The Banquet

Aiden hadn’t known the form of the Bond in Weaver of Fate could change at all, but that news shocked him less than another part of the window.

This was the line that demanded his attention.

He had glanced through Katya’s skill list a few times before, but after a message like that, the list looked ridiculous on a second pass.

…Well, would you look at that.

Aiden caught himself muttering it inwardly as he scrolled down, and down, and down. He had only opened the list because the window said skills were being added and he’d wondered what they might be.

…Every class is in here?

In the game, too, the lead characters each grew along a route of their own, and the paths they walked differed to match. For all the terrifying power Noelle and Katya showed now, both of them were still only standing at the starting line. The further the main scenario went on, the more their ‘majors’ diverged, each according to the field they chose.

Take Noelle. She might specialize in swordsmanship, or in body enhancement, or pick up magic on top of it and go the magic-swordsman route; that was the rough shape of the classification. Yet the skills that had just been added to the list covered every one of those majors.

Once a major is fixed you can’t learn the others, though…

And the Weaver of Fate Aiden held could only copy a skill the target ‘currently possessed’. Now, simply because the bond had changed, the pool of skills open to him felt as though it had swollen enormously.

As though.

As if he could copy the whole of these people’s ‘future’, some kind of…

“Your Highness, as I keep telling you.”
“I said I’m not going back.”

“…”

“More to the point, hand over the adjutant’s post.”

A curt voice cut in right under his nose before he had any room to follow that train of thought further.

Not content with declaring that she would not go back to the Holy Kingdom, Katya followed up with a demand that could have given Noelle apoplexy. She had learned that the post of ‘adjutant’, the aide always brought along to official functions, stood vacant, and she was pressing for it relentlessly.

Thanks to that, a rather awkward standoff had been dragging on for a while now. Calling it a standoff was a stretch, though, since all it amounted to was Noelle desperately trying to persuade a Katya who let every word go in one ear and out the other.

“For the royalty of one nation to behave this way in a foreign country makes no sense in itself, Your Highness. By custom, by culture, by administration—”
“Adjutant.”
“—which is exactly what I have been telling you all along. It is not only that the Empire is put in difficulty; Her Holiness the Pontiff, back in the Holy Kingdom, would be placed in an awkward position as well—”
“Adjutant.”

“…”

“Adjutant.”
“…Please restrain yourself.”

That last line came from Aiden, who had spotted Noelle’s hand creeping toward her scabbard. The motion carried enough genuine intent to make him suspect that, since Katya wouldn’t die anyway, Noelle might really cut her…

…Though it’s an improvement on the two of them going at each other to the death a little while ago.

Compared with the mood back then, this much was positively endearing. Still, thank goodness Noelle was good-natured at heart. She was dealing with someone who had pulled a stunt that mad, yet she held no great grudge over it.

“Look, the situation as it stands is a little strange to begin with, isn’t it?”

Whether or not she knew what state Noelle was in, Katya laced her fingers behind her head and spoke in a bored drawl.

“You two are going to be out at every kind of official function as a married couple before long. Without even an adjutant, how were you planning to get through that schedule?”

“…”

She had a point. Come to think of it, hadn’t Noelle once said she would assign him an adjutant, then put it off on the grounds that she wanted someone outstanding?

“It’s strange. Attendants are one of the best ways to show off your own standing. At your rank, having none at all just earns you dirty looks.”
“Is it as serious as that?”
“…It’s common sense in society. Lionhearted, how on earth are you treating your husband?”

Good grief.

Hearing the words ‘common sense’ pop so blithely out of this particular mouth was one thing, but watching Noelle cough in reply, as though she had no excuse to offer, was a bizarre sight of its own.

“Before we attend an official function, I can lend a hand with the escort work and the other odds and ends myself. I simply have not yet found anyone who meets the standard.”
“Well, whatever your reasons. All I’m saying is that if you insist on going around without one, you won’t be getting kind looks from the people around you.”

Katya tapped her cheek and went on.

“Like I said earlier, letting him walk into a place like that alone and empty-handed eats away at your reputation and your husband’s at the same time. Don’t tell me you don’t know that.”

Finding little to rebut, Noelle pursed her lips and fell silent.

“…Then I shall simply avoid taking Aiden to such places as far as possible.”
“And if you don’t bring the man who’s to be your husband out into society, what do you imagine they’ll say about you? Wild guesses about the state of your marriage will be flying around like mad.”
“That is mine to bear as I see fit. Neither Aiden nor I want him tangled up in anything major.”

