No Help Without a Price
I had always been an obedient niece — and Jenice an obedient maid.
The alley that had been roaring with commotion fell silent in an instant, and even my heart, which had been hammering in terror, found its rhythm again. I'll admit the cold metal against my throat startled me too. From the moment I regressed, I had gone looking for Chyo's whereabouts, and I had even considered the possibility that she might not recognize me — but I never imagined she would put a knife to my throat. Before she died, after all, Chyo had been terribly fond of me, her niece.
In my past life, I knew I had an aunt, but not where she lived or what she did. It was only after passing twenty that I finally tracked Chyo down. We met often after that, and every time we did, she worried over me and told me to speak up whenever I needed help. So I had assumed that once I revealed I was her niece, she would lend me her ear at once.
Well, that settles it. I'm the only one who regressed.
A few days after coming back, the thought had struck me out of nowhere: Am I truly the only one? My regression had been special. Thanks to three people — Jenice, Chyo, and Cassion — I had been able to return at all. Surely, then, might they not have regressed too? Or at the very least, wouldn't they know me on sight? But Jenice had known nothing. Neither had Cassion. And neither had Chyo. I alone had come back, and none of them knew how my past life had unfolded.
"Did Sana send you?"
I had gone quiet to think it over, and Chyo filled the silence with the question. I'd expected her to fly into a rage over an impostor claiming kinship, but since it was she who brought up my mother's name, it seemed I really did resemble her after all. Enough to make doubting difficult.
"No. My mother... she passed away."
"What? Sana is dead? Don't you dare lie to me!"
Chyo jerked in shock, and the knife pricked my throat. A sharp sting — and with the pain, blood traced a thin line down my neck.
"Stop it! D-don't do it, please!"
Jenice shrieked — and at her cry, a rat came streaking in, darting straight for Chyo's leg.
"Eek! What the hell is that!"
Chyo flung her leg out wildly.
My eyes went round as I watched the rat scramble away, then turned to the flushed and frantic Jenice — and then it clicked, the way she would so often say, I heard it from the rats. Could it be? Was Jenice actually commanding the rats?
"My lady, even if it costs me my life, I will see you out of this alive!"
Was meeting my aunt really such a life-or-death affair? Stray thoughts drifted through my head, but calming Jenice came first.
"Jenice, I'm fine. So breathe. Please — I'm asking you."
Jenice bit down hard on her lip and let out a long, shuddering breath. Silence swallowed the alley once more.
"Sana is really dead?"
Chyo searched my profile. I nodded. To me, returned from the past, my mother's death was already a long-settled thing — and yet my chest still ached every time I said it aloud. My mother had been endlessly gentle, a truly good person. One I could never hope to imitate.
"So Sana... is gone."
Chyo's knife clattered to the ground. She swayed and staggered back from me. It would have been stranger for a woman who chased information for a living not to know the affairs of House Ehrenberg.
"I deliberately kept away from all that, and in the end I couldn't even sit at my sister's deathbed. I meant to come home only once I'd made something of myself..."
And with those words, my old question answered itself. The woman who had bolted from noble life because it didn't suit her had wanted to return in triumph, so everyone could see. Afraid that missing her family might soften her resolve, she had cut herself off from every scrap of news of them — and while her ears were stopped, someone precious had died. Grief flickered across Chyo's face.
I was still wondering whether I ought to offer some word of comfort when Jenice seized my wrist and yanked me back. She tucked me behind her and hefted up the plank she'd been holding like a shield, blocking the way.
"Do you have any idea who this is? She— that is, this is...!"
"Diana Viola Ehrenberg, you said? My niece."
Chyo finished the introduction Jenice had fumblingly begun. While Jenice muttered, scandalized that she had known all along and raised a blade anyway, I pushed past her and stepped forward.
"My lady, it's dangerous!"
Jenice whimpered at my back, but she didn't try to stop me again.
"That's right. I am my aunt's niece."
"You do look like Sana. Your face, I mean. So why come looking for me? Did Sana tell you to?"
"All her life, my mother missed you terribly, Aunt. She searched for you a long time, too."
I spoke with truth and lies braided together. Why had my mother never found Chyo, when I — once I put my mind to it — could? It was only after meeting the young Chyo that I understood. Chyo smelled of the wind. She was never meant to live tethered to one place. So my mother had found her, and then let her go without a word. She longed to see her only sister, ached for her — but she never bound Chyo's feet. It was just like her.
I'm sorry, Mother.
But I was different. I wanted Chyo at my side. Not necessarily her body — even just her heart would do. Let her body go wherever the wind blew; let her heart stay with me.
"Mother told me that if ever trouble found me, I was to go to my Aunt Chyo."
I'm sorry for lying to you again, Mother. I tipped my face up to the sky for a moment and offered the apology in silence.
"How long has she been gone?"
I'd braced for Chyo to see through my lie and pick it apart, but my mother's death had apparently struck her hard enough that her face showed only turmoil.
"One year."
Chyo's eyes wavered.
"Was Sana at peace, at the end?"
"My mother... relatively speaking."
I pray she was.
