A Lady's Accomplishments

“‘Oh, right’?! Pai’s not a nanny, either!”

Ardine, thoroughly put out, drew her brows together and pushed out her lips in a pout. The seven-year-old young lady was quick to fly into a sulk.

“Aw, come now. The ‘oh, right’ was just a little exclamation. Come here — would you like to try holding the reins, my lady?”

“Hmph.”

“It’d be ever so much fun to sit up front and hold the reins, you know?”

“Hmh…”

“And the mane’s so soft, too. Practically silk, honestly.”

“Hmh… hmhh. Fine.”

But her sulks always melted just as fast. The child flung both arms wide and looked up at Pai.

“Carry me.”

“All right. Up you go—”

“What’s this one’s name?”

“Eurius, I’m told.”

“Then Ari’s going to call him Riu for short.”

“Good idea. Riu… there’s a good one.”

Seated behind Ardine, Pai gave the horse’s neck a couple of light pats. Riu let out a soft, gentle whicker, as though it understood human speech.

“It’ll have us to Wellerden in half a day.”

Ardine had been eavesdropping on the conversation in the study, and when she came bursting in shrieking ‘I want to go with Pai too!’, Pai had thought Keith would never permit the outing.

Keith upended her expectations and cheerfully told them to go ahead. Wellerden was only a few hours off, he said, so it would be fine. He had even offered to send one of the ducal house’s Frost Rose Knights along as an escort. The whole outing, it seemed, was a chance for him to win points with Ardine.

All the better.

Once she had settled matters with Kalada, the business waiting for her bore directly on Ardine Paragon.

“The mane… wowww…”

“Give it a stroke. It’s grown very used to a human touch, I hear.”

Steady in the stirrups, Ardine reached out and ran a hand over the soft mane. Her violet eyes went round with wonder.

“S-so soft and fluffyyy…!”

“Homa was giving it a good, thorough brushing again this morning, too.”

“Homa?”

“The stablehand. We’ll go say hello to them later. They’d be over the moon if you came round to have a look, my lady.”

“Mm. Okay.”

Trading remarks back and forth with Ardine, Pai ran one last check before they set off. Saddle, check. Stirrups, check. Only once she had lashed Ardine and herself together tight enough to feel it did she glance at the knight and dig her heels into the horse’s flank.

“Hyah!”

“Uwaaah!”

Wellerden lay northwest of Heliaria, and it was known as the city of mercenaries. The mercenary guild kept its northern branch there, so naturally that was where they gathered.

We’ll get there before evening, so I’d best deal with Kalada first, and quickly.

She had never meant to settle it by talking, not from the outset. Kalada worshipped strength; persuading her through action, through force, was the more efficient route.

And then there’s the mage…

The mage.

That was Pai Deluosa’s true errand. To draw to their side the mage who stood above every other, whether measured by the present day or by ten years hence, and so to head off the terrible tragedy fated to befall humankind: the Demon War.

It’ll work out somehow.

Push the tangle of it aside for now.

Pai raced forward, cutting through the white wind pouring down around her.

“H-hah, ah, ah… ah-CHOO!”

Wellerden was cold. Sitting even farther north than Heliaria, it was bound to be, and yet even allowing for the geography, the air bit at her skin more sharply than it should have.

“Snf… snfff.”

“Oh dear… is your nose still running?”

“Mnghn.”

The drab grey stone buildings played their part in that cold, and so did the people, black and brown hoods pulled low, giving off a gloom of their own.

Ardine’s face was red from the wind. When Pai lowered herself to eye level and held out a handkerchief, the child buried her face in it and blew her nose with a loud ‘Honk!’

“Feel better?”

“Mm.”

“Good. And your bottom?”

“It’s fine!”

Bundled round and snug in fine fur, Ardine waddled about and stuck out her bottom to show it off. Pai gave the little bottom a couple of pats with her gloved hand and flashed a thumbs-up.

