Chapter 71

At that, even the workers further inside came pouring out to say hello.

"What kind of eggs today?"

"Steamed ones."

"This stuff — I could eat it forever and never get sick of it, and there's so many ways to cook them. I'll be thinking about these even after I head home."

The workers cracked eggs and shoveled them into their mouths.

"This one's nicely salty too!"

"Salt the eggs first and then steam them — that's the trick. Try it when you get home."

The workers had been so intimidated by Lyssel at first that they hadn't known where to look, but now they could hold an ordinary conversation with him standing right there.

That said, they weren't exactly chummy with him either.

---

A territory didn't come together overnight, so there was still a lot left to build.

The jeweler had been given his own house and workshop too.

When he saw them, he'd been so overcome that he'd burst into tears — the same way the Habil family had.

She hadn't realized it before, but apparently almost no jewelers had their own workshops.

Most were commoners who scraped by working under jewelry shops or under noble patronage.

In fact, that jeweler had been running his own workshop until he'd gotten tangled up with the wrong noble, ended up in a lawsuit, and nearly ended up out on the street.

"None of that's going to happen here, so do whatever you want. There's no shortage of stones."

"Yes. Yes. Thank you so much."

Watching the jeweler bow his head, the Habil family patted his shoulders like they understood exactly what he was feeling.

"Your Highness!"

It was right then.

A servant came running up at a frantic sprint.

When her face creased with what now? he shouted —

"Th-the territory residents!"

"Territory residents?"

"There are people here — they've come!"

"Huh?"

"They're asking to be taken in. As residents of Lecashe!!"

The servant's face was flushed red with excitement.

Iberin blinked slowly, then let out a startled Whaaat?

"Let's go see."

Lyssel patted her shoulder as if to settle her down, and they followed the servant who'd run for them back to the entrance.

The group wasn't huge, but there really were people there. Every one of them looked terrible.

The moment they spotted Lyssel, they dropped flat to the dirt.

"W-we heard that residents would be taken in with no conditions… so we came…."

Lyssel slowly looked them over.

None of them carried any luggage — they were empty-handed.

They'd clearly fled in a hurry, too. Barefoot, every one of them.

"…Come inside, for now."

The gates had been open to take in residents to begin with.

As long as they hadn't committed a crime, anyone was welcome.

"…Wash them up and get them something to eat first. We'll talk after that."

You could tell at a glance they hadn't had anything resembling a meal in days, and she wanted them rested first.

---

They turned out to be people from the Alketa and Roman territories.

They didn't know each other beforehand — they'd heard the rumors about Lecashe and ended up running into one another on the way.

Asked about their status, none of them were slaves, and as long as there was nothing else amiss, taking them in seemed fine.

The first day, all she thought was these people must have been really struggling.

But then.

"They came again?"

"Yes…. More than last time."

The number of people fleeing the surrounding territories was steadily climbing.

"That seems fast."

"At this rate we might run into problems."

A noble wasn't going to lose sleep over one or two residents going missing, but if the numbers kept growing, that changed everything.

"How many is that now?"

"Thirty-four in total."

That was the count of people who'd come to Lecashe over the past few days.

In one sense it wasn't huge, but it had piled up over just a handful of days.

If anything, the numbers looked more likely to keep climbing than to slow.

"What do we do?"

"What else? We take them in."

"Understood."

They'd come grasping at straws — there was no way she'd turn them away.

"But the numbers are only going to grow."

"It must be bad for them to come here at all."

"Truly."

She'd thought that even though Lecashe was strong and had openly declared it would accept residents, people wouldn't actually come.

There was the monster problem, too.

For them to come knowing all of that meant the abuse in the surrounding territories had to be past the breaking point.

Iberin clicked her tongue.

"…Even commoners have ears and mouths."

"Oh — the ijet?"

"More than the gemstones, I think they figured they wouldn't have to starve here."

"Huh?"

"We started trading food with House Marquis Bilson, remember?"

"Word's traveled that fast?"

"Words don't need legs to move. And there are workers staying in our territory now too."

"Ah…."

It had to be thanks to the workers Count Elton had sent.

They weren't bound here as Lecashe residents — they'd go out to nearby territories whenever they needed supplies.

The rumor must have spread through them, by word of mouth.

"It doesn't matter how the other nobles react."

It wasn't as if those people had wanted to abandon their homes.

She hadn't expected the resident count to climb this fast, but she'd known that as the territory grew, there'd be some friction.

So Lyssel said going forward, anyone who knocked should be let in.

---

Lawyer Nais.

He'd never been this busy in his life — not since the day he'd passed the bar.

"Come on in."