…No.

Aiden stared at Noelle as she pressed stubbornly on, something close to disbelief in his eyes.

“I’d rather you didn’t take that much of a burden on yourself.”

Every so often he was struck all over again by how inflexible this person was, enough to make him wonder whether she was all right.

Noelle’s eyes went round at that instead, as though he had said something she had not expected in the least.

“What? But…”
“For that sort of thing we can just go together, can’t we? Wasn’t the whole point of marrying me that you wouldn’t be stuck at times like this?”
“…That is true, but…”
“Then you should put me to use. I have to do my own job too, don’t I.”

The whole thing may have started as something close to half an abduction, but Aiden could feel it every time: this person was trying with all her heart to help him. The money, the conveniences, all of it. She always seemed to do her utmost for him, well beyond the ‘contracted items’, and giving a little back for that would hardly be difficult. Besides, he had been told the reason she ‘hired’ him in the first place was that leaving a husband’s seat officially vacant caused trouble in one way or another.

“…Ah.”

But at those words Noelle hesitated, and her lips twitched. She looked as though she had been agonizing for a good while over what to say.

“Thank… you.”

“…”

Faced with a reaction that suggested she was unused to goodwill of any kind, Aiden found the words catching in his throat. It wasn’t even goodwill, only a matter of course, and the sight of her finding even that a little uncomfortable was startling.

How on earth did she end up with a personality like this?

Could someone with her ability, in her position, really have self-esteem this low? A wonder, nothing short of it. He let out a deep inward sigh and went on.

“Then, if having Her Highness play adjutant right away doesn’t sit well with you, can’t we just attach anyone at all as an attendant for now and go to the function?”
“Out of the question.”
“That would be out of the question.”

Both of them dismissed the idea as though it weren’t worth a second thought.

“An adjutant is someone who stays pressed close to your person almost all the time. No amount of repeated vetting is ever enough. There is a reason I have picked nobody until now.”
“The easiest routes for assassinating a VIP run through the cook, the tailor, and the secretary or adjutant, you know?”

“…”

He was fairly sure this was the first time he had seen these two agree on anything. And if they shot it down in unison like that, he figured it really was dangerous.

“…So the point is you can’t just seat any old person as adjutant.”
“Which is why I’m saying I’ll do it. What are you agonizing over?”

At Katya’s words, Noelle shot her another narrow sidelong look.

“Are you not taking the matter far too lightly?”
“The Imperial Palace’s regular banquet is coming up soon anyway. Other functions aside, that one you have to attend regardless, don’t you?”
“Even so, Your Highness becoming Aiden’s adjutant is an entirely different matter—”
“…No.”

Aiden cut in before Noelle could finish. Stroking his chin in thought, he had the look of a man running the numbers in his head.

“That, actually, might not be as bad as you’d think.”

“…”

Noelle looked at him as though he had pulled the rug out from under her.

“What on earth do you—”
“If her being royalty is the problem, we just fool them, don’t we?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“All that matters is not getting caught, isn’t it. In that case there are plenty of ways. At the very least, covering her face alone would do, wouldn’t it.”
“Ooh— now there’s someone I can talk to.”

Katya said it with a beaming grin, while Noelle pressed a hand to her forehead and forced her words out.

“…Aiden, your attitude seems to have changed somewhat from before.”
“No. It’s that there’s a need to leave people with a ‘good impression’.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“It’s the first function we go to together. We ought to do it well, shouldn’t we.”

“…”

Noelle’s eyes went wide. She plainly hadn’t expected words like that out of his mouth, of all people’s. Here was someone who was nothing but trouble, and the man who had spent all this time dodging trouble with everything he had was welcoming her instead.

But Aiden, for his part, was in no position to let what had just come up slip by. Other official functions aside, the engagement Katya had raised could not be ignored.

The Imperial Palace’s regular banquet, then…

The game itself merely noted that ‘there is an event like this’ and moved on, but dig into the details and it turned out to matter a great deal. Not only did members of the imperial family and the nobles who held power show their faces there, but often enough influential figures from other countries did too. In other words, the odds were very high that the figures central to the main scenario would turn up.

Because.

…Which meant, in short, that he could put the banquet to very good use.

Unlike before, he now needed to intervene actively in the main scenario as well, which made collecting good abilities as quickly as possible matter more than ever. And he already knew which people to make his first targets.

The Shamaness. And the Prince.

Urgan’s Shamaness, who would have come over from the Tribal Confederation.

