“Oh. Good evening, Kuro.” Herscherik greeted the intruder, whom he could safely call an acquaintance at this point. The prince was newly turned four that spring. Despite the casual tone of the greeting, as if they were just two old friends that had run into each other on the street, the pair were standing in the armory of the Knights’ Order, nearly past midnight. “Working the night shift, again?” Herscherik remarked before returning to his own work.
The intruder, clad in all black to hide in the shadow of night, continued staring at the prince. A look of exasperation and bewilderment was discernible through the hood and long bangs that covered his brow. The prince had continued to address him as “Kuro” without once asking for permission.
This is the last place I expected to see this little prince...
Half a year had passed since their first encounter. While all children surely grew up quickly, Kuro had noticed that the prince was already a little taller and his face looked a little older in comparison to when they had first met. He had infiltrated the castle enough times for him to see the difference. Kuro would receive all sorts of missions through his underground guild—like reconnaissance, recovering evidence of corruption, etc.—to the point where he was practically sneaking into the castle every other night.
This time, the job was to deliver a letter to the lover of a certain noble’s wife. That lover happened to be a knight, so Kuro had snuck into this particular building that served as the knights’ quarters and equipment storage. After making his way into the building without a hitch, Kuro sensed a presence in the armory. He poked his head through the door to find a small silhouette scuttling about the room—and he knew that the little figure could be none other than the Seventh Prince. Kuro first went to the knight’s room to slip the letter under the door. He could imagine the color draining from the knight’s face upon reading the letter come morning, but ultimately that was none of his concern. Then, Kuro returned to the armory to find Herscherik scowling at a piece of paper.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find him anywhere, at this point...
Some locations of their previous encounters included the treasury records room, the office of the chief of castle security, and the royal pantry... Kuro would have demanded to know what the prince was doing in all those places if he hadn’t ironically been illegally infiltrating the castle himself. Despite always encountering the prince late at night and outside the exploration range of any ordinary child, Kuro was beginning to get used to these encounters.
Kuro guessed that the prince was researching the armory’s inventory. Herscherik continued to check things off on his handwritten list, but there seemed to be some discrepancies.
“They still don’t match... Are they just late, or are the orders inflated?”
“What’s wrong?” Kuro called to the muttering prince from behind.
Herscherik looked back up at Kuro. “Are you all done with your work, Kuro? Nothing bad for our country, right?” Through the course of their acquaintance over the past half year, Herscherik’s tone toward Kuro had become much more frank.
Kuro shrugged. “I wouldn’t say so. Just delivering bad news for a young man down the hall.”
To the young knight, there must have been no worse news than the object of his affair urging for a proposal. He had crawled into bed with a married woman, after all. Unless he could bring their affair to a discreet and agreeable conclusion, he wouldn’t remain a knight for long.
“Okay.” Herscherik didn’t particularly care as long as Kuro’s work didn’t jeopardize his country or his family. He also didn’t believe for a moment that Kuro would give up any more information even if he had asked. Kuro’s work had not caused any major effects within the castle so far, and Herscherik couldn’t ask Kuro to abandon his livelihood for him. So, Herscherik had put aside his curiosity for the details of the man’s mission and shifted his focus to solving the mysterious discrepancy. “Kuro... Say you’re running an ordinary business. Do weapons and combat equipment take a long time to make and deliver?”
“Depends on the goods. I’m sure the Knights’ Order and the military uses decent-quality stuff. That could take a while.”
“A while as in...half a year behind?”
Kuro fell silent. It was plain to see that he found that much of a delay to be suspicious.
Herscherik took his silence as confirmation. “Payments were made, but the products aren’t here, and there’s no evidence of them ever being actually used...”
That’s a fraudulent order if I’ve seen one. One-hundo percent. Herscherik rolled his eyes. The more he looked around the castle, the more unaccounted-for invoices and suspicious orders he found. If this was a corporation, we would have gone bankrupt already...
Since taxes and the national reserve still covered for the discrepancies, the treasurers hadn’t seen this as a problem. In fact, Herscherik would not have been surprised if the treasury was turning a blind eye altogether. Perhaps they simply planned to raise taxes when the reserve ran out.
Over the past half a year, Herscherik had been delving deep into the offices of every single governmental department and had found some suspicious things in each of them, although he only found them suspicious because of the intuition he had acquired from his life as Ryoko.
I just don’t have enough information or experience in this world.
He couldn’t help but wonder if some of the things he found suspicious were completely normal in this world. No matter where, any government was bound to have people with the sole duty of doubting the necessity of any taxpayer-funded expense.
What I need now is common, everyday knowledge about this world. Maybe it’s time to take the next step. Herscherik needed to fill that gap in his knowledge as quickly as possible. He turned to Kuro, who had been giving him a suspicious look.
“Can I ask you a favor, Kuro?”
“Huh?”
Herscherik was looking up at Kuro and craning his neck. He gave an innocent-as-can-be smile, fully utilizing his unequivocally adorable appearance.
On Herscherik’s first venture down into the castle town, the streets were bustling. Shops and stalls aligned the streets, all filled with products for sale, and workers were energetically calling people into their shops, left and right.
So, this is what our castle town is like!
Herscherik couldn’t stop looking all around him like a country boy on his first day in the city. His outfit for the day was considerably less extravagant than what he normally wore. Herscherik had asked Meria for a pair of clothes that he could get dirty; on top of the outfit, the prince wore a poncho-like layer with the hood drawn over his face. While his disguise didn’t quite make him look like one of the street children, Herscherik would have been happy with everyone thinking that he was some nondescript rich kid.
The other night, Herscherik had asked Kuro to show him a secret passageway from the castle out into the nearby town. Herscherik was sure that Kuro knew a hidden but safe passage in and out of the castle. No matter how good a spy Kuro was, there was no way that he could so easily come and go from the castle protected by a magical barrier without something like that. In fact, Kuro had stumbled in an attempt to deflect the question.