Chapter 42
#42화 Servant Cedric (8) - Lord of Eched
“Since that apology last time, don’t you think the young lady has changed?”
“She has. She doesn’t lay a hand on people anymore, and even when she scolds them, it stops at words.”
“I-I got praised last time for polishing the shoes well. I thought she had no interest in what we were doing at all, but it seems she had been watching.”
“My mother collapsed, so I had to hurry home, but the young lady gave me the day off. How thoughtful can she be?”
“Honestly, wouldn’t the young lady count as a pretty decent master? At least she doesn’t withhold our wages.”
“Is that so? No, but that old rampage was still a bit….”
“Ahem! ‘Rampage’ is too much! It was just a temporary wandering phase, a wandering phase! Isn’t that the kind of thing that always happens at that age!”
“Last time, you were muttering that she was a master you couldn’t stand unless it was about pay.”
“W-What are you talking about! Don’t make up things that never happened!”
Murmur-murmur.
Whisper-whisper.
The Redbell estate in Eched Territory.
The servants there had recently been doing nothing but gossiping day after day about the ‘young mistress’s’ change.
At first, even the servants who had been watching her with suspicion and unease gradually loosened up once Claudia began showing an openly friendly, dignified attitude.
It was true that the sudden change was bewildering and puzzling.
But if you asked whether they disliked the change, of course they didn’t.
Between a mad dog that might suddenly fly into a rage and bite you and a kind, dignified noble young lady, there was no need to compare which superior was more desirable.
However, Claudia, who was at the center of all this whispering, had a somewhat different view.
“I’m tired… so tired….”
Claudia’s room.
She whined with her face pressed against the table.
Constantly being aware of someone’s gaze and maintaining the attitude and speech needed to win their favor and respect consumed far more mental and physical energy than one might imagine.
It was even more so for Claudia, who normally vented complaints immediately and only felt satisfied after doing whatever she wanted the moment she wanted it.
“Cedric. How long do I have to keep doing this?”
“Hahaha, young lady. You’re asking the obvious. Why, for life, of course.”
At Cedric’s answer, Claudia’s face filled with indescribable despair.
“Seriously? I have to keep up this fake act for my entire life?”
“That’s how all civilized people live. Living while laying bare everything you want and every complaint is closer to being a beast than a human!”
“Are you trying to say that your master is a beast?”
“Which do you prefer: truth mixed with personal opinion, or plain objective truth?”
“…Forget it. I don’t want to hear it.”
“That’s a shame. I was hoping I might be able to offer the young lady one more valuable piece of advice.”
Claudia shot Cedric a prim glare as he clicked his tongue as if he truly meant it, then let out a deep sigh.
She had been grumbling one way or another, but Claudia herself was not unaware that her reputation among those around her was improving at a shocking speed.
To be honest, it was happening so quickly and with such dramatic effect that she was left dazed.
“It’s good that you’re pleased with the results. But this is only the beginning. It’s still far too small to count as something to show Marquis Redbell.”
Cedric’s dampening words made her frown for a moment, but she quickly straightened up and asked,
“Then what am I supposed to do next?”
“First, let me confirm once more: you are the lord of this Eched Territory, correct?”
She nodded.
“Nominally, yes. The actual management is handled by the deputy lord. Besides, it’s just some backwater place anyway, so I’m not really interested.”
“Then we should start by correcting that perception. This is absolutely not a backwater territory.”
“What?”
Claudia looked confused, but Cedric’s opinion did not change.
That was because, in his view, this Eched Territory was by no means a place to be underestimated.
The Eastern Branch of the Adventurers’ Guild, where the adventurer Bern mainly worked. The city where that branch was located had a population of only a few thousand.
And yet this Eched Territory’s population easily exceeded 10,000, and its land area was nearly five times larger.
The reason Claudia saw this place as ‘the countryside’ was simple.
Redbell’s other territories were even more lucrative.
‘I see why the adventurer guild, with its strong anti-aristocratic streak, doesn’t recklessly draw swords against incompetent country nobles even though it spreads its influence across the kingdom. The nobles near the capital are simply too powerful.’
Even when you added up the territories of the royal family, the marquis families, and the count families—the kingdom’s three pillars—they still didn’t account for more than 30% of the nation’s land.
And yet, in terms of population, those living in that 30% were roughly equal to, or even more numerous than, those in the remaining 70%.
With so many people concentrated in relatively little land, talent and capital were that much more abundant, and the level of development in each territory was higher as well.
To Cedric, it was an unbalanced structure that could cause all sorts of problems, but for now it was also a structure that helped him.
Otherwise, Marquis Redbell would never have handed over this much territory to a daughter who had fallen out of favor, dismissing it as a ‘backwater.’
“Listen carefully. From now on, what the young lady needs to do is—”
***
“Starting today, I’m going to manage this place myself, so you can take a rest.”
When Claudia suddenly stormed into the residence and made that demand, the acting lord of Eched felt a very complicated mix of emotions.
But if you stripped away the trivial details and compressed it into a single word, it could be described like this.
‘Pathetic.’
With a kind smile plastered on like a mask, the acting lord said to Claudia,
“Lady Claudia, your words are so sudden that they’re hard to understand. You want me to step down all of a sudden?”
“I’m the lord of Eched, aren’t I? If the lord wants to manage the territory personally, is there some problem?”
There was.
And quite a lot of it.
To begin with, Claudia’s post as lord had not been granted in any proper sense.
For Claudia, whose wretched personality made normal noble young-lady activities like attending social gatherings or serving at the temple impossible, it was a title that had been forcibly bestowed just so they could use the excuse that she had trouble with public duties because she was carrying out her lordly responsibilities.
It was nothing more than a paper qualification meant to raise her value a little later when she was used in a political marriage.
