COARV Chapter 22

"Saint. I am Simon, knight of House Charlotte. Please, call me Sir Simon. To be able to meet you like this…"

"It's an honor, Saint! I've come from House Liam, in the east…!"

Lina, faltering under the knights' fervent self-introductions, turned as if in a trance to gaze at the dance floor the moment the music began. Lesche and Seria were dancing.

The great ballroom was beautiful enough to draw an involuntary gasp. The melody was sweet. Most of the people who had been carrying on their own conversations were now watching the pair—occasionally exchanging a whisper, but for the most part keeping their eyes fixed on the dance floor.

"Sir. Sir."

Lina asked the question in a small voice, addressed to Baron Aison beside her.

"Why is it only His Highness the Grand Duke and Seria who dance first? Is it because they're the hosts? If I held a ball, could I do that too?"

"Ah."

Baron Aison answered with a smile.

"It is because His Highness's rank, as defined by imperial law, is exceptionally high. The Grand Dukes of Berke have, generation after generation, held rank equal to the imperial family."

The Grand Ducal House of Berke was a house of imperial merit—one of the very few families granted, across generations, a standing private army of real scale, in exchange for shielding the empire from the glacier. The Grand Duke of Berke was permitted the special title of "Your Highness," and his rank stood equal to that of the imperial family itself.

"Then what about me and Kallis?"

"Well… The Saint is, of course, a magnificent personage. But within the Empire, the line between the nobility and the imperial bloodline is drawn very strictly."

The imperial house of the Gleick Empire was, relatively speaking, generous when it came to distributing noble titles. It was not, precisely, selling offices—but a hero returning from war with distinguished service might well be granted something on the order of an earldom. Such was the largesse the empire could afford, given how vast its territory and how unrivaled its population.

But that generosity extended only as far as an earldom.

The odds of an earl being elevated to a marquess were vanishingly small. It was an unspoken line in the sand. In particular, for nobility ranked below the earldom to set foot within the imperial bloodline was as rare as finding a needle in a desert.

Even a young lord or lady of an earl's household or lower—however beautiful in appearance, however elegant in bearing, however much attention they drew in society—almost never succeeded in entering the imperial family through marriage or wartime merit. Most members of the imperial family married, as a matter of course, into houses of marquess rank or higher.

'The Saint, I suppose, might manage something on the order of an earldom. Even so—since the Saint had been born within the Gleick Empire itself, the Emperor was said to have been overjoyed.'

But anything beyond that would, by the customs of the Gleick Empire, prove exceedingly difficult. Unless Lina happened to marry into the imperial family herself.

"I see…."

Lina turned once more to gaze blankly toward Lesche, when a cluster of noblewomen approached. They were ladies from the vicinity of Haneton territory. Because they belonged to houses closely tied to the Haneton family, society tended to call them, collectively, "the ladies of Haneton."

"Countess Mathieu!"

Lina, who had spent several days trailing after Kallis and had grown familiar with the Haneton ladies in the process, called out warmly. But her welcome quickly gave way to confusion. The way the noblewomen looked at her was, openly, far from kind.

Countess Mathieu, whose influence among them made her, in practice, their leader, spoke first.

"Saint. I did not expect you to come to the ballroom."

"…What? But I received an invitation, didn't I?"

"Oh dear. It seems you don't quite understand the workings of society yet."

"…What?"

The noblewomen exchanged glances.

"The mistress of this house, at present, is Her Highness the Grand Duchess of Berke. Would it not have been proper for the Saint to enclose a flower with the invitation and send it back?"

"That's right."

"Of course."

There was no good feeling to be found in the Haneton ladies' agreement. Lina gritted her teeth.

"That's not true."

"…What?"

"It's not true, I said. I learned this from my tutor. To become the Grand Duchess of Berke, one needs the permission of the imperial family. So Seria is still just Lady Seria Stern. And… what all of you are doing to me right now, tormenting me like this—that isn't right, either."

"…Tormenting you? Us?"

Lina answered with resolve.

"Yes. This isn't moral."

A sound escaped the noblewomen surrounding her—a breath, "…Ha."

'Trouble. Real trouble.'

Baron Aison very nearly put a hand to his forehead.

Lina absorbed knowledge quickly. But grasping the subtle standoffs of society, and parrying them with elegance—for that, there simply had not been enough physical time to learn. A young lady who had fully mastered society would, as a matter of course, either withdraw naturally from such an unpleasant situation, or answer with a sharp yet flawless courtesy that made clear she, too, had been invited to this place, thereby sidestepping the trap entirely. It was the graceful, and the conventional, way to handle such a thing.

Lina might have managed that too—had things gone as Baron Aison had anticipated, had she spent a few more months studying, had she made her debut into the capital's society at leisure. Under those circumstances, this kind of clumsy handling would never have happened.

But the water was already spilled.

Worse still, those noblewomen had, it seemed, held a very good impression of Seria Stern, who had originally been slated to become the Marchioness of Haneton. Which was exactly why they had come, though it was not even their own ball to host, to make this scene with Lina.

"Are you speaking of morality to us, Saint?"

"That isn't a word one takes so lightly."

