelore, I would like for you to see it as well.”

I signaled Brunhilde with a glance, prompting her to give Anastasius’s attendant the box containing the hairpin. It needed to be thoroughly checked upon receipt, of course, so we all waited as the attendants went through this long and tedious process.

When the box was at last handed to Anastasius, he received it with a satisfied grin. “I hereby gift this hairpin to my beloved wife,” he said, setting it down in front of Eglantine.

Hannelore finally gave a relieved smile after seeing the peaceful exchange. “So you ordered a new hairpin as well, Prince Anastasius? My older brother also ordered one from Ehrenfest and is eagerly awaiting its arrival.”

“We received hairpin orders from Dunkelfelger, Ahrensbach, and the Sovereignty,” I said. “We even received one from Lady Detlinde, who is receiving hers as a gift from Ferdinand. The flowers she has asked to use are the same as Lady Adolphine’s but smaller. There are going to be five in total, each a different color.”

“Oh my. Five different hairpins?” Eglantine asked, surprised. She had responded just as I’d wanted, which meant it was time for stage two: explaining the details. At the very least, I needed the royal family to know there was nothing wrong with Ferdinand’s aesthetic sense; how people viewed the hairpins would depend entirely on how they were worn.

“Lady Detlinde proposed it herself, with the idea being that she can choose which of the five hairpins to wear according to the time, place, and what she is wearing. She, um... expressed a lack of confidence in Ehrenfest’s artistic sense and opted to take complete control.”

“Oh dear. I am satisfied with Ehrenfest’s designs and consider today’s hairpin quite wonderful indeed.”

“We are honored. I will inform my hairpin craftsperson of your kind words.”

Our conversation about hairpins continued until Solange and Hortensia arrived from the library.

I still can’t believe this woman is married to the Sovereign knight commander.

“I realize that Ehrenfest must think poorly of us, but I do hope you can get through this,” Hortensia said all of a sudden, wearing a sad smile that completely threw me off. “In the midst of what has been a time of great turmoil for the royal family, Prince Hildebrand came home with word of an Ehrenfest archduke candidate who knew of a forbidden archive. My husband, the knight commander, went to investigate this rumor—only to find that same archduke candidate in an otherwise empty library, with the diary of an executed librarian in her possession. That diary spoke of royals visiting the library, did it not? It is only natural that he would think Ehrenfest intends to steal that which belongs to the royal family.”

Especially when he knows that Ferdinand is a seed of Adalgisa and has royal blood.

Our timing seemed just plain terrible. If we hadn’t met in the library, then maybe we wouldn’t have drawn so much suspicion to ourselves and Ferdinand wouldn’t have been sent to Ahrensbach.

“It is my husband’s duty to treat all potential threats with the utmost caution,” Hortensia continued. “Anything less would make him a failure of a knight commander. I recognize that his suspicions earn him much ire, but we hope to resolve this as peacefully as possible, with all parties being the better for it. Please do understand this.”

I managed to put on a smile. It was hard to dispute her claim that the royal family had acted reasonably. Ferdinand hadn’t been arrested on the spot for his suspicious actions, even though his royal blood made him a particular source of concern; instead, he had simply been ordered to leave the temple and marry into a greater duchy. It was the kind of climb in status that anyone would envy.

If only that greater duchy hadn’t been Ahrensbach...

Ferdinand had instructed me to feign happiness, so I couldn’t say that their efforts had caused us naught but suffering. Instead, I gave her my most agreeable expression and said, “We all have our circumstances, and there certainly are many times when our personal thoughts do not match the opinions of those around us.”

That concluded my short discussion with Hortensia.

Hildebrand arrived not long after, having been urged in by his head attendant, Arthur. We exchanged greetings, whereupon I noticed that he was delivering his lines more eloquently than last year. It warmed my heart, like seeing a younger cousin growing up.

“I was told that we would see each other much less often this year, as not even you have been able to finish all of your classes on the first day now that you are in your third year,” he said. “I am glad we have this opportunity to meet.”

“I am glad to see you as well,” I replied. “I have been ever so excited to see what books you will recommend.”

As my conversation with Hildebrand went on, Hortensia apologized to Hannelore. “We are truly sorry to have not kept you properly informed. It simply did not occur to us that you would be visiting the library often enough to take ownership of the tools.”

“Professor Hortensia has since taken ownership herself, so you may rest easy,” Solange added.

