Chapter 79: A Hand Behind Every Pawn
A few days later.
"998."
The sun beat down on Evangel while the young apprentice hero, Aldric Paydragon, trained in the courtyard of his manor, bringing his sword down from high to low exactly as Mei had taught him.
"999."
"1000."
At first this training had been utterly hellish, and he had barely managed to survive it, collapsing from exhaustion the moment the thousand strikes were done. Which he hadn’t even been allowed to do, since he then had to move straight on to Freya’s intensive and entirely merciless lessons.
It really was hell...
Because yes, Aldric, given his youth and his standing as a noble, had never been pushed like that in his life. He had experienced those two weeks as the hardest of his entire existence, whether because of the poor creatures he had to raise and then slaughter with his own hands, Mei’s monotonous drilling, or Freya’s lessons. All of it without ever knowing whether his sisters were all right, or how long he would remain a prisoner of that dungeon.
The worst part of it all was that deep down he knew perfectly well those had also been the most constructive and formative two weeks he had ever lived through.
And now that his infernal apprenticeship was behind him, he knew full well that even back home he had to hold the line. He had to keep applying every foundation they had drilled into him, and finally grow into a man worthy of the name.
"Your towel, sir."
Myriam had approached in silence, holding it out at arm’s length with a light curtsey.
"You pushed even further than yesterday, if I may say so. It’s admirable to see you like this."
He set down his heavy wooden sword, let one hand fall onto the woman’s shoulder and wiped his face with the other.
"Always so attentive to your master, Myriam. Thank you very much!"
There was of course an undertone to his words, an undertone the woman would never pick up on.
"It’s only natural, sir. It is my role, after all."
Then Gauvin arrived in turn, a ledger clutched against him and already looking pressed for time.
"So, what do we have on today, Gauvin?"
"You’ve arranged to distribute food in the lower districts, as well as to help with the rebuilding efforts in the Morio quarter alongside the house knights, following the brawl that broke out two days ago between the city guards and the residents of the lower districts."
"Aaahahah! What a fine day we have ahead of us!"
"But that isn’t all, sir. You also have an appointment to acquire a warehouse for storing goods, over in the Karakura quarter."
"Aaah, that’s right, thank you for reminding me."
He laid a hand on the old man’s shoulder and was already starting to walk off toward everything he had to do.
"Uhhh, sir! There’s also the goblin quest with that group of novice adventurers, the Haruhiro. You promised to help them, and you even said you’d take the opportunity to raise your level!"
"Aaah... do I not get a single day with even the smallest amount of time to myself since I got back?"
Aldric said this, but he knew better. Freya had repeated it to him far too often for him to ignore it any longer. His power, which allowed him to gain levels, something normally reserved for monsters alone, made him a being of absolutely limitless potential.
His whole life as a noble, and despite having been designated an apprentice hero, he had never truly aimed at gaining levels. He had been convinced he would change the world through his words and his convictions. But he knew now that he had been staggeringly naive.
He would need strength. Crushing, solid strength, for himself, for those close to him and for his people. The kind of strength that would let him impose those very convictions and those very words he held so dear.
"No, sir. That is the way of the Paydragons."
"If only my father had followed it."
The butler scratched his cheek, visibly uncomfortable, before adding something further.
"Speaking of which, we’ve received another letter, what should I—"
"Tear it up. As usual."
"B-but are you certain? It could—"
"Don’t worry, Gauvin. I have ways of covering my back."
The old man let out a long breath. Because after all, the boy he had known since he was small, the one he had always seen as a genuine hero, had come back after two weeks of disappearance with that same enormous heart he had always known in him. But he could feel it too. Something had happened during those two weeks. Something that had darkened that heart a little.
"Right, I’m off! No time to waste! Gauvin, Myriam, look after yourselves! See you tonight."
The two servants bowed at their master’s words, and he vanished at once through the estate gates, after which they each went back to their own occupations.
Both of them would be writing, incidentally, but for radically different reasons. One for the master he loved so dearly, and to lighten a workload that had done nothing but grow since his return. The other out of pure greed, writing for an entirely different master.
~~
In an office of almost indecent luxury, all dark panelling, gold-threaded tapestries and display cases full of objects nobody had ever used, Baron Frarken sat in an equally ostentatious armchair, facing a glass sphere resting at the center of his desk pad.
