We Must Hurry
“Your Highness. We are already busy enough as it is.”
At my words, the Imperial Princess smiled very briefly. At least it meant her mood was not foul.
The lady scanned the remaining lines on the ledger once more before withdrawing her hand. The air inside the archives had shifted slightly. The clues that had been scattered like mist until a moment ago now felt gathered into a single, slender thread.
The Imperial Princess turned to the archivist.
“We’ve confirmed that these three names belong to real people, correct?”
The elderly archivist nodded hastily.
“Yes, Your Highness. However, as I just explained, their actual movement records do not match the time frames.”
“Then we will need two things.”
She tapped the ledger twice with her finger.
“First, the current locations of the people whose names were stolen. Second, a list of those who actually manage the medicine warehouse’s intake and outflow.”
The archivist answered at once.
“The medicine warehouse is jointly managed by the Barrier Calibration Office and the Records Office.”
The lady asked in a low voice,
“And the keys?”
“There are three keys to the warehouse in total. One with the Calibration Office, one with the records officer, and one held by the Imperial Barrier Administrator for emergencies.”
I stopped my fingers without thinking. Three. It matched every condition that had surfaced so far. Someone who could handle barriers, who understood the records system, and who had access to the calibration solutions.
The Imperial Princess seemed to have reached the same conclusion; her gaze grew colder still.
“That list as well. Now.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The archivist bowed and withdrew. The Imperial Princess looked from me to the lady and back.
“In the meantime, we will inspect the medicine warehouse ourselves.”
The lady gave a short nod. I closed the ledger and asked,
“Is it truly necessary for you to go in person?”
She countered,
“If I do not go, who will?”
“You could send the knights.”
“Now that we know there is an insider, there is no one left we can trust, is there?”
She was not wrong. In the end we left the archives and walked the stone corridors once more. This time the Imperial Princess set a faster pace. The footsteps of the knights walking with us carried a natural edge of tension.
As we climbed from the archives toward the main palace galleries, the very air changed. There were more people. And more eyes. They were more blatant than they had been that morning. Faces that swallowed their words, and servants who bowed with excessive formality. Some already wore the look of those who had heard.
I caught a low exchange as two of them passed.
“…Lady Walter herself…”
“…in front of Her Highness the Princess…”
The sentences did not finish, but that was enough. Serena had asked to speak inside the archives, yet she had spoken in a public place. Noble society never left such a scene untouched. They were experts at hearing half of something and inflating it tenfold.
The Imperial Princess asked nothing, so she had already guessed. The lady said nothing either. Every face showed they knew something more urgent demanded attention now.
The medicine warehouse was attached to the rear of the Barrier Calibration Office. From the outside it looked like nothing more than a narrow storeroom, yet the guards at the door and the seal affixed to it made plain that this was no ordinary warehouse.
When the Imperial Princess arrived, the two guard knights snapped to attention.
“Your Highness.”
She spoke without preamble.
“Open the door.”
One knight hesitated for a moment.
“Opening it without confirmation from the Calibration Office supervisor is against regulations—”
The Imperial Princess looked at him. That alone was enough; the knight’s face stiffened.
“…I will open it.”
When the door swung wide, a cold, bitter smell drifted out—medicine and metal and dry paper. The interior was larger than expected. Small drawers lined the walls in tiers, and a single desk for recording intake and outflow stood in the center.
The lady stepped inside first. She swept her gaze once around the room, then immediately opened the ledger on the desk. I approached the drawers. Every bottle bore a label. Barrier-line calibration fluid. Residue cleansing solution. Seal preservative. Axis coolant. Just reading the names was enough to make my head ache.
The Imperial Princess asked from behind me,
“Can you find it?”
“I will have to.”
I answered while examining the lower drawers. The organization was excessively neat. That was what made it stranger. Even after the night’s upheaval, the traces of someone having come through in haste and set things right were plain.
And soon I found a very small wrongness.
“Your Highness.”
She came closer. I pointed to the bottommost compartment.
“Only here has less dust settled.”
The lady lifted her head from the ledger as well. One empty space. A bottle sat in its proper place, yet the round mark left on the wooden shelf beneath it was clearer than the others. The mark of something recently removed and then replaced.
The Imperial Princess asked,
“What medicine was it?”
I read the tag hanging from the bottle’s neck.
“Residue cleansing solution.”
The lady flipped through the ledger at once.
“As of last night, the final recorded transaction was two days ago.”
“Yet the bottle was moved recently.”
The Imperial Princess’s voice dropped low.
“And it is not in the ledger.”
I reached out and turned the bottle’s neck the slightest bit. Sealing wax still clung to it, but the mark of the first break and the mark of it being pressed back down were minutely different.
