Chapter 4
<5화>
“That condition. Don’t you think it’s a bit much to impose on a child?”
The next day. A peaceful afternoon in the office.
Knox, who had been agonizing over it all day, asked Calips as he sat working.
“What is?”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to me, but if word gets out that Your Excellency made such a contract with a five-year-old, your public image will suffer.”
“Ah.”
Calips responded indifferently.
“The beheading?”
“…I was trying to be subtle, but if you put it so bluntly, it’s terrifying.”
“To whom?”
“To me.”
Knox’s blue eyes widened behind his monocle.
That’s right.
The additional condition Calips had proposed to the five-year-old was: ‘If the Lady is not found, you shall be executed by beheading.’
It was a condition hardly befitting the Duke of Crost, the guardian of the Frozen Kingdom.
“It wasn’t a contract I wrote with any seriousness anyway. Don’t be so dull.”
“So it was a joke?”
Calips replied nonchalantly.
“I was just playing along.”
“What if the kid was lying? Were you really going to go through with the execution?”
“I have no intention of cutting the throat of a child whose blood hasn’t even dried yet. I just wanted to see her reaction.”
“Her reaction?”
“That brat.”
He answered with an impassive face.
“If this were a prank, she would have been scared enough to back out of the contract. I was just testing her.”
He spoke as if he didn’t care, but a cold light flickered in the red eyes hidden behind his mask.
In the end, Aisha hadn’t even flinched upon hearing his condition.
Though her small, fern-like hands seemed to twitch slightly, the child looked as if she had already prepared herself for that much when dealing with Duke Calips.
That was the problem.
The fact that Aisha wasn’t joking.
If that child’s words were true, then Eve was currently in the Doctia Kingdom.
‘To be precise, in an orphanage near the Andra Swamp in the Pose Duchy.’
Just thinking about it made his temples throb.
Originally, the two kingdoms had signed a peace treaty in the face of their common enemy, the monsters.
This was because the Crost Duchy used their ice abilities to erect a massive Ice Wall, barring the monsters’ entry.
However.
Lately, the Doctia Kingdom’s behavior had been strange.
They kept crossing the borders of the Frozen Kingdom without permission, and they even released bandits into small villages as if testing the Frozen Kingdom’s security.
The peace treaty, formed with the goal of exterminating monsters, was gradually cracking under Doctia’s precarious provocations.
In such a situation, he had to send a formal letter of visitation to the Doctia Kingdom.
“For now, I’ll send a message.”
Everything was a mess, but since he had no other choice, he sent a private message to the Duke of Pose.
A few days later.
“This is absurd.”
Knox grimaced as he read the reply.
“They say it’s fine for you to come to the Pose Duchy, but you must have absolutely no escort knights, and you can only bring exactly two servants. And in exchange, they want you to hand over the Crime Plains.”
“The petty bastards.”
Calips let out a low, mocking laugh, his gaze darkening.
The Crime Plains was territory the Crost family had defended ten years ago during the territorial war with Doctia.
Yet, he had no choice but to agree to these clearly disadvantageous terms.
His child was far more important than land.
“Tell them I’ll visit in a week.”
Knox was horrified.
“…Pardon? Please reconsider. Setting the territory aside, asking a noble to visit without escort knights? That’s the same as telling you to walk into a tiger’s den alone.”
“Tell them I’ll visit.”
But Calips barked out his command firmly and stood up as if the conversation were over.
Or rather, he tried to.
“Oh, and that brat.”
“The brat?”
“Yes. That brat Aisha. Look into her background. She said she was in the same orphanage as the Lady, but it’s strange how she made it all the way here.”
“Sigh, finally an order I actually like.”
Knox sighed in relief at the sound of a finally rational command—
“Actually, never mind.”
“Pardon?”
Calips suddenly stood up and threw on a robe.
It was the robe he used when he took walks in the garden—the only time he went around without his mask.
“I’ll look into it myself.”
A brat was a brat.
Rather than having knights interrogate her and dig into her past, it might be faster to approach her disguised as a gardener.
“Wha—?! Your, Your Excellency!”
Thud!
Knox tried to follow Calips, but all he met was a closed door.
Sigh.
“…Everything about him is fine, but he loses his mind whenever it comes to his children…”
Knox wiped his face with a dry hand and let out a slow sigh.
In truth, everyone except Calips accepted it.
That the missing children were already dead.
A peaceful afternoon. The annex of the Duke’s Castle.
My mouth, which had been munching on bread, creaked to a halt.
“Did you hear that girl told His Excellency where the Lady is?”
“Yeah. That’s why His Excellency is making a fuss about storming into the Doctia Kingdom without any escort knights.”
“My god. Isn’t that just going there to die?”
“I wish His Excellency wouldn’t get caught up in such nonsense. Especially since the monster subjugation only just ended.”
On this peaceful afternoon.
Under this clear sky.
“…It’s really because of that girl.”
The maids sighed and glanced at me as they walked past.
This is driving me crazy.
‘It’s not even gossip behind my back; they’re doing it right in front of me. I don’t know how to react.’
