I chased General Wageris and the others out, checked that the doors and windows were locked, and took the crystal down from the shelf.
“They really are contacting us. Let’s see—channel mana into it to activate it, tune it, confirm the magical attribute… all right.”
This was an improved version of the voice-transmission device Wearerel had made, with an alchemical mechanism added to its base.
Rather than transmitting complex voices or words, it had been simplified so that it only emitted multiple sounds.
By lightening the magical capacity required, we had also given the base a function to notify us of communications.
After activating it and waiting a little, long and short piano notes began to pop out from the crystal.
“At the palace, signs of a plot.”
The sounds indicated pronunciation through differences in pitch and combinations of long and short notes, like Morse code.
Incidentally, the only ones among us who could distinguish them by ear were Nomariola and me, since we had taken music lessons that trained us to identify pitch.
Even Wald, who was the one tapping out the messages to contact us, could only manage it given time, because he had learned it as part of his education when he was young.
“What? My letters haven’t arrived?”
I decoded the continuing report and raised my voice.
Just to be sure, I sent sounds back and had him transmit it once more, confirming that the cipher was not mistaken.
After that, I tapped in an acknowledgment of the information and listed the points I wanted him to verify.
When I was done, I turned back to Wearerel, Helkov, and Ikuto, who had stayed silent so as not to disturb me.
“Apparently, the letters I sent have not reached His Majesty.”
At Wald’s report, Helkov was the first to react.
“Only the ones addressed to His Majesty? You sent letters to the younger princes, and to Wald as well, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and apparently the reply letter to Terry had something odd about its contents.”
Wald had only been exchanging reports with me about finances, and it was Terry who had noticed the abnormality.
Terry felt something was off and went directly to my room, where he checked the letters with Wald, who had been watching the place.
“The replies to Wald were almost entirely about finances, so they were short, and there wasn’t anything especially strange about them. But with the letter to Terry, even if the writing itself was properly composed, there were omissions as a reply.”
“There is a possibility they have been altered. Let us also review the letters sent from Prince Terry’s side.”
Wearerel responded, but could alteration really be done so easily?
From my expression, Ikuto explained.
“If they prepare one specialist, your handwriting habits can be copied at a glance. The ink and paper Prince Asha uses are not particularly rare either, so if they prepare the same materials, it would be possible to discard the original portion and write a false continuation.”
A forgery specialist…
And since it was for me specifically, that meant there was also the possibility they had forged a prince’s seal and sealed the wax with it, so it would apparently be an extremely serious crime.
“If Terry’s was forged, and only the letters addressed to His Majesty were removed, then the problem really must be the contents. The matter with General Wageris, the matter with the Imperial Guard, or the assassination.”
“Rock also sends regular reports as the person in charge of the army. Shall we ask him?”
I had Helkov include my letters along with the regular reports he was talking about.
In other words, there was a high possibility that the forger was someone connected to that process.
“No, depending on how His Majesty moves—oh.”
The lamp signaling that the crystal was receiving lit up again.
I immediately strained my ears to the sounds.
“…I see. Apparently, in the palace, the story has become that I am constantly causing trouble and throwing the army into chaos.”
“Well now, I wonder who exactly is making such accusations? Surely it could not be the very people who forced Lord Asha into military service.”
Wearerel was unusually venomous today.
If they were only interfering with my interactions with Terry, that would still be a personal matter. But if they intended to use me in political strife, I had no intention of sitting by and watching.
“Ikuto, you’re up. Change the contents of the regular report to Marquis Strategue.”
“Marquis Strategue told me he would rather we did not use this method.”
“That can’t be helped when there are useless adults altering letters and troubling His Majesty. Let’s expose the villain good and proper, and have Marquis Strategue increase his presence.”
But Wearerel and Helkov, whom I hadn’t told, looked like they didn’t understand.
“Actually, since I thought interference like this might happen, I made prior arrangements with Marquis Strategue and planted a method to deal with it in the event of letter forgery.”
I took a nearby sheet of paper, painted it with a colorless solution derived from minerals collected at the crater, and dried it.
Then I held it over a flame.
At once, the circle I had drawn with the solution appeared, as though scorching the surface of the paper.
In other words, invisible ink revealed by heat.
“I had Ikuto deliberately keep his reports concise so that no one would take issue with them. And I also told Marquis Strategue that a mark like this would always be included.”
