“No, I must stay. I already asked Sister Myne to allow me to accompany her here.”
“You really do lack flexibility, Fran.”
That’s right, Arno! Keep giving it to him! Make Fran agree to rest!
I internally cheered Arno on. I had let Fran join me since he was always so diligent and dedicated to his work, but would really rather he had gone back to his room to rest.
“I do not want to hear that from you, Arno. You could have told us that the High Priest was in his hidden room instead of sticking to the story of him being absent. Some flexibility there would have been much appreciated,” Fran complained, his frustration clear in his voice.
He was right, really—Arno was at times more inflexible than he probably should have been. Maybe that was just because he was the High Priest’s attendant and they all ended up like that. I gave a small smile.
“The tea is all we need. Leave.” The High Priest cleared the room, sending all of our attendants outside. The only ones left were me, the High Priest, Sylvester, and Karstedt. My family would be joining us eventually, but for now it was just us key members.
Sylvester’s archduke persona dropped as soon as the attendants were gone. He slumped over in exhaustion and hung his head. “Sheesh, I’m beat. I never want to put any of my family on trial again.”
“Things will get a lot easier for us after this. For now, just remember it’s not over yet. Keep your back straight,” Karstedt said, giving the slumped Sylvester a slap on the back.
Sylvester bent his lips into a frown and sent a glare in my direction. “Karstedt, think about it—what’s the point in acting big in front of Myne at this point? She understands me already.”
“If you’re going to be her adoptive father, you’ve got to at least stay sharp at the beginning,” Karstedt chastised. He honestly seemed like he would be a much more reliable adoptive father than Sylvester—so I thought for the thousandth time while watching their back-and-forth.
“If the High Bishop is your uncle, and the High Priest you’ve been so friendly with is your half-brother from another mother, is it safe to say you are related to Lord Karstedt by blood too?” I asked. Karstedt was close enough to Sylvester to hit him—the archduke—on the head alongside the High Priest. It was more likely than not that he was a blood relative too.
“Yeah, Karstedt’s my cousin—the son of my dad’s older brother.”
“Older brother? Wait, then how is succession determined here?” Apparently it wasn’t determined by age. Maybe the youngest son took over?
As I blinked in surprise, Sylvester looked at me with a baffled expression. “What else would it be determined by if not mana? The most important thing for someone ruling a duchy is having enough mana to keep it afloat, so successors are generally chosen from the first wife’s kids, especially since she’ll have a lot of political influence through her side of the family.”
“I see... Even ruling duchies requires mana.”
“...I forgot since you talk to us like it’s nothing, but you really don’t know anything about this place, huh?”
What was common sense for nobles wasn’t even known by adults born and raised in the lower city, so it would be pretty unreasonable to expect me to know these things. I pouted, and Sylvester hardened his expression while still slumped over.
“Myne, let’s be a little serious for a second.”
“Okay.”
“The adoption was more or less completed when you stamped your blood against the contract necklace I gave you, but we’re going to need to pull some tricks to make sure this actually works.”
Apparently, they were first going to pass me off as Karstedt’s daughter and then have Sylvester adopt me. It was like money laundering, but for identity.
“Is there any significance to me becoming Karstedt’s daughter?”
“Absolutely. Can’t you tell there’s a big difference between a commoner being adopted by the archduke and the daughter of an archnoble descended from a former archduke being adopted by the archduke?”
“That’s true, but what’s the point when so many from the Knight’s Order already know I’m a commoner?” They would be able to draw a connection between the blue-robed commoner shrine maiden and the archduke’s adoptive daughter the second they saw me. Surely they would question where all this business about me being Karstedt’s daughter came from.
“That’s just the Knight’s Order. Karstedt and Ferdinand can take care of that. The story’s gonna be that you’re Karstedt’s beloved daughter.”
“Um, ‘the story’? I don’t see any way this isn’t going to be seen through right away. Am I the crazy one here?” There had been about twenty knights who had seen me during the trombe extermination; it was far too late to start saying that I was Karstedt’s daughter if you asked me.
“Nah, it’s surprisingly easy to mess with people’s memories. Karstedt doted on his now-dead third wife, and you’re her daughter,” Sylvester said flatly with a shake of his head.
“The daughter of his third wife?”
“Right. Karstedt’s third wife was of humble mednoble origin, but she had a wealth of mana. That led to his first two archnoble wives picking on her relentlessly.”
Wow, this made-up story is starting to sound like a soap opera. How seriously should I be taking this...?
“She died not long after giving birth to you, and in order to save you from the same fate as your mother, Karstedt had you raised out of sight in the temple. He hid your origin for safety’s sake, and my uncle misunderstood that to mean you’re a commoner. He tricked countless people with his complaining, and due to his lies an innocent knight even ended up executed. My uncle’s crimes know no bounds.”
...The High Bishop’s list of crimes keeps getting longer with things he didn’t do! My jaw dropped at Sylvester’s bare-faced audacity, and after a second of blinking in surprise, I looked at Karstedt and the High Priest. They both looked exasperated.
“But Lord Karstedt and I made
