Finally. Starting with a morsel less personal to Claribel, Ari awaited for the answer behind the Church’s motive to remove Tristram from the land of the living.

~You heard them address him as a viscount, right?~ Claribel started at the thread that Master Keating had offered. ~They addressed him as Viscount Keating, because he holds land within the Duchy of Carnell, just south of Eirene. Last year, when one of the barons who was a vassal to him died without issue, the land should have returned to him, and he could have decided to make another family his vassals, but instead, the baron bequeathed it to the Church in his will. That kind of thing happens much more often in Taur, because the Holy Place is in the Taurian Sea. People there tend to want to bequeath their land to the Church after their death for a better chance of being reborn into a good family. The thing is… If your land goes to a son or a daughter after your death, the line may break at any point and return to the liege lord above. But if you bequeath your land to the Church, that’s it. The Church never dies. And while the Church has the land, the Duke of Taur cannot collect any tributes from that land. Over the years, a lot of land in Taur has ended up in the hands of the Church.~

~Yes. And worse, if you die without a wife or any direct descendants, you must pay a tithe to the Church. For a duke, the tithe must be paid in land. Tristram’s death just cost House Taur a tenth of their land. Or what remains of it.~

Ari wished there was a place to store routes she’d unlocked within this world, but the world of fiction was full of inconveniences, so she added her own mental note.

===Branch: Whose Tithe Is It Anyway? Conflict between nobles and the Church. [Unlocked]===

~Is it my turn to ask a question now?~

~So… what do you think of my father?~

Ari nearly choked on the piece of purple carrot she had just popped into her mouth. Her question to Claribel had made sense, right? But what was Claribel trying to get at with a question like that?

~I just want to hear you answer this properly, without jokes and without trying to provoke me. You said there’d be no lying in the answer to these seven questions.~

~Go on?~

<…but some seem to call you a daughter of a duchess instead of a daughter of a duke, and you yourself said that he’d been a landless knight when he’d met your mother… So maybe his [Social Standing] is a mix bag, and he is more at home among the knights than among other nobles.>

~I see. So that is how you see people.~

That was it, wasn’t it? Claribel was using her questions to gauge Ari’s stats. Body and identity aside, there were only [Charisma], [Intelligence], [Wisdom].

she added hastily.

~He is, and I’ll give you that answer as a bonus. What do you want to ask me next?~

~Oh. I know what you’ll say. You can’t really ever truly know someone. But I’ve worked closely with him for the past three years, and… Look, I can see some of what you think about the Church happening in Taur. The path from priest to cardinal is murky, and from my knowledge, the other cardinals are not like him. You have only seen him officiate a burning, but I meet with him every week to arrange alms for those who need it. He is a good man.~

That didn’t contradict with someone who’d kill a duke. Because having a duke wasn’t necessary for the happiness of the peasants who lived and worked on the land.

~I heard that. There are people who talk of things like that here, too. Of a country run by the Church.~

~Like the Republic of Treno, our rival in glass artisans, and traders of salt and slaves? Ha! Since you’re not of this world, I’ll let you know. I’ve thought a lot about whether Ventinon would be better off with all of us lot gone.~

~Of course. I’m aware that there are people who want to remove us. Jumont had gone through a peasant revolution at most of its dynastic changes. It’s not like I don’t know what happens when you get a populace that is hungry enough. At some point, people feel like they have nothing more to lose. I’m also aware that if we, the nobility, are gone, it leaves a vacancy at the top, and a certain type are better at climbing, better at wanting to climb to the top than others. The death toll of the last Jumont dynastic change is north of 200,000, more than four times the entire population of Eirene… Enough to dye the River Whye red. For that was the price to spin the wheel of fortune for a population of 55 million. Less than four deaths in every thousand. A drop in the ocean for a few hundred years of peace and, hopefully, prosperity, until it all falls apart once more. The end justified the means.~

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

~I think… as a daughter of Aquilon, I should prevent people wanting that end in the first place. I think I should try my best to give them things that they’d rather not lose. Safety. Shelter. Food.~

~Isn’t it my turn to ask the next question?~

~What do you think of slavery?~

That was… certainly… a question.

She waited for Claribel to come to its defence, but the spirit merely nodded.

