The Eighth Wife Esmeralda's Wickedness

The Eighth Wife Esmeralda's Wickedness

Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n7787la/

Esmeralda remembered the memories of her previous life while sitting in a rattling carriage bound for a far-off frontier. She was nineteen — and this was after she had already been condemned and sent away from the kingdom as a bride to the barbarians.

“Wait — isn’t this too late? Normally you’d remember in childhood, get your brother on your side, heal the prince’s heart, cozy up to the chancellor’s son or the knight-captain’s son or some merchant’s son and do all sorts of things to avoid being condemned, right?” A bit of that trendy schoolgirl-talk (which adults dismiss as dumb) dances through her head, but it’s already too late. The sentence has been carried out.

And it isn’t like she could claim a false accusation — she has clear, unmistakable memories of having cruelly bullied the saint at the Royal Academy of Magic.

No mistake: I did it. I threw away the saint’s textbooks, tore her dress, shoved her down the stairs, gave her the wrong training location so she’d have to fight a dragon, and locked her in the Demon King’s tomb.

Esmeralda bore charges that made condemnation unavoidable and stared blankly out the carriage window. Her destination was the far frontier — an oasis in the wilderness or perhaps the desert, a place she wasn't even sure could be called a neighboring country — and her groom was the chieftain of some inscrutable barbarian tribe.

She thought, wouldn't a condemned wicked woman be a poor choice to present as a token of friendship? But the state had decided it, so there was no doubt some calculation behind it.

Still, it would be okay. These stories always go the same way — a handsome young man who won't love you at first, you break the curse, and then he dotes on you, right?

Recalling knowledge from a past life, Esmeralda was certain of her victory and smirked proudly — though there was no one to see her; she had not even been given a companion on the carriage trip.

Life doesn't go easy, though. After a month-long carriage journey, Esmeralda put on the barbarian bridal garments and quietly attended the wedding. Calling it a "ceremony" was generous — it was mostly a banquet. There was no solemn rite. Of course not — Esmeralda was the chieftain's eighth wife.

Her husband, the chieftain, was a man twelve years her senior; he already had seven wives and eleven children, six of them boys.

That meant there truly was nothing for Esmeralda to do. No wonder she had been chosen as a token of friendship: any subject of the kingdom would have done.

They drank and made merry deep into the night, the first night was hurried away, and thus Esmeralda became the eighth wife of the barbarian chieftain.

The expected "I will never love you" of course never came.

---

"He's the type I haven't met before, but I might not dislike him," she said — referring to her husband, the chieftain.

"At first his booming laugh scared me, but once I got used to it I think his laughing face is kind of cute."

No one answered.

"When he gave me that rabbit that had died the other day, I was surprised — was that a message that I'd be next?"

The hand of the maid pouring tea trembled for a moment, but Esmeralda didn't notice.

"That rabbit had such lovely pure white fur, so if I make ear muffs from that pelt, do you think my husband would wear them?"

Again, no one replied.

The maids the barbarians had provided for Esmeralda did not converse with her — whatever they had been instructed to do, they did not engage in conversation. They simply woke her, dressed her, applied her makeup, prepared her meals, bathed her, and dried her hair. She wasn't even sure how far she was allowed to go outside her assigned room, so each afternoon she took only short walks in the courtyard visible from her window. Her husband, who visited occasionally, was the only person who would talk to her.

Unable to speak with anyone, bored out of her mind, Esmeralda decided to keep talking to her unresponsive maids. They weren't deaf; after all, they came when called.

She vowed she would make them burst into laughter someday — but lacking any real comedic material, she spent her days speaking aloud whatever crossed her mind.

One day the First Wife invited her to tea. Three months had already passed since she married, but this was the first time she'd face the other wives. Perhaps they had been at the wedding; the great banquet, the men laughing loudly and the women whooping and cheering had overwhelmed her memory.

Desperate to speak to anyone, Esmeralda happily accepted and nearly lunged at the First Wife's attendant who had come to fetch her.

There was a risk of cutting remarks or being bullied, but Esmeralda had been the woman who had maliciously tormented the saint in the royal capital. If it came to underhanded nastiness, she would not lose; it was her specialty.

Her husband was an older man, and the First Wife — his childhood friend and betrothed — was naturally an older woman too. To Esmeralda, being twelve years older made someone very, very old. She was a sturdy, hearty woman.

