Marius gasped.
“Whoa...”
He reverently took Divine Dragon’s Claw from the box, almost as though he were offering it to a god. He ran his fingers across the blade, looking restless.
“I also gave it a name,” I said. “Divine Dragon’s Claw.”
“Amazing,” Marius replied. “It really does look like you cut a claw from a real dragon.”
Camilo and the margrave nodded along. Camilo then said, “I trust your skills, Eizo, so I knew you’d make something breathtaking, but this? This...is absolutely stunning. It’ll be a more than suitable gift for the empire.”
“And if they even dare to decline this present, I’ll buy it off your hands at a good price,” the margrave added.
Everyone laughed, but the cheery mood died down quickly.
“Now then, shall we get down to business?” Marius asked.
I heard someone in the room gulp nervously.
“We’d planned on keeping this orichalcum knife gift confidential until the day we presented it to the empire,” Marius explained.
“That was gonna be the first step in the investigation of the counterfeit Forge Eizo knives, right?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yep.”
Fake Forge Eizo knives had been circulating in the capital, and this orichalcum knife was supposed to be a trigger—an envoy of the empire would claim that they had bought a popular knife in the kingdom. That was when we could openly claim that they had a fake, thus prompting a proper investigation.
During interrogations, the dissident duke’s faction would be the first to fall under the line of fire—he was currently in a political conflict with the margrave and Marius, who belonged to the mainstream faction. While his faction wasn’t huge within the kingdom, the duke was still related to the king, and he thus wielded quite a bit of power. Our plan was to deal a heavy blow to the duke and his underlings.
Needless to say, the duke’s faction wasn’t supposed to know about any of this before the plan was put into action. If he did catch wind of it, and Marius pushed this plan anyway, the duke would likely try to find out where the orichalcum knife had come from. Then, it would only be a matter of time before he sensed the entire farce, which would hurt the mainstream faction.
Wait, that means...
“The duke’s faction discovered our scheme,” Marius said, stating exactly what I’d imagined.
“Do you know who leaked the info?” I asked.
He furrowed his brow slightly. I feel like my question isn’t out of pocket, but was I not supposed to ask?
Marius gave a small sigh. “Sort of, yes,” he confessed.
Since only a select few knew about the plan, by process of elimination, it probably wasn’t hard to pinpoint the suspect. And I’m probably one of the suspects too. I lived quietly in the Black Forest, so I had ample opportunity to casually let this plan slip to the duke’s faction while skillfully covering my tracks. I would be the suspect...given that the rest of my family keeps quiet about it, of course. I could only hope that I was at the end of the list of potential perpetrators instead of at the beginning.
“Is it curtains for this orichalcum knife, then? No role to play?” I asked, pointing to Divine Dragon’s Claw, which had been returned into the box.
Marius shook his head. “Whether we go public or not, we have to hand the knife over to the empire’s envoy. We were only borrowing the orichalcum, after all. But the biggest issue is—”
“How we can handle the issue of counterfeit Forge Eizo knives,” the margrave finished. His powerful, dignified gaze was directed at me, emanating pressure.
“Well, truth be told, I’m in no rush to solve the problem,” I revealed.
“Oho?” the margrave asked, raising an eyebrow. Did he expect me to be furious about the fakes circulating the market?
I grinned at him. “I can’t imagine that our products will be inferior to those fakes.”
The margrave’s eyebrow soared even higher.
“It goes without saying, but the knives that I make easily surpass any fake on the market,” I said. “And the same can actually be said for the knives that my family members forge. If you need to kick the can down the road for a bit—if you need more time—Forge Eizo is quite all right with that.”
“Are you sure?” the margrave asked.
“Yeah. Though obviously, I wouldn’t want you to let them run wild forever. That would hurt not only our business, but Camilo’s as well.”
“Of course.” The margrave gave a deep nod.
If business went south for Camilo, the margrave would have one less merchant he could rely on. Sure, losing one wouldn’t be a huge deal for someone as powerful as the margrave, but Camilo was friends with a blacksmith (me) who possessed mysterious skills, and he also had connections in the empire and the Nordic region too. While I wasn’t sure if Camilo was publicly recognized by the empire, it was true that he’d received permission directly from the emperor himself to sell goods within the kingdom. The margrave definitely wasn’t keen on letting such a merchant fail. Doing so would cause the empire to doubt the margrave’s skills and, by extension, those of the main faction of the kingdom. No noble was willing to be underestimated.
“I know very well that we must pursue them one day,” the margrave said.
“Well, maybe we can just wait and see for the time being,” I offered.
“But...”
The margrave crossed his arms as Marius tried to lend a helping hand.
“You see, while His Majesty himself might not be present this time around, some higher-ups will apparently be there,” Marius explained.
“If you make a big stink in front of these people, you can ensure, at least, that this matter won’t be silenced,” I guessed.
“Exactly. If only the empire’s envoy is present, it would mean very little. The people from the empire will return home, and they frankly couldn’t care less about matters in the kingdom. But if we can make a big fuss in front of them, people will definitely care—and with orders from one of the higher-ups in the empire backing us, we could have a chance to corner the duke’s faction without caring about how they might try to meddle or stop us.”
“Fair enough...”
I’d experienced something similar back on Earth. By involving my boss or other supervisors, the matter had been escalated, thereby forcing a company to act and forcing a certain situation to progress. This must be like that. The trick was to involve people above you but also to ensure that it wouldn’t go too far up—you didn’t want people with far more power alerted to this situation. But I don’t think I’ll need that trick here.
“We don’t know when we’ll get an opportunity like this again. We really don’t want to miss this chance,” Marius said.
“And it’d suck if they used Divine Dragon’s Claw against us, forcing us to reveal where the orichalcum came from in the first place,” I added.
Marius nodded. “But I don’t think it would do much if we brought out one of your knives for reference during the meeting.”
“Yeah. At a glance, my real knives and the fakes look almost identical.”
“We’d only humiliate the empire’s envoy. The orichalcum gift would probably cancel out any offense, but...” Marius paused as he stared at the rest of my family. “While it pains me to ask, I’d like to enlist your assistance, my lady.”