Chapter 6: Inheritance of Ashes
The tea had long gone cold by the time I asked the question.
“So…”
I said, breaking the long silence in the sitting room, “what exactly did you mean when you said it would be impossible to find me a swordsmanship instructor?”
The butler, ancient, stooped, and wrapped in the kind of poise only decades of service could bestow, paused mid-polish of the silver tray.
His eyes, an almost glassy grey, lifted from the tea set to me.
And for a moment, I saw the faintest twitch in the corner of his mouth, like something unsaid had just tugged at the corner of his weathered soul.
“I meant, Young Master,” he said slowly, “that no instructor would agree to come here. Not now. Not anymore.”
I blinked.
“Wait, but... Why?”
The silence that followed felt like it filled the whole estate.
The soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner only made it worse.
Then the old man straightened his posture slightly, as if adjusting to recite something long memorized.
“There were six before, Young Master. Six hired over the years. Two from reputable schools. One directly appointed by the Count. One was even a retired knight of the imperial guard.”
He set the tray down, precisely, soundlessly.
“Every single one left.”
I frowned.
“Why? Because Lucien-er I mean- I was… lazy?”
The butler’s lips thinned.
Ignoring the clear case of amnesia the boy was displaying, he continued.
“Laziness was one part of it, yes. But it was not the worst of it.”
He clasped his hands behind his back, facing the window now, his reflection staring back in the polished glass.
“There were fits of temper. Public humiliation. One instructor was injured. Another was insulted so cruelly his wife came to fetch him with tears in her eyes. The knight left after two days and warned the Count to never send another man of honor into this estate unless he wished to be spat on.”
My heart sank.
The picture painted was worse than I would expected.
I knew the old Lucien was problematic, sure.
But this… this was institutional damage.
The kind of reputation that didn’t wash away with a few polite bows and fresh shirts.
“I see,” I said quietly.
“And if… if I were to apologize, write letters, beg even, would they listen?”
The butler turned to look at me fully now.
He studied my face for a long, unreadable moment.
“You might be able to buy forgiveness, Young Master. But not theirs.”
I sighed and slouched back in my chair.
The fire crackled, indifferent.
“Then what if I bow my head? I’ll kneel, lick the damn floors if I have to. I want to learn. I need to learn. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
The butler didn’t answer immediately.
Then, with a tone dipped in something perilously close to pity, he said:
“Even if that were enough to convince a master to teach you…”
He walked over to the ledgers resting on the corner table, flipping one open with gloved fingers.
“…the estate’s treasury would not allow it.”
I stared at him, uncomprehending.
“There isn’t enough money left,” he said, almost gently.
“A half-decent instructor costs coin. A master costs gold. And we haven’t had gold for quite some time.”
The finality of it hit me like a stone in the gut.
All this land.
This estate.
The giant paintings and antique chandeliers.
The fleet of maids and endless hallways.
And no money to hire a single damn teacher.
All this power and privilege, squandered by a spoiled, angry boy with too much freedom and no one to guide him.
“…I see,” I murmured.
There was a pause.
Long.
Still.
My voice was hoarse when I spoke again.
“Then just… set up a dummy,” I said. “Somewhere quiet. A corner of the estate. Something I can swing a stick at without breaking priceless family pottery.”
The butler bowed slightly.
“As you wish.”
He turned to go.
“Wait,” I said.
He stopped.
“Thank you.”
That old man, for just a split second, blinked in surprise.
And then, with something between satisfaction and mourning in his voice, he said:
“It’s strange, hearing those words in this house again.”
Then he left me there, alone, seated beneath the weight of a history that wasn’t mine, trying to figure out if I could still carry it anyway.
***
In the kitchens of the D’Claire estate, where the fire always burned warm and the copper pans always gleamed just a little too much from obsessive polishing, gossip sizzled hotter than the morning stew.
Word of the conversation didn't stay locked in the study for long.
“I’m telling you,” a young scullery maid whispered, leaning far too dramatically over a sack of peeled potatoes, “he didn’t say a single word about what happened in there. Not one!”
The others gasped in theatrical unison, as if they hadn’t all been waiting on the exact same juicy tidbit since the young master summoned the old butler.
“Old man’s a vault,” muttered another, dusting flour off her apron like it was the butler’s fault she hadn’t heard anything.
“If that were me, I’d at least drop a hint. Throw us a bone.”
“Actually,” piped up one of the kitchen hands, a lanky fellow who always seemed to be in the wrong place doing the wrong job, “he did say something.”
A beat.
All eyes turned to him.
“Well?”
Someone hissed.
“Don’t sit there like an overboiled carrot, what did he say?”
The boy rubbed the back of his neck, obviously savoring the attention but pretending to be humble about it.
“He said… and I quote… ‘I’ve seen treaties signed, wars decided, and marriages negotiated at this estate… and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all that time, it’s how to tell actual regret from an act.’”
There was a pause.
A heavy one.
“…Huh,” said the scullery maid, blinking.
“That’s it?”
Said the flour-covered one, unimpressed.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means…” started the boy, drawing himself up dramatically, “he thinks the young master is actually regretful.”
Another pause.
“…Get out.”
“No, really!”
