Bezewanst had dismissed his attendants and read over the latest letter from his beloved niece with a soft smile on his face, the pale glowing lines of the invisible ink reacting to his mana signature to reveal a message hidden to all but his eyes.
Despite the tough times she had to endure, being the third wife of a Greater Duchy that didn't view her as worth anything, things were finally starting to look up.
With the chalices that Bezewanst had been sneaking out of Ehrenfest, on top of Ehrenfest's own sudden rise in influence, Georgine had managed to buy her way into being the First Wife and was now getting the respect she deserved.
Not only that, her second daughter was now engaged to the Archduke's Second Wife's son, meaning that both would soon lose the right to succession, due to a very poorly thought out law created by their ancestors to hinder traitors.
Magic laws were not terribly difficult to make, but they were so hard to take back that most were rightfully afraid to make them. Only the truly paranoid or the truly self-righteous would do something so risky and insert a law into the Duchy's foundation.
Because of this, Ahrensbach will soon only have two possible heirs, the first son of the previous First Wife, and Georgine's youngest daughter.
(For those of you who know there is another, she would not have been publicly revealed yet, being pre-baptized and of the second, now third, wife.)
Georgine was one accident away from being the mother of the next Archduke of a Greater Duchy.
Everything was going perfectly for his favorite niece.
But Bezewanst's smile turned to a slight frown as he saw the end of the message, a plea for him to continue his support with more chalices to cement her position and help her buy more allies.
For this next Spring, that would be no problem. Veronica had even talked to Tohsaka about publicly offering assistance to Ahrensbach.
However, things would not remain that way for long.
This was going to be the last year that the girl would be in Ehrenfest. Once she left, roughly half of their mana would be gone. Once again, he would struggle to find mana to slip through the cracks into Ahrensbach in order to help Georgine.
If he wanted to support his niece, he would need a new source of mana.
Easier said than done.
It wasn't like he could go and drain the orphanage children of theirs. Those rejects weren't even worthy of being made Blue Priests. If they had any real mana, they wouldn't have lived long enough for Tohsaka to show mercy to them. Not to mention their bodies were immature.
All of them combined probably only had as much mana as your average Blue Priest. This might change in five years, but he couldn't wait that long.
He could try to secretly siphon donations from the Blue Priests and Priestesses who returned to noble society and were now graduating from the Academy. But those stuck up fools couldn't be trusted to keep their traps shut.
Not to mention that the High Priest, that bastard Ferdinand, was on to him. Missing chalices wouldn't continue to remain unnoticed for long.
He needed another way of sending the mana.
That was when it hit him.
There had been a rumor going around the Temple that one of the Gilberta Company girls, a child who regularly visited the Temple, had the Devouring and had nearly died from it.
A Devouring child who had returned from the edge of the abyss would have a considerable amount of mana. At least as much of a Midnoble.
If worked hard, she'd be able to prepare as many chalices as he had been sending by herself.
It was time for that commoner girl to be put to use.
Bezewanst grabbed a pen and his own special ink, a gift from Georgine, and started to write to her his plan, asking her to send a noble to help deliver the girl to Ahrensbach once she was captured.
Once done, he sealed the letter in the envelope, feeling his own mana being sucked out, causing it to turn into a small bird and fly through the window, passing through it without breaking it.
Bezewanst smiled as it left, knowing that he was helping the child he loved like his own daughter.
"I'm off." Angelica said as they stood in front of the teleportation circle meant to bring the students to the Royal Academy.
Being a first year student, Angelica's group was the last to go, with her one allowed attendant and pet Feybeast standing with her.
"You've prepared well enough to get through your classes, but I want you to take them seriously. And make sure you show off your swordsmanship. I want everyone to know that my personally chosen knight is the best in her year." Rin said, giving the girl her encouragement.
"Right. I'll fight with everyone who is willing." Angelica declared.
"Please try not to get in trouble." Lieseleta said, not liking her sister's enthusiasm, as she remembered the disastrous meeting between her and Lord Wilfried.