The First Wife looked Esmeralda over from head to toe and exhaled in satisfaction.

"Oh, it suits you well — that's our traditional dress. You match the occasion, too."

Esmeralda was surprised. She knew nothing about barbarian clothes and had allowed the maids to dress her without resistance. She did have a dress from home, but the maids had locked it away in the wardrobe.

Esmeralda had assumed the silent maids were in the First Wife's employ and would dress her ridiculously to make her a laughingstock. After all, she would have done the same.

But apparently they had dressed her correctly, perfectly.

"Huh, is that how things are?" Esmeralda thought, and she bowed in the kingdom style. Trying to imitate a barbarian custom she had not learned seemed like a worse option.

The First Wife nodded in satisfaction and urged Esmeralda to take a seat.

"You're so skinny — are you eating properly?"

"Yes, everything tastes delicious, so I'm eating heartily," Esmeralda replied.

Indeed. The barbarian clothing was less constricting, and freed from her corset she discovered how delightful eating could be; she ate eagerly every day.

Esmeralda's faint, distant memories from her previous life described a woman who ate little, so being able to eat as much as she liked was pure joy. When the chieftain occasionally brought fruit to her chamber at night, she ate it on the spot.

She felt she might have put on a little weight since being in the kingdom, but the barbarians were all larger than kingdom folk, so she still appeared slim. Her dress from home probably wouldn't fit anymore.

"They say you hardly ever leave your room," the First Wife remarked.

"I don't really know how far I'm allowed to go... I walk in the courtyard," Esmeralda answered.

As she popped the confections into her mouth one by one from the right, she answered the stream of questions. Many of the sweets were ones she had never tasted. She was determined to try every kind — even if it meant missing dinner.

The small flower-shaped sugar sweet she'd just eaten was so delicious she wanted another, but there was a long way to go. If she greedily ate it now, she might miss something even better later. She could remember the taste and gorge later — but if there was no later, she might regret it to her dying day.

She placed a hand near her mouth in a refined gesture and sighed as though she were a delicate young lady; the First Wife looked at her with exasperation.

"Don't be ridiculous. We'll give you as many sweets as you want. If you like them, we'll wrap some to take home. So don't eat them all at once."

Esmeralda smiled broadly; she had obtained a promise.

"One of each kind... no, three of each, please. And a few more of these flower ones."

"Can you really eat that much?"

"I'll share them with my maids," she said.

Two silent maids took care of Esmeralda's daily needs. They seemed to have quietly sided with her, so she would need to reward them as their mistress.

Esmeralda had been born to kingdom nobility and raised with the pride of someone being groomed as the prince's fiancée. That was why she had suddenly appeared and shamelessly attached herself to the prince, and why she had maliciously tormented the saint.

"Good to see you getting along," the First Wife said. Esmeralda popped another flower sweet and smiled again.

"This is your home now. There's nowhere you're not allowed to go. Just make sure you have an escort when you go out — that's all."

"Exercise a bit more," the First Wife added, looking at Esmeralda's upper arms that, even over her clothes, showed no muscle. Esmeralda carried the box of sweets herself; she had come alone after all.

As Esmeralda left the room, the First Wife called after her as if remembering something.

"She won't wear white because it gets dirty. Use the rabbit's fur for a collar and make the earmuffs in brown or black."

"Yes, elder sister!" Esmeralda chirped.

She was mostly out in the corridor when she simply waved her hand back into the room. She didn't know the First Wife had smiled and remarked "She even calls me 'elder sister.'" She'd been distracted by her maid standing just beyond the door taking the box of sweets from her.

"Terrible! Terrible! So awful!"

Esmeralda stamped down the corridor. Barbarian indoor shoes were cloth and made almost no sound on the stone floors, so though she felt she was stamping loudly, she merely padded her way to her husband's study.

As the eighth wife, Esmeralda had the right to enter the chieftain's study unannounced. A little over a year after her marriage, she no longer hesitated to open any door in the household.

Throwing the door wide with the help of a maid, she drew everyone's attention in the room.

There were the chieftain, the grand general, the head civil official, and a host of dignitaries — plus the First Wife, the Second Wife from a military family, and even the sword-skilled Fourth Wife. Esmeralda flushed with anger at not having been summoned to this meeting.

"What's the matter, Eiryan?"

Her husband called her "Eiryan" because her name was hard for the barbarians to pronounce, and soon many others had adopted the nickname.

