Using Barbarians to Fight Barbarians (1)

Regret came flooding in, in less than two seconds.

"Ah..."

I shouldn't have asked.

I squeezed my eyes shut. O Lord in heaven, why would You visit such a trial upon me?

Is this punishment for not believing in You?

At that moment, the courier, her nerves finally settled, took back the paper bearing the recipient's signature and said, "Well then, delivery complete, so I'll be on my wa—"

"W-wait! Just one moment, please!"

I couldn't let her leave just yet. Now that I'd uncovered the sender's identity, pretending ignorance was no longer an option. Failing to respond promptly to a letter from royalty would be a colossal insult — the letter had to be read the instant it arrived, and a reply dispatched the instant it was read.

Why on earth did I have to ask? Was I out of my mind?

I'd already guessed it in my heart. That should have been enough. Why did I have to go and dig for confirmation?

But it was too late now. Wearing the face of a man walking to his own execution, I addressed the courier.

"Would you mind waiting just a little? I'll read it and write my reply straight away."

"But I'm hungry..."

The harpy hopped anxiously in place, fluttering. At the sight of her, I turned my head and called out, "Hearing Officer, do you happen to have any snacks lying about?"

The Hearing Officer immediately produced a small biscuit from his desk drawer. "I've got some hardtack, if that counts as a snack~"

Right. At least you never drink without something to nibble on.

"Please give some to our courier here."

Harpies as a race are simple creatures, by and large. They gained the traits of mobility and flight, at the cost of burning through their energy almost instantly. So they delight in tasty food and are remarkably honest with their emotions. No doubt she'd been planning to mooch a meal off someone at the margrave's estate once the delivery was done.

"Wow!"

And right on cue came the reaction. Flapping her wings, she snatched the hardtack from the Hearing Officer's outstretched hand and crammed it into her beak. "Nomnom... All right, I'll wait a little longer, then!"

"Excellent."

There was no room left for hesitation. I tore open the envelope at once and read the contents straight through.

I shut the letter. My eyes swam.

"..."

Shock. And horror.

What did I just look at?

My head refused to process it, even though both my eyes had witnessed it directly. THIS is what a princess of a nation wrote? No matter how you sliced it, this was going too far.

Letters are normally written to convey information, emotion, and thought — and the reader parses them to work out what the sender wants and what they're trying to say. That is the way of things. But this... this conveyed nothing to me but confusion. Not questions, not fury, not sorrow — confusion. It was like reading a cursed grimoire.

"Whew... It's fine. I've processed paperwork far more complicated than this."

I steeled myself. If I retreated here, any reply would be dead in the water.

"...Let's do this."

I gathered my spirit and read it again.

Thud.

My forehead hit the desk.

"What is this even saying..."

Something beyond the boundaries of comprehension. Is it a cipher?

I focused every fiber of my concentration on the letter once more.

It was in the common tongue.

"This is genuinely going to kill me."

The sigh escaped me before I could stop it. Even my talent couldn't crack this one. I'd rather it be the language of another world — no, of another dimension. That would be far easier.

But as all things must end — and truly, thank the heavens for it — even this accursed letter had an ending.

Why is it that only the ending is so impeccably punctuated?

Pristine at the opening and the close, and an unspeakable morass everywhere between. Anyone could see this was a case of dumping everything she wanted to say onto the page and only then coming back to her senses.

"Haaah..."

Your Highness. What kind of life have you lived, exactly?

And she was sending another one tomorrow?

"What in the world did this officer ever do to deserve this..."

Barely five minutes had passed, yet I felt as drained as if I'd worked three consecutive nights of overtime. I shoved the letter deep into the farthest reaches of my desk drawer and immediately set about writing my reply.

"Phew..."

It seemed adequately presentable. Now for the return trip.

"Miss Courier. Would you deliver this letter as my reply?"

The harpy, having at last devoured every last crumb of the Hearing Officer's snack, snapped her head up. "Huh? But I don't even know who it's addressed to...?"

A lie. The harpy's big eyes slid slyly away from mine.

I shook my head. "No matter. She'll figure it out at once, regardless."

