A Treasure Hunt With a Madman
That Seton kid turns out to be quite competent after all.
The effort Arendt had put into looking after him had been well worth it. And it wasn't just Seton—Enoch and Rosie had each handled their roles admirably too. With rumors already circulating that both Arendt and the Crown Prince were keeping a close eye on them, no one dared interfere no matter where the three youngsters poked their noses around.
Thanks to that, the kids had proven to be Arendt's excellent hands and feet.
The three of them had taken turns observing the guest palace where Llewellyn was staying, reporting back in real time. Before long, the tip-off came: a small banquet had been held under the pretext of soothing the visiting dignitaries' travel-worn bodies, but Llewellyn had skipped out on it, claiming he needed rest, and shut himself in his room.
The instant Arendt heard that, his instincts flared.
So he had volunteered for outside patrol duty, which was how he'd ended up here. A satisfied smile spread slowly across his face.
"If that's what you want, I could treat you according to your status right this very second."
"Y-you—you know who I am?!"
"Shall I give you exactly what you want?"
Llewellyn, his face gone pale, made a futile attempt at defiance—but it was promptly crushed. The fellow knight beside him, rolling his eyes in bewilderment, still seemed unable to grasp the situation at all.
He probably can't even imagine that this lunatic would dare treat a prince visiting the Empire as an honored guest like this.
Arendt strode a single step closer and considerately placed a hand on the prince's shoulder. Behind them, the rowdy din of the festival carried on, and beneath it came a whisper in a voice brimming with mirth.
"We could escort you comfortably all the way back to the Imperial Palace, you know, Your Highness. I'm sure His Highness the Crown Prince would be absolutely delighted to see you. And his chamberlain as well. Oh—and I imagine your dear father would shower you with tremendous praise, too."
"……"
"As you know, I'm a knight of the Imperial family, so I'd be obliged to report in thorough detail exactly how we came to meet like this. What will it be?"
"You……"
In the end, Llewellyn had no choice but to throw his pride—and everything else—out the window.
"What the hell do you want, you bastard? Money?"
"You know, it's rather pleasant how well we communicate on matters like this."
Letting out a soft chuckle at the prince's vicious growling, Arendt straightened his posture. "Well, since it's come to this, why not have a nice little chat? Shall we move somewhere more comfortable?"
"What? What's going on?"
Arthur, still hopelessly lost, stared back and forth between the two in utter disbelief. But Arendt only fixed a meaningful gaze on the fish in his palm—no, the prince—and let loose a chilling smile.
And a short while later.
Once he'd learned the whole truth, Arthur went white as a sheet and clutched his stomach.
"……So you're telling me, the prince of the Kingdom of Everan……"
"Got caught by some mere apprentice knight, and now I……"
Llewellyn, seated across the table, looked just as terrible. Meanwhile, the chief architect of this entire debacle—Arendt—calmly sipped his drink.
"I-isn't this kidnapping of royalty? And extortion on top of that—either way, this is the crime of insulting a noble. You do know that, right?"
"No need to worry. The one who should be watching himself right now is that gentleman."
Arendt answered crisply and turned his gaze back to Llewellyn. Judging by the way he blended into the noisy surroundings without a hint of discomfort, the prince had evidently wandered far and wide in his time.
His curly blonde hair—like a wheat field come to mind—and his handsome face certainly carried an air of nobility, but there was almost none of that imperious bearing peculiar to those born of rulers' blood. From gestures to speech, everything about him suited the role of a free-spirited youngest child rather than someone standing above others, laying bare the prince's unpretentious nature.
Thumping his head down onto the somewhat grimy table, Llewellyn grumbled.
"That drunkard of an attendant—I'm not letting him get away with this."
"Why are you blaming someone else, exactly? Who was it that snuck out of the palace and caused a ruckus, I wonder? If word gets out that a prince of a nation drew his sword on a civilian after traveling all the way to the Callion Empire, I'd say that makes for quite an amusing situation."
"I know, so shut up!"
