Verifying the Galle Gold Leaf
AS I WAS GETTING READY to head back with the others after the battle, the knights of the First Knight Brigade came up to me and bowed.
“Princess Serafina, we’re very grateful for your help!!”
“Huh?”
They seemed to be confused, so I’d need to set things straight.
“Um, sorry, but I wasn’t the one who was healing you, that was the saints over there.”
I corrected their misunderstanding, since I figured the knights were so preoccupied with fighting the monsters that they didn’t realize who’d healed them. However, Lukbar and the other members of the First Knight Brigade deeply bowed before me once more.
“We are aware of that,” he said. “Thank you very much!!”
With that, the group of knights turned around and headed back to where my brothers were, leaving me confused.
“Why would they thank me?” I mumbled to myself. “If it’s not for the healing magic, is it for the enhancement magic I cast on them at the start of the battle? They’re very polite…”
The knights around me heard my murmurs and sighed overdramatically.
“You don’t get what it’s like to be a knight, Princess!”
“In battle, we strive to be as strong as possible, both to safeguard our own lives and to protect others. They were expressing their gratitude for your role in making that strength possible.”
They were right. I wasn’t a knight. I nodded, acknowledging that it would be hard for me to understand how they felt.
My brothers said they would return home first with their saints and the members of the First Knight Brigade. After seeing them off, and making sure they were out of earshot, Commander Wezen’s expression twisted into a smirk.
“The princes seem slightly more befitting of their titles now. Looks like the extreme methods did the trick,” he chortled as he lightly rapped Sirius on the shoulder. “And with one hundred bottles of the finest wine thrown in, I’d say I’ve earned more than my fair share. I’m truly content.”
Sirius silently cast a frosty glare at Commander Wezen. It looked like the commander had come out on top in their wager about who could defeat more fenrirs.
“Wow! It’s amazing that Commander Wezen beat you, Sirius!” I said, surprised.
“This happens all the time. Despite his appearance, Commander Wezen can be quite childish. Once he makes a bet, he does everything in his power to emerge victorious,” one of the knights murmured in my ear.
“Vice-Commander Sirius always keeps the full picture in mind, so he can stay in control of everything even when he’s competing. He assists the princes, gives us orders, comes to your aid, and so on.”
“Of course, Commander Wezen can also see the big picture, but when he’s in a competition, he hands the reins over to the vice-commander and goes all in to win the bet. The vice-commander believes he can beat the commander while also managing everything, so although he takes charge in many ways, he always happens to fall just short.”
Hmm, so that’s how it was. If you were going to sort them into different categories, you’d probably put Father and Commander Wezen in the same group, and Sirius all alone in another.
After hearing yet another example about just how responsible and hardworking Sirius was, I ran over to him.
“Sirius! Would you mind leaning over? I want to see your chest.” I couldn’t help but ask about the thing that had been bothering me for a while.
Sirius obliged and lowered himself to a position where I could carefully examine his chest. He’d been clawed by a fenrir during the fight but had told me that some kind of protective spell had been triggered, allowing him to remain unharmed. I didn’t cast any healing magic since there was no visible injury, but I wondered what was really going on.
I took a peek under his clothes. His uniform and the undershirt below were torn to shreds, but I couldn’t see a single scratch on his body.
“Whatever could be going on?” I mused, before being struck by an epiphany. “I know! Scheat, is this what you meant by ‘muscle reigns supreme’?”
I thought I’d stumbled onto a revelation, but the knights emphatically shook their heads and chorused a resounding “No!!” Looks like they were all on the same page, at least.
Sirius wordlessly reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulled out a handkerchief that I recognized.
“Oh!” I gasped, “That’s…”
As he spread it open, strangely enough, not a single thread was frayed.
“Why is the handkerchief perfectly fine when your breast pocket got all ripped up?” I wondered as the knights who were standing behind us voiced their own curiosities.
“For a handkerchief belonging to the vice-commander of the renowned knights’ order, I must say it is certainly unusual.”
“Check out the embroidery of an obese bear with broken bones. That’s certainly a unique choice. The threads are all also tangled up into bulges in some parts. I dare say that even something handmade by a child would be better quality than this.”
“M-made by a child, you say? Uh, p-perhaps this is your handiwork, Princess? A-aren’t you studying high-level embroidery under one of the best tutors in the country?!”
Why were they more concerned with the handkerchief’s embroidery rather than the fact that it didn’t get torn to shreds like Sirius’s shirt? My knights sure weren’t an inquisitive bunch.
I shot the knights a pointed look, feeling a little miffed by how much they’d criticized my work.
“Funny thing, that ‘best tutor in the country’ you mentioned was full of praise for my masterpiece! And that’s not an obese bear—it’s Sirius, the greatest knight of all! I poured all my hopes and dreams into this!!”
“Whaaaat?!”
“B-but look at how bloated the bear—er, Vice-Commander Sirius’s stomach is!”
“Is he the type who can pull off hiding it under his clothes?” The knights stared at Sirius’s belly in disbelief, but of course that wasn’t the case.
Sirius didn’t respond to the knights’ fussing, squinting a little as though he were deep in thought, “Rare magical swords and shields do exist, but they’re incredibly scarce. Most of them are stored in the royal treasure chamber, so few people know of them. However, those are all ancient items. The real question is whether it’s plausible to think that this handkerchief contains similar magic.”
His conclusion seemed incredibly overdramatic to me.