Curiosity Kills the Cat
The idea of an information brokerage wasn't something Arendt had come up with just a day or two ago. As long as he was cooped up inside the Imperial Palace, there was no way to get a proper grasp on the state of the empire as a whole.
Cantares fed him tidbits of information here and there, but everything passed through so many hands that its usefulness had limits. And since the man would someday stand at the very apex of this empire, Arendt couldn't keep relying on him forever the way he did now.
What he needed was raw, unfiltered intelligence — though at minimum, something where the lies had been sorted from the truth.
Of course, an apprentice knight belonging to the imperial household couldn't exactly waltz in and out of information brokers on a regular basis.
Gathering intelligence himself was obviously out of the question, too.
Which left, in the end, only two assets: the funds that had somehow piled up in both hands with nowhere to go, and Neumann, head of the Neumann Merchant Guild.
'And who exactly was it that accused me of meddling in other people's business?'
Neumann had accepted the proposal for his own reason, plain and simple: because Arendt had said he needed it.
He hadn't cared much about the money or the terms, yet he had spent that entire conversation circling around the point, hedging and deflecting, all so that this side wouldn't feel burdened.
Not that Arendt felt any particular gratitude. This was a business that could not fail.
'The East Merchant Guild pulled off something similar in the middle of a war, didn't they?'
Whatever Neumann was worried about would turn out to be no problem at all. After all, no one would welcome the arrival of a clean, transparent information brokerage with open arms more enthusiastically than the nobility.
The East Guild had leapt into the information trade amid the chaos, and the gamble had paid off spectacularly. By working directly with the imperial court to relay the positions of enemy appearances in real time, it had prevented untold casualties.
But there was no need to hand a good thing to someone else. And personally, Arendt found the East Guild's Guildmaster a little distasteful anyway.
Watching useless money slowly pile up was, at any time and in any place, a delightful thing.
He strolled back to the barracks with a light step — and was greeted at the door by Arthur's voice, thick with irritation.
"Where the hell do you keep running off to?"
"It's been like this for days, you know. Doesn't getting annoyed every single time get tiring?"
"You insufferable little brat. Here — that servant boy, Siton, dropped this off a while ago."
Arthur shot him a sour look and held out a sealed letter.
Skipping the courtesies as he always did, Arendt took it and checked the sender's name out of pure habit.
A moment later, his handsome brow creased slightly. The space where a sender's name should have been was blank.
Arthur chimed in from beside him.
"I thought it was weird too. No sender on it, so Siton was hemming and hawing even as he handed it over."
Arendt turned the expensive-looking envelope over in his hands a few times, examining it, then tore the seal open and checked the contents.
"Huh?"
Arthur, who had been craning his neck over with idle curiosity, felt his face go stiff.
Across the stiff paper, vivid red letters sprawled with a sinister elegance.
Curiosity kills the cat.
There was another time something like this happened, wasn't there?
Arendt clicked his tongue in irritation.
"Being popular is such a hassle."
"What kind of nonsense is that, you punk!"
Arthur bellowed, and at the sound, the knights scattered around the barracks began to gather.
"What is it? What's going on?"
"Where's all the racket coming from?"
Until the seniors had formed a circle around him, Arendt simply stared down at the letter, blank-faced.
Thinking about it rationally, this was...
"A threat, presumably? Looks like a warning to stop digging any further."
"Given your personality, having one or two of these fly your way isn't exactly surprising," someone muttered, half like a groan, at Arendt's offhand remark.
Nobody argued with him.
When Arendt pressed his nose to the paper and sniffed, a faint fishy scent of blood rose up. It wasn't merely bright red either — it had a strange, dark reddish-brown sheen that anyone could recognize as writing done in blood.
Arthur ground his teeth viciously.
"Damn it all. Sending a threatening letter to an imperial knight? That takes some nerve."
"Right? Most people wouldn't even think about mailing something like this to the palace. I mean, anything with an unidentified sender shouldn't even get inside in the first place, no?"
