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The Cursed Covenant
“Well, we really did catch a big one. I didn’t see this coming at all.”
After leaving the assassins in the care of the Princess Guard, Ludwig, Dion, and Vanos went to a different room to talk about their next steps.
“You’re right. I didn’t think the Ganudos royal family would be involved,” Vanos said with a sigh and a shake of the head. “To put it another way, we are deep in enemy territory right now.”
Ludwig made a stern face.
“The question is…what comes next?”
“Nothing, I believe. If they show that they don’t like the empire, they will be crushed. Of course, I doubt they’ll admit to being involved to begin with,” Dion said, pausing to look at Ludwig.
“Unless you mean what we’re going to do next. In that case, we’re all waiting for you to tell us.”
“All right… The way I see it, things will be easier if we all know where we stand,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest as he thought. If we let people know that we know who hired these killers, or at least have strong suspicions, that should be enough to stop them. Don’t give them any more ideas, if you will. The other option is to wait until Her Highness gets back, since she might want to use it as a bargaining chip when she talks to them. Still…”
He looked sad.
“I don’t like this whole thing. Something tells me that we need to talk to the King of Ganudos as soon as possible.”
He kept thinking about how he found out that the Duke of Yellowmoon was linked to Ganudos and what that meant. He had to find out if what he thought was true was true or not, and the only way to do that was to talk to the King.
“That seems good. So, do you want to break down their door, or should I? I guess we could also sneak in if it’s just the two of us though…”
“No, we’re going to do this the right way and ask people to watch. We have their assassins. They cannot ignore us.”
If things got bad between Tearmoon and Ganudos, it was bad for both of them. So, if it were possible, Ludwig would rather talk things out to find a solution, and he thought the other person felt the same way.
Two days later, his request for a meeting with the king was granted, and he went to the royal castle with Dion to prove that he was right. When they got there, they were shown to a meeting room.
Given that they wanted to talk to the King directly, this was definitely one of the few times when they were able to do so quickly.
“Ah, well met. I think you are the famous Ludwig Hewitt, the Great Wisdom of the Empire’s assistant and right hand man. And you must be Sir Dion Alaia; the best knight in the empire. I often hear about the great things you have done.”
The King of Ganudos didn’t look like a king at all. His smile and tone were strangely submissive, like he was trying to get someone to like him. He acted more like an old, grovelling government official than the leader of a country.
“Your Majesty, please accept my deepest thanks for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice,” Ludwig said.
“Too much, too much. You’re far too modest. I wouldn’t dare to make the Great Wisdom of the Empire’s loyal servant wait. Even more so when a serious misunderstanding seems to have happened. Neither the Tearmoon Empire nor my small country would benefit from a pointless war with the other,” the King said in a calm voice.
Ludwig looked into him. At first glance, the King of Ganudos seemed like a small, weak, and scared person, but Ludwig’s glasses helped him see that there was a spark of intelligence in those old eyes.
He knew right away that he was dealing with a smart and sneaky king, and that he shouldn’t be taken lightly. At the same time, he was sure he could handle this man, because someone really smart, like his old, wise master or the young woman to whom he had sworn his undying loyalty, would have played a better fool. They were so smart that they would have hidden every last bit of it so that their opponents would think they were safe.
The King did not do this, which showed that he was a dangerous but still beatable opponent.
“Okay, then let’s not waste time. Gentlemen, shall we get down to business?”
Ludwig took a short breath and cleared his mind when the King told him to.
“Certainly. First, I need to tell Your Majesty that there was an attempt on my life not long ago.”
“Was there? And this attempt happened inside Ganudos?”
“In fact, right in the royal capital, in an alley near the church.”
“Goodness. I’m so sorry that this terrible thing happened. Yes, that area is a little bit wild. Being a port country, we have to deal with the mistakes of former pirates all the time. They often turn into local thugs, and there are always a lot of them.”
