Risou no Himo Seikatsu - Volume 14 - Chapter Aft

Appendix — The Maids and Maids’ South-North Exchange

It was the afternoon, and the blazing season was nearing its end. The prince consort, Zenjirou, was in Uppasala for business. Aura was taking her lunch in the royal palace, so the main building of the inner palace had a relatively relaxed atmosphere that day.

According to the calendar, it was still the blazing season, so there was a long break that allowed for afternoon naps, but the temperature could be relatively low on some days. Today was one of those days. The elderly and those who worked out in the elements would still retire to their rooms after lunch for a rest, but others—those who were still young and energetic but not particular about their work—treated the lunch breaks on cooler blazing season days as free time.

It went without saying that the three problem maids—Faye, Dolores, and Letti—were the prototypical examples of such people.

“Yup, that’s great.”

“It really is.”

“Hmm, maybe it would be better if it rose more? Maybe I could add more baking soda?”

Faye, Dolores, and Letti were chatting as they enjoyed their free time, pancakes on wooden plates in front of them. They had wooden forks that they were using to break portions off to sample.

While Faye was happily enjoying the sweetness and Dolores was nodding along in satisfaction, Letti was the only one finding problems with them. Perhaps it was her pride as their creator, or even a result of the personal training she had received from Vanessa.

The recipe, it went without saying, had come from Zenjirou. He had originally brought a wide variety of both sweet and savory products. However, the sweeter snacks mostly relied on dairy products and thus were impossible to reproduce. Nicolai’s efforts had changed that, though. His rearing of the goats had brought about not just milk, but cheese, butter, and cream—albeit in small quantities. In turn, more of Zenjirou’s recipes were usable. Of course, milk was one thing, but there was by no means a stable supply of other dairy products. Indeed, there was much to do before any of it, milk included, was up to snuff.

Incidentally, the impetus for Zenjirou remembering the pancakes was less an increase in dairy products and more the maple syrup they had brought back from the Northern Continent. Zenjirou associated the pancakes with the syrup. Of course, it was also true that the only real use he could think of for syrup was pouring it on pancakes.

Either way, he had provided the recipe, but with it needing adjustments and testing for the best method, it was more the domain of the maids to make it and test it during their downtime. If they asked for permission to use the inner palace’s facilities and ingredients—within reasonable limits—they could do so. Of course, repeated failures that wasted ingredients would be another matter, but the maid in charge of the kitchen trusted Letti, which allowed the other two in the trio to benefit as well. Since there was not a stable supply of butter, and the only way to get maple syrup was by buying it through teleportation, those two ingredients were scarce and valuable. Still, Zenjirou had given the maids permission to use them in the name of perfecting the recipe.

After she had put the butter and maple syrup—retrieved from the fridge in the living room—on the pancakes, Letti asked the others for their opinions again.

“What do you two think?”

“Mmm? They’re good,” Faye responded.

“Right. I don’t have any complaints,” Dolores agreed.

The other two could only offer vague praise, which was less than helpful to the pancakes’ creator.

Letti protested in response. “What? I can’t give Sir Zenjirou or Queen Aura these. I don’t think Lady Vanessa would be happy with them either.”

“Right, she is fairly strict when it comes to this sort of thing.”

“Of course she is; it’s her specialty.”

Vanessa was, by far, the kindest and most easygoing out of any of the maids’ superiors. The younger maids were unanimous on that front, but she was not easygoing about everything. She was intensely exacting about the food served to the lords and ladies of the inner palace: Zenjirou and Aura initially, but now the new concubine Freya as well. She was the same when it came to how food was dealt with and even more so about safety.

Vanessa was particularly vigilant when it came to the contents of the fridge. That was perhaps a given. The three meals of the day were all checked by her, but Zenjirou and Aura both took food directly from the fridge.

It was exceptionally hard to make sure that there was nothing that had gone bad or potentially been contaminated with toxic material, in the worst case, within the fridge. Because of that, the servants who now worked in the gardens and bathrooms were not allowed to even enter the living room, let alone touch the fridge itself. The only ones permitted inside were those who dealt with the washing. That meant they were both more strictly vetted but also better paid. Being selected for the laundry work had already become a mark of status among the girls. They were watched by the maids, though, and were not allowed near the fridge. Even the maids Freya had brought with her—and indeed the Capuan maids assigned to her—were not presently permitted to touch the fridge.

