Apprentice Shrine Maiden Volume 4

by Miya Kazuki

  “I requested that the High Priest look for someone to adopt Dirk, and he diligently did so. I didn’t have much hope since he had told me from the start that he would be unlikely to find anyone, but he nevertheless looked to the best of his ability.”

  “...Oh, I see. I understand now,” Delia said with a nod, her tense shoulders loosening up.

  “I did not expect you to look after Dirk as eagerly as you have been; now I am glad that no one was found to adopt him. Arno did say that we should continue raising him in the orphanage, did he not?”

  “He did. The High Priest said to keep our spirits high and do our best raising him,” Fran added, which made Delia blink in surprise for a minute. She then peered at me, as if wanting to remove the last trace of doubt that still remained in her mind.

  “...So you won’t rip me and Dirk apart, Sister Myne?”

  “Of course not. I know how much you care for Dirk, Delia, and I know all too well the pain of being separated from one’s family.”

  “...Thank goodness.” Delia pressed a hand to her chest and sighed in relief. “I never want to let Dirk go. He’s the only... the only family I’ve ever had...”

  Ten days later, Johann had finished making the iron. It was the first thing he had completed out of everything I had ordered—perhaps because it was the simplest to make, or maybe because it stimulated his creative mind the most. Thanks to the timing, I decided to try strengthening the stencils with wax before we started printing for the second picture book. The wax being a little thick wouldn’t matter given that we weren’t using a file yet.

  “We should be able to print loads more using this!” I proudly puffed out my chest at the wax-strengthened stencil, whereas Lutz just crossed his arms and cocked his head.

  “...Hey, Myne, didn’t the High Priest say not to print too much? Is printing loads more really a good idea?”

  “Waxing the paper will let us reuse the stencils, which means we can print over a longer period of time.”

  “Don’t dodge the question!” Lutz yelled, but I had no intention of giving up my picture book stencils. I would eventually be using movable type printing for text-heavy books, but illustrations had to be remade.

  “This is to lessen the load on Wilma. Isn’t being able to reuse stencils just better in every way?”

  Lutz, knowing how much work it was for Wilma to draw the art then cut out the tiny lines, grimaced and rubbed his forehead. “Just the art stencils, alright?”

  I waxed exclusively the art stencils, which I then gave to Gil. All the printing was now done by him and the gray priests in the Myne Workshop.

  Lutz had a little more time on his hands thanks to Gil taking care of workshop business, and as a result, Lutz, Damuel, and I were able to spend our days alternating between going to the workshop and Gilberta Company, and going to the temple. The Italian restaurant was close to being done, its doors and window sills in the process of being installed, so I was actually pretty busy going there with Benno and visiting the ink workshop to record research results from Heidi, among other things.

  “Myne, why’d you fall silent? Thinking of something?”

  “Uh huh. Kamil.”

  “Again?”

  Despite my busyness, my mind was always dominated by thoughts of making toys for Kamil. According to reports from the orphanage, Dirk loved the wooden rattle I had made, but whenever he tried to hold it himself he’d drop it on his face and start crying. I felt bad thinking about a toy falling on Kamil’s cute face and hurting him, so if possible I wanted to make something that would be less painful.

  “Lutz, I think I want some little bells.”

  “What for?”

  “I can use them to make a rattle small enough to squeeze.” There were a lot of bells and other metal objects that made noises here, but I hadn’t seen any that looked like cat bells, the tiny round bells you might find on an animal collar. It might be hard to get them to make a pretty sound, but the design itself was simple enough that Johann could probably make them if asked.

  “Okay. Let’s go to the smithy.”

  The smithy wasn’t far from the ink workshop, and I eagerly started making my way there.

  “Morning.”

  “Welcome, welcome. Heeeey! Gutenberg! Lady Myne’s here!” A smith who I had never seen before turned and casually shouted for Gutenberg without even a flicker of a smile on his face. Apparently they had gotten so used to the name that it wasn’t even a joke anymore.

  Johann came to the front of the workshop and weakly muttered for the smith not to call him Gutenberg, but was very casually ignored.

  “Lady Myne, what brings you here today? I haven’t finished the styluses yet.”

  I had actually ordered a wide range of different styluses for writing on the wax paper, which meant the job would take him longer to finish.

  “Well, you could actually have some apprentices do this work instead, but I want some bells like these.” I started drawing the schematics for the cat bells, which Johann peered at with great interest. As expected, he had only ever made larger, more traditionally shaped bells, never small and round ones.

  “Lady Myne, are those notches just for decoration?”

  “They’re important for producing the right sound. The notches don’t need to look exactly like this, but please don’t exclude them entirely. They need to be narrow enough that the balls inside won’t fall out.”

  Bells would apparently make different sounds depending on the size of the notches, the thickness of the metal, the size of the balls, and the materials used, but I didn’t remember the details for all of that. All I knew was that if you put metal balls inside of a larger metal ball, it would make a noise when shaken. Once they were ready, I’d have him put the smaller cat bells into a larger metal shell; there needed to be two layers so that the noise would still be audible when put into a stuffed animal.