At the noblewomen's words—a reference to the ruined wedding of a Stern—Lina's face went pale as paper. She clenched both hands into fists.

"Saint, we shall take our leave now—"

Baron Aison hurried to intervene, but it was too late.

"Do your husbands know you're doing this? Does Kallis?"

"…."

"…."

"…."

Baron Aison could not bear to look at the noblewomen's faces as they turned cold, and looked away instead. Lina had just chosen, from all the worst possible options available to her, precisely the worst one.

'If only Lady Seria Stern had been the Saint's friend, at the very least—she'd have swept in and saved her clean, in a moment like this.'

Seria Stern was a woman like a viper. She never lost, not even in the jungle that was the capital's high society. When she fixed those beautiful, venom-bright eyes on someone, all but the boldest tucked their tails and fled. The stories were legion.

It was in the very moment Baron Aison was reaching for this hopeless little hope that—

"What exactly is happening here?"

Kallis's voice came from behind them. Baron Aison and Lina turned as one, as though beholding their savior.

"Kallis!"

Lina hurried behind Kallis and pressed her forehead to his back, as if hiding there. Kallis glanced briefly at Lina hiding behind him, then fixed his gaze on the noblewomen standing before him. Facing the head of the territory, the noblewomen bowed with elegant restraint.

"Marquess Haneton."

Baron Aison stepped forward quickly.

"The noblewomen and the Saint were exchanging pleasantries."

"Pleasantries?"

"Yes. It was nothing of consequence."

If only it might pass smoothly at that. But the situation did not unfold as Baron Aison intended—for behind Kallis's back, the sound of sniffling could be heard.

"…Lina?"

Baron Aison very nearly clapped a hand over his own mouth. Lina was crying, the tears falling one after another. Kallis's expression turned, fixed forward, into open anger.

"I'd like to ask the noblewomen present here—what is the meaning of this? Have all of you gathered together to torment the Saint?"

Countess Mathieu bowed her head slowly. Now that Lina had gone so far as to cry, this could no longer be smoothed over as easily as Baron Aison had hoped.

"It seems our frank counsel offended the Saint's feelings."

"If it oversteps its bounds, it is not frank counsel. See to it that you take particular care."

"…Understood, Marquess Haneton."

Their faces went cold, as if carved from ice. In high society, there was something more damaging than jealousy, more damaging than envy—and that was indifference. Being treated as though one did not exist at all. The noblewomen seemed to have decided, quite cruelly, to withdraw every last trace of curiosity or feeling they had held toward the Saint. There was not a shred of warmth left in their eyes.

Once they had withdrawn, Lina lifted her head.

"Kallis…."

Kallis let out a low, weary sigh. Lina's body flinched. Baron Aison spoke up, quick to read the moment.

"Saint? Your dress has wrinkled. Shall we go and set it right?"

"Huh? Ah—yes…."

Lina, following a maid's lead, went briefly to the retiring room to fix her rumpled dress. Baron Aison spoke to Kallis.

"That was not a good choice you made. To offend the noblewomen's sensibilities like that—several of those houses cooperate very closely in the management of Haneton territory."

"I know. But Lina was crying."

"That's true enough."

“Once we return to the territory, I’ll have to distribute some suitable gifts. It seems exhaustion will be following me for a good while, even after we get back.”

Kallis was, after all, a proper Marquess of Haneton in his own right. Had Lina not burst into tears, he could have gone along, following society's unspoken rules, and more or less let it pass without notice. That would, in the end, have been the better outcome.

But he could not simply ignore the Saint sobbing openly behind his back. It had been, in a sense, an unavoidable situation—but Baron Aison sighed all the same, knowing how poorly things were bound to develop from here.

'And those noblewomen already favored Lady Seria Stern to begin with—trouble. Real trouble.'

"…Marquess Kallis Haneton did that?"

"Yes indeed, to the ladies of Haneton, if you can believe it, Lady Stern."

"Thank you for telling me, Lady Aston."

"Think nothing of it."

There are, in every society, nobles who make it their role to carry gossip to whoever stands highest, in hopes of currying favor. Seria Stern was no exception.

Since marrying Lesche, such nobles seemed only to have multiplied. Society's gossip now reached her at several times the speed it had while she was still in the capital's high society. I repaid the lady who had secretly reported to me what had happened during my first dance with Lesche by simply speaking her name aloud, and the moment she withdrew, satisfied, I frowned.

In the original novel, the ladies of Haneton had been thoroughly favorable toward Lina. There had been a scene where Lina made her formal debut in the capital, and afterward, at Kallis's invitation, went down to Haneton territory—where she got along splendidly with them too.

I never imagined something like this would happen.

No wonder. There had been a reason for the strange look on Baron Aison's face. I sent away the noblewomen approaching me, on the excuse that this morning's glacier visit had left me tired. I couldn't have anyone getting close enough, for long enough, to notice my cheek had swollen.

Perhaps a few had already, quietly, worked it out.

But there was nothing to be done about that. I drank my champagne, its bubbles bursting on my tongue, and leaned my back lightly against the wall.

I was standing against the west wall.

On the exact opposite wall, Kallis stood watching me.