After Alfonso's warm and sincere consolation, Ariadne cleared her head and lay down on the bed.
Alfonso asked Ariadne, running his hand through his sweaty hair.
“When you have worries, exercise is the best, right?”
She asked back with a dubious look on her face.
“...Was this exercise?”
“Can’t you exercise?”
Alfonso said with a smile that made his teeth look white.
“Then next time you...”
Ariadne's face turned bright red, and she slapped Alfonso on the arm.
The most annoying thing was how he smiled so brightly as if he had done nothing wrong while talking nonsense. Alfonso laughed heartily and hugged her again.
“Don’t think about it.”
In that sense, exercise was the best prescription.
“Just live each day faithfully.”
“Ugh...”
If she didn't exercise voluntarily, he planned to make her do a lot of it.
Ariadne, not knowing what evil plan Alfonso was plotting, lay in his arms and wondered if it was right.
Cardinal de Mare was soon to step down from his position as Cardinal, which meant he would have to vacate the mansion as well.
Although every rafter and pillar of this house was touched by Cardinal de Mare's hands, it was still an official residence.
Alfonso whispered in her ear.
“Everything will be okay.”
She didn't agree at all, but she didn't bother to argue with it.
He was a man who had come dressed up and brought all his luggage with him just to put her at ease. He didn't want to bother her.
However, she was a little annoyed at the thought of how a man who knew he had to vacate the mansion could say such a comforting story.
Instead of fighting, Ariadne sighed deeply.
Knock knock.
Then there was a cautious knock at the door.
“My lady, this is Sancha. I apologize for your busy schedule. I was told that something urgent was going on outside at the moment.”
Ariadne searched frantically for something to do inside.
When the owner, who had been told to come out, did not come out and only a rustling sound was heard, Sancha, who had roughly figured out the situation, blushed and relayed the message from outside.
“I’ll just say it here! The palace wants your confirmation of attendance at the Thanksgiving Ball.”
“What? I didn’t get an invitation?”
“Yes... I knew that too, so I said I didn’t get an invitation...”
Leo III's officials were arrogant.
“This year, instead of sending out invitations from the palace like before and receiving a yes or no reply, they said that families with the rank of Count or higher must attend, and that families that do not wish to attend should notify separately that they are absent.”
The distress of the child was evident in her voice.
“A palace official is standing in the hallway right now. He wants a definitive answer right now. What should I do?”
Sancha was now a fairly seasoned manager. She could handle most situations.
But this was the first time that managers barged in and caused trouble.
Ariadne looked at Alfonso with eyes that asked if he had heard of it. Alfonso washed his face dry at his father's antics.
In fact, strictly speaking, this was an incident that occurred due to Leo III's stubbornness and the incompetence of his subordinates.
Recently, there have been more instances of nobles living in the capital moving down to their family estates.
This happened during the time of the great plague, but even after the Black Death subsided, they did not return to the capital.
The great nobles led the procession home as a sign of their protest against Leo III's hostility towards the great lords.
Unaisola's declaration of free cities was decisive. The minor nobles within their sphere of influence also followed suit.
And in fact, Unaisola was not the only problem. Leo III was consistently losing points in a variety of ways.
Just looking at the fact that those who left the capital were people of all kinds, such as the Marquis of Salvati, who went down on the pretext of a great plague and has yet to return home, the Marquis of Guatieri, who went down on the pretext of illness, and the old Marquis of Montefeltro, who went down on the pretext of old age, it was clear that they were people of all kinds.
Now, except for the court nobles who did not have separate estates in the provinces, the number of nobles permanently residing in the capital was much lower than before.
However, those who remained in the capital were not friendly to Leo III.
The nobles, realizing that getting involved with the King only caused trouble, began to avoid attending large gatherings unless there was an urgent matter to attend, such as a daughter who needed to be married off or a business partner who absolutely had to be met.
Men gathered in groups of three or four for a tasting, and women gathered in groups of three or four for a tea party.
With the popularity of the balls held by the King dropping, Leo III issued a warning to his subordinates, saying, "Make sure that no one misses this Thanksgiving Ball."
With Count Contarini absent and both Marquez and Baldessar busy, only Lord Delpiano, who had written the book, was running around here and there.
Sir Delpiano, who was short-handed, ended up throwing out unrefined ideas to his subordinates.
It was a nasty habit he had picked up from Leo III.
“How about changing it so that those who come unconditionally and those who don’t come have to notify separately?”
The King's incompetent staff interpreted this as a story of "If you don't show up, you'll get caught, so do whatever you want", as if they were going to drag you out if you didn't even get an invitation.
Sir Delpiano, who had planned to send an ordinary invitation and write something like 'If you plan to attend, please reply' instead of 'If you do not plan to attend, please reply', was too busy to double-check how things were going... This is the current situation as a result.
“...Even if you say you’re not going, they won’t drag you along or anything.”
Ariadne looked at Alfonso with a face that said, “Is that true?” Alfonso sighed and answered Sancha instead.
“There is nothing unusual!”
He asked Ariadne with his eyes, 'You weren't planning on not attending, were you?'
Ariadne nodded. She had no intention of doing anything different to stand out. Alfonso said with a deep sigh.
“Tell them I’m going.”