“A bottom hard as steel is one of a lady’s accomplishments.”

“Accomplishments! But what’s an accomplishment?”

“It means the sort of things you have to work hard to polish up.”

“Mm. Ari polishes her bottom real good, too.”

“…That’s not quite the sort of polishing I meant…”

“Th-thiiief!”

Just then a thick cry ripped through the desolate air. A man with his hood yanked low came barreling toward them, a cloth bag clutched to his chest.

“Move, move, move it!”

“You move.”

In one motion Pai swept Ardine up into her arms and, with perfect grace… delivered a side kick. The whole sequence was as natural as drawing breath.

— Thwack!

— …SLAM!!!

Struck in the vitals, the man flew off like a rag doll and slammed into the outer wall of a building.

— Craaack.

“…”

“…”

No ordinary woman kicked like that. The escort knight and the passersby alike rubbed their eyes, at a loss for what had just happened.

Pai set her leg lightly down and rolled her ankle. She lowered Ardine back to the ground, too.

“As if you’ll ever earn your keep off thieving…”

She muttered it in a pitying tone, then registered, belatedly, that every eye in the street had swung to her. She clapped both hands over her mouth and made a great fuss.

“Oh my. How frightening…! To go flying off so violently — the rudeness of it!”

No. You’re the one who sent him flying.

“Come along quickly, my lady. It’s dangerous to get tangled up with types like that.”

You’re the one who got tangled up with him, though…

The people who had watched the whole thing from start to finish had a great deal they could have said, and swallowed every word of it. Nobody wanted to be the next one that woman kicked.

Only Ardine, her eyes shining bright, marveled on and on.

“Pai, Pai. What was that just now? How’d you do it? That thief was super fast!”

“That’s only because you’re just seven, my lady. Once you’re as old as me, that much will look slow as a snail to you. Isn’t that right, Sir Knight?”

“Ahem. Ah. Yes. Wha—? Y-yes, my lady.”

The knight, thrown by the surprise question, went on making his odd little noises. Ardine hopped and skipped along as though crossing a row of stepping stones.

“And, and Pai went whap! and — whoosh! — he went flying away!”

“The fellow was a weedy sort, is all.”

“The wall got a little dent in it!”

“Goodness, they must have skimped on the building work!”

“Pai. Super strong.”

Ardine came to a dead stop at the roadside. Buried in fluffy greyish-brown fur, she looked like a fat squirrel that had eaten a hundred acorns. She grabbed a fistful of Pai’s trousers and tipped her head back to look up at her.

Her wavy blonde hair was a tangled mess about her shoulders, but the creamy rose-pink of her cheeks and her great round violet eyes still made her look like a pretty doll. Her healthy, coral-pink lips worked and parted.

“Ari wants to get strong too.”

“…”

“And Ari polishes her bottom good, too.”

She had been off the front lines for several years now, yet Kalada was confident that those who could stand against her, even reckoned across the whole continent, could be counted on one hand. Even now that confidence ran sky-high; what it must have been in the full flush of her youth hardly bore imagining.

Kalada had seized victory at the Imperial Sword Tournament, the dream of every swordsman alive, three times running. Setting aside the reclusive masters who shunned the spotlight, she could be called the first blade of them all without the least exaggeration.

So when a woman like that made noises about ‘a fellow who could shut her up,’ she did not mean she wanted any such bastard hauled up before her. She meant she wanted the man himself to come and grace her with his presence.

Enri would have grasped her meaning well enough. His slippery, sly-as-an-old-serpent manner was not much to her taste, but there was no denying he was quick to read a room, and that his head worked fairly fast besides.

And yet what greeted Kalada when she came into the branch office late that afternoon was a platinum-blonde beauty and a snot-sized little brat.

“I am Pai Deluosa. I come before you, Guild Master Kalada, in my capacity as proxy for the Regent Duke, Keith Paragon.”