While the trio themselves did not realize it, they were actually highly trusted in that respect. Of course, that was in terms of trusting them not to harm any of the three royals. In terms of their overall competence and diligence in their work, the servants were more highly regarded.

Another maid stepped into the room as the three problem maids enjoyed their time off. All three of them noticed the new arrival at roughly the same time, but it was Dolores who greeted her first.

“Oh, Rebecca? This is a surprise. Are you coping all right today?”

The young woman walked over in response to the greeting. She was one of the new maids Freya had brought with her from Uppasala. Therefore, she was pale and had long, straight locks of blonde hair and green eyes. Her entire color scheme was rather eye-catching in Capua.

Fortunately, the inner palace already had another maid—Margarette—with a similar appearance, so no one stared or anything, but she still stood out.

“It’s been a while, Dolores. You too, Faye, Letti. Is this seat free?”

“Of course,” Faye answered.

“Sure, go ahead and sit,” Letti agreed.

Rebecca sat at the table as well. It had already been over a month since she and the other Uppasalan maids had arrived in Capua, but there had been few enough chances for them to see Faye and the others that the “it’s been a while” was not unwarranted.

This wasn’t anything as serious as segregation between the main building where Aura lived and the annex for Freya. No, it was just due to the season. The Uppasalan maids—who had not set foot out of their country before—found the blazing season of Capua practically unbearable. Therefore, outside of their work hours, they had all but shut themselves away in their room with the magic tool to cool the area.

Faye and the others were both surprised and worried to see Rebecca out and about when she was perfectly within her rights to stay in that room.

“Are you not managing to sleep?” Dolores asked. “Although, today is pretty cool.” As she spoke, she swiftly poured out a cup of cold tea and placed it in front of Rebecca.

“Thank you. Honestly, I cannot say I’m doing ‘well’ at all. Frankly, I’m appalled you can call this heat ‘cool.’ I won’t be staying long, but I can’t just shut myself away forever.”

The woman, maintaining impeccable manners, then proceeded to drain her cup in almost a single swallow. Indeed, she didn’t look particularly well. While she wasn’t pale enough to look ill, her green eyes were flat, and both her voice and actions lacked any real dynamism.

She was here despite that, at the request of her lady, Freya, who had instructed her maids to form bonds with the Capuan staff as best they could. Rebecca could understand why. The most important thing a noblewoman needed when she married into a foreign country was a strong relationship with her husband. The second was a good relationship with her husband’s family, and the third was for the subordinates she brought with her to integrate with the local workers.

Additionally, in Freya’s case, she had brought far fewer maids with her for the inner palace than a normal royal would. Of course, that had been balanced out by other Uppasalans, such as Völundr the smith, but the fact remained that there were few of her people to help her within the inner palace.

They were few enough that they could not maintain Freya’s lifestyle within the inner palace. For both her comfort and—when you looked closer—her safety, it was all but essential for the Uppasalans to grow closer to the locals. Fortunately, the few maids she had brought had been carefully selected. While they naturally had significant skill as maids, they had also been picked for their lack of timidity with new people and their general affability.

As a result, Faye, who was no shrinking violet in the slightest; Dolores, who was able to form relationships based on their benefit; and Letti, who was just generally a good person, were all rather open with the new maids, even with the relatively small amount of interaction they had.

“Don’t push yourself too hard, Rebecca. Want a pancake?” Letti asked in concern.

Rebecca looked at the pancakes before shaking her head with a pained look. “Sorry, but I can’t. I love sweet things, but I think I’d collapse if I ate something hot,” she replied. Apparently, she was right on the verge between managing to cope and not.

“Rebecca, you really shouldn’t go too far,” Dolores chided her.

“Yeah, couldn’t you just stay in your room until it’s time?” Faye asked.

Rebecca smiled in return. “Thank you, but I’m fine. I need to get used to it. I feel bad for Lady Freya instead,” she insisted.

