“Well...kinda...”
“And since you didn’t know the reason, you couldn’t say anything back. We don’t need anyone in this castle who can say horrible things to a young child without reserve.”
At that moment, my brother felt at least ten years older than he really was, but that was also when I realized that he was a much more expressive person than I’d originally thought. He really was worried about me, and I was caught off guard by how playful he could be.
“Has grandfather passed away?”
“Of course not,” Chris said, then paused. “Oh wait, the last time he returned to Belisario was when you’d just been born, so you wouldn’t remember. You know how me, our aunt, and father all have the signature Belisario platinum blond hair? Well, grandfather was overjoyed when he learned that someone with his hair color had finally been born.”
Knowing that everyone had been as happy at my birth as they had been at Deir’s, I began to regret that I hadn’t asked about it sooner. Thanks to this conversation, though, any concerns I’d had about my brother completely disappeared, and I was no longer nervous here in his presence. I realized I’d never even touched my brother before, so I reached forward and grabbed at his clothes a bit. Chris didn’t look the least bit annoyed, instead tilting his head in question.
“Where is grandfather normally?” I asked.
“Do you know about the war that happened before we were born?”
“Yes.”
“Grandfather is the son of a count who owned a small piece of land in the northeast of Noland,” Chris explained. “Around ten years ago, the count and his retired predecessor, grandfather’s older brother, died in an accident. The count’s son was still only fourteen. He was far from being an adult. So grandfather had father succeed as Margrave Belisario so he could serve as an adviser to the new young count until he’d earned enough experience. He taught him all about managing the land.”
“Did grandmother go with him?”
“Mm-hmm. And then three years after that, war broke out. Their domain became a battlefield. Grandfather fought in that war as well.”
All I had learned about it was that we’d won the war and that the general had been so successful he’d even managed to expand the empire’s territory. Win or lose, people would still have been lost in a war. In areas that became battlefields, crops would have been ruined and homes destroyed. The war had never reached Belisario so it felt like a faraway tale, but now it turned out that the battlefield had been the land our grandfather had been born in.
“The rebuilding efforts took a lot of work and time, so he wasn’t able to come visit, but when he did find the time two years back, he said the count had already become a fine man. Nevertheless, grandfather also didn’t think he could stay here forever, even as a Belisario.”
“Huh?”
“So he went traveling with his wife.”
“But what about the restoration efforts?!”
“They should be finished by now, I think?”
“That’s it? I thought this was going to be a really cool story!”
It turned out that only a small part of the domain had become a battlefield, and with the help of Margrave Noland, the restoration had gone smoothly. Once they’d been freed from their duty, our grandparents had decided to go traveling abroad, but no one had been able to get in contact with them since, and it was uncertain whether they even knew Deir had been born. Father had let them be, saying that they’d contact us eventually.
First, no one had told me the truth about my hair, and now, we had wandering grandparents that everyone was letting do as they pleased—wasn’t everyone just a bit too relaxed about all this? The one who’d end up suffering because of that was Chris. Yeah. Not me.
“If you would permit me to speak, Lord Chris.” To my surprise, the one who spoke was the knight who had been accompanying me as my guard.
“What is it?” my brother asked.
“I would encourage you to speak to Lord Alan about the previous margrave’s achievements as the hero of Belisario. It is truly lamentable that not even the nobles who serve Belisario think to pass on his feats to their children. Lord Alan, you are actually very popular among the knights and the navy for having inherited the hero’s hair color.”
“They call him a hero?” I asked. “Because he fought in the war?”
“No, Alan,” Chris said. “The one who devised our current strategy of involving spirits in our formations was grandfather. There is no other domain in which so many of those who use swords and spears to fight are also in possession of their own spirits. Spirits can both heal and help with offense. Grandfather is the one who thought up the most efficient way to use the different spirit elements.”
The reason that there had already been many spirits in Belisario even before Deir had gotten involved was because grandfather had trained the knights to build their mana in order to use spirits in the army and for defense. The moment it had seemed like war was approaching Belisario, they’d spread rumors in Luftanen and Stark about how formidable our navy was and lined up ships manned only by spirit users in prominent areas of the port. Thanks to that, neither Luftanen nor Stark had declared war.
Belisario had never been involved in the war and had therefore been able to focus efforts on sending fresh supplies to the front lines. Anything we’d lacked, we’d imported, and since Luftanen and Stark had chosen not to view us as enemies, we’d been able to profit.