A Knight Hates Love Triangles (3)
"Hnnnngh…."
The blonde girl's head dipped in a drowsy nod, and her body began to tip. Sleep was spilling over her. Her eyes had fallen half-shut, her face the picture of someone about to drop off where she sat. It might have been the stupor of too fine a meal, or she might simply have been the sort who napped well through the afternoon — but one look into those glazed eyes made it plain that neither had anything to do with it.
She slumped.
Just before she could finally topple sideways, the maids who had been waiting caught her up in careful hands and bore her off.
"Mnyaa…."
"Arin, I am so embarrassed for you…."
The girl was dead to the world in a honeyed sleep, drool and all, and the ghost girl clapped both hands over her face, wishing she could crawl into a mousehole. So the girl made her exit, and Lee Han blinked at the sorry sight of a pretty little thing asleep with spit trailing from her mouth. She had gone under all at once, as if narcolepsy had struck her out of nowhere.
And then, a moment later—
"What did you do?"
He was starting to distrust what he himself had eaten.
The duke answered as if there were nothing worth concealing.
"I only gave her a little medicine. There is no cause for worry. It is nothing more than an herb — the sort that leaves the body bright with vigor, once one has slept it off."
"…Doesn't the part where you drugged her already seem a little wrong?"
"It could not be helped. I would rather that child not hear what is about to be said."
"If I might ask, for my own reference — did I eat that herb as well?"
"You, if anything, took in far too much of it. I had not expected you to finish an entire cake. And yet you were none the worse."
"…So that's why you never brought it near your own mouth."
For the record, Lee Han had also put away enough dessert for ten. Diabetes was a reasonable fear, but ever since the elixir, his heart, his liver, and the rest of his organs had grown freakishly robust. No quantity of sugar was going to sicken him, and with a detoxification like that, herb or poison weed, it was all the same as a plate of greens to him now.
…Obesity, perhaps. That one might still be in play.
"Do not misunderstand. I had no intention of doing you harm. If anything, for a knight of such ferocious vitality, it could only have been a help."
"Was it expensive?"
"Nothing of note. Merely one among the ten herbs of eternal life the sultan is said to favor."
"…That's a very long way around to saying that even money can't buy it."
"Did it sound that way?"
He had already been uncomfortably aware of how lavishly he was being received. This only made the weight worse. For the moment, though, he set that burden down.
Because—
I've got the upper hand!
Lee Han decided he would carry himself with some spine. The man wanted something from him, and was treating him well in order to get it. There was no reason to be cowed.
……That was how it ought to have been.
"I mean to speak of things I could not bring myself to say before my adopted daughter. That is why I put her to sleep, and so I must ask you to keep this secret."
"…If that's how it is, I'd rather not hear it."
"No. You must hear it. Only then will you hand that inquisitor girl over to me."
"……."
Hm.
So I'm the one in the weak seat?
No matter how he looked at it, he did not feel like the man holding the advantage, and a bead of sweat slid down Lee Han's temple.
"—You will already know that my wife is what they call the deceased."
"……."
"If you know, then the talk will be simple."
"Ahem…."
The conversation had turned heavy from the very first line. What was this — an attempt to make the meal sit even worse? His digestion was good, and thank heaven for it. Had it not been, this was the sort of subject that would have burned a hole in his stomach. Lee Han wanted to hear no more of it. Duke Blake, however, went on.
"Then do you know this as well? That there was a great deal about my wife's death that did not sit right."
"…That far, I don't really…."
"Then you may learn it now. My wife was a fairy. Not a common fairy — a nature fairy who had taken human shape."
"W-was that something impressive?"
"It is not a common case."
Lee Han did not know it well, but a nature fairy was akin to a spirit, a being on a level with a land-god. Such fairies had once been worshipped as gods, and even in this age of flourishing religion, a few regions still enshrined them as such. Pendragon's founding, in particular, was deeply bound up with the fairies, and so the authority a fairy carried on the southern continent was no small thing. A duke who had married one was, without question, a remarkable man — and the death of such a fairy was no exaggeration to call a great tragedy of history.
"Fairies have always been easy to aim at. The mystery they hold is still a thicket of things unrevealed, and kings and men of power who would uncover it — who would seize eternal life, or the mystery itself — still overflow the world. Why, there was even a mage who set his sights on my wife, for the stated purpose of studying fairies."
"…And that spell-monger — no. That mage. What happened to him?"
"He lives in the ducal house's torture chamber. His hold on life proved rather stubborn."
"……."
"To continue. For that reason, there was much about my wife's death that did not sit right."
"…I heard she died in an accident."
"So it was said. But tell me. Does the mistress of a ducal house dying in an 'accident' sound like a thing that could be true?"
"……."
"Do you know how many watched over her? The men who guarded her were the elite of the elite, chosen by my own hand. And yet…."
"……."
Lee Han found he could already guess the words that would follow.
And yet she died. Which means he suspects murder.
There was, it seemed, a story behind the one the world had been told.
Sure enough.
"You will have expected as much. My wife was harmed by certain suspicious persons. They put down every guard of the ducal house, and they… killed her."
KRAK.
For an instant the fury pouring off him seemed to detonate, and a long grinding rumble followed it — a presence given physical form. It was a high and difficult realm, the sort only knights who had reached a certain level could show: killing intent, or fighting spirit, made real. Used properly, that force was more versatile than Sword Resonance, and its destructive power stood second to none.