“It has been resealed.”
Her eyes went cold.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. The wax was melted once with fire and then forced back down over the original break.”
The lady scanned the desk, then opened the rightmost drawer. Inside lay sealing wax, dry cloth, and several small metal pins. She picked one up.
“…Your Highness.”
The Imperial Princess turned. Between the lady’s fingertips lay a brass pin no larger than a fingernail. Its edge was blackened by scorching.
“This is—”
“A pin used to pry open sealing wax. Yet the tip is burned.”
I stepped closer and looked. The scorch mark was familiar. It resembled the trace left on the administrator’s fingertips the night before.
“It may have been used to heat the bottle’s stopper.”
The Imperial Princess was silent for a moment. Inside this small warehouse the quiet was unnaturally deep compared to the corridor outside. Someone had entered here. The ledger had been erased. The seal had been reapplied. Yet not everything had been cleaned away.
She asked the guard knights,
“Who was on duty last night?”
One knight could not answer at once. After a brief hesitation he said,
“I will need to check the shift roster.”
The corner of the Imperial Princess’s mouth curved coldly.
“Excellent. It seems we all have a great many things to verify.”
At those words the knight’s face hardened. The lady tapped one corner of the ledger with a fingertip.
“Your Highness. You should see this as well.”
She and I moved to her side at the same time. Beneath the final page of the ledger a very short memo had been pressed flat. It looked more like something hastily written and then erased. The problem was that the memo was not an official record.
The lady nudged the spot lightly with her nail.
“The pressed mark remains here too.”
I bent closer. This time the writing was far shorter. Not a word, but something like a time.
“…It appears to be a time.”
The Imperial Princess asked,
“The number five? Five in the morning?”
“Yes, that is how it looks.”
The lady spoke low.
“It is not in the intake ledger, yet someone checked something here at five in the morning.”
I saw one more faint line beneath the memo. A very short stroke beside the time. Something like a character indicating direction. West.
In my mind the layout of last night’s banquet hall and the location of the barrier chamber overlapped.
“Your Highness.”
“What now?”
“It aligns with the hour the barrier chamber was opened last night. Not five in the morning—if we assume five in the afternoon, just before the banquet.”
The lady raised her head as if she understood at once.
“Just before the banquet.”
The Imperial Princess did not hesitate even a moment.
“The situation is clarifying. So now we have three things.”
She counted them off on her fingers.
“Someone who can enter the medicine warehouse. Someone who knows how to reseal a seal. And someone who passed near the western auxiliary axis just before the banquet.”
I added quietly,
“And someone who had reason to erase the entry records.”
The Imperial Princess nodded.
Just then hurried footsteps sounded outside the door. It was the same knight who had brought word to the archives earlier. The moment he crossed the threshold he steadied his breath and spoke.
“Your Highness. I have a report.”
She turned.
“Speak.”
“One of the personnel on duty at the medicine warehouse last night cannot be located.”
The air in the room stilled for a beat. The lady asked first,
“The name?”
The knight glanced down toward the ledger before answering.
“Assistant secretary of the Barrier Calibration Office, Leo Benhardt.”
I turned the unfamiliar name over in my mind. The Imperial Princess’s expression did not change as she asked,
“Where is he?”
The knight’s lips tightened for the briefest instant.
“…He is not in his quarters. He did not appear for the morning shift either.”
A person who fit every condition had vanished since morning. The flow was so honest it felt ominous instead.
The Imperial Princess did not hesitate even a moment.
“Search the entire grounds. Outwardly, frame it only as ‘search for a missing person within the imperial palace.’”
The lady added,
“It would be best to seal the connecting stairs between the west wing, the eastern galleries, and the archives first. If he has been moving since last night, he will have taken familiar routes.”
The Imperial Princess nodded. I looked from the ledger on the warehouse desk to the resealed bottle and back. Only now did it feel as though the investigation had truly begun. Not in any positive sense.
She started toward the door, then looked back at me.
“Sir Elberhart.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“From this moment, do not leave my side by so much as a single step.”
“Do you believe this missing man is targeting me?”
She answered with perfect calm.
“Because he may not have vanished of his own free will.”
The words sent a strange chill down my spine. He might be a fleeing insider—or the first witness who had already been silenced.
The lady closed the ledger and swept the warehouse one last time with her eyes.
“Your Highness.”
The Imperial Princess gave her attention.
“If that is the case, there is a high chance we will find him as a corpse if we are late.”
The words were so dry they rang all the clearer. The Imperial Princess answered shortly.
“Then we must hurry.”
The door opened again, and the cold air of the gallery pressed inward. I slowly clenched and unclenched my bandaged hand.