I see. So you want to blame pirates for this, huh? You could call it a bad act of robbery by outlaws…
Ludwig put one finger on the bridge of his glasses, which has always been a sign that someone is about to step it up a notch.
“I thought the same thing! So you can imagine how surprised I was when we caught the attackers, questioned them, and found out that they were following secret orders from Your Highness.”
“What?! They’re spewing garbage! You didn’t come all the way here because you believed those scumbags, did you?” asked the King with a big show of surprise.
Ludwig let him use his acting skills while he watched him in silence.
“It seems clear to me,” the King went on, “that this was a random act of violence by criminals or maybe a plan by a third party to drive a wedge between our countries… But it looks like you actually made the strange choice to believe what they said, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, Your Majesty, and I did it because I have enough proof to show me that they are telling the truth.”
That was, of course, a trick.
He played it anyway, hoping to get the King to say something interesting.
“Ha ha ha, do you now? So, that’s that. We tried to teach some former pirates how to do the job, but it looks like we didn’t do a good enough job. As you know, we are a small country, and our armies don’t have much. I don’t have enough good chess pieces.”
“…So you admit you had something to do with this?”
Ludwig said yes with a little bit of surprise.
“I’d rather deny the claim, but I don’t see any way to prove to you that I’m not guilty. So, let’s assume that what you say is true. We might still find something funny in this small talk. At the end of the day, you and I both know that we’re just going through the motions. No matter what you or I say, nothing will come of this.”
I see. So he wants to make this a “he said, she said” argument. He must have hired pirates to do the job because of this.
A confession from the King in a private conversation like this wouldn’t mean much if he then denied any connection in public. It would be Ludwig and Dion’s word against his, and that was a losing battle, especially if it went before the Duke of Greenmoon.
Given how close Ganudos and Greenmoon are, it’s clear that the Duke would trust the King over a commoner like Ludwig. They’d end the case by simply saying that criminals and their followers were not reliable witnesses. If Mia had been there, the King would never have told her like that.
Ludwig’s mind moved quickly through this web of reasoning. Then he gave a nod.
So be it indeed.
He decided that these were not big problems. He cared more about what happened next.
“Then, assuming we’re talking in private, I’ll ask you a direct question. Why was I picked on? Was it to keep us from finding out how Ganudos and the House of Yellowmoon are connected?”
“Your question confuses me. We did have ties to the House of Yellowmoon in the past, but I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”
“The Greenmoons are a good tie-down because they are easy to hold and throw away. Did you answer my question?”
Here’s how Ludwig’s theory went. Ganudos wanted Tearmoon to be dependent on them. Then, when it was time, they would cut ties with the empire and starve it to death. The rate of food self-sufficiency in Tearmoon was very low at the time. That is, a very large amount of the food it ate had to come from outside the country.
It was obvious that no noble would use their farmland for something other than farming if they didn’t know how to get enough food for themselves, no matter how much their minds were filled with the nonsense of anti-agriculturalist rhetoric.
That’s when Ganudos came into the story.
Their exports gave Tearmoons a steady supply of seafood that was once considered exotic but is now an essential part of the empire’s diet. So, if there was a famine or something else that made food scarce and Ganudos stopped sending food, the empire would be in terrible shape. And if Ganudos’s goal was to make things like this happen…
“What you want to avoid, if my theory is right, is for the empire to send in troops too soon. Ganudos won’t be able to defend itself if Tearmoon sends its armies here before Ganudos is tired enough. So, you should always give the impression that you are a loyal friend. Even if you started putting limits on exports, you’d have to say that negotiations broke down. So, you couldn’t have your true allies, the Yellowmoons, be the ones you were seen to be dealing with.”
They would secretly try to get the Duke of Greenmoon to leave the country, but in public they would only talk to the Greenmoons about trade issues. If, against all odds, the empire decided to get its army ready, they would waste time telling the Duke of Yellowmoon to put pressure on the government from the inside and cause trouble.
