"One misjudges without seeing the ground firsthand. I'm coming with you."
Lucas's voice caught Rosalind's back just as she was stepping out of the office door. It was early afternoon, three days after she had signed the contract.
Rosalind turned and tilted her head ever so slightly.
"Your Grace. Two clerks will be quite sufficient for an inspection. There is no need for you to spare your time on—"
"One misjudges without seeing the ground firsthand."
The second time, the words were exactly the same as the first.
Rosalind thought for precisely three seconds, then nodded.
"I accept this with gratitude."
Lately, every time those words left her mouth, they somehow carried a different weight.
Respect the priority of a direct work order. This, too, is part of labor management.
Inside her, Ritsuko Tanaka's voice was translating without being asked.
The Grand Duchy's main commercial district bustled in an orderly fashion beneath the afternoon sun.
Stalls lined both sides of the cobblestones at even intervals. Spices, cloth, baked sweets, fruit. Vendors' calls mingled with customers haggling. Yet nowhere was anyone shouting at anyone. The sound of a market that actually worked, Rosalind thought.
She walked the street, eyeing the traffic along the trade route. Lucas followed half a step behind, all but silent.
Rosalind's gaze went to the unloading of tariffed goods, the lanes for cargo wagons, the merchant guild's guardhouse—an occupational hazard. But at the edge of her vision, something unrelated snagged her attention.
White, round sweets, three to a skewer.
Rosalind stopped walking.
...Dumplings.
She did not say it aloud.
They looked like the sweets Ritsuko Tanaka had seen again and again beside the register at the convenience store on her way home on the last train, and had gone home again and again without buying. She would think, I'll buy some tomorrow morning, but she always went in to work at an hour when stopping anywhere was out of the question, and so, in the end, she had never bought them in ten years.
Expressionless, Rosalind approached the stall.
"Two skewers, if you please."
"Coming right up, thank you kindly!"
A stout middle-aged proprietress handed over two skewers wrapped in oiled paper. Rosalind passed her a coin and held one out to Lucas, half a step behind.
"These were a favorite of mine in my past li—"
She got that far, then cleared her throat.
"No, it was simply a whim. I do hope they suit your palate."
Lucas let a single beat pass before he took the skewer.
Then he took a bite.
"...Not bad."
A short reply, as usual.
Rosalind nodded—"I see"—and brought her own skewer to her mouth.
Rosalind did not know.
That the Grand Duke of this country almost never touched sweets in private. That for the past seven years, the refreshments the clerks left on his desk had been nothing but savory things.
Not knowing, she went right on to her second bite.
"Oh my, dear customer."
The proprietress leaned in for a closer look at Rosalind's face.
"Your color's not looking too good, you know. You've got to eat properly too, madam. Now, sir, buy your wife one more skewer, won't you?"
Another skewer onto the oiled paper.
The proprietress's gaze was on the man half a step behind Rosalind.
—The beat for a correction never came.
The Grand Duke, who ought to have denied it before Rosalind could, held his skewer and said nothing, to the proprietress or to Rosalind. Nor did he lower his eyes.
Rosalind shook her head reflexively.
"Oh, no, I'm not his wife. I am—"
She had gotten that far when something moved at the corner of her vision.
She thought Lucas's shoulders, half a step behind her, had shaken ever so slightly.
By the time Rosalind turned to look, there was only his usual expressionless profile.
"...I am Rosalind Abel, Economic Advisor. Thank you for your kindness."
"Oh dear, how rude of me, you're an official! Well then, you eat properly too, Miss Official. Working too hard's no good, you know."
—Working too hard's no good, you know.
In twenty-eight years of life, Ritsuko Tanaka had never once heard those words from a single soul.
Rosalind accepted the oiled paper and gave a light bow.
Lucas silently brought the last dumpling on his skewer to his mouth.
On the way back, Rosalind's mind was already working somewhere else.
This trade route. As I thought, the design that routes it through the homeland is outdated. I can have a revision proposal ready by next week.
Her eyes took in barely half of the evening streets flowing past the carriage window.
Only, in the oiled-paper bundle on her lap, the one extra skewer remained untouched.
"Your Grace. May I have copies of the passage records from that guardhouse sent over later?"
"Granted."
"Thank you."
Lucas was looking out the window.
For just an instant, his gaze dropped to the oiled paper on Rosalind's lap. Then it went back outside.
Rosalind did not notice.
While Rosalind went in through the office doorway to sort her papers, Secretary Oswald and a young clerk were speaking in low voices at the corner of the corridor.
"...Secretary Oswald."
"What."
"Um, His Grace going along on an inspection of his own accord—"
"First time in seven years."
"First time in seven years."
"Be quiet and write your numbers. You imagined it."
"...But—"
"But what?"
"At the stall, it looked like His Grace smiled."
Oswald gave the young man a light rap on the head with a bundle of papers.
"That man does not smile."
"...But I saw it."
There was no reply. Oswald himself had witnessed the scene from the corner of the corridor. The corners of the mouth of the master he had served for so many years had risen, in front of that stall, by half a degree. He was in the middle of telling himself, too, that he had imagined it.
Back in the office, Rosalind set the oiled-paper bundle on her desk and spread out her projections for the customs routes.
Evening light slanted in through the window, tracing the outline of her silver hair. Her fingers were already gliding over the figures.
"...Revision proposal in three days, projections in five, submission to His Grace in ten."
The muttering was pure past-life scheduling instinct.
She rewrapped the last skewer in paper and set it in the corner of the desk. I'll have it tomorrow morning with some hot tea—she thought vaguely, and then lost herself in the projections.
The next morning.
The corner of the desk.
Beside the oiled-paper bundle Rosalind had left there the day before sat a small teapot, prepared by someone, sending up steam.
Along with a sugar bowl and a thin teacup.
A single slip of paper was tied to the teapot's handle.
Before it cools.
A brief scrawl, in a hand she could not place.
The moment she entered the office, Rosalind stopped for half a second.
"Oh my."
Then she sat down in her chair as usual.
"What a thoughtful clerk we have. I must thank them later."
—That was, in all seriousness, how she took it.
Down the corridor, Oswald silently turned his face to the ceiling.
His Grace boiled the water himself. Seven years in his service, and I've never once seen that.
In the corner of Rosalind's desk, the bundle of dumplings and the warm teapot sat quietly side by side in the morning light.
The revised customs proposal would be out next week.
Her homeland still had no idea what was happening.