Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 566

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 18.
The Noble Daughter and the Detective (18)
Those who remembered Princess Charlotte in her younger days would occasionally whisper among themselves. How brightly she used to smile back then. How she would speak tender, endearing words a hundred times a day. How she would dart through the corridors like a small maple bird in ballet tutus with petals for skirts. When such stories surfaced, people would suddenly recall Bernard and rush to claim they had known all along.
‘She was not like this when the Grand Duke was alive.’
‘That incident changed the Princess.’
There is no easier way to hide the truth than to offer a simple conclusion. Charlotte gave no reaction to any of the rumors. She simply let everyone imagine as they pleased.
Thus the Princess—lacking the bearing of an heir, the grace of a lady, a suitable marriage prospect, and any semblance of noble dignity—inexplicably cultivated a cult-like popularity among certain circles. The fervor of Orlanne Royal Magic Academy students was particularly renowned. Every October on her birthday, they would use magic to cultivate peonies—summer flowers—and blanket the entire campus with them. Peonies were also the symbol of the ancient queen who once ruled Orlanne.
Why they adored Princess Charlotte remained unclear. The Princess had only the slightest connection to that school—she had briefly enrolled after leaving Etoile, then withdrawn after merely four days.
“Why else? The Princess is simply so extraordinarily captivating.”
Count Schönwald, called simply Colette here, giggled as she heard the peony story. This year the scale had grown even more extravagant—not only the campus and lecture halls but even building rooftops and walls were smothered in flowers, and they had even filled the fountain with soil to make flowers bloom, the madness reaching its peak.
“It’s a shame I couldn’t witness such a magnificent spectacle. I suppose it’s all been cleared by now? They always clean it all up after three days anyway.”
A man in a dark greenish robe shook his head slowly.
“If you didn’t see it yourself, perhaps you shouldn’t speak of it. Thirty handcarts full of flower debris were hauled away. They must have called in dozens of cleaners. All because of some lunatic student they call the ‘Peony Farmer.’ He’s a second-year now, and more than one professor has suggested we just let him graduate early.”
“That’s what we call job creation, Marie Louis. Besides, this was happening before that student even enrolled—it just grew under his hand. Now that he’s leaving, do you really think it will stop?”
“Then you see this as a good thing? To me, it seems like he’s just drawing strange attention.”
“What would you have me do? The Princess causes this chaos just by wearing a fencing uniform—if she dressed in a gown, all of Orlie would be buried under flower debris. Try explaining that to these fools. Understood?”
Colette and Marie Louis were conversing in the Separate Palace’s basement, known as the place where the Princess would shut herself away for days at a time. It was as spacious as a ballroom, as befitted a fencing practice room, yet utterly empty. They sat on the bare floor in one corner of the hall.
Count Nicolette von Schönwald had hiked her violet dress up to her knees, stretching her legs clad in white stockings. The Mage Marie Louis Tilande was flicking peanuts one by one from a handful balanced on her spread robe, catching them in her mouth. Beside them sat an almost empty wine bottle.
Colette paused mid-sip and yawned.
“Ah, the wine is running out and so is my patience. When is the Princess arriving?”
On the floor of the hall where they sat, strange patterns were drawn. At first glance, they appeared to be repeating flowers or stars made of six diamonds, but upon closer inspection, each one was different.
It was not merely the various colored stones and forty-eight glimmering pigments. Within the diamonds lay other triangles, ellipses, stars, and dots forming patterns—each distinct yet harmoniously interlocking. All of it was contained within a great circle, which itself was densely filled with other mosaic pieces. Colette kept glancing toward the center of the mosaic. As if waiting for something.
“If the Princess might arrive at any moment, we should clear away the drinking first.”
“Come now, the Princess understands such things. If anyone’s to be feared, it’s Nay.”
“That would be a complete disaster scenario. In any case, if you’ve finished, I’ll clean it up.”
“No, no, wait. There’s still some left. About thirty drops.”
“Don’t be stubborn about trivial things. Nay might just decide to inject those thirty drops into your forearm with a bloodletting needle. And there’s no Lord Castile to stop her either.”
As Marie Louis hastily reached to snatch the bottle, a new voice suddenly rang out.
“What are you doing? Having a picnic in the basement?”
Colette quickly pulled the wine bottle toward her with her toes and covered it with her skirt. But her effort came to nothing as peanuts tumbled from Marie Louis’s robe. Colette winked at Marie Louis while clicking her tongue.
“Tsk tsk, you still have much to learn.”
Marie Louis had no time to retaliate. He turned toward the mosaic and stammered.