Hannelore looked genuinely relieved to hear this news; the whole situation must have really been bothering her. I gave a relieved sigh myself, then expressed my doubts to Hortensia.

“I mentioned this to Professor Eglantine before, but I find it strange that Lady Hannelore ended up the tools’ master when an archnoble librarian was supplying them with mana every day. How did this happen, exactly?”

“There were other tools that required mana. Schwartz and Weiss already had more than enough, so I deemed them less of a priority.”

“Are there any tools in the library more important than the two shumils? Considering how much they help with the borrowing and returning of reading materials, not to mention their work recording those who take books without permission, I can’t imagine there being any other tools that see more regular use.”

Hortensia gave a troubled expression, then turned to Eglantine and Anastasius. It was like she was seeking their assistance.

“Schwartz and Weiss are undeniably important for daily operations,” Anastasius said, “but Hortensia had other matters to attend to. By royal decree.”

“I imagine you are aware of the archive that can only be opened with the keys of archnoble librarians. They were mentioned in the documents that Professor Solange lent you, after all.”

Hortensia had evidently been tasked with opening the forbidden archive and searching it for the Grutrissheit—or any clues that might have suggested its location.

“The plan was for me to supply Schwartz and Weiss with mana after obtaining the keys,” Hortensia said, “but by the time I had removed the keys’ previous registrations and started taking ownership of them myself, I no longer had mana to spare. According to Solange and the diaries, there are three keys, and one archive requires all three to be opened. Thus, I tried to obtain them all, but it turns out that only one key can be owned per person.”

Having all three keys wasn’t enough; the archive also required three people with sufficient mana in order to be opened. Hortensia had apparently lost ownership of the first key after registering her mana with the second. On top of that, Solange lacked the proper mana or some other qualification required to own the keys, so she had not been able to register with one herself.

“Thus, we would like the Library Committee to become owners of the keys,” Hortensia concluded.

“Could you not summon more librarians from the Sovereignty?” I asked.

“As much as we would love to, we would struggle to gather three Sovereign archscholars in the Royal Academy to open an archive that might not even be important.”

Solange, Schwartz, and Weiss had proven themselves capable of managing the library’s daily workload, and the Sovereignty didn’t have enough manpower to spare three archscholars on top of that—especially when there was a chance that they wouldn’t accomplish anything of use. The royal family themselves had said that, unless there were any major discoveries, Hortensia would need to manage on her own.

“The archive has remained closed for some time now without issue. I believe the archduke candidates will find supplying the keys with mana to be less of a burden than supplying Schwartz or Weiss, but what do you think?” Solange asked, looking between Hannelore and me.

Anastasius nodded. “The plan is for the Sovereignty to take over supplying Schwartz and Weiss with mana so that responsibility will fall to Hortensia and Hildebrand. Hannelore, Rozemyne, we ask that you join Hortensia in taking ownership of the keys and assist her with opening the archive.” The library would naturally keep the keys, and we would only be summoned when we were needed. “Although you are busier now that you are third-years, opening a lock should not be much of an inconvenience. Continuing to supply the library’s magic tools would have a much greater impact on your classes.”

They were actually being considerate about the burden they were putting on us. Hannelore and I exchanged glances, then nodded and said, “Understood. We accept.”

Anastasius and the two librarians nodded in turn, at which point Hildebrand timidly interjected. “Um... just Rozemyne and Hannelore? Am I not going to own a key too?”

“You said that you wanted to supply Schwartz and Weiss with mana, did you not?” Anastasius asked.

“I did, but...” Hildebrand lowered his eyes. “I didn’t think that would mean being left out like this.”

“Even if you entered the archive, you would not be able to tell what books were inside.”

Unable to protest any further, Hildebrand merely hung his head.

“Prince Anastasius, will I be allowed to read the archive’s books?” I asked.

“The Library Committee will open the lock and nothing more. The rest is the duty of a librarian. We cannot have you looking around inside when not even we know what is in there.”

Tch. And it’s a whole new archive too.

I was being expected to open a veritable treasure trove of reading material, then do nothing but stand around outside. It was basically torture. That said, if the Grutrissheit really was inside, then it was probably best for me to keep well away rather than invite further misconceptions.

“I... I’ll hold off on going inside. But if there are any books and documents that are safe for me to read, please allow me to see them.”

“That should not be a problem once they have been checked.”

