NOVEL NEXT 69 - Dinner with a Whiny Loser
Thankfully, once the Princess had left, Archmund had little more to do that day. He reassured her that he still valued her friendship, of course — he wasn't the kind of fool to throw that away, even if it did seem like she felt awfully guilty about whatever she'd done to his Dungeon.
Frankly, he got it. He didn't like what she'd done, but he understood why she'd felt the need to do it. He would've done the same if he was a princess responsible for the glory of the empire, assessing a promising upstart.
She declined to join them for dinner, saying that she hadn't brought a poison taster — not that she had any suspicion of him, of course. Personally, he suspected that she couldn't be poisoned, since she had a high degree of control over her own body, and she just didn't want to eat shitty backwater food.
He didn't say that, of course.
At any rate, he was expecting for dinner to be a small, private affair. Just him and his father, where they could discuss what had happened and what needed to be done next.
Which was why he had decidedly mixed feelings to see Beatrice Blackstone with two unfamiliar adults — a man and a woman — that could only be her parents already seated at the dining table when he arrived.
"Father," he said, taking his usual seat.
"Archie," his father, the Lord Reginald Granavale, said warmly. "How do you feel?"
He really was getting that question a lot, so he smiled his way through it.
The first course came, a soup of vegetables in a thin chicken broth. Mary was one of the servants who brought it out. Sometimes she still rotated to doing normal staff stuff instead of just being his pupil.
Archmund blinked at her, desperately begging her for any insights, but her face remained fixed in that visage of servants who have thoughts on a situation they must hide from their masters.
"I must say," said the unfamiliar man, the Lord Anthony Blackstone, "I'm surprised to see how much you've grown, Archie."
The unfamiliar man was calling him by a nickname. That suggested he wasn't that unfamiliar. But Archmund didn't remember him.
"Not quite as much as Betty," his father chuckled. "Though she's still a bit of a crybaby, isn't she?"
Wow. His father was brazenly insulting another noble to her face. Usually this was grounds for a duel or something to defend honor. Maybe his father had assessed how weak she was during the tournament and so didn't fear the risk.
He had a bad feeling about this. And Beatrice shrank in her chair, barely picking at her soup.
And yet Beatrice's parents only chuckled in turn.
He was going to fucking kill his way through the Dungeon if it turned out someone else he knew went by "Veronica".
"She'll grow out of it," her mother said. "We all grow at different rates."
This last statement was directed at Archmund appraisingly. Almost proudly. Judgmentally? He couldn't tell but it was clear she thought he was precocious. Which he couldn't argue with.
"Um," he said.
The servants came and brought the entree. It was a venison steak simmered in berry sauce. In his past life, he'd never had much of an adventurous palate, but this was a comfort food now.
"Archie, don't tell me you don't remember?" his father said.
"Remember?" he said, as neutrally as possible to avoid suspicion. He had a really bad feeling about this. He knew he was about to learn something that he really should've remembered, but forgot because he was six or something the first time he'd heard it. Because there were a whole lot of things six year olds didn't care about.
He instantly knew the worst-case possibility: he and Beatrice were betrothed.
"Surely you haven't forgotten completely," his father said, frowning.
"You used to get along so well," Beatrice's mother, the Lady Jane Blackstone, said. "You'd spend a week in our estate, a week in yours… you'd take lessons together…"
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"Play swordfighting, even," said Beatrice's father. "It was almost like I had two sons!"
"Now, now. This one's mine!"
That was uncomfortably, uncomfortably familiar.
His memories of everything before the Crylaxan Plague were vague, swept away by years of dull monotony and a period of debilitating illness. But he did vaguely remember long carriage rides and a woman who looked kind of like his mother and a boy he'd sword fought with.
"You really don't remember?"
He glanced at Beatrice. She seemed as puzzled as he was, and it also seemed like she had her hackles raised.
He could imagine. Being stuck with her the rest of his life? Being stuck with him the rest of his life? It would be an utter disaster. And from the look on her face she felt the same way.
"Well, it's understandable," his father said, sighing. "We haven't seen each other since before the plague. Since before Sophia…"
"Sophia?" Beatrice said. "Like… Aunt Sophia?"
"She remembers her family," his father said. "You should be more conscious of these things. It's very important when making connections."