If she simply tucked my reply back into the very envelope she'd sent and returned it, she would surely grasp the meaning immediately. I pushed the letter deep into the bottom of the bag she carried.

"In exchange, next time you come, I'll have a whole mountain of harpy-favorite snacks prepared for you."

A sweet reward, promised in the same breath. The courier's face lit up and her wings beat furiously.

"Wow, snacks! I will! I will!"

And with that, she snatched up her bag with her talons and shot powerfully out the second-floor window.

Please don't reply. Please don't reply...

It remains a secret how fervently I prayed after her departing silhouette.

Only once that wholly unwelcome storm had passed did the other documents finally come into view — the cipher book from the Intelligence Department, and its reward.

"Now, let's see..."

I unfolded the bundle of papers stamped with the serpent seal. Lines of Lamia script, intricately wrought, caught my eye. Scribbled as chaotically as a child's doodling, the sentences only resolved as I concentrated my mind upon them — the characters slowly transforming and revealing themselves.

Then one familiar name leapt out at me.

"Hatenzilla."

The very name the changeling had mentioned. The employer's name is Hatensi—

I immediately opened the border entry-and-exit registry. And there, among the countless 'Hatensils' I'd paged through yesterday, one identical name revealed itself.

The cult's area of activity and her place of origin matched. The name matched, too. Staring at the woman in the portrait, I said,

"Found you."

So you were the mastermind behind this terror attack.

Roughly fifteen minutes later. The conference room.

"This woman is the mastermind of the recent terror attack — the one who commissioned Erzena's abduction."

The faces of the Five Senses Officers, briefed on the full situation, and Erzena's own turned grim. She murmured as she gazed at Hatenzilla's portrait on the table.

"I had no idea. So the Evil God Cult has a post called Saintess, too..."

Her image was the precise antithesis of Erzena's — as though her colors had been inverted, from her hair down to the shade of her eyes.

"Standing at the direct opposite of the Holy Church, I suppose we ought to call her a saintess of evil."

This was news to us as well. Naturally, we'd assumed she was simply some lunatic — and she turned out to be nothing less than the Evil God Cult's Saintess.

"Someone holding a position that high could well attempt something even bolder and grander going forward," the Hearing Officer offered, making a persuasive point. "With their Elder still unaccounted for, that evil woman is almost certainly the one holding the reins."

"And what could possibly be worse than this?" the Smell Officer asked. Her eyes narrowed.

"Let's see. A full-scale infiltration of the border, perhaps. Meddling in another nation's politics, the way the Holy Church does. Or they might simply put out a contract ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on someone's life."

She spat out words that sent chills down the spine just to hear, without a moment's hesitation. But no one rebutted her. Anyone who had already attempted an abduction against the Holy Church wouldn't balk at committing something far worse. Beings with no scruples about the means were precisely the ones we needed to guard against most.

"That much, at the very least, we must prevent."

When I spoke in a hardened voice, the Taste Officer forced a display of unconcern. "Th-that's right! Besides, now that we know who the bad people are, all we have to do is set up our defenses!"

The Touch Officer nodded along. "Issuing a wanted order alongside a blanket entry ban on the Evil God Cult, even now, would be for the best."

It was the most reasonable proposal on the table. The enemy didn't know we'd secured this information — exploiting that would throw a wrench into whatever they were planning next.

But I shook my head. "No. I don't intend to use this information that way."

"...Sir?"

Up until now, we had always been the ones battered by every incident and accident. The border was a place where the unexpected erupted — and where the expected erupted too. From the standpoint of the Border Administration, and of immigration officers as a whole, the total prevention of every threat was impossible. Rules and regulations existed, and we were bound to adhere to them rigorously.

We could never be anything but defensive and reactive.

No matter how careful we were, in the end our best was damage control and preventive safety measures.

"This time — just this once — I intend to change that stance."

But that was the story of the past. Now that we held their information in hand, this time we could deal with them differently.

I addressed everyone in the room. "First, we will strike the Evil God Cult."

We were not going to sit back and take the beating forever. It was time to counterattack at least once.

"And not with our own hands — with someone else's."