“You see, Princess, we’ve been waiting here for five hours and…”
Charlotte stood in the very center of the mosaic. She had not entered through the door. She was simply there. Moreover, she wore a cream-colored dress of dozens of layers of flowing chiffon like peony petals—a sight so rare that no one in the kingdom might witness it even once a year. Had the “Peony Farmer and friends” seen her, they might have collapsed from heart failure.
With sleek yet powerful black hair, eyes that drank in light and sometimes blazed forth all at once, shoulders firm and a neck delicate by contrast—elegant as a predator drawn with peacock feathers, the Princess removed her dress with merely two gestures and cast it into a corner of the practice room. Now in pourpoint and short breeches, she strode toward the two of them and spoke.
“If you needed wine, you should have stayed at your salon, Colette.”
Charlotte then removed her veiled hat and cast off her emerald earrings into the corner. She drew the two-span-long short sword hanging from her thigh and gripped it in her hand. As Colette and Marie Louis bowed, she nodded in acknowledgment.
Colette and Marie Louis maintained their composure before the Princess but were not rigidly tense. Above all, their relief at her return was evident. Charlotte pointed at the empty bottle and asked.
“Just one bottle?”
“Ah, yes. Of course, just one bottle…as if that were possible.”
Colette caught the shift in Princess Charlotte’s tone and smiled brightly, quickly moving toward the wardrobe at the Practice Room. Marie Louis, left behind, muttered apologetically.
“I’m terribly sorry.”
“Then you know what to do?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Marie Louis hunched his shoulders and studied Princess Charlotte’s expression before testing the waters cautiously.
“Should I tell Nay…?”
“Don’t let her find out.”
Princess Charlotte approached the wardrobe and accepted a glass from Colette, who had already poured fresh wine. She pointed with her gloved left hand at the glasses the two had left behind, and only then did they retrieve their own. Princess Charlotte leaned against the wall and extended her glass, her dark eyebrows raised.
“To damned Nenyaple.”
Colette and Marie Louis started to clink glasses but hesitated. Colette asked.
“Did you really go all the way there?”
Nenyaple was a Magic School in the Southern Region of the Continent—more precisely, in the south of the Anomarad Kingdom. Anomarad was incomparably larger than Orlanne, and traveling from here to the south took more than a month even on horseback. Princess Charlotte twisted her neck left and right as if loosening her muscles, then took a sip. She spoke.
“No, just nearby. There was a charming outdoor banquet. The Southern Region is quite warm. A land flowing with milk and honey, as they say.”
The pourpoint Princess Charlotte wore was sleeveless. Her exposed arms were taut with muscle—the physique of someone who had never set down her sword since she was eleven.
“And? Did you meet him? That detective?”
As Colette pressed for details, a bitter smile crossed Princess Charlotte’s lips.
“A detective, you say. I’m not sure that’s the right word. I didn’t meet him. Couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“At three in the afternoon, he still hadn’t woken from sleep. Invited to someone else’s home, no less. Are all Nenyaple students so leisurely? I had no idea when he’d wake, and I’d already spent all my time getting there, so I simply returned.”
“What?”
Marie Louis approached with an incredulous expression and thrust his head forward.
“I’m not entirely certain what this detective does, but does he work by receiving premonitions in his dreams?”
Colette took up the thread.
“How could that be? He must have been out conducting an all-night investigation. A detective must be meticulous and diligent. Bungle even a single case, and your reputation crumbles—you’ll struggle to make a living.”
She turned to Princess Charlotte and continued.
“A detective is often synonymous with a charlatan, but this man found the automaton the Grand Duke had hidden most carefully. He’s certainly no ordinary person.”
Princess Charlotte nodded.
“Which is why I need to go to Nenyaple in person.”
The mosaic on the Practice Room floor held the power to send one to several places in an instant, but one could not stay long—at most a few hours. To remain longer, one had no choice but to travel directly.
Marie Louis tilted his head and asked.
“How? Nenyaple is protected by the Curtain of Agonina, so you cannot enter without revealing your identity.”
“That’s fine. It won’t be me going—it will be ‘Espin.’ I’ll enter with proper authorization.”
‘Espin’ was a false identity Princess Charlotte had created long ago. Though false, it had been maintained so carefully that dozens of people believed in the existence of ‘Espin Sharl,’ the son of ‘Tibery Sharl,’ a beekeeper living in Linberk in the Northern Region of Anomarad. Colette blinked thoughtfully.
“The authorization you mention—I’ve heard it’s no simple matter.”
Colette came from a wealthy family in Orlanne and had married Count Shunibaldt of Anomarad, whom she met at a resort. After her husband’s death, she became Count based on his will and beautifully restored the crumbling Jineman Manor, opening a Salon. Some distant relative of her husband’s tried to cause trouble, but when her Salon succeeded, he changed his attitude and sought to benefit from it. Possessing a successful Salon in competitive Keltika was no small source of power.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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