"...Why would I get in trouble?" Angelica said, with an innocent tilt of her head.
"Angelica…" Lieseleta sighed, getting a pat on the head from her big sister.
"Look after Rin while I am gone." Angelica said with a smile before turning and leaving the party to go to school for the first time.
…Rin wished she could go with her to make sure she would be alright.
While a natural born warrior, she was too innocent for noble society, and Rin would have cursed to death anyone who tried to bully her.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Rin would not be at the Academy with her this year. Angelica would have to do this alone.
"Please… Please don't let them get hurt." Lieseleta said, holding her hands together as if in prayer.
Rin smiled. "Don't worry. Your sister is stronger than your average child."
"That is exactly what I am worried about."
Rin chuckled at this before turning to her new Knights and Attendant, her expression serious. "Theresia, have all of the preparations for tonight's tea party complete?" She asked the Sovereignty attendant.
"Yes. Lady Tohsaka." The woman said with a bow, trying to hide her exhaustion.
Theresia was a middle aged woman in her late forties, who Rin didn't trust as far as she could throw her. Her hair was a starch white and tied up in a relatively loose manner, in the style of many women who were of that age.
Theresia was a widow who almost certainly killed her husband and step-son in order to put her own son in position to inherit the family, not that anything could be proven. She had at least three major political connections she didn't mention when asked, and was selected to try to gather information about Rin's backers.
She knew the political game and was a player, despite her status as an 'Attendant'.
Because she had been recommended by the King's First Wife, Rin couldn't simply fire her without it being taken as a slight against the Queen.
Rin's current solution for her was to work her to death. Or at least get her to quit on her own.
Rin was surprised she didn't quit immediately, after being forced to hand deliver letters of invitation to Lords across the entire Duchy for Rin's little tea party, instead of sending the invitations by magic. Not to mention being forced to organize the party while being kept in the dark about what was even going on.
The level of frustration the woman was experiencing was evident, but she still refused to just quit already. How annoying. Rin would have to think of a way to kick it up a notch.
Compared to Theresia, Rin found herself not minding Abigail and Sylphina.
While they hadn't been wanted, the fact that they were set up to be abandoned in the end meant that they had everything to lose if they were caught betraying Rin, as their lives as nobles would be effectively over if they ever left her services.
Their only real open was to trust that she was being honest when she said she wouldn't fire them if their secret got out.
They were basically the perfect guards for Rin… except for one small detail.
Unlike Brigitte, who looked like she was a 25-year-old model at the age of 15, and Angelica's fairy-like appearance, Abigail and Sylphina each had more of a girl-next-door kind of appearance.
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with that. In fact, they probably looked pretty cute while they were in school. It was just that tradition was that when girls came of age, whether they were commoners or nobles, they would start to tie their hair up.
Abigail wore her honey blond hair in a single bun, while Sylphina's deep green hair was in a double bun with a strip tied up in the back. Neither looked particularly good with their facial features and their armor.
The fact that they willingly went with tradition despite how bad it suited them annoyed Rin, especially since she knew that people would expect her to tie her hair up someday as well.
Yeah, no. That was not happening. She wasn't going to let people tell her how to wear her hair.
The only time that Abigail and Sylphina let their hair down was when they were alone in their own chambers, when no one was looking.
Chambers which were right next to each other, had magical locks on the doors, and were sound proofed by Rin herself, as a means of buying the girls' loyalty. Something that Rihyarda didn't like, but lacked the status necessary to stop.
Rin wondered who Rihyarda would end up as the Attendant of when she was gone, and how many of her secrets she would expose.
While Rihyarda was 'neutral', she served whomever the Aub told her to serve. If the next person she was assigned to was Wilfried, Charlotte or Florensia, she could easily be told to expose her secrets to them. Like she had when Rin grilled her about what she witnessed while serving Veronica, Georgine and Ferdinand, giving her a good idea of the kinds of skeletons that exist in those three's closets.
