The aged servant left me as she entered an adjoining room that served as a closet. Before long, she was back with a full outfit. She laid articles of clothing, from headwear to footwear, on the table.
“Will these suffice?” she asked.
The clothes were perhaps too fine for where I was going, but they wouldn’t stop me from riding an eagle.
“Yes, they’re good enough.”
With her help, I immediately began to change. I guessed these had once been Rook’s clothes.
“I’ll return tomorrow. When the lords arrive, have them wait for me.”
By the time I’d switched to another eagle and flown to Suomi, it was already getting dark.
I landed on an office building near the port. There was an area for leaving an eagle there used by almost no one else. It was a simplified birdcage with a large perch for a single bird to stand on and something resembling a carabiner that I could attach the reins to.
It wasn’t good to leave an eagle tethered like a dog on a leash, but there wasn’t much choice—real birdcages required a lot of space. They didn’t just have to be big enough to contain the eagle, but also to provide enough space for the bird to open its wings without injury. That required five square meters of floor space and a height of six meters at the very least.
After descending the stairs, I saw office employees heading home.
“Mr. Chairman? Good evening.” An employee named Starsha bowed her head to me. She looked young, but she was already a widow with children.
It was business as usual here, which suggested that news hadn’t yet reached Suomi.
“Is there anyone next door?” I asked. “I was hoping someone would be around.”
“In the print shop? I’m not sure...”
I left through the front door of the office and hurried toward the print shop located in the neighboring building. Holy books were printed there using a primitive version of movable type printing presses.
A powerful smell of ink hit me when I opened the door to the building. The substance used with movable type contained soot and resin, so the smell was like a mixture of ordinary ink and cigarette smoke.
The employees who used the new technology to print our heretical texts day after day were finishing up their work as usual.
“Mr. Chairman?! What brings you here at this hour?” This man who spoke was a foreman of sorts who managed the print shop.
Since the sun was setting, it was fairly dark inside the print shop. The lighting here was poor since the shop was generally closed at night.
“Don’t leave just yet,” I said. “You’re working overtime today.”
“Overtime?!”
“We already have about half of the movable type pieces needed for Shanish, right? Let’s put them to use.”
“But it’s night already...”
“Overtime pay is one gold coin per employee. Gather all the lamps and candles you can, get them set up in here, then work through the night. Can you do that?”
“Y-Yes, sir...”
I turned around and called out to Starsha, who’d followed behind me. “Starsha, could you go buy some lights too, if you don’t mind? You’ll get overtime pay. If the stores are closed, you can use the Ho family’s name to get them to open.”
“Yes, sir... I can do that.”
“You’ll have to hurry. There should be enough money in the vault.”
“Yes, there is.” Starsha turned around and ran off.
“What could be so urgent?” the foreman asked. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worth one gold coin per employee.”
“Her Majesty the Queen passed away yesterday. It’s related to that.”
“What?!” He was fairly surprised.
“Yeah, it’s a big deal. I’ll write the manuscript... How many Shanish type pieces do we have, exactly?”
“We had the most commonly used pieces made first, but there’s still a lot missing.”
“Where are the piece shelves? And give me a pencil and paper.”
I lit a lamp while there was still some light and headed to the shelves with a pencil and paper in my hand. The idea was to write something that used only the characters we could print.
Looking at the shelves, I found they were indeed quite empty. But like he’d said, the most commonly used characters already had type pieces, and that would probably be enough.
A bigger problem was my utter exhaustion. It dawned on me that I hadn’t slept in a long time.
I hope I don’t make a mess of this.
✧✧✧
ON MARCH 14 OF IMPERIAL YEAR 2320, IN PREPARATION FOR THE WEDDING OF YURI OF THE HO FAMILY TO CAROL OF THE ROYAL FLUE SHALTL FAMILY, MEMBERS OF BOTH FAMILIES MET IN THE CASTLE OF THE ROYAL CAPITAL, SIBIAK, WHERE PRINCESS CARLA ADDED POISON TO THEIR WINE AS PART OF A PLOT TO ELIMINATE BOTH FAMILIES.
THE PLOT RESULTED IN THE LOSS OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN SHIMONE, AND ALSO THE DEATHS OF THE HO FAMILY’S HEAD, ROOK, AND HIS WIFE, SUZUYA, AFTER THEY DRANK THE WINE.
WHEN SOLDIERS SERVING WITCHES WHO INHABIT THE ROYAL CAPITAL SAW THAT YURI HO AND PRINCESS CAROL HAD NOT DRUNK THE WINE AND THEREFORE REMAINED HEALTHY, THEY ATTACKED THE CASTLE.
WHEN THE PAIR ESCAPED THE ROYAL CASTLE AND ATTEMPTED TO LEAVE THE CITY, SOLDIERS UNDER COMMAND OF WITCHES COMPLICIT IN THE PLOT GAVE CHASE, MAKING IT CLEAR WHOSE SIDE THEY ARE ON.
THE HO FAMILY WILL NOT SERVE CARLA FLUE SHALTL, A TRAITOR WHO KILLED HER OWN MOTHER. CAROL FLUE SHALTL IS THE ONLY UNTAINTED SURVIVOR OF THE ROYAL LINEAGE, AND WOULD-BE USURPERS SHOULD FEAR THE HO FAMILY’S WRATH.
That should do it.
“Disassemble the holy book print pieces for now. Set up this text so that the same thing gets printed four times on each sheet of paper.”
We could mass-produce each type piece once we had the molds, so—although we didn’t have many different kinds of type pieces—we had a large number of copies for the ones we did have. That allowed us to print the same text several times simultaneously.
“We’re making it into a book?” the foreman asked.
Where’d he get that idea?
“No, we’ll separate each sheet into four pieces that a kingeagle can scatter onto the royal capital and all nearby towns. We’re making flyers.”
Although the kingdom’s literacy rate wasn’t particularly high, a good number of city dwellers knew how to read. At the very least, our flyers could limit the number of wild rumors circulating.