The Ffrika Hypothesis
"Oh, right—that story!"
"I'll tell you about it later."
"My lady! You can't just dangle a story like that and then stop!"
Jenice looked so visibly let down that I almost felt guilty, but I turned my full attention to my tart instead.
It wasn't that I had meant to keep quiet from the start. At first, the idea had seemed so sound I'd wanted to tell someone—anyone. But if my hypothesis proved correct, it was bound to send shockwaves through everything, and I had concluded it was safer to hold my tongue.
There's no guarantee I'm right, after all. If a rumor spread for nothing, it might only land me in trouble.
So with an apology to Jenice—and a promise that she would be the very first to know the moment I was certain—I popped a slice of peach tart into my mouth.
"Mmm."
It was the kind of flavor that clenched your fist and made your whole body shiver. Impossibly delicious! Before I knew it, the tart plate was showing its bare bottom.
"Shall I bring you another?" Jenice asked. I gazed at the plates lined up on the tray. Cooker knew how fond I was of dessert and set out a generous spread every morning—but I never ate more than two. Whatever I left behind meant the rest of the servants got to taste his handiwork as well.
"I'm full. Oh, Jenice—was there any word from the palace? About Prince Cassion, I mean."
I had heard he'd regained consciousness, but with no way of knowing what had happened while I lay unconscious, worry gnawed at me. At the anxious note in my voice, Jenice smiled softly.
"They say Prince Cassion is doing just fine."
Relief washed over me. I let out a long breath, hand pressed to my chest, and climbed down from my chair.
"Jenice, fetch Rebert for me, would you? And get my things ready to go out—right away."
"Wouldn't it be better to rest one more day, my lady?"
Jenice trailed after me, still counseling rest, but my heart was already racing ahead. The full day of sleep had worked like medicine—my mind was keen and my spirits brimming. My steps toward the washroom quickened with every stride.
"You called for me, my lady?"
Rebert appeared just as my preparations were drawing to a close. I began to turn my head and was promptly caught by Jenice's hand.
"Let me finish your hair first."
"Rebert, you heard that, right? I'll be with you as soon as my hair's done, so have a seat."
Only after confirming in the mirror that Rebert had obediently settled onto the sofa did I urge Jenice to hurry. Today's hairstyle was soft curls worn loose, with a single pin set to keep the side strands from tumbling forward. Perhaps it was the deep sleep, but even by my own judgment, my face looked wonderful. After one last check of my reflection, I took a seat across from Rebert.
"Did you make the medicine for the symptoms I mentioned this morning?"
Assigning him a task at dawn and asking at midday whether it was done—I felt every inch the tyrannical employer. But this was groundwork to help him, not a scolding.
"No. Not yet... I haven't been able to find an ingredient that could pin down that sensation of floating in empty air..."
Though guilty of nothing, Rebert shrank into himself.
"Rebert, do you know a herb called Ffrika?"
Rebert blinked at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
"I sailed on a ship once, and the sailors' mouths were pitch black. And they spent the whole day chewing on something."
Young as I'd been, I'd been keenly interested in everything around me, and terribly curious about what those sailors could be chewing from morning to night.
"It was a herb called Ffrika. When I asked why they chewed it all day long, they told me it made the body adjust to life at sea more easily."
Rebert tilted his head, plainly failing to catch my meaning.
"That ache sailors feel when they come ashore after a long stretch at sea—that is the sensation of floating in empty air."
"Ah!"
Rebert's face brightened dramatically.
"Then we need only make it from Ffrika!"
I had supplied the raw ingredient; blending it to draw out the fullest effect was Rebert's craft.
"Rebert, could you make that medicine small—and something that keeps for a long time?"
"Yes, I'll try. Is it very urgent, my lady?"
Rebert asked, determination already blazing.
"Could you have a trial batch ready within a week?"
"I'll do my best, my lady."
"If it works, we may need to produce it in bulk within six months."
"In bulk? How much are we talking?"
"Mm. About five thousand pills."
"Five thousand pills?!"
Rebert's eyes bulged as if they might pop clean out of his head. Too stunned to even shut his mouth—sputtering wordlessly over what on earth they could be for—it was Jenice who asked in his place.
"You're not planning to take all of them yourself, are you, my lady?"
Before Jenice could launch into a full oration on the dangers of misusing medicine, I answered quickly.
"Of course not! I'm going to sell them."
"To whom?"
Who else would I sell seasickness medicine to, if not the people riding ships? I mused, a sly grin tugging at my lips.
When a naval war broke out, untrained civilians would be pressed aboard as well. It took no great foresight to see that people unaccustomed to ships would be wretched with seasickness. Indeed, in the naval war I remembered, there had been engagements where ships turned their prows and fled without ever trading a single shot—all because of seasickness.
My plan was to unveil Rebert's new remedy, proven against seasickness, to every nation joining the coming naval war.
Hand it out free at first, then charge for it later.
