A Knight Acts in the Time It Takes to Ask Permission (1)
Time is a relative thing.
Set a man to work he loathes, and the hours crawl without end. Give him a moment he enjoys, and it is gone between one blink and the next.
And so:
"Winter break is over already? I could have sworn we only went home the day before yesterday."
"We're second-years? ...Mm. What did we even do to be second-years?"
"...Exactly."
Such was the muddled murmuring of the cadets, gathered again after each had finished weathering the winter in his own way. There was nothing strange in it. Every year, when the winter recess ended and the class advanced, the cadets looked just like this, and the sight itself was a kind of emblem of peace.
Only a few years ago the war had forced the Academy to shut its gates time and again, and the cadets had either returned to their houses or hardened their resolve to go and fight. Now they could enjoy the spring, and even grumble on full stomachs. How absurd it was.
Peace. Yes—the kingdom had suffered its share of incidents, and yet a peace hung over it all the same. Without so much as a ripple of disorder...
Bang—!
"You call that something a person says!"
Someone flinched. Those who knew this peace had been born of ignorance were furious.
"Hide what happened at Mordred!? Is that truly what you mean to say? No—is that something any human being ought to say!"
The voice ringing through the hall belonged to the head of a renowned house, a man famous for prizing knightly honor, and one of the few consciences still left even in the Noble Council, that breeding ground of corruption.
"My lord councilor, lower your voice, I beg you. This seat is not for fighting. It is for conference."
"They're the ones making me angry! Angry!"
"Even so, this is the kingdom's Round Table Hall. And... are there not personages of the highest station seated among us?"
"...Hrk!"
At the chairman's attempt to mediate, the noble who had been shouting found, this time, that the words stuck in his throat.
The kingdom's Grand Assembly. The Noble Council, the Guild Union, the merchants' league, the mercenary confederation, the temple—every power that represented the South had been gathered into one meeting, a meeting that might occur once in three years, if it occurred at all. Nobles and merchants, guild officers, mercenaries, even priests: not one among them was a person with time to spare. That such people should wrench hours free and come together meant a Grand Assembly could only be rare.
...And what made this one still more extraordinary was, perhaps—
A gaze slid across the chamber.
To think those personages would actually attend. Then again, they fought in the Mordred Defense with their own hands, so perhaps it is only natural.
Even among the kingdom's nobility, one could see the masters of houses that stood on an entirely different tier.
I have met His Lordship, Marquis Jenimia, if only briefly and in private. To behold the others from this near is a first.
The nobles—no, the officers of every faction—were sweating cold, every last one of them. An ordinary Grand Assembly was notorious for reckless talk running wild, and for brawls that dwarfed the meeting itself. Unlike those assemblies, nothing flowed through this one now but a dead stillness.
...All because those personages occupied their seats.
"You aren't going back to the North, I see."
"I have to finish the work before I go. I have a proxy, so it hardly matters. And you, Blake—aren't you the one who ought to be heading home? You've done nothing but shut yourself up in that house."
"Hmph. That is none of your concern, Magnus."
The lord of Galahad, and the lord of Lionel. With those two sovereigns present, no one dared spew reckless words or fall to scuffling as they usually did. Do that, and they would earn the displeasure of those two houses—and that, at least, they declined. Better to offend the royal house!
...Except.
"...Still, every one of you is spouting something strange. Hiding the matter of Mordred, I can understand after a fashion. But concealing the vampire, the high demon, and even the existence of the Great Saintess—whose deranged opinion is that? Raise your hands. I won't be angry."
No one moved.
"I told you to raise them."
...They already seemed as displeased as displeased could be.
It was Crown Princess Isis who had spoken. As if to mark a wordless agreement, the two lords settled into heavy, sunken stares, and a few of the weaker hearts trembled like sick chickens until the color drained white from their faces. Their anger was justified. This was no small matter. The factions meant to hide every scrap of it from the people.
And even that Great Saintess's noble sacrifice...!
Each was news enough to shake the kingdom—no, the whole of the South—and upon the factions insisting that all of it be buried, the lords' eyes narrowed to half-lidded slits. Of course, one might have dismissed every word of it as empty noise from the mouth alone. And yet.
"If you cannot believe me, I can show you the Video Orb again. There will be no surer proof than that."