"Eiryan — we're discussing something pretty difficult right now," the Fourth Wife said, treating her like a child. In fact, the First Wife's eldest son was closer in age to Esmeralda than to some of the other wives, but this wasn't the time for that.

"This is awful!"

She even said "desu wa" for the first time in ages. She was a little amused that she slipped into the kingdom's courtly speech when she was angry.

"What's awful?" her husband asked in a kindly, almost parental tone. She would not forgive that bear-like kindly face today! Blushing more, Esmeralda pointed fiercely at the map on the table.

"You're going to go up against the kingdom, aren't you?"

"Ah — it's your homeland... but it's unavoidable," said one of them.

"We didn't say that!"

"Yes..."

It turned out that since around autumn the barbarians had been enduring repeated small provocations from the kingdom. Even though the barbarian state had built a city in an oasis rich in resources, the kingdom viewed the place as attractive. Talk of a long friendship was thinly veiled ambition to one day seize it. Offering a condemned noblewoman as a token of friendship exposed the contempt.

The harassment had been repeated, and fighting was becoming a probable consequence. Because Esmeralda was from the kingdom, they had kept these matters from her. She had overheard a rumor from a junior civil official while meandering around the administration building and marched straight into her husband's study on impulse.

Behind the angry Esmeralda stood two silent, expressionless yet devoted maids.

"I hear the kingdom's been harassing you!"

"Oh, Eiryan..."

"The kingdom's — harassments! Nobody is better at that than I am!"

The Fourth Wife, poised to strike if Esmeralda started bawling about invading the homeland, relaxed her stance. The First Wife ordered sweets to be brought, the Second Wife reset the pieces on the map to restart the explanation.

"Do you not remember why I came here?" Esmeralda demanded.

"I do remember — as a token of friendship..."

"I was found tormenting the saint and reprimanded for it!" she blurted.

It wasn't merely a reprimand — it had been a choice of execution by beheading or exile to marry into the barbarians. Normally it would have been beheading; the prince himself had put forward the choice of exile to the barbarians as a petty torment. The kingdom could be spiteful indeed.

A young aide to the grand general muttered "so it was true..." and received a sharp jab in the ribs from the general.

"There was a time I was nearly brought before the inquisition for the saint's alleged heresy! I'm that familiar with the kingdom's underhanded tactics! Is there anyone here more adept at harassment than me?"

Esmeralda scanned the room; no one raised their hand.

This land's people were open and hearty — the opposite of the kingdom's sullen, sticky temperament. Esmeralda prided herself on being among the most spiteful and tenacious in the kingdom. Recalling her previous life had given her objectivity.

"But you were reprimanded — doesn't that mean you failed once?"

The First Wife shrugged, holding Esmeralda's favorite sweet. That struck at the heart of it. Esmeralda ground her teeth.

Precisely because of that failure, she thought she had not been called here; they must have assumed she was still the same person and failed to prove otherwise.

It was a misunderstanding. Esmeralda's husbands had secretly kept these matters from her out of concern for her feelings regarding her homeland. The people here valued consideration for others.

"My father..."

Her voice dropped low, and the whole room turned its attention to her. Even the great pendulum clock in the hall seemed to listen in silence.

"My father, at the end, told me: 'Look honestly at your deeds.'"

What she'd done was what it was, so everyone accepted that line — as in, "of course."

"I have, every day, every morning and night, thought about what I did without a single moment's lapse. Up until today, I have not missed a moment!"

Esmeralda clasped her hands. A thin white arm peeked from beneath the folds of her gown.

"And at last I understood what I lacked. Yes..."

Her eyes shone clear, a hue unseen in this country, and everyone drew breath. It was a color that seemed to see right through to the farthest distance yet kept its depths hidden.

"I lacked groundwork — I didn't do enough behind-the-scenes scheming!"

Her fists had turned white from clenching them so tightly.

"If I'd had just one more month, if I'd devoted another month to preparations, I could have toppled that woman. I rushed for results...!"

Esmeralda was consumed by regret — genuine, deep regret. The day the carriage rocked her away from her homeland, she nearly died of rage; that very fury had triggered the return of her past-life memories. It was that intense.

Even before remembering her past life, Esmeralda had been proud and did not blame others. Everything was due to her own shortcomings. But she swore that if an opportunity appeared she would repay them — and even if no opportunity came she would exact revenge — so she chose exile over beheading.

