Emily gritted her teeth. Ciara got her there—it was all but impossible for a commoner to refuse a noble. What they really should have done was escape earlier, when Donquis, the housekeeper, and the butler had been at loggerheads. But she’d been so confused that she’d stuck around to hear the whole argument play out.
“Just a minute,” Astrid chimed in. “You said you want a duel. If Nina wins, we get to leave, right?”
“And who are you supposed to be? Some hack inventor?”
“You’re talking to an inventor from the Freja Kingdom,” Astrid said, flashing her inventor papers. Ciara promptly clasped her hands over her skirts and performed a flawless bow.
“What a pleasure to make the acquaintance of an inventor of such ability. In the highly implausible case that Nina wins our duel, you are welcome to leave.”
“Now see here—!” Donquis began, but Ciara cut him off.
“Hush now, master. Surely you don’t think that I might lose? I am a Lorsted maid.” The look she shot him was so ferocious that the marquess flinched back with a whimper. There was something seriously odd about this master-servant dynamic.
“If I win—I mean, obviously I will win—but in that case, Nina will become my master’s third wife or whatever it is he wants. But if she wants to be a maid here, she must first master the way of the Lorsted maids.”
“Hmm,” Astrid considered. “That seems fair enough. Nina accepts your challenge.”
“What?! Astrid!” Emily hissed.
“You are unbelievable,” Tien said hotly.
Astrid pulled the two of them close and whispered, “Whatever this maid duel turns out to be, do you seriously think Nina could lose?”
“Well, no...”
“Chi cannot imagine it...”
“Then our best bet is to get it over with quickly. The chance to make it like this noble’s interest in Nina never happened outweighs the risks.”
Emily groaned. “I mean, you’re not wrong...”
Tien growled a little.
Both were clearly unhappy about the plan, and rightly so. First they were dragged to this mansion and now Nina had been challenged to a duel, and none of them had gotten any say in the matter. To Astrid, however, the offer to let them walk away if Nina won the duel was too good to pass up. That was how selfish, tiresome and just plain annoying the privileged nobles could get.
“Erm, I’m sorry...” Nina said. “This is all my fault.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself for any of this,” Astrid told her. “And sorry about the duel. Will you accept the challenge? We’ll be cheering you on.”
“A-All right. I’ll do my best.”
Astrid turned to look over her shoulder at Ciara. “Before we seal the deal, I’d like to add one more condition for when Nina wins.”
“Why? There’s no point when I’m going to win, is there?”
“Ahh, so that’s how it is,” Astrid said knowingly. “The rules of this ‘maid duel’ are somehow rigged to make sure that Nina can’t win, right?”
“H-How could you even suggest such a thing?! On my honor as a Lorsted maid, I swear that I will not cheat against Vasiliace’s disciple. Our duel shall be open and above board.”
“I’ll take your word for it. My condition is nothing big. If you’ll accept it, I won’t ask for anything more.”
“Let’s hear it, then,” Ciara muttered.
Astrid turned to Donquis, then went down on one knee in a formal Frejan gesture of respect.
“My lord marquess,” she said, “I would beg a favor of you.”
“H-Huh...?”
Donquis was thrown for a moment. The high-class formality was one he knew well, but he hadn’t expected it from a woman he’d assumed was a commoner.
“I am compelled to ask that you keep everything you know about Nina under lock and key. If I may be frank...I am totally at a loss as to how you managed to ascertain her whereabouts. A few concerning incidents occur to me, but I thought we’d been relatively discreet.”
“Oh, that... I mean, I don’t have a problem with that. The other noble houses’ intelligence capabilities have nothing on mine, so if I don’t say anything they’ll be none the wiser.”
Beside the marquess, the butler puffed out his chest.
“You’re probably right that it’s better to keep it hidden,” Donquis went on. “What with the bounty Duke Werther has out for her, when I marry her—”
“A bounty?!” Emily, Astrid, and Tien all said at once. Three pairs of eyes turned to Nina.
“I-I don’t know what he’s talking about!” she said defensively. “I don’t even know who Duke Werther is!”
“I don’t buy it.”
“It does seem suspect.”
“Chi thinks so too.”
Unfortunately for Nina, none of them believed her.
“Oh, who cares about that?” Ciara said. “Nina, come along. We shall have our maid duel at the mansion. You too, master.”
“R-Right...” The marquess hesitated. “Um, you are going to win, right?”
“Master,” Ciara snapped, glaring at him again.
“Mrm...”
Marquess Donquis still didn’t seem convinced, but he set off back to the mansion at Ciara’s heels. The butler and the gaggle of maids followed in their wake.
“We’d better go too, I guess,” Emily said.
“Yeah. Let’s just hope this ‘duel’ wraps up quickly.”
“Come on, Nina,” Tien said. “Nina?”
“Y-Yes, coming!”
Nina had just noticed the frostiness in the other maids’ eyes. She’d have understood had it been her they turned it at—her sudden arrival at the mansion spelled nothing but trouble. But they weren’t looking at her.
Their eyes were on Ciara.
✦ ✦ ✦
“This duel shall test you on the most basic of basic maid work, the absolute lowest rung of the ladder—the scullery!”
Given the size of the mansion, it followed that the kitchen and scullery were just as vast. There were great buckets brimming with water, and holes in the floor around the sinks that presumably connected to a drainage system. Of those, there were two identical setups.
Ciara quickly began to rattle off an explanation.
“Here we have twenty-five platters, forty plates, six sets of cutlery, and a full array of cooking utensils. All are made from different materials, and...”
Different materials required specific detergents and washing methods. Ciara’s “open and above board” duel meant ensuring Nina had accurate information before they began.
Large as the scullery was, between Ciara, Nina, and their audience—Emily, Astrid, Tien, Marquess Donquis (he’d never set foot in the scullery in his life until now and kept muttering things like “This place stinks”), and all the maids—there wasn’t room to swing a cat.
The butler, incidentally, had been pushed out of the throng of spectators. He was now explaining the situation to the manservants who’d come down to see what the commotion was about. The young man who’d first come to find Nina was among them. He seemed to have come just to gawk.
“So there you have it,” Ciara said. “Any questions?”
“No, thank you,” Nina replied.
“Really? You remembered all that after only hearing it once?”
“Of course. Any maid could do the same.”
There was an outbreak of whispering among the maids. Clearly they had other ideas about what “any maid” could do.
“You there,” Ciara said, pointing at another maid old enough to be her mother. “Give the signal to begin.”
“M-Me, ma’am?”
Nina and Ciara took their places in front of their sinks. The piles of dishes at each were unmistakably identical, as were the various detergents.
But for some reason, Nina’s gaze was fixed on the hole in the sink that led to the drain.
“A-All right then, with your leave, ma’am,” the older maid said. “I’ll start you off. If both of you would take your places...”
Emily noticed the other maids looking at Nina with pitying expressions.
Huh. They think Nina’s gonna lose, do they?
Marquess Donquis fidgeted restlessly. While he had total faith that Ciara would win, he was afraid that Nina might cry when she lost.
Emily, Astrid, and Tien, meanwhile, weren’t worried in the slightest. This was Nina, after all. She couldn’t lose.
“Let the dishwashing duel commence!” cried the older maid.
Nina and Ciara both sprang into action.
The spectacle that followed was like nothing any of the onlookers could have imagined.