Rihyarda didn't know anything about Rin's magecraft or history, and she didn't care if the woman revealed how casually she spoke at times, but she could easily expose Abigail and Sylphina's secret… which would be annoying.
"Milady." Theresia said as they walked towards Rin's meeting room for her pre-party discussion with Benno about the goods that were going to be showcased. "I've been meaning to ask. Those invites you had me send. They were addressed to three Archnoble houses from each of Ehrenfest's major factions, were they not?"
So she already knew about the major factions in Ehrenfest, did she? She worked fast.
"That is correct." Rin said casually.
"Would it not have been better to favor your own faction instead of treating them all equally?" Theresia said.
"Hm. That would probably be the case, if I was part of any faction."
"You aren't?" Theresia exclaimed in shock. "But surely someone like yourself would have been able to attract a faction to support you."
"Oh, I did. All of them in fact. I just give none of them preferential treatment." Rin openly admitted. "Siding with factions is important when you have limited resources that you have to work with and need to decide how to split them up among the people. But for my purposes, people are the most limited of resources. Alienating any of the groups would be counterproductive. Though I suppose my time is a pretty limited resource."
"But… If you don't have a faction, how were you planning on securing a position for yourself and your future children?" Theresia said in disbelief.
"I never had any intention of becoming Aub. Nor do I have any intention of becoming Zent now. While those positions have great political power, politics is stupid and I want as little to do with it as humanly possible. Besides, if I became Zent, my businesses would become part of the Kingdom's funds, meaning I wouldn't have full control over it anymore. Do you know the kind of power I would have to give up in order to become King?"
"That's…" Theresia stammered, her mind not able to compute such a statement as they reached the room where Benno was waiting for her.
The standard greetings went out and Rin blessed Benno off-handedly, before the meeting started.
"Mark, take Theresia with you and explain to her who is to receive what. After that, I want you to check on the kitchen to make sure everything is in order. As my Attendant, that is your job when hosting these parties." Rin told Theresia who nodded, not showing any signs of her internal scream of frustration. She left and the meeting started for real. "Be at ease and don't worry about Abigail and Sylphina. They will keep my secrets. Now. How are the products looking?"
"Everything is still in the prototype stage, but it still produced results good enough to be displayed." Benno said, before getting a new servant that Rin recognized as a former Gray Priest to unpacked the pieces.
A new metal alloy that was more rust resistant. Plastic and plexiglass. Bamboo cloth and synthetic fibers. Makeup and perfumes. A new style of dress. Several types of paper and printed materials. Their new type of sugar. And finally, the hard liquors, brandy, scotch and vodka.
"Time to see what people are interested in." Rin said after inspecting the goods.
They weren't up to the standards of the modern day, but they would do as proof of concept.
"Hopefully they will let us expand into their territories more. We are finding it difficult to find more laborers in the city of Ehrenfest." Benno said with a weak chuckle.
In a little more than a year, he'd gone from being the owner of a clothing store worth around a hundred gold coins and with twenty employees, a respectable business for any commoner merchant, to being the head of a mega cooperation worth 100,000 gold coins and employing enough people to populate a small city.
One in twenty people in the lower city now worked for the Gilberta Company in one way or another. The man basically controlled the city of Ehrenfest.
It was all going so blisteringly fast that Benno's head was spinning. The Merchant's Guild that had originally tried to suppress him was at risk of being devoured by him.
"We have half a bell until it starts. Let's go and prepare our display case."
"Wow! This stuff is strong!" Sylvester shouted, staring at his drink after a coughing fit that had left many people pale, wondering if the Gilberta Company had decided to poison the Archduke, knowing that Rin couldn't be expected to demonstrate an alcoholic drink first.
"I suppose it is stronger than what you are used to." Rin said, holding back her cheeky smile. "Using new technologies, we have drastically increased the alcohol content of the wine. While the usual wine you drink has an alcohol content of around 8%, that one is sitting at 42%. We are calling it brandy. If it is too strong, might I suggest diluting it a bit with water?"
