Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic-Chapter 1547: Hamilton and the Actresses
Miss Galina seemed a bit troubled:
"It’s impossible for my nephew to leave Tobesk City easily. Perhaps during the negotiations, I might have to represent the Royal Family with Lecia’s brothers. If that’s the case, I really won’t have any rest this spring."
"Won’t Lecia be sent?"
Shard asked curiously, as Her Highness the Princess, holding his hand, finally leaned gently on his shoulder. Miss Galina, being on the other side, couldn’t see what Shard’s hand was doing, but Angelina beside Lecia could clearly see Shard’s hand dancing on those beautiful long stockings.
"Father definitely won’t send me. Since I went to visit Velindale City last summer, it certainly won’t be me this time."
"I understand, for balance."
Shard nodded.
"You really understand everything. Sometimes I wonder where you get such knowledge."
The witch took Shard’s other hand and gently kissed Shard’s cheek. Shard thought Lecia might get angry, but Miss Galina stood up after kissing him and called the maids in the room to take a break with her in the side room:
"I won’t disturb your dating time anymore. If I wait a while longer, I’m afraid Lecia will actively chase us out, and that would be too indecent."
Her golden eyes blinked playfully at her grandniece:
"A knight’s hand is very warm, isn’t it?"
Lecia completely ignored her, anyway, she was the one who benefited.
"Angelina, what are you doing sitting here?"
The Princess curiously asked her sister again. The Little Princess then belatedly stood up, turning back with every step, following Miss Galina out of the room.
After everyone left and the doors to the side room and hallway were locked, Her Highness the Princess kicked off her high heels lightly, wrapped her arms around Shard’s neck, and sat on his lap.
"You must win the City Horsemanship Competition."
In the dark, her beautiful eyes looked at Shard:
"Not for Draleon, not for any honor, just for Dorothy and me. Dorothy and I have already discussed this. At the banquet after the competition, if you want to have a good time, don’t let us down, Knight."
She grabbed Shard’s tie and pulled him down to kiss her. Her Highness the Princess seemed exceptionally exuberant tonight, so much that by the end of the kiss, Shard even wondered if his lip was bitten.
The opera "Lovers of the Bell Tower" performed that night lasted a total of two and a half hours. Due to the success of this performance, when the actors collectively took the stage to bow after the final scene, they had to bow five times to calm the audience’s excited emotions.
The lights above the audience seats turned back on, and people coming back from the opera once again bathed in the glow, feeling as if they had experienced a whole new, strange life.
The lights in the private box above the audience seats also came on at this time. In the central room, the maids filed in to clean up the traces, helping Her Highness the Princess tidy her clothes, while Angelina obediently helped Lecia straighten her hair.
Shard buttoned up his coat and saw Miss Galina standing by the door beckoning to him:
"Young people really have a fiery temperament...Come with me, there’s more to do tonight."
"What’s the matter?"
"An uncontained relic has appeared in the opera house. I just got the message this morning. Luckily, I have a good relationship with Queen Maria’s Opera House, or rather, I own 27% of the shares here. The relic is still at the back; come see what it is with me."
Since she said so, Shard had no reason to refuse. Only, he thought about how, as a Circle Sorcerer, the odds of encountering a relic alone were too small. Not to mention compared to The Chosen One like Iluna, who faced challenges almost daily, even compared to ordinary Circle Sorcerers, the probability of him encountering relics was too low.
Since he was going to leave with Miss Galina, Shard naturally had to explain his whereabouts to Lecia. The already satisfied Her Highness the Princess looked somewhat languid at this moment and waved to Shard:
"Since it’s a relic, you should go and have a look with her. I won’t say goodbye to you. In a while, Angelina and I will head back to Yordle Palace directly. Knight, tonight was great."
This gave Shard a feeling of being discarded after serving his purpose. But fortunately, Lecia remembered to get up and send him off with a kiss, the Princess’s wet kiss leaving a pleasant feeling.
The structure of Tobesk’s Maria Opera House is quite similar to the Wilder Opera House in Randall Valley. The auditorium of the opera house connects the audience seats and the backstage, and apart from that, only a guarded passage allows direct access from the front of the opera house to the backstage, to prevent actors from being harassed during the performance.
Although Miss Galina hadn’t placed her followers in the opera house to keep constant watch, she had her own local network of informants, and the news of the relic reached her through this network.
