54 — Return to the Royal Palace: Maids and a Rune Artisan

The next morning.

I got up early and packed my things. The three of them were still asleep.

Watching them tangled together in that narrow bed was pure comedy. Karin was pillowed on Eva's leg, Eva had Sofia in her arms, and Sofia had commandeered the entire blanket.

The three of them had filled the space I'd left behind. A gap shaped like me. ...Fucking hell. Seeing them cling to one another to patch over the hole where a single person used to be, I knew exactly what it was — the emptiness I had planted there. I knew it better than anyone.

"Whose leg is this...?"

Karin muttered, the first to sit up.

"Mine," Eva said, rubbing her eyes.

"Eva, your legs are so heavy..."

"That's not fat, it's muscle."

Sofia opened her eyes quietly. Her silver gaze sought me out.

"...Do-hyun?"

"Right here."

Sofia let out a breath of relief.

"You... haven't left yet."

You haven't left yet. The relief soaked into those words ran so deep that I looked away for a moment. Eyes terrified I might leave. That terror was something I had carved into her with my own hands. What a comedian, Kang Do-hyun.

The main gate of the knights' order. The carriage had come for me — the carriage back to the royal palace. Helga had come out to see me off.

Silver bob. Thirty-three. Instructor of the order. My first partner from the knights.

"Safe travels."

Helga said it without expression, but emotion bled through her silver eyes all the same.

"Thank you, Instructor."

"Come back sometime."

Helga ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠paused for one second. Then she added:

"That's an order."

Helga's order. An order from the order's instructor. Non-refusable.

"Understood."

Helga turned away, her silver hair swaying in the wind.

The three female knights stood behind her.

Karin flashed a grin, green eyes sparkling between her freckles.

"Do-hyun, sir."

Sir. On the front lines I had been plain 'Do-hyun'; back at the order, 'Do-hyun, sir.' The official honorific.

"I'm staying with the capital knights. Call on me whenever you need me."

Karin saluted — a knight's salute, right hand pressed to the left breast.

Eva stepped out beside her. Blonde hair scattering in the morning breeze, her bust asserting itself even inside armor. The armor wasn't caging them — it was propping them up. ...Shit, I'm the one receiving a farewell and my cock is the first to say hello. A pull tightened in my lower belly. Crush it, hard — spring a boner now and I'm a genuine loser. A psychologist by trade who can't win an argument against a single suit of armor.

"Me too!"

Eva beamed — a genuinely bright smile I'd never seen on the front lines.

"Wherever you go, I'll follow."

She grinned and winked.

Sofia came out last. Black bob. Silver eyes.

"...Me too."

Her voice was small, but her silver eyes didn't waver.

She took one step forward.

"Do-hyun."

"Yes."

"I'm going to report to Rene Wolf."

"...Sorry?"

"To the order's ethics committee. About what happened four years ago."

Sofia's silver eyes were resolute — nothing like the trembling eyes of four days ago.

"Because I'm not alone. Not anymore."

She looked at Karin and Eva. Both of them nodded.

"We'll testify," Karin said.

"Evidence gathering is on me," Eva added.

Sofia looked at me.

"It's thanks to you, Do-hyun. That I could find the courage."

I looked into her silver eyes. Not the fear-soaked eyes from the day we'd first met, four days ago — eyes where resolve and calm existed side by side.

"It'll work out, Sofia."

Sofia smiled.

The three knights saluted in unison. A knight's salute. Karin — green eyes, flame. Eva — blue eyes, sun. Sofia — silver eyes, moon.

Three swords had come over to my side.

Courage. Resolve. Calm. Good words, all of them — if you ignored the thin layer of my [Brainwashing] laid beneath every one of them. That Sofia could testify before Rene Wolf without shaking was genuinely her own courage. It was also genuinely true that I had shaped where that courage flowed, steering it into trust aimed at me. ...Fuck, and the fact that both were real made it all the more fucked.

