Another day broke.
Rising late, he staggered with the aftereffects of too much drink. Shaking his head, dressed light, he ran in the inn's yard and then out into the street. Reaching the central plaza, he began running its outer edge.
"Huff, huff, huff."
The plaza in the late morning was quiet and he could draw clean air in to his heart's content. He ran about an hour, and when his body had grown hot enough that he could not feel the late-autumn cold, he came back to the inn.
"Hoo-ff, hoo-ff."
Only after cooling himself with cold water from the well in the back yard did he come to his senses and find the inn's dining room.
Hans ate breakfast on the ground floor, still fighting what was left of the hangover. His face was pale and puffy as he half-ate the soup in front of him, one hand clamped on a head that still throbbed.
"Just because you can eat it doesn't mean you can digest it."
The belated repertoire of a man who has drunk too much is predictable. His head swam and his stomach burned.
—Shake, shake.
"I had forgotten for a while how terrible a hangover is."
A man resolves always to remember this pain, and soon forgets it. And the vicious circle of standing at another drinking table repeats.
To Hans, a human being who amounts to no more than that, an invitation came.
'To Hans Gale Zimmer.'
'You are respectfully invited to luncheon with our house.'
'Dmitrin Cal Pellone.'
Hans looked blankly at the middle-aged man standing in front of him.
"Andre di Moreni, butler to the house of Count Pellone."
"Ah. Hans Gale Zimmer."
'Is a butler a noble as well?'
Hans widened the limits of his knowledge and fell briefly into thought.
High nobles kept wanting to meet him. He had not anticipated this much interest from the world in a newly minted war noble.
'This is the house of the commander I respected. Refusing would not be courteous.'
"I'll get ready and come out shortly."
Bow.
"I shall wait below."
Thinking it just as well that he had ordered new clothes, Hans dressed himself and left the inn. A noble carriage was waiting in front, and Andre the butler opened its door for him.
"Please get in."
"Thank you."
—Clop, clop.
The carriage, drawn by two horses, ran slowly. Seated opposite, the butler watched for whether his guest was uncomfortable or had any questions, and led Hans through an easy journey.
He took in the butler's manner, neither excessive nor deficient, and kept it in his eye.
'What looks good is presumably what is good.'
In the etiquette of noble houses, inviting a man on the same day is a discourtesy, and having the butler fetch him in person might be called excessive courtesy. On the other hand Hans understood the count's heart. Was it not something like the gratitude he himself held toward Hundred-Commander Tomius?
The carriage ran slowly along the roads of the capital's outskirts.
The easy ride of a fine carriage, well-kept roads, and a handsome landscape where city and countryside blended pleased Hans's eye.
When the carriage passed through the mansion's gate Hans began getting ready to step down, but it ran on a good while longer before it came to a stop.
'The scale of this place beggars imagination.'
—Clop, clop.
"Whoa. Whoa."
—Clack.
"We have arrived."
At the driver's announcement, Moreni the butler nodded and said.
"Well done. There seems to be a bad vibration at the right front wheel; have a look at it, and stand by, since we must convey our guest again."
"Yes. Understood, sir."
The butler stepped down first and opened the door.
"Please step down."
—Nod.
"Thank you."
The carriage, which had passed the count's main gate and stopped before the mansion, turned its head once Hans and the butler were down, and disappeared.
—Tromp, tromp.
Down from the carriage, he made for the mansion under the butler's guidance. It had looked close, but there was unexpectedly some distance to it.
'How wide is this place, exactly?'
Mansion and garden together, the size of it was that of Hans's home village of Gale. The outskirts of the city it may have been, but it was indeed the mansion of a power that moved the kingdom.
'A count's house with a hundred thousand subjects, they said.'
Hans tried to imagine the mansion of Duke Bahama von Bieri, said to have held three hundred thousand — no, of his descendant Nimitz von Bieri, Marquis, the title having been demoted across two generations — and shook his head.
'A pleasant thing to imagine.'
The pleasure goes as far as the imagining. 'If you think about the responsibility and the duty that come with it, how is that any different from standing on a battlefield,' thought the lazy Hans.
'To have to draw blades between brothers for a succession. And they call that a noble's pride?'
In truth, rather than a fight between brothers, the essence of it was a trial of strength between the vassal factions that run an enormous domain, in the course of which the head's own family gets swung about. But understanding it that deeply was beyond Hans.
The count and his wife and their son were out in front of the mansion.
"Welcome."
"We meet again."
"Was there any discomfort on the way?"
"With Andre the butler's help I came comfortably."
"Well done, butler."
—Bow.
Having commended the butler, the count looked at Hans.
"Yesterday Tomi's service papers arrived."
From the redness of the count's eyes he was clearly moved.
"A certificate of merit stamped with His Majesty's seal has come down and Tomi's honor is restored. It can only be called a glory for the house."
"It was a thing that ought to have happened."
'So the grief of losing an eldest son can be covered over with a house's glory.'
His dead commander came back to him and it left a bitterness, but he did not let it show.
'They stake everything for honor and for power. That is a noble.'
"Once again I thank you, Sir, for recovering our house's honor."
—Bow.
When the count, his wife and their son bent at the waist, Hans bowed his head in return, courteously.
—Bow.
"Not knowing how long you would remain in the capital, I invited you in haste and pressed it too far. I hope you will understand the feeling behind it."
"My birth is humble and I am clumsy with etiquette. I ask your generosity."
The count answered with a broad smile.
"What use are courtesy and form among family? My only wish is that the meal be an enjoyable one."