When trying to change Tearmoon politics, having one of the Four Dukes on their side gave them a big advantage. They didn’t know for sure that the Duke of Greenmoon would follow their plan, but if he didn’t, they could always kill him and hide his body, making him disappear.
Ganudos would gain a lot of time because it would cause chaos in the House of Greenmoon while they figured out who would take over. This was the last thing Ludwig said about his theory.
“Do you really think you can make the empire your enemy and still win?”
“An enemy? What do you talk about?”
The King just smiled.
“It would never occur to Ganudos to fight against the Tearmoon Empire. That would be a crazy idea, right? We have a small military group whose job is to keep the peace and keep pirates away, but they wouldn’t stand a chance against the powerful imperial army. Why on earth would we, with our small army, ever want to fight against your huge empire?”
When the King replied, Ludwig tensed up. He hadn’t thought that the old man would use the weakness of his country’s military as a weapon and a cover for his own bad plans.
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument,” the King said, “that I have plans to stop exports to the empire if there is a famine. Even if this were true, do you really think you can use it as a reason to bring your armies here?”
Ganudos’s plan did not include any kind of military action.
If Ludwig had even the slightest idea that Tearmoon was going to be attacked by military means, that would be enough for him to declare war.
If someone did something openly wrong against the empire, the empire would do the same thing back. The problem was that “Ganudos won’t sell us food if there’s a famine in the future” couldn’t be seen as an attack.
It was too vague and hypothetical to make me feel like I was in immediate danger, especially since the whole plan depended on there being a famine and would fail if there wasn’t one. Overall, this Ganudos plot lacked both initiative and aggressiveness to the point where it could hardly be called a plot.
It was hard to call out because it was not clear what it was. Ludwig was sure of his own reasoning, but in the end, his accusation was just a guess.
If his peers accused him of chasing shadows, it would be hard for him to defend himself. He wasn’t fooled into thinking that this supposed plot could be used to argue for military action against the port country.
Ganudos was no barbarian horde. It was a country where people believed in the same God as Tearmoon and practised the same religion. If Tearmoon went to war without a good reason, its neighbours would look down on it.
Ganudos’s moves would be completely useless, though, if the empire set up a reliable way to make sure it has enough food on its own.And that makes me upset. Anti-agriculturalism… Ganudos would have never had a chance to try this trick if it weren’t for this ideological plague.
Ludwig thought it was strange that the cursed belief was so important to this whole scheme.
For such a slow, harmful plan that requires hard work over years or even decades, it depends too much on things they can’t control. Too much depends on the weather and what goes wrong in the other country.
You could say that famines have only happened every few decades in the past, but bad policies and leadership can be fixed in a day. Even the idea of anti-agriculturalism started to smell like it was done on purpose.
Maybe the Yellowmoons and Ganudos worked together to spread the rumour.
Still, something didn’t add up.
Even though Yellowmoon was one of the Four Dukes, did he really have enough power to do something on that scale? The nobles of Tearmoon were not a single group, and the voices of the other three groups were heard loudly and clearly.
Ludwig stopped thinking about the same thing over and over again and shook his head.
“In either case, we will fix the empire with the help of Her Highness. Once systems are in place to make sure there is enough food for everyone, your plan will fall apart.”
His statement didn’t get a response from the King, who replied in his usual calm tone,
“I see. That’s great news! We are always happy to hear that problems in friendly countries have been solved. Even though I’m disappointed that this will cause our food exports to Tearmoon to go down, I’ll be okay with that. After all, a small country like ours has little to say about the things going on inside your huge empire.”
Ludwig tightened his jaw because he was afraid of what the King would say. He didn’t understand why, which made him feel even worse.
The King of Ganudos stood there until the doors shut behind Ludwig’s party as they left. Then he leaned back and smiled calmly.
“So, the battle lines have been drawn. The oldest of the Great Houses, Yellowmoon, is on the other side from the Emperor’s favourite daughter. Hah. What a great time to live! Let’s see what happens…”
There was a cursed covenant that tied the empire together, and its hidden chains were about to be revealed.