Two Men Go All the Way (7)
The palace where Sultan Salah was staying had been built for royal guests of foreign blood.
Meant to be shown to dignitaries of other nations, it was vast enough to house hundreds, and fitted with every convenience besides.
…And yet not a soul, just now, could spare a thought for using any of it. For one simple reason.
"Ghhhkk…!"
"Sultan, endure a little longer. The bleeding will be stopped in a moment. Or—we could use a potion even now…."
"N-no. A potion cannot give me back the ear I have lost!"
How was anyone to savor such splendor while their master writhed in pain? Better to live in fear that one's own head might leave one's shoulders at any moment.
"B-but, Sultan…."
"E-enough! Take it away!"
"…As you command."
Whose order was it, that anyone would dare disobey?
The healer withdrew, unable to hide his desolation.
"…Damn it!"
Salah was not a man who spat crude curses in ordinary times, but now he could not endure without one.
The wound still throbbed, burning as if it had been set alight. One ear had been sheared away as if torn, and because he would neither have it stitched nor touch medicine or potion, the pain could only be savage. That he was not bleeding out was thanks to the medicine of the West, which could delay a steady drip of blood. Even that was only a stopgap. His color worsened by the moment.
"Vermin of the Sun God's Temple…."
If he wanted the ear healed, he need only ask the priests who followed the Light of Radiance. A sultan, however, stood where he must never accept the help of another faith.
The West was a continent ruled by a Sun God religion said to rival even the Light of Radiance, and the sultan was praised as both descendant of the Sun God and His proxy. For that reason, for a westerner to believe in any faith but the Sun God's was as good as taboo. Insulting the Sun God was bad enough; to be suspected of treason against the sultan himself would be no exaggeration.
A brutally strict rule—and yet, for a king set on guarding his own legitimacy and authority, there was no finer instrument than religion. One might call it a realm where the divine right of kings was simply taken for granted. So it was only natural that the faiths of other continents, the Light of Radiance among them, could not so much as lift their heads in the West. To westerners the Light of Radiance was mere heresy: a pack of infidels who must never be tolerated.
Especially now.
"Khhhk!"
"Sultan, rather than this, if we went to the temple…."
"No. Absolutely not. The moment I take healing from an infidel, my authority collapses!"
"…Sultan."
"Nngh!"
The sultan must never be treated by the Light of Radiance. He was the Sun God's proxy, and of His blood. Would men who held that pride accept a heathen's care merely because they were wounded? Unthinkable. If one of his rivals ever learned that he had been treated by a priest of another faith, the royal authority he held would shake from the root. The people would rise at once, crying that he was no child of a god, and the first thing they raised would be rebellion.
"When did you say those damned priests of the Sun God's Temple would arrive?"
"…I am told they have only just crossed the border."
"Arrogant vermin! They could have come long ago, and still they drag their feet!"
"……."
"Insolent wretches! Disgusting creatures…!!"
The Sun God's Temple. They served the Sun God, and in truth they were the ones who ought to tend the body of the sultan, the god's own proxy—yet the temple and Salah were at odds. From of old the priests had wanted to stand on the sultan's head, and the sultan, for his part, was brimming with the will to grind every priest of the sun beneath him. Small wonder they got on poorly. Even when the sultan traveled abroad, they made a point of not going with him.
And now the gravely wounded sultan still bore those great injuries, without proper treatment. He could have ordered a healer to suture the torn ear and the rest, but if he did, regeneration would be difficult even with Holy Power. Among the conditions vital to a sultan was the rule that he be free of physical defect and mental impairment. By that measure, the harm he had taken was fatal. The pain was not the problem. It was reason enough to drag him down from the sultan's seat.
This has gotten filthy tangled!
To think he would take a blow like this in Pendragon.
Who in the world was it…!
Salah did not believe the ones who had attacked him were Assassins. The crows might be cruel, but they were not the sort to abandon a commission lightly, or to betray. Had betrayal been their daily bread, they would have been wiped from the West long ago. Nor did it make sense that another sultan had struck at him. Every sultan knew well enough that keeping the present order served them all.
Which meant—
Someone from Pendragon attacked me.
Dared to, that is.
Salah had unquestionably struck first, but that was not the point. To leave a wound on a sultan's jade body—on the proxy of the Sun God—was high treason for which even being fried in brimstone would not suffice. Salah had not the slightest intention of forgiving the ones who had attacked him.
"…Salman. If my proud soldiers waiting near the border were to march, how soon do you think they could reach Pendragon?"
"S-Sultan? Surely you don't…!?"
"They must be taught. What it means to dare lay a hand on a sultan—on me, blood of the Sun God!"
"……."