From there, our serious discussions gave way to a more peaceful tea party. We lined up the various sweets we had brought and introduced them while taking demonstrative bites.

“This is the result of us purchasing Ehrenfest’s pound cake and adding our duchy’s rohres,” Hannelore said. “We received some from Lady Rozemyne during last year’s Interduchy Tournament, and it was so wonderfully delicious that we had our chefs experiment with it as well.”

Dunkelfelger often pickled its rohres in wine, so the flavor of the cake was completely unique. “Is the wine different as well, I wonder?” I mused aloud. “This cake is delicious in its own distinct way. I think it’s wonderful that we can enjoy the flavors of other duchies like this.”

“I, too, look forward to the new sweets you bring each year,” Solange said with a giggle as she reached for the yogurt mousse tart I had brought. There was rutreb jam spread atop the white mousse in an attractive pattern, making it a fancy-looking winter sweet.

“This white part often just tastes like plain yogurt, so you may add sweeter flavors as you please,” I explained. The sweets from the Sovereignty looked cute, but they were way too sugary, as expected. I tried my best to get through them but only managed three bites of each at most.

After enjoying the sweets and tea, our conversation turned to books.

Now this is a true bookworm tea party! It’s so exciting!

“I found the knight stories easy to read even without having attended the Royal Academy,” Hildebrand said. “I thoroughly enjoyed my time with them.”

Our knight stories had come at the perfect point in his education. They had most likely been a bit of a challenge for him, but the beats of each tale had made him so excited and anxious that he had read through them all in a trance.

“I, too, want to put my all into giving a beautiful feystone to the woman I love,” he continued. His purple eyes sparkled as he told us which knight stories were his favorite, and hearing him say that he wanted to grow stronger to slay feybeasts really made me think, “Wow, boys will be boys.” Everyone else was looking on warmly as well.

“Lady Letizia is quite a delightful young woman,” I said, “so I expect she will be overjoyed to receive a feystone from a wonderful boy such as yourself.”

“Lady... Letizia?” he asked, blinking as though he hadn’t understood me.

“You are engaged to Lady Letizia of Ahrensbach, are you not?” I asked in turn, looking at him quizzically. I was pretty sure their engagement had been announced during the Archduke Conference. “She came to the Ahrensbach-Ehrenfest border gate to welcome Ferdinand into her duchy. I spoke with her briefly, and she was rather adorable indeed.”

“I... see. But I...”

I considered what was going on here. My first thought was that he simply wasn’t used to the idea, since he hadn’t met with Letizia since the engagement was announced... but then I remembered.

He has a crush on Charlotte!!!

Maybe he was feeling like his parents had trampled all over his first love by ordering him into an engagement with a girl whom he had never met. I panicked on the inside, trying to figure out how to approach this.

It would be weird for me to mention Charlotte out of nowhere. Plus, I’m sure he wouldn’t want everyone here knowing about his first love, right? Aah, what should I do?! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to stomp on your first love! I wasn’t thinking about how Mother would love to hear about this story!

“Um, Rozemyne. I—”

“I heard of your engagement as well,” Hannelore said, interrupting the prince without even realizing it. “Congratulations.”

At that, everyone else began congratulating him as well. Hildebrand ultimately gave a small smile while expressing his thanks. It seemed that he wasn’t unhappy with his engagement at all—he just hadn’t quite come to terms with it yet.

Whew.

Hannelore looked around and gave a teasing smile. “Everyone here has such wonderful partners. I feel somewhat left out.” It was true that she was the only one not married or engaged.

Hortensia giggled. “Oh, Lady Hannelore, but you are a third-year now. This is going to be the most exciting time for you, no? Do you not have your eye on a special someone?”

“Erm, well...” A hint of shyness graced Hannelore’s expression. “I wish to be courted by a man who would grant me a wonderful charm like the one Lady Rozemyne is wearing. Just like in Ehrenfest’s romance stories.”

All eyes gathered on my hair stick. I wiggled my head a bit, touched the rainbow feystones, and said, “It was designed by Ferdinand and given to me by Wilfried. My guardians all worked together to gather the feystones out of concern for my safety.” It was the perfect opportunity for me to stress that it was a present from my fiancé—and that Ferdinand’s fashion sense was completely normal.

“For feystones on this level to have been prepared for you, Ehrenfest must be treating you exceptionally well...” Eglantine said, staring at my rainbow hair stick.

