Chapter 174: Chapter 160

“Hey … hey. Psst, quiet.” Dressed in a fine attire, I stood in our front yard, or whatever else one may call this forest. With one hand, I leaned onto the bark of one particular tall tree while Hannah, standing right beside me, looked around nervously. We both didn´t want to be caught here. I didn´t want to spend the rest of the day in a study, drowning in paperwork, while she probably wasn’t that keen on cleaning my room. Thus, we decided that the day wasn’t over yet and changed clothed unnoticed. From then onwards, we sneaked around outside to find my beloved guard.

He was the only one I could see actually breaking the rules, no matter what. He walked through fire with the person he was supposed to protect, which was definitely a plus point for me. And so, we winked him over from the shadows of the forest and waited for him to notice us.

Loudly, he walked over to us, wearing his usual stuff. Leather armour, a normal sword and a pair of sturdy shoes.

“The madam is searching for you.” He said the moment he was within arm’s reach.

“And I …” didn´t have any good answer for that. It didn´t really fit into my general friendliness to answer sarcastically, so I could only shrug my shoulders and hope he wouldn’t mind. “… I have the obligation to do something different.”

“Like running into fire?” Well, I didn´t have anything planned like this, but if he wanted to get grilled a second time, I wouldn’t mind.

“Something along these lines …” I muttered and looked to the other guards who seemed to search for their captain.

“I see. I guess we can be considered lucky that you asked me to accompany you?” I smiled, happy that he started to understand me somewhat and turned around, away from the mansion, towards the parking lot for all of our carriages.

“Let´s say there is a crisis. What would you do first to ease it?” I questioned nobody in particular.

“How old are you again?” asked the guard rather brazenly. Hannah remained silent, and rather looked where she went in her maid dress.

“I´m in the very fortunate position where I am able to help others, despite the current financial struggles of my family. I know how it is to live in poverty and I also know how little the people in the slums had. Now, after they lost everything … I can´t even imagine how desperate they must be. My wounds are largely healed now, there is no reason to stick around a mansion where I am completely useless.” That was the main reason, but I also didn´t want to spend my whole time with paperwork. I could do that when everyone else was asleep and my activities were largely limited.

“I heard you are helping the duchess in her work though.” The guard added, pointing out that the public looked at the situation differently than me.

“A bureaucrat can do the same work, but he will never be able to give me a good view over the situation in the burnt slum.” I stated. “If we want to tackle the humanitarian crisis unfolding in front of us, we need to find out the reasons, what we can do to help right now, and how we can prevent it from happening again.” I said with a rather stern expression. I never imagined saying something along these lines a few years ago, to be honest. Times change. Rapidly. So fast in fact, that I was wasting so much money and time on a few subhuman animals living in filth. Not that I would ever show my real thoughts to anyone.

Minutes later, we arrived at the parking lot, coerced an unlucky boy to prepare a carriage with a few sweet words and soon made our way towards the slums. The curtains closed, we tucked through the filled streets, while I tapped my armrest nervously. I was doing something I generally shouldn’t do.

The capital city and the surrounding area was under the direct control of the king and my actions could be seen as meddling in his affairs. True, I was young, at least on the surface, but my behaviour was atypical for someone my age. No girl would ever run into the fires like I did, nobody of my apparent birth should be able to play around with the prince like I did, and most importantly, nobody of my age should be able to take in information like a sponge. Mr Schlaumeier, my tutor, must have informed the king, no doubt about that, and thus, it was doubtful if the king would apply the normal standards to me. Well, there was only one way to test out how far I could go, and that was simply to test it out.

Constantly, I was thinking about situations that could happen and how I would react to them. The worst case scenario would be that they would blame Hannah for everything, which wasn’t that far from the truth. But they would hopefully never know …

In any case, our trip towards the slums was relatively boring. We were in a traffic jam that lasted for around twenty minutes, but otherwise, it was a perfectly normal trip. The sun shone on my white hat, as I finally jumped out of the carriage onto dry dirt.

“What a wonderful day!” Exclaimed the guard the moment he jumped out of the drivers’ seat. The weather was quite good at this point in time, with only a few clouds on the sky and a gentle breeze, making my dress flutter beautifully in the wind. And yet, what we saw was in stark contrast to the weather. The outskirts of the slums were largely saved, thanks to our relatively quick response and the endless fields of wheat still painted the landscape in a beautiful gold, but it was clear that this was only the case on the surface.

