Going Home
About ten years ago, the wife of Claude V fell seriously ill and took to her bed.
The physicians who examined her were so incompetent that they never managed to identify the disease, but the symptoms they recorded at the time included coughing, sneezing, labored breathing from blocked nostrils, mild fever, and headache.
Wait… that’s just a cold.
Claude V, who loved his wife with an almost fanatical devotion, summoned every renowned physician in the kingdom to examine her. Yet her condition only worsened; not a single treatment had any effect.
Worse still, the physicians who attempted to treat her caught the illness themselves and spent a long time bedridden.
A disease that defied every remedy and was even contagious—truly a terrifying affliction.
Of course it was contagious. It was a cold.
After dozens of treatments failed one after another, the enraged Claude V had every quack physician executed and kept vigil at his wife’s side alone.
Until the very moment she left this world, he held her hand tightly and prayed desperately for a miracle.
…Isn’t the real miracle that the patient survived long enough for him to try dozens of baseless folk remedies?
The folk remedies from my old neighborhood at least had centuries of clinical trial data behind them. The ones in this world were pure, hundred-percent defective products slapped together after the religious orders collapsed. How she lasted that long is beyond me.
In any case, the queen died, and Claude V began searching for a replacement.
And he found one.
Lovely children who looked exactly like his beloved wife in her youth—children who carried her blood.
“Ugh.”
Why the hell would anyone’s mind go there? What is this, the Habsburgs?
No, wait. Even they only tried sibling marriages; they never had a father trying to raise his own daughters as spares.
And the Habsburg habit of incest was less an expression of some twisted lust and more a cold-blooded strategy to keep titles and property from leaking out of the family.
Comparing that to His Majesty “I’ll give you the throne and the whole country, just spare my life”—the most catastrophically strike-prone monarch in history—trying to groom his own daughters is an insult to the Habsburgs.
“So that’s why he locked his own daughters in the basement? So he could visit them whenever he felt like it and…?”
Once you’ve come this far, the rest is obvious.
Claude V, whom I had only thought of as ruinously incompetent, was in fact an irredeemable child sex offender, and the princess locked in the basement was nothing more than a sacrifice for his appetites.
Rebecca and even Matilda both turned to stare at me with looks of pure horror, as if they never expected those words to come out of my mouth. But I am not some pure country girl.
I’ve put dozens of bastards who kidnapped kids and filmed porn away. Something like this is hardly going to rattle me.
There’s a reason the Foreign Ministry put me and my senior at the very top of their watch list.
Back then we only ever operated in places where law and order had completely collapsed, and we saw with our own eyes just how rotten a society can become when neither law nor morality functions.
Whatever Claude V—now reduced to ash—did while he was alive, it was never going to give me a psychological shock—
“If he’d been that far gone, I would have quit as finance minister ages ago. His Majesty intended to offer the princesses as sacrifices to bring the queen back to life. He believed that a daughter who inherited the queen’s blood would make the perfect vessel for resurrection.”
Well. That’s a hell of a story.
I’ve seen plenty of people who kidnap civilians and put on beheading shows, but I’ve never once met someone trying to become a black mage through human sacrifice. Do I have to chalk this up to “cultural differences” too?
And what on earth is Matilda saying?
A black-mage aspirant who wants to sacrifice his own daughters to resurrect his wife is somehow better than a child sex offender who lusts after them? Mentally speaking, aren’t they both equally far gone?
The first is a bastard consumed by desire; the second is a fanatic with a completely twisted worldview. Considering this is a world where miracles actually exist, the second one looks even more dangerous.
“Not that he had any concrete method, of course. Or the ability to research one.”
Ah.
So our king really was consistently incompetent and lazy to the end!
Human sacrifice isn’t some summer homework assignment you keep putting off because you lack motivation—but after the pathetic display I just witnessed, I can almost believe it. The thought makes me a little dizzy.
What kind of creature is this? The fact that a king tried to become a black mage is shocking enough, but he was too incompetent and lazy to even get around to it?
And while he was wasting time, the eldest princess—the original intended sacrifice—escaped.
Is he an idiot?