Ariadne looked at Alfonso with a slight sense of anxiety. Alfonso looked back at Ariadne, who was covered only with bed sheets.
The single-layer sheet flowed gracefully along the curves of the body.
Through the dramatic shadows, Ariadne's slender thighs were revealed through a crack in the sheet, past her sunken waist.
Alfonso smacked his lips. No matter how thin the bed sheets were, they were thicker than the fabric of the dress, so he wondered if they would be okay.
“...I don’t want to show it to anyone.”
He pulled the goose-down quilt over her and covered her just below her chin. He wished the dresses worn by women in the palace were made of goose-down quilts.
“Because work has to be done.”
Alfonso was thinking of slowly bringing Ariadne into the palace. He whispered in Ariadne's ear.
“Let’s go into the Prince’s palace and live there now.”
Ariadne was so startled that she threw off the goose down quilt that covered her and stood up.
***
Agosto woke up in bed with a grumpy expression. It was that dream again.
'Ahsal Aliha.' (Take her.)
In his dream, Isabella appeared smiling brightly.
She met his eyes, looked into the window of his mind, and smiled. It was quite different from the real Isabella.
The Isabella he actually meets has a sharp face, and her expression when dealing with Agosto, or rather, Akirilou, is close to expressionless.
It was not because she showed any feelings towards him, but because ahd treated him with the same level of importance as a bed, a chair, an agosto, a door, or a dinner stew.
Strictly speaking, dinner stew comes before Agosto.
'Take her? How?'
But he couldn't ignore this dream. This prophetic dream was always right.
As a priest serving God in his homeland, he was the man closest to being the next high priest.
His father, AkkiRaun, 'the Eye of God', was the spiritual leader of the Amhara tribe, and his family had been priests for eight generations.
Akirilou was also known as the 'Staff of God', and was the one who received revelations and led the tribe.
It was absurd for him to leave the Moorish Empire and the Amhara tribe. But the dream whispered.
'Go, Eliom.' (Leave today.)
It was a powerful revelation that he felt he had to follow. On the day he left the capital, half in doubt, his adversary arrived in the city.
And the adversary brutally murdered his father. He questioned the dream.
'Was he destined to kill me?'
The dream just smiled and did not answer.
In a past life that Agosto does not remember, he killed his adversary, became a murderer, and ran away from his tribe.
In this life, he was given a way to return to his tribe in exchange for sacrificing his father.
The dream was him, and he was the dream.
Agosto, Akirilou was determined to achieve in this life the success he had failed to achieve in his past life.
Even using himself as a tool.
***
Ariadne complained to the old priestess whom she had not seen in a long time.
“So, let’s pack our bags and go to the palace right now!”
There were too many problems piling up to enter the palace right now.
When she goes to the Prince's palace, it becomes much more difficult to meet the old lady shaman who will cast a spell on her hand.
There was also the question of where Prince Louis Gallico would reside.
But all of those things were secondary. First of all, the biggest problem was how to explain the purpose of the foreign woman's residence in the Prince's palace.
The grandmother asked Ariadne with a face full of interest.
“So, you said you would come in?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
The Moorish grandmother had a bad habit: she pretended to know everything.
Ariadne, who was always annoyed by her Moorish grandmother's boast that she 'knew everything' no matter what it was, took it back.
“Didn’t you know everything about the goddess?”
Ariadne said the word 'goddess' that her grandmother had taught her in a twisted Etruscan pronunciation. Her grandmother's expression distorted.
“Do you think life can be eaten up like that?! Don’t call the gods of heaven and earth like that!”
“Ah, the goddess knows everything and is so amazing! She knows what cinnamon tastes like without even trying it!”
“That’s different! If you don’t understand it, don’t even try to apply it! You ignorant guy!”
The old shaman grumbled and complained as she ground pieces of talc in an old mortar to make a fine powder.
Ariadne felt a little scared when her grandmother seemed to be really upset. She asked in a soft tone, asking for reconciliation.
“How is Ishmael?”
Ishmael was an Etruscan name given to the grandson of the grandmother when he arrived in the Central Continent.
As soon as the story of her grandchild came up, the grandmother's face lit up, and she began to brag about her grandchild.
“They say he's the fastest at math at school. He's good at sports and calcio! He has a lot of friends around him, so my house is always bustling.”
What is gained must also be lost. The grandson had forgotten the language of Balasa-Ordo, and even apart from the language, he could no longer communicate well with his grandmother.
He was also indifferent to the stories of his whispering ancestors and the ghosts of the land. Unlike his grandmother, who lived in the past, he had perfectly adapted to the new land.
Ariadne was purely delighted at the news of Ishmael.
“That’s great! I knew Ishmael was good at sports. He’s the best calcio player in Scuola de Greta.”
"Yes?"
“If you’re more talented at sports than at bookkeeping, why not try becoming an apprentice knight?”
“...As long as you have fun, that’s fine.”
The boy was so absorbed in becoming the soccer captain that he forgot his old wish of becoming a hero who would go down in the history of the Central Continent.
It was sad, but it was what the old woman wanted. Nothing in the world was without its pros and cons.
He had no intention of ordering the knight, but if the child likes it, it might be okay. The old woman, who had come to this conclusion, suddenly threw out some words of comfort.
“Your father, too. Don’t be too discouraged.”
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