Past History
“Stefan.”
Emotion colored Merchit’s voice.
But only for a moment.
“Given how hard things are, your big brother will understand. Later, once you’ve settled down, you can apologize for treating me like a murderer.”
He spoke as if he were gently reasoning with him, but to Stefan it was nothing more than being handled like a child.
“Don’t make me laugh. Are you telling me I’m… that I’m barking up the wrong tree right now?”
“You honestly believe this was my doing?”
“I already have proof. Look at this!”
Stefan pulled out the scarf he had been clutching.
The crest of the Pascal Mercenary Company caught Merchit’s eye as well.
“I already know your methods! That filthy ‘necessity creates demand’ trick of yours! This started the moment I declared I would monopolize that trade route.”
“You’re buying the nonsense those merchant bastards are peddling?”
“It’s not just one of them. Everyone who ever contracted with you says the same thing—how am I supposed to ignore that?!”
Merchit chewed on the words for a moment.
“Fine. Maybe the people those men wronged really were my doing.”
He almost seemed ready to concede, then cocked his head.
“But where’s the proof I interfered with your business?”
“It’s right here, isn’t it?”
“This fancy scarf? Anyone can make one of these.”
He flicked the scarf, then tossed it onto the table.
“We’ve got ten thousand registered mercenaries and over two thousand scarves in stock. Any one of them could have stolen one and made it look like our company did the job. You’re smarter than me—how have you not thought of that?”
“Would you still say that in an Imperial court?!”
“You want to take this to court? Ready for a fight to the death, are we? You little shit—you really are pissed. Dragging your own family into a courtroom…”
“Stop with the family crap. You only play the family card when you’re in a tight spot. The rest of the time we’re strangers!”
“You’re saying I tried to hog everything for myself? Hey, Stefan. When you were struggling I helped you plenty. I looked the other way, I gave you everything I could—so what the hell is the problem?”
“I’ve been saying it from the start! Those bandit bastards you lead murdered my employees—that’s the problem!”
“This bastard’s really going to keep calling my people third-rate trash—”
“Merchit Pascal.”
Veins standing out on his neck, Merchit half-rose from his seat.
The moment Ferda spoke his name, Merchit realized the regent had been watching and immediately bowed his head.
“Forgive me, Your Regency. I’ve shown you an ugly side of family business.”
“Think nothing of it. I’m sorry, but could we pause this conversation and have you step outside for a moment? I need to speak with Stefan alone.”
“Of course. This humble one will withdraw for now.”
Merchit offered a polite bow and left without protest.
The instant Merchit was gone, Stefan jabbed a finger at the empty seat and shouted.
“There’s nothing left to look at. That bastard did it.”
His face had flushed a deep, furious red.
“Stefan.”
“We need to drag him in right now and interrogate him. Ask him if slaughtering thirty-three people made him feel better.”
“I wanted to. But after seeing you, I realized I can’t.”
“Seeing me? What’s wrong with how I look?”
Ferda swept a cold, assessing gaze over him before answering.
“You’re no different from a ghost thirsting for blood and revenge.”
“Revenge. Isn’t that exactly why I’m doing this?”
“The problem is that the revenge you’re chasing doesn’t belong to the present. You’re dragging every old grudge from your past into it.”
“I…”
He wanted to deny it, but Ferda’s words forced a measure of calm into him.
“You’re right. Honestly, there were a lot of things my brother put me through when we were young.”
“Tell me.”
“Whenever I came home beaten up, he’d say my guts weren’t to his liking, grab a wooden sword, and thrash me half to death for ‘training.’”
Ferda understood that feeling, if only a little.
After his mother died and he was treated as a bastard, he had endured that kind of treatment more times than he could count.
“And I… no. Let’s drop this.”
“No. Don’t stop.”
Ferda cut him off before he could abandon the complaint.
“Pour out every scrap of the anger you still hold toward Merchit.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“It will help.”