The acting lord clicked his tongue inwardly beneath that smiling face.
From his point of view, every second spent talking to a spoiled brat like this, when the marquis had entrusted him with managing the territory, felt like a waste.
“Heh-heh-heh, Lady Claudia. Managing a territory is an extremely weighty responsibility and one that requires a great deal of effort. If you treat it lightly and cause chaos in the territory, Marquis Redbell would be very saddened as well, wouldn’t he?”
Claudia flinched.
The acting lord’s eyes did not miss the way her body stiffened.
He felt secretly pleased.
‘Hmph. Setting aside the likes of rootless servants, do you really think your childish tantrum will work on me, someone who received direct orders from the marquis?’
If one of Claudia’s other siblings had come here, the acting lord would not have shown such an openly hostile attitude.
But Claudia was an exception.
Claudia’s mother was a Birka royal, but the support her mother received from her maternal family was weaker than that given to most country nobles.
At that time, the Birka royal family had no one among the various royals who stood out particularly in legitimacy or ability, and endless political struggles were repeating. They had no intention of spending royal power and resources to support an old royal line that had become an ‘outsider.’
Unlike the other siblings, who had lost their mother and inherited all the tangible and intangible resources the first wife had left behind, Claudia had to rely entirely on her father, the marquis—and even her relationship with him could hardly be called good.
A noble young lady with a fine appearance but, in practical terms, no power at all.
There was no reason for him, a vassal entrusted with an entire territory, to be frightened of or shrink from someone like Claudia.
So.
‘By common sense,’ that was true.
“Today’s words I’ll take as if I never heard them. So, if you would just go back—”
“—now.”
Claudia’s voice was low enough to send a chill down his spine.
By the time the acting lord came to his senses, a blood-red two-headed wolf that had appeared at some point had already slammed his body into the floor.
Grrrrowl!
Grrrrowl!
A body as if forged from blood. The two-headed aberrant wolf growled from each of its muzzles.
Faced with the blood fiend beast’s menace, as if it were about to tear out his throat and chew his head off on the spot, the acting lord couldn’t even scream and only gaped wordlessly.
“M-My lord!!”
The escort knights who had been in the reception room with the acting lord were shocked and tried to draw their swords, but they were far too late.
By then, blood fiend beasts already radiating terrifying killing intent and majesty had appeared before them as well.
At the sight of the blood fiend beasts that looked ready to lunge at any moment, the escort knights swallowed hard.
Since they were vassals of the Redbell family, they knew very well what blood fiend beasts were.
Beasts that were fearsome not only for their brute strength, but also for their ferocity, which paid no heed to injuries.
They were enemies you wouldn’t want to face even if you formed proper ranks and charged together; if you were half-ambushed indoors, there was no need to say more.
In the end, all they could do was raise their voices and plead.
“Young lady!! Have you lost your mind?!”
“You’re the ones who don’t seem to be in your right minds.”
Claudia’s gaze, full of irritation and disgust, pierced the acting lord and his men.
Her eyes, like ice awls driven one by one into their bodies, overwhelmed them before they even realized it.
“A mere deputy dares threaten the lord? And you there—you just called this fool ‘Lord’ instead of ‘Deputy Lord’ a moment ago. You call the real lord ‘Young Lady’ and the deputy ‘Lord’? That’s funny, isn’t it? Hm?”
In response to Claudia’s fury, the blood fiend beasts’ killing intent only grew stronger.
Emotion is, after all, a consumable.
Emotions expressed too often naturally become cheap.
But emotions that are rarely shown and long suppressed overwhelm everyone around them once they finally come to the surface.
When Claudia’s ferocious nature, which she had been suppressing lately to show only her good side in front of the servants, burst out with the right trigger, the acting lord’s party could not even breathe properly.
Claudia declared to the acting lord pinned beneath the floor, enunciating each syllable distinctly.
“Go tell Father. Tell him I’m going to change Eched. It won’t be too late to decide what to do with me after he sees the results.”
“Uh, ah.”
“If you twist my words, you know what’ll happen, right? I’ve definitely memorized all your faces. Even if I get sold off to some strange place, I still have enough skill to find you and turn you into wolf food, so behave yourselves.”
“…….”
“Not answering?”
“Ah, understood! I’ll deliver it! So please, please, just take this beast away!”
At Claudia’s snort, the blood fiend beast that had been pinning the acting lord down with its front paw stepped back and took its place beside Claudia.
The acting lord kept drawing in ragged breaths even after the blood fiend beast withdrew.
The look he kept sending Claudia had an awful lot to say, but in the end he left the residence quietly without a single complaint. His escorts did the same.
Claudia gave orders to Bestian, the head butler she had brought from her villa, and to some of the servants.
“Tell the servants in the residence that from today on I’m the one ruling here. Take in the ones who accept it willingly, cut out the ones who don’t, and have you all take their places. But even when you cut them out, don’t forget to make them explain every detail of the handover.”
“Understood, young lady.”
Perhaps because she had selected only those who were especially friendly to her and showed strong loyalty within the mansion, none of them voiced complaints or worries.
The room after all the other servants had left.
Claudia, sitting in the chair where the acting lord had just sat, asked Cedric, the only servant left in the room,
“…Can I do it?”
Cedric answered.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to see the future, so I can’t give you a definite answer to that question.”
“Hoo, right. I guess so.”
“But.”
“?”
Cedric smiled.
“Compared to a young lady who only takes out her frustration on those around her and wastes each day meaninglessly, the current you does seem more fitting as my master.”
His expression was a gentle smile, and his voice was soft, unlike his usual self, which always carried some trace of madness.
“Eep.”
Claudia’s face reddened as if she had been caught off guard, but she soon snorted and puffed out her chest.
“You’re awfully cocky for a servant.”