Worst of all, they weren’t wrong.
I sat there like a corpse, feeling as if I were sitting on a bed of needles. At this point, even eating bread felt like a sin.
Ever since I made the contract with Duke Calips.
The rumor that I knew the whereabouts of the direct-line Lady had spread in an instant. The problem was that the servants didn’t want that.
‘I’m screwed. I thought they’d definitely be happy about it.’
Thinking about it, the relationship between the Frozen Kingdom and the Doctia Kingdom was terrible right now.
In the midst of that, Duke Calips was making a scene about visiting the Doctia Kingdom without any guards… It was only natural that the atmosphere in the Duke’s Castle was grim.
But I had my own grievances.
‘I mean, doesn’t Duke Calips think? Why is he just thinking about storming into the Doctia Kingdom?’
I gnawed on my bread with narrowed eyes.
You should consider it carefully first!
Find the Doctia Kingdom’s weakness first!
And then use that as leverage for a deal, shouldn’t you?!
Of course, the usual Calips would have done that.
But I had underestimated the fact that he was more of a fool for his children than I thought.
There was nothing I could do now.
‘I’ll just have to stay as quiet as a mouse until the Lady is actually found.’
So, my current goal:
Until the Lady is found, pretend not to notice the sharp glares of the maids.
‘Right. I’ll just be like a shadow.’
I had made up my mind and was wiggling my butt toward a discreet patch of shade.
“Hmph~ Well now. What’s this brat doing here? Is there no maid in charge of her?”
Thump—
Along with a familiar voice, something caught against my backside.
‘What now?’
Breaking into a cold sweat, I looked around.
A maid’s leg was hooked right next to my hip as I was trying to find a way to survive.
When I looked up.
“If no one’s looking after this child, I’ll take charge~”
Dorothy stood there with her hands on her hips, looking down at me with the expression of a predator eyeing its prey.
I was doomed.
Completely doomed.
“Eek!”
“Be quiet, brat.”
A short scream escaped my lips as a brutal hand suddenly grabbed me by the scruff of the neck.
At first, I had just rushed in, looking only at my goal.
Thinking back, there were so many things I should have considered upon entering the Crost household.
Duke Calips’s state of mind. The atmosphere of the castle.
And even Dorothy, the spy who had been planted here beforehand.
‘Is this the life of a five-year-old? Isn’t this child abuse?’
I wanted to lodge a complaint with whoever wrote the original novel.
No, I wanted to take it up with the god of this world who made me possess a spy extra in the first place.
What do you want from me? What did I do so wrong?!
“Eep!”
I was thrown into her empty quarters and landed hard on my bottom, only to hear a sharp laugh from across the room.
“You’ve pulled quite a cute little stunt, haven’t you? The Duke of Pose is very pleased right now.”
My poor butt is really working overtime today.
I rubbed my aching backside and struggled to stand up.
Or rather, I tried to.
“Thanks to your little act, I’ve been left high and dry.”
Poke—
Her index finger suddenly jabbed my forehead, sending me right back down to the floor.
“……?”
I looked up at her and frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the new stone has pushed out the old one. Didn’t you learn these basic metaphors during spy training?”
“Oh, I know them. But if things go well for the Duke of Pose, isn’t that good for you too?”
Since the mission was almost over, she’d be able to return to the Pose Duchy and receive recognition for her work as a spy.
Thump!
However, at my words, Dorothy stomped her foot as if she couldn’t believe my stupidity.
“The Duke of Pose ordered me to return! Think about Duke Calips’s position. Do you think he’d easily agree to a deal that even he knows is absurd?”
Ah.
My eyes widened automatically at her meaningful words.
‘…I think I understand how things are playing out now.’
As I belatedly grasped the situation, I swallowed hard.
Right now, the Pose Duchy must be in a celebratory mood. Because Calips said he would set foot in the Pose territory without any escort knights.
But there was a problem.
There was still time left before that visit.
‘So the Duke of Pose will try to eliminate any potential weaknesses during that short window.’
For instance, a spy who had been undercover in the Crost Duchy for six years.
A spy like her…
‘In this situation, if it’s discovered that Dorothy is their spy, it’ll be a loss for them, so they’re trying to pull her out quickly.’
It was incredibly sly, but I suppose that’s how the Pose family has survived for so long. It made sense.
Wait a minute.
Then, something occurred to me, and I stared at Dorothy with wide eyes.
‘But that weakness is right in front of me, isn’t it?’
Dorothy flinched, feeling my gaze.
“What are you looking at?”
“…….”
“I said, what are you looking at, brat!”
“Oh, nothing.”
‘I just think I’ve found some very good prey.’
I swallowed the last part of the sentence and clenched my small fists.
And then—
“Thinking that it’s all because of me that you’re in this mess… I’m, I’m so sorry… Waaaaah!”
“…What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?!”
As I burst into tears with acting skills so divine they bordered on manic, a flustered Dorothy clutched at her own hair.
‘My job is to stay as quiet as a mouse?’
No.
My goal had changed.
My goal now was to expose the identity of this lunatic—Dorothy.
