I Pulled Out Excalib Chapter 228

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Chairman, Dieta (2)

Dieta was busy.

She bathed, combed her hair, and even though she'd made up her mind the night before what to wear, she spread dozens of dresses across the bed and spent far too long deciding.

Some might call it excessive. Others might ask what the difference was, anyway. But so what? Dieta was happy. She gave herself freely to that most human of instincts, the desire to look good for someone, and felt no guilt about it. One slow spin in front of the mirror. She nodded.

This one. Definitely this one.

She finished with a light spritz of perfume and finally made for the door. The meeting place was the reception room, same as always. She settled onto the sofa, sipped her tea, and kept stealing glances at the clock. Ten minutes to go.

When was the last time she had waited for someone like this?

Merchants and nobles stood in line with fistfuls of money just for ten minutes of Dieta's time. Her schedule was packed solid months ahead, and for a woman who parceled out her hours by the minute, time was gold.

The most precious commodity there was. The kind money could not buy.

And yet there was someone she could spend that time with freely, no, "spend" wasn't quite the right word. She swapped it out in her head. Spending implied a one-sided exchange. This was nothing like that.

Share. There was someone she could share it with.

Heart thumping, she kept looking back and forth between the clock and the door. She strained toward every sound from the corridor, and when footsteps drew close only to pass by without stopping, she let out a small, disappointed sigh.

And then, click.

Footsteps. The moment she heard them, she knew. He's here. That's him. His steps were always like that. Light, but with weight behind them.

Three. Two. One.

She counted in silence and steadied herself. She knew it, a few words exchanged, or even just the sight of his face, and whatever composure she'd managed would fall apart. Still, she drew a slow breath. She wanted at least the first impression to be perfect.

A few knocks. The door opened.

Dieta looked at Najin standing in the doorway. Her heart was hammering, but the first words came out without a stumble.

"Welcome. It's been a while, Najin."

* * *

Sweet tea and a spread of pastries.

Tasting proper food again for the first time in ages, Najin felt something close to wonder. Right, this is what food tastes like. He'd spent so long in the Outland, where eating was neither necessary nor easy, that the whole concept had grown strange.

"So," he said.

He told Dieta about his adventures in the Outland.

"Did you see it in the papers? Here's how I brought down one of the biggest trading houses in the empire..."

Dieta told him about the politics on the continent and how she'd swallowed Rocktide Trading whole. They talked without holding back, laughed together more than once. Just the sharing of it was enough.

"You said you were going to get your hands on the Empire's purse strings, and it looks like you almost have. All I saw on the way here were your company's flags."

"Corneld is the only one left now. The groundwork's already done on that front too. If things go smoothly, three months. Even if it takes longer, I expect to have it before the year's out."

She talked about absorbing another great trading house like it was nothing. Najin laughed. He was closing in on the pinnacle as a fighter. The girl sitting across from him was closing in on hers as a merchant.

Different roads, different worlds, but she was the one who had said they'd each walk their own path and meet again at the summit.

She was actually keeping that promise. She might even get there first.

"You might reach the top before me, Dieta."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She tilted her head.

"You said so yourself, back then. That the purse strings were just the first goal. After that, it was there."

She pointed to the tower encircling the imperial palace.

"There's no rule that says only archmages and Sword Masters can enter that tower, is there? In the Empire's thousand-year history, there was exactly one case where a merchant was put forward as a candidate for a Pillar."

A legendary merchant from the Empire's distant past. They had seized control of logistics, monopolized shipping lanes and trade routes, piled up staggering wealth, and been nominated as a Pillar candidate. They never made it. But the possibility had been proven.

"When you reach Sword Master, I plan to climb into that tower too. It's a dream of mine, but there's another reason I need to."

Dieta glanced at him.

"A reason? Revenge, you mean?"

"Revenge? Oh, the Arbenia family? That's already in motion. I've taken out about twenty of their business partners, they'll be reaching out before long. But that's a separate matter. This is something else."

Said so lightly, but the edge was there. Najin nodded and let it go. So what was the reason?

"Because that's the only way I can stand beside you."

"You don't need any kind of qualification to stand beside me..."

"I have no intention of becoming a burden to you. Even less of becoming your weakness. I want to be useful to you, not drag you down."

Dieta smiled.

"And that way, I can stay by your side longer."

Only then did Najin understand what she was getting at.

"You mean lifespan."

"Yes. That's it."

