There Is a Traitor Among Us
There is a traitor among us.
“Hmm…”
A man walked the corridors of the count’s manor, one hand resting thoughtfully against his chin as he narrowed his eyes to slits. His attire was cut from silk so fine it caught the light like a mirror—fabric expensive enough that one might have used it in place of glass. Yet the cloth was stretched taut and bulging over a thickly padded belly, so swollen with fat that the seams looked ready to burst. Gold and silver thread embroidered the garment in lavish patterns, completing the picture of a man who had clearly grown soft and greasy on the rich food of a noble house.
His name was Curmon.
He served as treasurer and vault-keeper for the Evergarden Count family.
After the head of the Evergarden house changed and countless nobles finally took notice of the family’s excesses, the viscounts and barons who had once handled the paperwork quit one by one. Curmon—originally nothing more than a commoner, the fourth son of a merchant-guild master—had been hired out of sheer necessity to fill the gap.
His manner and clothing were far beyond what any ordinary servant’s wages could buy, yet Curmon had his methods. The previous head of the Evergarden family had been, quite literally, a lazy, blustering fool of a noble.
The first Evergarden count had been a young spearman who stood on the battlefield from the very day the Obina Empire declared its intent to conquer the continent. Through repeated feats of valor he rose from commoner to knight, and when the empire finally proclaimed its dominion over the land he was rewarded with the title of count and a fief of his own. Under that founding lord the Evergarden line produced many renowned generals and stood as a house of true renown. Now, however, that glory had faded to nothing. The current head was little more than a windbag who strutted about preening before other nobles.
As a third son he should never have inherited at all, yet the untimely deaths of his two elder brothers thrust the succession upon him overnight—the first nail in the coffin of the family’s decline. Darian, who had never been heir and had never cared for study, suddenly found himself seated as head of the house. How could the family possibly have remained intact?
It could not.
Even his father, pining for the sons he had lost, wasted away and died, leaving Darian in complete control. The new count promptly squandered the once-honorable assets of House Evergarden on whatever pleased him. As for managing the territory, he dismissed the work with a sneer—“Does a noble look like someone who plays with scraps of paper?”—and dumped every document onto the servants while he devoted himself to spending money in endless revelry.
And so Curmon, the vault-keeper, had found himself acting as de-facto steward, forced to handle a mountain of affairs. Looked at another way, however, it also meant that no one in House Evergarden would ever notice whatever Curmon chose to do. At first he had trembled as he slipped a few gold coins from the vault and forged the ledgers. Now he embezzled the family’s wealth with brazen confidence. His once-scrawny frame had swollen into the heavy bulk he carried today.
But—
“Why are those blockheads suddenly acting like this…?”
Curmon muttered, recalling how the Evergarden nobles had barged into the office yesterday without warning. People who never so much as glanced at the forged papers he handed them for form’s sake had suddenly announced they would take the abandoned work upon themselves. Small wonder his head tilted in confusion.
“That woman… something about her felt off…”
As he replayed the previous day, one figure stood out most clearly in his memory.
Freyja Evergarden.
Even after bearing two children she still behaved like a spoiled noble daughter. In this case “spoiled” simply meant she was a naïve young lady who knew nothing of the world. As the countess who ought to have managed the household, Freyja Evergarden—like her husband—cared nothing for how the family actually ran. She spent her days hosting tea parties and boasting about the newest dresses and jewels. Such habits should have been left behind after her debutante season, yet Freyja had never managed to grow out of them. She never listened, and even if she did she never understood. A foolish woman.
That was the Freyja of only a few days ago.
Oh, and would you kindly return the seal he transferred to you?
Yesterday, just before leaving the office, she had called him over and smiled. It was not the empty, frivolous smile she always wore. An unmistakable aura of noble authority had radiated from her—something that forbade anyone from looking down on her.
“…Well, I suppose she suddenly wanted to play the part of a proper parent.”
Curmon had fretted for a moment over the couple’s abrupt change, then dismissed it as unimportant. They had spoken of heir education; no doubt they merely wished to show their children how nobles ought to behave. In the end they would still be unable to organize a single document and would call for him again. That much was obvious.
“When that happens I’ll just forge a few things and patch it over, and everything will be—”
“Why, if it isn’t Curmon.”
“Waaah?! You startled me!”
Grinning as he planned his next moves, Curmon nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden voice behind him.
“Ah—Head Butler Gordon, is it? What brings you here…?”
He spun around. An elderly butler stood regarding him with a kindly smile.
Head Butler Gordon.
He had spent more years in House Evergarden than anyone else; some said he had served since the time of the previous head’s predecessor. Through all the years of a couple who abandoned their duties to frolic about and two children who tormented the servants with their mischief, the smile never left his face.
Curmon found the man deeply unsettling. Always smiling, yet appearing and vanishing like a ghost—impossible to read.
“Nothing of particular note. I merely spotted you while passing and thought to offer a greeting.”
“…Ahem. Well, as always, I am kept busy with work.”
“Oh… is that so?”
“…”
Those eyes. Even while smiling so gently, the gaze fixed upon him felt uncomfortably sharp, making Gordon all the more inscrutable.
“A-anyway! I have paperwork piling up, so I must be off. If you’ll excuse—”
Finding Gordon thoroughly unpleasant, Curmon made to leave at once.
Then—
“Ah, and by the by, it seems Her Ladyship is engaged in something rather interesting at the moment.”
“…Her Ladyship, you say?”
At the mention of Freyja, Curmon’s hurrying feet faltered. He turned back.
“Curious? Then go to the central hall on the first floor. You will understand soon enough.”
“Is… that so? Very well. I’ll be on my way.”
