5. Luna Herb (1)

One year and five days.

That was all the time left before the heart of the Empire finished rotting through.

It took effort to drag myself out of that horrific picture of the day the Lord of Lamentation was born, but I didn’t have much time to spare, so I decided to do up the first button of my plan in its first hole.

“Dust is bad for the Young Master’s breathing, so make sure you clean the room regularly.”
“Yes, sir!”

Two weeks had gone by since the incident in the hallway, and Leo now carried himself like a model you could hold up to any servant. Naturally, he was also the one handling the basic training of Elli, who had only just come up from the countryside.

“Is there anything you need?”

He looked in on me often, too, asking after me and seeing to my care.

No one loved the change more than Eve.

Some might say he was only doing it because of the offer I’d dangled, the cure for his younger sister. That was possible, but—

Not once has he so much as mentioned his sister to me.

Humans are animals that demand a reward for their efforts. Devotion without a purpose? There’s no such thing.

“Leo.”

I called him in the middle of his cleaning, and he came over at once.

“Young Master, you called?”
“I’m going to need you to make a trip to the herb storeroom this time.”

The moment he heard the words herb storeroom, his body twitched.

“…What should I bring back?”

I told him which herb I wanted.

“Luna Herb. I’ll be taking it every morning from now on, so check how much we have in reserve and put in an order for more if we’re short.”

Luna Herb is exactly what the name implies, a variety that improves as it soaks up the essence of moonlight. It runs from the lowest grade to the very highest, and it’s famous for the sheer span of that range. The top grade grew only in moonlight-drenched places no human hand had touched, so it was extraordinarily hard to find, and you paid whatever they asked. What a place like the manor’s herb storeroom could stockpile, on the other hand, would mostly be no better than low or lowest grade.

Not that I’d have used top-grade Luna Herb even if I could have laid hands on it right now.

I pressed the point on Leo with all the emphasis I could muster.

“Make sure you bring the darkest ones.”

Leo furrowed his brow and answered back.

“But Luna Herb is better when the color is lighter, isn’t it?”
“Right — Luna Herb absorbs moonlight. The lighter the color, the higher the quality. The more of its own green it sheds, the deeper the blue comes in, and the whiter the veins of the leaf turn.”
“…If you know that, then why—?”

The truth was that for Arden’s body as it stood, the lowest grade was the right choice, and anything better would be more than it could withstand. But I didn’t particularly want to share that with Leo, because I didn’t trust him completely yet.

“Off you go.”

I gave him no further answer, and once he saw that nothing more was coming, he nodded in silence too.

Watching him, I found a prediction coming to mind. I hoped it would be wrong, but—

My predictions have yet to miss the mark.

Regrettably.

They say bad premonitions don’t miss, don’t they?

The next day passed, then the day after that, and Leo did not come back.

I was propped up against the bed as usual, idly turning the pages of a book, when the door to my room was nearly torn off its hinges.

“Y… Young Master!!”

Elli came tumbling in, drenched in sweat.

“What?”
“They’re saying Sir Leo got taken away! Lord Valerian’s personal knights dragged him off, and now he’s locked up in the dungeon!”
“Oh?”

She stamped her feet on the spot as she spoke.

“H-how can you just say ‘oh’ like that?! They threw him in the dungeon, I’m telling you!?”
“Must be cold.”
“That’s exactly what I — that’s not the point! Why are you so calm! Aren’t you worried at all, Young Master?”

I turned my head to look at her. She was utterly soaked, and one glance told me how much she’d put herself through trying to find Leo.

“Did you see them take Leo away with your own eyes?”
“Th-that’s… no, but they definitely said Sir Leo got thrown in the dungeon.”

Now that I looked at her properly, her face was hollow. Dark circles under her eyes, hair every which way, signs all over her of the brutal time she’d just had.

“Our house’s laws are stricter than other houses’, but we’re not the kind of place where people get violent wherever they feel like it. And if a servant has to go to the dungeon for some reason, whoever’s actually that servant’s master has to be told first. Even if that’s me — the one this house scorns.”

I held up the book I’d been reading and showed her the title, and she read it aloud.

“…Code of House Arne?”
“Right. By that code, no one gets to just haul Leo off. Well — no one except the head of the house.”

Eldest son or not, Valerian couldn’t simply override the code of the house. That was why this whole business struck me as strange. It was full of holes.

“Who told you Leo got dragged off to the dungeon?”
“…”

Elli couldn’t quite get the words out, so I waited patiently.

“Senior Rel told me. She’s got a bit of a mean streak, you see…”

She sniffled and tumbled the story out, half rambling.

“…She said to me, ‘Leo’s been thrown in the dungeon, so quit running around making a mess of the manor.’ I… I was only trying to find Senior Leo.”

Finally she burst out crying. A “Hic!” of a sob, and the tears flowed.

And Eve, watching her, began to cry too.

I auto-muted Eve’s crying and handed Elli a tissue, which she took and blew her nose into with gusto. I auto-muted that sound too and gave my order.

“Bring Rel here.”
“…What?”
“I need to ask her if what she said about Leo being in the dungeon is actually true. Hurry up and go get her.”

I must have said it firmly enough, because Elli stepped out of the room, still sniffling.

“That’s enough crying out of you too.”

.

.

.

A short while later, Elli came back leading a woman who was presumably Rel.

Unlike the other servants, she folded her hands in front of her and addressed me in a very deferential posture.

“Runt Young Master, I’m told you called for me.”
“So you’re the one who told Elli that Leo got carted off?”
“I was merely relaying the truth. It seemed that creature saw fit to spend a comfortable night without so much as knowing where her senior had gone.”

When Elli had introduced Rel as having a mean streak, I could see exactly why now.

That bullying of hers must run pretty thick.