And the Empire’s legitimate heir to the throne. …Also the suitor clinging to Dame Noelle, and the reason Aiden was where he was.

Both were weighty people with enormous influence inside the main scenario.

“…Aiden.”

Noelle spoke up again, looking as if her head were throbbing.

“I trust your abilities, Aiden, and I am glad of the thought you are giving me. But the nobles’ social world is, in several senses, no different from a battlefield. It is a place where the most trivial thing can be seized on as a fault, so might you reconsider, just once?”
“When you say seized on as a fault, what sort do you mean?”
“Etiquette, custom, and beyond that, tearing someone down over nothing but a slight lapse in tact or a gesture is practically the tradition there. Anyone who has never once been to such a place will have a hard time of it.”

“…”

Watching Noelle bite the words out, Aiden tilted his head. This person rarely voiced an opinion so negative in one go.

How to put it.

“This may be rude, but do you have some bad experience with it, by any chance?”
“…I could not claim to have any decent memories of it.”

At her stiff answer, Aiden gave a wry smile. Fair enough. Given her character, she had likely lived with a wall built between herself and backroom maneuvering, delicate interpersonal relations, politics and all the rest.

And, in that case.

“Then I’ll make sure you can hold your head high.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“I’ll make it so nobody can look down on you.”

For once, it was his turn to be of help to Noelle.

This person… I’ll have to keep on good terms with her going forward anyway.

…He had no wish to treat a person as a skill vending machine, but his ‘relationship’ with her was the pivot his survival would turn on from here on. In that respect, helping her was by no means a bad investment.

In that respect.

Etiquette? Custom? Reading the room?

A place where violence crashed into violence might not be his; but a place where things like those became ‘weapons’ was Aiden’s home ground. What had he earned his bread with in the first place?

And on top of that…

He knew of one ability that would give that talent of his wings.

The one-skill copy he had taken from the Emperor earlier. Time to use it.

In a social world where never a day passed without some wind blowing, stories about all sorts of people were bound to drift about, tangled together like a snarled skein of thread. All the more so at an event as large as an imperial banquet, where people gathered from every corner of the Empire.

Some noble house’s daughter had thrown someone over, a great noble somewhere had taken a lover…

Gossip of that kind scattered in every direction from a hub of rumor like this one, but today’s banquet had one topic that had the room more heated than usual.

“They say the Prince is attending the banquet today?”
“To be able to look upon that august face once more! What sheer good fortune!”

There were several types of man society envied, but one could safely say none was as perfect in every respect as the Prince. Rank, ability, looks; on top of which he was still very young, and his footing inside the imperial house was rock solid. Small wonder his mere attendance became a topic.

At the mention of that name alone, bright laughter and a pleasant murmur went round among the noble daughters.

“Ah, if we are on the subject of amusing things, there is one more.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“They say that ‘Lionhearted’ is attending today as well, with her spouse in tow.”
“…Ah, is that so?”

A delicate mood, the exact opposite of a moment ago, settled over the table.

“The Lionhearted… a splendid Knight, to be sure.”
“Indeed.”

So they said, but what showed on each of their faces was a sneer and a faint distaste.

She was a splendid person, admittedly. To have built that much standing by her own strength at her age was splendid however you looked at it.

But.

“…So there really was a groom, it seems. I had heard she was married, but I took it for an empty rumor.”
“I did wonder who could ever fancy a woman that violent— but happily, it seems there are men with unusual tastes after all.”

Noble daughters with little interest in tangled political relations tended to hold little respect for the Lionhearted, the Knight who represented the nation. That she had won distinction in a war fought until the whole continent was a quagmire meant little to them either.

For all the standing she had built, society had also firmly pegged her as ‘impertinent’, thanks to a manner that was forever stuffy, straitlaced, and never properly open to anyone. Noelle would say she had merely kept neutral because she had no wish to be swept into any faction, but from where they stood, they couldn’t have cared less.

And, above all.

“Shall we have a look at just how fine this husband is? Who does she think she is, refusing His Highness the Prince’s courtship like that—”

The daughter whose true feelings had slipped out snapped her mouth shut under the glares pouring in from around her. Everyone here knew that, whatever they felt, putting a thing like that into words outright was far too conspicuous.

Yet since not one of them went so far as to object, they all seemed to share the opinion itself. A Prince they could never come near had courted her, and she had ‘dared’ to refuse him, and so flatly. From where they stood, that alone was enough to turn the stomach.