The moment one looked past the first few houses, one could only see burnt houses. My guard gulped audibly while Hannah was strangely detached from the fate of these people. Or she had seen enough in her life so that she couldn’t care less about them. I was … well, for starters, I wasn’t smiling, but wore a rather grim expression. In my mind though, I was dancing in joy. It was always great to see a few humans suffer, even though I wasn’t the cause for it. Trust me, I would plunge them even deeper into despair if I could, but for now, I needed to help them.

And so, I strode forwards into the mess, Hannah, pulling a hood over her ears and the guard, his hand right beside the hilt of his sword, following me directly. We could only hope for the city guards at the gates to do their job to watch over the horses as we inspected the first completely destroyed hut.

“Yup…” As I expected, there wasn’t much to salvage from these huts. I couldn’t even spot a pot for cooking, as it was either stolen or sold on the black market for food or other necessities. The owner was also nowhere in sight, which could have very different reasons. Well, he wasn’t the only person I could potentially talk to as quite a crowd gathered around us already. They didn´t encircle us and rather kept their distance with a kind of reverence I never imagined possible. They were thankful for my actions, that was for sure, but there was also more to it I couldn’t grasp yet. I was more than interested in finding out what it was.

Looking past the burnt hut, I could only spot the same problems over and over again. Homelessness, insecurity, and a sense of helplessness. Lovely.

“Hey …” I sighed loudly in front of the crowd, seemingly incapable of putting my thoughts into words. “I´m not done. I still want to help. I´m not leaving you alone.” My speech was short, really short, but it did what I tried to achieve. As far as I was aware, none of the more influential nobles interacted with them like I did, mostly because my situation was quite special. They knew about me for the most part, they knew who I chose as my dad, and they suspected I was more like them, than different. From the moment I stepped out of the carriage, I didn´t walk like a noble, I never looked down upon anyone and never looked aloof or detached from their fate.

With a rather grim expression, I strolled out of the ruins towards a rather large patch of grass on the wayside. To their surprise, I sat down in the dirt there and smiled gently towards those that followed. It was only quite a few as most suspected I was only there for my simple statement, which wasn’t the case at all.

“Hey, Hannah, please sit down behind me.” Hannah raised an eyebrow, but otherwise did what I asked her to do. Leaning against her back, it was much more comfortable and so, I could begin with the sole reason I was here. Information.

“As I said, I want to help. But I cannot do so without you. All of you. So please, take a seat and tell me about the problems you are currently facing, what needs to be solved immediately, and what stops you from finding happiness in the long term.” Was that sweet enough? Well, it was certainly convincing, because most of them sat down and stared at me with this reverence that I still couldn’t comprehend completely.

“Our houses were destroyed …” said one of them after a long pause. I nearly plucked out my right eye and threw it at him for stating such an obvious fact, but I managed to smile bitterly instead. Quite an achievement, I dare say.

“I know. My mum and I considered ordering simple tents for you, but … it´s complicated.” I didn´t want to say that the king would dislike such a move because I knew they wouldn’t understand. Politics weren’t their forte, so I rather left it out. It was also not really my task here to rile them up to rebel against the king, which would be rather contra productive right then. “We are already working on that problem, but I cannot help you right away, I´m sorry.”

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The man looked to the ground dejected and an old woman soon took away every bit of my attention. At first, she sat with the others a bit away from me, but right when the man had his answer, she robbed over towards me awkwardly. I tilted my head in curiosity as she touched my hands, resting on my knees.

“Thank you.” She simply said, while I blinked rapidly. Either I spontaneously got Alzheimer, or she was a bit crazy, because I simply couldn’t remember this woman.

“I … cannot follow.” I said, looking into her hope filled eyes, that didn´t really fit to all the wrinkles on her face. I shortly considered pulling my hands away from her, fearing she would find out about the smoothness of the skin on my palm, which directly contradicted their vision of me in which I did hard labour in the past.

“You are an angel.” She said, which kind of stupefied me. I didn´t want to work for some shitty god after all.

“I have done nothing to help you …” I said, hoping she didn´t say it figuratively.

“You have saved my life. Well, not directly, but you inspired all these young, brave men to search for survivors and one of them found me. You have my eternal gratitude.” I finally understood where she was coming from. I simply couldn’t remember her because I never met her in the first place.

