Chapter 157
Brisa quietly nodded as she glanced at the Grand Duchess, who lay limp as if dead, drugged by sleeping medicine.
The man immediately picked up the coat hanging on the wall and went outside.
Only then did she feel her blocked breath open up, and she took a deep breath, but then she heard a rustling sound nearby.
Brisa flinched and raised her eyes, then nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw the Grand Duchess slowly rising.
The woman, whose clear eyes suggested she had been awake for some time, stared at her for a moment, then lowered her legs beneath the bed.
Brisa, who had been standing stiffly, hurriedly approached her side.
“Your Highness, you must not get up. Until the medicine wears off, you must rest in bed...”
“Move aside.”
At the cold voice filled with dignity, Brisa flinched and stepped back.
The Grand Duchess stood barefoot on the floor without even putting on slippers.
Brisa, at a loss for what to do, stamped her feet, then hurriedly bent down beneath the bed, intending to at least get her shoes.
At that moment, she saw the Grand Duchess limping toward the fireplace.
“...Was she not trying to go outside?”
Brisa, looking flustered, hurriedly followed her.
She was worried that the Grand Duchess, whose legs were weak, might fall into the flames.
“Your Highness, if you are cold, I will quickly prepare a hot water bottle for you. First, if you sit here...”
“Annoying.”
The woman coldly pushed away the hand trying to support her and bent down in front of the fireplace.
Then she picked up the poker leaning beside the grate and pulled a half-burned bundle of parchment out of the fire.
Brisa was horrified and took off her apron, patting down the sizzling, burning document.
At last, when the embers died out, the Grand Duchess bent down and picked up the parchment document.
Brisa watched in distress as she held the document, blackened here and there, unfolded in both hands and examined it carefully.
What on earth was she supposed to do in a situation like this?
She vaguely felt she should stop her, but she had no idea what she should say.
While she was floundering, unable to do anything, the Grand Duchess, who had been scanning the blotchy parchment with cold eyes, threw it back into the fire.
For an instant, the flames flared fiercely and dyed her gaunt face red.
Brisa swallowed dryly.
The woman’s face, surrounded by firelight, had looked for an instant as if it were burning.
What on earth had been written there for her to make such an expression?
As Brisa looked back and forth with curious eyes between her pale face and the bundle of parchment engulfed in flames, the woman abruptly turned around and lay back down on the bed.
Brisa hesitantly approached her and carefully pulled the blanket over her delicate shoulders.
Then, suddenly, she saw tears flowing down the woman’s face and stopped breathing.
At the sight of the woman silently crying with an expression as if she had given up on everything, her heart dropped.
Without realizing it, Brisa hurriedly opened her mouth.
“...Please stay strong, Your Highness. With time...”
She was about to say it would get better, but swallowed the words.
Even to her own ears, it was a hollow comfort.
The Grand Duchess showed no reaction to those presumptuous words.
Looking at her with a helpless heart, Brisa ultimately could not continue with any suitable words and turned her head.
***
“At this rate, war will be unavoidable.”
Kailias, an elite knight of the Roem Knights, leaned his upper body over the table and spoke heavily.
Varkas, who had been leaning against the back of his chair and reading through the report he had brought, let out a cold sneer.
“Are you saying they did not do this intending to go to war?”
The man, noticing the mockery in his voice, flushed and defended the Emperor.
“His Majesty did his utmost to mediate the conflict.”
Varkas gave no reply.
Perhaps interpreting his silence as denial, the man continued in a rather heated tone.
“Sir Siarkan knows well how zealous the members of the Imperial Assembly are, does he not? The conservative members do not want the current order disturbed. On the other hand, the hardliners strain their necks, saying the dignity of the Imperial Family and the authority of the Empire must be set right. His Majesty was trying to accept both sides’ voices.”
“In other words, as a result, things have been driven into a neither-here-nor-there situation.”
The man, who had been about to retort with an indignant face, soon let his shoulders droop and ran a hand through his tangled hair.
“Isn’t that just what politics is? Everyone chases their own cause and dignity, and practical benefit gets thrown to the dogs.”
