“That condition of yours. Don’t you think it’s a little excessive to impose it on a child?”
The next day. A peaceful afternoon in the study.
Knox, who had been puzzling over it all day, finally put the question to Calypse, who sat at his desk working through correspondence.
“Which part.”
“Speaking for myself, I’m not troubled—but if it becomes known that you’ve written a contract like this with a five-year-old, I fear it would do significant damage to your public image.”
“Ah.”
Calypse responded with perfect indifference.
“Decapitation?”
“…I deliberately phrased that gently, and you go and say it out loud. Now I’m the one who’s frightened.”
“Who’s frightened?”
“I am.”
Knox’s blue eyes grew wide behind his monocle.
Yes.
The additional condition Calypse had proposed to the five-year-old was: should the young lady not be found at the given location, the informant is to be sentenced to execution by decapitation.
It was a condition unworthy of Calypse Krost, protector of the Frozen Kingdom.
“It was never meant to be a serious contract in the first place. Hardly worth taking earnestly.”
“So it was a joke?”
Calypse answered without inflection.
“I was playing along.”
“And if the child had been lying? Were you really going to proceed with execution?”
“I have no intention of removing any head that hasn’t yet dried behind the ears. I simply wanted to see how she’d react.”
“Her reaction?”
“That child.”
He said it as easily as noting the weather.
“If it were all a fabrication, she’d either try to void the contract out of fear, or flee altogether. I was just testing the water.”
Flat as the words were, the crimson eyes behind the mask carried a distinct coolness.
The result: Aisha had not moved a muscle.
Her small hand had twitched, perhaps imperceptibly—but the child had met the Duke of Krost with an expression that said she had been prepared for exactly that.
And that was the problem.
Because if she wasn’t bluffing—if her words were real—then little Eve was currently somewhere in the Kingdom of Doctia.
In a specific orphanage near the Andra Marshlands, within the Foss territory, to be exact.
The thought made his temples ache.
The two kingdoms had once maintained a peace accord against their shared enemy—the Creatures. The Krost family’s Ice Affinity had allowed them to erect a vast wall of ice, holding the Creatures at bay.
But recently, Doctia’s behavior had grown strange.
They had been crossing the Frozen Kingdom’s borders without leave, sending brigands into small villages—seemingly to gauge the state of Frozen’s defenses. The fragile peace agreement was fracturing under Doctia’s increasingly brazen provocations.
And in that climate, he now had to send a letter of formal visit to Doctia.
“We’ll send word first.”
Every option was bad, but he had no choices left. He sent a private message to Duke Foss.
Several days later—
“This is outrageous.”
Knox read the reply and pressed his lips together in distaste.
“They say they have no objection to a visit to the Foss territory—but absolutely no escort knights, a maximum of two attendants, and in exchange for admission, they want the Kraim Plains transferred to their name.”
“Absolute extortionists.”
Calypse’s expression darkened.
The Kraim Plains was territory that House Krost had fought to hold in the territorial war against Doctia ten years ago.
But as disadvantageous as the conditions were, he had no choice but to accept.
A territory was replaceable. A child was not.
“Tell them we’ll visit in a week.”
Knox was appalled.
“…Excuse me? Please reconsider. The territory aside—visiting a noble’s domain without even a knight escort? This is the equivalent of walking alone into a lion’s den.”
“Tell them we’ll visit in a week.”
Calypse’s voice brooked no argument. He rose from his desk as if the conversation was already concluded—
“Ah. And that little one.”
“The little one?”
“Yes. The child Aisha. Do some background checking. She said she was at the same orphanage as the young lady, but how she got all the way here on her own doesn’t add up.”
“Ah, now that is an order I can get behind.”
Knox exhaled in relief at what finally sounded like a rational command—
“Never mind.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Calypse had already risen and was pulling on his black robe—the one he wore during his private garden walks, the only time he moved through the castle without his mask.
“I’ll look into it myself.”
A child was a child.
Having the knights question her, investigate her—approaching her directly, disguised as a gardener, would be faster by far.
“Y-Your Grace!”
Bang.
Knox hurried after him, but the only thing that met him was a closed door.
Sigh.
“…He is wonderful in every other respect, but the moment his children are involved, he loses all reason…”
Knox scrubbed at his face with a dry hand and exhaled slowly.
Because in truth—though no one said it aloud in Calypse’s presence—everyone else had already accepted it.
The missing children were almost certainly dead.
________________________________________
A quiet afternoon. The east wing of Krost Castle.
I had been peacefully working through a bread roll when my jaw locked mid-chew.
“They say that child told His Grace where the young lady is?”
“Apparently. And now His Grace has declared he’s going to march into Doctia without a single escort, and everyone’s in a panic.”
“Dear God. Isn’t that just walking into his own funeral?”
“I really wish His Grace wouldn’t let himself get tangled up in something like this. It hasn’t even been that long since the last Creature subjugation.”
