A Use for Herself
“Would someone care to explain what exactly is going on?”
CRACK —
An unannounced bolt of lightning bleached the window white for an instant. The decorative plant headband on his head trembled in the aftermath, lending the scene a deeply unnerving atmosphere.
“…What is that headband?”
Calypse asked, flat and tired.
“A disguise. I’ve been curious about the child’s identity, so I concealed myself in that pot since last night.”
Impressive, actually.
Aisha gave an honest nod of admiration and raised a thumb.
“Remarkable technique. You should have been a spy, Knox.”
“I’m not so easily flattered by —”
He stopped mid-sentence to adjust the headband, and faint color crept across his otherwise expressionless face.
“For the record, I made this myself. At any rate —”
He set it down on the table with a decisive click.
“…I was already stunned that you’d adopted a swindling child. And now it turns out she’s a House Foss operative?”
He removed what remained of his disguise and fixed Aisha with an unblinking stare.
“……”
Without the bizarre costume, Knox was unmistakably House Krost’s chief advisor.
Blue-green eyes, drained of warmth, boring into her as though trying to excavate whatever was buried at the back of her mind.
She understood now.
There had been one person noticeably absent from the household for days, and now she knew who it was.
Knox. It was Knox the whole time.
And — the figure she had spotted at the window, the one with tied-back hair. The maids all wore their hair pinned up. Knox was the only one in the castle who wore a ponytail. That had been him too.
“Either way,” Knox continued, indifferent to her realizations, “if the staff were to find out about this, it would be chaos.”
“Then we keep it quiet.”
“And how does one keep something like this quiet?”
“Simple. You keep your mouth shut.”
“You’re asking me to keep my mouth shut.”
Aisha watched the two of them volley back and forth, turning her head from side to side, and set her jaw.
Knox was Calypse’s most trusted confidant. He had been suspicious of her from the very beginning — sharp-eyed, competent, not easily fooled.
She had naturally assumed that Calypse would have already told him everything. Apparently not.
This is going to need some management.
She tapped Calypse’s chest lightly.
His fierce gaze softened as he bent toward her.
“What.”
She leaned up to whisper in his ear.
“Uncle… don’t tell me you’re the only one who knows I used to be a spy?”
“I didn’t think you’d get caught.”
“…Excuse me?”
He didn’t think she’d get caught.
The conqueror of the North. The man before whom armies had trembled. Saying, with apparent sincerity, that he hadn’t thought she’d get caught.
“…You didn’t plan all of this before adopting me?”
“I’ve told you before. I never actually intended to —”
Calypse broke off abruptly and covered his own mouth with his hand.
As though something had very nearly slipped out that he hadn’t meant to say.
“…Uncle?”
What had he been about to say?
She blinked up at him, curious —
“Don’t worry. Knox talks like this, but he’s my subordinate. He does as I say.”
A large hand rumpled her hair, forcing her eyes shut. When she opened them, Calypse had reassembled himself into the adult she recognized, seamless and composed.
“Well. What a picture of devoted fatherhood this is.”
Clap. Clap. Clap.
As though he’d heard quite enough, Knox stood and interrupted their conversation with three slow, dry applause.
“Our dear little fake duchess has cast some sort of spell over His Grace, spy craft or otherwise, and the man is oblivious while the rest of us worry ourselves sick. Charming.”
He shot Calypse a glance with just a hint of genuine reproach in it — then turned abruptly toward the door and bellowed.
“Guard!”
“There’s a spy from House Foss right here —”
But Knox’s shout died in his throat before it could finish.
“Squeak?”
In the same instant, the messenger rat — which had been sitting quietly — launched through the air.
Because Aisha, who had been holding it, had swept her arm in a wide arc and vaulted forward.
The Frog-Squirrel Technique.
Leap like a frog. Soar like a flying squirrel.
“Wait just a moment!”
She landed cleanly on Knox’s shoulder —
“What is this — get down from there!”
Knox recoiled and reached back to grab her by the scruff.
If she’d been the sort to be caught easily, she wouldn’t have leapt in the first place.
Slide —
Like a lizard down a tree trunk, she flowed from his shoulder down his back.
“This — do not touch my backside!”
“Your backside was the only handhold, I apologize —”
“Why you little —”
Knox lurched forward trying to grab her, which brought his torso low enough — and she vaulted back up to his shoulder like a small, determined monkey.
