The Ruler of the Pleasure District
The people of Winterfeldt were free to come and go from the Pleasure District as they pleased. Freedom.
Contact with demonkind was not itself forbidden within the Empire, for moderate demons who had chosen to live alongside humanity dwelt there as well.
Even so, as I made for the Pleasure District I drew my cloak about me and hid my face beneath hood and mask. It would hardly look well for the Grand Duke to be seen slipping in and out of that place.
Of course, most of Winterfeldt's nobles and its people already knew that I dealt with the district on a regular basis, and that I kept it under my control. Old resentment toward demonkind still lingered, so it was not a thing they could regard kindly—the sort of act the Empire, or the Church, might seize upon whenever they pleased.
And yet the people of Winterfeldt accepted my dealings with the Pleasure District all the same, because the district was breathing economic life into Winterfeldt.
Set in the far north, Winterfeldt lay buried in snow the year round, a land where no proper crop could be grown. Step beyond the walls to hunt or forage, and magical beasts and wild animals seethed in every direction. Somewhere deeper still in the northern forests, demons who still preyed upon humans might be hiding even now—the hardliners, scattered after the Demon King vanished.
And so the Pleasure District, drawing every manner of crowd on entertainment alone, was one of the few real sources of income Winterfeldt possessed.
The people of Winterfeldt did not run the district themselves. Anyone who wished to enter it, however, had first to pass through Winterfeldt.
Was this what Father intended…?
I still could not be sure. I did not believe he had looked to coin alone. There had to be some other reason as well.
I turned onto a lonely stretch of road and made for the Pleasure District beyond Winterfeldt's walls. Far off, lights of every color came into view, and voices—men's and women's, tangled together—began to reach my ears.
Chirp—!
…?
Then a clear birdsong rang at my ear, so near it might have come from right beside me. I turned my head and looked to my shoulder.
A small bird, sparrow-like, was perched there. Or was it a wren? I could not truly say. I had never cared much for the kinds of beasts and birds that lived in the wild.
Even so, the sight of a little thing like this always warmed me. They were cute.
Chirp—!
While I stood staring, half spellbound, it pecked at my shoulder and cried out. Well… the poor creature was probably hungry too. Life in a country this cold could not be easy.
I drew a few of the nuts I had kept in my pocket and offered them to the sparrow. It pecked at once, as if it had been waiting.
"That ought to be enough, shouldn't it?"
Its belly soon full, the sparrow fluttered up and was gone.
I visited the Pleasure District often enough, and yet the smell peculiar to the place always stabbed at my nose until it was nearly past bearing. The reek of legal aphrodisiacs on the boil, the vomit of crowds drunk past sense, the fluids spilled by nameless men and women coupling even in the streets—every grotesque odor one would never smell in Winterfeldt hung thick in the air, all of them mingled and trembling together.
Brow furrowed, I stepped into the entertainment tavern Goro ran himself.
A hulking demon charged with keeping order showed me the way. The scale of the place was hard to credit for a tavern on the fringe of the northern frontier. It had exactly the air of a house the ruler of the Pleasure District would operate in person.
Following that brute's lead, I passed countless rooms whose purpose I did not know—no, whose purpose I had no wish to know—and entered a chamber set deep within the tavern.
I opened the door and stepped inside, and there was the demon Goro, reading a book.
"It's been some time."
"Lord Goro. Have you been well?"
"Of course. And you?"
"There is a great deal I wish to say."
"Come. Sit."
Goro dismissed the brute who had brought me as far as the room. Now there was no one here but the two of us.
"Well then, Hardy. Has something happened in Winterfeldt?"
"It has."
"As I thought. You grow more like your father with every passing day."
I offered Goro a smile I did not quite feel. That my father had been able to overcome the opposition to this Pleasure District owed a great deal, no doubt, to the cooperation Goro had given him.
"Lord Goro. A few days ago, an operative of Winterfeldt's Special Task Force was abducted outside the walls."
"Was she?"
"Yes. We caught the culprits… but one of them was a demon."
"Hm… A demon…"
Goro stroked his chin and sank into thought.
Now.
I put the question to him.
"Lord Goro. Have you any notion who it might have been?"
"I wouldn't know…"
I closed my eyes, and I asked it of myself.
Are the words of the demon Goro true?
From the heart of a pitch-black mindscape, the form of the demon Goro appeared. His image was clearer than that of Morte, the demon I had interrogated not long before.
Soon the answer came.
The words of the demon Goro are true.