Ah. Yes. He is an idiot. Confirmed.
Thanks to that, one princess is now missing, and I have no idea what kind of variable she’s going to become.
The princes will almost certainly step forward themselves, so Count Montpellier can handle them. But a princess who still holds succession rights to the Kingdom of France…
If she runs off to Germany and marries the crown prince there, we’re completely screwed. Is there any way to find her?
“Anyway, Princess Louise escaped long ago, and we were about to get Princess Bianca out as well—then the war broke out…”
Hold on. Did I just hear that right? They were going to get Princess Bianca out as well?
That sounds an awful lot like she was the one who smuggled the eldest princess out in the first place. Was this woman really just a finance minister?
“Yes. I was the strict, sharp-tongued finance minister who managed the incompetent king’s assets full-time while scraping by on a miserable salary.”
So when I quietly siphoned off assets in kind, no one ever noticed.
Miss Matilda D. Granger, the greatest embezzler of the age, said this with a completely shameless expression.
She diverted royal property and transferred it to the eldest princess’s account. I genuinely can’t tell whether I’m looking at a former finance minister or a corruption suspect.
The way she casually activated various mechanisms and opened the hidden entrance to the basement looked far too practiced for a first-timer.
Or maybe she just used to come and go regularly.
“Follow me. Princess Bianca should be down there.”
I want her.
The sheer nerve to openly admit to embezzlement. The skill to keep the royal assets running smoothly. And that rebellious streak that makes her stab even a king in the back the moment she’s had enough.
There isn’t a single aspect of her I’ve seen so far that I don’t like.
Former royal treasurer Matilda Granger was a talent I had to recruit by any means necessary.
She had already been important; now she was indispensable.
Someone like her could be handed the entire financial administration of the Holy Kingdom without a second thought.
“Have you ever heard of double-entry bookkeeping? Do you know what kind of damage excessive seigniorage does to a national economy? And standardizing documents for clarity and efficiency is crucial too… Oh, would you like a little taste of cameralism?”
“Pardon?”
In other words, I planned to teach her everything and work her like a public slave.
I have far too many things to build; I can’t afford to waste time balancing household ledgers myself.
I have to lock her down.
“Hup.”
I immediately jumped down from Rebecca’s back.
Until a moment ago the searing heat had forced me to cling to her, but thankfully the temperature had dropped considerably once we entered the basement.
Being carried around on someone else’s back simply doesn’t look dignified.
“You know where the eldest princess who escaped is, don’t you? Bring her. In the name of the Saintess, I will protect both of them.”
“…What do you want in return?”
“Work for me. Keep my books, calculate profit and loss, manage the organization. So that I can focus entirely on my own duties without worry.”
My small frame still made the whole scene look a little ridiculous, but Matilda had no real choice but to accept.
Why else would I have made the princesses’ safety the condition?
If she refused, it meant the Order itself might take revenge.
And I had conveniently brought it up right before we rescued the second princess—the effect would be doubled.
I don’t know how she became so close to the princesses, but I’m not kind enough to respect other people’s friendships.
Still, once she accepts the offer I fully intend to keep my promise, so it won’t be a losing deal for Matilda either.
“All right. Fine. I’ll give it a try.”
“I won’t let you regret it.”
Done.
We gathered a few valuables and fireproof cloaks from the royal secret vault, then freed the imprisoned princess.
“Matilda unnie… where are we…?”
“Come, Your Highness. Somewhere safe.”
Princess Bianca was a child.
A small, fragile little girl who looked utterly incapable of becoming any kind of threat.
The moment I saw her appearance and let out a quiet sigh of relief, Rebecca—who had been silent until now—suddenly approached the princess.
She draped all three fireproof cloaks we had taken from the vault over the girl and tied them tightly so they wouldn’t slip off.
What is she doing? Is she telling me to live down here forever?
“Shall we go?”
Ah. She planned to carry her herself.
This unnie is surprisingly honest about her desires.
I’ve been working her hard enough; I can pretend not to notice this much.
…But all the people waiting outside are only waiting for us.
Surely she doesn’t plan to stay carried the whole way?
She’ll put her down somewhere reasonably safe, right?