She was probably forcing herself to say as much, and perhaps as proof of that, she didn’t react at all to Letti getting up in apparent realization. She may not have even noticed, in fact. The reason she felt worse for Freya was that she had it far worse in the blazing season than they did. While the maids generally never left the inner palace and could retreat to their cooler room if the need arose, Freya had to attend meals in the royal palace from time to time. It went without saying that the other palace had none of the mist generators. In that respect, perhaps she was in a harsher situation.

“Princess Freya has spent over a year in the country. She’s also had training as a warrior, so you shouldn’t compare yourself to her.”

“Faye, you’re supposed to be calling her ‘Lady,’ not ‘Princess,’” Dolores warned her.

“Oh, whoops. My mistake; I meant Lady Freya,” she corrected herself hurriedly, putting a hand over her mouth.

Freya had ordered them not to refer to her as ‘princess,’ to make her position as Zenjirou’s concubine clearer than her original status as a princess of Uppasala. Therefore, strictly speaking, Faye had just disobeyed one of her orders. However, it had been both unintentional and not in front of her, so it was a minor issue at most. In fact, Rebecca had no complaints about it either. Still, she disagreed with something else that Faye had said.

“I’m sure you’re right that acclimatizing to it is a large part of it, but the latter half is wrong.”

“Huh? Lady Freya wasn’t trained as a warrior? I heard she was,” Faye replied.

Rebecca gave a small but proud smile before answering. “That isn’t wrong, but you said that I shouldn’t compare myself to her in that way, no? However, we are the same in that way.”

“Huh?” It took Faye a moment to understand what Rebecca meant.

Conversely, Dolores immediately cottoned on to the implication and exclaimed in surprise, “What?! You were trained as a warrior?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s what you mean,” Faye added, still surprised but understanding what the other girl had meant now.

Rebecca’s smile took on a conflicted air as she nodded. “Indeed. I was trained since I was young. I convinced my parents and trained that way, even taking the rites to call myself a warrior...but I failed. Lady Freya and I really are alike, although I was stronger as a fighter than her. I was much closer to succeeding, and even as we’ve sparred, I have never lost a bout to her.”

She flexed her arm as she spoke. They looked again and could see that she was built differently than most women. Her neck, arms, and chest all had a thicker layer of muscle than was typical. The table was in the way, but her legs would likely show the same features. Rather than a soft build, she seemed more lithe, looking like someone who had actually trained themselves.

Faye and Dolores had a completely different impression of the other woman now.

“That’s amazing,” Faye told her.

“Countries that officially recognize women as warriors are something else,” Dolores commented.

“Oh? But surely Capua has female warriors as well, no?”

The two didn’t immediately understand what she meant, and both of them cocked their heads, but Dolores soon figured it out.

“Oh, you mean Her Majesty? That’s an exception,” she said.

Rebecca blinked in surprise but let it pass without question. “Oh? Ah...yes, Her Majesty is rather exceptional.” She was not talking about Aura.

There were two maids in the inner palace whom Rebecca judged to be as capable in a fight as her, or perhaps even more so. However, now that she considered it, both wore the same outfits as the others and were not visibly armed. They had been trained—perhaps intentionally—such that their muscles were less visible. Therefore, it was easy to imagine that the maids as a whole were unaware.

I should talk to Lady Freya and Lady Skaji about it just in case, she decided.

While Rebecca was making that decision, Letti returned to the table carrying a covered metal tray. The trays were a custom that Freya had brought from Uppasala. They had a long winter in the north, so the locals had come up with this approach to keep food warm after it had been heated, but Letti was using it for the opposite purpose here.

“Rebecca, do you think you can manage this?” she asked, uncovering the tray. Atop it was a small plate, and on top of that plate was a familiar food item: a pancake. Unlike the pancakes the trio had been eating, though, it was not steaming with heat, but had been chilled in the fridge in such a way that it had been kept from drying out. The pancake itself wasn’t topped with butter or syrup, but ice cream.

“Letti?!” Faye yelled in shock.

“You didn’t?!” Dolores added.