The Video Orb. It was a magic tool lately invented by mages and alchemists together, alongside the camera, and it possessed the mysterious power of storing moving images. The price was so vast that few owned one. Those who had fought in the battle named the Mordred Defense, however, had each carried a Video Orb, and had gone so far as to film their own combat with their own hands. Evidence overflowed past overflowing, and there was no one, anywhere, who could call it a lie.
Rather...
We saw it. That's why none of us can say a word now.
How we suspected the footage had been fabricated. Monsters, the lot of them...
We must never, never turn them into enemies. Our merchants' league would be swept away in a breath!
Those who had confirmed the images were shuddering. They had witnessed that overwhelming strength. It was the moment they took the measure of a great house's true depth, and so they had not the slightest wish to make enemies of them. No one in that place meant to bare any greed, or to try any trick.
Why?
...Because if they pulled something of that sort, it would be no surprise at all to find themselves dead by tomorrow. The more a person possessed, the more fiercely instinct begged them to live long, and they had not the faintest will to talk back.
...They hadn't. And yet.
"Well, we understand perfectly what Her Highness the Crown Princess is saying. Yes, of course. Talk of this kind must not be hidden. Certainly not. But even so, it cannot be now."
"Hmm."
There was one who found the courage to object.
"Y-you know, don't you? A Highness as brilliant as yourself could not possibly fail to know. If that information were released, uncontrollable chaos would break out across the South. Chaos on a tremendous scale...!"
"...Go on, then."
"Hah... haah..."
The man granted a further chance to speak was a minister then distinguishing himself in the Treasury, and a disciple of the previous chancellor, who was now headmaster of the Pendragon Academy.
"...First, allow me to offer my thanks. It is because all of you shed blood and fought that the kingdom can enjoy the peace it has now. Had it not been for you, the kingdom would have collapsed. So—my sincere thanks!"
This was no flattery. It was the plain truth.
It raised the hair on my neck...
He, too, had seen the footage. More than six hundred thousand monsters. Had those been loosed upon the kingdom, the land would have been a wasteland. And yet the monsters were the fortunate part. What if a demon—a high demon—had descended into this world? Especially in a wretched mess like this, where even the temple, the natural counter to demons, could not do its part?
"We might have had to brace ourselves for a return to the Stone Age. That is neither a joke nor a guess. A high demon possesses power enough for it. So I thank you. A heartfelt thanks, offered on behalf of the Treasury."
However.
"We of the Treasury, gratitude notwithstanding, must look at reality. So I fear I must beg pardon in advance of Her Highness the Crown Princess, and of the other two Highnesses as well. ...This matter must be kept entirely secret. It must not come to light for at least ten years."
"...Because of the economy?"
"As expected, you already know..."
Crown Princess Isis, as expected. Here was someone a man could actually talk to.
"What does he mean?"
"Why is the economy suddenly coming up here?"
"...?"
...The bleakness of a reality in which the others could not follow was beyond describing. The minister found it pathetic. Their betters had already understood every word, and yet the other nobles could not even grasp it, and wanted it explained to them. The problem, as ever, was fools who knew nothing but how to swing a sword, and had never read a single sentence of a book on economics!
"Hah. Before I explain for the benefit of the rest—the kingdom's economy is presently in crisis. The enormous loss of funds from the war with Britannia, ended three years ago, is problem enough. But with the incidents that have struck one after another of late, the kingdom's economy is now suffering a crisis of the worst kind. There is even a chance that Pendragon's economic credit may be shaken."
"Economic credit?"
"Is that such a great problem?"
"Those of you who just spoke, get out of this hall at once! What business do you have in these seats when you don't even know basic common sense!!"
Bang!
He slammed the desk in his excitement, and still no one said a word against him. Simply to share the place with men who could not understand even that much was a shame past bearing. As the saying went, clear even the middle and you were already halfway there—and those who did not know that ignorance ought to sit quiet and read the room flushed crimson under everyone else's glares.
"For credit to shake is for the kingdom's economy itself to shake! It is a grave matter even in diplomacy with other nations, and the great merchant companies of foreign lands who trade with us will begin to doubt Pendragon's strength! We might dismiss it now as a trifle. Ordinary people may do so. We must not pass this problem off as trifling! A state whose economy collapses falls even without a war! It falls because of money!"
