The nobleman who brought the inventor Giovanna’s father back to the city-state of Astra ordered the ruins of the waterworks in the area to be restored and made available.
The ambitious nobleman wanted to expand his power by taking credit for the restoration of the waterworks to make up for the poor results of his military campaign.
Her father was able to fix some of it.
But he could not fix most of them. Many of the ruins differed in shape and size from those he and his daughter had tried in their hometown, and there were numerous areas where different techniques were thought to have been used. There were too many things he didn’t understand.
He didn’t talk about his daughter. There was no way they would believe that a sixteen-year-old girl had done what no one had ever been able to do before.
More than anything, he was concerned for his daughter’s safety and wanted to keep her out of it.
A water supply system was only meaningful if it was connected from the source to the place where it was used. Even if a part of it could be repaired, the water could not flow.
The aristocrat who ordered the restoration was furious because he had been misled, but there was nothing he could do about it.
However, another nobleman, who was at odds with the aristocrat, accused her father. There was no way that an uneducated stonemason could have come up with the technology to restore the ruins. Saying that his knowledge must have been obtained by making a contract with a demon.
…Ekaterina thought to herself, a certain fighter would have been very busy if she had been there.
[What the heck am I thinking about?]
Even in her previous life, the Inquisition was often about convicting wealthy Jews and the like and taking away property, or in numerous instances. I guess the idea of [heresy] as a crime arose in this world because there were powers that could be used as they pleased.
But it was only a minor skirmish for those in power, and if found guilty, they would be burned at the stake. Sacrificing the lives of low-status people in order to gain power, I realized, was a bad tradition that had continued throughout history, but if they tried to stop it, they would be punished!
The accusation against him was ridiculous. But many people have lost their lives because of this ridiculous accusation.
The father was hauled before the court and asked how he came up with the idea of restoring the ruins of the waterworks. The taciturn stonemason could not explain himself well enough to hide his daughter from the court.
The news of what their father had been accused of was immediately passed on to Giovanna and her brother Giovanni, who remained behind.
Shocked and heartbroken, Giovanna tried to talk to her brother about how she could support her father, but he told her, “You’ve got to be kidding me”.
[I’m not going to get into trouble because of that father. I don’t give a crap.]
Then he took all the money in the house and disappeared.
…he was a bastard, that brother. I’d ask him to take some of my brother’s less desirable qualities, but my big brother was so good that I wouldn’t let that happen even after suggesting it!
Giovanna was stunned, but she told the chief of the village that it made her feel refreshed and liberated.
The first thing she did was to cut her long hair into chunks with scissors from her mother’s sewing box.
Then she put on her brother’s clothes, which were not much bigger than hers, quickly packed her belongings, put on a hooded cloak, and headed for Astra.
