PDCOO Chapter 1

Prologue

"Your Highness will no longer be able to smile."

The mage's voice was soft. A lullaby delivered over an open chest.

"Your Highness will no longer be able to feel anger. Whatever rage burns inside you will consume you from within—or be loaded onto the sword you raise against your enemies."

He made this irrevocable pronouncement, and as he spoke, he drew lines with a bloodstained brush across the opened chest of Prince Bertram of the realm.

Each time the brush passed, the stone embedded in Bertram's heart stirred.

Dragon bone.

From this day forward, that would serve as Bertram's aorta.

Before he closed the chest.

The mage said, in a voice with something faintly tired in it:

"Your Highness will no longer be able to weep. Not even on the day you receive His Majesty's body back from the battlefield and hold his funeral—not a single tear will fall."

"That is all right. It will make me a stronger warrior."

Bertram was sixteen. His voice was steady. Beneath the black hair, his ocean-blue eyes held a resolve that was almost frightening—the kind that could convince a boy that throwing himself onto a battlefield was a reasonable solution to anything.

The mage drew his last line.

"The people desire a strong leader," he said. "But they also fear a leader who feels nothing. Even if you lead the war to victory, Your Highness—you may find the throne is not yours to take."

"Even if I lead the war to victory?"

"Yes. When you cannot weep before His Majesty's body, the people will call you a monster."

Bertram did not understand this.

But now he could not express even that confusion in his face.

With a bitter smile—mourning the prince's fate, though the prince himself could not—

The mage closed the chest and stitched it shut.

Six years after the day the prince threw himself onto the battlefield.

The war ended in defeat.

The land was ravaged. Many young men did not come home. The people, stripped of even the means of their livelihood, could only sit down in the ruins.

To quiet the chaos, Duke Saeydl—the fallen king's younger brother—ascended the throne in his place.

It was, plainly speaking, a dismissal of the prince who had come of age during the war. But no one opposed it.

On the surface: because the Duke had been carrying out the king's duties throughout the war.

In reality: because no one wanted to crown a monster who had lost his emotions and gone mad with a sword.

Prince Bertram did not weep at the late king's funeral.

His blue eyes, which had forgotten how to smile, were as ominous as a winter sea.

The only time anything like life could be found in him was at the front lines—

Swinging his sword like something that had stopped being human. To the people, he was a trigger, the living reminder of everything they were trying to forget.

In the end, Duke Saeydl decided to separate this troublesome nephew from affairs of state for a while.

The prince, who found himself thus in possession of a very long and entirely unexpected holiday, chose......

Chapter 1

Three years after that.

"Do you have any last words?"

A woman's voice rang across a wide countryside potato field.

"What? You want us dead for stealing a few potatoes?"

The two thieves looked up in disbelief.

But Anna, the farm manager, didn't waver. "The potatoes in this field exist to feed the villagers," she said, with the gravity of someone delivering a verdict. "Therefore, you two—who tried to steal them—have effectively attempted to kill a hundred people."

"Does that even make—ugh!"

Anna swung her pickaxe through the air.

Between the tangles of blond hair, green eyes flashed. It was an expression that had no business on such a small, pleasant face.

"Is it the potatoes you find funny," she said, "or me?"

"W-wait! We'll give them back!"

The men scrambled to pull dirt-caked potatoes from their pockets. The pickaxe did not retreat. They ended up hopping in place to prove their pockets completely empty, then looked to see if they might be permitted to go.

"Surely we're done now. Can we leave?"

"Not yet. Pay the fertilizer fee."

"......What?"

"You'll have to compensate for turning up my potato field. Pay the fertilizer fee, or if you have no money, leave some manure before you go."

The men started to laugh.

Anna's expression did not change.

The laughter died.

'This woman is completely mad.'

Hesitation, it turned out, had a price.

Anna leveled her pickaxe at the buckles of their trousers.

"Shall I help you with those?"

They refused, naturally, and ran.

"Ahhhhh! She's — she's insane!"

"Don't you dare come back, you bastards! Next time I'll skin you and use you for scarecrows!"

Once the two stumbling figures had vanished from sight, Anna gathered up the scattered potatoes and came down from the field.

Three years since the war ended in defeat.

Taxes were still heavy. Those who had lost limbs had lost their livelihoods. Many villages struggled with labor shortages.

Anna had generally turned a blind eye to petty thieves. Sometimes she'd give them odd jobs and pay them in vegetables, help them find their way back home when she could. A few had settled in the village altogether.

But that was right after the war, when every pair of hands was scarce.

Bringing home another stray now would earn her the white-eyed disapproval of the neighbors.

'Those two definitely came looking for buried treasure.'

All sorts of strange rumors had circulated in the chaos after the war. That the prince, maddened by blood, was wandering the countryside killing civilians. That the missing soldiers had been eaten by the enemy. That the communal farm in this village had treasure buried beneath it.

'The land just grows things well. The rumor got garbled somewhere. Only an idiot would believe it.'

She was idly imagining what she'd do if someone came digging again—kick them into the ground and let them serve as fertilizer, perhaps?

When she came back to the village—

And immediately ran into something unpleasant.

Village youths had a man pinned to the ground outside her restaurant, surrounding him. In front of her restaurant.

Anna rushed over and grabbed the sleeve of the youth with his fist raised.

"Why are you fighting in front of my restaurant!"

"Oh, Anna. There's this obviously suspicious guy just sitting here in front of yours and won't get up. We tried asking, but he just keeps saying strange things!"

"That's still no reason to raise your fist! Wait—let me see if he's one of ours."

The youths backed off, still fuming.

And when the silhouette of the threatened man became visible, Anna briefly understood their position entirely.

