Why a Knight's Hatred Is Right (1)
A small earthquake had struck the night before, and hardly anyone cared.
It wasn't as if the tremor had done any real damage. More than that, Mount Bulkan was given to throwing a fit now and then and shaking the ground itself, so the people of the Royal Capital were long since used to mild quakes.
What actually held their interest was the previous night's society gossip, and which lovers had fought and split this time around. And so—
"D-did a meteor come down or something?"
"If one had, the astronomers and the alchemists would already be in an uproar. Those lunatics would kill to get their hands on a meteorite."
"Then how in the world did this crater get here?"
They hadn't even noticed that an enormous pit had opened overnight on the outskirts of the Royal Capital.
"How should I know? Hmm. Maybe some huge monster hit the ground with everything it had?"
"Use your head. And stop talking nonsense."
"...Sorry."
Soldiers had been out to the site, but even they could only tilt their heads, none the wiser as to what the unidentified hole was supposed to be. Had there been a trace of something, or any sign that someone had been there, it might have been different. There wasn't even that. Nothing but a crater left sitting on its own, and nothing the soldiers could do about it. And so the case of the suddenly appeared giant pit remained an inexplicable mystery, unsolved.
Then again, who could possibly have predicted it?
"Did I overdo it a little?"
That the one who had made that crater was a single man. Or that, only last night, more than fifty assassins had gone to meet Dullahan.
Soldiers investigating with ordinary common sense were bound to find a case this far outside it impossible to close. Still, if one had to name the reason every trace but the crater itself could be wiped so clean—
"Thanks. Thanks to you, it got handled."
"Not at all. If anything, we came away with information of our own. We're the ones who ought to be grateful to Sir Ihan, for calling on us of all people."
"...I didn't call you. Weren't you the ones hovering around me?"
"Hoho. All's well that ends well."
"......"
Luna Bridget.
A woman knight of the Galahad Shadows, and, as the green hair made plain at a glance, little sister to that spearman brat. True to his blood, she was no minor talent, and she and her people were the ones who had kindly erased the traces of the assassins wiped out the night before.
Gratitude, though, was still gratitude.
"Why were you around me in the first place?"
"That man gave us some advice."
"That man?"
"My biological family."
"......"
...Did she hate calling him her brother that much?
Ihan was just starting to feel a little sorry for the spearman when words arrived that snuffed the sympathy out on the spot.
"That's what he said. So we did as that man told us, and watched from a very long way off."
"...Who are you calling a beast?"
Muttering that he would have thrown a straight punch if the man had been standing in front of him, Ihan clicked his tongue. He had been grateful. The gratitude was gone now.
Even so.
No debt, then. That sits cleaner.
He had thought he owed them one, but set side by side the slate was effectively blank. A gain.
"Next time, say you want to cooperate."
Otherwise he was going to feel a small and thoroughly petty displeasure, so he let the rest of it trail off. Luna understood him well enough and apologized at once.
"I'm sorry, Sir Ihan. I never meant to use you. It's only that you like to go about things alone, so it was difficult to ask for your cooperation."
"I do?"
"Yes. You always prefer to settle matters by yourself."
"That's..."
"If I asked to work together out of nowhere, I thought you might be displeased.... You don't much care for nobles...."
"Th-that's not wrong, but..."
Talking with her, Ihan could feel, at one remove, how the other powers saw him. Some kind of misunderstanding. No. It wasn't a misunderstanding, but still.
No, seriously. What kind of image do I have?
A strange sense of being wronged rose in him, and he couldn't bring himself to ask outright what that image was. He had a bad feeling about the answer.
He didn't even have time to sit with the fresh discovery that a thoroughly ominous theory was making the rounds—that Ihan Turtle was a man whose personality had snapped—before new information started pouring into his ears.
"There's been a rumor of late. That one of the great nobles is employing criminals who fled the Empire into the South...."
"Interesting rumor."
"Isn't it? What's more interesting is that the rumor is very likely true. And if the one absorbing that criminal organization is Loengrin, it becomes all the more fascinating."
"......"
...His face said it was neither fascinating nor the least bit fun.
One look at the killing intent banked in her eyes, though, and it was obvious why she was the spearman's blood. He didn't lay what he felt out in the open, of course. Ihan only nodded, quiet.
"I hate to say it, but criminals are endlessly useful, depending on how you spend them. They're illegal residents with no citizenship, so you can use them up in a hurry and throw them away, and no one makes a problem of it."
Thoroughly disposable.
They had once been called the Empire's foremost assassin organization, Blood Wind, but in the end they were nothing but fugitives. Well. Succeed at the job, produce results, prove they were worth keeping, and the story might change.
"Unfortunately, they picked a fight with Sir Ihan, so that luck has run out. It's a child who has only just started to babble, charging a starving beast."
"You've been a little free with the 'not a person' treatment."
"...More to the point, if I may go on."
"Hey."
