Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 415

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 185.
In the Name of Loyalty and Vengeance (27)
Duke Joshua stood gazing at the opposite hill. It was where the most people had gathered. They were watching him too. It had been nearly a century since anyone bearing the name Arnim had set foot on this land. Children must have been born and grown during all that time. Most of the islanders were likely people born on Periwinkle after the Arnim line vanished.
Joshua’s face differed from Icabon’s. It differed from his father’s as well. The islanders had never even seen his father Franz. The last Demonic to leave the island must have been the young boy Hispaniae von Arnim, with his golden hair and blue eyes. Back then, Hispaniae had been even younger than Joshua was now.
It would not have been strange if they failed to recognize him. I should not have been surprised by indifference or even hostility. Yet from among the crowd, an elderly man in his seventies stepped forward, slowly bowed, and straightened again.
“Welcome. Blessed Arnim, our Young Duke. You have the right to come and go from this place whenever you wish. Since you have come here today, we are your people.”
Joshua looked around at the people. His eyes had grown deeper. After a moment, he bowed to them in return.
Greetings rippled through the crowd like waves. Standing, Joshua received each of their salutations one by one as he turned. In this moment, he stood upon the authority of his ancestors, his father, and his house, and therefore bore the duty to protect it. Whether he had wanted it or not, because of that name, these people who had never seen Joshua before showed him respect. This was his role.
When the greetings ended, Joshua smiled at them.
“Thank you for remembering.”
The old man replied.
“We are bound by the fate to remember. It is our duty, and our right as well. Arnim possesses every speck of soil on this land without exception, and we in turn possess such an Arnim.”
The old man’s demeanor differed slightly from the courtesy shown to a guest, and also from the loyalty shown to a master. Joshua did not yet know what the relationship between the Duke and the islanders was like here. But it was clearly different from the relationship between lords and subjects on the Continent.
What should I say in response? Was I someone worthy of making promises? Did I have the right?
Yet this was a moment that demanded an answer.
“It will remain so.”
No one paid attention to the two standing behind him. To them, the person who appeared here today was only Duke Joshua von Arnim, and it mattered not whether the other two were friends or servants. Joshua himself made no effort to introduce them to the people. Riche murmured.
“We’ve become mere spectators.”
Rather than agreeing or voicing complaints, Maximian gazed at Joshua’s profile. His friend would one day rule all those people. Before they even came to know what kind of person Joshua was—someone their own age—they held expectations from the moment they met. The name had created the role. This was a situation Maximian had never experienced before. Under the name Maximian Lipkne, he had received expectations like “So you’re the one who stole the chicken!” but nothing like this.
Joshua, who had so often tried to escape from the roles assigned to him, did not falter in moments like this. A sight as if only a young man destined to become a Duke and the people who expected it existed in the entire world.
Maximian watched such a Joshua. He had known it before, but he thought today was the day he felt it most clearly.
That fellow would find it hard to escape.
The Magistrate Richard Pell lived in a modest two-story house surrounded by ivy. Unlike other islanders, he was not a fisherman, nor was he a miner or aquaculturist. Before becoming magistrate, his occupation had been “the magistrate’s son.” He had never felt the need to have any other profession.
Magistrate Pell knew the House of Duke Arnim well. He meant the empty manor whose owner he had to visit every three or four days. When he went, there were so many portraits hanging on the walls that one wondered if wallpaper was in short supply, piles of genealogies stacked high enough to be shot down by siege weapons, and an old gatekeeper who maintained the manor spoke of the Arnim family so much that his lips would stick together if he didn’t talk about them once a day—it was impossible not to know. Just yesterday, as he was leaving through the front gate, the old gatekeeper brought up the story of how Altena von Arnim, said to be the most beautiful on both the island and the Continent, had made him a lily-of-the-valley bracelet, causing him to be an hour late for dinner.
Once a year, the magistrate sent one-tenth of all the island’s annual income to the Duke in Keltika. Since the House of Duke Arnim and Periwinkle Island had officially severed relations, this was done in secret. It had been interrupted briefly during the Republic era, but when the new Royal House took power, all the accumulated payments were sent at once.
The Periwinkle Archipelago had enormous income from exclusive pearl cultivation and coral harvesting, as well as lapis lazuli mining sold through the semi-pirate merchants of Durnensa. Thus, the Duke of Arnim’s annual income was incomparable to the continental estates of mere farmers or sheep herders.
The magistrate’s salary was paid by the Duke himself. The Duke had entrusted tax calculations entirely to the magistrate. He never sent inspectors. For that much, Pell was grateful, but he was not the type to embezzle taxes anyway.
When one considered how continental lords demanded not only taxes but various corvées, and in severe cases monopolized mills or bread ovens and charged usage fees, the island’s situation—where one need only pay taxes without interference—was far more comfortable.
Yet Richard Pell had never in his life even glimpsed the Duke of Arnim to whom he had to pay taxes. Because of this, he could not shake the feeling that the Duke of Arnim took nothing for the island while collecting money, pearls, coral, and even the precious lapis lazuli.
Richard Pell was diligent and rose early, but he did not particularly enjoy early visitors. The previous night, he had spent time complaining to his wife and had not reviewed the documents he had intended to examine after dinner, so he had ordered a servant to brew him tea and was just sitting at his desk. Then the servant who had gone downstairs opened the door a crack and poked his head in.
