Part 2: The Branch in the Coffin, Mistilteinn (5)

Remuse, the largest museum on the Central Continent.

From paintings and sculptures to ancient weapons and culture, it offered a sweeping view of the past—a veritable compendium of history.

Quinier had come to Remuse Museum for both pleasure and study. Looking at fine works of art helped develop an eye for assessing an item’s worth.

Today, however, the person beside her was something of a distraction. She gave an awkward smile.

“I told you, you didn’t have to come.”

“No, no, this is fun, fun. Really, really.”

Anne answered beside her like an answering machine. Judging by the way she repeated every word, her responses were beginning to lose all semblance of life.

“Why did you tag along when you don’t even like this sort of thing?”

“Dad bought a painting a little while ago, but apparently it turned out to be a copy. I guess he embarrassed himself in front of his friends. Then he suddenly came to me and said, ‘My daughter, you must never let this happen to you,’ and told me to study art. Something about there being a lot of cases like that lately.”

“He sounds like a good father.”

“... Well, I was just thinking I needed to learn about that anyway, and since Dad asked, there wasn’t any reason to say no? So I thought I’d look into it?”

Anne twirled her hair as she spoke. Quinier chuckled at the sight.

... But without a love of art, she would never develop an eye for it. An eye for art was, after all, the ability to sense beauty.

Quinier considered saying so, but ultimately kept it to herself. Perhaps looking at enough pieces would open Anne’s eyes.

“... Oh my.”

As she walked, Quinier stopped before a painting.

It depicted a woman praying. Yet she was not in a church or cathedral. She stood in prayer amid a golden expanse of grain. She was smiling, her face neither solemn nor grave, but bright and sunny.

All those dissimilar elements came together in harmony, at once incongruous and magnificent.

Amazing. Quinier grew flustered, worried she might have inadvertently said it aloud.

“Q-Quinier, look, look over there.”

“Yes, I’m looking. Even you can recognize something of this caliber—”

“No, no, not the painting! Beside you!”

Quinier frowned slightly at Anne’s barely audible whisper, then looked to her side.

Sure enough, what she saw left her even more flustered.

Frondier was standing beside her.

Frondier somewhere other than Constel. Frondier inside a museum. Frondier standing before a work of art.

Not a single part of it made sense. Quinier froze.

Like Quinier moments earlier, Frondier seemed unaware of the person beside him. His gaze was fixed solely on the painting.

His face showed no particular reaction. It wore its usual languid expression. From another perspective, he might have been examining the painting.

Quinier did not know whether he had an eye for art, but lingering over one work for this long was certainly unusual. Her curiosity stirred.

Of course. This was Frondier, who had known Mistilteinn was a fake. Perhaps he knew something about art as well.

What did he think of this painting?

“... An incredible...”

Frondier spoke softly. The sigh that accompanied his words seemed to attest to his admiration for the painting.

“...knockoff.”

It was a brief assessment.

With that, Frondier walked away, his stride as unassuming as ever.

“...?”

Quinier watched him walk past her.

She stared, then stared some more.

“W-wait! Just a moment, please! Hey! Wait for me! Stop right there! Excuse me!”

She strode after him, polite and informal language tumbling out indiscriminately.

“Oh, Quinier. Fancy meeting you here.”

Frondier greeted her. His utterly ordinary manner made her falter for a moment. She decided to return his greeting first.

“Oh, yes, hello. What brings you here, Frondier? You didn’t strike me as someone who would visit a place like this.”

“Well, I came to see the relics rather than the art. I was on my way there.”

“Relics?”

“Yes. Weapons, armor, things like that.”

At last, Quinier understood.

Frondier, the boy who had recognized Mistilteinn as a fake. He was a nerd obsessed with old things!

But there was a more pressing matter at hand.

“F-Frondier, anyway, what did you mean by what you just said?”

“Pardon? What did I say?”

“You called that painting a knockoff! You definitely did! I heard you perfectly clearly!”

Quinier jabbed a finger toward the painting, taking another look herself while she was at it.

