How to Raise a Dumb Wolf - Chapter 62

“…Your Majesty?”

Les halted. With a soldier’s practiced speed, he swept his gaze in both directions. Once certain that no one was nearby, he slipped into his room, locked the door behind him, and opened his communication with Carter III.

Living apart from Aisha brought one advantage besides propriety: it made those communications far easier. Alone in his own room, Les no longer had to worry that Aisha might hear him speak. The schedule of his regular conversations with the cat emperor had therefore become much more flexible. Whenever Carter III had time and Les was in his room, they could talk.

Their appointed hour had gradually moved earlier. They spoke mostly of work and their respective circumstances. As long as Les no longer had to stay up late, the change also spared him some physical strain.

Even so, they had never spoken quite this early before. Carter III’s voice had entered Les’s ear the instant his conversation with Queen Louisa ended, leaving him stunned for several seconds.

“…It is I.”

The cat emperor’s voice came through the magic again, accompanied by an unusual amount of noise. Les thought he could hear wind on Carter III’s end, though he was not certain. Could His Majesty be speaking with him while traveling outdoors tonight?

After a pause, the cat emperor repeated his question.

“Les, who were you… speaking with just now?”

“Queen Louisa,” Les answered honestly. “She came to ask how I had been faring lately.”

Carter III remained silent for a moment before slowly repeating, “…Louisa?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

After Les gave his answer, an endless silence followed. The whisper of wind from somewhere beyond his room continued in his ear, proving that the magic had not broken. The person maintaining it simply was not speaking.

Les waited quietly. Carter III’s behavior left him deeply puzzled, but still he chose not to interrupt.

At last, His Majesty said only, “I understand. Forgive me, Les. I think I am rather tired tonight. We will speak again tomorrow.” Then he ended the spell.

Les could make no sense of a conversation that had begun and ended so abruptly. He was not a mage and could not contact Carter III on his own, however, so he had no choice but to let the matter rest.

…

In truth, no one knew how complicated Carter III’s feelings were at that moment.

“My apologies, Fawkes. I made you come all this way with me.”

After ending the conversation with Les, Carter III turned and thanked the fox who had accompanied him.

“Thank you for agreeing to come.”

“It is my duty to assist you, Your Majesty. I am deeply honored.”

The red-furred fox bent his forelegs and lowered his head in a courteous gesture of submission.

When he straightened again, Fawkes tilted his head. His red, downy ears quivered in the wind.

“However, Your Majesty, we have been here for several days. When… do you intend to go inside?”

The cat emperor said nothing.

After a moment, he turned toward the nearby palace, its buildings woven from gold and silver, and regarded it with complicated emotions.

They had, in fact, reached Micks some time ago. From the instant Carter III learned that Major General Les Wolf was traveling to the royal palace of Micks, he had been unable to sit still. Feelings suppressed for decades gradually rose to the surface. When they finally swelled beyond his endurance, he made his decision and came to Micks with Fawkes.

As the Beast Emperor, Carter III had always kept his beast form secret. Any journey beyond the Beast Empire demanded extreme caution. The two nations might be enjoying a honeymoon in their relations, but his safety could never be guaranteed, nor could he guarantee that his beast form would remain undiscovered. Turning the trip into a formal state visit would only create still greater complications.

If Carter III wanted to enter the Kingdom of Micks, then, he had no choice but to slip across the border in secret.

He had no desire to undermine the agreements between Beast and Helman at this crucial moment before diplomatic relations were established. Even so, he had taken the risk. To his ministers, he announced that he would make a discreet tour of the southern region and take a holiday. After riding an eagle to the southernmost town in Beast, however, Carter III and Fawkes crossed the border into Helman.

Their beast forms were both small and common, and they aroused no suspicion. Passing through the forest along the border had been easy.

At first, Carter III had brought Fawkes only because he needed a mage for communication and because Fawkes was the minister he trusted most. Now, however, he could not help feeling grateful that he had a fox companion beside him.

Even Carter III had not imagined that hearing that person’s voice again after more than twenty years would shake him so deeply or make his heart… hurt so much.

Her voice opened the floodgates of memory. Decades flashed before his eyes in a single instant, every moment as vivid as though it had happened yesterday.

A young and proud emperor had suffered a disastrous setback upon a battlefield he had considered effortlessly easy. The arrogant pride he had always possessed was shattered amid blood and blades. Wounded and separated from the main body of his army, he had been reduced to begging the enemy for food in beast form while searching for a way to heal and struggling to return to his own country.

The person who saved him was the enemy kingdom’s beautiful and brilliant princess, only sixteen years old at the time—the woman who would one day become its queen.

