From Cradle to Attendant #4
"Huff… huff…!"
In the training yard behind the Altram manor, I stood catching my breath, lungs burning as I fought to steady my ragged breathing.
Common knowledge. Noble etiquette. The duties of an attendant. And physical training for emergencies—my days had been packed full in every direction. For anyone who meant to serve a duke, that was only natural.
I had never been the type to skip studying, but I had never been especially good at it either. So when the lessons began, I had worried more than a little. Thankfully, a child's natural capacity for absorbing information let me somehow chew through the sheer volume of material.
"Hmm. If it's too much, let's take a break."
My instructor—and Zion Altram's own father—Chess lowered the fist he had raised to chest height and called for rest.
Under the pretext that I needed at least enough skill to protect a member of House Krauser in a crisis, he had been running me into the ground for nearly three years now.
"Yes. Thank… you…"
Trailing off, I dropped onto the ground in a heap.
Hand-to-hand techniques were one thing, but learning dagger arts fit for an assassin meant keeping every nerve stretched taut. And with a child's body, exhaustion hit me far harder than it would an adult.
Still, the fact that I could endure it at all was thanks to Chess moderating the intensity. Perhaps he went easy on me simply because I was his son.
"Zion. You're already eight years old."
Looking as fresh as ever, Chess sat down across from me with a remark that felt slightly out of nowhere.
He was in training clothes himself, so a little dirt would hardly matter—but planting himself so casually on the bare ground was not the sort of thing one expected from an ordinary noble.
Then again, this was the man who had kept up his marital relations with his wife from the time I was a baby all the way until now. In that sense alone, he clearly stood on a different line from the typical noble who strutted about full of hot air.
"Yes. That's true, but… why bring up my age all of a sudden?"
"Ahem. Under normal circumstances, raising this topic with you would clearly be premature. I had meant to wait until you were older, but… you are far more precocious, and growing far faster, than I had anticipated."
Precocious. I found the word only natural. Of course I was. A grown man had been reborn into this body with all his memories intact.
"That's rather embarrassing to hear."
I offered a suitably modest reply, and Chess shook his head as if to say there was no need.
The faint curve at the corner of his mouth told me he approved of my attitude.
"Nothing to be embarrassed about. In any case, looking at you like this, there is one thing I wish to ask."
"Please go ahead."
"Do you intend, in keeping with the Altram tradition, to serve House Krauser?"
So the question had finally come.
I had known all along that every lesson and every drill had been for the Krausers. Even so, Chess had never once spoken of it directly. He had only preached the generosity and greatness of House Krauser, without a trace of coercion.
That, I believed, had been possible because he respected my free will. His love for his son rivaled even his loyalty, and that was why he had kept silent until now.
But now he was asking whether I would serve the Krausers. He must have judged that I was old enough to understand the weight of the choice. Otherwise he would never have praised a young child for being precocious.
"Serving the ducal house has always been the role of our Altram family, hasn't it?"
"Indeed. For more than three hundred years now. Even when opportunities for higher rank presented themselves, we refused them and remained viscounts, continuing to support House Krauser. My late father did so, and I do the same. But every one of those choices was made freely by the people who made them. There was never any compulsion."
Never any compulsion. In other words, House Krauser possessed the caliber to earn the Altrams' loyalty outright—enough to keep successive generations serving them of their own accord.
"The current duke, and Lady Helena, who will be the next duke, are both extraordinary people. Simply standing at their side is an honor beyond what we deserve."
I already understood the depth of Altram loyalty well enough. But hearing him heat up like this, he sounded less like a loyal vassal and more like a full-blown fanatic. It was enough to give me chills.
So my answer came out a little flat despite myself.
"Ah… yes."
"At any rate, Zion, I believe you are more than capable of weighing right and wrong for yourself, which is why I am putting this question to you. It sits a little uncomfortably to press for a decision so early, but… I ask that you carefully consider whether you will serve Lord Krauser or not."
Consider.
Giving me the choice was kind of him, but my answer had already been decided. If I said I wanted to live freely, there would have been no point in reincarnating at all.
Enjoying life here while the world burned might not have been the worst option—but in that case the world would shatter beyond any doubt. There would come a point when enjoying anything became impossible. Nodding was the only answer that kept the peace.
"Father. I have already made up my mind. I will serve House Krauser."
"What?! Truly?!"
Even though Chess had quietly hoped I would choose to serve the Krausers, my answer came without the slightest hesitation, and he was thoroughly flustered. Knowing nothing of my circumstances, that reaction was only natural.
"Yes. Truly. It is something I have been thinking about for a long time."
"Hmm… I see. Is it because of Lady Helena, by any chance?"