Inside the carriage. The road back to the royal palace, the knights' order receding behind us. Through the window the three of them grew smaller and smaller — Karin waving one hand, Eva waving both arms, Sofia lifting a small hand — until the carriage rounded a corner and took them out of sight.

I leaned back and stared at the ceiling.

The knights' detachment was over. Helga, Karin, Eva, Sofia — four swords secured on my side, my abilities raised another rank. That was enough. Settled, then.

Karin's crooked grin. Eva's bright laugh. Sofia's quiet smile. The picture of the three of them laughing lingered like an afterimage on the carriage window. ...It had been a good twelve days.

A good twelve days. Ask who it was good for, and I couldn't answer. For those three, surely — they'd caught a spy, faced their wounds, and found each other. For me too, it had been good: four swords had landed in my hands. The same days being 'good' for everyone in completely different senses — that was the essence of this work. I always settled my accounts on the side where things looked good.

The carriage swayed. Spring air drifted in through the window. Elena. Thirty-eight. Queen consort of Astel. Violet eyes and golden hair, and the rumor that she and the king had not shared a bed in three years.

This knights' mission had to have piled on more of her trust. Purge of the spies: complete. Fortification of the knights' minds: complete. That two-line record of merit would make Queen Elena need me even more. The queen's regular consultations were already standing business; they would resume the moment I returned. Which meant it was finally time to knock on the home base of my MILF hunt. Vulgar phrasing, granted — but whose fault is it that what's in my head is vulgar?

The towers of the royal palace began to rise over the horizon. Let's go.

Arrival at the royal palace. Five in the afternoon. Entry procedures at the west gate, then the Royal Psychologist's private passage. Elina, the head maid, was there to meet me — sixties, administrator of every maid in the palace, a thirty-year veteran, deeply trusted by the queen.

"You've returned, Psychologist."

"Good to be back, Head Maid."

"Her Majesty awaits. The official report is tomorrow at ten in the morning. Tonight, please rest."

Elina's voice was courteous, but the distance in it was deliberate — the professional wall of a woman who had guarded this palace for thirty years.

"Thank you. Although... there is one favor I'd like to ask of you, Head Maid."

"Speak."

"Tonight at seven, could you assign me a few maids to clean and tidy my office? I've brought back a great many documents from the knights' detachment."

"I'll arrange it at once. How many do you need?"

"Ten."

Elina's eyebrow rose a single time. Ten was excessive for office cleaning.

"The document sorting is complicated. Twelve hundred individual knight reports to organize within three hours — impossible for one man alone."

A perfectly reasonable excuse. Elina nodded.

"Very well. Ten will be assigned at seven."

"Thank you."

Before leaving, Elina handed me a black envelope.

"The item you sent from your post has been placed in Her Majesty's private vault. You will report on it in person tomorrow."

Inside the envelope was written the receipt number of the original. It matched the number I'd been given at the order. At the very least, the black plate had made it to the palace.

Elina departed, and I headed for my office. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠closed the door behind me, settled into the chair, and watched the sun sink past the window.

'...Tonight's experimental subjects. Ten palace maids.'

'...Testing whether I can touch ten minds in a single pass. Three at once has already been done. Now, ten.'

'...If it works, the picture widens. If it fails, I learn exactly where my limits sit. Either way, data.'

Drafting a plan to summon ten people under the pretext of filing papers and comb through their heads, I leaned back comfortably against the chair. ...That comfort was the most fucked-up part of all. My guilt couldn't even make it down as far as my posture.

Seven in the evening. My office.

Ten maids filed in and set about sorting the twelve hundred knight reports. From twenty-two-year-old Mila to the successor candidate the head maid Elina was grooming, their ages and temperaments ran the gamut — but their loyalty to the queen and their professional trust in the Royal Psychologist were one and the same.

I laid two lines over that common ground.

A third line — making them read my mana traces as perfectly normal — I started to add and then stopped. Forcing three layers into ten minds at once raised the odds of overlooking an individual's resistance far too high. I couldn't test my greed at the same time as the scale.