“Dame Noelle Astria Simmers of the Capital Command, entering!”

The tiger turns up the moment you speak of it, and here was the party in question, making her entrance in person.

The daughters all raised their fans over their mouths and looked down with haughty eyes at the figure walking in through the entrance. The first to catch the eye was the Lionhearted, striding into the hall with the same emotionless face as ever.

“…The uniform again?”
“How stuffy. We have long known she has no sense for choosing clothes, but one does wish she would at least make a show of trying.”

Not even meeting the basic dress code. An impertinent person, just as they thought.

Having shared that impression, the daughters presently turned their eyes to the person beside her.

And.

There was the groom, coming in with his arm cozily linked through the Lionhearted’s.

“…”
“…”
“…”

The daughters who a moment ago had been chewing the Lionhearted over as a pitiable creature fell silent as one. For that instant, every one of them was probably thinking much the same thing.

…No wonder she sets her sights high.

If the chance to take a man like that as a groom had been open to her all this time.

Going by outward appearance alone, the verdict was well deserved. He was no sculpted beauty, nor a magnate draped head to foot in obvious luxury goods. That sort could hardly draw a reaction like this to begin with; society was packed to overflowing with them.

If anything.

By rights the man beside the Lionhearted did not even rank among that sort. He was closer to the kind who would be sneered at: what manner of bumpkin turns up in a place like this.

But.

He carried an ‘aura’ of the sort you saw only in the Prince they had just been discussing.

There was a ‘refinement’ about him that one sensed only in members of the imperial house.

At a glance, he gave off an air that said this man did not belong among the ordinary.

“F-first impressions are rather passable.”
“H-hmm.”

When someone brought that out along with a cough, they all hummed grudging agreement through their noses.

But the assessment was not over yet. Merely looking refined on the outside by no means made him a husband of high standing. Without real ability or real blood behind him, wasn’t he just a wild apricot: fine to look at and sour to the bite?

While each of them was turning that over, the hall’s guard stopped the pair as they were about to enter.

“And the identity of the person at your side…?”

The Lionhearted’s escort was usually Dame Stella, well known as her adjutant. The figure beside her today, though, was buried in ‘full plate armor’ complete with a visor that hid the face, and nobody knew who it was. Hence the stop, no doubt.

“Adjutant.”

When that single word came briefly from the Lionhearted’s spouse, a ‘proof of identity’ nobody could argue with bloomed from the armored figure: a colorless flame. Small, but a ‘supernatural power’ nobody could fail to recognize.

Those who handled divinity fell into two groups. Royalty, and the Paladins bound to them by vow. Royalty it could hardly be, so what stood there must be a Paladin.

And the moment that conclusion dropped.

A silence markedly deeper than before fell over the hall. Not only the daughters at the nearby table but everyone in the hall who had been watching closely must have been struck by it.

“…D-divinity…”
“A Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, attached to him as an adjutant…?”

Paladins were personnel of the highest importance, used only to guard the Holy Kingdom’s royalty: its strongest body of force. Using one as an ‘adjutant’ was clear proof that this man was treated, at the least, as the equal of the Holy Kingdom’s royalty. Not even an ordinary high noble could enjoy a luxury so extravagant.

“…”
“…”

The sound of someone swallowing dryly carried clearly. That alone had probably driven the point home for every one of them.

That man standing there might, just possibly.

Be the most ‘important’ man in this hall right now.

…As expected.

Copying this had been the right call.

Thinking that, Aiden looked at the window floating up in front of him.

…That’s right.

Aiden gave a silent whistle at the messages. Taking this much trouble to dress himself up had paid off after all, and using Katya to leave a deep impression seemed to have worked too.

What’s left is…

To scrape as many skills as he could off the ‘key figures’ in this hall.

As he walked on ahead with that thought, a sharp whistle sounded behind him. Katya’s cackle rang out from inside the full plate armor, echoing off its walls.

“He said he’d make sure you could hold your head high, and look at him, a fish that’s found water.”

The voice dropped toward Noelle in a near whisper. Maybe some dregs of their earlier fight were still left over, because it was brimming with the urge to tease her.

“…”

Hearing that from beside her, Noelle pulled her hat down low without a word. Clearly she did not want her face seen right now, not at any price. Judging by the heat climbing to her ears, it was easy enough to guess what sort of face it was.

“The rumor that you’ve got yourself a decent husband will be all over the place now, won’t it? From here on you’ll never be slighted anywhere in society, Lionhearted.”
“…Be quiet.”