"We're cousins," he said. "Huh."
His fears instantly receded. They were cousins. That made a lot more sense. Now that he looked at her, it was oddly like staring into a mirror. Black hair. Dark eyes. Similarly-shaped face. Same annoyed look at everything.
Though, he supposed, given the habits of nobility, that didn't immediately rule out a betrothal. Which was concerning, because he really wanted to rule out a betrothal.
"And… we're just cousins, right?" he said. "Like, nothing more, at all, right?"
"Ew," Beatrice said.
"Where would you get such an idea?" Beatrice's father said.
It wasn't uncommon. He'd researched marriage customs in the library when he was considering ways he could get rich and powerful. In this world, just like on Earth, sometimes the nobility intermarried for the goal of preserving their wealth and power within a family line. If anything, it was more suspicious that they were denying it.
"He reads too much," his father said. "On the worst excesses of what they do up in the Imperial City."
"I'm glad to hear you haven't gone completely native," Beatrice's father said.
Their tone made it sound like the Imperial City was full of decadent inbred barbarians.
"Frankly," Beatrice's mother said, "You're too close for it to be of any use. One generation removed? You're practically siblings anyways."
Well, that just made his whole line of questioning even more uncomfortable. As was the fact that he'd ripped her training sword out of her hands and reduced her to tears.
"I guess being a whiny, avaricious little shit runs in the family," he muttered, eying Beatrice.
"Funny, I was going to say being a smug manipulator did."
Their parents sighed or gave exasperated chuckles.
"This was just like how Sophia and I were when we were growing up," said Beatrice's father. "Ah…"
No doubt they were going to move onto some tedious business negotiation. The Blackstone family was named not because their founder had been a reincarnator with a familiarity with the American financial services industry, but because their lands held large reserves of coal. This was their primary source of wealth, and it had absolutely ruined the health of their people. Not that Archmund could do anything about that.
Yet.
Simply put, they provided clean-burning coal to Granavale county for their furnaces and ovens and kilns — but not for heavy industry. The world of Omnio simply hadn't advanced to the point of the steam engine yet. Somehow, the existence of Gemstones had tilted the economy away from the efficiencies of steam power, despite their rarity and class-associated controls. There was something illogical there, and Archmund knew he'd have to look more into it.
Either way, it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep relations going well. Gemstones could either violate the conservation of energy or draw energy extremely efficiently from an extradimensional space, but they required a human-in-the-loop and a high level of skill. Coal, on the other hand, just needed to be fed into a machine that was properly designed.
Which he would get around to doing. Eventually.
Though it was a little surprising Omnio's technology wasn't more advanced, if an entire noble house could sustain itself from mining coal alone.
"I suppose, Archie," said the Lord Blackstone, "you fight very well for someone so young. And you have achieved… quite a lot. More than Reginald and I had at our ages."
Though his words were directed at Archmund, his eyes flicked on and off Beatrice, who squirmed deeper into her chair, as he spoke.
And then he twisted the knife Archmund saw coming, though it wasn't a knife aimed at his heart.
"If only Beatrice was operating at your level."
Beatrice ripped her venison steak off her fork with her teeth.
Now Archmund was uncomfortable.
"Well, you know, people develop at different rates."
"But people can be pushed to greatness," his uncle said. "These latest great feats of yours are no coincidence. They came after you entered and conquered the Dungeon. Why don't you take her with you on your next expedition? She might be… she works as hard as anyone, even if she whines her way through it, and she won't hold you back."
Archmund did need allies. And he'd just classified the Blackstone family as a useful contact. And if Gem had to leave Granavale, he'd prefer it to go to people he could trust.
But to Beatrice?
She just wasn't at the level. Surely it would be irresponsible to bring her down there. Surely it would be far too risky. But what could he possibly say that would convince these adults who were certain that his success was a matter of grit and circumstance?
He cast another glance at her. She'd moved on to the soup, slurping it down, making as much noise as possible as if to drown out the conversation. He was surprised he hadn't seen their relation before. Her straight, black hair, the shape of her eyes, the bridge of her nose, the jut of her chin.
He'd seen those features before, but not in the mirror.
"I saw mother's ghost," he whispered.
The adults sat in shocked horror.