Letti just smiled softly back. “I did. It’s from my portion, though, so don’t worry,” she told them before addressing Rebecca. “Of course, you don’t need to force yourself to eat it, but it’s cold, so I thought you might be able to manage it.”

Letti sat down as she spoke. Faye and Dolores leaned forward over the table.

“You really don’t need to force yourself!” Faye exclaimed.

“Right! You shouldn’t push yourself! What if you forced yourself and it made you feel worse? That’d completely defeat the point,” Dolores added.

Their behavior made it obvious just how strongly the three valued the cold pancake Letti had brought over. Rebecca’s actions were driven less by hunger and more by curiosity and a slight desire to tease Faye and Dolores as she picked up a fork.

“I would feel bad turning you down, Letti. Thank you.”

While it was cool for the blazing season, the air still easily felt over thirty degrees, and the plate itself had a chill to it. Pulled in by her curiosity, Rebecca scooped up a portion of the pancake and ice cream before bringing it to her mouth.

The second it touched her tongue, she sat bolt upright. Freezing cold assaulted her entire mouth along with a refreshing sweetness. It was hard to make cold things taste sweet, and yet this was sweet enough to have taken buckets of sugar. It was completely different from the sweetness of maple syrup.

For someone from Uppasala, who imported sugar at a premium, it was an intensely luxurious flavor. Additionally, for someone from Capua, it was an inexplicable food item. In Uppasala, there was—when the weather was suitable—something like a milk sorbet made using goat milk. However, it would be impossible to make the same thing in Capua. After all, they would have no way of freezing the milk.

Technically, there might be places cool enough even in Capua—perhaps at the summits of mountains—and it would be possible for someone that could use teleportation to get it here before it melted. However, the possibility didn’t even bear consideration. The only two in the country who would be capable of it were Aura and Zenjirou, and there was no way the queen or prince consort would be teleporting into the mountains to make snacks for the maids. It would be completely backwards.

Silently, Rebecca ferried the pancake and ice cream to her mouth.

“Aw...”

“You like it? Yeah, I guess you don’t even need to say.”

Faye and Dolores looked saddened, but Rebecca devoured the entire confection in practically a blink of an eye.

“Thank you, Letti. That was delicious,” she said with a wide smile. “I’m sure I’ll be dreaming about it tonight.”

It certainly didn’t seem like she was exaggerating. Rebecca’s eyes, practically dead from the heat before, now had a light in their depths again.

“Honestly...I cannot even imagine how that was made. There must be something that made it possible,” Rebecca murmured in wonder.

“There is,” Dolores answered after a moment’s thought. “It’s something like a magic tool. Sir Zenjirou brought it from his homeland.”

It was impossible to hide the generator—arguably the root of all of the appliances—from the new maids, so they were allowed to be informed of the existence of the appliances.

“Magic tools. I see. Honestly, I thought that the Northern Continent was much more advanced than the Southern, but I’ve reconsidered since arriving here. Those fireballs in particular are a large part of it. They make lighting places much easier. The mist generators are essential as well, of course.”

Despite how impressed Rebecca sounded, Dolores had personally seen the Northern Continent, so she corrected her with a rueful smile.

“Your first impression was right. The Northern Continent is more advanced overall. The palaces of the bigger nations with magic tools are exceptions, though.”

Zenjirou and Aura had ordered many magic tools from Francesco and Bona for Freya’s arrival to the inner palace. They had prioritized the mist-generating tools but had also commissioned several of the static flames for lighting. Zenjirou had spent a fair amount of time in Uppasala’s palace and noticed that even commoners generally used candles for illumination.

Meanwhile, in the Capuan palace, candles were limited in use, and most lighting was done with oil lamps. Zenjirou had been uneasy asking people used to candles to transition to oil lamps. Light from loose flaming liquid was more dangerous when one wasn’t used to it.

The mix of Zenjirou’s concern and Aura’s decision that it would serve as a physical sign of their welcome to the new concubine meant that they had set up several of them in Freya’s annex. Discounting those magic tools and the appliances Zenjirou had brought from Earth, the Northern Continent was definitely more technologically advanced than the Southern Continent. In the commonwealth, even lodgings with a somewhat refined clientele had window panes, and the ports had cranes, albeit ones powered by people.

