Two Men See It Through to the End (1)
"You've really made a mess of things."
A hand the old poets would have called slender jade flung the newspaper down, and it spilled open across the desk.
Sultan Salah in Critical Condition.
Western Assassins Found Around the Carriage?
Sultan Mahva's Banner Discovered—Are the Clouds of War Gathering Over the West Once More…?
The attack on the sultan had come only the night before. The apparent culprits were the Assassins, that pack of western killers: they had ambushed the sultan and done him harm, then failed their charge and taken their own lives. So the world had been told.
Those who knew a little deeper—the handful who had actually grasped the truth—were nursing headaches fit to split the skull.
"You pick up a blade, you'd better be ready to get cut."
"Ha… Your tongue runs like a clear stream."
"I do have a way with words…"
"That was not praise, you reckless fool."
Thwack!
At last she raised her fan and brought it down on his head. Unfortunately for her, the knight's skull had only grown harder than before.
"Nngh!"
"You all right? What'd you hit me for? All you did was hurt your own wrist, Sister."
"You infuriating little—"
Isis clutched her wrist. The hand that had struck him was numb and buzzing, and she knit her brow, a rare crack in her face.
"…You seem harder than you were."
"Did a bit of training!"
"Haa…!"
The shamelessness of him. Not a trace of remorse on that face.
Then again, Isis herself, who had summoned him, did not particularly think he had done wrong. Only—
"I would have preferred you told me before you stirred all this up."
"…Sorry about that."
"Sincerely?"
"…If you ask it like that, not really…?"
"…Next time I shall have to prepare a fan of sturdier metal."
Infuriating. Truly. Isis found her sworn younger brother utterly infuriating.
…Originally, Lee Han had meant to kidnap the sultan. Kidnap him or whatever it took—he had intended to drag the truth out of the man. Unfortunately, someone had already said it.
"My lord. What use is a truth obtained by threats?"
Was it not said that nothing outranked the truth—not agitation, not fabrication? Even if he lost his temper, tortured the sultan, and wrenched the truth out by force, the man need only play the victim and be done. Claim he didn't remember, the way a drunk behind the wheel does, and that would be the end of it. Call it an unavoidable accident committed while his mind was impaired, and that would be the end of it too. It turned Lee Han's stomach, but that was how the world worked. So he gave up on the kidnapping. He hated the decision. Even so—
"Then I just have to not kidnap him and torture him. That it?"
"…Pardon?"
"And if that bastard ends up genuinely pitiful, I'll feel a fair bit better myself."
"Wh-what exactly do you mean by that…."
"Nothing. I'm just going to handle it my way. My way."
"……?"
And so Lee Han turned about and fell on the man instead. He left no evidence. He had to grant it: Galahad and Tristan were competent. They had not left so much as a trace that they had been there, and they had confined every crime and every circumstance of the affair to an internal matter of the sultanate.
"Feels wrong saying it myself, but I almost feel bad stacking them up against those White Cats."
"…Do you realize you are spitting upon my face?"
"I stopped it on the scene, didn't I? So leave me out of it."
Lee Han was brazen about it. He had done as much as could be done. If anything—
"More to the point, what were you doing, Sister? Most days you act like you've got the Heavenly-Mile Eye, but this time you were really…"
He took her to task, and for the first time Isis's eyes curved, as if being the one scolded were a novelty.
"I thought you more insolent than usual. So you were sulking at me."
"Less sulking. More angry. The kids almost got hurt."
"…Hm. On that point, your anger is certainly just."
"…?"
It was hardly his place to feel this way after what he had said, but he truly had not expected that sister of his to admit fault so readily. Arrogance, he could have predicted. Quiet acknowledgment was not her.
Could it be….
"Sister, you sick somewhere?"
"……."
"Summer cold? Those are nasty, I'll give you that. Go lie down. I'll get out of here."
"…Whom are you treating as an invalid?"
"You're not sick?"
"…I expect I shall be, on account of you."
"…??"
He worries about her, and this is what he gets?
"Enough. It is not that I left the Academy unattended for lack of any concern. You were there. I trusted you would stop whatever came, and stop it well."
"…Isn't that dereliction of duty?"
"There is a fine saying. The right person, in the right place."
"……."
"I believed in you, and so I left it be. Do not sulk."
"…Why is this sister of mine suddenly being so ominous?"
She had started, out of nowhere, saying things that were pleasant to hear, and what rose in him was not gratitude but unease. Anyone else praised by her would have passed straight through joy into feeling unworthy of the honor. Lee Han only got goosebumps, already wondering what she meant to make him do.
"Hmph. Infuriating thing. I see now what you ordinarily think of this sister."
"They say you only become a fine person once you learn to look back on your own conduct."
"That may well be. I simply do not believe the saying applies to me."
"……."
…No ordinary thickness of face.
But the idle talk was finished, or so the shift in her declared.
"You asked me, did you not? What I was doing, that I offered no response at all. You were right to ask. I was already certain the sultan had come all this way with some purpose."
"A purpose?"
"It took a little time to uncover."
A soft smack, and Lee Han caught the notebook she had thrown. When she passed along information she usually had it prepared as proper documents; to be handed something this raw meant the investigation could not have been finished for long. She must have been busy in her own right.
