6. Luna Herb (2)

The morning after Leo vanished, the air in House Arne had visibly changed. The air at the servants’ morning assembly, to be precise.

“Tsk, tsk — fool didn’t know it was a rotten rope, and grabbed it anyway.”

“Leo was a moron. Betrayed Lord Valerian and threw his lot in with the other side, didn’t he? Just deserts, that’s all.”

Until now the maids had simply given up on Elli, worn out by her relentless cheer. Now they rounded on her as if they’d been waiting for the opening, knives out.

“If you wanted, our side would take you in. You’re stupid, sure, but your face is pretty enough — you’d be of some use.”

“Lord Lucius likes a pretty woman, you know. With a little luck, you might get bumped up from maid to concubine?”

Mockery and ridicule rained in from every direction.

Elli kept doggedly working through her breakfast, and Rel sat down across from her. The instant Elli’s eyes landed on Rel’s face, she bolted the last of her meal and made to rise. Rel spoke first.

“Sit.”

A heavy pressure bore down on both of Elli’s shoulders.

“Usually you shovel it all down without leaving a scrap. Where are you off to in such a hurry, hm?”

“The Runt Young Master likes a long morning sleep. Well — he’ll be sleeping forever soon enough, after all.”

The same maids who had been leering and taunting her now pinned her in place so she couldn’t slip away.

Left with no choice, Elli ended up seated face-to-face with Rel. The color drained from her face, yet she clenched both fists tight all the same. It only made her an easier mark.

“Still hasn’t gotten over the habit of digging dirt in some southern backwater, has she? How dare you clench those filthy fists in front of your betters?”

A malice that even her trademark cheer couldn’t quite shrug off washed over Elli.

“Within a few days, your master will be dead, and you’ll be a kite with a cut string. And what’s waiting for you then is one of two choices.”

At Rel’s gesture, the maids seized Elli’s clenched left hand and pried it open by force.

“One — bow that dim-witted head. Kill the look in those eyes that don’t know their place and dare to look up. And report the Runt Young Master’s orders to us.”

Elli bit her lip. But no prince on a white horse came riding in to save her from her plight.

Rel gestured again. Elli held out as stubbornly as she could, but she was no match for two of them, and in the end her right hand was wrenched out and forced open as well.

“If, by some chance, that pathetic loyalty of yours is sincere—”

Rel set two very small white pills onto Elli’s right palm.

“Then die together with your beloved Young Master.”

Tick, tock.

Time slipped past without mercy.

All day, Young Master Arden had let no one into his room. Not even her.

Will he be all right? He’ll be all right, won’t he? He has to be all right.

Her anxiety only swelled the longer the day dragged on.

The sun went down, and a long, cool shadow settled over the manor. With it set the worst day of harassment she had yet endured. From dawn she’d heard nothing but slander against Senior Leo and curses against the Young Master too vile to repeat.

By now she was honestly curious.

Why do they all spit out such nasty things?

Elli was, without question, pure-hearted. But pure didn’t mean she swallowed every superstition whole: the man-eating ghosts the grown-ups invoked to frighten children, the gods who supposedly punished sinners, all those tales.

She had grown up in a mountain valley. Friends of hers had been carried off by bears and tigers on those slopes. The grandfather who had been kinder to her than anyone had been stabbed to death on a bandit’s blade, and that was after he’d offered up everything he owned.

Elli was pure of heart, but her life had not been a smooth one. She had a bright nature, yet that brightness had not been forged into her at birth.

Just as light only exists alongside darkness, tension, anxiety, and bottomless worry lived inside her brightness too.

And the thing that always beat them back, every time, was this.

“I can do it. I can do it. I — can — do it! Aja-ja!”¹

It was her will to turn positive again, however negative reality became. A spirit more overwhelmingly strong than anyone else’s in all the world, one that could weep, could be rattled by lies, and still spring right back up like a roly-poly doll. This was the secret behind Elli’s low DV stat, the one even Suhan didn’t yet know.

