MPNS Ch 33

Chapter 33

 

The glacier-cold blue eyes turned toward the count — and then, suddenly, softened.

It was like feeling the warmth of the sun break through.

Smiling like a flowerbud bursting open on a spring day, Nikiel stayed Allewynn’s hand.

“Come now, man. Isn’t your loyalty a bit too overzealous? That will do — let him go.”

“…Yes, Your Highness.”

Allewynn was not a man who asked twice — because he was a soldier to the marrow.

And yet, even with “Follow Orders” carved into his very bones, the words of this prince drew from him an involuntary protest before he released the arm he’d been twisting.

But in that moment, “Ollarii” — no, Allewynn — was still in a state of complete Ollarii-yo, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

The shift had been too fast for him.

It seemed Count Gaspar, too, was struggling to process it.

The mustache he kept for show was tightly curled at the ends, like arrowheads, but now — as his lips trembled with humiliation — even those tips quivered in an unsightly way.

One of his favorite methods for bolstering his reputation was to demean the royal Nikiel in public. But now, even after his arm was freed, the shock had left him unable to move much at all.

Count Gaspar had long harbored grievances toward Nikiel — or, more precisely, toward the four heads of houses connected to him.

The four commanders cut themselves off from polite aristocratic society, drawing around each other in a closed knot and showing a cold exclusivity toward all other nobles.

Like aloof cranes, their conduct radiated such hauteur that many of Ossinis’ nobles found their admiration fading.

To Gaspar, they were arrogant bastards. On the rare occasion one approached them, their gaze would turn glacial, and they would depart without a word — and so he, a noble of long-standing lineage, had found his own standing diminished in high society over recent years, and blamed their disdain.

Even in a kingdom where people delighted year-round in feasts and banquets, they would not attend unless the king himself hosted the affair. They shunned casual gatherings and salons, never hosting their own events.

Though they dutifully appeared at the court assemblies nobles were obliged to attend, they would vanish like the wind once the sessions adjourned — leaving no chance for conversation and seeming, by their swiftness, to mock those who lingered to drift off in groups toward drawing rooms and parlors.

And then there had been the business at last winter’s court banquet…

‘Your Grace, it has been too long. By the grace of the Lord of Beasts, the winter banquet has been held in grand fashion once more this year. For tonight, let us set aside our worries over magical beasts and enjoy the festivities…’

Having noticed even Grand Duke Balt in attendance for once, Gaspar seized the moment to affect familiarity. He had been in the midst of describing to Viscount Lumin — as today — the details of various business ventures he intended to pursue.

Lumin was a recently arrived provincial lord, rich but ignorant of the capital’s ways.

Gaspar’s plan was to charm him, then lure him into opening his purse for “investments.”

To win the country noble’s confidence, Gaspar sought to make a show of “targeting” Yullan Balt — imagining that if Lumin saw them exchange even the briefest of pleasantries, it would lay the foundation for a lucrative agreement.

The count had been certain Yullan would not refuse his greeting.

‘Any man living full-time in the capital would have the sense to return a polite word.’

For to a noble attending court functions, an acknowledgment of another’s greeting was no more than common courtesy.

But what he received in return was a frigid snub.

Yullan’s gold-flecked eyes looked him over — as if weighing a nugget fresh from a mine — and then the man walked past without so much as a word, taking up a draught of malt whisky and leaving the hall entirely.

Gaspar had floundered. Unless he showed Viscount Lumin some display worthy of respect, the “country bumpkin” might not admire him enough to loosen his purse strings — and the moment was slipping away.

‘Ah… perhaps His Grace is simply wearied this evening.’

It was the only excuse he could muster. Gaspar trembled with the shame of it.

Even without being a founding contributor to the realm, the great House Gaspar had maintained its name since the kingdom’s founding — and yet he had been brushed off without so much as a second’s thought.

How dare Yullan treat him so?

In hindsight, perhaps he should have targeted Duke Raymon Boltwick instead. Raymon’s nose was high, but he had never so blatantly ignored a person. In front of Viscount Lumin, he would have made the better choice.

But this assumption, too, had been dashed.

