08-06 To Celuroa Kingdom
The next day, 6th of April.
“…”
“…”
Among them was the doll Non Jin had given her a while ago.
(So she left behind you too.)
The dagger was also left behind. Looking at it Jin felt a little disappointed.
Jin worried himself about why she had done that, as she must’ve known its usefulness. He had wished she had at least kept hold of this. That’s why Jin picked up the ring and put it in his pocket.
“What, Reinhardt, you were still around.”
“We were just about to leave.”
Fritz said, surveyed the room, then turned to speak to the butler and the guard.
Fritz said and hit Non who was on top of the night table with his hand, making her fall.
Before she hit the floor, Jin caught her. Fritz watched it from the corner of his eyes and,
He snorted disdainfully and,
He said to Reinhardt, back-to-back with him.
With just a short reply, Reinhardt patted Jin’s shoulder and he left the place.
The butler Adberg and guard Herman lonesomely watched the two leave.
The same day at ten in the morning. Jin and Reinhardt rode their carriages and entered Celuroa Kingdom.
The two spoke little words. Even so, they seemed to be enduring Elsa’s disappearance.
At two in the afternoon they arrived in the provincial city of Tellurs where they would spend the night.
In the back of Tellurs flowed a large river called Torres, and on the other side of it was the capital city Esaia.
“Reinhardt-sama, I hear that there is one vacant reservation in three days.”
“Is that so, well, no way around it. You reserved lodgings, right?”
“Yes, there is an adequate hotel with vacancies.”
“Taking the stairs to the sixth floor seems really tiresome.”
“For its size, Celuroa Kingdom has relatively few people. That’s why golems are used in all sorts of places.”
It was Jin’s first time experiencing sitting on a golem’s arms being carried up some stairs. The invisibly following Reiko had a somewhat annoyed expression but of course it wasn’t seen.
Being on the sixth floor meant that they could see the faraway river Torres from above the rooftops. Dozens of ferries were going back and forth. But all of them were small boats.
Reinhardt caught the words Jin muttered to no one in particular.
Hearing that Jin wondered if the situation was similar to Ooi River’s in the Edo Period. There even boats had been forbidden, and Jin remembered once seeing a scene in a period drama where travellers were carried across the river by people.
The rooms reserved this time were four adjoined rooms. One was assigned for Reinhardt, and one for Jin. One for male servants like Claude, and the last one for female servants.
Right now, Jin and Reinhardt were chatting in Reinhardt’s room.
“Yeah. Because there’s no other route than this.”
There was one more, a narrow road in the moountains, but it seems that because beasts and burglars appeared frequently only armed troops used used it. There didn’t seem to be settlements that could provide supplies either.
From Reinhardt’s explanation Jin thought that the country appeared rather complicated.
“Because I’m a diplomat and we’re going to approach Esaia, there’lll be problems going through the ramparts until the fourth one. What’re we going to?”
No thanks to difficult things, Jin said to Reinhardt. Reinhardt seemed to be of the same opinion and,
He brought the topic to an end.
“The proper Esaia is inside the fifth rampart.”
“The space between the fifth and fourth ones is wide, and there’s a town there. Prosperous commoners live there. It could be said that for all the people except the nobles, that’s where Esaia is.”
“Well, that’s the case. So, the space between the fourth and third ones, that’s even wider. However, because that place is meant for holding back the enemy when the time comes, military drills and such are held there, it’s not a place with a very pleasant atmosphere.”
“Ah, so that’s why the highway is between the third and second ramparts.”
“That’s right. Because anyone can travel between the second and first ones, I hear the public order isn’t good. But that doesn’t mean I’ve witnessed it myself, though.”
That evening’s meal was lonelier than usual. Just by having no Elsa, the mood changed this much, Jin thought.
Suddenly Jin spoke out by accident.
Reinhardt threw back at him, apparently thinking about the same thing as Jin.
“Reinhardt, can I ask you something?”
“Mh-hm, what is it?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
He asked because the brother had been too different from the image he had got in the town of Delead from the talk with Elsa about her playing with her brothers when she was a child.
“Ah, I see.”
“Fritz changed four years ago. It was the period after the previous king of Celuroa Kingdom had died, and the current king who succeeded him hadn’t yet solidifed the foundation of his government.”
“During the time he was a second lieutenant, and the enemy…Celuroa Kingdom’s national defence army took him as a prisoner of war. Eventually he was extricated in a prisoner exchange, but ever since then he’s been a different person.”
“Until then he had been a good elder brother who doted on Elsa, though.”
The kind elder brother whom he had called a muscle-brain and made Elsa laugh was completely changed. It must’ve surely come like a bolt out of the blue.
Jin once more thought about what Elsa’s happiness could be.
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