“I don’t see how it helps…”
“Then consider it an order. Curse every single thing he ever did to you. Shout it.”
Ferda’s demand left Stefan flustered.
But under the circumstances he had no choice; he forced the name out.
“Merchit… you… you… son of a… bitch…”
It started stiff and choked, but that didn’t matter.
“You…”
Like a dam bursting, the outpouring of emotion turned savage in an instant.
“You filthy bastard!!!”
Stefan’s eyes rolled back as he began to bellow at the top of his lungs.
“Damn that rotten bastard! He holds a ritual for my ruin and then pulls this?! Did I look that easy to you?! Huh?!”
“……”
“I’ll do the same to you! Just like you shattered my bones when we were kids, I’ll shatter every last one of yours!”
After that he ranted and raved, spitting out every buried resentment from the past in a continuous stream.
About ten minutes later Stefan’s voice simply gave out.
“Khhek! Khek!”
“Have a drink.”
“Khek-khek… thank you…”
Stefan sank into his seat and sipped the tea, limp as a man whose strength had been completely drained.
“Feeling a little better?”
“Yes… thanks to you, Your Regency, I think I’ve avoided dying of pent-up rage.”
“Then your eyes should be a bit clearer now. Let’s continue the discussion.”
Stefan straightened his posture. Ferda spoke.
“I’ll start with the conclusion: this doesn’t feel like Merchit Pascal’s work.”
“…What?”
Only moments ago Stefan had been waving the mercenary company’s scarf around as if Merchit were the undeniable culprit.
And now he was saying otherwise?
“Then why did you make me curse my brother?”
“So you wouldn’t stay trapped by those grudges. You’ve been carrying things in your head that cloud your reason, haven’t you?”
Ferda’s words were almost absurd, yet they were also true.
Had he ever once cursed someone at the top of his lungs like that?
As a child he had stuffed his fist into his mouth and wept; as an adult he had only been able to hide a bottle in a desk drawer, take quiet sips, and cry alone.
Now he had been able to pour it all out at full volume.
“You said contracting with the Pascal Mercenary Company was no different from dealing with the devil, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve known that from the beginning, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“So from the start you could have suspected Merchit Pascal—your own brother. Yet you never once showed me that suspicion.”
Ferda asked calmly.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t because at the time I was out of my mind…”
“Is that the whole reason? You simply didn’t think of it?”
At Ferda’s question Stefan shook his head as well.
It couldn’t have been only that.
Stefan thought carefully.
Why, when this happened, had Merchit not been the first person he suspected?
Merchit Pascal.
Family and enemy at once.
From childhood Merchit had been unable to control his overflowing blood-heat.
He had turned that temperament into a career as a mercenary captain.
He possessed charisma. He possessed leadership.
Leadership meant he understood the weight of responsibility that street thugs never carried.
Just as a merchant analyzes another executive, Stefan forced himself to judge every fact about Merchit as pure data.
The answer that emerged was startlingly clear.
“…The possibility was low.”
“Reason?”
“The idea that my brother would retaliate just because someone didn’t contract with him… honestly, it’s little more than a superstition. Those people were digging their own graves. Most of them simply hired cheap mercenaries, walked into danger zones, and got themselves mauled. They bought the cheapest cake and then blamed someone else for it.”
People see only what they want to see and believe only what they want to believe.
Caught in his emotions, Stefan had missed even that basic truth.
“So a single scarf… can’t make the suspicion certain. That’s my opinion now.”
Even after reaching the conclusion himself, Stefan could hardly believe it.
Only minutes earlier he had been certain Merchit was the culprit and had been planning a merciless revenge.
He had judged with feeling instead of reason, and that feeling had blinded him.
If Ferda had not forced him to shake it off, he would have gone to war with Merchit.
While Stefan swallowed the hollow feeling, Ferda listened to the answer and spoke to Ruri.
“Show Merchit Pascal back in.”
Merchit, who had been waiting, took his seat again. The three-way confrontation resumed.