What mattered here was not that Ihan was a beast. It was who had hired the organization, and why they had fixed the employer as Loengrin.
"No one is stupid enough to hire a criminal outfit in the open. The sensible way is to hire through other people, two layers deep, three layers deep, so that your own identity never surfaces. ...But no matter how thoroughly you work it, there is nothing that cannot be found out."
A sharp flutter cut the air.
"Good work, Arpi."
"Squeak!"
"...A squirrel?"
A peculiar squirrel. No—a flying squirrel. A blue one, and judging by the faint presence he could feel from it...
A spirit beast?
An animal possessed of spirituality, without a doubt. And sure enough.
"This is Arpi. An elite agent raised by Galahad. Say hello, Arpi."
"Cheep!"
"Oh..."
A flying squirrel that even snapped off a proper salute. Ihan let out a sound of genuine admiration.
"Galahad raises a great many spirit beasts tied to the fairies. Among them, a special individual is born once every five or ten years, and Arpi is one of those. It was born with spirituality already in it. Long-lived, and cleverer than most people. Oh, and it picked up a little martial arts, so if it puts its mind to it, it can even take down a lion."
"......"
"Above all, it's the finest operative among the Shadows. Its infiltration is first-rate. His Grace has decorated it three times!"
"Squeeeak!!"
"...Huh."
...Might even be smarter than the White Cats.
The outstanding intelligence agent—no, the flying squirrel—drew a neatly folded sheet of paper from a bag on its back no bigger than a miniature.
"Squeak."
The paper was covered in drawings and writing. A face, and its features, set down in careful detail. The flying squirrel, by all appearances, had drawn them.
"I see, Arpi. This person is a Loengrin spy."
"Cheep."
"But do you have solid proof?"
"Cheep-cheep."
"Hmm. You've been watching for days, and the food they've been buying has increased? As if they were buying it to feed someone?"
"Squeak..."
"Yes. You're right. Suspicious enough."
They were actually holding a conversation?
All I can hear is squeaking.
Was it because he himself wasn't pure enough? Ihan stared blankly at her and at the excellent flying squirrel for a moment, until Luna Bridget turned her eyes to him.
"Sir Ihan, would it be all right to consider us cooperators now?"
"...It wasn't what I intended, but I'm taking your help, and you need me. That would be cooperation, yes."
"I'm glad. Then we'll share what we know, so might I ask you to help us look into Loengrin?"
"......Not by going in and hitting them?"
Ihan tilted his head, plainly puzzled. With Galahad's strength, he had expected them to raise troops and strike Loengrin at once. Hearing that they would not, he found it strange, and at that reaction Luna wore a bitter smile.
"Galling as it is, evidence of this degree isn't grounds to raise an army. Of course, even if we mustered soldiers without warning and struck Loengrin, no one would dare pick a quarrel with Galahad. But if we did that, the other great houses might raise troops as they pleased. It would mean a war, if we weren't careful, and His Grace has no wish to start a meaningless one."
"...I understand."
Power on that scale was mighty enough, certainly, but moving it came with its own inconvenience. There seemed to be no helping that.
In that case.
"What if I hit them alone?"
"Pardon?"
"If it isn't Galahad, and it's just me colliding with Loengrin, that wouldn't matter, would it?"
"Th-that's... y-you're joking, aren't you?"
"......"
"......"
"Ha. Right. A joke. How would I take on a great noble by myself? Haha."
"...Ahaha. R-right?"
...And yet, why was it that to Luna those words did not sound like a joke at all?
Utterly—
I-I think he means it.
Recalling what that man had told her before they joined hands, Luna broke into a cold sweat.
So there really is someone who runs wilder than that man...
Terrifyingly so.
Her face changes a lot.
Ihan found the sudden shifts odd, but he had something else he wanted to know, so he opened his mouth.
"Say. There's one thing I'm curious about."
"Yes?"
"You. Galahad, I mean. Why do you hate Loengrin?"
"......"
"Did I imagine it?"
Strangely enough, Galahad was burning with killing intent toward Loengrin, and Ihan, finding it odd, had asked. As if to say his reading was not wrong, she did not deny it.
"You have a sharp eye, Sir Ihan."
"You hated them so openly I poked at it."
"Haa. Yes. We hate them. To a sickening degree..."
"Honest."
She answered more readily than he had expected, and then she went on.
"It's not as if it's something to hide. Most people know, don't they? That Galahad hates Loengrin. No. That we hate the current head of Loengrin."
"Why?"
"...It's nothing else, only..."
"......"
Hearing the answer that followed, Ihan's mouth fell slightly open.
And as he saw it—
And the duke actually left a man like that alive?
He could only wonder why someone who ought to have been dead long ago still wasn't.
...Slamming a confession on a married woman and asking her to bear his child? That isn't sane.
At the part where the man had said it outright to Duke Blake's own lady, Ihan lost the capacity for words entirely.
Nobles. Every last one of them...
Hatred was the right answer.