  “...Yeah, these won’t be too hard to make. Are these for printing too?”

  “No, I want to use these for baby toys. Even I order things unrelated to printing sometimes,” I said with pursed lips.

  Johann beamed a wide grin. “Hey, this is the first time you’ve ordered something unrelated to books or printing. I thought books were the only thing you cared about,” he said, a clear sense of relief in his voice. Right now my head was full of Kamil, but in general I only cared about books. That said, I didn’t feel the need to correct his misunderstanding. He could be happy while it lasted.

  Or so I thought, but Lutz went ahead and shot him down. “You were right. Myne only cares about books. If you think you can escape your fate as Gutenberg, you’ve got another thing coming.”

  “I know that. Can’t you at least let me have a little hope?” Johann said with an exaggerated groan. Lutz slapped his back and said he needed to get used to me as soon as possible, which was the nail in his coffin.

  “Yup. And Lutz, don’t forget you’re my oldest, most respectable Gutenberg,” I said, which for some reason made him slump over just as sadly as Johann.

  Why? I was just trying to give him a compliment. So strange.

  “I’ll just be going straight home today,” I said to Damuel after leaving the smithy. But at that moment, the chime of bells sounded out through the city—bells signaling an emergency. Seconds later, a red light shot into the sky from the east gate. It was someone calling for aid using a magic tool.

  As a knight, Damuel was the first to react. He glared at the red light by the east gate with a hard expression while picking me up on the spot.

  “Let’s go.”

  That was all he said before running straight to my home. He advanced down the roads and through side alleys with confidence, having possibly memorized them all while following me around the lower city. Lutz was running close behind him all the while, despite blinking in utter confusion.

  “I know the roads by now. Lutz, you can go home or to your store. Whichever works,” Damuel said, still running. He normally dropped me off at the well in the
plaza, but this time he raced up the stairs with me in his arms before rapping a fist against our front door.

  “Yes, who is it— Myne?!” Mom stepped aside to let Damuel in, who quickly set me down. Mom blinked in surprise as he looked between me and her, a hard expression on his face.

  “Something happened at the east gate that made them call for the help of the Knight’s Order.”

  “The east gate?!”

  “It was a thin light, not a thick one, so I would guess it isn’t anything violent. They likely just need us knights to make a firm decision on some noble matter. That said, I will remain here until the apprentice’s safety is secured.”

  Mom was stunned by the sudden visit from a knight, but she grasped the circumstances and nodded quickly. “Please keep Myne safe.”

  Damuel stood by the front door so that he was ready to react on the spot if something happened. Kamil had started crying so Mom went into the bedroom, while I got Damuel a glass of water since he was a little out of breath.

  “Ah. Thank you, apprentice.” Damuel gulped the contents of the cup down in one go, then took a few deep breaths to collect himself. I knew I would just be in his way if I stuck around any longer, so I went to the storage room. I wanted to know what cloth we had for the stuffed animal rattle I wanted to make.

  “There’s a lot of white, so maybe I’ll make a rabbit?”

  After finding some cloth that felt nice, I started getting to work on making stencils at the kitchen table. All of a sudden, a white bird like the magic ones I had seen before phased through the wall and came flying this way. It surprised the heck out of me, popping out of nowhere like that, but Damuel just casually extended his arm toward it. The bird settled on it and opened its mouth.

  “Damuel, after delivering the apprentice shrine maiden to the temple or her home, regroup with the Knight’s Order.” The bird repeated the order three times in a low, gravely male voice before crumbling and turning into a yellow feystone. Damuel made his gleaming wand appear from somewhere like the High Priest usually did and tapped the stone while chanting something. Whatever he did made it turn back into a white bird.

  “The apprentice shrine maiden is safe at home. I will return at once,” he said before waving his wand. The bird flew through the wall and disappeared. “Apprentice, I’ll be regrouping with the Knight’s Order to get briefed on the situation. Under no circumstances should you leave the house before I return. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  After emphasizing that I wasn’t to even go outside to the plaza, Damuel left. I had no idea what kind of emergency it was, but if he was being called away to regroup with the Knight’s Order, it probably had something to do with me.

  “Myne, did the knight just leave?” Mom, having finished feeding Kamil, came out of the bedroom wearing an uneasy expression. It seemed she had found comfort in Damuel, a knight, being here with us. At the moment, there was only me, Mom, and Kamil still inside; nobody would be able to act if something happened.

  “He was summoned back by someone in the Knight’s Order. If they don’t think Sir Damuel needs to stay here with me then they think I’ll be safe, which means it’s either already over or nothing too serious,” I explained.

  Mom gave a faint smile, looking just a little relieved. “Oh, he left because it’s over. That’s a relief.”

  In the end, we didn’t even have to wait for Damuel to get back with an explanation, since Dad came home with one first. He had started working at the east gate in spring, and had been at the center of today’s ruckus.

  “Dad, what in the world happened over there?”

  “Yeah, guess I should tell you about it, Myne.” After dinner, Dad explained what happened while slowly sipping away at his beer. “A noble from another duchy kicked up a fuss when trying to enter the city.”

