Deep within the Royal Palace, a "feast" without gunpowder but no less fraught with tension was underway. The air was thick with a mingled scent of spices, fine wine, and the desires churning in people's hearts.
Like two meticulously dressed dolls, Nami and Carina wore lavish gowns they had once only gazed up at in shop windows and had been seated in the most central, conspicuous positions on one side of the long table.
Silk and lace wrapped their still-immature bodies, and jewels glittered at their necks and wrists, yet felt heavier and more uncomfortable than chains. Countless gazes-appraising, calculating, curious, greedy-clung to them like tangible spiderwebs.
The theme of the feast was "division." Dividing the vast salt empire left behind after Duke Sergei's downfall, dividing its associated mineral resources, trade routes, and even hidden assets in the gray economy.
Captain Snake of the Marines' G16 16th Branch had shed the timidity he had shown at the city gates. Now, spittle flew as he argued red-faced with the kingdom's finance minister over ownership of key salt mines and the division of future profits, his words brimming with calculation and undisguised greed. Other nobles and officials joined the fray, haggling over every scrap of profit, until the scene nearly resembled a street quarrel among shrews.
Nami and Carina sat stiffly, the delicacies before them tasting like wax. Bewildered and at a loss-that was how they truly felt. Those complicated terms, enormous figures, and secret dealings might as well have been an indecipherable script to them.
They were merely required to sign their names on designated documents at specified moments-sometimes "Nami," sometimes "Carina," and sometimes even a completely unfamiliar symbol representing "the interests of Lord Aaron Ball."
Whenever the shares under "Aaron Ball's" name came up, the arguments would pause with uncanny