Lady Lucrezia’s grand soirée.
Having utterly dominated the banquet hall with luxuries from the East, I naturally strolled across the hall’s carpet and slipped in among nobles and wealthy merchants.
“Oh, Grand Merchant Carnoble! About that rose oil earlier—might you be able to spare a few bottles exclusively for our trading company in the future?”
“That chewy confection called lokum—my wife has taken quite a fancy to it. I’ll pay double, so please…!”
Influential figures holding champagne glasses crowded toward me from every direction.
Even amid their flattery and subtle probing, I did not show the slightest sign of being flustered. I led the conversation with elegant smoothness.
In truth, when it came to the ways of high society, I, Elpanso, was an expert second to none in Pelua.
My father, Theodore, who had seized the wealth of the continent as a self-made man, was quick with numbers, but he had always been out of place among the nobles’ graceful, hypocritical manner of speaking.
In the past, after following my father around and painfully realizing that limitation, I had studied rhetoric and manners like a madman in order to fit into mainstream society by any means necessary.
Of course, that shallow social polish later became the root cause of my descent into pleasure and debauchery, but now, layered with rational self-control, there was no better weapon.
“Exclusive, you say? My goal is to have the scent of roses bloom in every noble estate in Pelua. I shall distribute them slowly and fairly.”
I did not smile too broadly, and drew the line while standing exactly half a step back.
The protagonists of tonight’s banquet were, after all, Lady Reinas and Lady Lucrezia.
If I stepped forward too much and monopolized all attention, I could very well offend the host.
Besides, I knew better than anyone that, for a merchant, the proper distance translated directly into an air of mystery that tormented the other party’s heart.
Lightly swirling my champagne, I tossed a metaphorical bait toward the great moneyed men of Pelua gathered around me.
“Still, it is a dilemma. I did break through the windless zone off Pelua’s coast and throw open the barred gates of the East, but…”
“A dilemma? Did you not pioneer a trade route with that incredible ship?”
“One ship is far from enough to meet demand. I intend to float dozens, hundreds of those monsters in Pelua’s harbor. To do that, I will need enormous capital to maintain stable eastern trade.”
At the word that flowed from between my lips, the eyes of the wealthy merchants changed like those of starving wolves.
Investment!
Eastern trade had originally been a privilege attempted only by super-merchant houses like Valerius, or those sheltered by power.
The risks were simply too great: pirates, typhoons, and voyages with no promised duration.
But Carnoble’s ship ignored natural disasters, boiled pirates alive, and made the round trip to the East in an instant.
If they could place their capital onto that perfect, safe golden route as easily as setting down a spoon?
The merchants swallowed hard, looking ready to pull out gold promissory notes and cling to me at any moment.
It was then.
“Ha! What a laughable claim.”
A sharp sneer that broke the mood flew in from one corner of the hall.
The crowd parted, and the head of a mid-sized trading company that survived by picking up scraps under Valerius stepped forward, twisting his champagne glass in his grip.
He lifted his chin and looked me up and down.
“The people of Pelua seem to be dazzled by your flashy show and have forgotten, but I remember clearly! Just a few years ago, the moment you took full authority over your trading company, you spouted similar nonsense and sent a merchant fleet south!”
“……”
“And what was the result? It was plundered clean by pirates, and the captain of the guard betrayed you! A scoundrel who caused an unprecedented mass bankruptcy in Pelua’s history and ended up on the streets now wants to gather investment funds again and open another gambling den? Do you think that just because you got lucky with one iron ship, the stupidity of your past will be erased?”
A cold silence settled over the banquet hall.
A painful past.
Elpanso’s indelible dark history.
Holding their breath, the people watched me with tense eyes, wondering whether Elpanso the scoundrel, who had once overturned gambling tables, would erupt in a fury.
But I took a sip of champagne, then let out a very soft, cold chuckle.
“Thank you for remembering that foolish failure so keenly. Thanks to it, I was able to become perfect.”
“Wh-what?”
I slowly approached the merchant chief and, looking down at him with our overwhelming difference in build, snapped back.
“There is only one reason I failed in the past. It was because I did not have proper ‘eyes and ears’ in the East and the South. A blind man threw money into the sea, so it was only natural that pirates picked it up.”
“S-so what of it!”
“Merchant Chief. By any chance, did you see the stern of my ship anchored in Pelua Harbor? Are those pirate bastards not boiled whole, bound in chains? One cannot massacre pirates through coincidence and blind luck.”
