Chapter 47: The Cursed Pact

“Well well well, we sure caught ourselves a big one. Definitely didn’t see this coming.”

After leaving the captive assassins with the Princess Guard, Ludwig, Dion, and Vanos moved to a different room to discuss their plans going forward.

“Damn straight. I sure didn’t expect the Ganudos royal family to be involved,” said Vanos, shaking his head with a sigh.

“In other words, we are currently deep in enemy territory.” Ludwig pursed his lips. “The question is...what happens next?”

“Nothing, I reckon? The empire’ll crush them if they show any open hostility. ’Course, I doubt they’ll admit to being complicit in the first place,” said Dion before pausing to glance at Ludwig. “Unless you mean what we’re going to do next, in which case...we’re all waiting for you to tell us.”

“Fair enough... The way I see it, just knowing where we all stand will make things easier for us,” he answered, arms crossed in thought. “If we let word out that we’ve discovered who hired these assassins, or at least have strong suspicions, it should function as a deterrent. Keep them from getting any more ideas, so to speak. The other possibility is to wait until Her Highness comes back, since she might wish to use it as leverage during negotiations. Still...” He frowned. “This whole business, it bothers me. Something tells me we should speak with the King of Ganudos sooner rather than later.”

In his mind swirled the discovery that linked the Duke of Yellowmoon with Ganudos and the implications that arose therein. He had to know if what he suspected was true, and the only way to find out was to speak with the King directly.

“Sounds good. So, do you want to kick down their door, or should I? I guess sneaking in is also possible though, if it’s just the two of us...”

“No, we’ll do this the proper way and ask for an audience. We have their assassins. They can’t afford to ignore us.”

A souring of relations between Tearmoon and Ganudos was beneficial to neither. Therefore, if it was possible, Ludwig would rather reach a solution through simple discussion, and he suspected the other party felt the same. Two days later, he was proven right when his request for an audience was granted, and he traveled to the royal castle with Dion in tow. Upon arriving, the two of them were directed to an audience chamber. Considering the fact that they were requesting a direct audience with the King, such prompt accommodation was doubtlessly an exception among exceptions.

“Ah, well met. I believe you are the famed Ludwig Hewitt, assistant and right hand to the Great Sage of the Empire, Princess Mia? And this must be the empire’s finest knight, Sir Dion Alaia. I often hear tales of your great deeds.”

The King of Ganudos was, appearance-wise, rather unkingly. His smile and tone had a strange servility to them, as if he were trying to curry favor. He carried himself with an air that more resembled an old, groveling official than the leader of a country.

“Please accept my deepest gratitude for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice, Your Majesty,” began Ludwig.

“Too much, too much. You’re far too modest. I wouldn’t dare keep a loyal vassal of the Great Sage of the Empire waiting. Especially when there seems to have been some sort of serious misunderstanding. Neither the Tearmoon Empire nor my humble country would be well-served by meaningless conflict between our nations,” said the King in a mild tone.

Ludwig studied the man. At first glance, the King of Ganudos looked like a trifling character, cowardly and meek, but Ludwig’s spectacles-enhanced perception did not miss the spark of intelligence hidden in those elderly eyes. He knew right then and there that he was dealing with a shrewd and cunning king—someone definitely not to be underestimated. At the same time, he was also filled with a certainty that he could handle this man, for the truly wise—his old venerable master or the young woman to whom he pledged his unwavering loyalty, for example—would have played a more perfect fool. They, in their boundless wisdom, would have hidden every last shred of it to lure their opponents into a false sense of security. The King failed to do so, and thereby revealed himself to be a formidable but nevertheless vincible foe.

“Well, let’s not waste time then. Shall we get down to business, gentlemen?”

At the King’s urging, Ludwig drew in a short breath and cleared his mind.

“Certainly. Firstly, I must bring to Your Majesty’s attention the fact that recently, there was an attempt on my life.”

“Was there? And this attempt occurred within Ganudos’s borders?”

“Within the royal capital itself, in fact, in an alleyway near the church.”

“Goodness. I’m terribly sorry for this dreadful occurrence. That area is indeed a tad unruly. Being a port country, we’re constantly beset by the misdoings of former pirates. They often become local ruffians, and there’s never any shortage of them.”

I see. So you intend to pin this on pirates, huh? Call it an unfortunate act of banditry by outlaws...