On this perfectly peaceful afternoon, in this perfectly clear weather—
“…All of this because of that girl.”
One of the maids exhaled, threw me a pointed look, and moved on.
I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
It’s one thing to be talked about behind your back. But being talked about directly to your face—I’m not sure how to react when I’m sitting right here.
The worst part was that they weren’t entirely wrong.
I sat very still, trying to take up as little space as possible. Even eating the bread felt like a crime.
After making the contract with Calypse, word that I’d uncovered the location of the direct daughter had spread through the castle at impressive speed. The problem was that none of the servants were happy about it.
I miscalculated. I assumed they’d all be overjoyed.
In hindsight—the Frozen Kingdom and Doctia were on hostile terms. Against that backdrop, the news that Calypse intended to visit Doctia without his knight guard was causing a small panic throughout the castle. The atmosphere was anything but celebratory.
Still, I had my own grievances.
What is Calypse thinking? Why would he just charge into Doctia without any preparation?
I chomped irritably at my bread.
You gather intelligence first! You identify Doctia’s weaknesses! You use those as leverage to negotiate on equal footing!
Under normal circumstances, that was exactly what Calypse would have done.
But I had badly underestimated how completely unhinged he became when his children were involved.
There was nothing to be done about it now.
Until the young lady is actually found, I need to be completely invisible.
Current objective: survive the sharp-eyed scrutiny of the maids by pretending not to notice it.
Right. I’ll be like a shadow.
I scooted my small self toward the unlit corner of the room, discreetly—
“Hmm~ Well, look at this. What’s this little one doing over here all by herself? No assigned maid?”
Thump.
A familiar voice. Something nudged against my hip.
What was that?
Cold sweat. I looked around.
One of the maids’ legs was extended right next to me.
I slowly looked up.
“If nobody’s assigned to this child, I’ll take her~”
Hand planted on her hip, wearing an expression like a predator who had just cornered its dinner, Dorothy looked down at me.
I’m finished.
Utterly finished.
“Eep!”
“Quiet, sweetheart.”
A merciless hand seized the back of my neck, and a short shriek escaped me.
I had charged in here with my eyes fixed on the goal, without stopping to think about all the complications waiting inside Krost Castle.
The current state of Calypse. The mood of the castle.
And Dorothy, who had been embedded here long before me.
Is this really the life of a five-year-old child? Is this not child abuse?
I wanted to lodge a complaint with whoever had written this novel. Better yet, with whatever god had put me in the role of a spy extra.
What do you want from me? What exactly did I do wrong?
“Oof!”
I was flung into Dorothy’s private quarters, and the impact of landing on my tailbone was followed by a sharp laugh from across the room.
“You pulled quite the clever little stunt, didn’t you? Duke Foss is very pleased right now.”
My tailbone was working overtime today.
I winced and pressed my hands to the throbbing spot, struggling to get up.
I was almost standing—
“Because of your cute little scheme, I’ve ended up as a kite with a cut string.”
Tap.
Her index finger touched my forehead. I sat back down.
“……?”
I looked up at her with a frown.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It means the rolling stone has knocked out the embedded one. Did they not teach you that metaphor in spy training?”
“Ah, yes, I know it—but why would Duke Foss’s success be bad for you? Shouldn’t it be good?”
With the mission essentially complete, Dorothy would soon be recalled to House Foss. Her years of work would be recognized and rewarded.
Thump.
Dorothy stamped her foot in disbelief.
“Duke Foss gave me a recall order! Think about it from Calypse’s perspective—do you really think he’d so easily comply with a deal that’s blatantly rigged against him?”
Oh.
My eyes went wide before I could stop them.
…I think I understand what’s happening now.
It clicked all at once, and I swallowed reflexively.
House Foss would be in celebration mode right now. Calypse had agreed to walk into Foss territory without his knight escort—essentially handing himself over. But there was a problem.
The visit was still days away.
So before that window closes, House Foss wants to eliminate anything that could compromise them. Such as, for instance, the spy who has been embedded in House Krost for six years.
It was brazen and ruthless, but it was exactly why House Foss had survived as long as it had. It made a horrible kind of sense.
Wait.
Something occurred to me and I looked at Dorothy with wide, round eyes.
But the liability in question is standing right in front of me.
Dorothy flinched when she felt my gaze.
“What are you staring at?”
“……”
“What are you staring at, child?!”
“Oh, nothing.”
Just found a rather useful bargaining piece, is all.
I quietly swallowed the rest of that thought and closed my small fist.
And then—
“Because of me, you ended up like this, and I feel so… so terrible about it… WAAAAAAH—!”
“—What is wrong with you all of a sudden?!”
My sudden, absolutely committed breakdown sent Dorothy scrambling to press her hands over her own head.
My current objective is to disappear quietly?
No.
My objective had just changed.
My new objective: expose Dorothy for what she was.