It was still an extraordinarily fine painting. Far from being a knockoff, it would not have looked out of place among the most celebrated masterpieces.

“Oh, yes. I did.”

Frondier’s reply could not have been more matter-of-fact.

First Mistilteinn, and now this. Had calling everything a knockoff become a habit for him or something?

“Do you know where we are? Remuse Museum! The finest museum on the Central Continent! A knockoff in a place like this would be a very serious matter!”

Frondier touched his lips, apparently considering something.

“... So you mean I should have lodged a formal complaint about the museum displaying a knockoff...?”

“That’s not what I mean!”

What was with him?

Did it not occur to him, even for a second, that he could be wrong?

“You can’t just go around saying Remuse Museum has a knockoff on display and expect no consequences!”

“Whether this is Remuse Museum or the Louvre Museum, a knockoff is a knockoff.”

Frondier spoke as though he were stating something utterly self-evident.

Well, the statement itself was self-evident.

But where was the Louvre Museum?

“You’re saying that’s a knockoff?”

“Yes. A knockoff.”

“Really? You won’t regret saying that? Are you sure?”

“Really. I’m sure. It’s one hundred percent a knockoff.”

Quinier looked at the painting once more.

... No matter how she looked at it, it was an excellent work.

The Mistilteinn incident might have raised her estimation of Frondier, but she still trusted her own eyes more.

“... Then would you care to make a bet?”

“A bet?”

“Yes. On whether that painting is genuine or fake. If you win, the Biet Trading Company will send the Roah family the painting’s listed price. If I win, it will be the other way around. What do you say?”

“How do you intend to verify its authenticity?”

“I’m going to buy it. That painting.”

Anne, who had been standing quietly beside them, let out a startled “Eek!” on his behalf.

Quinier looked at Frondier confidently.

In truth, she had intended to purchase something from the moment she came to Remuse Museum. That painting more than satisfied her eye.

... Which was also why hearing him call it a knockoff had angered her.

“If you take it back now, we can forget this ever—”

“Very well.”

Frondier’s answer left Quinier blinking, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

But what he said next was even more absurd.

“But could you send it to me personally instead of to the Roach family? In cash, for instance.”

“You really are something else, aren’t you?”

* * *

The Biet Trading Company was currently riding higher than ever.

But that reputation was a recent development. Before Quinier took charge, the company had already lost the luster of its glorious heyday.

Back then, everyone considered the company beyond saving. In fact, they were right. Given the direction it was heading, restoring it to its former glory was impossible.

So Quinier tore it down and started over.

She ended every unprofitable business relationship, dismissed employees, and severed every connection with nobles who had been friends of the company for years.

Once she stripped away all the excess clinging to the company, its deficit disappeared. The problem was that her enemies multiplied accordingly.

Biet had done extensive business with other companies and families over the years. Many of them would have fallen along with the Biet Family if it went under.

But Quinier cut them off without hesitation. Neither the years they had spent doing business together nor any sentimental attachments entered her calculations. Naturally, she could only make more enemies.

That was how she earned the nickname “Quinier the Little Devil.”

Afterward, Biet grew as though to prove its detractors wrong. And as the Biet Trading Company prospered, every family Quinier had cut off headed down the path to ruin.

Public opinion, which had once called her reckless, changed completely.

‘Heartless, but possessed of a chillingly discerning eye. Her judgment of people and their abilities rivals foresight.’

Families Quinier retained ties with, or approached herself, prospered. Those she cut off fell into ruin.

As that pattern repeated, the families that had sought her downfall found themselves in urgent trouble instead.

Being cut off by Quinier had become evidence that they were not worth keeping. Naturally, they lost favor and were branded incompetent families.

Quinier had an almost uncanny eye for judging people.

But though her ability might rival foresight, it was not foresight, of course. She could hardly anticipate every unexpected incident.

Today, that obvious fact irritated her immensely.

“So it all got mixed together?”

“W-well, it was already in this state when we arrived.”

“So it got mixed together?”

Under Quinier’s questioning, the butler fell silent, at a loss.