Paper rustled. Lee Han slowly skimmed what Isis had given him. A little under three minutes passed.
"Greg Bin, was it? The illegal mage you have been hunting."
"…Use your turn signal. You just about stopped my heart."
"Ohoho!"
She had uncovered an aim he had never told a soul. Lee Han shook his head, conceding once again that he could not beat her. Anyway.
Terrifying. Genuinely terrifying.
Greg Bin was an illegal mage the world had already marked dead several years prior. He had belonged to the imperial Magic Tower, yet he had pushed ahead with illicit experiments under the heading of Plunder of Mystery, been judged an illegal mage for it, and been cast out of the Tower. Still—if the first theft is the hard one, who ever found the second difficult?
He had gone on with his illegal experiments in plundering Mystery, and word was that a foreign guard had caught him in the midst of them and put him to death. …That, however, was only the fact allowed to show on the surface.
"In truth, he gathered mystery-races in some facility and carried out his experiments there."
"My guess, mind you."
A prediction Lee Han had offered from the testimony of Judia Pierre, who seemed to be a survivor of that laboratory. Not that it was merely a guess.
"You've been digging into my background, so you already know, but I picked up a little through the guild. However I turn it, the one who ran that experiment was the spell-slinger Greg. Above all, they say he's a master at changing faces."
"Digging into your background? What an odd way to put it."
"While you were digging into my background, yes…. Anyway, looking at what you gave me on top of that, my guess wasn't off."
The notebook Isis had handed him held information on everyone the sultan had contacted in the West, and the contents of conversations he had held with his retainers. How she had obtained any of it, he could not begin to say. That was not what mattered now. What mattered was this.
Obtain a Mystery in Pendragon.
These bastards were running a scheme. The line was brutally short, and the fact inside it was a shock, for it meant the sultan had been aiming at Pendragon's Mystery.
"Hilarious. A sultan, holding hands with a spell-slinger."
"So long as the power ends in one's hands, the method will do. I cannot say it is beyond understanding. It lacks dignity, however."
"…Dignity?"
"Were it I, I would never have stooped to kidnapping in secret like this. I would have made it a clandestine bargain between states. And yet he commits an outrage this wild. Honestly."
"……."
"Why do you look at me so?"
"…Nothing. Just thinking, all over again, that you're a frightening person."
Rather than curse the killing of someone to plunder their Mystery, she understood the impulse and looked for another way. A person of power was, indeed, a person of power. And yet—
"It is only natural. At present Pendragon has strength, and so it may extend tolerance and mercy. But what if Pendragon had no strength? If it had always to fear invasion, if the danger of war stood high—what then, do you suppose?"
"……."
"Mark it well. For a person, to be without strength is a misfortune. For a nation, to be without strength is a crime. Thus one who leads a nation must always wear the mask of feigned virtue, and the mask of feigned vice. Sultan Salah managed neither. By a base act he dragged down the dignity of his state. He has no power, and still he will not bow his head—he holds it stiff and high. What an undignified lowness that is. Even should later ages call me a wanton, to lower one's head in order to seize strength is precisely the duty of a royal, of one who leads a country. Thus the sultan is disqualified. Blood and a tolerable ability raised him to the rank of sultan, yet he is arrogant and does not know his place. And a man like that cannot simply be left as he is."
"…Mm."
……Lee Han reconsidered. He had thought her merely frightening, and that had been too simple. He had learned from history the grief of a nation without strength, and still he had failed to truly grasp it. Which meant he himself was still, by a long way, not enough.
"Sorry…."
"Hu hu. That you know how to apologize is enough to make this princess's sworn younger brother a commendable man. A posture capable of reflection. I rate it highly."
"……."
It felt like he was being teased. For the moment, he would have to take it. A bitter smile settled on his mouth.
"Bring the mage to me."
"Huh?"
"Bring that wretch Greg Bin back alive, and I shall settle every matter."
"…So you've got a plan."
"I always have a plan."
"Hmm."
Lee Han could tell Isis was spinning something underhanded. He did not know what she had prepared, but he could probably trust her. Only—
"Hss. Bringing a spell-slinger back alive isn't exactly my specialty."
"Make the effort. Should it go well, I shall grant you a great reward. If you wish it, shall I even set my lips to yours?"
"No. I genuinely don't need that."
"……Impudent wretch."
To anyone else it would have been a prize. To Lee Han it was a reward he had absolutely no use for. He'd sooner take it in goods, damn it. He snorted, and went on.
"Anyway, I heard you. I just have to bring him back alive, yeah? …Well. I'll try."
"Not try. You will."
"…You really know how to pile it on."
"In return, whatever comes of it, I shall not hold you to account."
"……For real?"
"But of course."
"Ho…."
"……That is not, mind you, permission to truly run wild."
For an instant Isis wondered whether she had misspoken. Other knights possessed such a thing as a proper limit. The sworn younger brother she knew….
…is a man for whom no such limit exists.
It felt rather like entrusting a fish to a cat, and a small unease stirred in her. And sure enough—
"……Haa."
Isis could already feel the headache coming on.