"Speaking of which, I wonder if your mentor, Miss Danester of the Thirteen Rings, ever mentioned this to you."
As the servants passed through the side door at the end of the corridor to enter the backstage, Miss Galina lowered her voice and said to Shard:
"Since last spring, the frequency of relics from the Material World losing control, Circle Sorcerers losing control, and natural disasters occurring has significantly increased. By the end of last year, when the Church summarized the year’s work, they noticed this. Small teams of grassroots Circle Sorcerers, like Iluna’s, had long since noticed the abnormal incident rates throughout the entire year."
The walls on both sides of the opera house backstage corridor were lined with curtain call photos from various performances, with golden nameplates indicating the time and the acts performed. Shard glanced at them out of the corner of his eye: 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖
"Miss Danester didn’t mention it, but I heard Iluna complain about it. She was transferred from the Papacy to work here in the spring of last year. According to her, her friends in other parishes also thought that the frequency of strange occurrences last year was unusually high."
Shard replied, noting that this must also be part of the epic’s beginning in the Sixth Era. This is the real world, not an opera stage; the problems won’t be confined to just one place while everything else remains calm.
However, the story of The Chosen One clearly began last summer, only after the Outlander arrived, something Luviya could confirm. Yet Miss Galina said that since the spring of 1853, the frequency of various events significantly increased.
"The spring of 1853 again—a year ago during this season, indeed, many things happened..."
The news of the Duchess arriving backstage had already been conveyed to the opera house. When the theater manager heard about it, he wiped his sweat and jogged over as they entered the backstage corridor.
The gentleman was rather plump, wearing a stylish checkered shirt under a black suit. A silver watch chain extended from the pocket on his chest and was fastened to the third button. He had a monocle on his right eye, with a short dangling chain on the right side of the frame. On his head was a tall black silk hat that seemed capable of hiding a rabbit, resembling a magician’s outfit.
He clearly knew that Duke Galina Cavendish disliked unsolicited men’s advances, so he stopped at a relatively distant spot by the wall:
"Duchess, welcome. Please forgive our lack of hospitality. May I ask what brings you here..."
The plump manager guessed at Miss Galina’s intentions, bowing slightly.
Miss Galina said nothing. Tifa smiled and explained:
"Mr. Nesser, good evening. Mr. Shard Hamilton is interested in meeting tonight’s opera’s leading lady backstage, and Miss Galina came along with him."
"Hmm?"
Shard raised an eyebrow but didn’t object verbally.
The theater manager, Mr. Nesser, was also taken aback. He was aware of Shard and Miss Galina’s relationship, as was nearly everyone in the city, but he was still astonished by the Duchess’s indulgence towards her "lover":
"Alright, no problem. The ’Alice Opera Troupe’ performing tonight will surely be delighted to be noticed by ’Rejed’s Hamilton.’ Oh, may I ask which leading lady Mr. Hamilton wishes to meet?"
The plump man wiped his sweat and asked. Since the role of the male knight in the recent "Lovers of the Bell Tower" was also played by a woman, there were indeed two actresses who could be called leading roles.
"He wants to meet them all."
Tifa maintained a composed smile as she said:
"We’ll be waiting in Dressing Room 5. Just the two of them, with makeup, in costume, exactly as they were on stage earlier. You have twenty minutes to prepare, Mr. Hamilton doesn’t have more patience."
Shard felt that his reputation in Tobesk City would suffer significantly after today.
"Also, regardless of what happens tonight, the Duchess would prefer if no one else finds out."
Tifa added.
To Shard, it seemed like they were preparing for any noises that might arise during the Relic Containment, but to the people in the theater, it sounded like something inappropriate might occur here soon.
"Is that so? Alright, alright, I understand."
Manager Mr. Nesser nodded while wiping his sweat, then watched them enter Dressing Room 5. Miss Galina’s two female attendants stood by the door, prohibiting anyone else from entering while the twenty-minute countdown began.
"This is it."
Queen Maria’s Opera House had many dressing rooms, and Room 5 was a large space that could accommodate at least twenty people for makeup. The tables with mirrors were arranged in three rows, each row with seven tables.
And the reason there were twenty tables instead of twenty-one was that the makeup mirror on the corner table had shattered and, until replaced with a new one, it was being used as a miscellaneous table placed in the corner.