Quinier sighed.

“Let’s go take a look, then. I need to see how much of a mess it is.”

With the butler leading the way, she went out to the front of the mansion.

The cargo had already been fully unloaded, and the servants were busy sorting through the goods.

“... Good heavens.”

The space in front of the mansion was utter chaos.

Even Quinier could spot items the company had certainly never purchased.

“Fraud involving replicas has become widespread lately. Apparently, businesses like ours that purchase goods in bulk are the primary targets. The perpetrators bring a similar vehicle, forcibly drive off the driver, then swap similar-looking goods between the two vehicles. For the expensive items, they apparently prepare replicas that are particularly difficult to distinguish.”

“If they had replicas ready beforehand, that means they already knew what our company had purchased.”

“Yes. It seems someone was leaking records from galleries and museums.”

Quinier heaved a sigh.

Only then did she remember Anne mentioning that her father had been sold a fake.

Though expecting her to anticipate all this from that one remark would have been asking too much.

Still, the Biet Trading Company was relatively fortunate. They had caught the criminals in the act.

The problem was that the swindlers had been midway through switching the goods, leaving the cargo from the two vehicles mixed together.

They had brought both vehicles here and were now sorting everything out.

“... But what are they doing over there?”

While employees and servants busily sorted the goods, another group had gathered off to one side.

“Ah, we hired several appraisers. We found quite a few replicas resembling the items we purchased.”

“Hmm.”

Curious, Quinier walked over to the group. She wanted to see just how similar these replicas could be.

But then—

“Oh, wait. No. This can’t be...”

Before her stood two paintings. The painting she had purchased at Remuse. The painting of a girl praying.

‘Impossible...’

The two paintings looked exactly alike. Only the girl’s expression differed. In one, she was smiling; in the other, she was expressionless. Quinier had most definitely bought the painting of the smiling girl.

“H-have you finished the appraisal?”

“Ah, Lady Quinier. My apologies. It was extremely difficult, but yes, we’ve finished. The painting was so wonderful that I got carried away without realizing it. Haha.”

The appraiser laughed sheepishly.

They had finished. Quinier swallowed. Which one was genuine?

She looked at both paintings again. To her eye, the smiling girl looked more authentic. The act of prayer paired with the girl’s smile—that incongruity made it all the more beautiful.

“So which one is genuine? Which has greater artistic merit?”

“Well, those two questions have different answers.”

“Pardon?”

The appraiser pointed to the painting of the smiling girl.

“This one has greater artistic merit. All of us admired it the moment we saw it. Not just the girl’s expression, but the use of color and the care put into the underpainting—all of it perfectly captures the beauty of an unfamiliar combination. Above all, while borrowing the original’s coloring techniques, it refines them to a higher level. Most people would be unable to distinguish the differences from the original.”

Then he pointed to the painting of the expressionless girl.

“This is the original. It is an excellent painting as well. However, its methods are a little old-fashioned, and above all, the girl’s expression leaves something to be desired. We initially thought this was the replica ourselves.”

“Then how did you determine that it was genuine...?”

“Fortunately, one of us was familiar with this work.”

Another appraiser stepped forward.

“Alain Buchon’s ‘A Girl’s Prayer.’ Both the artist and the work are extremely obscure, and the artist has been dead for a long time. Very few people would know it. Why, even the swindlers brought the original to substitute for a supposed genuine piece. It was probably being sold cheaply at some gallery.”

A fake with greater artistic merit than the original.

Was that why Frondier had called it an “incredible knockoff”?

... No, then...

“Then is there any way an ordinary person could recognize this as the original?”

“It would be difficult. Even the museum displayed the fake believing it to be genuine. To distinguish the original from a fake in a case like this, one would have to have been fortunate enough to see the original before this replica existed—or be familiar with nearly every painting on the continent.”

Quinier blinked several times. She seemed to consider something, then spoke.

“He must have been lucky, right?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean, he must have been lucky, right? There’s no other way to explain—”

She was earnestly arguing something the appraisers could not possibly understand.