Even now, Carter III found it difficult to believe that the few short months he spent stranded in Helman had changed the course of his entire life as a cat. Everything Louisa taught him differed completely from what he had learned during his first eighteen years at court.

He still remembered how his heart raced the first time he met Louisa’s incomparable golden eyes. For one instant, he had thought she might have seen through his clumsy performance. But… she had gathered him into her arms, summoned a physician to treat his hind leg, and adopted him as her pet.

Sometimes she read to him. Sometimes she explained what she had learned in classes on political theory and philosophy, or told him of the gentle and compassionate theology followed in the Kingdom of Micks.

Carter III had still been very young then. He had not even completed his own studies. Encountering knowledge so unlike everything he knew was inevitably fascinating.

The beastfolk had always been enthralled by war, and every ruler in their history had been a notorious warmonger. Those months with Louisa were, in fact, the first time Carter III had ever considered such things as humanitarianism or the meaning of war.

In the end, Louisa’s wisdom and eloquence persuaded him to abandon convictions that had been rooted within him for years. Her wise eyes, which seemed to see through everything; the peaceful expression she wore when immersed in her loneliness; the girlish smiles she showed only to her pet—all of it gradually bewitched a beastfolk man who had only just shed the title of prince and ascended the throne. He fell hopelessly in love with her.

Louisa, of course, probably knew none of this. Still less could she have known what profound influence her casual words to a pet would have upon the world.

When Carter III’s leg finally healed, leaving had not been easy. Beast was home to his younger brothers and sisters, and to their children. The empire’s political structure was strong enough that even if he vanished forever, it would not suffer any great upheaval. But… Carter III knew that there were duties he ought to fulfill—duties Louisa herself would have wanted him to fulfill.

After returning to the empire, he signed a peace treaty and announced that lasting peace had come to the southern lands of Beast.

The people’s joy surpassed anything he had imagined. After years of protracted war, ordinary citizens—including the many smaller species of beastfolk—had long since grown exhausted. Carter III won more support through peace than he ever had through great military honors, and his throne became secure almost overnight.

Even the ministers who had profited from war and opposed the treaty fell silent before the celebrations of the common people and the bared fangs of those officials who supported peace.

Ending the fighting against the darkfolk in the north, however, was far more difficult. The darkfolk royal family was every bit as warlike as the worst warmongers among the beastfolk. It controlled several military bases directly, each staffed entirely by extreme militarists who revered power even more fervently than the beastfolk did.

After losing the protection of their god, those desperate men became obsessed with the belief that their own strength was the only force capable of changing their fate. Though their smaller population placed them at an obvious disadvantage, their gift of flight and towering physiques allowed them to continue their invasions and attacks.

The unrest dragged on for years. The death of the heroic Wolf couple at Beast’s most important northern defensive line dealt a tremendous blow to the empire. At the same time, Carter III, stretched too thin to turn his attention elsewhere, received word that King Micket had died and that his eldest daughter, Louisa White, had been crowned.

*Good,* he had thought. *Being queen suits her.*

Louisa was so compassionate and wise that she seemed born to guide a nation. And yet… once burdened with responsibility for a kingdom, she would probably never be free to leave it.

That year, he brought the kittens born to his younger brother’s wife to live under his care. At the same time, he adopted the orphaned infant left behind by the Wolf couple.

…

“…Your Majesty?”

Fawkes swayed his fluffy tail and prompted him when Carter III remained staring at the palace of Micks without speaking.

“…My apologies.”

After a pause, Carter III returned to himself. He pulled his gaze from the palace where Louisa lived and looked at Fawkes again.

He had never expected that, after so many years—now that he had become a mature ruler whom Louisa would have no cause to scorn—the thought of entering this palace again would still frighten him.

He had left without saying goodbye. For a cat, that was perfectly ordinary. And yet… somehow, he feared that Louisa might have been hurt or angry.

But Louisa did not know that he was an intelligent beastfolk man. Even if he had risked appearing before her in human form and explained the truth, she would probably have seen only the leader of an enemy nation, a treacherous deceiver, or a criminal who had crossed the border illegally.

Now… he only wanted to see her once more.

After wavering for a moment, Carter III looked at Fawkes.

“Tomorrow, I will try to go inside. Do not worry. I will not stay long. I will speak with Les and come straight back out. Wait for me here. I will… return before nightfall.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

…

And so, the next day…

“Meow!”

The elderly maid had come to the palace garden for her customary inspection of the flowers. When she saw a white cat seated with perfect composure on the lawn not far away, her eyes widened in astonishment.

“William?!” she cried.