“…H— hah—”
Knox went rigid. His blue-green eyes widened.
She could read him clearly. This round was hers.
Is it already over?
She felt slightly guilty looking at his hollow expression. It seemed Knox had absolutely no athletic ability to speak of, which meant his ascent to chief advisor had been powered entirely by books and brains.
“Are you all right?”
She scratched the back of her neck, a little sheepish — when:
“You see? This is not the reflexes of a normal five-year-old! She’s trained! This is operationally trained movement!”
Knox snapped, his voice tight with frustration.
The accusation stung, but she pressed the flutter in her chest down firmly.
Calm down, Aisha.
She had been caught. She couldn’t simply breeze past it.
To earn Knox’s acceptance, she needed to prove her worth — somehow, in some way.
“…Yes, because I’m a trained five-year-old spy. And that’s exactly why I can say what I’m about to say.”
“What?”
He hadn’t quite caught her murmur. Knox asked again.
She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and spoke at full volume.
“I am a trained five-year-old. So let me prove my value to you, Knox!”
“……”
Silence settled over the room.
She took a breath and looked around.
Knox had gone still as stone, one hand still on the door handle.
Calypse was equally frozen — caught mid-rise from the sofa, neither standing nor sitting, in an awkward hovering crouch. His crimson eyes, so often unreadable, were comically wide.
Good. I have their attention.
The atmosphere wasn’t quite what she had planned for, but she pressed on with the substance of her argument.
“I’ll work as a double agent. House Foss will keep sending messages, and those messages will almost certainly contain classified information that could —”
“Who on earth —”
She couldn’t be sure which of the two men spoke first.
“— told a five-year-old to prove her worth to anyone.”
“— is asking a five-year-old to have a use?”
When she snapped back to awareness, she was dangling in midair, one wrist held by each of them.
Blue eyes and crimson eyes.
The two men, who had spontaneously answered in near-perfect unison, were looking at her with matching expressions of exasperation.
“Five years old…”
And then —
“…Who says something like that at five?”
“…Is not an age for saying things like that.”
Their voices overlapped again.
“…Um?”
She blinked, slowly, unable to process what was happening.
“They really are alike.”
“Master and subordinate tend to resemble each other.”
“That’s enough. I’m just going to stuff this child’s mouth with strawberries.”
“Now that sounds like the Calypse I know.”
In the span of about thirty seconds, the two had abruptly fallen into the easy camaraderie of lifelong friends. Aisha was promptly handed off to Head Housekeeper May.
Her punishment: eating strawberry cake.
“…Uncle?”
The breathtakingly indignant sentence — sit down, be quiet, and eat cake — was, apparently, what passed for discipline in this household.
* * *
A short while later.
I’m just going to stuff this child’s mouth with strawberries.
Stuff this child’s mouth with strawberries…
Stuff her mouth with strawberries…
Creak.
The fork left teeth marks in it.
May, who had been watching nearby, startled at the look on Aisha’s face — but Aisha was in no state to care about being observed.
The Duke’s words were still reverberating through her skull.
Does he trust me so little? I can do things too. I can help.
And on top of that — the duke’s daughter’s whereabouts, the succession trial — all of it unresolved, all of it pressing. Her head felt like it might burst.
She was grinding through the cake with a ferocious triangular scowl when she caught May watching her across the room.
Their eyes met in the air.
“……”
May, who had been quietly praying for time to pass faster, went visibly pale.
She stole a few glances at Aisha before backing toward the door with a bow.
“Well — I’ve brought your cake, so I’ll just be —”
“Head Housekeeper May.”
The desperateness in her own voice surprised her. May’s retreat slowed to a reluctant halt.
“Yes. Lady Aisha.”
Aisha still had a ferocious expression. She practically shouted the words.
“Does His Grace truly trust me so little?”
“……”
Oh. That slipped out.
Her small hand flew up to cover her mouth, but the words were already gone.
That had been frustration talking. She had let it out before she could stop herself.
Knox knew she was a spy now, but the others still didn’t — she couldn’t be talking so carelessly. What a mess.
“May, I’m so sorry — what I just said —”
“Because you broke the contract.”
And then, quiet and even:
“He took you in out of pity. But trust? That would be too much to ask, when you were the one who lied first.”
Head Housekeeper May said it without malice, without cruelty. Simply as a fact.
