They'll Make Splendid Bait

Viscount Patrasche had read the letter the carrier pigeon brought at first light over and over again, and still he could not put it down. It ran to no more than a few lines, and what they reported was something he had never once seen before.

— Tap, tap, tap.

A long index finger struck the mahogany desk at regular intervals. The desk had been his half-brother’s, the Grace lord’s, before him; handed down through the house for generations, it could be used only by a lord the vassals acknowledged. So by rights it had always been his, and even when he had taken it off her in trade for a few dresses, that idiot Chloe had clapped her hands and said how lovely it was.

His eyes stayed fixed on the sheet of letter paper, smaller than his palm.

“Sold her jewels to a jewel merchant and handed out grain to the estate’s residents, did she… Chloe is doing things she has never done before.”
“Chloe must have given up on everything at last. If she has gone so far as to sell off her mother’s keepsakes, and she treasured those so.”

Eileen had been drinking tea on the sofa in the study, and she answered Viscount Patrasche’s muttering in a voice thick with self-importance.

Eileen was the same age as Chloe. Where Chloe was stupid, lazy and mindful of nobody but herself, Eileen was clever, diligent and wholehearted in everything she did, the Viscount’s pride and the jewel of the house. Brilliant golden hair and eyes the pale green of new spring shoots made her beauty all the more dazzling. Her slender waist and full bosom set the hearts of men fluttering, and her shining intellect drew the praise of every noblewoman whenever a salon was held.

Lowly as his own title was, he had built a colossal fortune by his own hand alone, and opinion held overwhelmingly that the only man who could succeed to the Grace marquessate was Viscount Patrasche; his influence was a match for any noble’s. As though to prove the point, the greater part of the Grace estate’s land had already passed into his grasp.

The brows he had knotted over the pigeon’s message smoothed out the moment he looked at his daughter. Those pale green eyes were said to appear only in a person the goddess of spring had blessed, and every time he saw them he felt reassured, as though he were looking at his house’s guaranteed future. The look he rested on Eileen was full of fondness and pride.

His daughter was brighter than Chloe beyond all comparison, and beautiful, and well known in society. The whispers that had quietly slighted her for being born illegitimate had faded away little by little as his fortune swelled, and now, wherever he went, he was swamped with people desperate to be close to him.

“Quite so. If Chloe had only been half as sharp as you, the Grace estate would never have gone to ruin like this.”
“Thanks to that our own estate has grown, so I think it fortunate. Perhaps it was fated to go that way from the very beginning.”

At his daughter’s words the corners of the Viscount’s mouth pulled up into a long curve.

“Well then. Do you think Chloe has changed so suddenly because she has laid everything down?”

He waited, full of anticipation for whatever crisp answer she would produce this time.

“Chloe never did think about what comes after. She decides everything on the spur of the moment, always. She takes people at their word, and gets taken in. But she never improves. Because it is always somebody else’s fault. Her estate has shriveled to this and she still has not come to her senses, and there she is trailing after some man — which tells you everything.”

Eileen took a sip of tea and went on, her voice full of certainty.

“Chloe Grace is hopeless. The whole of the Grace estate will have come over to ours before this year is out. And for a song, at that. Chloe never so much as thinks to find out what land is going for.”

The Viscount listened to his daughter’s answer and nodded, well pleased. Not a word of what Eileen had said was wrong. Anyone could see that he was picking off the prime land of the estate for a song, and yet Chloe thought of him as a good, kind man buying land from her because she had run out of money.

She was terribly easy to handle, too. Buy the land off her for a song, press a few of the lace-laden dresses she loved into her hands as a gift, and she would be beside herself with delight. Clever Eileen went along every time to keep Chloe’s mood sweet, telling her that the tacky dress suited her, that she looked ever so pretty.

“I mean to send her an invitation to my birthday party. I cannot wait to see what a state she turns up in this time.”

Picturing Chloe arriving in a dress dripping with lace, with no idea how tacky it was, put Eileen in such a good mood that a giggle escaped her. Chloe, oblivious as ever, would never notice that the others were mocking her, and would go about beaming like a fool at their sneering little compliments. That much was certain.

“I mean to go over to Grace sometime next week. Will you come with me again?”
“Of course. Who would help Papa if not me? Leave it to me this time as well. And if I hand her the invitation while we are there, she will be delighted.”

He gave a broad smile and patted Eileen fondly on the shoulder.