Recalling her past in the carriage and seeing her actions from the perspective of a third party had been huge; it allowed her to analyze where she'd gone wrong day and night.

Whether sipping tea with the First Wife, exploring dungeons with the First Wife's heir and a stick, picking flowers with the Fourth Wife's second daughter, or stroking her husband's head in his lap, she kept thinking and thinking.

If only I'd done that then, if only I'd said that then. But in the end it always came down to lack of preparation. Had she had one more month she would have won — rushing to results and losing deserved the condemnation.

But, as Esmeralda desired, opportunity arrived. The matter of the prince or engagement no longer mattered. She had to repay the woman who made her kneel and the prince who humiliated her in public. If possible, she'd take care of the prince too, because he had laughed at her at a social gathering before condemning her.

This vengeful mindset didn't sit naturally with the barbarians — they accepted defeat gracefully and admired strength.

Even in the kingdom — a place where revenge operas were popular — very few would go as far as Esmeralda, who would swallow mud if need be. She was, as she claimed, one of the kingdom's most spiteful and tenacious people.

Most kingdom women would choose beheading rather than marrying a barbarian. In the kingdom, barbarians were thought to sip the raw blood of animals. Esmeralda had come prepared, saying internally, 'I will rip open throats and drink animal blood if that's what it takes.'

"Now, explain your plan here," said the Second Wife.

"Yes, sister!"

The Second Wife pointed to the map where she'd placed the pieces. Esmeralda loved the Second Wife's practical, rational mind.

Standing by the map in high spirits, Esmeralda laid out her entire plan of harassment against the kingdom — knowledge that once might have taken her all the way to queenhood.

"That count was bothering you, right? Then don't strike him directly. Attack right on the margin of his domain so that monsters end up pushed into the neighboring baron's territory. The marquis who fostered that baron has long been at odds with that count; if the count's mischief harms his vassals, that's more than a personal grievance — it's an excuse for conflict, and they'll be grateful for the pretext."

"The canal shipments were stopped, weren't they? Then we'll suspend ours too — not against the kingdom, but against another country. Say that the kingdom is to blame for cloth shipments and fruit. The downstream port state will be inconvenienced. They take our preserved fruit on voyages and our cloth across the sea. If that spice from across the sea stops coming, the princess will be furious."

"Only a subset of the kingdom's nobles are doing the harassment, right? Then take revenge that seems to hit the nobles who aren't involved. The ones harassing are royalist nobles; the non-royalist nobles are just watching. So we'll direct our responses so it looks as if all the aristocratic faction took the blow. Then the nobles who haven't done anything will suffer losses and the royalists will be blamed..."

"Meanwhile, don't forget small annoyances. Take the giant herbivores the Sixth Wife's merchant family raised and herd hundreds of them to the border to bellow morning and evening; swagger in and defeat a beast that the kingdom neglected near a frontier village and be hailed as heroes; build free rest stops, a school, or a well in a spot near the border where it would be helpful; spread endless trivial rumors — the prince is impotent, that noble's child is actually sired by another, that the minister is bald — and more. Preparation, painstaking and persistent, is what's important."

With that, Esmeralda wrote a single letter.

She still remembered a cousin she had played with when they were so young that gender distinctions blurred, a cousin who had gripped a toy knight and muttered, "I have a right to be king too." She wrote to that childhood friend now in a cipher only the two of them understood, disguised as a charming poem. He replied almost at once, with lively handwriting that leapt across the page in childish delight. With that letter in hand, Esmeralda skipped her way to her husband's study in the barbarians' palace.

She burst into the study, hugging her husband and kissing his cheek. She then planted kisses on the cheeks of the First Wife, the Second Wife, and the Third Wife who happened to be there. After doing a little of the barbarian dance the Fifth Wife had taught her, she stood in front of the table with the spread map.

"See? Didn't I tell you? Erya will come dancing any minute," the Third Wife said.

The Third Wife was a curse-priest from a remote land and spoke in that region's distinctive cadence, sometimes glimpsing the future. There was a remote wilderness far to the north that one could enter only by invitation, and she promised Esmeralda that if she ever could, she'd take her there.

"Something happy happen?" one asked.

"Yes, yes, elder sister! I did it!"

"Well, Eiryan — tell your husband what you did, will you?"

"Of course! I love you, husband! This is our victory!"

Esmeralda danced again. This time even the Third Wife joined the steps and clapped.