The older laundress, who'd been silent until now, finally looked up from folding linens.
“That old man served three generations of nobles. He knew the late Lady D’Claire. If he says something like that… well, it means something.”
A nervous murmur rippled through the kitchen.
One of the maids bit her lower lip, glancing toward the high windows that let in pale morning light.
“…So he believes the young master’s changed?”
“He didn’t say that,” the kitchen hand said quickly, suddenly nervous.
“Just that he saw something. Maybe not change. But maybe… maybe regret.”
“I didn’t think he could feel regret,” said the potato maid, a little softer now.
“After what he did to the last instructor… and that time he set fire to the west garden because the peacocks ‘looked at him wrong’”
“Oh Saints, don’t remind me.”
“I had to pluck melted feathers out of the hedges for weeks.”
“But then…”
Another whispered, “why did the butler look so… sad?”
The chatter faded into silence, the kind that fills when too many people start wondering the same thing at the same time.
The older laundress, slow and deliberate, folded the last sheet and said, “Because maybe, after all these years, he finally saw the boy feel something. And that scared him more than anything.”
The kitchen sat in stillness for a few more seconds.
Then, quietly, the scullery maid whispered:
“…Do you think he’s still the same Lucien Crowley?”
The question hung in the air, unspoken and unanswered, like a cloud that hadn’t yet decided if it would rain or not.
They all went back to their work, hands busy but minds far away, replaying the moment when the old butler had returned to the hallway… and sighed.
It hadn’t been frustration.
Not exactly.
It had sounded… like the beginning of mourning.
Or maybe the start of hope.
They weren’t sure which.
***
The thud of wood against hay echoed through the far garden as Lucien swung his wooden sword with grim determination.
The dummy swayed slightly with each strike, but gave no satisfying feedback, no clash, no resistance, just the dull honesty of his weakness and inexperience.
“Ugh… damn it,” he muttered, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of a shirt he was very sure used to be embroidered silk and was now downgraded to ragged linen.
He took a step back and dropped the sword into the grass, sucking in a long breath as he squinted toward the horizon.
His legs ached.
His arms burned.
And above all, his brain refused to shut up.
‘Money.’
It kept circling back.
No matter how hard he tried to distract himself with swordplay or survival plans or even empty daydreams of curb-stomping Leonardo into the dirt, the looming weight of the estate’s finances pressed on his mind.
He leaned against the dummy and looked up at the pale sky.
“I remember something… a hint.”
Lucien furrowed his brow, trying to dig into the half-remembered dialogue boxes and background snippets from the visual novel.
“Right… right… Lucien Crowley was rich, yeah. But it was always framed kinda weird, he flaunted wealth, but there were offhand comments… small things. Like the bursar mentioning late payments. Other nobles mocking how he clung to girls from moneyed houses. Some heroine route even dropped a line about him ‘marrying above his worth.’”
He blinked slowly.
“Wait… he wasn’t at the Academy for prestige. He was there to find a wallet with legs to spread.”
Lucien let out a long groan, slumping down onto the ground, back against the dummy.
“So this was always a desperation play for him. I just didn’t realize how bad it was.”
It had seemed like background flavor in the game.
A subtle, tragic undertone to an otherwise flamboyant character.
But sitting here now, watching a cracked marble fountain spit out muddy water while the gardener used twine to hold a broken rake together… it wasn’t flavor.
It was reality.
“If I can’t even afford the Academy tuition,” Lucien muttered, “then the plot derails before it even starts. No heroine, no villainess, no nothing. And I’m stuck here trying to outrun economic collapse while Leonardo gets to live his golden boy power fantasy.”
His first instinct was to write to his father.
That died quickly.
There were too many unknowns.
Too many flags.
And from what he could tell, the Count didn’t even send birthday letters, much less money.
Banking on that man’s help felt like placing his fate in the hands of a drunk roulette wheel.
Lucien rubbed his face with both hands.
“Okay. What do I have?”
He looked around.
The estate was massive.
Beautiful in that tragic, fallen-goddess kind of way.
But beyond the cracked tiles and flaking paint, there was land.
Heaps of it.
Vast gardens.
Long-forgotten sheds.
And past the east hedge…
He stood up slowly and jogged toward the orchard.
What met him was a row of overgrown fruit trees, branches sagging under the weight of unharvested pears and plums, some rotting where they’d fallen into the long grass.
It smelled sweet.
And sad.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lucien whispered.
He turned, looking over the whole patch.
It was huge.
Wild.
Half-dead and completely unmanaged, but still full of produce.
He started pacing in a circle, eyes darting.
“There’s at least a dozen rows here. If I cleared this up and got help picking and sorting... even a basic local merchant would take these. Or a farmer’s guild. If I package them right, hell, maybe even make jam or cider or…”
The gears were turning.
Slowly, clunkily, but turning.
He wasn’t a businessman.
He wasn’t a farmer.
But he was, technically, the master of the estate.
And this?
This was his.
He looked down at his hand, still shaking slightly from his clumsy training swings.
“…Swordplay can wait,” he muttered, voice resolute.
“First, I need to save the stage before the curtain even rises.”
He glanced back at the fruit trees.
“Let’s get to work, my dear estate of D’Claire.”
***
