None of the saints reacted to my greeting, and I began to wonder if I was wrong about their curiosity. Abruptly, however, a single saint applauded. Charlotte clapped as hard as she could with her small hands, trying to make me feel welcome amid the stony silence.
It was a bit odd to receive applause for introducing myself, especially when I was a nobody only here to observe, but I appreciated it. The saint standing next to Charlotte chided her, however.
I wanted to say something. She was being scolded for my sake, after all. But Lloyd spoke up before I could. “Please don’t be too hard on her. Saint Charlotte was only trying to make us feel welcome, and I quite appreciate it.”
The saint that chided Charlotte paled, turning her head away with a huff. Lloyd grinned wryly at Charlotte.
Dorothée silently watched this all unfold, then picked up where she left off like nothing had happened. “Few women are blessed enough to call themselves saints. If you discount the saints of the cathedral and some large churches, we twenty of the royal castle are the only saints who exist. Our three main duties are joining the knights on their expeditions, curing the sick, and creating healing potions.”
I cocked my head. Something was off in her explanation. If curing the sick was part of their main duties, then why hadn’t they healed Earl Peiz’s daughter Ester? Earl Peiz should have been able to leverage his noble status to request the saints of the royal castle heal his daughter.
My question must have shone on my face because Lloyd turned to me and elaborated on what Dorothée had said. “The duties of the royal castle saints are limited to the royal castle. As healing the sick requires a great deal of mana, they generally only do it for members of the royal family. If a high-ranking noble or minister found themselves on death’s door while in the royal castle they might receive healing, but otherwise they would not.”
We’d needed three saints to heal one person on that monster-hunting expedition I joined. If that was standard, then healing diseases had to require many times more saints. It made sense then that they would limit who had access to healing.
“Oh, I see,” I said with a nod.
Lloyd threw his hands up and said, “It’s a real shame. Twenty may be a lot compared to other institutions, but given the size of the royal castle, it really isn’t enough. They can’t spare a single saint to help others.”
Oh, so there are way fewer saints than I thought. Half of all women were saints three hundred years ago, so that’s a bit of a surprise…
Lloyd grinned sarcastically. “Those who receive their blessing probably don’t even realize how lucky they are, but the fact that saints accompany the knight brigades on their expeditions at all shows how much preferential treatment they enjoy because of the queen dowager being the head saint.”
Come to think of it, when I went monster hunting with Red, Green, and Blue, I was surprised that they fought without letting themselves get hurt. I asked why they fought so carefully, and they said it was because saints only work with royalty and nobility and would never join up with adventurers. Healing potions took time to work as well, so it was better to focus on not getting hurt than risk it. In other words, the fact that saints joined us knights on our expeditions was the exception, not the rule.
“Wow. Saints are really rare, huh?” I murmured.
Lloyd nodded. “Indeed. And the head saint stands at the top of those very few saints in what is a tiny hierarchical society. As a general rule, a saint can’t defy a higher-ranking saint’s orders.”
“I see. So it’s like the knight brigades!”
I remembered learning a while ago that the saints were ranked by ability. I’d assumed that ranking was established when they selected the head saint. But if they only held a head saint selection every couple of decades, could one’s ranking never change until the next one? Where did new saints like Charlotte fit in?
A flurry of questions swirled in my head, but I didn’t want to bring them up in front of Charlotte, so I stuffed down my queries for later.
Cyril, Desmond, Kurtis, Fabian, Cerulean… There were tons of people who could answer my questions later. How nice it was to live in a world filled with smart people! Even if I couldn’t count myself among the brainiacs, it didn’t matter since I could ask them about whatever I wanted to know. It went to show that having ties to smart people was more important than actually being smart.
I giggled proudly at this grand truth. Lloyd sighed down at me for some reason.
He collected himself and asked Dorothée, “Incidentally, what are the saints doing in this room?”
Dorothée glanced around the parlor before regarding Lloyd. “As we saints are bound by our mana, we limit ourselves to only using a certain amount per day. After occasions where we use up much of our mana, like expeditions, we refrain from using magic for three whole days. For that reason, we pursue non-magical means of refining ourselves.”
Like what? I wondered, blinking.
Lloyd seemed to understand and smiled. “Ah, I see. That saint reading by the window must be improving her knowledge of medicinal herbs, I take it?”
“That is correct,” Dorothée answered. “There are eighty-two varieties of medicinal herbs, and some look like common weeds or can only be found in specific locations, so we learn them by reading a field guide and comparing it to real specimens.”
A table near the sofas was laden with books and a basket of medicinal herbs. “They’re quite passionate, aren’t they?” Lloyd observed, but I ignored his admiration of the saints as something else caught my eye…
I met Charlotte’s eyes. She’d been staring at me restlessly.
Right. I was surprised before when she told me there were only eighty-two known kinds of medicinal herbs. There had been far more back when I was the Great Saint, but it seemed something had happened in the past three hundred years. Of course, varieties beyond the eighty-two still existed, but knowledge of them had been lost. They were seen as common weeds now. It was a real shame. In the past, we’d had about three or four hundred known varieties of medicinal herbs, but these folks knew of less than half that.
I tuned back into the conversation as Priscilla drew herself up to respond to Lloyd. “I’ve actually memorized every single medicinal herb in the field guides.”
“That’s incredible. Have you used all eighty-two varieties before?” Lloyd asked.
Priscilla hemmed and hawed, then, somewhat prickly, replied, “Well, of the eighty-two, around twenty are extremely difficult to obtain. Furthermore, of that twenty, five are incredibly rare, enough so that the field guides says one would be lucky to see even one in their lifetime.”
I glanced at Charlotte again. In the past, she’d asked for some uncommon medicinal herbs from Sutherland as a gift, and I brought back a few I thought she might like. Instead of thanks, I encountered shock, however, as I brought her things that were apparently all listed as super rare in her field guide.
I had brought back three medicinal herbs in total: a yellow snowdrop, a red sweetfruit (the actually sweet kind), and an ocean perilla. I only chose them because I thought an assortment of yellow, red, and green would be pretty, so I was surprised to learn of their rarity.
I clamped my mouth shut and studied my feet, thinking I should avoid saying something and unintentionally causing a scene, when a saint—likely irked by Priscilla’s haughty attitude—mockingly spoke up. “Oh, but they can’t be that rare. I mean, even a child like Charlotte easily found some of those supposedly super rare medicinal herbs.”
“Pardon?” Priscilla looked sharply at Charlotte, who jumped in surprise.
Charlotte floundered until a saint behind her spoke up on her behalf, a mocking lilt in her tone. “That’s right, Charlotte obtained a yellow snowdrop, a red sweetfruit, and an ocean perilla! Oho ho ho! I do believe the field guild lists all of them as among the most difficult to obtain, no?”
Ah, so Charlotte had shared them with everyone. Come to think of it, that made sense. It wasn’t like her to monopolize something so precious for herself.
I took in the saints of the royal castle as Priscilla glared furiously at their self-satisfied smirks. Meanwhile, Charlotte hung her head.