Why Is This Yours?
When the Holy Kingdom and the Empire joined forces to seize Canaan and place Down Fork under Holy Kingdom rule, they tried to fill every key administrative post in the city with their own people.
Replacing the veteran staff who had worked in Down Fork for years, however, proved no easy task. So they changed tactics. If they couldn't pack the city's inner workings with their own, they would at least make the organization that watched and oppressed Down Fork theirs.
Thus the garrison charged with keeping the peace and defending against invasion was staffed entirely with personnel handpicked by the Holy Kingdom. And that remained true even now, after Jin had driven out both the Wild Dog Alliance and the Holy Kingdom.
"Has the Holy Kingdom been defeated...?"
"And we're just supposed to stay here like this?"
Once the Wild Dog Alliance became masters of Down Fork, the garrison had been scheduled for replacement. Because a prolonged vacuum in the city's security couldn't be allowed, they had planned to be the last to leave — crossing paths with the Wild Dog Alliance on their way out.
But both the Wild Dog Alliance and the Holy Kingdom had been played by a single man named Jin, and both had retreated. And the city's new master was someone else entirely.
Rosamond.
The witch the Holy Kingdom had excommunicated had returned.
"Commander, what do we do?"
The soldiers asked the middle-aged man whose belly jutted out in front of him.
"Hmm..."
The middle-aged man rubbed his unkempt beard. He had never commanded anything in his life, yet he was the garrison commander of Down Fork — courtesy of an elder of the Holy Kingdom who happened to be a distant relative.
He'd been sucking every last drop of honey from Down Fork all this time, and the thought of handing it over to the Wild Dog Alliance had left him bitterly disappointed. But things had taken a very strange turn. Word was that the Saintess's former bodyguard knight had sided with Rosamond and snatched Down Fork right out from under everyone...
What was the name again. Jin, was it?
"You said it was just one person?"
He asked a soldier, who nodded. It wasn't a particularly confident nod.
"That's how it looked when I snuck a look, sir."
The garrison commander snorted.
"You damn idiot. You think one man could pull that off? Against the Holy Kingdom and the Wild Dog Alliance?"
His shoulder twitched as if he might take a swing. This was a man for whom looking down on others had become second nature.
"Still, they don't seem to have many people. If you only saw one, that tells us something."
His eyes narrowed, as if running the numbers. The gaze that had been drifting somewhere beyond the window swept across his soldiers.
"Any of you heard the name 'Jin'?"
The garrison soldiers shook their heads with blank expressions, or simply denied it.
"Jin? That's a name?"
"Strange, unusual name, sir. Is he from the East?"
"Yeah. Some nobody who used to be the Saintess's bodyguard. Apparently he's the one who sided with Rosamond this time."
"Never heard of him, sir."
A nobody whose name wasn't even known. Anyone who was anybody in this business would be a name everyone recognized...
The garrison commander finished his calculations and grinned. His unkempt beard and the flabby flesh of his cheeks rose with the corners of his mouth.
"Hey. Listen up."
He lowered his stance slightly, as if sharing a secret.
"Us, sir?"
"That's right. Listen. That witch is just some ordinary girl, and this Jin fellow is a nobody brat. I saw him a few times when he came and went from the Holy Kingdom — tall, sure, but scrawny as a stick. Never even heard of him fighting anyone."
On top of that, it was obvious that the forces Rosamond commanded were vanishingly few.
"If we rise up, it's a fight we can't lose. We take Down Fork for ourselves, or we hold it until the Holy Kingdom comes back and hand it over — either way, that's our achievement, isn't it?"
The garrison commander's grand ambition was laid bare. And the subordinates who heard it...
"That's our commander...!"
"Your ambition is on another level, sir!"
"We'll follow you, Commander!"
"Loyalty!"
Watching his soldiers' eyes light up, the garrison commander smiled with satisfaction. Teeth stained yellow from drink and tobacco showed beneath his dark beard.
I'll take care of the witch and Down Fork both.
His eyes, looking down on Down Fork's city hall, burned with ambition.
"Ah, Jin. You're here. Did you finish the inventory?"
Rosamond was in the city hall office. Buried in documents, she peeked her head out, her eyes curving into a smile.
"More or less."
Knox and I had just finished taking stock of the warehouse on Rosamond's orders.
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to put you on this kind of work..."
"It's not difficult."
"Even so."
