"I present the keys to the city of Genoa to the Saint."
"The keys to the city have been securely received."
September, Year 1512 of the Continental Calendar.
Saint Jacqueline Longwy entered Genoa and presided over the handover ceremony. Genoa was officially transferred from the Habsburg Empire to the Great Temple of Athena. The citizens of Genoa, witnessing this sight, cried out in rapturous cheers.
"Long live the Saint! Long live Her Holiness!"
"Glory to the Goddess Athena!"
Thanks to the Saint, they had escaped a fate that would have seen them reduced to slaves. Those people would probably shout "If the Saint says so, it must be possible!" even if she claimed she could grind a table into melon juice. The Saint smiled radiantly and waved to those around her. The cries of adoration grew even more fervent. She certainly knows politics.
After the handover ceremony concluded, we moved to the study in the residence. Only three of us entered the room—the Saint, Daisy, and myself.
"And what was that ridiculous spectacle all about? If you were going to prepare something like that, you should have at least told me beforehand."
The moment we stepped into the study, the Saint's expression did a complete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, as if her earlier smile had been nothing but a lie. She looked less like she'd been served melon juice and more like she'd been chewing on a cockroach. They say a woman's transformation is innocent, but perhaps an exception could be made for the Saint—a guilty verdict wouldn't be unwarranted. Your Honor, I submit that this woman is a witch.
"So we were supposed to draw up the contract in private, stamp it, and call it a day? The whole point of this was to put on a show for the citizens. All things considered, it went fairly well for something we didn't prepare in advance."
"I thought you'd barely made it here after racing across the land for half a month, and you thrust a speech at me without so much as a word! Court Count, you have absolutely no idea how to handle people!"
I couldn't understand why she was angry. Hadn't I written that speech myself? Thanks to that moving address, the hearts of Genoa's citizens had landed squarely in the Saint's palm, thumping away with devotion. If anything, I deserved a word of thanks.
"Yeah, yeah."
"Don't give me halfhearted answers when someone is talking to you! Stop shrugging! And quit smirking! Do you have any idea how infuriating your gestures are!?"
"In front of people other than the Saint, I manage just fine, actually. You're getting special treatment. You should be flattered."
"I wish you'd just drop dead already...!"
Grinding her teeth and glaring daggers, this was the twenty-eight-year-old Saint Jacqueline Longwy—self-proclaimed and universally acknowledged as the person working harder than anyone else in the world for the sake of peace between the continent and its races.
I turned my gaze to Daisy. As always, Daisy was neatly dressed in her maid's uniform.
"Daisy."
"Yes, Father."
"I heard from the Saint. She said you were a great help in recruiting mercenaries. It seems your head has grown enough to pull your own weight after all."
I placed my hand on Daisy's bangs and gave them a light pat.
"You've worked hard."
"……."
"For now, continue attending to the Saint. I'm currently moving with the Minister of Military Affairs. It wouldn't be good for you to show your face."
"Yes. Understood... Father."
Laura and Daisy were like cats and dogs. Surprisingly, the victim, Daisy, seemed to think nothing of Laura, but Laura couldn't hide her discomfort whenever she saw Daisy. I didn't want to leave the two of them alone in the same space if I could help it.
I turned my gaze back.
"Now then. Shall we discuss the plan going forward?"
"...Huh? Ah. Yes."
For some reason, the Saint was staring over here with a slightly dazed expression. I furrowed my brow. My glance said, "What's with that blank look?" The Saint then narrowed her eyes and spoke.
"You're surprisingly... kind to your daughter?"
"Pfft!"
The unexpected remark made laughter burst from my mouth.
"Kind? Me to Daisy? You're taking the joke too far, Saint Longwy."
"Just a moment ago, from any angle, it looked like a somewhat stern father and a dutiful daughter. You don't need to be embarrassed."
The Saint before me smiled smugly, having apparently gotten something firmly into her head. It was exactly the expression of a kitten. The one that says, "I know everything about you, you know." Unfortunately, just like a kitten, the intelligence of Saint Longwy was also quite lacking.
"I was wondering why Miss Daisy works so hard despite her young age, but there was a reason after all. Miss Daisy, is Dantalion, the Court Count, a kind father?"
The Saint, beaming with delight, bent down to meet Daisy's eye level. It was a complete case of treating her like a child. As it happened, being treated like a brat was the second thing Daisy hated most in the world.
"Yes. Father is always extremely kind."
"Oh my, oh my. Well, I never. Here I was thinking the Court Count would arrive spewing every disease and curse known to man, all with the air of someone insisting the world may have demons but they don't actually exist, yet at home he's so gentle..."
"Every time I make a mistake, he tortures me through the night. But he is plenty kind."
The Saint of Longwy's smile froze on her face, exactly as it was.
"I'm sorry?"
"The most recent torture was four months ago, actually. While mediating disputes between the villages in the Custos territory, I neglected the interests of one village. I filed the paperwork incorrectly. That day, I had to sit on a triangular stocks from early evening until dawn while candle wax was dripped all over my body as punishment."
Ah, in this case even I couldn't have stopped Daisy from saying it. Truthfully, I didn't want to stop her. Intentionally or not, the Saint had insulted Daisy. So she should pay the price.
"Um... Excuse me...?"
The Saint looked at me. Her eyes, filled with bewilderment, were asking: *Is this real? Or are you joking?* I shrugged.