Unlike the explosive tension of earlier, a calmer current now filled the room.
“Merchit Pascal. I’ve finished speaking with Stefan, but I need you to state this one last time, clearly.”
“Please speak, Your Regency.”
“Can you swear you had no involvement in the attack that happened to Stefan?”
Ferda’s tone was so icy it sent a chill down the spine.
Merchit raised his index finger.
“I have one principle. Just as my family is precious to me, other people’s families are precious too. My men and I take money to raise our swords for the sake of protecting others. If we raise our swords only for the money, we’re nothing more than third-rate thugs and bandits, aren’t we?”
“I see. Thank you.”
Hearing Merchit’s words, Ferda nodded toward the scarf still lying on the table.
“If this scarf has nothing to do with the mercenary company’s involvement, then someone was trying to drive a wedge between the two of you.”
“Between me and my little brother?”
Merchit’s eyes flew wide.
The look on his face left no doubt—his fury was genuine.
“What bastard had the guts to lay hands on my family?”
“I think I know who.”
The now-composed Stefan answered.
“Who?”
“My sister. Tilda.”
The name that left his mouth belonged to yet another member of the family.
“On the surface she pretends the Dandolo Trading Company is enough for her, but no one wants the Pascal Trading Company more than she does. She’s been quietly, persistently interfering for a long time. And the only person who benefits if you and I are set against each other is that bitch.”
“Yeah. If it’s her, she’s more than capable of this.”
Even Merchit, who held family so dear, agreed the moment he heard his sister’s name.
It was a strange thing.
“Isn’t Tilda Pascal still your family?”
“Don’t even start. She’s not someone you can call family.”
Merchit seethed, yet he forced his blood down and answered steadily.
“Do you know what she tried when my wife was pregnant with our first? She sent poison under the pretext of a pregnancy gift. Luckily I ate it without knowing and suffered for it—if my wife had taken it, she would have miscarried for sure. My sister never had a single cute bone in her body, but that day she crossed the line for real.”
It was Stefan who looked shocked.
“That happened five years ago?”
“I wasn’t certain, so I never told anyone. Raising a fuss would only have made her happy.”
To Stefan, who had always assumed Merchit’s nature would have him turn the house upside down screaming about who lived and who died, this was a startling hidden side of his brother.
“Anyway, she’s a woman with nothing but greed and no ability to back it up. Since she can’t make it on her own, she snagged that old bachelor Henri Dandolo, swallowed the Dandolo Trading Company, and now she’s trying to devour Father’s company too.”
Merchit clenched a fist the size of a pot lid.
Veins bulged viciously across the back of his hand.
“So what will you do, Your Regency?”
Merchit asked.
“We could flip her over and drag her here right this second if you want.”
“Wouldn’t that only make the mercenary company’s image worse?”
“You don’t need to worry about that. If I can shove that witch onto a pyre, I don’t care if I become the devil myself. If she laid hands on family, she pays the matching price.”
Rage burned hot and bright.
As a mercenary who had rolled across rough ground, Merchit knew exactly how to use anger as fuel.
“We must not lay a hand on her ourselves.”
It was Stefan who said it.
“What? Stefan, are you stupid?”
“Think about it. Violence is the wrong move. The fact that she started something this vicious means her plan has already begun. In the worst case the entire Pascal family could collapse.”
“Well…”
Both men knew what kind of person Tilda was; no long persuasion was needed.
“One of her evils is how thoroughly she clings. Until we have solid proof it’s Tilda’s doing, we can’t touch her carelessly.”
“Then what do we do?”
Stefan forced his racing heart under control and spoke.
“For now we leave with the misunderstanding still unresolved. We give the other side exactly what they want. Then their plan will almost certainly proceed on schedule.”
“So we catch that bitch’s tail that way.”
Merchit slapped his knee.
“Good. I’m in. Let’s drag her out into the open properly.”
“Understood.”
The two brothers who had nearly become enemies now stood shoulder to shoulder against a common foe.