But the presence the duke was giving off now—
He only let his presence out, and the marble shattered?
Ha.
It was a different order from anything other knights had reached. If what those men released was gunpowder at best, what this one released was nitroglycerin. Let it so much as touch you and it stung; it would burn you besides. The sort of thing that dragged a hollow laugh out of a man.
I'd already guessed, but still….
This man was absurdly strong. The kingdom's foremost swordsman was no empty title, and the thought crossed Lee Han's mind that he might even stand as a match for an Aura User.
And that strong man still had not loosened his presence.
"I do not know how many had a hand in her death. I was, however, able to narrow down the ones who killed her."
The words that followed could not have been more chilling. A power greater than the royal house itself had been thrown, in full, at dragging the truth into the light.
"And at last, I was able to close in on those who killed her."
A hard, clean tap.
"……."
"They were a group that claimed to follow the self-styled angels."
"…Hm."
What the duke set down was a cross soaked through with blood. Not an ordinary cross, either — a Reverse Cross, about as ill-omened as an object could be. Lee Han already knew of the Reverse Cross.
"A knight who brought down the Tunnels would know these fanatics, would he not?"
"…Just how much do you know?"
"It would be faster to ask what I do not."
"……."
The Blood Cross Army. A group thought to have summoned the Ghost King only the day before, the ones who had seized the Tunnels, and — so it was suspected — the same hand behind Black Moon, the assassin order that had kidnapped him as a boy. Learning now that they had gone so far as to harm even a duke's wife, Lee Han clenched his eyes shut.
…So a rofan really is a rofan.
One of the standing promises of a romance fantasy was exactly this. An organization that took direct aim at the beloved wife of a duke, an archduke, or an emperor, and had her assassinated. And most such organizations—
—have the church behind them, or the old men of an imperial house.
It was the cliché, fixed as if by law, and all Lee Han could do was wonder that it had, of all things, taken hold in this world too.
……And if.
If it runs true to that script, then maybe….
One of the most suffocating clichés in romance fantasy — the kind readers nicknamed a sweet potato, a lump in the throat that never goes down — and he had barely had time to dread it coming out of the duke's mouth before it did.
"Do you know what my adopted daughter, Irene Windler, and Judia Pierre, inquisitor of the temple, have in common?"
"…What."
"Nothing other than this. A trace of the fairy can be felt in them."
"……."
A demon of suspicion, and it had its claws in the daughter of his own blood. One of the worst clichés in romance had just come leaping out, and though Lee Han's meal had long since finished digesting, his stomach felt strangely tight.
Sweet potato or soda — the choke of it, or the fizz of relief — it didn't matter which he wanted. The duke pressed on with his claim all the same.
"In Irene Windler, one glimpses an affinity with nature. From Judia Pierre, one feels the love of God. Both are constitutions that fairies possess."
"…You mean magic, and Holy Power?"
"Quick on the uptake."
"That…. Does that even make sense?"
An affinity with nature would mean holding two attributes at once, and the love of God would mean Holy Power. No matter how he looked at it, this could only be wild delusion, or a reading stretched far past reason. Irene Windler's talent was special, yes, but talents of that sort did turn up now and then. And Holy Power was a strength anyone at all could have, so long as they simply believed in God. So to Lee Han it seemed nothing but a bad case of fantasy. The duke, however—
"And yet it is rare for peers of such talent to appear in a single age. Rarer still when they are women."
"……."
He poured the suspicion out without end.
"Is that all? They say that in her teens, while she was at the orphanage, Irene Windler's character changed overnight. She had been arrogant to the point of insolence, and suddenly she grew gentle — became a child who looked after the others in the orphanage."
"…She probably just grew up late."
"That may be. Then what of this? Judia Pierre was nothing but an ordinary vagrant, until Cardinal Raphael took pity on her, saved her, and brought her into the temple. After that she distinguished herself so sharply that she became an inquisitor almost at once. And yet, for all those achievements, she is said to have concealed even her age and her sex…. Does that look like coincidence to you?"
"Hm…."
"It looks, rather, like someone scrambling to hide something."
"……."
At a glance, the duke's suspicions seemed to hold. Women of the same generation, appeared out of nowhere after his wife had died. Nineteen years old — the same count of years since her death. And on top of that, uncommon talent that looked like a fairy's gift, and beauty to spare…!
Fail to suspect, and you would be a fool.
"And so I want her. Judia Pierre. That woman was suspicious beyond words, and when I looked into the matter, I found she had ties to this band of fanatics. All that remains is to ask her myself. Needless to say, if her answers are satisfactory, I have no thought of handling her roughly. So I want you to hand her over."
"……."
"It is not a bad offer. I will compensate you amply. If you wish…."
"—So it wasn't just your eyes that rolled back."
"……?"
In an instant, the whole of the room locked rigid. Call it the illusion that the air itself had stopped.
Have you ever had the fierce eyes of more than a hundred people fix on you all at once? If not, count yourself fortunate. It was the sort of thing that left a scar.
Lee Han, however—
"Ah. I only meant to think it, and it came out of my mouth…."
Sheepish. Or shameless. One of the two, and he simply went on. And since the situation had already gone to shit anyway—
"Hey, mister. Drink some cold water and get your head on straight. You're old enough — quit pulling this strange nonsense."
"……."
"And here I was, wondering what you were about to say."
"…Huh?"
He made up his mind to go further off the rails still. If only to teach this suffocating old man exactly what it felt like to be bludgeoned with the facts.