Master and Slave
Tilda Pascal was a villainess.
According to the testimonies of Stefan and Merchit, who had lived under the same roof as her, she possessed no mercy whatsoever.
She was a woman who smashed everything that offended her eye.
A nature like that always left a trail of grudges in its wake.
Ferda, who had incurred more enmity than anyone alive, knew this better than most. That was why he assumed this affair, too, must have an obvious hand behind it.
The strongest candidate was Rico Dandolo, the man who had been poisoned. Next came Stefan or Merchit, or their wives. He had even entertained suspicions of her own father, Herman.
Yet there was exactly one person Ferda never managed to suspect.
That dull-looking middle-aged man standing right there.
Henri.
“You’re the one who ordered the investigation into Tilda?”
Unable to believe it, Ferda asked the man directly.
“That is correct.”
“You commissioned it hoping for her downfall?”
“That is correct.”
“You did this knowing full well it would end like this?”
“Of course. I had this outcome in mind from the start.”
Henri smiled faintly. At a glance it was the smile of an utterly good-natured man—so good-natured he looked dull, the sort who could hide nothing of what he felt.
“Why?”
“Because I truly love Tilda. I would do anything for her.”
“And that ‘anything’ is this?”
Ruri, who had been listening, cut in. Disgust was written plain across her face.
“Of course.”
He answered with a smile, as though her reaction meant nothing at all. The people around them reacted much the same way Ruri had.
“Condemn me if you wish. Countless women have whispered love while looking only at my money and reputation. Am I not allowed to love someone for their shell alone?”
“I have no intention of condemning what you did. But I am curious about one thing.”
“Please speak.”
“Is this woman worth enough that you would hand your company over to me?”
Tilda was pretty, yet she was no peerless beauty—nowhere near Olivia’s level, for whom a man had sold everything in his territory and offered a million roses.
Henri answered as if the matter were trivial.
“The company was something Father cherished; it never held great value for me. I rather wanted to be free of it. So I made use of the woman I love.”
“Tilda?”
“She is truly beautiful, yet cunning. Who else in the world would poison her father-in-law and scheme to kill my family?”
Henri had been waiting for Rico to die. He had watched everything and controlled everything. In a way, the one who had kept Tilda dancing in the palm of his hand was Henri himself.
Only then did Ferda understand the question he had set aside until now.
“They say that when the medium was destroyed, the head of the house, Rico Dandolo, suddenly lost his life.”
“Yes. Father passed away.”
“That was not Tilda’s doing.”
Ferda’s eyes fixed on Henri as though they meant to pierce straight through him.
“But it can be made to look that way.”
Henri answered vaguely.
“Father always wanted me to become a strategist. I became the son who honored that wish.”
“……”
Ferda found himself with nothing to say. As the silence stretched, Henri moved to close the conversation.
“As promised, I shall hand over the Dandolo Merchant Guild. Bestow the mastership upon Regent Ferda and entrust the management proxy rights to my brother-in-law, and everything will resolve smoothly.”
“Understood.”
“All of my company will fall into the Regent’s hands. Therefore, would you grant this humble man one request?”
“What is it?”
“I would like the items taken from my wife returned.”
Ferda’s gaze turned to Ruri. She scowled as though the mere implication left a bad taste in her mouth.
“I didn’t touch anything.”
Which meant someone else had quietly taken them. Ferda could name the next suspect at once.
“Why are you looking at me?”
Penelope.
“Because it’s only you.”
“Saying something so embarrassing is troublesome—ugh!”
“Cut the crap and tell me where you put it! Spit it out!”
“Gah! Guh! T-tail! I hung it on my tail!”
“You demon bitch, do your guts twist if you go a single day without causing an accident? Ugh!”
“Hic, my diamond…!”
“What do you mean your diamond, you crazy bitch.”
Jed searched her thoroughly, and just as she had said, a single ring hung from her tail—a ring fashioned from blood diamond, something money alone could never buy. He handed it to Ferda.
“A blood diamond. An engagement ring?”
“Yes. The one thing my wife truly loves.”
Henri accepted the ring and went straight to Tilda.
“Ooooh…”
She was making a mournful sound like a restless spirit still wandering this world.
“Tilda, my love. Look here. It’s the diamond ring you like.”
Tilda’s eyes—vacant, drooling, as if her soul had already fled—turned toward the ring. Those aimlessly drifting pupils fixed clearly upon the diamond.
“Hehe…”
At the smile of someone who seemed to possess the entire world, Henri smiled as well.
