The Grand Duke's Stare
"You've returned, my lord."
The Grand Duke's office.
Having returned to the duchy after a week away, Kadrian entered the office as he shed his cloak.
Count Norbert Millard, a vassal of the Ballot Grand Duchy, received the cloak and spoke.
"I trust your vassal duties went smoothly?"
Then he glanced around the room.
"Come to think of it, I don't see your aide anywhere?"
Kadrian pulled out a chair at the desk and sat down.
"Things aren't finished there yet. So I left Ed behind."
Ah. Norbert let out a sigh of sympathy.
"So you rushed back alone because of the newly discovered survivor."
Kadrian nodded.
"The one found on Teridana Beach, I hear."
"That is correct, my lord."
Norbert poured tea into a cup he had prepared in advance and set it before the Grand Duke, then bowed his head slightly. His movements were flawless, without a single wasted motion.
"We have instructed that they be brought to the duchy for now... What do you intend to do?"
"......."
Kadrian rubbed his forehead.
"One of two things, I imagine. Either they're connected to black magic, or they're a monster."
Whichever it turned out to be, either way, it meant the person was going to die.
Norbert swallowed dryly at the voice that had turned razor-sharp in an instant.
Black magic. And the black magicians who wielded it.
A year ago, the black magicians who had vanished without a trace for centuries resurfaced once more.
It had been 400 years.
Armed with magic more insidious than ever, they had begun their assault on the entire continent, starting with the Remarte Disputed Territory.
At the time, war between the Cadea Empire and the Tenasis Empire was raging in full force over that very territory.
They must have chosen a place where the eyes of the whole continent were already focused.
Perhaps they considered it the perfect stage on which to announce their existence to the world.
Because of it, an almost uncountable number of knights perished in the Remarte Disputed Territory.
Among the fallen of the enemy nation, there had even been knights that Kadrian himself would sometimes mention.
Sia, was it?
The Grand Duke, who had witnessed that knight's death with his own eyes, would spend long stretches afterward staring blankly out the window, lost in thought.
Like a man who had lost a comrade.
And in the end, the Remarte Disputed Territory fell to the black magicians.
Then, exactly one year to the day after that.
Trensha, the village beside Teridana Beach, was attacked by a black magician and reduced to rubble.
That had been a week ago.
The casualties were devastating.
Kadrian had dispatched knights to scout the ruined village, searching for any survivors who might remain.
Amid the chaos of managing the aftermath, something had happened to Kadrian as well.
It was the first time I'd ever seen my lord so shaken.
Kadrian had entrusted the village's recovery to Norbert, and then he had vanished somewhere, taking his aide Ed with him.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—no survivors were found for some time. So there was nothing particularly wrong with the Grand Duke being away, and Norbert alone had been able to handle the situation on the ground without difficulty.
But today. Of all days, today, a survivor appeared.
The moment the news of the discovery reached him, Kadrian, who had been absent for a while, had been forced to rush back.
Norbert spoke up.
"I was beginning to wonder if you'd deliberately dumped the work on me just to keep me from retiring."
"As if I would."
When Kadrian chuckled low, Norbert said in a somewhat heavier voice,
"...If you intend to conduct an interrogation, my lord, it might be better to take them to the dungeon beneath our county estate rather than here at the duchy."
The Grand Duchy of Ballot was already notorious for its cruelty and ruthlessness.
Even if it was nothing more than rumor.
Better to keep them from spilling any unnecessary blood.
The Grand Duke replied to Norbert, who had been muttering such worries aloud.
"You'd put an old man like our Count through an interrogation?"
At that, Norbert puffed his chest out proudly.
"I'm still in my prime."
"Weren't you supposed to retire and wander the land?"
"That's exactly what I said. And of course a survivor shows up today of all days."
"Then go on and leave with the luggage you've already packed. I don't lack for hands badly enough to work an elderly, retired vassal to the bone."
At the laughter lacing Kadrian's words, Norbert's lips pushed out into a pout.
"That wounds me, my lord. This old man is yours until the very moment his breath leaves him."
"Oh? Then how about you take the vacant butler position of the Grand Duchy, since it happens to be open."
At once, Norbert, who had been gazing at Kadrian with heartfelt devotion, straightened his expression as if nothing had happened.
"Ah, now that's going too far. Have mercy on this old man, I beg you. I have to stay alive to serve you, don't I?"
"Anyone listening would think I was shoving you into an early grave."
"Well, it would be the truth."
It had already been over five years since the butlers of the Ballot Grand Duchy began dying off.
All because of the assassins who came for the Grand Duke's head.
The Ballot Grand Duchy had no shortage of enemies.
With Kadrian, the head of the house, so constantly exposed to danger, the butlers charged with protecting the duchy's safety were inevitably dragged into the fray as well.
More than fifty butlers alone had perished that way.
Ordinarily, a butler to a high noble family had to be born of a good house, receive an elite education, and graduate from a butler academy.
Few among them excel at the sword or at magic, though.
Those skilled in the sword generally aspired to knighthood rather than butlerhood, and those with powerful mana dreamed of becoming mages.
A butler who was both highly capable and an exceptional swordsman was vanishingly rare.
No—practically nonexistent.
It's certainly better than the Grand Duke himself being harmed, but...