“Hohoho. Do have a pleasant day.”
“…Senile old man.”
Though he had asked, Gordon’s reply made no sense. Curmon turned his back and strode away, muttering under his breath.
“What’s supposed to be in the first-floor hall?”
Still, Gordon’s words nagged at him. Before long Curmon’s steps carried him toward the central hall on the first floor.
“Wh-what in the world…?”
Following Gordon’s advice, Curmon reached the first-floor central hall—and the sight that greeted him left him speechless with shock.
“My lady, where shall we take this?”
“Please put that with the furniture.”
“My lady?”
“Ah, that one looks to have artistic value—send it to the art pieces, if you would.”
“Um—”
“That goes with the valuables—”
Countless maids and butlers were hauling expensive furniture and precious objects back and forth while Freyja stood at the center, issuing calm directions.
“What on earth is—whoa? Oof!”
“Coming through!”
The absurd scene—like a full-scale moving day—left Curmon staring blankly. In that moment a pair of maids carrying an enormous painting crusted with glittering gold fittings failed to notice him and shoved past. He toppled backward and landed hard on his rear.
“W-wait…! My lady! Wh-what is the meaning of this?!”
Instead of clutching his stinging backside, Curmon heaved his massive frame upright with surprising speed and forced his way through the throng of servants until he stood before Freyja, shouting.
“Ah, let me see… Curmon, yes? The vault-keeper Curmon, is that right?”
“Yes! N-no! That isn’t the important part—”
“You’re asking what I’m doing right now?”
“Yes…? Ah—yes! Exactly! What in the world is going on here…?”
Freyja studied the face that had come stomping up to her, dredging up the memory of the man she had seen yesterday and the name she had read on the documents.
“Simply put, this house is cluttered with far too many unnecessary pieces of furniture and valuables. I intend to keep only a portion and dispose of the rest. Until a suitable buyer can be found, we are storing them temporarily in the warehouse.”
“Unnecessary? Did you just say unnecessary?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
“N-no, not as such… but after collecting them so diligently, to sell them all…?”
The words that followed made Curmon doubt his own ears. Freyja—who had lived for the joy of flaunting expensive treasures before other nobles—was casually announcing she would sell off the furniture and jewels she had so painstakingly gathered. It was impossible to believe.
“We neglected the territory for far too long, and the state of things is frankly appalling. The debts are nothing to sneeze at, either…”
“D-debts…?”
“You didn’t know? You, Curmon, who manage this count family’s vault—surely you couldn’t be unaware…?”
“O-of course I know! Naturally I’ve been running myself ragged researching ways to repay them!”
“Hehe. How very reassuring.”
No… how did she find that out? Did someone help her?
When Freyja casually mentioned the condition of the territory and the existence of the family’s debts, Curmon kept his face carefully blank, yet the cold sweat beading on his forehead was harder to hide. Even he had never dared tamper with the actual proof of debt or the contracts themselves—but he had assumed Freyja, who struggled even to look at documents, would never discover them.
Gordon, that old man? Since when…?
The possibility that Freyja herself had simply read the papers and understood them never even crossed Curmon’s mind. Instead he latched onto Gordon’s earlier cryptic remarks and decided the butler must have been helping her.
“Very well. Ours has always been a purely business relationship—employer and employee bound by money. I never imagined you would work so tirelessly for our family’s sake.”
“Pardon…?”
“Once this is finished, shall we set aside some time for a thorough discussion on the matter?”
“Ah… yes! Of course…”
“Hehe. I do look forward to it. As it happens, I have a great many things to say regarding the ‘documents’ you submitted yesterday.”
“Ah… haha…! I-is that so…! W-well then, I still have a great deal of work to finish…”
“Oh my. I’ve kept a busy man standing about far too long—how rude of me. I’ll call for you separately later, then.”
“Yes, well then… if you’ll excuse me.”
The moment Curmon finished speaking with Freyja and turned the corner of the corridor, his measured strides became a frantic scramble.
“This is bad… this is really bad…!”
His yellow-fat-laden belly jiggled as he pounded down the hallway. By the time he reached the room assigned to him, his entire body was soaked in sour sweat as though he had been dunked in water.
“She singled out the documents…! However it happened, I’ve been found out…!”
He slammed the door hard enough to make it boom, then immediately grabbed his bag and began stuffing it with the valuables he had secretly stolen and the original documents he had forged over.
A commoner stealing a noble’s treasures, embezzling funds, and forging documents on top of it. If he were caught, prison would be the least of his worries—summary execution, his head rolling from the guillotine, the remaining corpse hung in the marketplace for stone-throwing would still be too light a punishment.
He had committed crimes of such magnitude and then lounged about in leisure, only for the horrific consequences to come crashing down upon him now. Curmon’s legs shook like aspen leaves.
In truth Curmon was rather clever. To serve as vault-keeper of a count’s house—a position most nobles would envy—required more than ordinary intelligence, especially for a commoner. Yet once an easy method of filling his belly had appeared, that sharp mind had rusted away. All that remained was a greedy pig trembling at the thought of paying for the deeds he had committed far beyond his station.
“…That’s it! Bjorn! If it’s Viscount Bjorn, I might still survive somehow!”
While packing in preparation for immediate flight, Curmon wrenched open the wardrobe, revealed a hidden compartment inside, and drew out a magic crystal orb that had been sleeping there.
“Th-the method was… insert the mana stone and… work, damn it… hurry!!”
His hands shook violently as he fumbled with the crystal. The moment he jammed the mana stone—acting as a power source—into the socket, the previously dormant orb flared with brilliant light.
And then—
“What is it?”
The light of the crystal dimmed slightly, and a man’s voice began to issue from within the orb.