The truth was that my parents' deaths were riddled with unanswered questions. That day was the day my mother was finally to visit her hometown. Instead, the rain came down in sheets. A trip they would ordinarily have postponed, the two of them pressed through anyway. The journey was rough from the very start, and when the road they always traveled flooded, it only grew worse — until, doubling back along a detour, disaster found them. The carriage, swerving to avoid a rockfall, plunged off a cliff. An accident. But looking back on it now, nothing about that day sat right. Back then, I only grieved and let it all wash over me.
"Sana told you to come find me?"
Chyo's question drew me out of my reverie. She let out a long, thin breath.
"Yes. She said you would help me. I'm still young, so I need you, Aunt."
I drooped my brows and clasped my hands together, doing my best to look pitiable. In my old life, such a lie would have been unthinkable. But I understood now that sometimes a lie was simply necessary — because I was no longer a child.
"Diana, was it? Don't tell me you need a guardian?"
Chyo took hold of my hands, pressed them neatly against my side, and stepped back. Then she leaned against the wall, fished out a cigarette, and set it between her lips. White smoke unfurled wide through the back alley — and as far as the smoke spread, light came creeping into the alley as well.
"I don't need a guardian. I need a different kind of help."
"You really are naive. Do you think being family covers everything? It doesn't — no, it doesn't. If I help you, what do you give me in return?"
Give you what? I'm your niece, aren't I? You were the one who came looking for my execution site — you hadn't come wanting anything from me. At Chyo's words, the artless expression I'd been wearing nearly caved in on itself.
Chyo, catching that flicker of change, curled the left corner of her mouth upward. She tapped my frozen, dazed cheek twice with the hand holding the cigarette, then tossed it to the ground. It landed in the filthy puddle with a sizzle.
I dropped my gaze. Watching Chyo grind the discarded cigarette under her heel, I clenched the inside of my cheek. I'd thought I had thrown off that green, naive act for good — and yet here I was, nearly slipping again. Pinning my hopes on someone else's goodwill, of all things. And I know Chyo better than anyone.
Chyo weighed her losses and gains with cold precision, no matter who stood before her. If she judged the price too steep, she refused — whoever it was. An anecdote surfaced in my memory: when she later lent her hand to building the royal intelligence organization, she had demanded a treasure of the royal house as her fee. Back then, not knowing she was my aunt, I simply marveled at her gall. I pitied His Majesty for the loss.
But I'd had it wrong. The intelligence organization Chyo laid the foundations for went on to perform brilliantly for a state-run network. Demanding her price even in the face of her own blood — that was Chyo. My disappointment turned, strangely, into trust.
"Then that's the first thing you'll learn from me. There is no such thing as help without a price."
I tapped the ground with the toe of my shoe. Every time my feet moved, grime spattered up and freckled my dress. Right — begging for help on the strength of sentiment was something you did when you had nothing to give. And I had plenty.
"You require payment, then?"
I lifted my head. The naive mask was gone.
"Naturally."
Chyo straightened at my abruptly changed expression, as though my transformation had caught her interest. She took a step closer. I looked up at her, eyes wide open.
"I can pay it."
"And how would you know what I want?"
"You need money. From what I understand, your guild members' living wages are behind."
Chyo's eyes narrowed to slits. Her gaze brimmed with suspicion — how on earth did you know that?
Chyorny — Chyo's guild — would one day grow rich buying and selling every secret on the continent, but in these early days it was starved for funds. Trust was the bedrock of trading information, and unsurprisingly, hardly anyone would entrust real work to a guild that had yet to prove itself. People believed in Chyo, but not in Chyorny. For now, it was less an information broker than an errands guild, and even the requests that trickled in were menial labor at best. And yet this was no guild so careless that intimate details like these would come leaking out of its own house.
Chyo studied me with wary eyes.
"I take after you, Aunt — I know a little about buying information myself. A trade should be equal, shouldn't it? And it seems I'm finally in the mood to trade. Shall we?"
Strictly speaking, what I held wasn't information I'd bought. It was information I'd lived. Chyorny's present circumstances were easy enough to piece together from the conversations Chyo and I had shared in my past life — she had a habit of drawing out those old hardships and telling them the way people tell fond memories.
Chyo, who had been scrutinizing me to weigh truth from lie, took a step back. She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her chin up.
"Fine — let's trade. Go on, then. Let's hear these conditions of yours."
It was a pass, for now. When the knife had been at my throat, I'd feared a productive conversation with Chyo would be all but impossible today. What a relief.
"As you know, I am the heir of House Ehrenberg."
"Let me correct you. You are the heir presumptive, not the heir — you have no guardian. Don't tell me you mean to make me yours? Don't bother. I can't abide being tied down."
"I know better than to try binding someone like the wind to my side, Aunt."
"Then by what miracle do you intend to hand me a fortune?"
"Not yet — but soon, I'll be the rightful head of the house."
"Hah! Look at you. I thought you were naive, but you're a fool through and through?"
Chyo laughed out loud, as if she'd known it all along, and shook her head. She swept past me without a trace of regret — though she did remember to give my shoulder a pat or two on the way. And to that retreating back, I declared with all the confidence I could feign:
"I am going to marry His Highness Cassion, the Third Prince."