As time passed after my return from the marquis’s estate, the way people looked at me began to change. Word of what had happened there had spread, and accounts of my part in it reached people after being exaggerated and distorted along the way. Some thought I was a once-in-a-lifetime lucky bastard. Others believed I was a sinister schemer with dozens of cunning snakes coiled up in my head. Most, of course, heard a deliberately downplayed version: I was an illegitimate son who had gotten lucky and done more than anyone expected of a child my age.

Either way, my standing in the mansion was much better than before I went to the marquis’s estate. But that wasn’t entirely good. Just as the knights and officials had begun taking notice of me, the Duchess had begun watching me too. She must have her own sources and would have heard what happened at the marquis’s estate. It was only natural that she’d be wary of me.

'It can’t be natural! What if I get on her bad side and end up like I did with the second Duchess?'

How many times had that woman gotten me killed? Just thinking about it was enough to give me a complex. Things I knew nothing about kept happening, and I still hadn’t decided how I would live in the future. I had to be careful not to die.

While I spent my days watching out for those changed attitudes, Juan came to see me.

“Mr. Juan is here. Shall I let him in?”

Flora had left him waiting outside the door before coming in to ask me.

'She could just let him in...'

Flora didn’t much like Juan. Like my mother and most of the servants, she believed I’d been lucky to earn credit for what I did at the marquis’s estate. Mother had given me a long scolding when she heard about it, and Flora had sulked for ages. I knew they were only worried about me, so I put up with the discomfort. They’d both gotten over it now, but Flora still disliked Juan because of it. What’s more, after his mother’s health improved thanks to the money I’d given him, Juan had taken to calling himself my subordinate. That only made Flora more peevish whenever he visited.

Only after I told her to let him in could Juan enter. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, perhaps because he was off duty. As Flora passed him, she gave a quiet snort, trying to keep me from hearing it. But since my ears had grown far sharper after my real combat experience at the marquis’s estate, I heard it clearly.

“I’m sorry about Flora.”

“It’s all right. She’s only worried about you, young master.”

He gave a wry smile and shook his head.

“Anyway, what brings you here?”

Juan wasn’t the sort to come uninvited without a reason.

“A mercenary called the Firebird Hunter has arrived.”

I sprang to my feet. The person I’d been waiting for was here. I left the mansion with Juan.

Once again, I felt how much my position had changed since visiting the marquis’s estate. Until then, leaving the mansion hadn’t been easy. Illegitimate son or not, I was still the Duke’s child, and young enough to need someone to protect me when I went out. But my status as an illegitimate son made it difficult to ask anyone other than my own people or my mother’s maids to do that. Since my return, though, I hadn’t needed to ask. I had Juan with me, but no soldiers stopped us from going out like this, and no one expressed concern.

Beyond the broad front grounds and the main gate lay a district of fine homes. The Duke’s mansion stood in the north of the city, with the wealthy residential quarter spreading out below it. The nobles who served him and lived in the city, along with senior officials, knights, and influential merchants, made their homes there. It was where the city’s uppermost class lived. The streets were clean, and though the buildings couldn’t compare to the Duke’s mansion, they were large and splendid.

After walking for some time, we reached the central square. To the east lay a temple and ordinary residential districts; to the west, the market, workshops, and merchant guilds; and to the south, Mercenary Street and the neighborhoods where the lower classes lived. I headed south. I’d never been this way before, but I’d gained enough experience in the marquis’s domain that I wasn’t particularly worried.

“It’s quite different from what I expected...”

“Ha ha. They may all be mercenaries, but every domain has its own atmosphere.”

Juan laughed and explained when he saw me looking down the street with a dubious expression. Mercenary Street in our domain was noisy and dirty, much like the one in the marquis’s domain. Unlike that street, though, this one felt a little restrained. Perhaps because the sun hadn’t set yet, I saw hardly anyone drinking and carousing, and no one was fighting. People were simply busy going about their business, alone or in groups.

“A bit more austere than the one at the marquis’s estate, isn’t it? Our domain keeps a tighter rein on mercenaries than most. His Grace takes safety seriously and doesn’t turn a blind eye to their crimes or misconduct.”

An explanation of the atmosphere had somehow turned into unexpected praise for the Duke. He really was good at his job. Whether I was inside the mansion or out, I heard praise for him everywhere. If I’d been an ordinary resident of the domain instead of his illegitimate son, perhaps I’d be singing his praises too. But I couldn’t see things the way they did.

Though it was a little different from Mercenary Street in the marquis’s domain, it still looked lively. We passed through it and stopped before an inn.

<Red Rose Mercenary Inn>

The name seemed utterly unsuited to an inn for mercenaries, but the place looked so neat that it suited it in its own way.

“It’s the most expensive inn on this street,” Juan said. “Probably the most expensive in the city apart from the inns up north.”