Ludwig brought one finger to the bridge of his eyeglasses in the timeless gesture of someone about to take things up a notch.

“I thought so as well! So imagine my surprise when we captured the assailants, questioned them, and were told that they were acting under secret orders from none other than Your Highness.”

“What nonsense they spew! Surely, you did not go to all the trouble to come here because you believed those wretches,” said the King with an exaggerated reaction of surprise.

Ludwig let him exercise his theatrics, silently studying him in the meantime.

“It seems obvious to me,” the King continued, “that this was an act of wanton violence by outlaws, or perhaps a calculated attempt from a third party to drive a wedge between our nations... But well, it appears that you actually made the bewildering decision to take them at their word, didn’t you.”

“I did indeed, Your Majesty, and that is because I have in my possession enough evidence to convince me that they speak the truth.”

That, of course, was a bluff. He nonetheless played it, hoping to draw some sort of telling reaction from the King.

“Ha ha ha, do you now? So be it then. We tried to train some former pirates for the task, but it seems that we didn’t train them well enough. As you’re well aware, we’re a small nation, and our armies are poorly supplied. I suffer from a shortage of capable pawns.”

“...So you admit your involvement in this matter?” Ludwig confirmed with mild surprise.

“I’d prefer to disavow the claim, but I see no way of convincing you of my innocence. In that case, let us proceed under the assumption that this claim of yours is factual. We may yet extract some amusement from this little talk. After all, you know as well as I do that we’re simply going through the motions. Nothing will come of this, no matter what you or I say.”

I see. So he intends to turn this into a he-said-she-said situation. That must be why he hired pirates for the job.

A confession from the King during a private talk such as this would mean little if he then went on to deny all association through public channels. It would be Ludwig and Dion’s word against his, and that was a losing battle, especially if brought before the Duke of Greenmoon. Considering the close ties between Ganudos and Greenmoon, the Duke would doubtlessly trust the King over a commoner like Ludwig. They’d close the case with a simple declaration that criminals, and underlings, were too unreliable a source for testimony. Had Mia been present, the King would never have confessed so casually.

Ludwig’s mind ran through this web of logic in an instant. Then he nodded.

So be it indeed.

These, he decided, were minor issues. He was more interested in what came after.

“Then, with the understanding that we speak in confidence, I shall ask a frank question. Why was I targeted? Was it to stop us from learning of the relation between Ganudos and the House of Yellowmoon?”

“Your question confuses me. It is true that we had ties with the House of Yellowmoon in times past, but I fail to see the relevance of this fact...”

“The Greenmoons make for a convenient tether, easy to hold and easy to discard. Does that clarify my question?”

Ludwig’s theory went as follows. Ganudos’s objective was to make Tearmoon dependent on them. Then, when the time was right, they would cut ties and starve the empire to death. Currently, Tearmoon’s food self-sufficiency rate was extremely low. That is, a very large percentage of the food it consumed had to be imported from abroad.

It went without saying that no noble would repurpose their farmland for non-agricultural uses if they hadn’t yet figured out how to acquire enough food for themselves, no matter how badly infected they were with the nonsense rhetoric of anti-agriculturalism. That was where Ganudos entered the picture.

Their exports titillated Tearmoon palates with a steady supply of seafood that, though once thought to be exotic, were now an irreplaceable part of the empire’s diet. That was why if food ever became scarce—due to famine, for example—and imports from Ganudos ceased, the empire would sustain unthinkable damage. And if the creation of such circumstances was Ganudos’s very goal...

“What you wish to avoid, assuming my theory is correct, is an early military intervention from the empire. If Tearmoon sends its armies here before it’s sufficiently exhausted, Ganudos will be unable to defend itself. Therefore, you need to put up the consistent front of being a staunch ally. Even if you began restricting exports, you’d need to blame it on a breakdown of negotiations. That’s why you couldn’t have your true allies, the Yellowmoons, be the ones you’re seen to deal with.”

They’d secretly influence the Duke of Greenmoon to flee overseas while publicly demanding to speak with the Greenmoons, and no one else, regarding all matters of trade. In the unlikely case that the empire chose to mobilize its army, they’d waste time telling the Duke of Yellowmoon to pressure the government from the inside and run interference. Having one of the Four Dukes on their side afforded them a significant advantage when trying to influence Tearmoon politics. Of course, they had no guarantee the Duke of Greenmoon would act according to their plan, but even if he strayed, they could always assassinate him and hide his corpse, rendering him missing. The chaos it would generate within the House of Greenmoon while they dealt with issues of succession would buy Ganudos valuable time. This was the full extent of Ludwig’s theory.