And yet she still couldn’t stop her fingertips from trembling. The dark frightened her, and the ghastly rumor that Leo had been hauled off bloody and broken kept circling back to her ear. The Young Master had told her it was all lies, but what the maids had fed her today were the details of the torture Leo was supposedly enduring. Each time she replayed the words, the tears threatened to spill.

Dong, dong, dong.

The clock on the wall chimed midnight.

Smack!

She slapped both her own cheeks. She couldn’t fall apart here. The sting of them, swollen and red, snapped her mind back to attention.

Calling to mind the one strategy the Young Master had drilled into her, she spent the full ten-minute golden window rehearsing what she had to do and what Luna Herb looked like, over and over again.

Then she stripped off her maid’s uniform, a thing not unlike a white dress, and changed into a grubby black top and trousers. She didn’t forget to smear soot across her face for camouflage, either.

At last, just before the long hand of the clock could tick forward one more notch, Elli drew a deep breath and opened the window.

Pitch-black darkness met her. Without a single moment’s hesitation, she flung herself into it.

The maids’ quarters sat a fair distance from the herb storeroom, so the first task was simple: don’t get caught by the patrol guards. Elli had been slipping along the shadow of the wall, soundless as a cat, when her body went rigid.

From somewhere off in the dark, the faint glow of a lantern and a light ha-ha-ho-ho of laughter brushed her ear.

This has never happened before.

For some reason she couldn’t fathom, the maids were running a patrol, a sight she hadn’t seen once since the day she transferred in. Instinct told her this was Rel’s doing. But the wrinkle didn’t make her heart waver. Anxieties of that sort had already lost out to her own will.

She searched her surroundings, desperate, and before long she spotted the outer wall of a building thick with hanging vines.

“You should’ve seen that girl’s face today — I about busted my gut laughing.”

“How shall we torment her tomorrow?”

There was no time to hesitate.

This was where the talent she’d once bragged about to the Young Master came in. Elli kicked off the ground and sprang as high as she possibly could, then threw out her hands, caught the vines, and climbed.

And then, in that instant.

“Who’s there!”

The maids swung their light onto the spot where Elli had been standing only seconds before.

“Hey! Who’d be here?”

“Aish, this is embarrassing.”

And right above their heads, dangling from the vines, was Elli.

If the darkest place is under the lamp, then tonight the darkest place was up above the vines.

“Honestly, isn’t Rel going a little overboard? Is she really going to slip out at this hour?”

“That’s what I’m saying. Let’s circle around lazily and head back to bed already.”

Once the maids had wandered off and Elli had climbed safely back down, she let out a breath. There was no luxury of relaxing, though; her legs were already moving. The moment the Young Master had spoken of would arrive soon.

.

.

.

Elli reached the herb storeroom without incident. The problem was Rel, standing guard right out front.

Had she taken too long getting here? To Elli’s own eyes, there wasn’t the faintest trace of fatigue on Rel.

The Young Master couldn’t have been wrong.

Forcing down her impatience, Elli kept her eyes on Rel from her hiding place in the bushes. Time felt like it was sliding past twice as fast as usual.

Thu—

Could it be—

Her stalled heart slowly started drumming at her ear.

—mp.

Did I fail to make it in time?

Thump.

What if she’s checked my room and found I’m not there?

Thump-thump.

Her heart was speaking to her like mad. That pounding and trembling sounded almost as if it were saying this:

— How does it feel, to stand at the edge of the cliff of your life?

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

The Demon Seed dormant inside Elli writhed.

That was the exact moment. Rel let out a wide yawn and got to her feet.

“Time for a cup, I suppose.”

Rel started off toward the main building, where the kitchen was. Her stride never hesitated, the walk of someone who knew the route by heart.

The Young Master’s information was accurate to a hair’s breadth, just as I thought!

Once she’d confirmed Rel had vanished completely into the darkness, Elli shot out like a loosed arrow and planted herself before the herb storeroom door.

Creak.

The moment she eased the entrance open, the fragrant scent of medicinal herbs welcomed her nose. It was a world apart from the one outside, which had been crammed with darkness and tension. To Elli, a country girl, the smells were achingly familiar and dear. The dried herbs packed onto every shelf carried her straight back to her childhood.