"Someone must have slipped it in among the pile of regular mail. To be honest, even the imperial household can't completely stop a skilled infiltrator who's determined to get in."
Glenn muttered gravely beside him, but Arendt answered with all the interest of someone discussing someone else's problem, turning the letter over front and back.
Aside from the threatening phrase scrawled on one side, nothing else stood out.
"Anything suspicious come to mind?"
"Not a thing, sir."
There was no information anywhere that could identify a sender — but there was one thing he could guess at.
The corner of Arendt's mouth curled up.
"I'd wager getting their gambling den stripped clean left them feeling awfully sore about it."
Rebecca.
The other knights could call that name to mind just as easily.
Ryder scrunched up his whole face.
"What? Then why come after you specifically?"
"The other side isn't stupid either. Give it five seconds of thought and anyone could take a rough guess at who orchestrated that mess. And who made the biggest scene there, exactly?"
"You at least have some self-awareness, I'll give you that, you brat."
He hadn't bothered to hide his face at all, so figuring out who he was from his appearance wouldn't have been difficult anyway.
Arendt scratched his cheek.
"Quite the ballsy one, this. The content's a threat, but the act itself is closer to a declaration of war, really... Ah."
"What?"
"Come to think of it, we don't exactly have a way to respond on our end either. We're hardly in a position to be upstanding about it, are we?"
The fact that Arendt and his group had been inside the gambling den was, for now, a secret.
There was no proof that the sender of this threatening letter was the den's owner either, so an official investigation into the letter itself would be difficult. Getting snagged on that thread in return was the last thing he wanted.
Understanding the implication, Arthur scrunched his face up.
"Fair point. In any case, who knows what kind of tricks they'll try, so keep your head down for a while. What are you going to do with it?"
"Keep it somewhere safe, I suppose. Who knows, the day might come when I have to return it."
Arendt shrugged and tucked the threatening letter away neatly.
"Things just got interesting. I don't know whether it really came from them, or whether there's yet another someone out there."
At that point, his head tilted to one side.
"Now that it's come to this, I'll just have to stir things up to my heart's content."
"...That fearlessness of yours, refusing to back down, is admirable — but do you have any sense of caution in that head of yours?"
"And what, precisely, would I need to be cautious about here?"
Arendt replied with perfect equanimity to Ryder's deadpan "I'm done with you."
"And think it over carefully. If I report that I received a threatening letter, do you really think the Commander will just sit still?"
"......"
No. Absolutely not.
In an instant, every knight's mouth snapped shut.
They could already see it: Laios, eyes blazing with fresh fury — how dare anyone threaten the safety of our apprentice knight — throwing himself into the investigation twice as hard.
"I'll just fan the flames gently from the sidelines. You seniors would do well to brace yourselves in advance, too. Work is about to come pouring in. I'll look into this myself for now."
"Ugh, that insufferable little...?"
Someone let out a small, weary groan.
"A cat, my ass."
Unfortunately, that creature bore no resemblance to anything as cute as a cat. A giant, slithering water snake, maybe.
The arrival of the threatening letter was quietly swept under the rug. But the apprentice knight's prediction soon became reality. The moment he returned and heard the report, Laios's eyes had lit up like fire.
"We expand the investigation."
As it happened, the Crown Prince's authorization had come down just days before. Nothing in the world could stop Laios now.
Illegal gambling dens, black markets, and exchange houses that had operated quietly from the shadows were suddenly struck by lightning from a clear sky. With Diana and Kendrick joining the campaign, the scope of the investigation only widened further.
And Arendt himself ran from place to place with relentless energy — as if he were dying to announce to the whole world that the curious cat in question was none other than himself.
In the end, Arthur, unable to watch any longer, finally exploded.
"Do you even know the meaning of the word restraint?"
"Senior, I feel my irritation growing by the minute. Why don't you go to the kitchen and ask for a nice warm glass of milk?"
"Why you—! This is all your fault!"
"What is?"