"Because Daisy mistyped three letters, seven hundred and fifty villagers nearly suffered consequences. A person who will one day bear responsibility for countless lives cannot be allowed to make mistakes. It was a fitting punishment — and honestly, if anything, it was a rather light one."
"..."
While the Saint sat there dumbstruck, Daisy continued.
"Six months ago, on March 16th, I made an error while torturing a suspect. I was supposed to remove the liver, but I removed the lungs instead. Until the lungs regenerated, the suspect could only make inane noises, which nearly disrupted the interrogation process."
"T-torture?"
"Yes. That day, Father administered a drug that amplified sensation several hundredfold, then had me hung on a remote section of the castle wall. It was a place where the wind blew fiercely. Every time the wind touched my skin, I had to endure agony akin to death."
I furrowed my brow. There was a serious error in what Daisy had just said. I felt the need to correct it.
"Don't be stupid. That was March 17th."
"No. It was definitely the 16th."
The two of us stared each other down.
"Wasn't it the day we tortured Valefor? March 17th — that's right."
"Father was attacked on March 15th, and the interrogation started that very day. So the 15th, the 16th — it was the 16th. He revealed nothing on the 15th. On the 17th, he confessed everything. Surely you can remember at least that much?"
I stroked my chin.
"……Hmm. The 16th does seem right."
"See? Father's memory is excessively poor."
Daisy let out a derisive snort.
"I sometimes suspect senile dementia. Are you really sure you don't need me to attend to you all the way to the bathroom?"
"Quiet. Your memory is abnormally good. I'm not so pathetic that anyone would look down on me."
While we waged our fierce battle of nerves, Saint Longwy stared at us with the hollow eyes of a soul that had already departed the body. The saint spoke cautiously.
"Um. The two of you are... adoptive father and adopted daughter, correct?"
"Yes."
"That's right, but — Saint Longwy."
The saint pressed her hand to her forehead.
"Do you... cherish each other... or despise each other...?"
"I despise her."
"I do despise him."
"……? ……?"
The saint wore the same baffled expression as an 18th-century mathematician staring down Fermat's Last Theorem.
"So you're saying you don't cherish each other?"
"No."
"That's a little different."
If some bastard dared to lay a hand on Daisy carelessly, I would tear their mouth apart, shove it up their ass, then quarter them at the Namdaemun Gate and put them on display. This was no joke. Last time the one who'd touched her was Laura, so I'd settled for a flogging — nothing more.
"Saint Longwy, do you perhaps believe that in order to care for someone, you must first like them?"
"Well, isn't that obvious...?"
It was the most pathetic answer imaginable.
I shook my head back and forth. From beside me came the sound of Daisy snorting.
"This is exactly why you can't have a sheltered young lady who's grown up inside a temple knowing nothing of the world. Do you think human relationships and psychology can be neatly split into like and dislike? Good grief. There's even the famous saying, 'Rather than lukewarm friendship, outright hostility is better,' but I doubt Saint Longwy could understand that even if she spent a lifetime trying. I find it hard to fathom why anyone would choose to lug their head around on such a heavy neck."
"Truly. Pretty face and all, yet at nearly thirty years old, I have no idea what she's been learning all her life."
"............."
Tossed by the one-two punch of me and Daisy, Saint Longwy apparently gave up on thinking altogether.
It was quite some time before expression returned to the Saint's face. She radiated an air of firm, steely resolve.
"I'm sorry, Court Count."
"Please, go ahead."
"Please replace my personal handmaiden immediately."
That night. I labored furiously over a schedule that would keep Laura and Daisy's paths from crossing.
After the Grand Duke of Florence had died so horribly, the Kingdom of Sardinia had become extremely passive.
The royal army flatly refused to engage us in open battle. Instead, whenever we showed a weakness, they were ready to sink their teeth in — they targeted our supply lines with ruthless precision. A textbook guerrilla campaign.
Word had it that this strategy was strongly advocated by Consul Elisabeth. She had apparently declared that "facing the Imperial Army head-on is suicide." Together with the Duke of Milan, who had already been pushing for guerrilla tactics, the Kingdom of Sardinia huddled like a hedgehog.
Thanks to that, our forces could pillage and plunder the kingdom at will.
"Burn it all to the ground."
Whether the militia huddled in their fortress and put up a universal defense or not, they couldn't drag all their homes and possessions inside. We seized anything that could fetch even a handful of coin. Anything too massive to carry away was burned to the ground.
Regions without fortresses — areas that weren't strategically important and hadn't been developed much — tasted nothing short of hell. In those places, a storm of blood swept through without fail. The "Elisabeth Strategy" forced every remaining province, except for the handful of vital cities, to be sacrificed.
Elisabeth's strategy was efficient, but it came at a terrible cost. The farmers who were being sacrificed, along with their representatives, fiercely denounced the Kingdom's forces. In the end, Elisabeth had no choice but to march out with her army.
That was where the problem erupted.
Elisabeth led roughly twenty thousand troops to contain us. Contain, not attack — she peppered us with threatening shots just to keep us from pillaging freely.
It was around then that one of our detachment squads, through sheer bad luck, stumbled right into Elisabeth's encirclement. For her, it must have been a golden opportunity.
However.
"Not a single casualty, Your Grace the Grand Duke!"
For reasons unknown, Elisabeth let our detachment slip right through and escape. Apparently she claimed she had "accidentally" let them get away.
The Sardinians were outraged by this pathetic display.