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WHEN I told Karna about our conversation, she lit up with anger. Literally, her magic began leaking out, spraying tiny fireworks all around her.
“Knowing that he idolizes Prince Wilhelt is all the more reason not to let our guard down around him!” she announced in a clipped tone.
Karna was fluent in social niceties but made no attempt to hide her intense dislike of Will. I thought part of it was an act to avoid ending up forcibly engaged to him, but if she was really that against the idea, I, too, would do whatever I could to help her.
“As you wish, my lady. The other party is a wily fox who, despite our best efforts, refuses to allow us to get a good read on him. It’s been a while since I’ve faced such a satisfyingly difficult challenge.”
Now Paul’s getting in on it too. I’m kind of impressed with Aise, though. Even Paul considers him a “wily fox.”
“Is Prince Aise really that amazing?” I asked, getting into the habit of using his nickname.
“Yes. On the surface, he appears to be socializing with the aristocrats who oppose the emperor’s political stances and doing a remarkable job of keeping them in line.”
Because he’d said “on the surface,” I assumed something else was going on below the surface, but I resisted the impulse to interrupt and ask what that might be, waiting instead for Paul to elaborate on his own.
“He must have some concealed motives, but he has never let so much as a glimpse of them slip.”
“I understand that the staff we brought with us has been unable to uncover anything on him as of yet, but surely the agent from our household, who has been undercover in the Linus Empire since before our arrival, has found out something?”
“Unfortunately not.”
Our family employed many people. Even I had no idea just how many of them there were.
However, all of the highest-ranking aristocrats employed spies both domestically and abroad. That just went to show how aware the nobility were of the value of information.
In our country, according to Will, the Dierta ducal house employed the largest number of spies. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that the royal family was aware of precisely how many spies the Dierta family had on their personal payroll, but that was another matter, I supposed.
Anyways, our family also had spies all over the place, and like all of the other servants in our employ, they were exceptionally skilled.
And yet none of them could get anything on Aise’s hidden agenda.
He’s really something!
“Neema, you mustn’t let your guard down around Prince Aisent, you understand?! Even if he brings up Prince Wilhelt, don’t go along with it!” Karna started unintentionally sparking again as she muttered to herself, “That black-hearted prince really attracts the most unsavory people!”
The emperor had also cautioned me to be wary of the people around me, so I decided to include Aise in the list of people to be cautious of.
“As a last resort, we can always have Kai eat his desire to scheme. Neema’s safety is much more important than international relations.”
Karna! As a daughter of the family who serves as prime minister of our country generation after generation, it would be catastrophic if anyone were to overhear you saying something like that!
“Come to think of it, what do you do all day, every day, Kai?” I asked Kai, who was playing with Inaho, and he responded that he mostly attended tea parties. “Tea parties?”
It wasn’t as if drinking tea would do anything to satiate Kai’s hunger.
“I keep getting invited by the… what do you call them… young noble ladies?”
Oh, now I see… So this is the source of the rumors about a “handsome young man newly arrived at court” that Marie was talking about.
“None of them have very tasty desires, though.”
I had no idea what qualified desires as “tasty” by Kai’s standards, but I was pretty sure it was a good thing for us that there weren’t many people with especially tasty desires.
“What kinds of desires did they have?” Karna asked.
After a pause during which he seemed to think it over, Kai finally answered that most of them were sexual in nature.
Why are gently bred young ladies full of lusty desires?!
“Goodness! It looks like they’re hoping for more than just to charm an eligible gentleman and improve their station in life!”
If they were the type of pure-hearted maidens who dreamed of a Cinderella story like that, the words “sexual in nature” would’ve never come up!
“Many of their desires seemed to revolve around needing to gain experience to become a favored concubine,” Kai explained.
“This topic is not suitable for the ears of young ladies. I will take your report in private later, so please stop there for now, Kai,” Paul cut in smoothly.
With this, the conversation came to an abrupt end, with Kai nonchalantly saying, “Okay,” and returning to playing with Inaho.
I was surprised to see how good Kai was with Inaho, Haku, and the others. Apparently, he sampled a tiny taste of their desire to play to glean what kind of games they were in the mood for and would grant their wishes whenever possible.
I would never, under pain of death, admit how jealous I’d been to see the three monsters playing in the bath on the water slide Kai had made for them entirely out of water after we’d returned from our tour of the military facilities.
I consoled myself by deciding to have Euche or Sache do something similar for me the next time we played together.