Faced with a Sultan Salah who seemed to have lost a measure of his reason, Salman could not hide his desolation. This was not a man who looked like the same rational, brilliant sovereign. But Salman clenched his teeth as he looked at the gaping hole where his master's ear had been.
This is the fault of those who dared attack us!
His own empty arm was no great matter. To leave a defect on that noble jade body, however, was a capital crime that could not be forgiven, and Salman understood his master's feelings well enough. Like master, like man. Master and servant cut from the same cloth.
A human face over a beast's heart. Had any knight looked on the pair, that is how he would have judged them: beasts wearing the shapes of men. A beast lives by instinct, and with a beast sick with something like rabies there can be no such thing as speech. And so—
"—Creatures who do not know their place. There is a limit even to indulgence, and still you try to climb without end."
"!!?"
"W-who goes there!"
Salman drew his sword in haste. One arm or none, he was still a man of skill, and he leveled the blade at the third party who had appeared so suddenly, a sharp presence pouring off him.
Tok. Tok.
The sword was aimed at her, and still she advanced with proud steps, taking the moon for her lamp. An arrogant tread. Each time the moonlight struck her, silver hair that already shone drank in the glow, and those arrogant eyes seemed to blaze as well.
"Y-you…?!"
When the figure came clear, Salman had to start in shock. A face he knew. The woman he had seen first upon entering the kingdom, and the one who held the highest station in the land.
"…What discourtesy is this? Does Pendragon's heir not even observe the courtesy due a state guest? Princess Isis."
Isis Irene de Pendragon. The kingdom's heir, who had set her name, without shame, at the very first of the succession. When she appeared, bearing a beauty compared to goddesses and angels, the place brightened for an instant, and one might have fancied one had stepped into a tale. Had the entrance not been so sudden, Salah too would have welcomed her. He loved beauty.
The timing, however, was bad. How bad—
"Hmm. You have confirmed my face, and still you keep that blade drawn."
"…I know it is a breach. I ask you to regard it as the proper measure against an intruder, Princess."
The air was vicious enough to suggest a killing meant to leave no witness. A blade steeped in murder. An ordinary woman would have trembled before the edge, her face gone white. She was no ordinary woman. She was calm even before the steel. And she went a step further.
"Insolent. Court courtesy would have you call me not princess, but Her Highness the Crown Princess. This is why you rustics of the West…."
"…You wench, you dare insult the sultan!"
She had provoked them. Rustics. The word was a slight against the sultan as well. Salman flared and lifted the sword higher still—
Fwaaaash!
"!!?"
Salman dropped to his knees with a thud.
"…Salman?"
"……."
He could not answer even the sultan's call. His vision was pure red.
"…Huh?"
Salman realized blood was pouring from his eyes, his ears, his nose, and his mouth. Strangely, there was no sensation. Blood kept gushing like a fountain, and he felt nothing at all.
"You ought to have understood what it means to level a blade at me. That a wretch with neither breeding, nor honor, nor manners should dare be insolent to me—this is what it means. A thing that does not know its place."
Isis reviled the fallen Salman. In her history there was no record of sparing one who turned hostility upon her. If there were, it would have to be someone possessed of the standing and the honor to deserve it, and in that sense this lowborn had no standing at all. Not even the standing to be respected as a warrior.
"Wh-what have you done to Salman, Princess Isis!"
Salah shouted in alarm. Watching his loyal guard captain spew blood and die, desperation was only natural. But she—
"I thought you a fool, but not a fool to this degree. I begin to doubt you are even a sovereign fit to rule a nation."
She looked at him as if in contempt. How could anyone be so foolish? How could anyone's sight be so narrow?
"What you should have asked was not why that insolent thing ended so, but why—though I have entered this palace—no one comes to save you. You foolish get."
"What…?"
"Does it not strike you that the place is far too quiet?"
"……."
"So you understand at last. Dull thing."
"…W-what have you done!"
"That was the first thing you should have asked. Slow-witted. Hopelessly slow-witted."
Nothing but disappointment, endlessly, until displeasure gave way to something nearer pity. Not pity for that beast, of course. Pity for the people ruled by such a beast.
Tack.
Salah was still bellowing something at the top of his lungs, but she felt no need of conversation, and flicked her fingers.
In that instant—
"Kehek…?!"
Salah thrashed and retched, just as his guard had collapsed a moment before.
Blood poured from him in a slide. Isis only lowered herself, slowly, into a chair, her posture unbroken.
"Presumptuous creature. Not content to covet Pendragon's Mystery, you join hands with mage-vermin, and go so far as to hire Assassins to strike at the students…."
"Ghhhk……!"
"I hear you have even hidden soldiers near the border. Absurd. By what nerve did you mean to attack Pendragon? Or did Pendragon look a joke to you?"