A close look suggested a cunning streak as well. She kept up that deferential posture whenever she spoke to me, yet in the very act of talking about Elli she’d let her displeasure slip out sideways. And cunning, of course, meant clever.

Sensing a clever specimen of human being, I carried the conversation forward.

“And why was Leo carted off?”
“Last night, Leo attempted to steal goods from the herb storeroom, and we restrained him.”
“I’m the one who ordered him to fetch those herbs, you know.”

She shot back as though she’d been waiting for it.

“Two days ago, Leo entered the herb storeroom without authorization. Herbs are a precious resource of the house, and you cannot make use of them without filing a prior request for entry. We warned him about this fact several times, and as Leo ignored our warnings, we placed him in custody.”

I held out the Code of House Arne to her as well.

“Not even Big Brother Valerian can just throw my personal servant in the dungeon on a whim.”

Rel let out a small snort.

“Would you permit me to deliver Lord Valerian’s message?”
“Go ahead.”

She cleared her throat, raised her voice, and mimicked Valerian’s manner of speech.

“To spend precious herbs on a soon-to-be corpse is the same as throwing the house’s coin into the gutter. Surely you’re not under the delusion that pouring water into a leaking bucket counts as treatment? My servant has gone along with that foolishness. He tried to dump the house’s precious assets down the hole that is you. Make no mistake, Arden — Leo is my servant. Therefore I am under no obligation to report each and every matter to you. — So he said.”

A brief silence settled over the room.

I was utterly unbothered, but Elli, furious at Rel’s discourtesy, gathered her courage and cut in.

“That’s going too fa—!”
“Silence! Where do you, a mere underling, find the gall to talk back to a senior!”

Rel’s expression hardened to ice in an instant, and at the killing intent flooding out of her eyes, Elli let out a “Yip!” and shrank her shoulders like a puppy caught in fear.

Rel skewered her with one more contemptuous glare, then put the deferential mask back on.

“My apologies, Young Master. I have committed a discourtesy.”
“It’s fine.”
“Then may I take my leave now?”

I waved my hand instead of speaking. It meant go on, get out.

But Rel walked all the way to the door and still didn’t leave at once. She turned back and looked at me.

“Oh — Young Master. By any chance… was this herb errand also on the orders of the head of the house?”
“No? This time it was entirely my own, personal order.”
“I see.”

She fixed me with a smile freighted with meaning, then closed the door behind her and was gone. From the look of things, she’d worked out the whole truth.

Slam.

“…Haaah.”

With the door shut and Rel’s footsteps fading into the distance, only Elli’s ragged breathing was left in the room, like someone who had just barely clawed her way back out of a sea called fear.

Even the strength had gone out of her legs, and she slumped to the floor with her hands trembling.

Eve, watching Elli unable to escape her fear of Rel, was asking for my counsel, but I didn’t say a word back. I simply lay down on the bed, pulled the blanket up over my head, and deliberately shivered like a patient who’d caught a cold.

That made Elli speak up.

“Y… Young Master? Is something wrong?”

How many people can worry about someone else’s suffering when their own is overwhelming? Astonishingly, Elli was a person of that calibre. Which was, of course, why her DV had come out at that staggeringly low number, a 2.

I let all the strength go out of my body and spoke in a voice that crumbled feebly.

“Now that there’s no way left to get any herbs… I suppose I’ll be dead within a few days.”
“Y-Young Master! You can’t go saying weak things like that!”

Before I knew it, she had sprung to her feet and come close to my side.

Only Eve, who knew the truth, planted a flurry of can’t-actually-land kitty-cat punches on me.

I shot Elli a sidelong glance. Her legs were trembling fiercely.

Impressive.

Courage is not the overcoming of fear. It is taking that heavy step forward in the attempt to overcome it. That, to my mind, was courage.

“No, I think it’s time I accepted it. I suppose this was my fate after all.”
“No! There’s no such thing as fate!”

Her voice was resolute as she cried it out.

“…I-I’ll!”

She hesitated for ages, unable to get the words out.

“Cough! Augh! Hck!”

But the moment she heard my coughing spell, the kind that sounded like I’d reached the brink of death, she grabbed my hand without hesitation.

“I’ll bring back the herbs you need, Young Master, I swear!”
“You heard her, didn’t you? Big Brother Valerian banned them from releasing any herbs to me.”

Elli wrestled with it for a moment, then balled her fists and made her declaration.

“I’ll sneak into the herb storeroom!”
“Are you sure? The keeper of the herb storeroom is Rel.”
“…What?”

She apparently hadn’t known, because a storm cloud bloomed over her face again.

“This time, it might be your turn to go to the dungeon.”

Her shoulders trembled with fear.

“But I need the herbs. Assuming you want to keep me alive, of course.”

I had no intention of offering her a single drop of comfort or hope.

“Every night, at exactly 1 AM, Rel goes to the kitchen to chase off sleep and brews herself a cup of hot coffee with her own hands. Heating the water, plus the trip from the herb storeroom to the kitchen and back, comes to roughly ten minutes. For that brief sliver of time, there’s nobody guarding the herb storeroom.”

In exchange, I gave her the strategy, the way to beat the boss called Rel.

But knowing the strategy doesn’t mean everyone can clear the content, and the courage for this was something only Elli herself could squeeze out.

“If you fail, it might not end with you in the dungeon like Leo.”
“…”
“Even so, I’ll promise you one thing.”

I peeled back the blanket I’d pulled over my head, sat up on the bed, and held out my pinky finger to her.

“If you fail, I’ll die with you.”

Elli didn’t lift her head. She stayed that way for what felt like an aeon, and then, at last, she raised it.

The tracks of her tears still lingered in her eyes—

“What do I need to do?”

And a fierceness I’d never seen in her before was waiting for me.