Whether making money from war could ever be right—I had wrestled with that question for a long time, for war is built upon human sacrifice. It was the very reason I had never aggressively chased a wartime boom, however endless the ways to profit from one might be.
I want nothing my business does to be tied directly to people's sacrifice.
Call it hypocrisy—some surely would—but it was the bare minimum line I drew to keep from losing myself. Truthfully, I even knew of a technology that would extend a cannon's range by leaps and bounds. Sell the know-how to make weapons, and the money would be staggering. But selling weapons of slaughter for profit had never once crossed my mind.
So I had agonized over how to turn the naval war to good use while guarding my conscience—how to wedge a foot into the maritime hegemony negotiations without ever entering the war itself. And today, I had found the answer.
Both nations waging that naval war would welcome Rebert's new medicine with open arms.
And it will go on selling like wildfire even after the war ends.
Because the Ffrika leaves they chewed in place of a motion sickness remedy were fiendishly hard to keep aboard—no matter how carefully they were dried, a week at sea was their limit. Once war began, resupply would grow difficult, and a ship that put out to sea might drift for weeks at a stretch.
A timely supply of fresh Ffrika leaves will be nearly impossible.
But make it into a pill that kept for years, and everything changed. Easy to store, easy to carry in bulk. His Majesty will be flabbergasted when he hears my plan, won't he?
Permission for my marriage to Cassion could not be far off now. Of that much, I was certain.
I ordered the butler to purchase Ffrika on a massive scale.
Money was already draining away in every direction, so I drew on the funds of the savings guild I had established a while back. Whatever I invested would multiply several times over within a few months and flow back to the guild's members, so there was no harm done. With the practical matters entrusted to Cho and Loomdrax, I paid a visit to the Mage Association.
My memory was right.
In two weeks, the most celebrated mages on the continent would gather at the kingdom's Mage Association to commemorate the birthday of the great archmage Magelake. Mages were a staggeringly self-interested breed, so under ordinary circumstances the festival's attendance would have thinned dramatically—but this year's event was unlike any before it.
Because the head of the Mage Association's Petrora branch had run away.
The Association formed close ties with each nation while building and operating its own branches in every country, granting it independence from politics and protection from it all at once. Each nation's branch cooperated in that country's affairs and kept the friendship warm. In short, a branch head was the one post charged with constant, close communication with the host nation.
So important was the post that when one head resigned, a successor was named and seated on the spot—yet this time, the incumbent had bolted without leaving even a moment to appoint one. Alarm bells rang through the Mage Association. Long-simmering grievances about chaining free spirits to a single nation, sensing their moment, came boiling up all at once.
And besides, wear the branch head's cap, and you could no longer cast magic as you pleased, nor find time to devote yourself to the research you loved. Call it mere formality, but the moment an organization takes shape, an unending tide of paperwork follows. In any case, the Petrora branch head's flight left the seat standing empty—and Karman had been in a truly foul temper over it.
The greater problem was appointing a successor. Lavish pay or no, word had spread that the post was dull enough to drive a man to run away—who would volunteer? With even the youngest mages quietly slinking out of the running, the elder mages resolved to convene an emergency assembly.
And that assembly was to be this year's Magelake birthday celebration.
Dayson pestered me half to death that year, begging to be taken along.
Back then I had no interest in magic, so I couldn't understand him at all. And yet—fancy that. Dayson, the stain on my life, proving useful at a moment like this.
In two weeks, on the day of the Magelake celebration, I intended to bring Cassion to the Mage Association.
Because I believe Prince Cassion may be a mage.
I had my reasons. First, moments before my death, Cassion had sent me a message through magic. Second, there was the state of his body—something no branch of medicine could begin to explain. I had once read a paper stating that afflictions born of magic or divine power lie beyond the reach of ordinary diagnosis and treatment.
How am I only remembering this now?!
When I clutched my head with a groan, Jenice's eyes lifted sharply to me. I gave her an awkward smile and pressed on with my thoughts.
And then there was the final reason I had come to suspect Cassion might be a mage: the ceiling mural I had glimpsed just before I collapsed! Like a revelation handed down from heaven, in the instant before I fell, I had seen the figure of a mage.
If the first two reasons were objective, this last one was utterly subjective and impulsive. But even impulse carried its own weight of reason. The study's ceiling mural was a gathering of figures—dozens of people painted together—and tucked into one corner, a tiny mage looked down at me as though poised to pounce.
I don't believe in superstition, but I do believe in hunches. This was a world where oracles truly existed, after all. Perhaps my desperate, burning wish to make Cassion well again had simply reached the heavens. Setting everything else aside, the first two reasons alone were more than enough to justify finding out.
Whether Cassion was a mage or not. And whether his illness had anything to do with magic at all.
"My lady, what did you go to the Mage Association for, anyway?"
Jenice asked, throwing the window wide open to let in the fresh air.