EP.3 – Princess Isis Is Not the Heroine
"Ooh."
Did the child fussing so sweetly have any idea what he was? That he was a precious legitimate heir, born between the reigning crown princess of Pendragon and the prince who carried the last blood of the Kingdom of Britannia?
For the record, the Kingdom of Britannia had gone to war with Pendragon three years ago as an enemy state, and that same Britannia had since been reduced to a duchy barely clinging to its name. Victory had handed most of Britannia's territory over to Pendragon.
And that kid is going to be the king who holds both Pendragon and Britannia.
Not Pendragon alone. The child had inherited the blood of the Britannian royal house at the same time. Silver hair and silver eyes, the very marks of Pendragon, meant the Pendragon blood ran thick in him. Yet if Britannian blood was his as well, he would carry a Mystery to match it. That was what a royal bloodline meant.
"You know it too, do you not? This child is a symbol. Britannia and Pendragon are still no better than oil and water, and he shall be the fine ladder that joins them. In him lies the legitimacy to bind the two."
"...I don't really get politics."
"Hmph! Don't play dumb. I know full well your eyes see farther than most vermin. Cease the pretense."
"Mmm."
Just as Crown Princess Isis said, he understood, to a point, how the country actually ran. He knew the Britannia they had swallowed was still fiercely defiant. He knew the prince who was Britannia's last blood was wasting under a chronic illness, and that it would surprise no one if the man died tomorrow. So if this little prince grew up properly and became crown prince, only then would Pendragon and Britannia truly become one. If that came to pass, this country would wield a power vast enough to overwhelm even the mightiest of nations.
...It was still a long, long way off.
"Arthur Drake de Pendragon. Arthur Pendragon! My son will, without fail, become a great king. Heheh."
"...Haha."
Mmm. Somehow, in a great many ways, that was an ominous name.
No—wait. He does become a great king, so...
Lee Han made himself bless the child's name.
When the idle talk had gone on long enough, Lee Han loosened his tense body and simply sat where he was. This conversation was clearly going to last a while longer.
"So, Sis. What's the real point?"
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Don't you play dumb either. You think I don't know you? You're the sort who can see straight through another person's insides."
"I possess no such gift. I am merely confident in hearing another's air and manner of speech, sorting truth from falsehood, and grasping what they intend."
"...And how's that any different from reading their heart?"
Personally, he respected this woman. Remembering the day he had first saved her from an assassin, he could not call her anything less than a rare caliber of person—no, a woman of valor.
"Was it you who saved me? Splendid."
Even in a tent drenched with blood, her utter calm had been more than enough to overawe everyone present.
In any case, because she was a woman of that caliber, Lee Han knew. This was not someone who came looking for people on a whim. Even though he had saved her, even though she treated him at ease as a sworn younger brother, she would never meet anyone without some political intent.
So what he had to do was—
"Haah. Seriously. Hunting-dog duty again."
"Heheh. I am sorry."
At a grumble whose meaning no one should have been able to parse, Isis offered an apology for the first time. And in the next instant—
Thuk!
"W-why...?"
The chest of the maid attending at Isis's side was punched clean through. The hand axe he carried inside his clothes had driven, without a moment's hesitation, straight through the center of her breast. In the same motion Lee Han moved like a nimble hunting hound and seized her by the throat. Veins stood stark at the corners of the eyes of a woman who could barely draw breath.
And like that, he spoke.
"Sis. If you've got questions, ask them now."
"My thanks. Tch. And I had thought her rather commendable, for keeping her hair so well."
Isis looked at the maid with open contempt. The woman had attended her for more than two years in a royal court harder to survive than a savage jungle, and all Isis gave her now was a gaze cold as a sheet of ice.
"A remnant of Britannia, are you? Or an assassin out of the North?"
"I—I...!"
"Hmm. You mean to hide the truth even at this moment? A remarkable loyalty."
Isis flicked a glance at Lee Han, and he did not hesitate.
Crack!
"Ghhhkk!"
He pulled the maid's tooth, and a poison pellet came out with it.
"Hoh. Magically worked, was it? It looks just like a real tooth."
"To dodge suspicion, I'd bet. Spies or assassins, the thorough ones are all the same."
The maid, as if she understood that everything was already exposed, tried to move her hands. That she could move at all—with her chest run through and her neck gripped hard enough to snap—already announced she was no ordinary human. She had learned Fighting Art. And a covert kind of it, at that.
Stupid. If she was going to be this sloppy, she should have just killed herself. Wouldn't that at least have given them less to work with?
Crunch!
"Gaaahk!"
His hands did not hesitate. The surest way to seal a person's movement was to tear the limbs clean off.
...By any common sense, not something you did in front of a baby. But the situation was the situation, so he would let it pass for now.
"The way she moves isn't the Pendragon style. Doesn't feel like Britannia either..."
"You are certain?"