Henri promised to vanish with Tilda exactly as he was. His claim that he had predicted this ending had been no lie. He had already secured a house in the west and prepared enough money to live modestly. Taking only what he needed to spend the rest of his days in quiet, he would leave the Dandolo mansion behind.
“What a vicious bastard.”
Ruri spoke. Her tightly clenched fist was full of the urge to snap Henri’s neck.
“Are you simply going to let that go?”
Ferda nodded as though the answer were obvious.
“He kept his promise. Must I not keep mine as well?”
“Something that disgusting could still ruin our affairs, couldn’t it? Looking at how he played the witch from the very top, it’s entirely possible.”
Ferda looked down at Ruri.
“Wanting him dead is only your personal wish.”
“It’s disgusting. How can anyone kill their family and ruin the one they love like that?”
Ruri, who normally never interfered in human affairs, said so. Using his wife to kill his father, then making even that wife his own—to the dragon spawns, whose familial devotion ran deeper than anyone’s, the act was unforgivable.
“Tilda Pascal did the same. Though she failed, that bitch sowed discord between brothers, tried to poison her sister-in-law, and turned her father-in-law into a vegetable. If that villainess’s end is to live captive to that man, does it not suit her?”
“When you put it that way… it does seem so, but…”
Even furious Ruri found her voice growing quieter. The act was revolting, yet on the other hand she began to think it was fitting punishment. In the end she decided to set thoughts of them aside. They would never meet again anyway.
Ferda quietly looked down at the place where Henri had passed.
Pitiful.
He had been a truly clever man. Even Ferda had failed to grasp his true intentions; had he possessed ambition for commerce, he would surely have surpassed the Pascal Guild itself and ushered in a golden age for the Dandolo Guild. Yet he had acted as though even such ability was unnecessary to him.
The last face Ferda had seen on Henri looked happier than anyone’s, though the man had abandoned a fortune. That face lingered in Ferda’s mind like an afterimage.
Whether the lingering taste came from unease or from envy—he had no way of knowing for now.
Pascal Guild Headquarters.
“Is that so? So the matter regarding my sister is concluded.”
Stefan seemed surprised that the work had been carried out in secret, yet he did not particularly mind. In any case, the affair that had disturbed his heart was settled, and that was enough.
“Understood. I will inform my elder brother and explain the whole story to Father so we can wrap things up.”
Stefan cut the telepathic link and felt the lingering aftertaste. Wonder directed at Ferda filled him.
To think he would obtain the Dandolo Guild.
An unexpected harvest. If the matter had deepened further, Stefan had planned to destroy that guild in the end. He had never imagined they could take it over intact.
The Regent is truly a remarkable man.
He felt how pathetic his own judgment had been only days ago, when he had been ready to abandon everything.
Now I must clean up the aftermath.
A sigh escaped Stefan’s lips of its own accord. Since the plot had been hatched with Merchit, once it was over it was over—but Herman was different. Herman, who did not know the full story, had sincerely checked Stefan, and Stefan had had to respond in earnest as well.
“Director. The Chairman…”
The secretary could not finish the sentence. It was clear how angry Herman was.
He wanted to run. Instinct screamed at him to flee, yet he nodded calmly.
A moment later four bodyguards large enough to fill the doorway and one frail old man entered. The big men who came with him were threatening enough, but those sharp eyes gleaming between wrinkled folds stirred something deep inside Stefan.
“Why are you still here?”
A question asking why he had not resigned.
“Everything is over.”
“What is over?”
Stefan explained everything—that Tilda had tried to drive a wedge between Stefan and Merchit using her husband’s company, and that in the process she had even conspired to kill Herman. He deliberately downplayed parts that might seem exaggerated in order to lend force to his persuasiveness. Even so, he could not read the old man’s intentions. Like a sword refined in a dwarf forge deep in the mountains, nothing cracked Herman’s expression.
“So that happened.”
“Yes.”
“But you did not answer my question.”
“What question…”
“I asked why you are still here.”
It did not sound like the conversation of a man who had just heard the previous story. Stefan answered.
“Because I am the director of the Pascal Guild.”
“I am the chairman. Stripping you of your position is nothing. I hoped you would step down yourself, yet you do not.”
“Do you still claim my judgment was a mistake?”
“Of course. When I am certain, what fool would reverse his claim?”
The Grand Duchy will fall.
Driven by defiance, Stefan said,
“The Grand Duchy of Baldrova will prosper.”
“It cannot prosper.”
Herman cut him off flatly.
“You seem curious as to the reason. Very well—I shall answer personally.”