"……!!"
"What a wronged look. Are you thinking, perhaps, If I die, the sultanate and Pendragon will go to war—how does she mean to answer for it? Some paltry thought of that kind."
"!!"
"A needless worry. My sworn younger brother did not, as expected, betray my hopes. He captured the Illegal Mage. Thanks to that, fitting your hide onto another will be no difficult thing."
"!!!?!"
Salah could not even scream. He only twisted, his whole body knotting. Harder than the pain was the part about stripping his hide. Surely not—!! Eyes bulging, he glared at Isis, and for the first time Isis wore a smile. A sneer colder than a sheet of ice.
"This is thanks to your foolishness. Thanks to it, a sultanate falls into my hand. Worry not, by all means. I shall tend it with every effort I have. Your people will be happy as well. I promise you it will be far better than when the likes of you ruled."
"N-no… you… must… n-never…!"
Salah flailed as if in a death throe, as if it could never be. As if a descendant of the great Sun God could not have his nation stolen by some dragon's blood.
But—
"I have no need of permission from the likes of you."
She was resolute.
"Fare you well, foolish sultan."
With that low announcement she left the palace, as endlessly at ease as when she had first shown herself.
"——!"
Salah reached toward her with bloodshot eyes, but his hand never touched her, and in the end it dropped away in vain.
I… whom did I make my enemy…?
For the first time, Salah learned a thing called regret. One he must never have turned into an enemy. One he must never have touched.
Too late, he understood what a dragon's wrath was.
A realization that came far too late.
Tok. Tok.
"……."
Isis walked with the moonlight for company. She could have returned to her palace on horse or by carriage, but tonight, of all nights, she wanted to walk a little. It was not that blood on her hands had turned her sentimental. The blood she had already stained those hands with was past counting; there was no reason to grow sentimental now. She walked because she wanted to walk. A very simple reason.
A soft rush of air. An old man in a butler's livery came up beside her at an unhurried pace.
"Did you kill him?"
"…You do not ask after my safety. That is the first thing you ask."
"Heh heh. As for the Princess's safety, I am sure you looked after it well enough yourself."
"……Shameless."
"Haha."
Albert. Her man, and a man she could not order about. It irritated her that he appeared only after the work was finished, as if he had been dawdling.
"Hah. I have not killed him yet. There is so much information still to draw out. Why would I waste him?"
"Haha. As expected of the Princess. You could not fail to be a villain of the age."
"…It is true, so I cannot deny it."
"Heh heh."
She never denied what she did. Even if the other party had done evil, to answer evil with the same evil made one a villain all the same. Called a villain, she would have nothing to say. But if one was to be a villain, better a first-rate one than a third-rate. At the least, she—
"Haha. I look forward to it."
"Hmph!"
At the butler's impudent remark she snorted. He was a man whose insides she could read even less than her own, and even that laughter felt like pretense.
Then—
"But why is the Princess alone? In a matter like this, Sir Lee Han would hardly be left out."
"……."
"Princess…?"
"…Haa…."
"?"
It had seemed a light question. The moment her sworn younger brother's name was spoken, the coldness and the hauteur of a moment before went somewhere else, and Isis sighed first.
Her sworn younger brother. He handled the work well, and unlike his face he was diligent, and yet somehow—
"If only his loathing of mages would ease, even a little."
"…Heh heh. I can guess where he has gone."
"Haa……."
Isis pressed at her brow and shook her head.
"—Hm?"
His ear itched all at once. The knight picked at it and frowned, wondering if dust had gathered.
"What filthy thing are you doing."
"You're just as dirty. What the hell are you on about."
"…Being classed with the likes of you puts me in a temper."
"You always look like some lunatic who's already mad."
"……Draw your sword."
"We've got to run, not fight. Why go to the trouble of drawing it."
"…!!"
The knight decided to needle his companion a little and set the unpleasantness aside. The people worth cursing were few enough anyway, and probably—
Sis, no doubt.
She had looked endlessly dumbfounded at his notice. If she cursed him, he would have to understand. The scolding could wait until later. For now, only the goal in front of him mattered to Lee Han.
"…So how much farther do we have to go?"
"……You are truly beyond help. You do not even know the road, and you mean to go all the way to the Magic Tower."
"You said we only had to reach the empire, right? Figured we'd manage somehow."
"……Which is precisely why it is absurd."
His companion shook his head. And with reason.
"Do you truly think it reasonable to cover six thousand miles in four days?"
The speaker was Lark, the guide Galahad had attached to him. Lee Han bristled, brow knotting. This bastard, of all people—
"Say it in kilometers, not miles, damn it…!"
If pounds and yards come out next, I'm finished.