“Since you came under the pretext of cultural exchange, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to experience firsthand how the knights of Shertian operate. Our Northern knights have a system of grueling drills—no, I mean, training—and a merit-based evaluation system that pays no heed to social status, so I’m sure it will prove a valuable experience for you.”
Despite Aily’s eloquent explanation, Ian couldn’t quite follow where the conversation was going. From what he had gathered so far, he was a prince of an enemy nation, so why were they suddenly putting him in the knights? Ed, standing beside him, raised his eyebrows as though this was the first he had heard of it as well.
“It is an order from His Grace, the Grand Duke.”
Yet that single sentence seemed to settle every question. Ed’s expression immediately returned to its usual benevolent calm. Sensing that the matter was about to be decided without him, Ian opened his mouth.
He wanted to ask what kind of nonsense this was, but all that escaped him was a breath of air.
Ah, how irritating.
“Is this troublesome for you?”
As though she had read the bewilderment on Ian’s face, Aily tilted her head and asked. He hadn’t noticed at first, what with all the blood covering her, but she was quite beautiful, with a slender jaw and striking eyes.
It was such an obvious question that Ian simply nodded.
Aily closed her mouth and remained silent for a moment.
“Then you shouldn’t have done anything to draw attention to yourself.”
The faint, obligatory smile on her face vanished in an instant.
One step.
Aily moved a little closer, lowered her head, and spoke quickly in a flat monotone. Though her voice was quiet, Ian had no trouble hearing her.
He blinked.
A few seconds of silence followed.
A moment later, Aily let out a small sigh. Her expression returned to normal as she continued.
“I have been briefed on everything that has happened since you entered the Grand Duke’s domain. From your exhibition of self-harm, to grabbing His Grace the Grand Duke by the collar, and even drawing a knife during the procession.”
The accounts were vaguely similar to what had actually happened, yet somehow missed the point entirely.
I didn’t grab him by the collar.
He had wondered what she meant by an ‘exhibition of self-harm,’ and apparently she was referring to the time he had slit his wrist and shown it to the soldiers on the day he first met Kyle.
“Such behavior would be unthinkable from the royalty of any nation. Still, considering that you were most likely dragged to Shertian against your will, I can understand it. However, Lord Ian, you should be aware that what you are currently enjoying is far more than you deserve. You ought to know that much, considering I stopped by the dungeons first.”
That had been Ian’s first thought as well once he understood his situation.
His meek reaction, almost as though he agreed with her, seemed to catch Aily off guard. She paused, her gaze fixed on him.
She had expected him either to tremble with suppressed rage or slap her across the face for her insolence.
“That is enough.”
Ed, who had been standing silently beside them, finally spoke, apparently deciding that it was time to intervene.
Aily, however, did not so much as twitch an eyebrow at the old butler’s words. She simply continued saying what she had intended to say.
After spending months infiltrating a den of scum, she had finally returned, only to find the entire mansion in an uproar because of this man.
“Judging from what I’ve seen, no one seems willing to say anything to your face. They only whisper behind your back. So I will be the one to draw the sword. Rox is an enemy of Shertian, and you, Lord Ian, are a hostage from that enemy nation.”
“……”
“Everyone here knows that as long as you are not killed, it does not matter what happens to you.”
Ian knew that now, too.
The condition that “he must not be killed” was merely another way of saying that “anything was permitted as long as he remained alive.”
Taking his silence as confirmation, Aily swept her gaze around the room.
An expensive chandelier.
Thick bedding beyond anything an ordinary commoner could dream of.
A fireplace piled high with firewood.
“And yet you’ve been given a room this spacious. Naturally, people are going to talk. No one would dare voice their complaints to His Grace the Grand Duke, so all of that resentment will be directed at you instead, Lord Ian.”
As long as the Grand Duke’s favor remained upon him, Ian would continue to enjoy lavish treatment.
But the moment that favor disappeared, it would be an entirely different story.
Logan Higher was a man more fickle than the weather in Syuyen.
Lightning could strike from a clear sky, and what began as a light drizzle could turn into a monsoon in the blink of an eye.
Even when other people’s lives hung in the balance.
“You must decide for yourself. Will you spend the rest of your life shut away in this room like an imbecile, incapable of doing anything? Or will you take this opportunity to step outside and find some way to live a proper life?”
That was all Aily could say.
After all, even she could not begin to fathom the Grand Duke’s true intentions.
She had returned carrying hard-won information on the flow of funds from the Luhton Mine, only for him to suddenly ask,
“How about putting that man in the knights?”
It was completely unlike him.
Normally, he listened to reports with an expression of deathly boredom.
She had no idea what had piqued his interest this time, but Aily was the sort of person who would do anything her master asked of her.
Not out of respect.
Not out of loyalty.
It was simply her job.
If she was told to do something, she did it.
Fortunately, the prince seemed to understand what she was saying and had fallen into thought. The mere fact that he had not reacted negatively at once was already a success.
Of course, it’ll be even more of a hell over there.
The fact that the knights were not bound by social status meant that their ranks included men born as commoners and even slaves.