“We had best send word that we are coming next week. What do you say — shall you write the letter this time?”
“Gladly. I shall write it so sweetly that Chloe will be beside herself when she reads it. Oh! I ought to send a brooch I never wear along with it. If I lie and tell her it is one I treasure, Chloe will very likely be so moved she will not know what to do with herself.”
“A fine idea. Then which land would it be best to purchase this time?”

At her father’s question, Eileen’s pale green eyes glittered with cleverness.

“Mmm… I think we should buy the village of Morta.”
“And why is that?”

Enjoyment filled the Viscount’s face as he asked. He had already reached the conclusion in his own head, but hearing his daughter’s cleverness confirmed was one of his great pleasures.

“Less than a tenth of Morta could be farmed at all.”
“And even so it is worth buying before anywhere else?”
“Of course. Morta has the Black Forest.”
“The Black Forest will be full of monsters, though.”
“But that is exactly why there is so much in it worth money. Hunt the monsters and sell what they yield, fell the trees and work them into timber, and there is an enormous amount of money to be made.”
“And the estate’s residents?”
“Put a modest sum in their hands and drive them out to hunt monsters, that is all. People that starved will go tearing into the forest for small change, will they not? They’ll make splendid bait.”

Viscount Patrasche looked at Eileen and broke into a grin that filled his whole face. She took after him: clever and tenacious, giving everything she had to any undertaking, so much so that she had to see each one through to the end. There were a great many disciplines she had studied out of interest, and she was more than fair with a sword, skilled enough to match a decent knight.

If he put Eileen out in front at the point where the monster hunting was drawing to a close, she might well end up a hero of the realm.

It would not be long now before the name ‘Grace’ was permitted to his house and his house alone.

The long line stretching out in front of the temporary distribution post had been shrinking steadily, and only about half of it was left now.

The sky was overcast, so the sun never came out, and the air was noticeably cold, yet the lord did not so much as complain, let alone retreat into the carriage. She stood guard over the distribution post, and watching her, Scrooge and the knights could not get over their astonishment.

Could a person really change so much in the space of a few days? Wondering if their eyes were playing tricks on them, they rubbed at them over and over.

“What is it you are looking at so intently?”

The butler asked it with his eyes on the lord, whose gaze was not on the people collecting their food but on the ground around the broken fountain.

“The children.”
“I beg your pardon? The children?”

Until that moment Scrooge had not so much as registered that there were children there, and only belatedly did he spot them romping about near the fountain.

“If those children have offered my lady some discourtesy…”

As his words trailed away, worry welled up quietly in Scrooge’s eyes once again. He was afraid the thoughtless children had put the touchy lord out of temper.

Dong-hui, for her part, understood well enough that he did not trust her, but every time she opened her mouth, his eyes set guilt stirring in her of its own accord, and she could have done without it.

She let out a heavy sigh and muttered, unable to take her eyes off the children.

“Those children must be freezing. Their clothes are far too thin.”

They were people who might vanish one day out of nowhere, just as she had dropped into this place one day out of nowhere herself. But Dong-hui was not hard enough to look past children wandering about half-clothed in front of her. Even if these people had been nothing more than characters in a game, she would have gone as far as grinding out points to get them clothes, everything short of paying real money for it.

“Pardon?”

Once again words nobody could have expected had come out of the lord.

“Is there a tailor nearby?”

Having picked the word up somewhere, Dong-hui asked for a tailor rather than a clothes-seller.

“It is nobles who have their clothes made up by a tailor. Commoners mostly sew their own, or have them handed down from their brothers and sisters.”
“I see.”
“And the tailors who were inside Grace Castle left for other parts as the drought dragged on.”

She thought she had heard on the news that when a recession comes, the first shops to feel it are the flower shops and the clothes shops.

Well, of course. New clothes, flowers — they aren’t things you need to survive.

Dong-hui nodded to show that she understood, and went on.

“Then find me the nearest tailor there is. And send someone to the city to say that we wish to buy cloth, and to ask the tailors to pay a visit to our estate. Be sure to tell them we will pay a generous travel allowance.”
“A travel allowance?”

That the lord had suddenly become a sound, sensible person was a very fine thing indeed, but as the hours went by he could not shake the feeling that something had gone wrong. Hour after hour she kept doing things the Chloe Grace he knew would never have done.

And a travel allowance, of all things.

“They are coming a long way, so a travel allowance is only right. How soon can a tailor be found?”
“I shall do my utmost, but it will take a month at the very least. Might I ask why my lady wishes to send for a tailor?”