Once again, the mercenary who had asked me to call her the Firebird Hunter had chosen the best inn on Mercenary Street. She hadn’t joined a company and certainly seemed to travel alone. I couldn’t understand how she could afford to stay at such good inns every time. Perhaps she was from a wealthy family, or perhaps she’d struck it rich working as a mercenary. Could the way she’d become rich have something to do with the sword bearing that emblem?

With that thought, I went inside. The first-floor dining room looked quiet. She sat among tables that were mostly empty.

“Over here! You’re early.”

She waved at me. Juan and I approached her table. Seeing him behind me, she asked, “Who’s that with you?”

She might not have asked if he’d been wearing his usual uniform, but in plain clothes Juan looked like an ordinary, solidly built commoner.

“This is Juan. He’s a soldier escorting me today.”

“Escorting you?”

She looked puzzled, and Juan shook his head with a wry smile.

“I serve the young master. I’m not really escorting him today; I just showed him the way here.”

Only then did she nod. “An escort in name only. Something like that?”

Not quite, but she wasn’t far off. I climbed onto the chair across from her. When was I going to grow taller? My feet still barely reached the floor when I sat down.

“You took longer than I expected. I thought you weren’t coming.”

I’d expected her to arrive a few days after me, but she was months late.

“I finished getting things in order quickly enough, but something got complicated. It took me a while to sort it out.”

Something got complicated... I didn’t like the sound of that. But she said she’d sorted it out, so I had to focus on the matter at hand.

“Now that I’ve come all this way, will you tell me?”

She got straight to the point before we’d even finished greeting each other. She was plainly impatient. I glanced around. The room was quiet, but it wasn’t empty.

“Can we talk about it here?”

She looked uncomfortable too. “No, that would be difficult... And I’d rather not have too many people hear...”

She said it while looking at Juan, who stood behind me. He still hadn’t taken a seat. I liked that. He seemed to have settled firmly on his place. Before I could answer, Juan spoke up.

“Please talk in your room. I’ll wait here.”

He was quick on the uptake, as always. If only other people, especially the knights, were as perceptive. Leaving Juan downstairs, she and I went up.

Her room toward the back of the second floor was remarkably large and comfortable-looking. It might as well have been the inn’s suite.

“Tell me, quick! How did you know?”

The moment we entered, her eyes lit up and she rushed right up to me. Looked at another way, a woman and a man were alone in a room, and the woman had pressed herself close to the man. But no one who saw us would have gotten the wrong idea. If anything, having a woman much taller than me suddenly charge at me was a little frightening.

“C-could we sit down and talk?”

I didn’t need to act; my voice came out shaky on its own. She looked embarrassed and stepped back. Once I’d caught my breath, we sat across from each other at the table in the middle of the room. She seemed a little restless, but she didn’t press me again.

Hmm. What to do? Watching her, I hesitated. Should I take her to the tomb, or would it be better to deceive her or forcibly take her sword and check it alone? But even on second thought, the latter wasn’t an option. Taking the sword by force—or killing her for it—was impossible on my own, and getting someone else’s help would only mean letting more people in on it. Besides, there was no guarantee that showing up with just the sword would make things go as I expected. Secretly extracting information from her would be difficult too. In the end, if I wanted to investigate the tomb, taking her with me was best.

But that had its own problems. Could I trust her? She’d given me plenty of reasons to think I could so far, but there was no guarantee she’d behave the same way inside the tomb, or if we found treasure. And finding treasure would present another problem: I needed to think in advance about how we would divide it, and what to do if we found something that couldn’t be divided. With that in mind, I took a stack of paper from inside my clothes.

“What’s that?”

Instead of answering her, I began with what I had to tell her.

“The emblem engraved on your sword—the bird taking flight. I saw it in a tomb.”

“Really? Are you sure it was a tomb?”

She forgot her first question and immediately asked another.

“Yes. There was an empty coffin inside.”

“That’s it! That’s the place I’ve been looking for! Where is it?”

She leaned forward as though she might devour me. She was nothing like the woman I’d seen before. This mattered to her even more than I’d thought. Which made what I was about to do all the more important.

“Before I tell you where it is...”

I set the blank sheets on the table, then took out the ink and quill I’d brought from the mansion and placed them beside the paper. She stared at the things I’d laid out, bewildered.

“Let’s draw up a contract.”

I picked up the pen and wrote a title on the paper.

<Contract for the Exploration of a Tomb>

Then I turned the sheet around and placed it before her.

“Promises concerning each other’s safety, how we’ll divide anything we find in the tomb, sharing information... Let’s discuss it all in detail and write it down so we don’t run into problems. We still have plenty of time before nightfall, and if that isn’t enough, there’s tomorrow and the day after.”

I smiled at the Firebird Hunter as she stared at the contract in disbelief. She couldn’t have expected me to bring one out, so I understood why she looked as though I’d dealt her a heavy blow. But I intended to do this properly. I wasn’t the one in a hurry, and the more carefully we drew up the contract, the more I stood to gain.