When Gaspar tried to address Raymon to make amends, the man who usually smiled like the gentle spring wind discarded that face entirely, scowled, and brushed past — shoulder knocking Gaspar’s offered cup from his hand.

As a result, Gaspar had had to “drink” his fruit wine through his own face, his painstakingly groomed mustache soaking through.

He would later learn that Raymon had acted that way because, earlier, Nikiel had loudly declared in public: “Raymon’s manhood isn’t manhood at all!” But what use was such knowledge?

By then the vintage wine from that year’s unusually good grape harvest had already drenched his mustache.

Twice humiliated, Count Gaspar shook with the memory.

‘Just who do those people think they are?’

At the end of the day, were they not simply coarse creatures, forced to brush animal fur from their frock coats after every hunt?

A true noble extracted rents and dues from his tenants, not his own profit from the carcasses of monsters he personally killed — that was the domain of butchers in Anyon Street.

Gaspar could not stomach them — haughty as they were, yet behaving so far beneath a noble’s dignity.

And yet, he could not openly shun them. Each house’s symbolic weight aside, individually they were formidable:

Grand Duke Yullan Balt, the military governor and the kingdom’s first line of defense; Duke Raymon Boltwick, the capital’s wall of protection; Duke Lucien Turun, hailed as a genius of magical science; and Marquis Jikari Griff, master of Ossinis’ skies.

Gaspar’s abilities could never hope to match such people.

Still — in the end, they were naught but cursed beasts. And the only one who could grant them relief from that curse was the king’s feckless son, Nikiel Ossinis.

A man of platinum hair and blue eyes as cold as a glacial lake — a peerless beauty — and yet, perhaps in proof of the gods’ decree that no man be made perfect, his grace of form was attended by the most graceless conduct.

Despite his overflowing holy power, Nikiel’s debauchery was such that one could hardly find its equal, making him an object of scorn among the capital’s nobility.

Many desired at least once to bed him — yet once they had, they would wish the interlude buried in secrecy forever.

Though no commoner, he was a prince of Ossinis, born under the fate of the deliverer, and still he was treated thus.

No one respected him — not for having greater holy power than the Pontiff, nor for being the direct descendant of the first king.

When the news of a monster’s appearance broke, Gaspar and Viscount Lumin had been moving through the palace grounds and had been near panic.

Fortuitously, they’d heard all four commanders were inside the palace that day, and the threat was quickly contained.

Still, they had not been reassured. While scanning for a place to hide, Gaspar spotted Nikiel walking in the court gardens.

In the cavernous space within his skull, Gaspar’s small mind whirred busily — until it devised a single, ill-conceived scheme.

Ever since the humiliation of last winter’s banquet, he had been dragging Viscount Lumin everywhere in a constant stream of distractions, hoping to make the man forget the shame Yullan and Raymon had dealt him.

Now, by chance, he could encounter Nikiel — and if he snubbed the prince in front of the viscount, his standing would rise again in the latter’s eyes.

Irritating though the prince could be to converse with, his occasional stupidity meant he often failed to catch the meaning of barbed remarks — making him an easy target to mock, and thus the perfect instrument for exacting petty revenge.

Seeing him humiliated without consequence would surely make Viscount Lumin respect Gaspar all the more.

And so Gaspar had approached him…

‘He bent my arm? And painfully?!’

Of course, it had been Allewynn who actually forced his arm back — but Gaspar still felt the sting of it.

The man he’d thought a half-wit had, point by point, spoken with unassailable logic — perfectly calling out Gaspar’s rudeness in blocking a royal’s way, failing to identify himself, and couching his greeting in a way that implied censure of Nikiel’s “holy steps.”

‘Did that imbecile drink some cleverness tonic from the Eastern Continent…?!’

Otherwise, how could he have so swiftly and decisively named Gaspar’s offense?

Viscount Lumin, meanwhile, blinked innocently beside them — the same man who had beamed in anticipation of seeing the prince embarrassed, now wearing a “who, me?” expression so guileless it almost made him seem fully aware of the turnabout.

Gaspar’s complexion went pale. If he were to be punished for lèse-majesté now, it would mean bearing forever the shame of being disciplined by the fool Nikiel himself.