“Magistrate, we have visitors.”
The magistrate was annoyed to see that the servant’s hands held no teacup. However, since he was a man devoted to his duties, he held back his irritation and replied.
“Visitors in the morning, and not just one but multiple? It’s fine that they’ve come, but tell them to enter one at a time.”
The servant went back downstairs but ultimately did not bring the tea. Moreover, the door swung wide open and what appeared to be six or seven people rushed into the office all at once. Since there were only two chairs for guests in the office, they all had to stand. Standing like that, the already narrow office became as cramped as a long-distance carriage.
The man standing directly in front of the desk spoke.
“Magistrate, I apologize for arriving so suddenly this morning. But I have something I must tell you.”
Before Magistrate Pell could even answer, the door opened again, and three new people poked their heads in. Those who had entered first turned around, and a commotion ensued with gestures to stay out mixing with insistence on entering. Just as the three who had pushed in were about to close the door, five more appeared at the entrance and shoved the people already inside. Now the door could not be closed.
“What in the world is all this commotion about!”
When the magistrate stood up abruptly and shouted, the people stopped talking. But upon standing, he saw that the narrow corridor beyond the door, the staircase leading down, and even the entrance hall were packed with people.
Seeing this, the magistrate forgot his anger and was suddenly seized with fear. For so many people to gather like this in the morning—this could not be over any ordinary matter. What if these people harbored grievances against the magistrate?
“My apologies, Administrator Pell.”
“Please forgive me. With so much work piling up….”
Administrator Richard Pell was a meticulous and fair man. Had he possessed the leisure to reflect on his life in this moment, he would have realized there was no reason for people to come rushing to lodge complaints against him. Yet he was simultaneously a timid soul. If one wished to harbor grievances, couldn’t one just as easily blame the cart wheel that got stuck on a stone in front of the Administrator’s courtyard, causing him to arrive late to his fifth cousin’s funeral?
“W-w-w-what on earth is happening?”
The people began speaking all at once.
“Administrator, something extraordinary has occurred. At last….”
“We’ve been waiting for this day….”
“…there’s no other way to interpret it.”
“I suspected as much already….”
“…we’ve placed our hopes here….”
Not a single decisive word reached his ears. As the timid Administrator struggled to comprehend the people’s chatter, beads of perspiration rolling down his temples, an elderly woman pushed through the crowd and made her way inside. The moment Administrator Pell glimpsed her face, his brow furrowed.
“Administrator. I know this sudden arrival must be overwhelming, but the matter is far too important for any other course of action.”
She was an old woman with an erect posture and a clear, resonant voice. The Administrator did not care for this woman. She owned the largest pearl farm on Periwinkle Island, had given birth to five loud and talkative children, and held opinions diametrically opposed to his own. The Administrator settled back into his seat and spoke.
“Ah, yes. Please, speak, Dulcia.”
“Of course I shall. Though you and I have differed in opinion, I trust you are not one to be discourteous.”
The old woman’s slow and deliberate voice grated on him like someone teaching a child, but he had to endure it. There was nothing to gain from quarreling with her—only loss. Yet upon hearing what came next, he could not help but leap from his seat.
“This very morning, a member of House of Arnim has finally arrived on the island.”
“Is-is that truly so?”
The old woman gave a quick, birdlike shrug of her narrow shoulders.
“Why would I deceive you, Administrator? Everyone who has gathered here witnessed it with their own eyes. Surely you can see how excited they all are. It’s only natural. These people have never in their lives been blessed to lay eyes upon one of the Arnim—how could they not be beside themselves?”
Suddenly sweat beaded on his temples. Administrator Richard Pell attempted to view this situation with detachment, but failed. He put on his spectacles, then removed them, and finally replaced them again, wiping his fingers with a cloth as he asked.
“By ‘one of the blessed Arnim,’ surely you don’t mean Hispaniae von Arnim?”
“No. He would never come in such a manner. The House of Arnim now possesses more than one of the blessed. Though I need not tell you what you already know.”
The Administrator’s eyes swept quickly across the faces of the crowd. One of them suddenly spoke up.
“Quite the momentous occasion, isn’t it? I thought I’d go to my grave never having laid eyes upon one of the Arnim.”
Another person took up the thread.
“And the manner of arrival was magnificent! A ship that sails through the heavens descended gracefully and came to rest upon the waters before us. From it, three people boarded a small boat and….”
“Everyone stood speechless, eyes wide, when he spoke first. ‘I have returned,’ he said. The feeling in that moment was truly extraordinary…”
“When I heard those words, my knees nearly buckled.”
“With features so striking and identical to the portrait, everyone recognized him at once. School is cancelled for all the children today. They’ve all rushed off to….”
“And his face bears such a striking resemblance to Duke Icabon….”
Joshua’s face was not particularly similar to Icabon’s, yet the crowd had already become firmly convinced of the resemblance. Administrator Pell drew a deep breath and asked, as if seeking confirmation.
“So who exactly has arrived?”
Children of Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Months Publishing
The rights to this book belong to the author and 14 Months Publishing.
To reuse all or part of this book’s contents, written consent from both parties is required.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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