Sweat had formed across his face, not from any physical effort but from purely mental strain, so he drew out a handkerchief embroidered with his coat of arms to mop his brow. The cloth came away darkened at once.
A fly drifted past and he swatted at it without conviction, his other hand still wiping his temple, while light gradually rose from the sphere before a voice came out of it.
"I have granted you considerably more time than was necessary, Baron Frarken. You presented yourself to us as the man for the situation, and yet everything reaching me indicates precisely the opposite."
The baron straightened at once in his seat, both hands flat on the desk.
"Your Highness, I assure you the situation remains entirely under control and that matters are following exactly the course I set for them. Trouble yourself with nothing, I shall bring you excellent news soon enough."
"Do you believe me to be without eyes in Evangel?"
The handkerchief closed inside his fist.
"Do you seriously imagine that the rumors circulating through your own city fail to reach me? That the existence of this supposed survivor from the village of Veille has escaped my notice? Or indeed that I would be unaware your attempts have failed, not once, but twice?"
The voice broke off for a moment, and the baron swallowed while waiting for what came next, unable to tear his eyes from the sphere.
"Shall I continue the inventory of your incompetence, Baron Frarken, or do you consider the picture sufficiently complete?"
"I... I shall do everything within my power to prove equal to the task, Your Highness."
"Never forget what it is we labor for, Frarken. This has nothing whatsoever to do with our titles or with our houses. All of this serves the design of the First Hand, and it would be regrettable indeed were you to prove unworthy of its expectations."
He let a brief silence settle before adding one more thing.
"The world belongs to humanity."
The baron seemed to hesitate a moment before answering.
"The world belongs to humanity."
And with that, the light vanished from the sphere.
Frarken sat perfectly still for several seconds, watching for any sign that the connection was still open. Then, once certain he was alone, he exploded outright.
The first thing to go was the sphere itself, which he swept off the desk with a backhand and which rolled away somewhere beneath a chest of drawers.
"Why did I ever join those damned fanatics!"
The desk pad followed, then the inkwell, its contents spattering across a tapestry worth more on its own than the annual wages of half his household staff.
"Always giving me orders! Always looking down on me as though I were worth absolutely nothing!"
He seized a chair in both hands and smashed it into a display case, which exploded in a shower of glass and scattered dozens of collector’s pieces across the floor.
"Because they handed me a little fortune, they think they can toy with me like this?! That I’m nothing but a nobody?! Nothing but a puppet of their organization?!"
He drove his foot into the debris, sending it skidding under the curtains.
"And that damned prince, who exactly does he think he is?! Do this! Do that! He isn’t even the heir, he’s the THIRD PRINCE!"
He stayed there, out of breath, one hand braced against the wall. The anger was still there but had already receded somewhat, and his mind turned toward something else entirely, naturally settling on a new target for what remained of his rage.
"This is all your fault, Paydragon!"
He had said it with his teeth clenched hard enough to grind.
Then someone knocked at his office door.
"Wait!"
He pulled out his handkerchief again, wiped his face, smoothed his hair back, tucked his shirt into his trousers and straightened his collar, thereby recovering a minimum of that entirely misplaced aristocratic dignity.
"Very well. Come in."
At those words a thin man entered the room. His gaze fell first on his master, then drifted over the shattered display case, the ink spread across the tapestry, the ruined chair and the objects scattered over the floor, before returning calmly to the man himself.
Already thoroughly familiar with his master’s temperament and his outbursts, he made absolutely nothing of it and kept his professionalism entirely intact.
"A letter, sir."
He held it out, and Baron Frarken read through it before smiling.
It seems the gods haven’t abandoned me after all.
His gaze rose back toward the thin man.
"Prepare twenty knights for tonight. The trusted ones, as usual. And dress them in civilian clothes."
The man acknowledged this with a bow before leaving the office and closing the doors behind him.
"Tonight is your end, Paydragon."
Contrary to Freya’s predictions, the baron had no interest whatsoever in theorizing beyond the end of his own nose. Because after all, and contrary to what he believed himself, he was nothing more than one of the many rotten fruits financed and used by that organization bearing the name of the Hands of Humanity.
An organization which, as you will have guessed, despised everything that wasn’t human, and which above all despised the invaders spoken of in the prophecy, along with those they called the dogs of the gods, in other words the heroes.