Understanding that it wasn't poisoned and with the promise of a wine that was five times stronger than what they were used to, the nobles flocked to it out of curiosity, the men tried desperately to drink it as is, while many women followed Rin's suggestion and added a bit of water.
The alcohols were popular, as was the makeup among the women, who were taken aside one by one to have it applied. There was also quite a bit of celebration about a cheap sugar substitute that could be produced locally, among everyone but the representative from Ahrensbach, who was sweating bullets because all of the sugar imports up until now had been coming through their ports. Though the promise of new exports was appealing to them.
Rin was a little annoyed that the vanity products were what were receiving the most attention, while the things that were revolutionary were mostly ignored. Mostly because they were a bigger deal for commoners than nobles.
Only Veronica and Elvira paid close attention to the new types of cloth, while Professor Moritz and Ferdinand stared at the plastic and plexiglass, as well as the paper products.
"High Priest, what are you doing here?" Rin asked, knowing for a fact that she had NOT sent him an invitation to this party.
"I merely wished to see what wondrous things you had managed to come up with this time. Our products truly are magnificent." Ferdinand said with the smile that he always wore whenever Veronica was around.
The one that sent a cold shiver up Rin's spine, though more than half the women in the room, including Rin's new guard knights, had strong blushes whenever they saw it.
It seemed that Ferdinand was something of a legend at the Academy, and Abigail and Sylphina had been there during his final year and witnessed him playing the part of the God of Darkness at the Dedication Whirl. His feminine features, due to his long braided blue hair at the time, twisting the ten-year-old girls' sense of physical attraction away from normal men.
"That is very nice, but next time, tell us beforehand. It would be shameful if we had not had enough extra to spare on you." Rin said, wondering if she should just kick him out under the pretense of not having prepared enough for him, but deciding against making a scene.
The party continued with the nobles tasting several different kinds of liquor and asking Rin a few questions about prediction requirements and what each individual territory would be best suited for, until a messenger came into the hall.
The young knight whispered something to Karstedt, who passed it on to Sylvester. The Archduke looked surprised before a wide grin spread across his face. "Everyone, I have an announcement to make!" He shouted, getting the attention of the hall. "I just received word from the Knights' Order that the fledgling Lord of Winter was discovered yesterday at Tyoh Ridge, exactly where Tohsaka said it would be!"
People in the room began to whisper in confusion, some not having heard that Rin had predicted the location of the next Lord of Winter and needing to be filled in.
Sylvester didn't care as he raised up his glass. "My people, let us toast, as for the first time in our generation, Ehrenfest will see a Winter without blizzards!"
Cheers went out from the crowd, with many giving thanks to the 'Saint of Spring' and several ambitious nobles attempted to down their wine glasses full of vodka in one go, causing quite the comical scene.
Not that any cared as noble masks broke and rival factions smiled at one another in bliss. For a year without blizzards in Ehrenfest was a blessing from the Gods. The hope of never seeing them again was enough to bring them to tears.
Not that Rin understood this. "Aren't they overreacting?" She asked as an Archnoble from the Leisegang gave a Veronica Faction Archnoble a hug.
"You completely lack any understanding of what you have done." Ferdinand said, his bright noble smile turning into a softer, more genuine one. "You've just saved the lives of thousands and brought hope for a brighter future and you don't even understand what it is that you did. You don't have any understanding of scope of what you did."
"She never has." Benno agreed, forgetting for a moment that he was surrounded by nobles.
"No. You all just don't understand what the word 'big' means." Rin huffed, before becoming tense as Sylvester went down on one knee in front of her, shocking everyone in the room as he gave thanks to the girl who had done so much for his people.
Several other nobles then followed his example until all of the most important people in Ehrenfest were kneeling before her.
…Well, this was getting awkward.
A territory that usually has blizzards that last around 1 month out of every year now is told that they might never see them again. It is a pretty big deal.
"Do you have any idea how much power I would have to give up in order to become President?"
Lex Luther's villain speech in Justice League Unlimited.