Professional butlers fresh from the academy, swayed by the lavish salary, arrived with high hopes and left as corpses.
None of them survived even a single month by the Grand Duke's side.
Thus the duchy, once hailed as the finest employer in the empire, was now known as the butlers' graveyard.
One empty head-butler position won't bring the Grand Duchy crashing down.
But still....
A manor could not run without its staff, and a household could not be governed by its head alone.
It's true that the longer the butler's seat sits empty, the shakier the duchy's internal affairs become.
And the burden that the Grand Duke and his aide had to shoulder between them would only keep growing.
I must find a new butler, and quickly...
At this rate, would he truly end up dragging some vagrant out of a back alley and seating him in the butler's chair? The worry gnawed at him.
Norbert let out a sigh.
"I will manage to find a butler no matter what, my lord."
Norbert continued in a calm but brimming self-confidence.
"I'll teach swordsmanship to academy graduates if I must! Teach butler's work to skilled swordsmen if I must! I will fill that chair, whatever it takes!"
Kadrian laughed.
"I look forward to it."
Because it was, in truth, a hopeless proposition.
Norbert smiled bitterly along with him.
Teaching swordsmanship to a butler, or teaching butler's duties to a knight—either would demand considerable time and effort.
More than that, finding someone willing to learn a completely new field outside their own expertise would be even harder.
What he needed was someone who had studied the sword and butler's craft from the very start, but....
Then again, who in their right mind would do something so foolish?
Mastering even a single discipline to any real depth demanded enormous time and patience.
Norbert's brow furrowed all the deeper.
Just then, Kadrian drew a pocket watch from his coat and checked the time.
"They're late."
"I gave orders to bathe them and dress them in fresh clothes before bringing them over."
Norbert's voice turned cool as he looked toward the door.
"There's no telling what they may have been soaked in at Teridana Beach."
Kadrian nodded.
At that very moment, someone knocked on the office door.
Knock, knock—.
"My lord. The Teridana Beach patrol has arrived."
"Let them in."
Soon, the office door opened.
A jolt ran up my arm. Goosebumps prickled to life.
That one word from the Grand Duke—enter—made every hair on my body stand on end.
Whoa. Is it real? Is it really him? The Grand Duke himself?
"You may go in, my lady."
The knight who had escorted me to the office said courteously.
I nodded and stepped inside.
A huge man sat with the sunlight from the window at his back.
The backlight cast his entire figure in shadow, yet even so, the man's violet eyes gleamed through the darkness.
Those eyes.
I knew those eyes.
The cold helmet I had faced time and time again, and the eyes that had glinted menacingly through the narrow slit of that helm.
Kadrian Ballot...!
It was real. The real Grand Duke.
My fingertips trembled slightly.
It was like standing face to face with a beast of unknowable skill deep in a forest thick with night fog.
So this was the living, breathing face of the Grand Duke—not the stiff, static expression in his portrait.
Wow... though, who on earth painted that portrait?
I'd assumed the artist must have been threatened into painting him more handsome than he really was.
The artist was the problem, all right.
The Grand Duke in the portrait and the Grand Duke before me were simply beyond comparison. If anything, the painter had failed to capture his looks properly and deserved to lose his head for it.
And to think I almost died without ever seeing him unhelm. That would have been a little unfair.
I was glad I'd lived long. No—I was glad I'd come back to life.
But then.
Why has he been looking at me like that this whole time?
The Grand Duke's gaze was strange. Yes, strange was the right word.
It wasn't the look of a man who had spotted a suspicious character. Not a gaze brimming with suspicion.
Slightly widened eyes. A brow that creased for the briefest instant. And a jaw that clenched tight, as if he were grinding his molars.
Could it be...?
Was this face the Grand Duke's type?
Well, he is a man, after all.
It wasn't as though this body's face was just some—eh, whatever—easily dismissible sort of look.
While I stood there nodding along, the knights' report went on.
The date and hour of the discovery, who had found me first, that it had been the northeastern end of Teridana Beach, what condition I'd been in when found, and so on.
And yet, through the entire report, Kadrian could not take his eyes off me.
Seriously, what is his deal? Say something already.
I stood a few steps from Kadrian and waited for him to speak.
"......."
"......."
Even after the report ended, the silence dragged on.
What's going on?
As the stillness stretched, an awkward air settled over the old man standing beside the Grand Duke, and over the knight who had finished his report as well.
I felt it too.
Being in a position with so much to hide, I couldn't help feeling on edge.
Wait—did they actually see through me?
He'd seemed startled when he first looked at me, and now he was glaring at me with an intensity like he wanted to devour me whole.
The theory that he was staring because this face was too pretty—because I was his type—had already been erased from my mental ledger.
No. In my current appearance, there wasn't a trace of my past life to be found.
Don't panic.
I am not the "Sir Sia" that Grand Duke knows.
That was when it happened.
The Grand Duke, who had been sitting quietly, slowly rose to his feet. A menacing air bled out of the eyes that had been studying me.
Then he spoke to the knights waiting outside the door.
"Put them on her."
Huh? Put what on?
When my eyebrows shot up, the knights who had been standing by rushed in.
"Pardon us, my lady."
Clank, clank! Heavy shackles snapped snugly around both my wrists and ankles.