Varkas neither agreed nor denied it as he turned the final page of the report.
Because his vision was opaque as if a pale film covered it, reading took quite some time, but there was no major difficulty grasping the gist of the contents.
The core of the report was clear.
The groundwork he had done throughout the previous winter was on the verge of coming to nothing.
Varkas calmly accepted that fact and set the bundle of reports he was holding down on the desk.
All through the previous winter, he had mobilized every connection of House Siarkan to individually win over members of the northern alliance.
It had been to isolate House Heimdal, which stood at the center of the treason, within the north itself.
However, as the Imperial Family launched a large-scale restraint, Balto began to unite again.
The premature military threat had heightened the sense of crisis within them.
“As written in the report, the northern nobles Your Grace had persuaded have already begun withdrawing. Even those who have not are lying low, afraid of being treated as traitors to their people. If things are left this way, a rebellion really will break out.”
“Then it must be suppressed. There is no other choice.”
Varkas let out a tired sigh and rose from his chair, adding,
“Tell His Majesty that we must march on Amasek first before the north moves. The sooner, the better.”
At that calm reply, not only Kailias but even the vassals inside the meeting room looked flustered.
The knight hurriedly stepped forward to stop Varkas, who was trying to end the conversation one-sidedly.
“I came to ask Sir Siarkan to personally negotiate with House Heimdal. Some of the members of the northern alliance are still taking a neutral stance. If we cooperate with them and pressure the ducal house, it can still be settled...!”
“The line where things could be turned back has already been crossed.”
Varkas spoke dryly.
“His Majesty ignored my advice and gathered the imperial army all the way to Sevron. You know well that region is the north’s major granary. Did he threaten to take food away from starving beasts and expect not to be bitten?”
“Sir! Show respect. Using such irreverent language toward His Majesty the Emperor cannot be tolerated...!”
“Your Grace.”
Varkas cut him off coldly.
“I am no longer a Roem Knight, but Grand Duke Siarkan. You are the one who should show respect.”
The man’s face went pale.
Varkas silently watched him, then spoke in a composed tone.
“I will have a room prepared for you, so rest sufficiently and return with the telegram.”
“What should the telegram say...?”
“I intend to write that I will dispatch an additional three thousand cavalrymen to the Berta Plain to aid in suppressing the treason... Is there a problem?”
The man sprang up from his seat with a flustered face.
“If war breaks out, His Majesty will... surely want Your Grace the Grand Duke to take the position of commander-in-chief.”
“Then I should add one more line asking him to please withdraw that wish.”
Varkas added dryly and stepped toward the entrance of the meeting room.
Kailias quickly blocked his path.
“How do you intend to answer the telegram His Majesty sent?”
Varkas turned to him with a cold face.
In his muffled head, as if filled with water, he suddenly recalled that this man was an ardent follower of Ayla Roem Ghirta.
Come to think of it, he had even overstepped and argued fiercely over Varkas’s decision to marry Thalia.
This time as well, the man seemed to have forgotten his place.
The man raised his chin high, as if determined to hear an answer no matter what, and spoke clearly.
“His Majesty said that if Your Grace wishes, he would write as many divorce permits as needed. He said forcing such an unfair marriage in the first place was a mistake...”
“His Majesty the Emperor must think my marriage is a joke.”
Even to his own ears, his voice sounded somehow chilling.
As if sensing an instinctive threat, the man stepped back.
Tracking that movement with his eyes, Varkas slowly continued.
“Since you seem curious, I shall kindly answer you. I intend to report this to His Majesty.”
Varkas reached an arm past the man and braced it against a pillar, then murmured low in the knight’s face.
“I will say that I cannot cast aside my wife like an old shoe, unlike someone else, so please stop concerning himself with the family affairs of this disloyal subject.”
The knight’s face turned blue.
Varkas lightly tapped that pale cheek with his palm a couple of times and asked softly,
“Has your curiosity been satisfied now?”
The man glared at him with a stiff face, then bit his lip and lowered his eyes.
Varkas quietly looked down at him, then leisurely left the meeting room.
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