"—The penalty: a sum the homeland's finances could never possibly pay."
At her desk, Rosalind rolled that sentence around in her mouth just once. She had not yet spoken it to anyone.
Seven days later, in the morning.
A single carriage bearing an unfamiliar crest rolled slowly through the main gate of the Grand Duchy.
The gatekeeper who ran up to meet it stopped short for a moment at a pattern he recognized.
—The flag of a special envoy, under the direct authority of the royal house of the Kingdom of Albert.
The old man who stepped down from the carriage was visibly exhausted. He forgot even to brush the dust from his traveling clothes, and his first words were not for the chamberlain sent to guide him. They fell toward the sky.
"...At last. I've arrived."
Anna, waiting nearby, caught the words coolly and added a single short line to the corner of her work log.
"Envoy from the homeland, arrived. —Fatigue showing on his face."
The office.
Rosalind was checking, once more from top to bottom, the three documents laid out on her desk.
The first: a copy of the bilateral memorandum (signed by both the Grand Duchy and the Kingdom of Albert).
The second: the memorandum's interference clause and the compensation calculation.
The third: the latest projected national budget of her homeland, the Kingdom of Albert (obtained via the intelligence network).
With the tip of her pen, she drew a small red circle at the bottom of the third sheet.
(A sum the homeland's finances could never possibly pay.)
Under her breath, she laughed, just a little.
In her past life, there had been one document Ritsuko Tanaka never managed to submit, just one sheet of paper: her resignation letter.
Each time a coworker quit, then another, and another, their share of the work piled up on Ritsuko's desk, and nothing else did. Her responsibilities kept growing, yet her pay never changed by a single yen.
Even so, whenever they held her back with "If you leave, the whole operation falls apart," Ritsuko, with her strong sense of responsibility, simply could not hand in that letter.
If only she could show the woman she'd been back then this desk, as it was now.
(Ritsuko, a position can be changed with paperwork.)
She murmured it quietly, deep inside.
On the first document, in the signature field of the memorandum, the handwriting of Lucas, Grand Duke Vernant, and the seal of the homeland's Chancellor, Erwin Garrett, remained side by side.
Just then, there was a knock.
"Advisor Rosalind. —I'm coming in."
The door opened without waiting for a reply. Not at all like His Grace to enter that way, Rosalind thought, blinking inwardly.
Lucas came in, walked up to the front of her desk, and spoke without so much as a glance at the documents.
"The audience is at two in the afternoon. The north drawing room. Present: you, me, two secretaries, two guards."
"Understood."
"The guards will stand at your side."
Rosalind set down her pen.
"Your Grace, the envoy is an elderly civil official. As for any physical danger—"
"The guards will stand at your side."
The second time, his voice was half a tone lower than the first.
Rosalind began to open her mouth, then nodded obediently.
"Then, as you wish."
(From a labor-management standpoint, a formation that shores up our own defenses while putting psychological pressure on the visitor. He intends to steer the negotiations in our favor. As expected of His Grace.)
Within Rosalind, the arrangement was processed strictly as a rational piece of negotiating tactics.
Lucas neither denied nor confirmed it. At last, he lowered his gaze to the three documents on the desk.
"You seem to be ready."
"Yes, of course. A bilateral memorandum is a document meant to bind both signatory nations equally. It exists precisely for moments like this."
A low, short laugh sounded deep in Lucas's throat.
Anyone other than Rosalind might not have recognized it as a laugh at all.
Ten in the morning.
In the room next to the Grand Duchy's drawing room, a secretary was seeing to the homeland envoy's attendants.
While he waited, the old envoy gazed out at the Grand Duchy's city from the window of the waiting room.
A neatly laid-out commercial district. White roads stretching from the new port. In the market square, children were playing, flicking coins of a kind he had never seen before.
—The new coinage, the old envoy realized.
The very one Rosalind Abel had designed and Grand Duke Lucas Vernant had approved.
The old envoy's fingertips trembled slightly.
He could not bring himself to reach for the cup of tea set on the table.
The drawing room.
Two in the afternoon, minus five minutes.
Before taking her seat, Rosalind checked the order of the three documents once more.
One: the bilateral memorandum.
Two: the interference clause and the compensation calculation.
Three: the projected national budget.
She would not get the order wrong.
—So long as I don't get the order wrong, the conclusion is already in the documents.
She heard the door open.
The footsteps of the secretary guiding the envoy, and behind them, another set of footsteps, hesitant.
Rosalind quietly lifted her head.
She recognized the face of the old envoy who entered.
Back when she was small, back when she ran papers in and out of her father's study, she had exchanged greetings with him several times: a finance officer. A gentle, sincere man, with a habit of silently handing his own achievements up the chain.
—That's right. There was a time when every projection submitted under his name was presented to the throne as the Crown Prince's idea.
Deep in her chest, a flashback from her past life flickered, lightly.
The white ceiling of a conference room. From across the long table, three sheets of paper, slid over to her one at a time, in order. The expiry date of her contract. A notice that it would not be renewed. Last of all, the signature line. Once they had been laid out in that order, there had been no room for objection anywhere.
(Today—it's our turn to present them in order.)
Rosalind rose slowly and set the angle of her curtsy to perfection.
"—Welcome to the Grand Duchy of Vernant."
The color drained, just slightly, from the old envoy's face.
Beside her, a guard's boots took one step closer to Rosalind's side.
The clock on the drawing room wall struck two.
—The last envoy sent to save the homeland did not yet know that here, in the very place he had come to beg for help, he would be handed his final notice.