Llewellyn snapped irritably, then propped his chin on his hand and continued to grumble. "This guy's a genuine lunatic, isn't he…… Does His Highness the Crown Prince even know you're extorting an honored guest?"
"He may not know about the extortion, but he's well aware I'm a lunatic, so I doubt it would come as much of a surprise to him."
"That's not something to brag about, you damn fool."
Arthur, holding his head in his hands beside them, let out a groan of suffering. Arendt merely shrugged, folded his arms leisurely, and faced the prince.
"You came because of the Dragon, didn't you? I gathered as much from the way you rushed off to see it the moment you arrived at the palace."
"What—you knew?"
"If I couldn't pick up on a disturbance of that scale, this job wouldn't be fit for me. In any case, Your Highness."
"Just call me by my name. Anyone would think you're mocking them."
"Very well, Llewellyn."
Arendt had never looked more pleased with himself. Llewellyn heaved a long sigh and picked up the cup in front of him.
"You're doing this to me on purpose, aren't you? I asked before, but—what is it you actually want?"
"It just so happens that your interests and mine seem rather similar, Llewellyn."
"Interests?"
At the cryptic remark, Llewellyn latched onto his words.
"I hear you travel all across the continent exploring, Llewellyn. Especially that you take great interest in non-human races."
"Wha—well, yes, that's true."
Confronted with an unexpectedly reasonable statement, Llewellyn nodded, though his eyes remained full of suspicion.
"I also hear you prefer wandering the land charting new territories over staying cooped up in the royal court."
"That's right."
He might have looked like a spoiled child, but in truth, it was a remarkable thing. He was widely considered a troublemaker in human noble society, yet his characteristic free-spiritedness and sincerity apparently struck the other races as deeply endearing.
Thanks to that, Llewellyn had personally visited the lands of non-human peoples and opened the doors of trade, contributing enormously to the Kingdom of Everan. That was precisely why he'd managed to carve out a fairly substantial position within Everan despite being the sort of troublemaker who caused chaos the moment he was let off his leash.
"Then I take it you know a good deal about Dragons as well?"
"I've heard this and that. I've gone half-mad chasing rumors across the continent more than once. But I never caught so much as a shadow, let alone a tail."
Llewellyn gulped down a mouthful of liquor and grumbled on. "Tch. That's why I came running to the Callion Empire when word came that dragon remains had been discovered—and look what treatment I get for it."
"Well, count it a blessing, then. In any case—what would you do with the remains, exactly?"
"Do you have any idea how much you can learn from bones?"
Llewellyn leaned in, his eyes bright. "Their size, what sort of habitat they lived in—there's no end to the things you can find out! And from that, there might even be a chance of locating a living Dragon."
"So your goal is to use the information from the remains to track down where the Dragon lives?"
"Yeah, for a start."
Llewellyn replied sullenly and drained his cup in one go. "Ahh, that hits the spot. Do you have any idea how much this stings? All that time I spent running around, and the thing pops up in some completely random place…… and then what was it again—a ghoul?"
"Perhaps it wasn't that it popped up in a random place, but rather that you'd only ever been pointing at random places, Llewellyn?"
"……"
Struck dead-on by the honest jab that came back without a moment's hesitation, the prince stiffened. Arendt clicked his tongue.
"I suppose that's why you were so furious and aggrieved that you threw a tantrum at Aide Zereon the moment you entered the palace."
"……"
"If you'd simply said you wanted to see the night festival, arrangements for an escort could have been made. We on our side were well aware of your fondness for wandering, Llewellyn—accommodating you would hardly have been difficult."
With every point landing squarely on target, Llewellyn's head sank lower and lower.
"And yet you deliberately chose to cause an uproar like this—which is to say, were you perhaps trying to pick a fight with the Empire?"
"No, that's……"
"Or did you want to sever your ties with the royal house of Everan completely? Come to think of it, your status does keep you from playing freely, and everywhere you go you get nagged until your ears bleed."
"……"
"From your standpoint, Llewellyn, causing one grand scandal here in the Empire and getting disowned might not be such a bad deal."
