As I watched my son and the young lady leave for the garden, the Aspozat minx began to speak.
“So what designs do you have, coming all the way to our house? I have some trouble believing that you came here just to show your gratitude.”
It wasn’t often this woman showed her true colors. She must have felt it was fine to speak freely, given the private setting and that so many of her contemporaries knew what she was truly like. No point in hiding what’s already apparent.
“I heard something troubling. I wanted to see if you were already aware.”
“Troubling, you said?”
“It’s regarding House Yulville and the movements of the noble faction.”
That got her attention. I couldn’t think of any group she was more interested in. The young lady talking with my son was the daughter of a woman from House Yulville. Lord Yulville, who had been quite active as of late, was the young lady’s maternal uncle. With this connection to her, he would typically have the right to decide her marriage partner, but I had been given the impression he was trying to bring her over to their side.
House Yulville being in the neutral faction put a limit on how much information a house from the royal faction could gather. Similarly, while they could at least look into the movements of the noble faction, they couldn’t learn much unless they dug deep. If you don’t want information getting out, you limit how many people know in the first place.
“Would you tell me more?”
House Yulville had been acting strange lately. While we were both neutral houses, we had little to do with each other. Yet one day, they told me out of the blue to keep my hands off the Duval girl. Unsure what this was all about, I sent them off as politely as I could. However, apparently it had something to do with my son. My heart nearly failed me when I heard how he had gone to Peylon uninvited and asked the young lady for her hand in marriage.
I immediately sent a series of letters telling him to come home, but he ignored them. Not only that, he then went and joined in the hunting festival—an event held by the royalists. Honestly, was that boy trying to shave years off my life?
To make things worse, a few days later, Lord Duval himself sent me a letter of protest. Given that my son was courting his daughter, I felt the earl had every right to be displeased.
Further investigations revealed that something very odd was happening with that house. I knew the man’s wife was deceased, but I was only just learning about how he had sent his daughter away, and when she was only three years old, no less. And the daughter of that house was now being courted by my son.
More recently, I learned that Lord Duval hadn’t been sighted in some time. The servants of his royal capital residence had all been put on leave and the building itself was closed down. Now, the abandonment of the residence didn’t seem so strange when I recalled that the house’s reputation had begun to decline not with the current lord, but the previous one. Then there was the unsettling news that this minx in front of me had overseen his removal.
I knew that Duval had next to no branch families or relatives. Even the house of his wife, House Yulville, had distanced themselves from him after he’d treated his spouse so poorly. After what Lord Duval had done to that woman, it was no wonder they had a bone to pick with him. However, that ire mostly came from the former Lord and Lady Yulville. The current Lord Yulville didn’t much care for his sister.
This new lord was now looking to be bedfellows with Marquess Bilbroza, the head of the noble faction. It was a strange move for a house that had maintained its neutrality for so long.
Not that they were ever truly in the middle; they had always been loyal to the crown. Yulville was a big name among mages. Members of the royal family and many more besides, myself included, had learned the basics from the previous Lord Yulville and his wife. That was why they had long been a neutral house.
Yet the current head, who wasn’t on good terms with his predecessors, was now trying to cozy up with the noble faction. I was making progress in my investigations, but these were snakes from houses experienced in political games. The minx and her people probably weren’t faring any better than myself.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that the noble faction has been acting odd lately,” I said.
“That I have. I never imagined that man might interfere with the academy.”
“Lord Bilbroza is a cunning man. He ordered those boys from lower houses to attack, all without leaving a shred of proof.”
“Just how long does that old man plan to cling to power?”
I barely managed to contain my laughter. She was right—Lord Bilbroza was a despicable old man. He didn’t know how to keep his hands off women or the bottle, and nobody seemed to be certain how many children he had fathered as a result. Most of them he had gotten rid of before society was any the wiser. A few he had made use of by shoving off onto lower houses.