"What matters is the economy—the economy!!"
"Do you understand, you idiots!"
Among the nobles there were those who sneered that lords in trade were mere money-grubbers, lacking in dignity. That was only because their own houses sat on abundant resources and thus enjoyed economic freedom. It was never a mark of their competence, nor of their nobility. How many houses, noble in nothing but the pattern of the name, had trusted their resources alone, collapsed, and ended up sitting in the street?
The Treasury minister wore a look that said it was unpleasant beyond words to be called a noble of the same kind as these incompetents.
"Hah. In any case, for this reason too, the facts of this matter must be hidden. I am not telling you to hide them forever. Ten years. Endure just ten years. By then..."
"—they will have forgotten again."
"......"
...For a moment, the minister's mouth stopped.
"Repay us when the time comes? The words are fine enough. In the end, everyone will have forgotten. They will forget that the reason we can sit this unharmed, the reason we can enjoy this peace, is that someone paid for it in sacrifice."
"Th-that is..."
"Keep listening. You speak of reality again and again, but do you believe that chasing nothing but reality is the answer? If we tend only the credit that can be weighed, and never the trust that has no form, who will step forward for the kingdom? If we do not repay those who spent their whole lives in sacrifice—the heroes who saved the kingdom—then who, I ask you, will ever trust us?"
"......"
"An acquaintance of mine once spoke of a saying: cook the hunting dog once the hunt is done. It means erasing the trace of a hound whose use is finished, by doing away with the hound."
"!!?"
"Yes. Of course I am not saying you would go so far. Above all, how could anyone set a hunting dog and the noble Great Saintess in the same rank? What I mean is this. Do not look only at what is practical. If one calculates nothing but profit, how is one to win the trust of the people? I would have the Treasury strive to earn not only economic credit, but the credit of the people as well."
"......"
At Isis's words the Treasury minister was briefly speechless. Just as she had said, to lose the people's credit was a thing as frightening as losing economic credit.
"......"
Silence settled over the hall, and no one broke it. To break that stillness, one would have to speak words capable of convincing them all, and a move that clever was not something a person could produce on the spot.
Then, in that moment—
Bang!
"I—if I may interrupt for a moment!"
The stillness broke, and by an unpleasant means.
"What do you think you're doing, you!"
Nobles raised their voices at the knight who had dared burst, uninvited, into the sacred Grand Assembly, and the others made their displeasure plain as well. However urgent the matter, to intrude like this without so much as a by-your-leave was to ignore their authority. Killing looks went toward him. The knight had no leisure to see them. He spoke in desperate haste.
"Th-the thing is! A m-mountain has been carved away! A g-gigantic statue...!"
"What is he saying?"
"A s-statue has appeared, I tell you! A gigantic statue of a woman, a hundred meters tall!!"
"??"
"Please—go outside and look!"
"......?"
They wore puzzled faces, wondering what nonsense the rude knight was talking. Soon enough, faced with that desperate report, they had no choice but to begin filing out of the hall. What in the world was this absurd—
"Wh-what is that!?"
"???"
"Y-yesterday there was nothing there! I—I definitely saw it!!"
They knew. Only yesterday, in the direction they were looking now, there had been no structure of any kind. And yet, now—
"A s-statue!?"
It stood a clear distance from the kingdom's Round Table Hall, and still the statue asserted itself upon them with a fierce intensity: a vast, beautiful woman, and monstrously large. Status and profession forgotten, every one of them stood with mouth agape and soul gone out of them, and all of them lost the power of speech. It was uncanny beyond compare, a situation no different from a natural disaster.
And then...
"Now that I think of it, my sworn younger brother has been rushing about this way and that for the past fortnight..."
"Lark. That disciple of mine has always been a strange one, but he was never a boy who ran this far off the reins."
"...Maximus. This walking disaster of a little brother..."
The rulers who had picked out, in a single breath, the culprits behind the incident—no, the only ones who could have done such a thing—seemed to feel their blood rising. The three had suddenly taken to keeping company of late, and one had wondered what on earth they were doing.
"They've gone and caused one magnificent accident."
When three idiots who ought never to have gathered did, in fact, gather, the rulers came to understand exactly what sort of thing occurred.