"Erya, little sister — what did you do? Did you win? Tell your elder sister what you've accomplished."

They danced a short passage, and at the Third Wife's urging Esmeralda finally flicked a particularly ornate piece marking the capital on the table map with her finger.

"The king will be changed," she announced.

"Oh?"

"What do you mean?"

"I wrote to my cousin. Remember when we once watched funeral knights and trailing clouds and a yellow-eyed lark from the western hill? I asked him about that. And my cousin — oh, him — he said he'll invite me to the coronation. Such a hasty fellow."

"Your convoluted kingdom-style explanation is impossible to understand."

"Yes, sister. Heh heh."

The First Wife knew Esmeralda was being deliberately coy. She also knew that this youngest sister only acted like this toward the women she called elder sisters, so she indulged the child.

"My cousin is staging a coup. The kingdom is in chaos. I wrote to him asking if he'd allow some help. He said he'd help a bit."

"Oh, Eiryan — you did something like that?"

"Yes, elder sister! I did a lot of groundwork! With enough preparation and groundwork, there's no need for me to get my hands dirty at the end — just tempt someone else to do it!"

Esmeralda had learned from watching the saint at the Academy — the saint would get others to soil their hands with tears and smiles. Esmeralda had learned to do the same with marriage and gossip. Make many allies, find the right person among them, and have them act.

The saint had done that with tears and smiles; Esmeralda had done it with marriage and chatter.

"What happens if the king changes?"

"The current king will be toppled in the coup. I know all the secret passages in the castle. There's nowhere to run. The king will fall; the prince who stirred the unrest will be beheaded, and his fiancée — the former saint — will be taken with him!"

"I see. If she was engaged to the prince, the church will revoke her sainthood, and a mere prince's bride can be executed."

"Was the engagement ceremony in seven days?"

"They didn't invite us, eh."

While the husband and the elder wives hurriedly discussed the repercussions of a changed king and ran to summon people and send messengers, Esmeralda sat in a corner nibbling her favorite sweets while the Third Wife amused her.

The Third Wife always played with Esmeralda using curses that might or might not work and prophecies that could be right or wrong — but she was amusing company all the same.

Eventually the Second Wife's eldest daughter came to ask Esmeralda for help with her Kingdom-language homework and dragged her away by the hand; Esmeralda did not know how the discussions in the study were resolved.

After that.

Esmeralda did not know the precise details of her homeland's revolution. She knew it had succeeded because, as promised, an invitation to the coronation arrived from her cousin.

But Esmeralda did not attend the coronation. She was the eighth wife; her husband already had seven wives and eleven children, six sons. As a wife sent as a token of friendship with nothing to do, she chose to listen only to the fate of the woman who had made her kneel and the prince who had publicly shamed her, then to spend her time picking at her favorite sweets rather than worry about diplomacy, social affairs, coronations, or military councils.

Besides, the Third Wife, the curse-priest, had pointed at Esmeralda's belly and said, "Cute, beautiful, clever, good child."

Before long, Esmeralda gave birth to twin sons. The boys were so like their mother in both appearance and disposition that everyone from the grand general to junior clerks fretted that they might shove aside their older siblings to seize the chieftain's position.

However, the twins' tastes and preferences matched their mother's so closely that they attached themselves to the legitimate eldest son, following him around, and after he became chieftain they supported him faithfully with a motherly blend of clinginess and petty cunning.

Later history books would note, simply, that Esmeralda had been married off as a token of friendship from a neighboring country and had fulfilled that role well.

Characters

Husband: chieftain — big, bear-like. He had three older brothers and so had not originally been expected to become chieftain.

First Wife: the chieftain's childhood friend and betrothed; when he was elevated she became the de facto first wife.

Second Wife: from a powerful military family; so talented in warfare she had no choice but to marry the chieftain.

Third Wife: a curse-priest from a remote land; her distinctive way of speaking became the archetypal 'curse-priest' manner, leaving her looked down on in her homeland.

Fourth Wife: from a warrior family; talented with the sword, she too had no option but marriage to the chieftain.

Fifth Wife: possessed such a talent for enlivening feasts she became a wife to the chieftain.

Sixth Wife: from a merchant family; so adept with money she became the chieftain's wife.

Seventh Wife: from the neighboring empire; never leaves her room and cries, but brings imperial sweets when she visits and is popular with the children.

Eighth Wife: Eiryan (Esmeralda).