The Letter in the Rat’s Mouth
He lifted her up then and there and carried her into his study.
And then —
“Eat.”
He pushed a piece of cake — a whole thick slice of it — directly into her mouth.
She hadn’t expected it, but the sweetness of the cream and sponge washed away the murk that had been sitting on her chest all day.
Strawberry. Fresh cream. Perfect.
The corners of her mouth softened helplessly. Watching her, Calypse — who had been resting his chin on his hand — let out a relieved breath.
“Is someone bullying you?”
Her eyes, which had been drowsily half-open, went round.
This man has good instincts.
“No. Nothing’s wrong at all.”
But she had no intention of telling him about the subtle cold shoulder from the maids. They weren’t openly hostile to her. She understood why they were wary. And besides — bothering grown-ups over small things like this was not the behavior of a model child.
However.
“……”
There was still the matter of whoever had been watching her from the window.
She reached for the next piece of cake — somehow already in front of her — and took a bite before asking.
“Uncle.”
“What.”
“There aren’t any… dangerous people in House Krost, are there?”
“What do you mean?”
He frowned and took off his reading glasses.
“For instance — someone who could be watching me through the window of my bedroom…”
“Is someone bothering you?”
“Mm. I wouldn’t say that exactly…”
Her vague answer made his eyebrows rise.
“What kind of person hassles a little child the size of a bean? Who is it? The head housekeeper? Is it May?”
“No, not her…”
“The chef, then?”
“Mm. No… oh!”
“Aisha?!”
Her falling off his knee and Calypse crying out in alarm happened at almost exactly the same moment.
She had spotted something small moving rapidly beneath the desk.
“Got you!”
A former spy of House Foss doesn’t let prey slip by. She dove and closed her small fist around it.
“Reveal yourself!”
“Squeak, squeak!”
A familiar sound.
Surely not.
She swallowed. Then, one by one, she opened her little fingers.
“…Squeeeak.”
An irate gray snout poked through the gap.
A rat.
Not just any rat — it was a House Foss messenger rat.
“Uncle.”
“…Aisha. If you’re going to act like a frog, go play in the pond.”
“A message has arrived from House Foss.”
Calypse, who had been pinching the bridge of his nose, went still.
“What?”
The atmosphere changed in an instant.
The fingers resting on his forehead parted, and through them, his crimson eyes glinted sharp as cut glass.
* * *
A short quiz, for those paying attention.
As seen during Dorothy’s arrest, House Foss’s spies compose their reports on their own clothing. They then pass those reports to a relay point positioned near their place of assignment.
In Dorothy’s case, that relay was a bookshop called Perker’s Books in the nearby town of Thorn. On the pretense of going into town, she would deliver her reports there — and from that point, they were routed directly to House Foss.
So how did House Foss send messages in the other direction?
Carrier birds? Too obvious. Too easy to intercept.
The answer was rats.
Royal palaces. Noble manor corridors. Latrines. Orphanages. Even the frozen North.
A rat could squeeze through passages invisible to any eye and find its way to any destination without fail. That was why they had been chosen as House Foss’s messenger animal.
“Hold on a moment.”
“Squeak?”
She set the rat down gently in her open palm.
It flicked its whiskers at the air with an offended air, then turned and trotted toward her — drawn by her scent, which it recognized from training.
“Uncle, could I borrow a pen and some paper?”
“…Yes.”
Calypse handed her the pen and paper with a bewildered expression. She set them on the floor.
Pitter-patter —
As if it had been waiting for exactly this, the rat scurried forward and gripped the pen in its long snout.
“……”
Calypse stared at what was happening before his eyes, at a complete loss for words.
The rat was writing.
“…Child. Is this actually achievable through training?”
“Yes. You lay the pen in its mouth, release it into a maze shaped like letters, and throw food in with it. After a few tries, they memorize the shapes and start reproducing them on their own. Oddly well, actually.”
“…I see. I must say…”
He seemed momentarily unable to continue.
“…Its penmanship is better than yours.”
“……?”
An unprompted personal attack.
Her hair stood up at the unnecessary cruelty of it. She struggled to smother the offense rising in her chest.
Stay calm. Aisha.
“Does that mean I’m worse than a rat?”
“What are you talking about? That’s a ridiculous stretch.”
“Uncle.”
“What.”
“Even a golden seed can grow into a tree or a weed depending on how it’s raised.”
“Why are we suddenly talking about golden seeds.”
She crossed her arms and stated her complaint with great dignity.
“What I mean is, however golden a seed I may be, a remark like that has the potential to wound me and impede my development.”
Naturally, Calypse shrugged without so much as a flicker of remorse.
“Sorry. You’re better than the rat.”