Having gone that far, Arendt let the corner of his mouth curl ever so slightly. "Oh—did you already cause the scandal? But I'd say it's still a bit too weak to justify being cut off. You really should have gone and beheaded that drunkard from earlier, sword-fighting the imperial knights all the way through their pursuit."
"……"
That mouth of his is positively sparkling today of all days, Arthur thought, discreetly averting his gaze.
Llewellyn's face had by now turned an ashen blue. He had finally grasped that this apprentice knight was a lunatic beyond anything he'd imagined—and that he himself was a rat caught in a trap. If he went back home and so much as opened his mouth, even if he wasn't disowned outright, he could count on being nagged until his ears literally bled, and worse, possibly confined to the palace for a stretch—no travel, not even so much as a simple errand outside the walls.
For Llewellyn, with his free and easy temperament, there could be no greater trial.
"Oh, and cutting ties with family happens to be my specialty. If you need any help with that……"
"Wh-what do you want?"
Llewellyn cut him off, desperate now. "Do you need money? Or what, information about the Dragon? Is that it?"
"My, you're quicker than you look."
That flush-faced, wide-eyed smirk was so infuriating it made him want to throw a punch. Arendt leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the table. It was hardly the sort of behavior a mere knight ought to display toward a prince—but then again, common sense had never applied to this one, and Llewellyn gave up on everything and bowed his head.
"If I provide you a lead, can you bring something back?"
"Bring what, exactly?"
"You do prefer living like a stray dog, after all. Since that's how you live anyway, I'm proposing something along the lines of a rather more exciting treasure hunt."
It was a tantalizing offer, truth be told.
"So…… you'll fund my expeditions, and in exchange I share whatever I find?"
"Yep, that's exactly it."
But one problem still remained.
"……Why would I do this with you?"
Not even the Crown Prince—just him.
Llewellyn could roughly guess what the man wanted, and why he wanted it. But as far as Llewellyn knew, Arendt held no position from which he could reasonably make such a proposal to him.
The apprentice knight himself, however, couldn't have cared less.
"Because right now, I'm the person in the Empire who knows the most interesting things."
"……?"
"And among those who hold information, I'm also the one who can move around the most freely."
The Crown Prince, in his official capacity, could hardly issue a personal request to the prince of another nation—one careless misstep, and it might escalate into an international dispute. Arendt flashed a shameless grin.
"So this is a deal between you and me, Llewellyn. The Callion Empire has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
"Then what—whatever I dig up, I use privately?"
"Nope. I'll resell it to His Highness the Crown Prince. At a very steep price. Otherwise the numbers wouldn't balance."
"You absolute lunatic……"
After gaping in silence for a long while, Llewellyn finally managed to squeeze out a single sentence. "……You are a knight, right?"
"I am."
Somewhere, a certain Crown Prince was clutching his stomach—or perhaps tearing his hair out, in a future that was easy to picture. But that was not his concern.
"Oh, and it seems you're laboring under one misunderstanding, Llewellyn: as of right now, you don't actually have any other options."
"……"
"It's not as though I'm simply shaking you down—I've told you I'd pay well for it, haven't I? Is there really anything left to add at this point?"
Having re-registered his reality, Llewellyn's fist, planted on the table, began to tremble. "If you refuse, then I'll escort you as-is through the front gates of the Imperial Palace. You carry yourself decently enough in a fight, I'll grant…… but you've probably already figured out where this stands by now, Llewellyn?"
Arendt swept his gaze slowly over the prince from head to toe. The meaning of that look was simple: You couldn't win even if you pounced, so sort yourself out.
The moment Llewellyn took so much as a single step toward fleeing, Arendt had every capability of grabbing the prince by the scruff of the neck and dragging him straight to the palace gates. Arthur beside him went without saying.
In the end, Llewellyn had no veto power whatsoever.
Thud.
Dignity and all else abandoned, the prince buried his head in his hands.
"You son of a bitch……"
The deal was struck.