Byletta wasn’t surprised that Gail was taken aback. The existence of Targitte’s disease was a secret that the Kingdom of Naris and the Yahawelba Empire were both desperately trying to keep under wraps. In fact, that the man knew about it at all proved he must have been someone of decent standing. The disease was something only those close to the royal family were supposed to know about—a state secret.
Even Arnald appeared to have never heard of it before, but that was only natural, given he’d been in the south fighting a war. It was the fact that Count Swangan, the lord of these lands, hadn’t had enough of an interest in his neighbors to have an inkling of what she was talking about that Byletta found extremely regrettable. Concluding that she would have to bring him up to speed, Byletta launched into an explanation of what she knew.
“Targitte’s disease is named after a Yahawelba princess who married into Narisian royalty to ensure peace between the two nations. Its symptoms include fever, diarrhea, and bloody stools. In rare instances, the disease is also accompanied by certain neurological disorders, and if allowed to progress, the risk of death is high. It’s ravaging the Kingdom of Naris right now, but it’s usually endemic to the Yahawelba Empire.”
“That’s correct. The princess came to our country already infected and died there. People were told that she had been poisoned, but in reality, she was sick,” Gail managed to squeeze out.
His voice trembled, seemingly with anger. It appeared he’d been bottling up his feelings to the point that they’d become too much to bear. He didn’t come across as very old, but his appearance aged him somewhat, perhaps because of all the hardship he had endured.
“If the princess had died of any other illness so quickly after arriving in Naris,” Byletta continued, “I doubt the situation would have turned so sharply for the worse. It would have been put down to a simple series of unfortunate events. That things have escalated to a war shows how terrifying the disease truly is. It’s alarmingly easy to spread, as it can be caught from consuming contaminated food and drinking water. Given that, I assume the contagion grew from just inside the castle to the capital as well, and then to the rest of the towns in the kingdom?”
Gail nodded in affirmation. When he spoke next, his voice quivered.
“There’s no way to treat it. People just keel over one day and die. And it spreads like wildfire. It was ravaging the entire country before we even had a chance to do anything about it, but we couldn’t say that it was because of the princess. If people were told that the very marriage intended to cement peace between our two nations had brought disease with it, Naris would have been plunged into even more chaos. We had no choice but to keep even the name of the sickness a secret. The shameless Yahawelba Empire, however, started claiming that the princess had been poisoned.”
In the end, a marriage that had been meant to make peace had instead led the country straight into the quagmires of war.
“Yet it doesn’t spread within the Yahawelba Empire,” Byletta added.
“What do you mean? Didn’t you say that it was endemic there?” asked Gail.
“Yes, but since it is well-known in the region, people in Yahawelba are supplied with treatment before they can die or spread the disease. It isn’t considered a serious illness there. That’s why the people of Yahawelba believe their princess was poisoned. If a healthy young woman suddenly dies, what else could it be?”
“There’s a way to treat it?!”
Gail jumped up, pitching his body forward. He’d always believed Targitte’s disease was incurable, so he was still a bit skeptical, but he was also desperate for Byletta’s words to be true.
“There is. We also border the Yahawelba Empire, but have you ever heard of such a disease spreading here?”
“I’ve heard of people getting upset stomachs, but I’ve never heard of anyone dying,” the count said, inclining his head in thought.
“There’s something we and the Yahawelba Empire eat that the Kingdom of Naris does not. That’s the reason it never becomes serious here.”
“So…fish?” Gail asked, dumbstruck.
Byletta nodded.
Both the Gaihandar and Yahawelba Empires faced the sea, but the Kingdom of Naris was landlocked and mountainous. Perhaps they would eat seafood if they had a coastline, but fish weren’t readily available in the mountain-enclosed capital.
“There’s a sauce prevalent in Gaihandar made from a certain type of fish that helps provide immunity against the disease. The people of Naris rarely eat fish, so they are still vulnerable to contaminated grain. But as long as the grain hasn’t been contaminated, it’s perfectly safe.”
“How could that be…?”
Gail was shocked. Beside him, Count Swangan looked around the room quizzically.
“What are you getting at?”
“You left Bardu to handle things on his own for the first ten years, didn’t you?” Byletta pointed out. “He was probably stealing the grain to stock up on supplies so he could more readily provide aid to disaster-stricken areas. This region is already prone to abnormal levels of flooding, yet you sat back and did nothing. A crime is still a crime, but I think it was originally perpetrated out of desperation.”
Byletta glared at the count, then continued to speak.
“I came to that conclusion because the amounts taken in the beginning were so small compared to recent years. It’s only been in the last few harvests that the amount of disappearing grain has risen to unusual numbers. Since there’s no way to easily trade that much grain, they would have needed connections, just like in business. But there are also limits to the amount of trade a single person can afford to do. The amount of grain that was stolen far exceeded what a lone trading partner could feasibly purchase. The culprits probably saw that they could get away with the theft during the first few years and realized they could probably take more without being caught, and that’s when they started heavily raising the amount they stole.”
It had been twenty or more years since the count had visited his estate, yet the majority of the theft had occurred within the past three years. From that information, Byletta had concluded that Gail and the others must have become involved a year or two back. Ironically, the amount of grain stolen had peaked around the same time she’d forced Count Swangan to start going back to his estate again.