Chapter 34

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 34
Chapter Title: Goddess of Victory
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Ariadne and Vincenzio del Gato, the Porto merchant conducting the auction, had almost nothing in common, yet at this very moment, the same thought echoed in their minds.

‘Count Cesare, you crazy bastard!’

‘What a madman!’

The Porto merchant’s face instantly hardened as he desperately shouted at Cesare.

“What put such a preposterous idea in your head!”

“How should I know? Perhaps this young lady who said it knows.”

He nonchalantly examined his well-manicured nails as he continued.

“Something about it being a forgery?”

The hall immediately erupted as if a bomb had gone off.

- “A forgery? Did I hear that correctly?”

- “Are they saying the is a fake?”

- “Is it true?”

The eyes of everyone in the hall converged on Cesare and Ariadne, who was seated right beside him. Ariadne wanted to lie down with a wet towel on her forehead. Cesare had been like this for their entire life together—whether you called it a fourteen-year engagement or a common-law marriage. He would occasionally cause some unimaginable, large-scale disaster and then casually push the blame onto Ariadne. Back then, bound by the title of fiancée, she had silently cleaned up his messes, but why on earth did she have to wipe his slate clean now! She couldn’t understand it.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ariadne shook her head, trying to take a step back. She was about to make the excuse that a cloistered girl who hadn’t even had her débutante ball couldn’t possibly know anything when Cesare told a blatant lie.

“The young lady said it just a moment ago. That it’s a forgery.”

“I said no such thing!”

Ariadne mouthed frantically, protesting to Cesare. She wanted to demand he correct himself immediately and say this young lady had nothing to do with it, but it seemed the message was delayed by the stream of curses she was also trying to convey.

“You, young lady! If you’ve said it, you must take responsibility!”

The merchant from the Republic of Porto, panting heavily, stormed down from the platform as if to grab Ariadne by the collar. Ariadne quickly calculated whether she could go home if she burst into tears and cried, ‘Why are you grown-ups being like this? I don’t like the tall man next to me or the merchant in front of me! I’m still young, I don’t know anything!’ It seemed plausible. Just then, she saw Prince Alfonso in the front row, staring at her with a shocked expression.

‘…If I just leave this mess, Alfonso will be stuck with that troublesome statue, won’t he?’

Unfortunately, the last bidder had not been Count Marcellus, but Prince Alfonso.

‘Was it 2,000 ducats?’

It was a large sum, but for a prince, it wasn't *that* large. He wouldn’t end up on the streets or starve without it, nor would the prince’s palace go bankrupt. He’d have to scale back a few large-budget events, postpone palace repairs for a few years. Eventually, the King or Queen would pull funds from somewhere to cover it. But if that happened, Prince Alfonso would lose face over this incident. The throne that should have been his, which had somehow gone astray, would move one step closer to the madman standing next to her. She didn't want that to happen. No, even if it didn’t come to the throne, she simply didn’t want to see Alfonso become a laughingstock and feel hurt. Ariadne decided to clean up Cesare’s mess just one more time, for Alfonso’s sake.

“Hah.”

She let out a deep sigh, briskly smoothed her clothes, and straightened her posture. Her grooming complete, Ariadne looked the merchant straight in the eye and called out in a loud voice.

“Vincenzio del Gato of Porto. You’re said to be a merchant seasoned in the auction of antiquities, are you not?”

Her resonant, low voice filled the hall, drawing the audience's attention. To ensure everyone in the hall could see her well, Ariadne subtly stepped onto a wooden footstool that had been placed on the floor. It was about the height of a single step. Now half a *piede* taller (about 25 centimeters), she could better look down upon the people on the flat floor.

“In your eyes, does this statue truly seem to be the mentioned by Halicardotos in his ?”

“Of course it is, you clueless girl! That’s why I brought it here!”

The merchant seemed to have forgotten all honorifics and courtesies in his agitation. Ariadne ignored him and continued.

“In , Halicardotos lamented, ‘Her delicate wings, damaged in a single instance by the Moorish army that swept through the temple during the Celesphon War, were already marred and their restoration…’ Is that correct?”

was a common textbook used for teaching young boys Greek. There were a number of noblemen present who had memorized that particular passage.

- “Yes, there is such a passage.”

- “Isn’t that the part that says it was damaged and restored?”

The Porto merchant raised his voice hysterically.

“What’s wrong with it being restored! Statues get broken and put back together all the time! It was broken long ago, and if the restoration was done in the Hellenia era itself, its value as an antique would not be diminished in the slightest!”

The true passage that followed was, “restoration was impossible. The had no wings, no head, no arms,” but that part had not yet been revealed to the world. She would have to somehow make her case with the remaining circumstantial evidence.

“Have you heard the proverb that a broken dish, even when glued back together, is still a broken dish?”

As Ariadne spoke, looking the Porto merchant directly in the eye, she held out her hand to Cesare, who was standing idly beside her. Cesare spread his hands as if to ask what she wanted, then pointed to the longsword at his hip.

- ‘The sword?’

Ariadne glanced sideways and scowled.

- ‘The club. You carry a club.’