I nodded with a smile. “They really are. They listen to my selfish requests, permit me to make books I love within the duchy, and even gave me a library.” I then indicated the books that I had brought with me to lend out to everyone.

“You have new books once again this year?” Professor Solange asked. “I received a copy of Ehrenfest’s love stories myself. It was quite entertaining trying to identify the stories I recognized; I would look back on my own days in the Royal Academy, which was truly nostalgic.”

“I am glad to hear you enjoyed them, Professor Solange. This year’s Royal Academy Love Stories is composed of tales gathered by the apprentice scholars of other duchies, so I expect they will be a lot harder to identify.”

Our stories thus far had come from Elvira and her friends, which meant they were mostly from Ehrenfest, and those that weren’t tended to be popular enough for everyone in the Royal Academy to be familiar with them anyway. However, the stories gathered for us by apprentice scholars looking to make a profit tended to be more obscure tales, as the apprentices wished to avoid overlap and secure the most money possible. Naturally, there was no pattern to which duchies or generations these stories came from.

“I also have books for men, not just love stories,” I continued. “There are ones about friendship blooming from treasure-stealing ditter. If you are interested, Prince Anastasius, I will gladly lend them to you.”

“I am, but would it not be cruel to make Hildebrand wait?” Anastasius jabbed a thumb in the direction of the prince, who looked truly withered, like a dog that had been waiting for scraps but gotten none so far. There was normally only one copy of each book, so lending it to Anastasius would mean that Hildebrand had to wait.

However... fear not!

“I can lend you both the book,” I said. “Brunhilde, Rihyarda, please distribute our copies of Royal Academy Love Stories and A Ditter Story.”

“At once.”

Brunhilde distributed Roderick’s A Ditter Story, while Rihyarda distributed the new edition of Royal Academy Love Stories. We had been planning to debut the former during our tea party with Dunkelfelger, but there had been a change of plans, since these were the only new books that we expected would interest Anastasius and Hildebrand.

Your first readers are members of the royal family, Roderick! Wow!

I glanced to the side and saw Roderick standing in the corner, looking unbearably uncomfortable. I could tell from his expression that he was both eager and terrified about seeing how everyone reacted.

“Lady Rozemyne, are these not exactly the same books?” Eglantine asked, fluttering her eyelids.

“Indeed they are. The process of making identical books is known as ‘printing,’ and Ehrenfest intends to make printed goods its central industry. We are planning to sell books about Dunkelfelger’s history in this same manner, although we will not be releasing those right away, as they must check the contents themselves.”

Solange and Hortensia compared their books and voiced their surprise at even the illustrations being identical.

“I see that the contents are all neat and orderly, but can you not do something about the cover?” Anastasius asked, flipping through the pages with a clear grimace. As always, nobles weren’t fond of books that bucked the trend of having ornately decorated covers.

“The flower-covered pages technically serve that purpose,” I explained. “I assume that you and Lady Hannelore would rather something more traditional though, correct? As the string binding can easily be undone, you should have no trouble bringing the pages to a workshop and ordering a cover of your own preference.”

“Hmm...” Anastasius was still looking at the book in dissatisfaction. It may have been his first time seeing one without its cover.

“Think of this as Ehrenfest selling the contents of a book rather than a book in its entirety. By not including a fancy cover, the cost can be kept low enough that even laynobles and mednobles can afford them.”

“That is delightfully considerate,” said Solange, a mednoble herself.

Hannelore similarly smiled at the Ehrenfest book in her hands. “These are light and comfortable to hold, and the pages themselves are easy to turn. I quite adore them.” She glanced over at the thick Dunkelfelger books she had brought with her. “I find them much more agreeable than books I can only read with the assistance of my attendants or scholars.”

“I know what you mean,” Hildebrand added. “They’re so much more manageable than those big, thick books that have to be placed on a reading stand, aren’t they?”

Books so big they need a reading stand...? What the heck?! Let me read them!

I started to lean forward, eager to hear more, but Brunhilde stealthily brought me back from where she was standing behind me. I checked my necklace’s feystone to make sure it hadn’t changed color, then readjusted my posture.

“Now, how shall these be lent?”

Ehrenfest could give everyone copies of the same book, but, as expected, nobody else could do the same. Status decided the order in which we would act, and from there, the book exchange began. What ended up coming my way was a book that Solange had brought from a closed-stack archive.