Herman glared like a tiger as he spoke.
“I hear that this fellow Ferda is using black magic.”
“I have ears as well, so I know. But he saved many people in Halim.”
“Hero treatment lasts but a moment. Saving them is not the issue. The mere fact that he uses black magic is a weakness. What will you do if they say the Pascal Guild is aiding one obsessed with black magic?”
“That is…”
“If you continue aiding Regent Ferda and then try to withdraw, it will already be too late. Do you intend to cast the countless members of the guild out onto the streets?”
Stefan could not answer.
“And you are investing in the technology of magic engineering, are you not? What will you do if that fellow Burnel dies?”
Herman pressed on relentlessly.
“Then that investment will come to nothing, and we will gain nothing either. And is there any possibility that this man Burnel will not harbor other designs? What of his master, Ferda?”
“They would never abandon me.”
Though at first Ferda had spoken as if Stefan were unnecessary, when things grew hard he had helped in every way, material and spiritual. Thus Stefan could assert it firmly. But to Herman even such words were not trustworthy.
“Do you know why no cities are built in the far east?”
“Because the territory steadily shrinks.”
“Yes. Because there is no hope. It could not be stopped by human power, nor by the power of immortals. Will you come to your senses only after being eroded by Magi in such a close place?”
“……”
“Very well. Let us be optimistic and say it prospers. How do you think that prosperity will return to us? Money? Honor? Connections? No. The Empire will dig through every speck of dust in order to check us. Why? We are a guild of the imperial capital. It will look as if the capital’s power is flowing away.”
“……”
“Even if that young Regent has trust and spirit, all politics is conducted by old men. Do you know what old men are?”
Strength entered Herman’s neck.
“Things that tremble and shake while retaining just enough strength to clutch their own rice bowls, even if they have no strength to stand. It is easy to go from thrift to luxury, but hard to go from luxury to thrift. Power is the same. Old things push the young into battlefields to fight and exploit them so they can keep their own. Do you think dayflies like us can oppose and endure that?”
Stefan could say nothing. Herman’s words held the wisdom accumulated through the years, and that wisdom possessed logic. Macroscopically, nothing Herman had said was wrong. The risks Stefan had to bear were far too many.
“Abandon the far east. Or abandon this company. That is my will.”
Herman rose from his seat. Just as he was about to leave, Stefan opened his mouth.
“Father is the same as those old men.”
“What… did you say?”
Herman’s eyes widened as he asked again. The words seemed spoken in the heat of the moment—yet what entered Stefan’s eyes was pure venom.
“Is Father not also unable to accept new things, clinging only to his own will?”
“Are you saying I am stubborn?”
“Yes.”
Stefan agreed shortly and clearly. Herman grew angry.
“Ungrateful thing. By what right do you spout such words?”
“I have the right.”
As if clearing a blocked vessel in his throat, he poured the words out. They were long-accumulated emotions and hard-won conviction.
“For three years I have run and led Father’s company. That steady growth and stabilization is what I achieved. If Father is the one who sowed the seed in this company, then I am the one who cultivated it. Just as one cannot be called a farmer merely for sowing seed, it is not something that can be called Father’s achievement alone. Therefore I have the right to raise my voice.”
“You have the right? You?”
“Yes!”
With rising emotion his voice grew louder.
“While Father stood with hands behind his back like an old man in a solitary room, clicking his tongue and handing swords to us siblings so he could watch the show, I devoted everything to this company without looking aside!”
Herman said nothing and looked up at Stefan. Riding the momentum, Stefan spat out more of what had piled up inside him.
“Did I not tell you before? When you asked what kind of person Regent Ferda was, I answered like this: a man who can give everything.”
“……”
“That was not a mistake then. It is sincere. Do you know why? Because I thought that even if I handed the company to that man, we could obtain far more than what Father had built.”
“No matter how you appeal, in my eyes it is only that you have been eaten by your emotions.”
“It does not matter. When I was having a hard time, that man declared it sabotage against the Grand Duchy and responded. He said Grand Duchy, not Pascal Guild. He accepted me as part of the Grand Duchy and helped me.”
Though he had once tried to cast Stefan out cruelly, he had been as merciful as he was cruel. At that time Stefan had resolved that all of this depended on how he set his own heart.
“So I will make it clear.”
He threw down the irreversible final choice.
“I will not step down from this position. This company is what I run, and I will take responsibility for the choice. So if you intend to interfere with my decision!”
Bang!
“You will have to fight with the resolve to sever ties with me!”