Which he said with such obvious sarcasm.
“Uncle!”
The moment she puffed up with indignation, the corners of his mouth curved upward despite himself.
He always laughed when she got angry. He said it was because she looked like a completely ordinary child in those moments.
“Even if you’re worse than a rat, what does it matter? You are, and always will be, my perfect daughter.”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear!”
“…Ah. So this is what it means to raise a daughter.”
Pick, pick. Puff.
He was even cleaning his ear and blowing on the result with that maddening, deliberately oblivious expression —
“Uncle!”
“Squeak.”
Fortunately — or unfortunately — their argument was cut short by the small rat, which had finished writing.
“Squeak, squeak!”
Its task complete, the messenger rat rubbed its nose against the back of Aisha’s hand.
“…Uncle.”
“Aisha.”
One thing could be said in her favor at that moment.
When it came to serious matters, her new father was reassuringly steady.
He folded himself down onto one knee until their eyes were level, and placed his hands gently on her shoulders.
The crimson gaze that met hers was calm and grounded.
“You’re not a spy anymore.”
His voice, when it came, was quiet and kind.
“…Leave the message to me. I’ll handle it from here.”
Oh, he could be heroic when he wanted to. Exactly like a male lead in the story.
“…No. I’ll read it.”
If anything, his resolve had the opposite effect — it gave her courage. The will to be useful to him grew stronger than ever.
She held the message up so he could read it over her shoulder.
[Adoption mission confirmed complete.]
This much she had already told Calypse, so she moved past it without concern.
The trouble was what came after.
[Dorothy: terminated.]
Terminated.
Not executed. Not dismissed. Not failed. Terminated.
A word that refused to treat a person as human — that denied even the right to remain in the world as one. The last word written for a spy who had failed.
Something tightened across her body, wire-taut.
Dorothy had not been a good person. But Dorothy had existed in this world, and the fact of that existence —
I may be the only one left who knows she was here.
Her small maple-leaf fingers clenched.
She held Dorothy’s name in her gaze for a moment, then shifted her eyes to the next line.
[No further information will be provided.]
She had half-hoped.
So there really is nothing about the duke’s daughter.
Except — the phrasing was strange. Will not be provided.
They know. They just don’t intend to tell me.
[Focus on the upcoming succession trial.]
The final item: the succession trial.
House Krost’s succession trial was a well-known subject even in the original story. House Krost had protected humanity from magical beasts for generations using the ice barrier conjured by their Affinity. As current head, Calypse had maintained those barriers and conducted regular beast-clearing campaigns — and now the time had come to name an heir who would carry on that duty.
In the original story, the heir position went to the cadet-line Marquess Lilys’s eldest son — only for him to be expelled years later.
She couldn’t quite recall why. But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
“Uncle. What this means is…”
She turned, and found herself looking into a pair of crimson eyes that were quietly, carefully furious.
He had reached the same conclusion, it seemed.
“The implication here…”
“The implication here…”
They both began to speak at the same moment.
“House Foss wants me to become House Krost’s heir, don’t they?!”
“…Is this the quality of correspondence House Foss sends to a five-year-old child?”
…Not exactly the same conclusion.
She stared at him, momentarily thrown. He was already crumpling the letter in his fist, his jaw locked at an angle that radiated contained wrath.
“Wait — that’s evidence! Don’t crumple the evidence!”
“Come to think of it, I’ve been seeing the odd rat skulking around the castle grounds lately. I’ll have the whole place swept clean so thoroughly that letters like this never find their way in again.”
No, no, that’s not the point —
“That’s not the point here, is it?” came a voice.
Right. Exactly. The point is—
“Hm?”
“…I didn’t say that.”
Whose voice was that?
“Aisha. Come here.”
While she was still glancing around in confusion, Calypse instinctively pulled her against him, caging her in his arms.
“As I suspected — that child was a House Foss spy from the start. That is the important thing.”
Hmmm —
Another voice, low and ominous, cutting through the room.
“So the study wasn’t infiltrated only by rats, it seems.”
Calypse, in the middle of pulling her closer, had extended his other hand toward the hilt of his sword.
The situation had shifted without warning, but Aisha was not simply going to stand there and tremble.
Who is this? Has House Foss actually sent an assassin?
She pushed a small hand out from behind his broad frame, ready.
If the enemy was after her —
I won’t go down easy.
“……”
Both of them were coiled to strike, trained on the empty air —
Pop!
A potted plant in the corner of the study launched itself upward.
Or rather —
“A perfectly ordinary child, you said. I find that difficult to credit.”
— a man wearing a decorative plant headband erupted out of the soil.
Knox — House Krost’s chief advisor.