Najin was still growing, still aging, but the moment his body finished maturing he would stop. Even at his current level, he had already claimed agelessness.

Dieta was different.

She was no fighter, and no amount of gold poured into it would do more than slow the signs of age. Time would pass. She would grow old. She would die, as most people did.

"But if I earn a star, that changes things."

She had no intention of staying in that camp. A star would give her the same agelessness as Najin.

"If I become one of the Empire's Pillars, that kind of achievement ought to earn at least one star, don't you think? First in a thousand years, after all."

"I'd say so."

"Your reaction is awfully lukewarm. As if having five stars already makes one star seem like nothing..."

Dieta pouted at him. Najin shook his head with a laugh.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Then what did you mean?"

"I think you'd earn one even without all that."

Najin's eyes narrowed.

His perception, honed by his approach toward Transcendence, couldn't count the exact stars in a person, but it was sharp enough to sense a New Star on the verge of being born.

Starlight dwelled within Dieta's body.

It hadn't condensed yet, but the starlight flowing through her, the kind that would coalesce into one before long, was visible to him.

"What? What does that mean?"

"It's nothing. We should get going. Didn't you say you booked the restaurant for seven? Let's head out."

"Wait, Najin, what did you mean by that..."

The same upscale restaurant they had visited together on a trip to the capital. Seated at the window table, Najin and Dieta shared a meal and kept the conversation going.

"That window seat over there..."

"Those two people..."

A few things were different from before. For one, every eye in the room had drifted their way. In a room full of nobles, no one failed to recognize either of them.

Any noble with ties to the capital knew Dieta's face, chairwoman of the great trading house. Any citizen of the Empire knew Najin's.

Word had spread that he'd returned briefly from the Outland. Still, seeing him here of all places. The nobles murmured, and at one table among them sat a figure with the expression of someone who had bitten into something rotten.

"There goes my appetite."

Agesio Arbenia.

Eldest son of the Arbenia ducal house. He set down his utensils and sighed, cut a look at that table, those infuriating faces, and clicked his tongue.

His attempt to seize Dieta's trading house in Cambria had failed, and since then he'd been working to rebuild his footing in the capital. Under normal circumstances he'd have been at the estate by now, being groomed as the next family head. One failure had shaken all of that to its roots.

He had failed spectacularly. The kind of failure that gets preserved as a farce. An indelible stain on the family name.

「If only that child instead of you...」

Hearing the Duke mutter that, Agesio had barely kept his temper. Dieta had once been nothing more than an irritating blemish to him. Now something sharper had taken root. Inferiority.

That window seat. Hadn't they told him reservations were impossible? The staff had been clear, VIPs only, no exceptions. He'd pushed back, demanded to know who exactly counted as a VIP if not the eldest son of a ducal house, and they'd stonewalled him to the last. Her table all along.

Grit.

Agesio ground his teeth and stood. The reservation had been hard to get, but staying now was pointless. He gestured, face dark.

"Let's go."

His knights rose too. Among them was Griffin, once knight captain of the Arbenia ducal house.

Sword Seeker, Griffin.

His epithet: Knight of the Thornbush.

Under the Duke's orders to watch over his son, and shouldering the weight of a failed mission, he had stayed at Agesio's side in the capital. He was the kind of man who followed commands without complaint, and he was about to do just that when his gaze drifted sideways.

A young man was looking their way.

The same young man he had once crossed with.

The moment their eyes met, Griffin stopped.

Agesio stopped too, looking back at Griffin, who had gone rigid. "What are you doing, Sir Griffin? Come on." He kept at it. Griffin didn't move.

Had their eyes not met, it would have been fine.

But they had. Between Griffin and the young man at that table, there was a point of etiquette, one that could not be sidestepped once eyes were locked. Knight's etiquette.

Click.

Griffin approached Najin. Agesio watched, puzzled, as Griffin walked up to where Najin sat and slowly lowered himself. He bowed his head at the angle a knight reserves for greeting his own master.

"Sir Griffin, what on earth..."

Agesio's eyes went wide.

Griffin was a knight of the Arbenia ducal house. Saluting someone who wasn't his master? Before Agesio could get the words out, Griffin spoke.

"I greet Sir Najin, Free Knight."

Head still lowered, he addressed Najin.

Free Knight.

A title that could only be conferred with the agreement of both the Emperor and the Knights of Atanga. The last time it was given was during the age of King Arthur, unawarded for a full thousand years since.

The day word spread that Najin had received it, the public simply nodded..."Well, someone like him deserves it