Chapter 130

[To Miss Truydd, who is always busy and such a good liar.

Allow me to introduce myself for the first time, Miss Nerys Truydd. I’m not anyone important enough to boast about to a young lady of such distinction, but I still felt I should write my name here.

My name is Diane MacKinnon. Yes, I suppose you’re hearing it for the first time.

If you did know my name, if you knew even a little about me, there’s no way you wouldn’t have told me your whereabouts for almost a year.

Forgive me for saying so, but this Madam Kellen at the writing office claimed she didn’t know anyone named Truydd? Yet I sent several letters to her address and received replies!

Someone! You kept saying you were busy! Even when my family traveled nearby, you never showed your face! Did you think I wouldn’t worry?

Are you overworking yourself with this and that, just like when we were at the academy together? Did you get sick and decide to hide it because you didn’t want to hear my nagging?

Ah, you have no idea how foolish I felt worrying! When I sent a letter after three sleepless nights, asking if the Truydd who tutors your family was well and whether I could visit, and the reply was, “There’s no such person, perhaps you’re mistaken.”

Can you imagine how I felt when I heard you were up in the far north?

No, you can’t, can you? Because you’re not the least bit interested in me!

Why, then, am I writing to someone who doesn’t know or care about me?

It is absolutely not to beg for friendship. No, of course not. I have my pride too.

I’m coming with my brother to visit Miss Joan Moriér. I hear the Moriér Merchant Group needs the cooperation of the MacKinnon Group for some goods being supplied to the north. Do you remember Miss Moriér?

Oh, of course you do, since you told her where you are! Not the friend you spent all of academy with, but Miss Moriér!

To do business in Maindulante, we need a permit, so I plan to call on His Grace the Grand Duke. Should you happen to see me, don’t think I came following you—I write this to make it clear.

Yours,
Diane MacKinnon.] (T/N: Oh yeah! Bestest BFF is here!!!)

With spring past and summer beginning, Maindulante was truly in full bloom.

Even Dreykum, the gateway city to the Grand Duchy of Maindulante, was no exception. Centered around historical sites, the city boasted a beautiful natural landscape and fine accommodations. It made a perfect first impression for visitors to the duchy.

Yet, sitting in the finest suite in Dreykum, Nerys didn’t look particularly happy, despite usually being skilled at hiding discomfort.

“They’re coming after all.”

Talfrin, the attendant, cautiously spoke to Nerys, who’d been tense and silent. She nodded.

“They are.”

The MacKinnon Viscount, Joyce MacKinnon, had recently sent word that he and his sister would be visiting White Swan Castle.

This was no simple personal visit—depending on how things went, it could be a great help to Maindulante, with significant business for the next several years at stake.

As such, unlike with the Marquis of Tipion, the MacKinnons would be treated as official guests, and it was part of that courtesy that Nerys had come all the way out to Dreykum to await them.

It was a good thing. Talfrin, who knew the history between Nerys and Diane, thought it was even better. She’d see her friend again after so long.

‘And clear up misunderstandings.’

Talfrin thought Nerys invented the imaginary “Madam Kellen” for an alibi right after graduating early, simply because she disliked the Elandria family. By coincidence, Nerys’s Jeweled Eyes had awakened right after leaving the academy, so it had worked out cleverly.

She could have told Diane MacKinnon the truth, but perhaps it was better for secrecy that even Diane was fooled. If Diane hadn’t persisted in writing to “Madam Kellen’s” address, Nellusion Elandria might have gotten suspicious.

Now Nerys was part of Maindulante and couldn’t be forced back by the Elandria family. So there was no real reason she couldn’t explain and make up with Diane.

Talfrin had also been the one secretly delivering Diane’s letters to Nerys at White Swan Castle. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to intercept the one letter Diane managed to have her family’s attendant deliver directly during a trip.

He disliked that flaw in his perfection, but in the end, this was better—or so Talfrin told himself.

The real reason he’d volunteered to accompany Nerys all the way here was his annoyance at not having done the job perfectly.

Nerys also had an idea that Talfrin was underestimating the situation. In fact, everyone except her did.

Lying to a friend you’d been close to all through school was a big deal, but they thought she must have had her reasons, and if she explained, things would be fine.

But half of those reasons were things they didn’t know about. How could it be so simple?

‘It would do no good for the MacKinnon family to catch the eye of the Imperial Family.’

Maindulante was already a thorn in the Emperor’s side. The Marquis of Tipion had gone missing after arriving in Maindulante, and the capital was on edge.

After the revenge played out, it would be even worse. Nerys would someday have to face the Elandria house and eventually the Imperial Family, and she wanted as few people entangled as possible. She’d gathered only those helpers she truly needed and meant to protect them, but Diane wasn’t among them.

So Nerys had already sent Diane a curt reply: the Moriér Merchant Group would only be working with the MacKinnon Group for whatever shortfall remained in their northern supplies; she’d already received documents permitting MacKinnon’s business in the duchy, so it would be enough to send a representative.