Rosamond had no hands to spare right now. The city's people had welcomed her, but with the Holy Kingdom's withdrawal, Down Fork was in a state of near ruin. The problems she needed to handle immediately were countless — so many I couldn't even begin to grasp the scale. One look at the mountain of documents burying her was enough. Given all that, lending a hand wasn't any trouble.
"Thank you. You can rest now. I haven't decided on lodgings yet, so for a few days you can use the house right behind city hall."
The house where Loretta was sleeping, then.
As she checked the documents I'd handed over, she suddenly murmured something.
"Salvia...?"
"Salvia?"
"Ah, that's the name of the herb you reported was buried underground. Salvia."
The stuff Knox had found in the crate she'd nearly tripped over. I'd considered quietly pocketing one, but I hadn't. I didn't want to live that desperately. And there was no guarantee it would even help.
"It's a herb that grows wild around Down Fork."
A local specialty, then.
"Brewed as a decoction, it's good medicine for illness — and even if you're not sick, it helps your health. Especially for knights and soldiers, they say. Our family's knights used to go crazy over it, wanting to get stronger."
"I see."
"Mm. So I'm giving it to you."
"...Pardon?"
I'd brought the crate along with the report, intending to let her know something like this had been hidden underground. When I looked at her, she was holding the wooden crate of Salvia out toward me.
"You're my bodyguard knight. So of course I should look after you."
An unexpected gift. Not unwelcome, but it caught me off guard.
"Is that all right? It's city property."
"We can't properly trade for a while anyway, and we can't find the real owner. All the records are gone. We don't have the means to store it long-term either. So you eating it is actually the most efficient choice."
Hmm. Every word of that checked out. In that case, no reason to refuse. I wasn't the type to turn things down in the first place. If someone offered, I took it.
Resting her chin on her hand, she grinned.
"You find it easier to accept things when they're explained like this, don't you?"
"...Hah."
A dry laugh escaped me. She'd read me perfectly.
"That's unnervingly accurate. How did you know?"
"That's what I got from watching you. How to put it... you accept things faster when there's a logical connection you can follow?"
So she'd been observing me from the side. It felt strangely like someone peeling back my inner thoughts.
"So this is yours."
"Well, I won't refuse. I'll take it."
"This is what they call looking after your man, isn't it?"
As I took the wooden crate, our eyes met. Her red eyes curved into crescents as she smiled.
"I told you. I'm going to make you like me. Keep looking forward to it."
She still hadn't given up on that. There's no need to try so hard. I was never someone of any value to Hanna in the first place.
"...Well, give it a try, I suppose."
"Mm. I will. Ah, if you take it to Knox, she'll tell you how to use it. She knows pharmacology well."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"Then you can rest now... Ah. Could I ask one more thing? This is something only you can do."
Just give orders, not requests. Having to accept a request is a hassle in itself. I looked at her, waiting for her to go on.
"We'll need to defend Down Fork going forward... but the garrison hasn't been dealt with yet. They're probably all Holy Kingdom people."
"So there are still enemies inside the city."
"You could put it that way. I don't know how those soldiers will react, though. Either way, the garrison needs to be reorganized, cleaned out — something."
"And how do you plan to handle the city's defense going forward?"
"For now I plan to recruit from among the citizens. We need them urgently, so I'll set the pay high, then restructure into professional soldiers once we have more breathing room. It doesn't need to be organized immediately, so just keep it in mind."
"I'll remember that."
"Mm, that's all. Rest for today."
The last I saw of her before closing the door, she was buried in documents once more. I'd barely left the office when someone knocked, received Rosamond's permission, and went in.
The people waiting for her were countless. These were the things she had to bear as the city's new master. And yet on her face, there was only a hint of fatigue — not a single shadow.
How anyone could look at her and call her a villainess or a witch.
What a ridiculous slander.
"You can chew Salvia raw."
"Is that so."
"But it's incredibly bitt—"
"..."
"Pft, pffh! Haha, darling, what's with that face?"
This is why you listen to people until they finish talking.
I'd stuffed a stalk of Salvia in my mouth and started chewing before Knox had even finished her sentence. The result: my mouth was as astringent and bitter as if I'd chewed a stinking insect. This tastes absolutely foul...
"Bitter..."
"Pffh, hahaha!"
Knox pounded my arm as she laughed. My thoroughly scrunched-up face must have been quite the sight.
"Ah, darling. You're too funny. Your face is all crumpled up like a wad of paper."
"Calling someone's face crumpled."
"Our darling's got a secretly cute side, huh?"
"Next time, if something's this bitter, I'd appreciate a faster warning."
