Chapter 5

My sharply edged voice dropped into the narrow, dark alley.

“What are you looking at?”

At that, one of the man’s eyebrows shot upward.

Since everything except his eyes was covered, I couldn’t see his expression, but his gaze clearly seemed to say that he found my question utterly absurd.

Sweat slowly seeped from my palm, which was gripping the tree branch, and soaked into my glove.

A thought crossed my mind.

Could he be one of the guild members sent by the suspicious men?

Had he followed me here to make sure I couldn’t escape?

But then—

“…….”

The man who had been looking up at me let out a short, incredulous chuckle before turning around and disappearing into the alley.

Huh?

“……What was that?”

I stared blankly after him from atop the tree.

‘So he wasn’t with the guild?’

Come to think of it.

If he really had been one of their men, there was no way he would have openly revealed himself right in front of me like that.

‘Considering they secretly left medicine in my room at the Grand Ducal Residence without making a sound, they don’t seem like the type to reveal themselves so easily.’

Phew. I was scared for nothing.

I let out a sigh of relief and slid down the trunk of the tree.

‘I should hurry up, buy what I need, and go back.’

I didn’t want the innocent escort knights to get punished or scolded because of me.

No matter how committed I was to my crazy-princess act, I hadn’t intended to cause them this much trouble.

Today really couldn’t be helped. If I couldn’t make the hemostatic agent, a lot of people could get hurt……

I hurried deeper into the alley.

Fortunately, my memory had been accurate.

Before leaving the Grand Ducal Residence, I had pretended to casually ask Celine about the location of a jewelry store, coaxing her into telling me the locations of all the nearby shops one by one.

How could such a young child explain everything so clearly, as though she were unfolding a map right in front of me?

‘Aww, what a good girl.’

I should buy her a little present on the way back.

Ding—

Remembering Celine’s directions, I opened the door of an herbal shop painted green and stepped inside.

Wow.

The moment I entered the shop, every cell in my body seemed to cheer.

A bitter yet fragrant scent rushed into my nose.

It was the exact same smell I had always breathed in at my little cabin in the south.

‘Ah, I’m excited.’

This was it.

This was exactly what I had been missing.

Glass bottles and wooden drawers lined the walls of the shop from top to bottom.

Each bottle contained leaves, roots, petals, or powders of different colors, while bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling.

There were small scales, mortars and pestles, metal tongs, and sealed containers designed to keep the fragrances from escaping.

Ah, honestly, I felt like I could spend the entire day playing around in a place like this if I put my mind to it.

‘I never expected to find such a gem of a shop in some corner of the Grand Duke’s territory.’

I pulled out the piece of paper on which I had written my list beforehand and approached the counter.

“Would it be possible to get the herbs on this list?”

The shopkeeper, who had been sorting through some newly arrived herb pouches, accepted the paper.

His fingertips were stained green, and the skin on the backs of his hands was rough and cracked.

They were unmistakably the hands of someone who had handled herbs for many years.

He scanned the list before making a low sound.

“Hmm. We should have everything else, but I’ll have to look for the Crovein. Please wait a moment.”

“Yes, of course! Please look carefully! I really need it.”

“Certainly.”

The shopkeeper gave a warm chuckle and headed up the stairs to the second floor.

The moment he disappeared, I began casually examining the herb pouches beside the counter.

Judging by how the pouches had been opened, they seemed to contain newly arrived goods.

The shopkeeper must have been in the middle of sorting the herbs that had just come in.

That was when—

Creak.

Someone came down the stairs from the second floor.

Thinking it was the shopkeeper returning, I casually turned my head.

And froze.

‘Huh……?’

A dark navy hood.

A black mask covering more than half of his face.

And black eyes.

It was the very same man who had stared intently up at me beneath the tree in the alley a little while ago.

I looked back and forth between the man and the staircase.

‘Oh, what? He wasn’t following me. He was just another customer who happened to come to this herbal shop?’

