5. Luna Herb (1)

One year and five days.

That was all the time the Empire had left before its heart rotted clean through. With an effort, I dragged myself free of the horrific vision of the day the Lord of Lamentation was born, and, knowing how little time I had, I decided it was time to make the first move in my plan.

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

“Yes, sir!”

Two weeks had now passed since the incident in the hallway. Leo carried himself like a model servant these days, and he’d naturally taken charge of training Elli, who had only just come up from the countryside.

“Is there anything you need?”

He checked on me often, attentive to whatever I needed.

Eve, more than anyone, loved how much he’d changed.

One might say he was only doing it for the deal I’d dangled in front of him: a cure for his younger sister. Possible enough. And yet.

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

Humans are creatures that demand a reward for their efforts. Purposeless devotion? No such thing exists.

“Leo.”

I called over to Leo, who was in the middle of cleaning, and he came at once.

“Young Master, you called?”

“I’m going to need you to make a trip to the herb storeroom this time.”

The moment the words herb storeroom left my mouth, Leo flinched.

“…What should I bring back?”

I described the herb I wanted him to fetch.

“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, true to its name, is a variety that grows stronger the more moonlight it drinks in. Its quality runs the full gamut, from the very lowest grade to the very highest, and it’s famous for exactly that enormous range. The finest grade grows only in untouched places saturated with moonlight, which makes it brutally hard to find and lets the sellers charge whatever they please. The stock kept in a manor’s herb storeroom, by contrast, ran mostly to the low and lowest grades. Not that it mattered: even if I could have laid hands on top-grade Luna Herb just then, I wouldn’t have used it.

I drove the point home to Leo with all the emphasis I could put behind it.

“Be sure to bring the ones with the deepest color.”

Leo furrowed his brow and shot back.

“But the better Luna Herb is the one with the lighter color, isn’t it?”

“Right. Luna Herb absorbs moonlight. The lighter the color, the higher the quality. The more it sheds its own native green, the deeper the blue tones come in, and the whiter the veins of the leaf turn.”

“…Then if you know that, why—?”

The truth was that in Arden’s current state, the lowest grade was exactly right; anything finer would have been more than his body could withstand. But I had no particular wish to share that with Leo. I didn’t trust him completely yet.

“Off you go.”

I gave Leo no further answer. Seeing that nothing more was coming, he only nodded in silence. As I watched him, a single prediction took shape in my mind, one I hoped would prove wrong.

My predictions have yet to miss the mark.

Regrettably.

Bad premonitions never miss, or so they say.

The next day passed, and then the day after. Leo never came back.

I was propped against the headboard 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?”

“Sir Leo’s been taken away! Big Brother Valerian’s personal knights dragged him off, and they’ve locked him up in the dungeon!”

“Oh?”

Elli stamped her feet in place 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 to look at her properly. She was drenched in sweat, and one glance was enough to tell me how hard she’d driven herself searching for Leo.

“Did you see Leo being taken away with your own eyes?”

“Th-that, no, but they clearly said Sir Leo had been thrown into the dungeon.”

Now that I really looked, Elli’s face was hollow. Dark circles ringed her eyes, her hair stuck out every which way, the whole of her marked by the brutal time she’d just put herself through.

“The laws of our house are stricter than most, but that doesn’t mean violence is tolerated wherever someone pleases. What’s more, if a servant has to be taken to the dungeon for any reason, the master that servant actually answers to must be informed first. Even when that master happens to be me — the outcast of the house.”

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

“…Code of House Arne?”

“Right. By that code, no one is allowed to lay a hand on Leo and haul him off. Well — no one except the head of the house.”

For all that Valerian was the eldest son, he couldn’t simply override the house’s own code. That was what made the whole business strike me as off. The story was riddled with holes.

“Who told you that Leo had been dragged off to the dungeon?”

“…”

Elli couldn’t quite get the words out, and I waited patiently for her to speak.

“Senior Rel told me. She has a slightly mean streak, you see…”

Elli 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 Elli broke down, a hiccuping “Hic!” of a sob escaping her as the tears spilled over.

And Eve, watching her, started crying too.

I auto-muted Eve’s crying and handed Elli a tissue. She took it and blew her nose with gusto, and I auto-muted that sound too before giving my order.

“Bring Rel here.”

“…What?”

“I need to ask her whether what she said about Leo being in the dungeon is actually true. Hurry up and bring her.”

I must have said it firmly enough, because Elli stepped out of the room even as she kept sniffling.

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

.

.

.

A short while later, Elli came back in, leading a woman who had to be Rel. Unlike the other servants, Rel kept her hands folded in front of her and addressed me from a posture of deep deference.