“Do you truly believe you can make an enemy of the empire and win?”

“An enemy? Whatever do you speak of?” The King smiled calmly. “Ganudos would never think to oppose the Tearmoon Empire. Such an idea would be ludicrous, no? We have a small military organization tasked with maintaining order and deterring pirates, but they wouldn’t stand a chance against the mighty imperial army. Why in the heavens would we, with our meager army, ever make ourselves an enemy of your great empire?”

Ludwig tensed at the King’s response. He hadn’t expected the old man to weaponize even the weakness of his country’s military, employing it as a veil to shroud his own nefarious intentions.

“Let us assume for the purpose of argument,” the King continued, “that I have plans to stop exports to the empire if a famine occurs. Even if this were true...do you really think you can use it as a reason to march your armies here?”

There was no military component to Ganudos’s intended response. Had Ludwig caught even the slightest whiff of a plan to attack Tearmoon through military means, it would be ample reason to declare war. An act of open hostility against the empire would be responded to in kind. The problem was that “if a famine strikes in the future, then Ganudos will stop selling food to us” couldn’t be construed as an attack. It was too roundabout, too hypothetical to induce a sense of imminent danger, especially considering the whole scheme hinged on the occurrence of a famine and would simply fizzle out if it never came to pass.

All in all, this Ganudos conspiracy was so utterly lacking in both initiative and aggressiveness that it could barely be called a conspiracy at all. The ambiguity cloaking it made it difficult to denounce. Ludwig was confident in his own logic, but his accusation was ultimately just inference. If challenged by his peers, he’d be hard pressed to defend himself against claims that he was chasing shadows. He bore no illusions about the feasibility of using this supposed conspiracy to argue for military intervention against the port country. Ganudos was no barbarian horde. It was a country of people who believed in the same God and observed the same religion as Tearmoon. Declaring war without just cause would simply expose Tearmoon to the censure of its neighbors.

The thing is, if the empire establishes a reliable system to ensure food self-sufficiency, Ganudos’s maneuvering would be completely ineffective. And that’s what bothers me.

Anti-agriculturalism... Had it not been for this ideologic plague, Ganudos would never have had a chance to even attempt such a ploy. The highly requisite nature of the accursed belief for this entire gambit stood out to Ludwig as uncanny.

For such a slow, pernicious ploy, requiring a persistent effort over years if not decades...it’s too reliant on factors out of their control. Too much hinges on the weather and the opposing nation’s own failures. A famine, you can maybe argue has historically occurred once every few decades, but poor policy and governance can be reversed in a day.

Even the very belief of anti-agriculturalism was starting to smell of malicious design, possibly spread by the Yellowmoons in collusion with Ganudos. Still, something didn’t add up. One of the Four Dukes though he was, did Yellowmoon really have enough influence to do something of that scale? Tearmoon nobility was hardly a unified front, and voices belonging to the other three factions were healthily and loudly represented.

At that, Ludwig paused his increasingly recursive contemplation and shook his head.

“Either way... Under Her Highness’s guidance, we will reform the empire. Once systems to ensure food self-sufficiency are put in place, this ploy of yours will fall apart at the seams.”

His declaration failed to produce a reaction from the King, who replied in his ever-placid tone, “I see. That’s wonderful news. We are always delighted to hear of issues in friendly nations being resolved. Though I do confess some disappointment in the resultant decline this will bring about with regard to our food exports to Tearmoon, I will certainly make my peace with this eventuality. After all, the domestic affairs of your great empire are hardly something a small country like us can comment on.”

Ludwig tightened his jaw, seized by a sense of apprehension at the King’s response. He wasn’t sure why, and that made him all the more uncomfortable.

The King of Ganudos watched until the doors closed behind the departing figures of Ludwig’s party. Then, he leaned back with a calm smile.

“So, the lines have been drawn...and the oldest of the Great Houses, that of Yellowmoon, stands opposite the Emperor’s beloved daughter. Hah. What a time to be alive. Let’s see how this plays out...”

There was a cursed pact binding the empire, and the scope of its invisible fetters was about to be laid bare.