I opened my eyes. To anyone else, it would have seemed no more than an instant.
Goro had told me the truth. He knew nothing of the demon caught up in this affair. That he had spoken truly confirmed once more that he was a demon I could trust.
And yet the cause for unease had grown just as clear.
The demon Morte had confessed that he was registered in the Pleasure District. In truth, most of the demons who appeared around Winterfeldt were the same, for demons of unclear origin were forbidden entry to Winterfeldt.
Which meant Goro might not hold full sway over the Pleasure District, the domain that was his own. If someone had gone so far as to lay hands on an operative of Winterfeldt's Special Task Force, it was difficult to dismiss the matter as a crime of the moment.
A plain and present danger. I had to press the point.
I said to Goro,
"Lord Goro. I must ask you once again. Please keep a close watch on the trade in illegal aphrodisiacs, in forbidden goods, and in magical beasts. Above all else, the trafficking of people—never. That, I cannot overlook."
"That falls to me. You truly are like Walter."
Walter. Walter Bernheim was my father's name.
What I had asked of Goro were the very principles my father had laid down, and that Goro had cooperated in upholding. Coexistence between Winterfeldt and the Pleasure District was possible only beneath them.
When my talk with the demon Goro was done, I left his entertainment tavern. Perhaps from the mental power I had spent, my head spun.
The ability to judge truth and falsehood in the words a demon spoke drained more mental power the higher the rank of the demon one faced. Goro, whom I had met today, stood high in that hierarchy, and so the cost had been heavy.
I had never yet stood before a demon of a grade above his. Even so, I had the feeling that if I tried the ability on such a creature, it would not take. That was why I thought of my power as incomplete.
A headache came with the dizziness. I closed my eyes and drew in the outside air—but what filled my nose was the Pleasure District's stench, damp and thick.
In the moment I meant to frown at the foulness of it, something appeared before my eyes.
The interior of a tavern unfolded in front of me. This place… it was Goro's entertainment tavern, the one I had only just left. The scene spread so vividly it was as if I had been sent back there, and from somewhere a clammy dampness crept over my whole body.
A sense of déjà vu. This was the same feeling I had known days ago, when Future Sight had shown me Sora's abduction.
Enduring the unpleasant aura the vision gave off, I fixed my attention on the scene before me.
And then a familiar figure revealed herself. Jeanne Eichen—my childhood friend.
And yet she, strong enough to captain the Special Task Force, the woman people called the Lioness of Winterfeldt after the beast of her house… was wearing a rabbit's ears, not a lion's. Worse, the clothes on her were a tight costume that seemed cut with no purpose but to bare as much of her body as possible.
Jeanne carried drinks with a thoroughly displeased look, as if she were being treated as a serving girl in an entertainment tavern.
I was certain I had sensed no trace of Jeanne inside Goro's tavern until a moment ago. Then what I was seeing now had to be Future Sight—a glimpse of something that might yet come to pass.
My head began to throb. Goro was not the sort of demon who would do a thing like this…
At the pain stabbing in, I clutched my forehead and squeezed my eyes shut.
And then another image began to enter my sight.
A blonde woman whose face I knew had buried her face between some man's legs, as if she were sucking his cock.
She sat with her back to me, so I could not make out her face. Even so, the maid's uniform she wore told me plainly who she was. There was only one maid with hair of so luxurious a gold.
She was Rion Primrose, my personal maid.
Who was the man forcing her into something so vile? There was no such man in the manor, at least. Those watching the house while I was away would be Theon, captain of the guard, and his men—and the butler, Oswald. All of them people I trusted without reserve.
But in the vision before me, I could not see that man's face.
My heart grew urgent. I could not leave Rion to suffer a thing like this. I could not be sure what moment this Future Sight belonged to, but I had to answer it somehow.
I wrenched my gaze from the scene as it repeated, and opened my eyes. Cold sweat was dripping from my brow.
I had to learn where Jeanne was, and see to Rion's safety.
Enduring the stabbing ache in my skull and the heat slowly rising through me, I quickened my steps. A little farther, and I would be clear of the Pleasure District.
I clenched my teeth and took one step more—and something was fluttering before my eyes.
It was the sparrow I had seen earlier, beating its wings in the empty air and staring straight through me. When we first met I had thought the creature nothing but cute.
Why hadn't I felt it then?
The presence coming off it now was mana, and of a grain much like a demon's.
Had my instinct been right…?
The sparrow chirped, and spoke.