“Runt Young Master, I’m told you called for me.”

“You’re the one who told Elli that Leo had been carted off, are you?”

“I was merely relaying the truth. It seemed the girl had spent a comfortable night without so much as knowing where her senior had gone.”

Elli had called her senior mean-spirited, and I was beginning to grasp exactly why.

That bullying of hers must run pretty thick.

A closer look told me Rel was the cunning sort. She held that deferential posture while she spoke to me, yet in the very act of talking about Elli, she let her displeasure leak out sideways. And cunning, of course, meant clever. Reading her as a clever specimen of human being, I pressed the conversation forward.

“And why was Leo carted off?”

“Last night, Leo attempted to steal goods from the herb storeroom, and we restrained him.”

“Fetching the herbs was on my order, you know.”

At that, Rel 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 several times, and as Leo ignored our warnings, we placed him in custody.”

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

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

Rel let out a small snort.

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

“Go ahead.”

Rel cleared her throat, raised her voice, and mimicked Valerian’s manner of speech as she spoke.

“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 have no obligation to report to you, one item at a time. — So he said.”

A brief silence settled over the room. It didn’t trouble me in the least, but Elli, incensed at Rel’s rudeness, worked up 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 iced over in an instant, and at the killing intent pouring from her eyes, Elli gave a “Yip!” and hunched her shoulders like a frightened puppy.

Rel skewered Elli with one more contemptuous glare, then donned the deferential mask again.

“My apologies, Young Master. I have committed a discourtesy.”

“It’s fine.”

“Then may I take my leave now?”

I waved a hand instead of answering. The gesture meant go on, get out.

But Rel, having walked all the way to the door, didn’t leave at once. She turned back to look at me.

“Oh — Young Master. By any chance… was this herb errand, too, on the head of the house’s orders?”

“No? This time it was entirely my own, personal order.”

“I see.”

She fixed me with a smile freighted with meaning, then shut the door behind her and was gone. From the look of it, she’d pieced together the whole truth.

Slam.

“…Haaah.”

With the door shut and Rel’s footsteps fading into the distance, nothing was left in the room but Elli’s ragged breathing. She looked like someone who’d only just clawed her way back out of a sea called fear. Her legs gave out from under her and she sank to the floor, hands trembling.

Eve, watching Elli still trapped in her fear of Rel, turned to me for counsel, but I gave her no answer. I simply lay back on the bed, pulled the blanket up over my head, and made a show of shivering like a patient burning with fever.

That made Elli speak up.

“Y… Young Master? Is something wrong?”

How many people can spare a thought for another’s suffering when their own is overwhelming? Elli, astonishingly, was one of them. Which was, of course, exactly why her DV stat 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 the way to get hold of any herbs is completely gone… I expect to die within a few days.”

“Y-Young Master! You mustn’t say weak things like that!”

Before I knew it, Elli had sprung to her feet and rushed to my side.

Only Eve, who knew the truth, rained down a flurry of kitten-soft punches that couldn’t actually land.

I cut a sidelong glance at Elli. Her legs were trembling violently.

Impressive.

Courage is not the conquering of fear. It is taking that heavy step forward in the attempt to conquer 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!”

Elli cried out in a resolute voice.

“…I-I’ll!”

Elli wavered for an age, unable to force the words out.

“Cough! Augh! Hck!”

But the instant she heard my coughing fit, the kind that sounded like I’d reached death’s door, she seized 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 has banned the herbs from being released to me.”

Elli wrestled with it for a moment, then balled her fists and declared,

“I’ll sneak into the herb storeroom!”

“Are you sure? The keeper of the herb storeroom is Rel.”

“…What?”

She clearly hadn’t known. A storm cloud bloomed over Elli’s face again.

“It may be your turn to be the one going to the dungeon this time.”

Elli’s shoulders trembled with fear.

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

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

“Every night, at exactly 1 AM — Rel goes to the kitchen to chase off her sleep, and brews herself a cup of hot coffee with her own hands. The time it takes to heat the water for the coffee, plus the time to go between the kitchen and the herb storeroom and back, totals roughly ten minutes. In that brief sliver of time, there’s nobody guarding the herb storeroom.”

In exchange, I handed Elli her strategy, the way to beat the boss named Rel. But knowing the strategy doesn’t mean everyone can clear the content. And the courage for this part was something only Elli could wring out of herself.

“If you fail, it may not end with you going to the dungeon the way Leo did.”

“…”

“Even so, this one thing I’ll promise you.”

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

“If you fail, I’ll die with you.”

Elli didn’t lift her head. She held that pose for what felt like an aeon, and then, at last, she raised it. The tracks of her tears still lingered in her eyes.

“What is it I should do?”

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