Arendt, who had been on his way out, turned back around and opened his eyes wide in an expression of genuinely knowing nothing at all.
"Don't tell me you're actually worried? Over one lousy threatening letter?"
"......"
Arthur's eyebrow twitched.
To an outside observer it might have looked like the pure, touched expression of a youngest knight honestly moved by his senior's care — except the one wearing it was Arendt, and that was the problem.
It would feel so satisfying to plant a fist right in that innocently sparkling face.
But before he could act on it, the creature abruptly dropped the naive look and reverted to his usual face — that insufferably insolent, expressionless mask.
"I'm not a senior who wanders around getting beaten half to death, you know. If it came to it, I could sell all of you off and find my own way to survive. I have no particular interest in a dramatic, tragic death like some people."
"How long are you going to keep milking that!"
Caught between irritation and fury, Arthur raked both hands wildly through his own hair. Arendt watched him with something close to pity — then suddenly opened his mouth.
"You're free today, aren't you?"
"What? Er... well, it is a rest day."
"Exactly."
The moment Arthur answered in a daze, the insolent apprentice knight tilted his head slightly, a faint frown on his face.
"What. Why are you looking at me like that. It's unsettling."
"Nothing. I was just wondering whether you'd actually be of any help."
"You want to die that badly, asking the useless senior for help?"
"Do your worst, then."
Just as their never-ending bickering threatened to start all over again, Arendt changed the subject.
"If you're free, how about lending a hand? It's not particularly difficult work."
"What?"
The apprentice knight who sauntered out of the Imperial Palace headed, naturally, for the Neumann Merchant Guild's headquarters. And on the third floor, besides Neumann, one more welcome guest was waiting.
"Sir Arendt! It's been far too long."
Count Stadler, who had been seated in his chair, sprang to his feet with delight. Arendt sat down across from him and offered a light greeting.
"You're looking well, Count."
"All thanks to you, Sir Arendt."
Count Stadler beamed, his face utterly free of shadow.
How could his mood be anything but excellent?
He now had a perfectly respectable laboratory near the mine. Cantares had kept his promise to support his research without stinting. On top of that, the affair over the magic stone mine had left him on excellent terms with the Neumann Merchant Guild as well.
Research commissioned under the guild's name, research requested by the Crown Prince, and on occasion even collaboration with the imperial court mages — for a man addicted to his work, the place was nothing short of paradise.
"Ah, by the way — I've brought the thing you requested as well, Sir Arendt."
"Now that's the most welcome thing I've heard all day."
"The books and such I'll have a servant deliver to the barracks later. And this—"
Count Stadler placed a small leather pouch on the table.
"It seemed it wouldn't quite meet the standard you described, so I used a magic stone to raise its potency further."
"Thank you. I'll send the payment through a servant later."
The Count finished speaking in a hushed, rapid whisper, and just as Arendt gave an unbothered nod, the Neumann Guildmaster, returning from fetching the tea, smiled and spoke up.
"And what secret matters are we discussing, gentlemen?"
"Classified information."
The Count smiled awkwardly, and Arendt answered with perfect shamelessness.
Neumann, apparently having expected no real answer anyway, snorted softly and took his own seat.
"The Knight Order must be in an absolute uproar over the gambling den affair. Are you sure it's wise to be out and about this often?"
"I'm just one apprentice knight. What do I matter? I've always been a bit of a delinquent."
At Arendt's breezy reply, both men burst out laughing.
"Well then — shall we, the delinquent knight and his accomplices, get properly down to business? I'm speaking of the new venture, of course."
"Haha... I confess this sort of thing is entirely outside my expertise, but regardless, I look forward to working with you."
Neumann quipped, Count Stadler smiled his usual awkward smile, and their gazes met in the air.
'He's gotten to them.'
That shameless apprentice knight had well and truly rubbed off on them both.
The two men let out a soft laugh in unison.
Because each of them had recognized the unmistakable glimmer of expectation and mischief flickering in the other's eyes.