  The emergency incident had been an outsider noble trying to force their way in. Just like the High Priest had told us before, the rules regarding nobles entering and leaving the city had been changed in the spring, and one of those rules was that nobles from other duchies couldn’t enter the city without the archduke’s permission. The letters of introduction that had been customary up until now would no longer be accepted. The nobles of Ehrenfest knew this since they had heard it directly from the archduke during the winter gathering, but nobles from other duchies didn’t know the rules had changed. The result was a noble getting blocked at the gate by a commoner guard, and ultimately exploding with anger.

  “The higher-ups must have predicted something like that would happen. They had everything ready for the Knight’s Order to move in if any nobles started causing problems at the gate.”

  “Wow. The archduke sure thought things out, huh?”

  Apparently, it had been Dad himself who had used the emergency magic tool given to the gate by the Knight’s Order to call for help. It was composed of two pieces: a hammer-shaped tool with a red stone inside, and a second, separate red stone. To make the beam of light shoot up into the air, all one had to do was strike the second stone using the hammer-shaped tool. The one Fran had used in the carriage back during Spring Prayer was probably of the same kind.

  Nobles could act however they wanted to commoners, but when nobles of the city were involved, those from other duchies were at a disadvantage. The outsider noble had apparently left grumbling after the Knight’s Order had explained that he would need the archduke’s permission to enter.

  “Problems caused by nobles are best solved by nobles. Honestly, I’m real glad they came to help.”

  “Still, he had a letter of introduction from a noble here, right? Why did someone send him a letter of introduction if they knew that he wouldn’t be able to enter without the archduke’s permission?”

  “Who knows.”

  Maybe it was a letter of introduction he had been given before the spring. I tilted my head in confusion, despite the answer being impossible for me to know, when Dad looked at me with a serious expression.

  “Myne, you need to be real careful about staying safe. Remember what the High Priest said? Nobles from other duchies might be coming after you,” he warned, and I gave a slow nod. “I’ll protect the gate and call the Knight’s Order the second any dangerous noble tries getting in. You just be sure not to go anywhere without your bodyguard.”

  Dad promising to protect me made me so happy that despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but smile.

  The Two Who Left

  Damuel didn’t come the next day or the day after that. Since I wasn’t even allowed to go to the plaza, I had nothing but spare time, which I spent thinking up the content for my third picture book and making stuffed animal rattles with Tuuli. She was apparently going to give the one she had made to Corinna’s daughter, Renate.

  “I’ll bring it when we go to her place to see the baby. We are going to see her, right?”

  “It would be a bit awkward if we didn’t go given how much the Gilberta Company has helped us, not to mention that Benno gave us a gift when Kamil was born.”

  My plan was to visit Corinna once all of the danger in the air had settled down, and Tuuli was more than ready to come with me. Girl babies were probably pretty cute too, plus I was kind of looking forward to seeing Otto going head over heels for his new daughter.

  “...But, look. The one you made is cuter, Myne.” Tuuli looked down at the finished rattles and pursed her lips. She had made a white bear-like thing, while I made something more similar to a rabbit. They were kind of lumpy since we had stuffed the white cloth with rags instead of cotton.

  “Your sewing is way better than mine, though.” I had stitched mine together a little haphazardly, but like Tuuli said, it was still pretty cute.

  As I sat looking at my successful work in satisfaction, Tuuli peered over from beside me and shook her head. “If you don’t learn to sew a little better, you’ll never get married.”

  “That’s fine! I’m prepared to dedicate my whole life to books.” What men looked for in wives
around here was good health, being able to work, and having good sewing skills. I didn’t meet a single one of these criteria, so my fate was sealed; I had given up on marriage a long time ago. Just like in my Urano days, I would be just fine living with books as my soulmates. And to be honest, I would much rather keep making and reading books than be married off to someone and have to spend my days wrestling with thread to make clothes for my new family.

  If only we had the cat bells to finish these toys, I sadly thought to myself. But on the evening of my third day in isolation, Lutz came over with them.

  “Johann brought these things to the store. Whaddaya need them for?” he asked, rolling a few around in his palm. They let out cute little tinkling sounds as the smaller bells inside knocked into each other.

  Wowee. Johann knocks it out of the park yet again.

  “They’re little bells, and I’m putting them in these toys. That way they’ll make noise when you shake them.”

  The cat bells had to go inside the toys so that small children wouldn’t accidentally swallow them, and the eyes and mouths were just patterned cloth rather than separate parts that could be taken off. I had kept a small slit open on each toy so that I could put the bells in, allowing me to quickly complete them in front of Lutz.

  I shook the finished toys, and a cute clinking sound could be heard from inside the cloth. Success.

  “Kamil, it’s done. Can you hear the bells?” I tried shaking my rabbit next to Kamil’s ears, and he blinked in surprise several times. He couldn’t hold up his head yet, which meant he couldn’t turn to look at the toy, but his eyes were searching for the source of the noise.

  “Cute! You’re so cute, Kamil.” I broke into a smile at his reaction to my toy, and seconds later he started crying. It seemed my road to becoming a beloved older sister was far from over.