"Hello, Lawyer Nais!"

A small child walked in carrying a basket packed with steamed potatoes.

"Aila — again? I told you to stop bringing things."

"But my mother said she's so grateful, she made me bring them…."

"…I keep saying it's really not necessary."

"And I want you to have them too! Potatoes aren't much, but I wanted to give you something!"

"I've told you over and over, the reason I was able to help your father…"

"It's thanks to Grand Duke Lecashe! And the Grand Duchess too!"

"…Right."

"I know! I'm going to pay them back too, someday. My dad said so."

But truth be told, being this busy made him happy.

Watching that pure, untroubled smile, Nais felt healed in his own way.

In the end, he laughed in defeat and waved her in.

The child put the basket on the table and beamed.

"Tell your mother I'll enjoy them. And here — payment for the errand."

Nais opened a jar and pulled out a single candy.

It was a smooth, practiced motion — clearly not the first time.

He'd given her the whole jar once, but when the child had gotten in trouble with her parents and brought it back untouched, he'd started handing them out one at a time instead.

The child could keep one in her cheek and let it dissolve — she didn't refuse those.

"Thank you-u-u!"

She thanked him brightly, snatched it up, and ran off.

Once she was out the door, Nais picked up a steamed potato and took a huge bite — chomp.

He hummed as he flipped through paperwork, his hands moving faster.

While helping people in trouble, Nais had always made sure they knew Lecashe was behind him.

Maybe because of that, perceptions of Lecashe were starting to shift — slowly — among the people he'd helped.

"What on earth is going on at Lecashe, though…."

Nais murmured with a dry laugh.

He knew Iberin wasn't the type to sit still even after she got back to the territory, but lately the name Lecashe was being said in the capital several times a day.

And none of it was the bad kind.

"…She really is an incredible person."

Once again Nais smiled, satisfied, thinking he'd been right to take Lecashe's hand.

---

The rumors swirling around Lecashe had never gotten this big before.

It started in the south.

And the rumors, growing as they went, made it all the way to the capital.

"Apparently ijet's been found in Lecashe?"

"They're even selling some to southern nobles, I hear!"

"Selling? That? Did they find a mine?"

"Doesn't seem to be that. They sold it to two nobles, I heard."

"Hah — two whole nobles?"

Society was in an uproar.

At first the response was no way, it has to be a false rumor, but nobles with relatives in the south came in confirming it was true.

"Should've made nicer with the Grand Duchess when she was in the capital."

The noblewomen were kicking themselves.

Countess Megan and her circle — who had clashed hardest with Iberin — looked positively gray.

Owning ijet was an honor in itself for a noble.

And to think someone was selling it.

"They're acting like it doesn't bother them, but they have to be eating themselves alive inside."

The noblewomen who'd been on the wrong end of Countess Megan and her two-faced clique took quiet pleasure in it.

"Wasn't Marquise Civelli friendly with the Grand Duchess?"

The whole mess with Marquis Civelli came back to mind, and the room briefly went quiet.

"Nobody's seen her since."

"Such a shame. If the marquise had been in the capital, at least…."

One of the noblewomen trailed off.

"Now that I think about it, the Grand Duchess of Lecashe is the kind of person who drags incidents along with her, isn't she? It was the same when she first came to the capital, and now she's back at her territory and the capital's still buzzing."

"You're right."

"If she weren't cursed, she'd probably be sweeping society off its feet."

The noblewomen nodded along.

She might well have become the flower of high society — for better or worse.

The ones who remembered Iberin at Duke Cherity's party genuinely thought so.

There'd been an elegance about her, an atmosphere that drew the eye.

"Oh — and that lawyer, Nais? He works exclusively for Lecashe, doesn't he?"

"Ah, that lawyer's good. Shame he only represents commoners."

"I heard about him and tried to retain him for myself, but he turned me down."

"Really?"

A conversation that started with ijet had shifted to Lawyer Nais.

All of it was about Lecashe — or about people tied to Lecashe.

---

Residents kept arriving, just as expected.

The village got busier and busier, and it actually started to feel like a place people lived.

But the Gelta nobles still hadn't come to their senses — they kept right on grinding their people down. Apparently they'd caught wind of the runaways, because reports came in that guards had locked down the territory exits and were running brutal inspections.

Because of that, the residents who'd been arriving daily had dwindled to maybe one a day.

She wasn't all that broken up about it.

Taking in too many at once would have stretched their management capacity thin, so two hundred or so was plenty.

"A letter arrived from Marquis Bilson."

Pons came in carrying the mail he'd gone to sort.

"And this one's for you, Iberin."

"For me?"