The moment I opened [Mental Interference], the ten pairs of hands faltered for one beat, then resumed. Mana drained at nearly four times its usual rate, and my temples throbbed. It was shallower work than rebuilding a single person in depth — but I had succeeded in stamping the same direction onto ten minds simultaneously.

Three hours later, as the maids filed out into the corridor, their voices dropped, smooth and unthinking. The first line had taken. How far the second had widened my authority, I would confirm with the next request.

Without a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shred of official record, I had rewritten one of the palace's rules. And more dangerous than the success itself was how quickly, how naturally, I swallowed that fact.

Eleven at night. My office.

The last item on tonight's agenda: leave my mark on my women.

A tattoo. A rune design. Permanent ink. A procedure to make them live the rest of their lives with DH carved above their breasts — not a mark that only worked between the sheets, but a brand that would surface in their minds every time they saw their own body, for as long as they lived.

My women keep multiplying. Helga, Karin, Eva, Sofia, Marisa, Erika, Rosa, Irene. And the list will only grow. I want the same rune carved into every last one of them. The same spot. The same design. So that anyone who saw it would read it at a single glance: this is Kang Do-hyun's woman.

Watching myself lay out my possessiveness in neat little sentences like that, I had to wonder whether I was even human anymore. How is it any different from branding livestock? ...It isn't. That's the answer.

The problem was that I was no rune artisan.

A procedure improvised in haste was nothing but surface decoration. Carve it onto a breast, and without mana woven into it, it's just a drawing. To bind a rune design's mana into permanent ink takes a craftsman with at least six years of practiced hands — only then does the procedure itself carry a reinforcement effect on the engraving, and only with the backing of a rank-2 stability rune design like Irene's will it hold over the long term.

So this was not a one-time commission.

I would recruit one craftsman to carve my mark — a seat kept at my side permanently. A craftsman who would spend her life carving one single rune onto the breasts of my women. I'd even sketched out plans to unify their dedicated outfits with the same emblem someday, but that could wait. Tonight, all I needed was one artisan who could leave a rune on skin.

Tonight belonged to the rune. At noon, Irene would become the first subject of the procedure — and the one performing it had to be my person before tonight was over.

Two things to handle tonight. First, select the right rune artisan candidate. Second, make that candidate mine.

I spread the Magical Inscription Guild's capital registry across my desk. Eighty pages.

[Memory Reading] worked only on living minds. Paper and ink had no hearts to read, so the registry itself couldn't be touched by magic. I ran my eyes over the table of contents and registration marks, slipping paper slips into the entries whose specialties fit, and within five minutes I had five candidate indices — then read their detailed records one by one.

Five made the cut. One of them caught my eye.

No family. Solo workshop. Six years in the same place. Stable, with minimal outside interference. The ideal candidate.

I knew what was packed inside the word ideal. A lonely person, with no one to lean on and no one who would come looking if she vanished. The conditions I called 'ideal' were, in the end, the conditions of 'no one would ever notice even if she broke.' ...And there I was, picking out a human being that way while turning the pages of a registry.

'...It gets finished before tonight is over.'

Half past eleven at night. The eastern edge of the capital.

Hooded cloak. Commoner's clothes. The Royal Psychologist's insignia tucked in an inner pocket. I stepped down from the carriage and walked the alley.

Linee's workshop — a small two-story stone building, workspace below, living quarters above. Yellow lamplight seeped through the window. Still awake.

I knocked.

"...It's open."

A woman's voice. Calm. One person, working late in a workshop that had never been locked.

I went in.

A low-ceilinged workshop. Display racks of rune tools, fifty varieties of magic ink bottles, rune needles sorted by type, rings of silver, gold, and mithril. Dozens of rune sketches pinned to the walls. Embers dying in the fireplace. At the workbench, a woman sat with her back to me.

"Sorry for the late hour. I have a commission."

The woman turned, slowly.

Linee Valkrit. Twenty-eight. Black hair tied back at the nape, gray eyes behind glasses, an apron over her work clothes. Ink stains on her fingers — hands that had carved runes for six years. An ordinary, tidy face; a craftsman's face more than a beauty's. Her gaze was precise.