But the MacKinnon siblings were still making their way up here.

Nerys sighed. Diane really was…

‘No words for it. Or maybe too many.’

Persistent, reckless… and so kind.

Diane’s letter was written in a thoroughly angry tone, but it was hardly a declaration of ending their friendship.

If Diane truly didn’t want to talk to Nerys, she wouldn’t have written a letter warning of her visit so pointedly. She wouldn’t have come all this way.

Diane didn’t even work with the merchant group—there was only one reason she’d spend weeks in a carriage to come here.

‘She’s worried about me. She wants to see how I’m doing.’

That was why Diane made such a show of being upset. Why are you in Maindulante? Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Did something happen? Tell me, quickly.

‘She never looks out for herself.’

To pay no mind to others’ eyes… Nerys found herself sighing again, and Talfrin looked at her with curiosity.

‘She looks her age when she makes that face.’

No one in Maindulante, not even Talfrin, thought of Nerys as young. Seeing her outmaneuver people twice or three times her age every day had that effect.

But the surprise on her face when she heard Diane was coming, the scolding she’d given Talfrin over handling things—at least where Diane was concerned, she wasn’t the same as usual. It was almost cute, the way she worried over something so easily solved.

‘Is that why he finds her cute?’

Cledwyn called her cute, though Talfrin couldn’t understand why. He claimed even the way she struggled to speak when she was bad at lying was adorable.

Bad at lying? Talfrin remembered perfectly well how Nerys had dealt with wicked classmates in their childhood. If she couldn’t lie, how could she have managed that? Even Talfrin, a master of disguise himself, found it hard to see through Nerys’s deceptions when she set her mind to it.

‘Well, the adviser always knows what His Grace is thinking, after all.’

Even Talfrin, who’d endured every hardship with him since childhood, sometimes found it hard to keep up with Cledwyn’s thinking.

But those two showed each other talents that nobody else ever saw, ever since the beginning, but even more so since they reconciled that winter.

Their dynamic had become so familiar by now, it wasn’t even funny anymore.

“Miss.”

Dora opened the door and came in.

“The MacKinnon carriage is in sight. They’ll arrive in about half a day.”

“Really? Then I need to take care of this quickly.”

Nerys’s unhappy expression smoothed out into calm. She gestured to Talfrin.

“Bring the Marquis.”

She spoke of a person as if he were a thing, but no one objected. Talfrin signaled to the guards outside.

Soon, an old man was brought in, surrounded by knights, and thrown to his knees in front of Nerys’s chair.

Nerys gestured lightly. The knights, then Talfrin, then finally Dora all left the room.

The Marquis of Tipion was so thin and frail now, it was hard to believe he’d once been a proud great noble. Spending the northern winter in a dark cell had ruined his health, but what truly broke him was something else.

“At last, I can keep my promise to you.”

Nerys looked down at the Marquis and spoke. He looked up at her, lips trembling. Even in this warm weather, he seemed as cold as if he were still buried in winter snow.

“What… what’s the point?”

“What do you mean, Your Excellency? You’re being released. It’s time to return to your son.”

“H-ha, haha…”

He laughed with vacant eyes. The guilt, suspicion, and anxiety Nerys had planted in his mind had gnawed away at him through months of isolation.

But if that were all, a man as greedy as he wouldn’t have fallen so far.

“My son, who ignored every letter I sent from prison… that bastard?”

The Marquis’s precious son, Lord Tipion, had sent a few formal letters inquiring after his missing father.

But the truth was, he knew exactly where his father was. Nerys had personally “secretly” delivered several letters from the Marquis to his son during his imprisonment.

But officially, he pretended ignorance—obviously, he didn’t really want to have his father back.

That’s why Nerys never interfered with the Marquis’s letters. Once the Marquis was released, he would realize himself that the letters had been properly delivered, and the father-son relationship would be truly, finally broken.

“Still, you must go. Scold your son and take revenge on the Grand Duke if you want to live, isn’t that so?”

Anyone eavesdropping would have been shocked, but Nerys looked the Marquis in the eye and whispered calmly. Talfrin and Dora would make absolutely sure no one overheard.

They knew Nerys was deceiving the Marquis and making him believe her. She’d explained enough of the plan to make sure they weren’t surprised.

They didn’t know why such a suspicious old man trusted her so completely.

The Marquis trembled for a long moment, then nodded. Nerys gestured toward the terrace, whose doors were wide open.

“There’ll be a horse waiting out there. There’s money and a weapon in the saddle. Go. I hope you arrive safely.”

To the Marquis, half-mad from months alone, her words sounded like a revelation. He nodded once more and walked straight out onto the terrace.

After enough time had passed, Nerys tugged a bell-pull. When Dora entered, Nerys said,

“Change the carpet. It’s filthy.”