The merchant chief’s jaw trembled.
I drove in the wedge so that everyone in the banquet hall could hear clearly.
“And what matters most is that this eastern trade is not a lonely voyage undertaken by me alone. If the highest echelons of the Osan Empire… if an absolute local collaborator of that caliber is exclusively protecting my trade, would the story not be rather different?”
“A l-local collaborator…?!”
The banquet hall was thrown into an uproar.
For merchants, a solid network in a foreign land was both the entirety of profit and their lifeline.
And yet I had a connection to a power holder in a closed, heathen empire!
It was irrefutable proof that I had built a diplomatic and systematic trade route beyond mere luck.
“L-lies. The highest echelons? You are telling an absurd lie!”
I delivered the final confirmation shot toward the merchant chief, whose face had gone deathly pale.
“Go look at the finest copper ingots piled up in the harbor right now. As a merchant, surely you cannot be unaware of what it means for the empire to have permitted the mass export of copper. Before you wag your tongue out of petty jealousy, go and confirm the mountain of gold my ship has vomited forth.”
“Grrgh…!”
Crushed beneath humiliation and fear, the merchant chief’s face flushed red, and he vanished into the crowd as though fleeing.
The attempt to mock me was instead shattered before my merciless bombardment of facts, and the overwhelming credibility and investment value of the Carnoble Trading Company skyrocketed without knowing the heights of the sky.
“As expected of Carnoble! I shall bring every coin my trading company can spare at once!”
“Grand Merchant! Please accept our family’s investment!”
Just as the atmosphere had completely shifted to my side and the banquet hall was about to become a cauldron of excitement—
“Hoho, everyone is getting far too heated.”
A voice, gentle yet carrying an authority that could not be refused, cut through the hall.
It was Lady Lucrezia, elegantly closing her fan atop the dais.
At her single word, the merchants who had grown feverish shut their mouths in unison and made way.
“This is a gathering to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. Excessively sharp talk of commerce does not suit this beautiful music, would you not agree?”
Lady Lucrezia lightly descended from the dais and stood before me.
Her deep eyes looked up at me, filled with intrigue and secret curiosity.
“However, it would also be discourteous to leave a guest of honor who has given us such a special and wondrous gift standing about in this crowded hall.”
When she gave a light glance to a servant, the servant bowed politely and indicated a discreet corridor within the hall.
“Merchant Chief Elpanso Carnoble. I would like to offer you a cup of tea somewhere quiet. I suspect you and I have much to discuss in private regarding your astonishing tales of the East… and the new winds that will soon blow through Pelua.”
It was, in effect, a request for a private audience directly extended by the lady of the Doge’s house.
Before my eyes, a door had opened to the very heart of absolute power—something countless merchant chiefs gathered in this banquet hall could not obtain even if they devoted their entire lives to it.
I grinned at Ayla, who stood beside me with round eyes, then bowed to Lady Lucrezia with perfect noble etiquette.
“I would be delighted to comply, my lady. I have prepared a very entertaining and ‘immensely profitable’ story that will not disappoint your expectations.”
With the envious and jealous gazes of the banquet hall’s merchants at my back, I took a leisurely step forward.
*
Under Lady Lucrezia’s guidance, I entered a discreet corridor deeper inside the banquet hall.
The brilliant light of the chandeliers and the laughter of nobles grew distant beyond the thick door, and soon, a heavy door blocked my path.
“Please enter. He is waiting inside.”
Leaving behind a mysterious smile, the lady herself did not enter, but instead gave a slight nod and withdrew.
The fact that she, the host, was stepping away meant that the person in this room was the true power of Pelua—someone even the queen of high society did not dare sit beside.
Creak.
The room I entered after opening the door was an office far removed from the splendor of the banquet hall, filled with a heavy, chilling air.
On the walls in every direction hung enormous nautical charts depicting the maritime trade routes of the entire continent, and behind the ebony desk placed in the center of the room, a middle-aged man stood with his back turned, looking down at the city outside the window.
“It has been a long time, Elpanso.”
The man slowly turned around.
Hair gone fiercely silver.
A hooked nose sharp as a hawk’s beak, and gray eyes that seemed to pierce straight through to a person’s bones.
He wore a dark navy uniform without a single ornate accessory, but the overwhelming pressure he exuded was enough to make it hard to breathe.
The head of state of Pelua, and the supreme commander who controlled its invincible naval fleet.
The Doge.
Enrico Dandolo.
It was him.