People whose manners might as well have been boiled away in a stew, and whose resentment toward the nobility ran frighteningly deep.
And on top of that, Ian was from Rox.
Aily didn’t even need to see the future to imagine how things would go.
She was certain that this pale, delicate little prince wouldn’t last a week.
It would be a miracle if he didn’t end up burying his face in his pillow and weeping.
She would have wagered three months’ salary on it.
“……”
And exactly one week later.
Aily found herself watching those three months of salary vanish into thin air.
Thump.
Ian stared at the foul-smelling heap of clothes that had just been dumped in front of him and finally became certain of a suspicion that had been growing in the back of his mind.
It seems I chose the path of suffering, not survival.
As he stood there gazing down at the pile, another heap of laundry landed beside the first, as though to inform him that they were nowhere near finished.
He had expected something like this.
He simply hadn’t expected it to take this particular form.
A dry laugh escaped him.
But when a third pile began to form, Ian realized this was hardly the time to laugh.
Seeing him make no move to begin, Fred dusted off his hands and clicked his tongue, wearing an expression that practically screamed, I knew it.
“Hey, are you just going to stand there staring? If you’ve joined the knights, you start with the laundry.”
Anyone could tell it was a rule they had invented on the spot.
What in the world did being a knight have to do with doing laundry?
But no one corrected him.
There was an unspoken understanding among them all: Ian was not welcome here.
The knights? Out of nowhere?
Fred hadn’t liked a single thing about the situation from the very beginning.
He had spent the entire morning ranting about how absurd the whole idea was.
Then, a short while later, he saw Ian following Aily into the training grounds and immediately changed his mind.
Ian wasn’t particularly short, but his lean frame and pale complexion gave him a distinctly frail appearance.
The men, most of whom had only ever seen Ian from a distance, all arrived at the same thought now that they could see him up close.
This is supposed to be a knight? I guess in Rox, they put swords into hands as delicate as those.
He looked far better suited to embroidery.
He was the very image of a sheltered nobleman—the sort who belonged in a library turning the pages of a book or enjoying tea in a garden.
The men who had participated in the procession had said some ridiculous things about him, but Fred and most of the others had dismissed their stories with a scoff.
Killing three men with his wrists bound?
He looked more likely to piss himself at the sight of a corpse.
From that stubbornly expressionless face, as though he didn’t understand his place, to those unnecessarily pretty features, Fred couldn’t find a single thing about him that he liked.
Getting rid of a brat like this will be a piece of cake.
Who cared if bringing Ian here had been the Grand Duke’s order?
If Ian himself declared that he couldn’t handle it and shut himself away in his room, what could anyone possibly do about it?
With considerable experience in matters like these, Fred gave a confident shrug and addressed Ian again.
“You’d better not expect anyone to treat you like a prince here. Rank among us is determined strictly by skill. And when you’re a rookie, well—you do the laundry.”
“That’s right. Even if he starts now, there’s no way he’ll finish all of that before evening.”
Daniel, who was wiping down his sword with a cloth, chimed in from the side.
The amount really was enormous.
Far too much for one person to finish before evening.
Considering how hard they trained—enough to sweat constantly even in weather this cold—it was hardly difficult for the knights to produce mountains of dirty laundry.
The stench rolling off the heap was offensive even to Fred, who was accustomed to such surroundings.
Do these bastards train with their stink, too?
It was even worse because everyone had apparently gathered up every piece of clothing they had been wearing.
Ian, however, merely stared at the mountain of clothes with an utterly unreadable expression.
For some reason, that irritated Fred even more.
His stomach twisted, and he stepped closer, one corner of his mouth twitching.
“Ah. Do I need to teach you what laundry is first? Someone as noble as you has probably never done it yourself.”
The mockery in his voice was impossible to miss.
Only then did Ian lift his gaze from the floor.
Fred stopped just within arm’s reach and continued in an exaggerated tone, like a man patiently explaining something to a half-wit.
“Laundry is, well... washing clothes. With your hands. Understand?”
Is there anyone who doesn’t know that?
Ian had merely been wondering whether this world had anything resembling detergent.
He gave Fred a look one might reserve for the village idiot.
But Fred wasn’t finished.
He raised a hand and pressed down hard on Ian’s shoulder as he continued.
“You put them in the water, then you scrub... and scrub... until all the grime comes out.”
With every emphasized word, his fingers dug harder into Ian’s shoulder.
Hard enough to hurt.
Deliberately so.
Apparently, Fred intended to establish dominance from the very beginning.
Unfortunately for him, situations like this were nothing unusual to Ian.
This sort of thing didn’t even make him angry...
It simply failed to stir much of anything in him at all.
Ian casually knocked Fred’s fingers away with the back of his hand and bent down.
The curly-haired man had been right about one thing.
Even if Ian started now, there was no way he would finish all of this before evening.
Fred had already opened his mouth, ready to object to having his hand brushed aside so casually.
Then he saw Ian gather an armful of clothes into his arms.
For a moment, Fred was left completely speechless.