This scent—?

Among the countless herb scents, one in particular, sweet and dizzying, wormed its way up her nose. Something dangerous came with it: her head going hazy, her mood lifting of its own accord.

Dreamveil!

Elli held her breath so that no more of it could get in. She yanked her sleeve up and clamped it over her nose and mouth.

In small doses, Dreamveil soothed the body and mind; breathed in by the lungful, it brought on violent hallucinations and dragged its victim down into a dead sleep. Back in the countryside Elli came from, it was potent enough that people burned it to keep bears and wild boar from raiding their fields.

…What on earth is the Young Master.

She felt the gooseflesh rise on her arms.

— Rel is a thorough sort. Which means even those ten minutes she steps away to drink her coffee, she’ll have some kind of safeguard in place.

Just as the Young Master had predicted, Rel had laid a trap.

— Rel will use herbs to set her trap. People always reach for the weapon they’re most confident with, after all. And it’ll definitely be Dreamveil. Why Dreamveil, you ask?

Just as the Young Master had said, Dreamveil was exactly what she’d trapped the place with. It was as though the two of them had compared notes beforehand.

When she’d asked how he could be so sure she would reach for Dreamveil, the Young Master had answered with a sly grin.

— This humble Young Master knows it a~all. There’s a thing called that, you see~

Enduring the scent of the Dreamveil, she made for the shelf the Young Master had said held the Luna Herb.

Found it!

At last she found the Luna Herb she had so longed to lay eyes on. True to its name, the Luna Herb carried the essence of the moon within it. Unlike everything around it, it gave off a deep, distinct blue and a cool, chill aura.

She tucked the Luna Herb into the pouch she’d brought.

Pack it in tight, as much as I can get.

Joy washed over her at the thought of bringing the herbs back to the Young Master. She managed to cram the pouch full.

All that was left now was to slip out of this place.

I’m about at the limit.

The breath she’d been holding had hit its limit, and the pain came crashing in. She wanted to gulp down fresh air that very instant, but one breath and she’d become nothing more than an offering to this sweet poison.

No time!

She steeled her mind once more. Two countdowns were tightening around her throat at once: how long she could hold her breath against the Dreamveil, and how long until Rel came back.

Driven to breathe in spite of herself, she clawed to hold on to her blurring vision and made for the entrance she had come in through.

Just a few more steps. Open that door, slip out, and she could save the Young Master.

“…!”

Through the gap of the firmly shut door, a faint thread of light bled in. Moonlight slipping through the crack at the entrance would have been a lovely thing; this, however she looked at it, was lantern light. Someone outside was opening the door.

Creak.

“Rats labor under the delusion that the night will hide them. But the fact the rats don’t know is — ironically, the time we most often catch and kill you all is at night.”

The door swung wide open. There stood Rel, the lantern light at her back and the cruel smile of a hunter who’d run her prey to ground on her lips.

“Honestly, you couldn’t be more of a rat. You went and hid quickly enough.”

Elli had ducked deeper into the herb storeroom in her hurry, so Rel hadn’t caught her in her line of sight yet. But it was no different from a rat already in the trap.

“Even if you slipped past the patrol, looks like you didn’t have time to hide your footprints. I’ve got flat feet, you see. Quite different from the usual footprint.”

Elli edged inward, making as little sound as possible.

Thud, thud.

But Rel was bearing down precisely on the shelf where Elli had hidden. The dead-end wall crept closer and closer, no place left to hide, nowhere left to run.

So as not to let her face be seen, Elli had given up even on fleeing soundlessly any longer.

Crash!

In the end she caught her own foot and went down.

“Pwuhahaha! How pathetic.”

Rel barked out a laugh, then swung her lantern toward the sound of the fall.

“Time to catch the rat at last.”

The lantern light finally fell on the figure collapsed in the corner, and in an instant the smile dropped from Rel’s face. Where a girl should have been cowering there in tears, a man with cold, arrogant eyes was slowly rising to his feet.

Without realizing it, Rel took a step back; without realizing it, she breathed out the name of the being before her.

“…Lord Valerian!?”