Come to think of it, he must have been pretty surprised to see some woman climbing a tree while he was on his way to buy herbs.

Only then did I realize why he had stared blankly up at me earlier.

Feeling awkward for no reason, I lowered my gaze before our eyes could meet.

At that moment, he walked toward the counter and reached for one of the herb pouches the shopkeeper had been sorting earlier.

His large hand reached inside and picked up a red leaf.

The instant I saw it—

‘Oh!’

You can’t touch that like that!

I instinctively rushed over and smacked the back of his large hand.

Smack!

“Hey! If you touch that carelessly, you’ll go blind!”

“…….”

The leaf slipped from his fingertips and fell back into the pouch.

Then the man’s head slowly turned toward me.

He stared at me as though he had no idea what had just happened and tilted his head slightly.

“……Go blind?”

“Yes. It’s still toxic because it hasn’t been processed yet.”

The man asked,

“Do you know much about this herb?”

“Of course, I know all abou—”

I was about to answer proudly when I suddenly looked up at him.

“But when did we get familiar enough for you to speak informally to me?”

The man looked at me dryly and replied,

“You were the one who spoke informally first.”

“Oh.”

He was right.

I’d been so immersed in my crazy-princess act lately that I had unconsciously—

Ahem.

I cleared my throat and quickly lowered my voice into something calm and refined.

“I’m sorry. It’s become a habit.”

“Speaking informally?”

“Something like that.”

“…….”

After my vague answer, the man didn’t question me any further.

And to change the subject, I went back to talking about the herb.

“This is Redoct. Its bright red leaves are so pretty and eye-catching that people don’t suspect anything and casually touch them, you see? But beautiful things are always poisonous, right? This one is the same.”

Now that I finally had a chance to talk about herbs, my area of expertise, I excitedly chattered away.

The man didn’t interrupt me.

Instead, he quietly asked with what seemed like genuine interest,

“Then is it a poisonous plant rather than a medicinal herb?”

Since I had switched to polite speech, the man naturally did the same.

“Hmm, that’s a little complicated.”

I pointed toward the leaves of the Redoct.

“Officially, it’s considered a medicinal herb. But that’s only after it’s been processed.”

Normally, Redoct was sold after being processed.

It was extremely rare for unprocessed red leaves like these to be distributed as they were today.

“Once it’s processed, the toxicity disappears. But its pain-relieving effect also drops to one-tenth. At that point, it becomes nothing more than an expensive painkiller for easing nobles’ migraines.”

“…….”

A strange glint appeared in the man’s pitch-black eyes as he listened to me.

Apparently, he found what I was saying rather interesting.

“Most ordinary people don’t know what kind of toxicity those unprocessed red leaves contain. So if I had to classify it, I’d consider it a poisonous herb. Of course, there are ways to remove the toxicity while preserving its powerful pain-relieving effect, but……”

I stopped mid-sentence.

Something more urgent suddenly came to mind.

“Ah! Wait! That’s not what’s important right now!”

I pulled a handkerchief from inside my cloak.

Then I grabbed the man’s wrist.

His calloused hand stiffened for a moment beneath my grasp.

“Wait—”

Ignoring his attempt to stop me, I began carefully rubbing his palm with the handkerchief.

“There’s an invisible powder on the leaves, you see? Washing it with water would be best, but we’re in a hurry, so this will have to do for now.”

“…….”

Perhaps because he was nervous about the toxicity being wiped away, the man remained silent for a while.

I carefully wiped between his fingers and even along the creases of his palm.

Then I lifted my head and smiled brightly.

“All clean!”

Hehe.

I looked into the man’s black eyes.

In truth, his eyes were almost the only part of him I could see aside from his large physique.

“Still, just to be safe, don’t rub your eyes with that hand or put it in your mouth for a while, okay? Got it? Yuck, bad! Don’t do it!”

I also added that he shouldn’t casually touch things when visiting an herbal shop like this.

The man quietly listened to my torrent of nagging before eventually answering in a slow voice.