Even limiting the comparison to Uppasala, the general technological level of the country as a whole was higher than Capua’s. Of course, there were exceptions in both directions under limited circumstances.

“Oh, right, Lady Skaji is generally armed even within the inner palace, but you aren’t? You might not have quite made it, but you were close, right? Surely it would be a shame to let your skills wane.”

Dolores’s question prompted a taken-aback look from Rebecca. After a few moments thinking, the Northerner shook her head regretfully.

“While this isn’t Uppasala, and I am part of Capua for the time being—so it would not cause an issue for me to train—that is only true for a short while. Once I have served my time here, I will be returning to Uppasala and getting married, so I should not go too much against their customs.”

In Uppasala, a woman who failed the rites would be viewed as not knowing when to give up if she kept acting as a warrior. Of course, there would be no issue at all if she used her skills to save herself or someone she was serving. In that respect, Freya would be considered rather wayward with her tendency to have a spear or axe to hand at any opportunity. She would call them precautions for emergencies, but it was rather hard to excuse when she was accompanied by Skaji yet still insisted on hunting a drake herself while having her bodyguard stay back. For better or worse, Rebecca was not quite as extreme as Freya.

“Oh, so you’re heading back to Uppasala to get married rather than marrying here?” Faye asked innocently.

Rebecca’s face took on a conflicted cast as she answered. “If one of us wished, we could marry here and remain assigned to Lady Freya, becoming part of this country’s nobility...assuming we found someone to marry, of course. However, that isn’t possible for me. I made a promise to my father in exchange for my training. I agreed that if I failed, I would follow his desires with regard to marriage.” It was essentially impossible that such a marriage would involve a man from Capua.

“I see. That’s a shame,” Faye said, her expression suiting her words. Despite that, though, she saw it as simply being how things worked and accepted it. Whatever else she was, Faye was a noblewoman. It was a matter of course that the final decisions in such matters weren’t with the woman herself, but with the head of the family.

However, things were not quite the same in Uppasala.

“That wouldn’t have been a problem if I had succeeded,” Rebecca commented, somewhat regretfully.

“Did he promise to let you choose if you succeeded?” Letti asked.

Rebecca shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. A female warrior is on the level of a centurion, so she can form a branch family of her own volition. Of course, she would need to have the land, weapons, horses, and so on to be recognized as such, so it is not easy. If she can solve those issues, though, a female warrior can become the head of a family.”

Branch family or not, being a family head meant that even her father or brothers would have no right to give her orders. That said, a branch family was generally expected to defer to the main family in exchange for protection, so she would not necessarily be completely free.

“Huh? So what about Lady Skaji?” Dolores asked.

“Indeed, she is the head of her own branch family.”

“Oh, then would Lady Freya have been able to do the same if she’d succeeded?” Letti asked.

“Well...probably not. I cannot say for sure, since she is the only female royal who has attempted it to my knowledge, but most male royals have the same rank or higher. They would need the king’s permission to create a branch family.”

It was an obvious restriction. A normal noble branch family usually wouldn’t have much impact on the governing of the country. However, if the royal family could create branches so easily, it could easily become chaos.

“Do many women try for it?” Faye asked innocently. “Like Elvira, maybe?”

Elvira was one of the young maids who shared a room with Rebecca. She was also the one who had been temporarily sent back to Uppasala at Zenjirou’s direction.

“Elvira is different. She was just chosen for her maid skills and personality. Generally, there aren’t many women who aim to become warriors. Usually, it is just those who are particularly strong or energetic from a young age. However, in Lady Freya’s and my generation, there may be more than normal due to Lady Skaji’s influence.”

When Freya and Rebecca had still been young girls, Skaji—or Victoria at the time, since she’d had yet to receive the name—had gained her rank and was unassailable even from the men of her generation, so the young girls had admired her. It was no strange thing that those their age had wanted to become like Skaji. More of their generation had therefore at least attempted to follow the same path.

“I guess bigger women are the ones that make it,” Letti commented. “From our perspective, you’re pretty big, but I guess the warriors are all like Lady Skaji? Or maybe Dolores?”