The count introduced the woman beside him.
"This is my wife."
"Thank you for bringing us news of Tomi."
The countess looked at Hans with a warm smile.
"It was no more than my duty."
Hans answered in a settled voice.
"Tyler Cal Pellone."
The young noble's eyes were clear and blue.
"Thank you for recovering my brother's honor......."
"Hans Gale Zimmer. The commander was a fine noble who had everyone's respect."
'So it was a pointless misunderstanding after all.'
When the greetings were done the count gestured and said.
"Hm. I have kept our guest standing too long. Come, let us go in."
Through the door the mansion's hall revealed itself. In a space large enough for fifty or sixty people to dance, a splendid chandelier at the center of the ceiling showed off its beauty. It had the same structure as the palace's party hall. Only the scale felt reduced.
'This is the life of nobles.'
Along the corridor connected to the hall hung portraits of the count's house down the generations. At the end of the corridor was a staircase to the second floor, and as they climbed it the count said.
"To avoid the forms, I should like to dine on the second-floor balcony."
Hans nodded and thanked him.
"Thank you for the consideration."
"Not at all."
The count nodded with a kindly smile.
"The autumn feeling, looked down on from the balcony, is quite the thing."
As the count had said, sitting at the table on the second-floor balcony one looked down over the mansion's broad garden and, beyond the wall, the capital.
In a great dish-shaped outdoor brazier, wood crackled as it burned. The hot flames held off the late-autumn chill well.
'So this is the degree of luxury a count's house enjoys.'
If a count's house was like this, how far did a marquis's go? He found himself curious all over again.
"The garden really is beautiful."
"Thank you."
The count liked Hans's rough-hewn manner. His wife and son looked on with goodwill in their eyes and smiled. The man who had washed away their eldest son's dishonor and turned it into a glory for the house. There was no way not to like him.
"I hope this will be a comfortable occasion for you."
Hans bowed his head in answer.
The food came out in order after that, the forms simplified to ease the burden on him, and Andre the butler, appearing before anyone noticed, stood at his side and helped. Dishes came out a little at a time, continuously, delicious enough to revive an appetite the hangover had driven off.
Partly to settle a bad stomach, Hans chewed slowly and thoroughly and savored the taste. The food was good enough that a smile came of itself.
Watching Hans smiling and savoring it slowly, the count nodded.
'He does not seem country-born. He looks to have dignity.'
It was the count's own misreading, with bean husks over his eyes.
When the meal was finished Hans turned to the butler and said.
"Thank you."
"Not at all."
Andre the butler smiled as he answered.
Over tea the count said.
"If it is not a discourtesy, I should like to know your plans going forward."
Hans calmly disclosed that he was going home. When the count began to consider seriously the life of a low noble without a domain, Hans disclosed that he had traded his barony away.
"For a commoner, a knighthood is surely enough."
At Hans's words the count realized he had got ahead of himself and gave a hearty laugh. He had gone so far as to think of cutting off a piece of his own domain for the man, which was going much too far.
'Is making the house's benefactor a vassal really a kindness?'
—Shake, shake.
The count shook his head inwardly.
'That would be a discourtesy to this young man's goodwill.'
Seeing him off as far as the main gate, the count spoke for his family.
"Our house will not forget the grace we have received from you."
"Set against Commander Tomius's grace, it is nothing at all."
Having paid his respects to the count, Hans boarded the carriage back.
With that soft ride and a hangover only now lifting, Hans's eyes slid shut.
***
"He had a meeting with an unidentified person last night?"
"Yes."
"And today he was invited to Count Pellone's house? The butler brought the invitation himself and took him away by carriage? Hah."
"Yes. That is so. However."
"However?"
"The person he met yesterday evening......."
"I'm all right. Say it."
The mercenary commander took a deep breath.
"Hoof."
"The person he met yesterday is presumed to be Marquis von Bieri."
"Hoof. Kh — khek. Kek, kek."
Having swallowed wrong, the commander grabbed his throat and hacked.
"A-are you certain?"
"The back channel reports 'a middle-aged man of at least Expert class' whom they could not approach closely. They sent word that they finally trailed him to near the von Bieri marquis's house and withdrew."
The commander seized his head in both hands in anguish.
"A man who meets a marquis in secret and gets invited by a count's butler in person? Khh. Five years of my devotion, come to nothing."
"It is by no means nothing. It is only delayed."
"Thank you for the comfort. Damn it."
"You are still young, Commander. With another two years of effort, your branch expansion plan will be realized more completely."
"Two years? Right. Two years, you say?"
"Yes. Two years. Only two. And I think we should put more weight behind making the company elite. In that sense the training branch you planned was truly excellent."
"Thank you. Had it come a year earlier we would not have had trash like that in the company."
Of the two branches planned for expansion, the commander had intended one as a training ground. He had meant to take in discharged soldiers and turn the company into a more elite, better-educated body of guards.
It was a plan that might truly have foreseen the future. He had simply had no luck.
"Hoo. Would a hundred gold satisfy him?"
"Probably."
"And if it does not?"
"If he is a man high nobles take an interest in, it is presumed he possesses at least the common sense to match it."
"Right. There is nothing for it but to hope he is a wise man."
Having been unwise himself, he was now in a position where he could only lean on the other man's mercy.
"Now he is the party holding the contract and we are the lesser party."
The mercenary commander sank his back deep into his chair.
'You are mistaken, Commander. We were never the party holding the contract, not from the start.'
The desk man's retort circled only inside his mouth. He was certainly a rational man.