I couldn't spit out what I'd already chewed, so I'd have to swallow this scratchy thing rolling around in my mouth. My tongue was crawling. Better to swallow it fast than keep chewing.
"You can brew it with honey or milk. Leave it here and I'll have it ready for you next time you come by."
"The cost?"
"Heh, you know what? I really like that about you. How you keep the accounts straight. But between us, we don't need to fuss over little things like this, do we?"
Well. I wasn't entirely sure what "between us" was supposed to mean.
"Whatever the relationship, keeping the books clean means no trouble later."
"How does our darling always pick the nicest things to say?"
Her slender fingers tapped my shoulder.
"If you insist, could you get me some honey? I don't have any right now, and honestly, it's expensive."
"I'll give it a shot."
"I do love how straightforward you are."
I left Knox's workshop with the astringent taste still clinging to my mouth. Never eating it raw again.
...But does this stuff even work?
It was rare for my heartbeat to feel violent under ordinary circumstances. It happened intermittently, but it wasn't serious. Not yet. Usually it came with coughing blood or searing pain after intense activity like combat... No good way to check right now.
Honey, huh.
I still had a fair amount of the money Rosamond had given me. Might as well try buying some with that. Someone would be selling it somewhere.
The city's master had changed. There had been quite a lot of commotion in the process. But all of that had happened outside the city. The scenery inside was as ordinary and peaceful as if none of that chaos had anything to do with it — never mind that behind this peace, Rosamond was working herself to the bone, and there was no telling what the garrison might try.
Anyway, I stepped into the peaceful city market. Stalls lined both sides of a broad avenue, each vendor selling whatever they'd brought. Surely someone around here sold honey.
I was thinking that as I walked, when—
...Why are so many people staring?
Not armed men — ordinary citizens, looking at me quite openly. There was no threat in those gazes. Curiosity? Suspicion? Something like that.
"E-excuse me!"
One of them approached me. The face was vaguely familiar. One of the people who'd recognized Rosamond and exchanged greetings.
"You're Lady Rosamond's new bodyguard knight, aren't you? I, uh, heard you faced the Wild Dog Alliance and the Holy Kingdom all by yourself..."
The stares grew more intense.
"I-is that true?"
Ah. So that's what they wanted to know. These people were skeptical — whether one person could really have done such a thing. Well. Even I, having done it, found it so unrealistic I'd have trouble telling anyone. It wasn't some rustic legend like seventeen-to-one, either. Except in my case, it wasn't a rumor. It was fact.
"It is true."
They didn't look particularly convinced. If they weren't going to believe it, why bother asking? I hadn't told them to believe me. Whether they did or didn't was none of my concern.
Anyway, I had my own question.
"Is there a merchant who sells honey?"
"Ah, honey. Over that way..."
Then.
"You there. The witch's dog."
A group of people came striding toward me. All of them armed. The sound of their boots on the stone was heavy and crude.
Clank. Clank.
At the appearance of the armed crowd, the citizens who'd gathered around me scattered like leaves. The man at the front had a triumphant gleam in his eyes. For eyes as keen as a deer's, he was a potbellied middle-aged man. A body that had never seen a day of training in its life — and the armor draped over it looked ridiculous.
"In the name of the Holy Kingdom, we shall execute the witch who has disrupted the peace, and her dog."
Men armed with identical standard-issue equipment. I see. Holy Kingdom remnants. The Down Fork garrison.
"Does the Holy Kingdom call sucking taxes and exploiting people 'order'?"
"Shut your mouth! Do not insult the Holy Kingdom!"
"I don't recall insulting anyone. Maybe the Holy Kingdom is just an insult in itself."
I loosened up, rolling my shoulders. They clearly intended to make a scene.
"I should thank you, actually."
"...Thank us?"
"You've saved me the trouble of hunting you down, and given me a justification besides."
I hadn't brought a sword. Against the likes of these, bare hands would be more than enough.
"Hah! A scrawny bastard like you, putting on airs all by himself!"
I counted their numbers and assessed the quality of their arms. Heightened senses spread through every part of my body. The sensation filling me overflowed, spilling into the space around me. Their tension, their anticipation, came through. I had the enemy's measure.
Weaker than the ones who'd come after Rosamond. A decent warm-up to see whether the Salvia was working.
"Boys, get him—!"
At the potbellied middle-aged man's shout, the soldiers charged. And in my head, everything was already perfectly arranged.
Right. That's how I'll do it.