The Highest in the Castle
I shouldn't worry. I know that. And yet I can't help it. Go after them this very moment and try to fall in with them, and they'd only chase me off and tell me to go home.
She hated that. Nina pouted.
Still, Sir Louis went with him, so...
"Huh?"
"What is it? Did something happen?"
Nina let out a short laugh at Jin, who only bothered with formal speech when the mood suited him. Well, she didn't particularly mind.
"I need to tell Sir Louis a guest is coming, but he went off after the Young Master, didn't he?"
"Wasn't that what you were about to tell him, Captain?"
Nina's eyes went wide.
"Me?"
"Yes. I mean—agh, forget it. When it's just the two of us, I'll drop the formalities."
"I've been telling you to."
"In exchange, if I slip into casual talk when the others are around, you owe me a silver coin each time."
"Deal!"
Nina's hand shot up at once, and Jin raised his with the face of a man swearing a hard vow. Palm met palm in a sharp slap, and the bargain was sealed.
Jin cleared his throat.
"His Grace is away, and so is Sir Louis. That makes you, the knight captain, the highest person in this castle right now."
"Huh? Oh? Whoa. I am, aren't I?"
Me? I'm the one with the final say?
Thoughts already turning, Nina started walking again. She reached the executive office, but she didn't sit. As she stepped inside, Jin took her long coat and put it away. Leaning against the desk, she called for the butler.
Smith came at a run.
"Good day, Captain."
He bowed with proper courtesy. Nina smiled brightly.
"A distinguished guest arrives tomorrow, so we'll need a room ready. Use the corner room on the third floor of the east wing, and leave the cleaning to Margaret and Anne."
She counted the rest off on her fingers.
"Have John and Bobby move the heavy furniture. If it's Margaret and Anne, they'll know how to put those two to work."
Butler Smith looked utterly blank.
"Did I get something wrong?"
"Ah—no. Not that. It's only that you know all their names..."
"There are barely twenty of them. It would be absurd not to know the people I eat and sleep beside in this castle. How am I supposed to rest easy if I don't even know what's under my own feet?"
At Nina's unhesitating reply, Smith bent at the waist.
"Y-yes. Of course."
"Is that everything you wished to say?"
"Mm. For now."
Smith withdrew without another word. Nina propped her chin on her hand.
"This is a problem."
"What is? The sage coming tomorrow? Isn't he coming alone?"
"No, not that. It's the servants who work in the castle. Not one of them has the manners for receiving a noble. Smith's the closest, and even he only has a little of it."
"Well, none of them were ever taught any of that. They're all from the village below the castle."
"Exactly. That's the problem. Etiquette isn't only for the person across from you. It's for me, too."
Etiquette was a weapon for keeping oneself safe from nobles. Proper manners could turn aside a noble's attack and give you the standing to answer it. It was a weak person's fight, and that was precisely why it mattered all the more.
"We'll have to take on new servants as well. Training them will eat just as much time. It isn't as if well-trained servants are going to drop out of the sky... wait."
Are there any? Hold on. Think, Nina. Memory—drag it out!
She seized her twin tails and groaned.
"Nina, you all right?"
Jin was watching her with open suspicion. She ignored him and pulled harder still. Do that, and it felt as if the thought might shake loose from somewhere...
"Chara Viscounty!"
Nina all but shouted it. Startled, Jin fired the question straight back.
"Chara Viscounty? What's that viscount to you? What happened?"
Nina answered with a sly little smile.
"A place about to turn out a whole crop of decent servants."
Jin looked unconvinced. Nina looked entirely sure of herself.
Chara Viscounty. The house that took a red rose for its crest was a family of old tradition. The lands were small, yet it could still be called a viscounty with real weight behind the name. Of course, the tale also went that the heir there was a disaster and was running the place into the ground.
The heir was such trash that he laid hands on the castle servants without caring whether they were men or women, then hung false charges on any who protested and drove them out without so much as a recommendation letter. It was as obvious as a third-rate novel, and in noble society it was a thoroughly common story. Later, once that heir became Viscount Chara and turned up as a bit-part villain, the tale was tacked on beside him. A bit-part villain, finished at Adrian's own hand...
I ought to look into it. Without a recommendation letter, finding work in a noble house is next to impossible...
And what would it mean for a ducal house to take in servants who didn't even have one? She wasn't sure.
If Adrian looks into them and likes what he finds, it ought to be fine.
She would have to ask him to look. Nina let out a sigh.
If I'm thinking this far, I'll have to go to the Imperial Capital at some point, too.
Well-trained servants couldn't be raised overnight. She would have to bring them when she had the chance. Until then, she needed to build a name; whatever she did afterward would go more easily. In the meantime, she would simply have to get by with the servants they had.
Well, I don't think Randel would pick a fight over that.
She called to mind Randel, the original novel's male lead. The sages of Blue Stone Island had a habit of taking children the moment talent showed. Randel himself had lived on Blue Stone Island since he was small. Coming out into the world this time might well be his first.
That's how it was in the original, too. He's only coming out sooner.
Toward evening, Nina went to look over the room where Randel would stay. It had been cleaned spotless, and the furniture stood in it, as much as was needed. When she opened the wooden shutters, the garden and the greenhouse came into view.
She had given him a room with this view on purpose. He liked studying plants and animals; better that a place he would love be the one he could see.
"This is as much as I can do."
Nina shut the window and latched it. When she had finished with the room and returned to the captain's office, Jin was sitting in the anteroom, uniform off and dressed for ease.
"How are the new members?"
"They passed, so they're all wearing happy faces."
Nina huffed a laugh.
"No complaints about getting hit?"
She shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it at him.
"Yes, yes, Captain."
Jin caught the jacket, rose, and opened the anteroom door so she could go through. Nina stepped into the captain's office and dropped herself onto the desk. Jin hung the jacket up.
"Even if they had complaints, they didn't look as if they could say them. They seemed more curious about what comes next."
"We'll assign rooms in the knights' quarters and start training. The order uniforms will have to be made, too... which reminds me. Where do we have our uniforms made?"
Nina tilted her head, halfway through undoing her laces.
"There's probably a workshop for that. Our clothes use special materials."
"Right. They're specially treated so they won't take contamination. Now that I think of it, is it only our order's uniforms that get that treatment?"
"I heard they use materials from the Purple Forest. Come to think of it, we've been taking all sorts of things out of the Purple Forest from the start."
The black uniforms they wore were black, she had heard, simply because the raw material itself was black. Jin tipped his head, then went on.
"No one but us would have any use for it, would they? Bellac don't come out in the cities. The barriers see to that."
"Except now they're saying Bellac are turning up everywhere because of the cultists. Ugh, seriously. Why won't this come undone?"
Nina strained at the lace. Watching her, Jin came over at last, dropped to one knee, set her foot on his thigh, and worked the knot loose as he spoke.
"And they mean to ask us to hand it over? As if they'd have the shame to talk that kind of bullshit—no. Nobles haven't got any shame. Not a single one of them."
Once he had ground the words out to his satisfaction, he added,
"His Grace is the exception."
He undid the other lace as well, then flicked a finger lightly against Nina's round knee.
"You can't even untie a single shoelace."
"I don't know why it won't come loose. Thanks, Jin. Now that it's undone, I feel like I can live."
Nina kicked her feet atop the desk and flung the boots off. It was a spoiled little gesture, nothing like her usual self. Jin gave a wry smile.
"Don't worry so much."
"About what."
"Your Young Master."
Nina slowly lifted her eyes to him.
"Does it show?"