“Well, Lady Skaji is an exception among exceptions. She stands head and shoulders above even the other female warriors. She stands even further above them in skill, though. Dolores would be fairly tall among most of them. If I’d been that tall, I’d have definitely made it,” Rebecca answered with a somewhat reproachful glare at Dolores.

“Don’t look at me like that. I can’t give you any of my height.”

“I know, but that doesn’t stop me being jealous,” Rebecca answered with a sigh.

On average, the Sveans who made up most of Uppasala were taller than Capuans. However, that was just the overall average; there were taller and shorter individuals in both groups. Rebecca was around 170 centimeters tall, about average for an Uppasalan woman, so she was envious of Dolores’s roughly ten-centimeter lead on her.

“Being tall is helpful for getting married in general, not just trying to become a warrior,” Rebecca added.

There was a strong tendency towards militarism in Uppasala since the country was founded by pirates and warriors. Because of that, even the nobility wanted their children to be strong. Whether or not there was a scientific explanation for it in this era, there was anecdotal evidence of children tending to be similar to their parents in build. Therefore, people who wanted stronger and larger children saw height as a desirable trait in the women they married. However, there were more than a few men who would find their pride wounded by women like Skaji, who were taller than them.

“Huh, it’s completely different than here,” Faye commented.

“Right. Men are supposed to be tall, but it’s not so much a thing for women. If anything, there’s a slight prejudice against tall women, maybe?” Dolores said.

The lack of qualms from either of them—with each of them being on either extreme of the spectrum—showed Rebecca how true the comments were.

“I see. Then what is the preference for women here?” she asked. “Standing and appearance?”

Dolores considered for a while before answering. “Well, standing is definitely the most important thing. Looks and personality are important too, of course, but the other thing would be mana capacity, I suppose.”

“Mana capacity?” Rebecca asked, taken aback. She had not expected that in the slightest. However, it was just a fact of life for Capuans.

“Yeah, mana capacity is important.”

“Right, I’ve heard that it helps commoners as well as nobles,” Letti added.

The royals and nobles in Capua were proud of their mana reserves. Large amounts of mana offered commoners a leg up in the world as well. Therefore the amount of mana a person had was important in marriage for both nobles and commoners.

Rebecca offered an impressed breath once the three of them had finished explaining. “This country really is different than Uppasala. In the past, the royal and noble families had significant amounts of mana as well, but there is much less of a tendency to see it as important. I imagine that commoners don’t care about it at all.”

Magic hadn’t fallen out of use entirely in Uppasala, but it was much less of a focus than on the Southern Continent.

The response prompted a realization from Dolores. “Actually, the warriors in Uppasala and the mages here might be pretty similar. Women can’t become warriors here, but they can become mages. They can even rise high in the ranks, like Lady Pasquala.”

Pasquala was the head mage Espiridion’s wife. She herself was a skilled mage as well and worked in the royal court. She was no exception either; there were several other women who were official mages, even if not as many as there were men.

“That does indeed sound similar,” Rebecca agreed.

Patriarchal societies with an emphasis on people capable of fighting, along with a class system involving royals, nobility, and commoners, led to a lot of similarities between the two nations, but the biggest difference was the emphasis on magic.

With that realization, Faye spoke up—oddly hesitantly for her. “Um, so Uppasala prizes warriors even more than us, right? They don’t put as much importance on mana capacity, though. So...how is Sir Zenjirou seen over there?”

It was something that the maids of the inner palace were immensely curious about, and certainly something they should check. However, in light of the previous information and what they knew about Zenjirou, it also took quite a large amount of courage to ask.

Indeed, Rebecca’s green eyes were roving around looking for an escape. However, she let out a resigned sigh and began to speak quietly. “Well...you likely aren’t too far off the mark. It would be rather rude to be too specific, so please leave it there.”

It was rude enough to indicate that giving details would be offensive, but that was how Zenjirou was seen in Uppasala. Capua hadn’t appraised him particularly well to begin with. He was by no means large, and his body was completely untrained. His demands were weak and he had kept up a gentle demeanor. Even so, he had managed to be seen as a proper royal, as he had inherited the family’s lineal magic, and he had more than just the bare minimum amount of mana for a royal.