"A commission, then. There's an after-hours surcharge. Is that acceptable?"

"The surcharge is irrelevant."

"Have a seat."

Linee indicated the chair across the workbench. I sat, and pulled back my hood. Her gray eyes stopped for a moment — but she said nothing. A craftsman's professionalism.

"The commission details?"

"One female knight. A pair of DH runes above both breasts. One line of cursive down the cleavage. Silver-ring piercings through both nipples. Permanent magic ink. And the artisan will be you."

Linee's hands paused. She set down her pen and looked at me.

"...A few things to confirm."

"Go ahead."

"DH — your own initials?"

"That's right."

"Has the knight consented?"

"She has. She wanted it."

She wanted it. A lie that rolls right off the tongue. Irene truly did want it — because I had made her want it. That it wasn't even a lie, that was the filthiest part.

"You can prove it?"

"I'll bring her here in person at noon."

Linee nodded. Professional ethics: no procedure without consent.

"The price."

Linee spread out her rate sheet.

"Two rune pairs, one cursive line, two piercings, permanent magic ink. Ninety gold in total."

Ninety gold. A year's living for a commoner family.

"Fine. And one more thing."

"Yes?"

"This commission isn't a one-time affair. Similar requests will come in regularly from now on. Multiple subjects. Varied designs. Absolute confidentiality required."

Linee's gray eyes brightened a beat. Craftsmen love their regulars.

"...Roughly how many?"

"Seven to ten. It may grow."

Linee adjusted her glasses, slow and deliberate.

"And the confidentiality terms?"

"Exemption from guild reporting. Procedure records stay in your private notebook alone. Not a word to anyone outside. A breach means immediate termination of all commissions — plus a penalty."

"...Terms that would justify charging five times the standard rate."

"You'll be paid five times."

Linee held silent for one second.

"...I accept."

A craftsman's decision. Swift. A woman who had run a solo workshop from the same spot for six years had no reason to turn down a stable regular.

So much for the transaction. From here on, the real work.

"One more thing."

"Yes?"

"The client you met today. The face you saw. The name you heard. The sum you were quoted. How you file those away in your own head is entirely up to you."

Linee's gray eyes dimmed slightly — a face trying to gauge whether I was joking or serious.

"...?"

"I mean that I have a commission for that as well."

I reached out and planted my hand on the workbench. One meter between us. A distance for performing a procedure on the one who performs procedures.

A distance for operating on the operator. It sounded like a joke, and it wasn't funny at all. Hands that had spent six years carving something permanent into other people's skin had no idea that tonight, something permanent was being carved ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into her own head.

I read Linee's mind in a single sweep, surface to core.

A deeply lonely craftsman. Good. Ideal.

Ideal again. Looking at a woman abandoned by her fiancé four years ago and unable to trust anyone since, the word that surfaced in my head was good. Good, because that loneliness was the crack I meant to pry open. ...By this point I wasn't even sure what it was I was feeling anymore.

I split [Suggestion] and [Emotion Manipulation] into two layers — the professional and the emotional.

Into the professional layer I set three lines: that I was a stable patron; that my commissions would become her signature works; and that the fine details of every design were hers to decide. Into the emotional layer I bound a sense of safety at my side and the conviction that no other artisan alive could replace her.

The final line went deeper still.

To a lonely craftsman I held out patronage and creative freedom as bait — and hid ownership underneath. Eight seconds later, Linee's gray eyes came clear again.

"From today, this workshop will give priority to your commissions, Lord Do-hyun."

The direction I had planted came out of her mouth as her own resolution.

"Call me Linee, then. 'Business associate' is far too distant."

"I'll bring the knight here at noon. I'll observe the procedure from beside you."

"I'll have everything ready."

Linee spread her design sheets open again. Beneath the lamplight, a private smile lingered for a moment at the corner of her mouth. And I turned and walked away from a woman who would believe that smile was her own choice — my footsteps carried no weight at all. That was the filthiest outcome of the night.