“……I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Oh, you don’t have to take it that seriously.”

I let out a small laugh.

Just then, the shopkeeper who had come down from the second floor returned to the counter.

“I brought the herbs you were looking for, miss!”

“Oh, really?”

I quickly hurried over to the counter.

The shopkeeper placed several small bundles on the counter and said,

“We have a very small amount of Crovein left. How much would you like?”

“All of it!”

I answered immediately, worried that someone else might snatch it up first.

Completely forgetting about the man standing behind me—

And the handkerchief I had left in his palm.

Ding—

The shop door opened with a clear ringing sound.

A petite woman with her face tightly wrapped in a scarf dashed out into the street like the wind, clutching several herb pouches carefully against her chest.

The door closed, and the shop fell silent once again.

Then a man who had been standing in the corner of the second-floor staircase quietly approached from behind Varkan.

It was his aide, Roan Meyer.

He casually pushed up his glasses and asked Varkan,

“Do you know her? You seemed to have quite a long conversation with her. You even held hands rather affectionately.”

Varkan answered briefly.

“……I’ve never seen her before.”

Or had he?

Perhaps this was the second time.

Once in the tree, and once here.

When she had skillfully climbed the tree, grabbed onto a slender branch, and giggled to herself, she had looked exactly like a crazy woman.

But she had been different just now.

She had recognized Redoct and even knew that its surface contained toxic dust.

‘A pharmacist?’

Varkan briefly looked down at the handkerchief the woman had left in his palm before folding it and slipping it into the inner pocket of his clothes.

“She seemed to know a great deal about poisonous herbs.”

“Poisonous herbs? You mean the woman who just left?”

“Yes.”

Interest appeared in Roan’s eyes as he looked toward the closed shop door.

“She looked like a commoner from her clothes.”

Roan spoke with puzzlement.

In the Castillo Empire, receiving an education about medicinal or poisonous herbs required either attending a specialized institution or obtaining extremely expensive books on the subject.

For a commoner, it was practically impossible.

Even across the entire empire, there were very few people who completely understood the properties of poisonous herbs and knew how to handle them.

For the Grand Duke’s knights and Varkan in particular, who were constantly exposed to the poisonous attacks of magical beasts, having someone with such knowledge would be invaluable.

“Since Your Highness says so, she must have some rather useful knowledge…… Shall we follow her?”

“No.”

Varkan answered firmly.

“Something else is more important right now.”

With that, he handed the shopkeeper the pouch containing the Redoct—the very herb the woman had just lectured him not to touch.

“Is this all of it?”

At Varkan’s question, the shopkeeper bowed his head.

“Yes, Your Highness. That’s all the Redoct we currently have. I had set it aside separately because I thought Your Highness might come looking for it today.”

“Give me all of it.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Redoct.

Varkan also knew exactly what kind of plant it was and what kind of toxicity its unprocessed leaves contained.

Even so, there was a simple reason he had gone to the trouble of finding it despite the danger.

There was no painkiller as effective as this.

Especially for knights writhing in agony after being poisoned by mutated magical beasts, preserving the full pain-relieving effect of unprocessed Redoct was more important than avoiding its toxicity.

Before Varkan could collect the herbs and leave the shop, the shopkeeper spoke.

“If I can obtain more of the herbs you requested, I’ll contact you immediately! Travel safely, Your Highness.”

“See that you do.”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

After leaving the herbal shop, Varkan mounted his warhorse and tossed the pouch containing the Redoct to Roan, who was standing beside him.

“Deliver it to Cillier. Have her use it on the knights immediately.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Cillier was a physician belonging to the Grand Ducal household who treated injured knights at the encampment established for subjugating magical beasts.

Roan carefully accepted the pouch before asking,

“Where are you headed? Are we returning to the encampment?”

Varkan held the reins and briefly gazed at the tree near the entrance of the alley where the woman had been hanging moments earlier.

After a short silence, he turned his horse’s head and spoke.

“……I’m going to the Grand Ducal Residence.”