~Your turn.~

~You had nothing more to say.~

~Oh that. It’s an obvious one, isn’t it? We look different from those from other parts of Ventinon! You’re right, my family’s tribe used to be from north of Jumont, but we came over the seas, around the protection that the mountains usually offer, and we pushed the Ventinon forces all the way back to the River Whye.~

~I mean… On some level, they’re right. They say that the River Whye was dyed the colour of wine, and we’d built bridges across the narrower points with the bodies of soldiers and villagers alike. They say that the polluted waters reached Lake Una, and Lady Una herself crawled out of the waters and slaughtered men from Aquilon, Ventinon, livestock… everything. They called the king from my tribe Krek the Destroyer for a reason. Still… He was nothing against Lady Una. Both kings were lost, and many princes and dukes too. The peace we brokered afterwards was as much to appease Lady Una as it was due to victory or defeat. Or perhaps the only one who came out victorious at the Battle of Una was the Lady. Any soldier who was foolish enough to shoot an arrow or swing a lance in her direction were simply turned into pellets of water. Gone. Vapourised by the true Destroyer.~

Not for the first time since arriving at this world, Ari wondered,

~Powerful ones, of course? Otherwise, why would you worship them?~

A throwaway remark.

~Is there a difference?~

~Is there a difference? We do what the Fated One asks of us, because the Fated One is powerful, because the Fated One is the ultimate will of the world. We then define those actions as ‘good’.~

~Can I count that as your fourth question?~

~Haha, but I wanted to ask a different fourth question.~

~What do you think of slavery–~

~Yes, but what do you think of slavery when it concerns people from another faith, or of a more… more savage disposition?~

A few seats down, Natty coughed into her sleeve and breathed a silent ‘sorry’ to the Chaplain.

~I see.~

~You will have to ask me to find out.~

Was this some warped tactic to get Ari to waste a question now that she’d done her warmup? No, she would not take the bait.

~I… don’t know.~

Claribel closed her eyes and crinkled her brows.

~That’s the problem. I can’t think of why someone would dispose of him. I know you think it’s the Church, but it’s a dangerous move. They could burn Malory, but to take down Tristram would force the other dukes and duchesses into action. It is not a price worth paying for a tithe against the lands of Taur. Then that leaves Coell. As Tristram’s heir, you might think he’d have a motive, but he is not that type of person. In fact, he’d hate nothing more than to be torn from his beloved School of Thought. I have also considered other dukes and factions, but the truth of it is, at the moment House Auster and we at House Aquilon are in a very delicate balance of power. I don’t believe either side would truly want to disrupt the deal that Father has worked hard to achieve.~

~I can imagine Tristram angering someone, but from what you said, it was hardly a spur-of-the-moment tavern brawl. Someone planned this. Part of me thinks that it was done to harm Ventinon, but if they were going to go to the lengths of murdering a duke to throw our kingdom into disarray, they should have poisoned Duke Auster instead.~

Ari took a long sip of the blackcurrant cordial that a girl she didn’t know had poured for her. A feeling had been festering in her mind, niggling away at her. Was Tristram’s death really part of the political machinations within Claribel’s world, or was it caused by outside influence? Influence from Ari’s world…?

How many of them were there in this world? She knew of three Agents and one civilian, but the Chief’s words played in her mind: a group of them had discovered a rumour that it was sometimes possible to travel into this book.

A group.

How did they like it here? What did they do? Had they all made their way home? Or… where they the wrong questions altogether?

What type of person would want to brave the risk of being trapped here forever and leave the real world behind?

Natty smiled at her.

A case in hand.

~Is it my turn now?~

~What do you think of… eccentric people?~

~That… is true, I suppose, but my question is about the eccentricities themselves.~

~All right, all right, I keep forgetting what kind of people you deal with sometimes… I am talking about people who really like certain things and really don’t like certain other things, I guess, and sometimes they go berserk, even when they are not in the middle of a battlefield.~

~That’s good enough for me. As for the latter, like I said before, you will have to ask me to find out.~

Claribel had to be doing it deliberately: injecting more things to question within her answers. Ari suddenly felt like the evil king, trapped in Scheherazade’s one-thousand-and-one nights. But no, she would stick to her plan.

An echo of Claribel’s words before the burning replayed in her mind, of what they could have done for Malory while she was still alive: should you have broken her out of the cathedral’s dungeons yesterday, or the day before, and have her evade capture forever?

Had they really been meant for Ari, or was there something more. Spite? Guilt? Blame?

Claribel drew in a sharp, ghostly breath. Ari had her answer.