“I see. If the genuine article is already in Marquis Strategue’s hands, and someone swaps the paper for another in order to change the contents of the report and forge it, then it can be visibly exposed as such.”
Wearerel nodded repeatedly in admiration.
“What should we do about Rock? Knowing his personality, he probably leaves reports to his subordinates. But if a forgery happened under his jurisdiction and he wasn’t informed, he’ll get sulky.”
For all his roughness, he was quite territorial about things like that.
“We’ll have to tell him, but let’s keep Ikuto’s involvement hidden on the grounds that he falls under Marquis Strategue’s jurisdiction. Hmm… when the next regular report is sent, we’ll send Ikuto’s as well, and then tell him around the time the reply comes back.”
It would be an after-the-fact report, but it couldn’t be helped.
We couldn’t explain it because the existence of this voice-transmission device was secret too.
We would act as though we had only just learned of it from Marquis Strategue’s notice.
“Thinking about it that way, it’s good we found out now. If it had been much later, even the fact that we resolved the problem here might not have been properly conveyed.”
“And in that case, we would never have been permitted to return. Well, I suppose they never imagined that a problem which took seven years to resolve in previous records would be settled in such a short time.”
Just as Ikuto said, I had expected a bit more resistance too.
But in the remote villages, new and convenient things were more well received than I had expected—or rather, they latched onto them so eagerly that it almost seemed as if they had been starved for anything new.
“They were really quick to change their tune the moment they realized it would help their daily lives. But I wonder what they’re happiest about?”
“Would it not be resolving the poisonous wind?”
When Wearerel brought up the problem directly tied to death, Helkov shrugged.
“Nah, it’s gotta be the bedrock bath they want to get into even if they have to fight Rock for it, right?”
“The so-called steam cooking has also proven useful as a new way to eat the hard staple food harvested in the mountains.”
What Ikuto was talking about was something that seemed to be a grain with a smell similar to corn.
When I asked about it, I learned it was called tooth bean, because the kernels looked just like fallen teeth. It really was something like corn after all.
It was probably a similar thing, but the skin was thick, and if it was crushed into powder enough to eat, it had no flavor and was not tasty.
But when steamed, simply leaving it alone made the skin easy to remove, cooked it through, and though the flavor was still extremely faint, it took on a sweet impression.
(The advantage that should be cited is the utilization of thermal energy to compensate for the shortage of fuel.)
Even Sephira joined the conversation, but to summarize, that was exactly right.
Being able to use the heat of the crater, which they had never been able to approach before, as a heat source in a place with so few trees was surely a major advantage.
And so we sent the regular report, continued keeping the two villages—still prone to fighting—united, and ended up waiting a month.
“Yes, over there, Marquis Strategue exposed the false document and accused them of forging letters. Everyone who had been involved up to now has been arrested without exception. They’ll be searching for the person who gave the orders from here on, but it seems the letters we send next won’t be forged.”
Through the crystal, Wald quickly sent us a report of the results.
Apparently, Revan had been coming by to complain that Marquis Strategue was going to be glared at again.
It seemed they had become quite close while I was away.
“Once the regular reply comes back in another month, we’ll report it to General Wageris and have him make inquiries from his side too.”
In one month, the letter we had sent from here reached the imperial capital and exposed the forgery.
We had to wait because the return would take another month.
“More time has passed since I left the imperial capital than I realized.”
I felt a little nostalgic.
Even if it was at the far end of the left wing where I had been shoved away, it was still the room I had lived in since I became aware of the world.
I had enough attachment to it that I could call it a happy place, one where I had memories of playing with my younger brothers.
(An early return is recommended. I propose that the results of the experiments conducted in this land should be reflected.)
(Hey, stop pushing your own demands on me when I’m feeling sentimental, would you?)
(There is precedent for Master also lamenting the shortage of tools for alchemy. I point out that declaring this to be my demand alone is narrow-minded.)
It was true that, in the end, there were ores I couldn’t classify, and several gas masks had broken and become unusable.
On top of that, we had not been able to make anything here that could be used to collect the gas accumulated on the white road.
To be honest, I was lacking glassware.
I had been afraid it would break, so I had not brought more than what could fit in dedicated cases.
In the end, Sephira had hit the mark, and all I could do was fall silent.
Regular update
Next: The Eastern Uprising 3