Looking startled, as if wondering how she knew, Cesare unfastened the iron club he wore behind the longsword at his waist and handed it to her. Taking the club, Ariadne walked out from the guest seats in the center of the hall and ascended the dais at the front. It was where the was displayed. The space was raised about two *piedi* (roughly one meter) from the ground, so when she stood on it, she was clearly visible to the audience. The Porto merchant continued to scream.

“If the broken wings were restored, there might be a hairline crack. But does that diminish the statue’s value? Is a statue a dish? Are you going to hold water in it? What’s the big deal about a little crack! It was all made in the Hellenia era! It’s all the same!”

“If a cracked dish is dropped, it will break again in the same place, will it not?”

“How is a dish the same as a statue?! A decorative sculpture isn’t a dish you use every day, you don’t fill it with water, you don’t put weight on it, so what’s the big deal if there’s a hairline crack in the wing! It was all made in the Hellenia era! It’s the same thing!”

Ariadne, no longer paying any mind to the hysterically shouting Porto merchant, strode toward the , which rested on a wheeled pedestal. The was incredibly heavy, so to make it even slightly easier to transport, the wheels on its base were unusually large. Each wheel’s diameter looked to be at least half a *piede* (about 20 centimeters). She took a deep breath, carefully sized up the pedestal, and then raised the iron club high. She chose the front wheel closest to the audience. - Crack! She struck it with her full body weight. The club hit the wheel squarely. Ariadne’s strength wasn’t enough to break the iron joint connecting the wheel to the base, but the wooden wheel itself split satisfyingly into three pieces. With the wheel shattered, the pedestal tilted, and the massive, off-balance statue began to slowly topple forward.

“What do you think you’re doing!!!!”

A moment too late, the Porto merchant let out a horrified scream, and the guests below the dais also screamed as they watched the statue fall.

- “Look out!”

- “It’s falling!”

Although there was a safe distance between the dais and the guest seating, the guests still scrambled from their seats and frantically moved back. The Porto merchant clutched his hair and continued to scream from behind, but oddly, he made no move to try and catch the collapsing . - Grrrrrind… Thud! A grating sound of the three remaining wheels failing to roll properly under the weight due to the wrong direction and misaligned angle, and the unpleasant noise of marble scraping against wood filled the hall. Then, as the angle steepened rapidly, the marble statue finally fell from the stage to the ground floor where the guests were seated. Ariadne had broken the left wheel. The toppled diagonally from its left corner, slamming its left wing squarely into the hard, polished oak floor of the Marquis Cibo’s mansion. After the statue fell, a hush descended. Lying on the floor, having shattered the oak floorboards where it landed, the was completely intact, not a single piece broken off.

“This statue, are you certain it has a hairline crack?”

In case people didn't understand, she kindly added another sentence.

“If there had been a crack, the wing would have broken off again upon impact. But this statue is as smooth as if it were newly made.”

Facing the shocked crowd, Ariadne leaped down from the dais and landed next to the fallen . She stroked the pink marble and continued.

“If it wasn’t newly made, then someone must have done an incredible job of restoring it, and it must have been pre—served very well underground. But, ladies and gentlemen, do you know the two greatest differences between a statue from the Hellenia era and a contemporary marble statue?”

She ran her finger across the marble. Everyone in the hall was watching her.

“The ancient pagans painted their marble statues. They used dyes to color the skin apricot, the hair brown, and the clothes according to the figure’s status. The more well-preserved an excavated Hellenia-era marble statue is, the more dye it will have on it. This is something any experienced dealer in antiquities would know.”

Nothing came off on her finger.

“This statue is perfectly clean.”

The audience held its breath, focused on Ariadne.

“However, this statue is a beautiful shade of pink, is it not? With such a rosy pink marble, there would have been no need to paint the skin. Isn’t that right, Marchioness Cibo?”

Ariadne addressed the Marchioness Cibo, who was closest. Startled, she unconditionally agreed with Ariadne’s question.

“W-Well, I suppose so?”

“Then why did the ancient Hellenians bother to color their marble statues?”

“I-I couldn’t say.”

Ariadne let the Marchioness, who seemed burdened by the public attention, off the hook and returned to the statue’s side.

“Because the place where the Hellenians lived was at the eastern edge of the central continent, and the marble that comes from there is not pink, but a dull grayish-brown. Pink marble is a specialty product found only in northern Etruscan, specifically in the city of Lastera, where this statue was supposedly excavated!”

Ariadne stood tall beside the massive statue and looked around at the people.

“How on earth did a statue that was perfectly fine in Tibos, a city at the eastern edge of the central continent, end up not in the Moorish Empire where it would have gone if plundered, nor in San Carlo where it would have emerged through the black market if stolen, but in Lastera, a remote country backwater with nothing but quarries!”

She slammed the club, which she still held in her hand, down onto the fallen —no, the replica of .

“Do you have anything more to say, Vincenzio del Gato!”

“I have one more thing to ask him.”

A man’s tenor voice suddenly rang out in the hall that Ariadne had commanded. It was Count Cesare de Como, who had been leisurely watching Ariadne’s one-woman show from his seat.

“Is your name truly ‘Vincenzio del Gato’?”