“Well, you should thank your saviour instead of me then.” I claimed, hoping she would finally lift her wrinkled fingers from my hands. Naturally, she did not.

“I already did so.” She said gently and finally let go of me. “I already did so.”

After repeating her words a second time, she stood up and walked out of the small crowd, leaning onto a crane whenever she used her right leg. The others made room for her and immediately closed the gap afterwards. I didn´t know what to think of this old woman, nor did I understand how she survived this long in the slums. But sometimes, it was better to leave a few things alone, and the woman was one of these.

Just as the next man wanted to speak up, I heard a loud clamour from outside our circle. A young boy, around eight years old, was shouting at a man to let go of him, while the man looked helplessly towards me. The man knew what was going on, while I was completely perplexed.

“Let him through.” As far as I could see, the boy wasn´t carrying any weapon, but his rage still hit me like an hammer. Once again, I couldn’t remember him at all. He stomped through the crowd and only stopped a mere metre away from me, his hands balled into fists.

“You! You killed him.” I looked closer at the boy, trying to find any resemblance to any person I killed … and couldn’t find any. I suspected he lost a family member due to me, but I seriously couldn’t see when I killed them. Most importantly, I wouldn’t make a rookie mistake to show myself to the boy in this case, which meant one of my actions indirectly killed someone he held dear.

“I…” I muttered, trying to hide the fact that I absolutely had zero clue what was going on.

“My father died for you!” I still had no idea. “He … he told me he would come back! But he …” He said and started to sob loudly. The rage he was carrying within him dissipated like smoke the moment the first tears fell to the ground.

Slowly, I was starting to understand. I stood up carefully and walked towards him, carrying a sad expression on my face.

“I´m so sorry.” I said and hugged him the moment I was near him. I closed my eyes, not because I wanted to make it more impactful or anything, but because I needed to hide how I rolled my eyes. First of all, the guy stank horribly. His last shower was probably years … a lifetime away. And second of all, I didn´t really see it as my fault that his father got himself killed by running back into the fire.

I never told him to die there in the first place, so blaming me for his father´s incompetence was really … annoying. In the first place, how did that even happen? In every book I read, humans simply walk through fire like it was nothing. Well, they were fictional books for the most part, but whatever. It was such a hassle to deal with this boy, especially because my chest started to ache a bit.

“I´m so sorry.” for your fathers´ low intelligence. At least, that’s what I wanted to say. “Your father died for something. A belief. A belief in which helping is more valuable than doing nothing. Where cooperation is more beneficial than egoism.”

The boy squirmed out of my embrace, stepped back, and slapped me on the face before I could even react.

“You don’t know my father!” He exclaimed angrily.

The first to react was my guard as he drew his sword and stepped closer. Stupefied, I could only hold my slightly red cheek and look into the boy´s hatred filled eyes.

“Milady, allow me to-“ I turned around and stared at the guard sternly.

“That is not necessary. Please sheathe your sword.” I said hastily. I certainly didn´t need any more escalation. Once again, I turned around and looked at the boy, still rubbing my cheek. For a short moment, I wondered what I wanted to tell him, until I picked out the cold truth. “He will not come back. You can hurt me all you want, but he will not come back.”

Once again, the boy hit me, this time on my shoulder. Even though it was a weak punch, it still made me furious that he actually dared to do so. Still, I didn´t want to see his blood, despite everything.

“It was my fault that he died. Without me, he would be alive right now. But he had a reason to go through fire. Whatever it was that drove him to such unimaginable actions, he is a hero in my opinion just because he tried. I know, it doesn’t make your loss less painful, you will still see it as unfair and probably hate me for all eternity …” I looked over to Hannah for a split second, just enough for everyone to see. “, but I also know that hatred isn´t the way forward. Ultimately, it is your decision, but I want you to know that you aren’t alone, as long as there are people like your father.” I extended my hand, holding it right in the middle between us.

I didn´t expect him to take it. After all, he was eight years old and I honestly doubted he got his intelligence from his mother. But my little speech wasn’t for him in the first place. It was for the others around us, which seemed to grow in size the longer I stuck around here. The boy balled his hands to fists, then relaxed them again and breathed in strongly. Needless to say, he didn´t take my hand. A bit dejected, I could only look as he turned around and walked away without leaving any words behind.

I could only hope he was alone with his perception of me…  

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