However, in Uppasala, lineal magic had nothing to do with royalty, and they didn’t place much value on mana capacity. Additionally, Zenjirou was of average build for an adult male in Capua, so in Uppasala he was firmly in the “slight” category...in a country that prized a man’s size.

All of that combined meant that even conservatively, Uppasala wouldn’t think too highly of him. Rebecca clearly felt that she should speak in his defense, and her words tumbled from her lips.

“There are those who are very impressed with him, though. King Gustav and Prince Yngvi hold him in quite high esteem. Second Queen Felicia is also deeply grateful to him, but that is because he married Lady Freya, not quite because she holds him personally in high regard.”

“That’s really detailed,” Dolores said, unable to hide her surprise at the information the other had given.

“It’s secondhand, but it comes from Lady Ragnhild so I’m sure it’s right.”

“Lady Ragnhild?”

“You said Lady Ragnhild, right?”

“I guess she does seem really put together.”

The three problem maids all tilted their heads at her answer. Ragnhild was the older maid Freya had brought from Uppasala. The first impression the young maids had formed of her was: “Amanda but in different colors.” The impression they had of her after a month was much the same. They therefore all agreed that she was someone who wouldn’t lie pointlessly, but they couldn’t understand how she could be so informed about the royal family.

Conversely, Rebecca couldn’t understand what they had missed, but eventually came to the reason. “Oh. Right, families aren’t mentioned or asked about publicly to put you all on equal footing. Does that mean that not only have we not heard of your standing, but you haven’t heard of ours?”

Apparently, she had assumed it was only a restriction for the Uppasalans and not something that the Capuan maids had to follow.

“That’s right,” Dolores said, correcting her assumption. “We don’t know anything about your families or standings right now, like you don’t know anything about ours.”

“Right, then I suppose I shouldn’t say anything,” Rebecca answered before falling silent.

Dolores disagreed, though. “No, it wouldn’t be a problem. Like you said, we can’t talk about them officially or in public. Some of us have known each other since before we came to the inner palace, so unofficially, it’s not a problem.”

The inner palace was divorced from society as a whole, but the maids’ lives were not solely within its confines. In extreme cases, if two maids from completely different strata managed to start feuding without knowing their respective standings, it could end disastrously after they both left the palace. The more highly placed maid wouldn’t necessarily be the kind to let such grudges go for the rest of their lives. Therefore, while officially the maids weren’t to talk about their standings, they were almost encouraged to do so unofficially.

Once Dolores explained all of that, Rebecca nodded several times in understanding.

“I see. Then I suppose it would not cause issues if I say this. Both Her Majesty and Sir Zenjirou are aware, but Lady Ragnhild is Lady Freya’s aunt.”

The casual dropping of the bomb prompted yells of shock from the problem maids.

“What?!”

“No way?!”

“She’s royalty?!”

Dolores was the last to speak, and Rebecca shook her head.

“She isn’t. She is Lady Freya’s mother’s older sister. She was born into a marquis’s family and married quite a while ago, so she is now a countess, a rather highly ranked noble.”

Lady Ragnhild was therefore someone Freya could trust almost without question, though she also had the classic views of a noblewoman, which made their relationship rather awkward.

“Huh,” Faye breathed, taking in the new information.

Rebecca shrugged, poking her tongue out. “I’m rather similar to Lady Freya in that sense as well. I don’t have the right constitution for a noblewoman but failed to become a warrior and still regret that, so Lady Ragnhild often glares at me.”

Ragnhild had chosen Rebecca as the maid who was closest emotionally to the princess, while Elvira was chosen as the most trustworthy and capable. When the trio finished listening to that explanation, they exchanged looks of understanding.

“Ah, I see,” Faye said first.

“Right, she’s one of us.”

“One of us.”

There were many similarities to be seen in Ragnhild’s behavior towards Rebecca and Amanda’s behavior towards the trio.

“Uh? Why are you three suddenly acting so familiarly?” Rebecca asked, confused.

Rude though it may sound, the three problem maids had designated Rebecca as their fourth compatriot.