"I fought Britannian soldiers in the war until I was sick of them. Saw plenty of knights, too. Same as us—their way of fighting has a root to it. This one? Not really."
"Hoh. You know even that? For a man who mocks himself as talentless, your eye is rather good."
"This is more sense than talent. You know how it is. My senses are a little special."
"Hoho. Quite so. Better than ten hunting hounds."
"...I really am just a damn dog to you."
Isis laughed as if she were watching a comedy, and Lee Han stayed dry even in the middle of it. Neither of them looked particularly normal, and the maid with her throat in his grip thrashed in terror.
And then, at last—
Crack.
"Ah. See, that's what you get for thrashing."
"Is she dead?"
"Yes."
"A pity. I had wanted a little more information."
She waved a hand, as if the woman had no value left and ought to be cleared away. The moment the gesture fell, figures in black who had been waiting outside the carriage appeared. Familiar with the work, they removed the maid's corpse, until the carriage held only Lee Han, Isis, the baby, and one maid tilting her head with a somehow vacant look on her face.
And, as if he hadn't misread her, that maid spoke.
"Um, Princess?"
"Crown princess. Or you may address me as Your Highness."
"Hehe. Yes, Your Highness. I don't really understand the situation, but... was she a traitor?"
So she really was a bit short in the head.
"Fool. To be precise, both of you stood under suspicion."
"Aha!"
"...The reason I suspected you is that you are too stupid, and too naive. How does a brain stay this pure."
"Hehe. My parents always praised me for having such a clean head, too."
"That was probably not praise."
"Huh?"
"Haah..."
Watching Isis sigh, Lee Han understood. He understood why Isis, sharp as a ghost when it came to reading people, had found the traitor so difficult to pin down—and why she had come all the way to him.
So you can be suspected for having a brain that's too pure.
That, too, was a marvel.
Isis was one of the very few who knew Lee Han's secret.
A gnoll's sense of smell. A nose that could catch scents no ordinary human could ever detect was capable of seizing even the faintest trace. In daily life he kept it suppressed, but when he used it in earnest, Lee Han's nose could take in a vast amount of information through scent alone. Perhaps it was thanks to his years in an assassin order. The smell of poison, of blood, of iron—he picked them out as if by instinct. Even the unease a person carried could be read from nothing more than the smell of cold sweat, enough to tell him that someone was suspicious.
And the maid just now, though she had washed herself clean and worn a heavy perfume, had still given off a thick reek of poisonous herbs that none of it could hide.
"From a certain day, people in the royal court began turning up poisoned. Arthur, in particular, showed the symptoms."
"...They've lost their minds. They used poison on a baby?"
"Fortunately, Pendragon blood has a strong resistance to poison."
"......"
That didn't mean it hadn't hurt. Lee Han barely swallowed the rest of what he meant to say and shuddered at how vicious it was. So many grounds for suspicion, and still the court had not put every soul under doubt. They had narrowed the culprits to two and brought them all the way here—and called even Lee Han, so they could be certain of catching the woman who smelled of poison.
One hell of a woman. Truly.
Another mother would have burned with rage until her reason flew apart. This one kept a perfect coldness. Thorough past the point of frightening.
"Many find Arthur a nuisance. Should Britannia and we become fully one, that power will grow mighty beyond imagining. From the view of other countries, there will be no shortage of those who wish him dead."
"...It's sickening."
"That is the politics of a state."
Isis recited the facts without feeling and stroked Arthur. At a glance it was a mother, and a mother's love. At the same time, a sovereign's cruelty showed through. Lee Han clicked his tongue, wondering whether he could ever be like that. Instinct told him he would never be able to imitate that woman's nerve.
"...So. Is it over now?"
Having done his part as the hunting dog, Lee Han asked, politely enough, whether he might finally clock out. At his question, Isis said:
"No. There are about two matters yet."
"...T-two?"
"I shall repay you, so do not fret. If you wish, I will permit you to kiss the back of my hand."
"No. Absolutely not. Who are you trying to turn into a pervert?"
"Heheh. I would be granting you a kiss upon the hand of the kingdom's greatest beauty in her day, and you throw the chance away."
"Have a little mercy."
He could admit she was beautiful. A thorn steeped in poison, he would decline any day.
"Then it cannot be helped. I shall see to the reward later, at my own discretion."
"No. I said I don't need it."
"I refuse your refusal. In any case, what I mean to request of you, I shall say now. Carve it into your mind."
"...A request in nothing but name. How is this any different from a threat?"
Whether Lee Han grumbled or not, Isis's request—her order—went on.
......And the moment he heard it:
"...Sis. Have you lost your mind?"
"Heheh. Not at all. I am perfectly sane."
"......"
Lee Han seriously considered whether that wasn't the greater problem. And well he might.
...Asking someone to kill her own younger sibling. Is that something you say to a person?
Because an assassination request had just come down.