The most notable of those was House Nogdeid. I was told the eldest son of that house had recently made some extraordinary failure. Until recently, the boy had been coddled by the old man, which only made him come down even harder when the lad screwed up. Supposedly, he had been disowned and exiled from House Nogdeid. The younger brother, Zodian, was a sharp one, so the house wouldn’t be wanting for a suitable heir.
But there was something more important on my mind. “By the way, what brought that worthless old man’s attention to the young lady in the first place?”
“Who knows? I’m not him, so I couldn’t tell you.”
No use asking directly, I see.
While the academy festival was held on the campus, it attracted parents and guardians from all around into one place, making it as much a social event as an academy one. I couldn’t ignore the fact that the old man had tried to use the event to harm the Duval girl. He definitely had some ulterior motive.
As much as I don’t want to say this, I’ve got no other choice.
“I hear my son has asked for that young lady’s hand in marriage.”
“Indeed he did.”
“If they do wed, she’ll marry into our house. I’d say she requires our protection.”
“Oh my!” The minx began to laugh for reasons entirely beyond me. “Oh, how funny. Indeed, normally, you would be quite right. But, unfortunately for you, that girl will be taking a groom into her house.”
“What?”
The daughter was to take in a groom? I had been led to believe Duval had a suitable son, one the daughter’s elder. Though maybe not? There was no record of that son graduating from the noble academy, a rite of passage for all children of the nobility. It was a necessary condition for inheriting a title. Though there were exceptions for special cases.
“The Duval boy is sickly, right?”
“That’s the official story.”
So the truth was different? The mother was said to have had a stifling love for her son, some people even saying they had a warped relationship. That was perhaps a side effect of Lord Duval giving all his attention to his lover.
Duval was a royalist house. However, for two generations straight, they had been falling down the rungs and getting along poorly with Aspozat, the head of the faction. Some people suspected it wouldn’t be long before they were kicked out. So now House Aspozat was looking out for the girl exiled from Duval. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they wanted to help her since she had been sent to Peylon, a house with close ties to Aspozat. The minx sitting across from me was the daughter of the previous Lord Peylon.
The Duval girl was the object of my son’s affection, and this minx adored her like one of her own. Unable to fully understand why, I’d headed to that royal ball for academy students, and was shocked, to say the least, by what I saw. I had never seen such fine control in someone so young. It was a vast, seemingly boundless font of mana, yet it matched her outline perfectly.
Even the most expertly trained mages struggled to fully control their mana. In fact, the current Lord Yulville, from a house known for arcane skills, had dreadful control. He radiated energy like shimmering heat. The former lord wasn’t nearly so bad, but unfortunately, the son fell very short of his father. I didn’t think the son had much talent at all.
The minx glared at me. “My point is, if your son marries Lera, then you’ll have to give up on him being your successor. Now, we’ve digressed considerably. Have you learned what the old man is after?”
“The Mystic Forest.”
“Did I just hear you correctly?”
That certainly startled the minx. While the Mystic Forest was a trove of valuable resources, it was also a savage land teeming with dangerous monsters. If the old man was trying to stick his nose into that, the logical assumption was that his age was getting the better of him.
“I don’t have a clue what he’s trying to do. But as your kin know much better than I do, that forest is a dangerous place to play around in.”
“Very true. And now’s a terrible time for it.”
“The overflow? My son brought a report to the royal palace.”
“Simply because he was the only one available at the time.”
She used my son as a messenger and that’s all she had to say for herself? By god I hated dealing with this woman.
“Back then, Yulville was also in Peylon.” The minx now had an indescribable look on her face. “He stooped very low in order to join in the hunting festival.”
“What do you mean?”
“He joined the hunt by intimidating the parents of a novice from his order.”
What a travesty. The position of captain of the Knights of the White Summit was an esteemed one, yet he trampled all over that.
“Then he made some audacious demands to the Peylon research institute.”
“Demands? What did—”
“He wanted the rights to the portal.”
I was at a loss. The royal palace had specifically trusted the research institute—no, trusted Peylon, with ownership of the portals.