"I won't deny it."
Helena had been visiting the Altram household whenever she could spare the time, ever since I was a baby. Her only reason was to see me, and from the outside she must have looked like an innocent child utterly smitten with a cute infant. In truth, she had been exactly that.
Day by day she grew more skilled with the sword, polished her education, and became a person with fewer and fewer openings. For someone like that to keep coming around just to see a baby was a rather endearing gap—something that let people glimpse the humanity proper to her age.
But that had not been her only reason for visiting so often. I knew there was another: to forget, even for a moment, the endless attention poured upon her.
—Lady Helena, you're truly amazing.
I must have been around five at the time. I remembered stroking her hair and soothing her, pretending to be an innocent child who understood nothing. Once I was old enough to understand speech, she had stopped even muttering her complaints to herself, and I had wanted her to know she didn't have to hold it in.
Of course, stroking a noble's head was an act that, depending on the circumstances, could get a person executed for insulting the nobility. But I had been certain. I knew Helena had a fragile disposition that made her prone to breaking, and the calculation was deliberate.
And the effect of those words and that gesture had been extraordinary. Kneeling, she had pulled me into a tight embrace and choked back muffled sobs.
Looking back, her expression grew brighter after that, and her tendency to fall ill seemed to improve. Around then, a certain ease began to show in everything she did. It could only be called a good thing.
A broken Helena was a bomb that would toss the entire continent onto a powder keg.
"I see… So more for Lady Helena than for House Krauser itself. That works too."
Apparently laboring under some grand misunderstanding, the man muttered to himself and nodded. From the context, he seemed to think I wanted to serve because I was fond of Helena.
I considered for a moment whether to correct him, then decided there was no need. If it made him feel better to think that, so be it—and it was far preferable to exhausting myself trying to set the record straight.
In short: no need to poke the hornet's nest.
"Very well. I will convey your decision to His Grace and to Lady Helena."
After a brief silence, Chess left the rear yard with a resolute light in his eyes. Wasn't he being a little too hasty?
"…Hmm. I see. So your son has made a great decision as well. And at such a young age."
In a study furnished throughout in deep reds and blacks, with luxurious pieces that still bore the clear marks of age, its master—and the master of this territory—Duke Is Krauser stroked his magnificent beard as he received Chess's report.
The news of a boy only eight years old volunteering of his own will to serve the ducal house brought to mind Helena as a child.
Helena was elegant and kind, and a born warrior with exceptional talent for the sword. She was, in every respect, a vessel worthy of House Krauser, which led the kingdom's armies. Even as a woman, her gift was unshakable.
No—with each passing day it only grew sharper. It had already been two years since the duke himself could no longer best her, so there was little more to say. And at some point her blade had begun to carry not only keenness but a softness as well, making her as impenetrable as an iron wall.
At this rate, the duke was certain she would reach the realm of Master—a height few on the continent ever attained—sooner rather than later.
And once he realized that Chess's son stood at the center of that change, he had quietly begun to want the boy drawn closer. Altram blood was a guarantee more reliable than any other. Setting ability aside, the duke understood well that loyalty spanning generations was as hard to come by as stars in the sky.
So Is welcomed the boy's resolve—and yet, at the same time, he worried.
Young as he was, Zion possessed a precociousness that made one think of Helena. If a child like that had made so firm a decision, the duke reasoned, then falling for his own daughter must have been part of the reason.
That thought was half right and half wrong. Had Zion heard it, he would have snorted in silent disbelief. He did care about Helena, yes—but only to keep the world from collapsing.
From the duke's position, though, the concern was only natural. There was no denying that Helena's strength grew more solid by the day—and in equal measure, her figure had filled out into full, feminine curves. In other words, the duke was confident she had become so beautiful that any man who failed to fall for her would be the strange one.
"Hmm. Even so, putting him to the same work as you right away would be difficult. You are not yet of an age to retire, either. For now, have him serve as Helena's attendant and grow accustomed to the role at a measured pace. He is still very much a child, is he not?"
"Yes. I am grateful for Your Grace's consideration. Shall I report this to Lady Helena as well?"
"Yes. Do so."
Even so, the duke granted Zion permission to enter Helena's service as her attendant. Worry was worry, but he also knew that walking the grounds of House Altram had given his daughter a peace she had never possessed before—and that Helena valued that peace above all else.
So he gave the order, and Chess left the study looking thoroughly pleased.
"Hmm…"
Left alone, Is let out a low murmur and fretted—but even so, he did not believe the conclusion he had reached would change. As a father, fretting over men who might sniff around his daughter was only natural. But he could not use that as an excuse to bind her.