“You have plentiful mana, right, Lady Rozemyne?” she said. “This is a book that was moved to a closed-stack archive for long-term storage, but its pages contain many unusual magic circles. It was apparently written by a professor who studied Schwartz and Weiss long ago. Perhaps you will find it enriching.”

“I thank you.”

By copying out this book and getting Ferdinand or Hirschur to research it, I was sure we could make our own versions of Schwartz and Weiss for my library. I wanted to read it right away, but that simply wasn’t an option; the books were exchanged by our retainers, so it wasn’t actually in front of me.

“Um, do you enjoy reading difficult books, Rozemyne?” Hildebrand asked gingerly. His eyes shifted to the book he was borrowing from Hortensia, which his head attendant, Arthur, was currently holding. “A book such as this will take me quite some time to read, so you are more than welcome to have it first.”

In a shocking twist, Hildebrand was willing to lend me the book that he was borrowing himself. Holding back my urge to leap at the opportunity, I gazed up at Arthur and said, “May I, um... Would it be okay for me to borrow the book in his place?”

“Prince Hildebrand is quite fond of Ehrenfest books. He reads them over and over again. This one here”—he indicated the book in his hand—“is a little more complicated, so someone of your reading level is bound to find it more enjoyable. Do lend us more Ehrenfest books when they are made.”

I eagerly nodded in response, then turned my attention back to Hildebrand. “I thank you ever so much, Prince Hildebrand.”

“I’m just glad to see you happy, Rozemyne.”

Oh my gosh. What a good kid!

After this exchange, I received my payment for having agreed to take ownership of one of the archive’s keys: a book that Anastasius had brought from the royal palace. That made for three books in total—an impressive haul for a single tea party. But while I was giddy with excitement, eager to leave and delve into my new treasures, Anastasius was comparing Ehrenfest’s book to his other one.

“Rozemyne, does Ehrenfest only have thin books like this? It exudes poverty. If you will not attach covers, at least make them thicker.”

“They are bound with string, so they can only be so thick. Thus, we are competing in quantity.” I then turned to Brunhilde, who nodded and joined Rihyarda in distributing Elvira’s most recent volume: The Story of Fernestine.

This new book had come about from Elvira putting her stormy feelings about Ferdinand’s engagement on paper. Of course, the actual story couldn’t be published outright, so she had changed the protagonist’s gender—among many other things—while writing. The end product was the tale of Fernestine, a young woman whose mother had died prematurely, leaving her to be raised humbly alongside an attendant assigned to her by her father.

Just as Fernestine’s baptism was drawing near, her father came to get her and brought her back to none other than the archduke’s castle. In a shocking twist, she had been an archduke candidate all along. She then entered the Royal Academy, whereupon she began to stand out due to her feminine beauty and excellent grades. Some archduke candidates attempted to bully her out of envy... but it was nothing compared to the merciless mistreatment she had already been receiving from her stepmother.

It was at the Royal Academy that Fernestine first experienced freedom from her stepmother. It was also where she and a prince fell in love. But alas, as Fernestine was an archduke candidate without a mother, her romance was hotly protested—so much so that the king ultimately intervened, separating the couple by ordering that she be married into a greater duchy. It wasn’t just any greater duchy, though—it was the same one that her stepmother was from, and the man that Fernestine was to marry bore her stepmother’s likeness.

Even then, the first prince refused to give up on Fernestine, knowing that she wept over the king’s decree. He pulled one trick after another in order to save her. At first, Fernestine refused his help, saying that he was only getting in her way... but when the prince painstakingly convinced the king to permit their marriage, she willingly took his hand.

That was the gist. No matter how convenient it seemed, the heroine had to be rescued in the end.

Of course, Sylvester had immediately noticed that Fernestine was just a gender-swapped Ferdinand. He had guffawed and praised Elvira for doing something so fearless, but only those closest to Ferdinand were able to see the connection. Even in Ehrenfest, only a few noticed.

Incidentally, both A Ditter Story and The Story of Fernestine were long-form series that wouldn’t fit into single volumes. We were having to print them piecemeal, so the complete product took longer to make.

I gazed across all the excited faces clinging to their new books and smirked. This was just step one of my magnificent plan.

Everyone, get infected with a lust for the next volumes of your favorite series! Just like me! Spread forth, my bookworm virus!

I had come to this tea party on edge about interacting with royalty... but in the end, it was much more fun than I had ever expected.