'With a build like that, all you'd see is a bear sniffing for honey.'

The man was enormous. He was crouching and he still looked like someone had rolled a boulder into the village. The dark blue wolfskin cape he wore did nothing to help.

But any unease lasted only a moment.

When the man raised his head and Anna saw his face, she lost her words.

Beneath a strong, masculine brow, his eyes were the blue of deep winter lake water. His black hair, just long enough to brush his ears, was thoroughly coated in road dust. And what caught her eye above everything else—the detail that arrested her more than any other—was his sharp jaw.

Made sharper still by cheeks that had gone entirely hollow.

Something that was not alarm filled Anna's eyes.

The surrounding youths noticed the shift immediately.

'Oh no.'

'Anna is going to pick someone up and fatten him again......'

'Oh no.'

Exactly as everyone had feared. Anna reached for the stranger's sleeve.

"Excuse me!"

"......Yes?"

A dignified voice. Also completely parched—

Every syllable sounded as though it might crack off and fall.

The village youths took a collective step backward. Anna alone crouched down in front of the man and looked up at him.

"You're so thirsty you can barely speak. Come inside. I'll feed you."

"There is no need for a meal. What I require is—"

"It's free! Just eat! I happened to find some potatoes on the way here—if no one eats them, I'll have to throw them out!"

Anna held up the potatoes she'd confiscated from the would-be thieves and shook them cheerfully.

Whether he believed the transparent lie or simply didn't have the strength to argue, the man—who had kept a blank face even while being threatened—stood and followed Anna inside.

As he rose and passed through the door, the neighborhood quietly hunched its collective shoulders.

His build when seated had already suggested something considerable.

Standing, the man was a full head taller than most young men. Which meant he was two full heads taller than Anna. His shoulders were wide enough that if you set him in a doorframe, you could probably use him in place of the door.

Anna, meanwhile, felt something entirely different from alarm.

'How much would I need to feed him before he looked even halfway well-fed?'

A few potatoes alone weren't going to do it.

She sat the man down, then went to the kitchen and pulled out whatever else was on hand. She sliced bacon a full finger-width thick, brought out cheese, added a jug of wine that was unremarkable but present.

When the spread was in front of him, the man reached out a large hand—no thanks, no ceremony—and began to eat.

He chewed without expression, neither pleased nor displeased. It was less like eating and more like resupply. Anna found herself wondering whether she had, in fact, just fed a mud wall.

Because that bacon—thick, properly charred along the edges, with the fat gone golden and yielding under the teeth—the sensation of working through that kind of bacon, the warm pork fat sitting on the tongue just before it dissolved——

The man finished having barely chewed at all.

He spoke again, in a voice considerably more settled than before.

"How do you do. I am Bertram."

"Wow, that's a fine name. I'm Anna Burthe! I manage the communal farm and run this restaurant. Was the meal all right?"

"Yes. It was nutritious."

Anna's expression failed her.

'What is this man saying? I feed him until he's full and he can't manage a single word about how it tasted?'

The face she was making should have been obvious, but Bertram apparently didn't notice. Or, more troublingly, didn't care. He reached into his coat and produced a piece of paper, setting it in front of her.

Tattered and dirty. What might have been blood on the corner.

Anna studied the text from a distance, unwilling to touch it.

"The above item to be borrowed for an indefinite period...... repayment to follow the conclusion of the war...... Is this a promissory note?"

"Yes. Ordinarily this would have been drawn up on the official form, but at the time we had none available and used whatever paper was at hand. It retains full legal standing."

Legal standing aside, the document was a tangle of jargon and was conspicuously missing the borrower's name. What it did have, written clearly enough, was the lender's.

Hans Burthe.

Anna's father.

"Hans Burthe? That's my father!"

"Then I've found the right place. Where is he?"

"He... passed away a few years ago. I can receive it on his behalf! What was the item?"

Anna made herself sound bright. Grief was not a thing to unfold in front of strangers.

Bertram did not appear disturbed. Nor did he offer condolences.

'What kind of person is this?'

Before Anna could process her bafflement, she was handed something more baffling still.

"The item I must repay has been lost."

"......I'm sorry?"

"Therefore I came to ask Hans Burthe directly what it was worth, so I might repay it accordingly. It looked like this—do you recognize it?"

Bertram turned the paper over and drew something.

A fist-sized mass with two green horns sprouting from it.

"An onion?"

"It is not an onion. Hans Burthe told me it was a special bulb he had prepared for agricultural purposes. Are you unfamiliar with it as well?"

"......I'm afraid so. It doesn't sound like something we'd need."

If she didn't even know what it was, receiving it would only be a burden.

Anna shook her head. "You don't need to repay it. Please don't worry yourself—"

"I cannot."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I intend to repay it. Without question."

Flat face. Level voice. And yet the words sat on the chest like two hands pressing.

Even Anna, who could knock grown men across the back without a second thought, flinched.

"The thing is—we don't actually need the item—and you could simply eat and go—"

"Do I appear to you to be incapable of repaying my debts."

"That's not what I meant!"

"Then tell me the amount. I will meet whatever figure you name. I am also prepared to consider repayment in goods or in another form, if you prefer."

"......Does it look to you like I'm trying to negotiate here?"

Her patience, which had already endured quite a lot this afternoon, was beginning to curdle.

Bertram didn't appear to notice. If anything, he pressed further.

"Your intentions are of no concern to me. Simply name the amount so that I may repay it. I will make the arrangements."

"How very gracious of you to say so!"

"There is no need for embarrassment."

That single sentence evaporated every last trace of Anna's composure.

She had been patient. She had been practical. She had offered the man three separate exits.

She gathered all of her annoyance together and said:

"Then repay it with your body!"