Why a Knight's Hatred Is Justified (2)
Decades ago—back when the house of the present Duke of Galahad was still called Pendragon—Blake, crown prince and no more than a boy in his teens, already had a woman. None other than the Fairy Woman who had descended in human form: the noblest woman in the world.
He had fallen in love with a fairy, the holiest being in existence, and from the royal house's standpoint it could only be a blessing. Just as the Knight King, founder of Pendragon, had once received the blessing of a noble silver dragon, Prince Blake had received a fairy's love. To be loved by a fairy—nobler and greater than any other race—was a grander, more honorable thing than loving the daughter of even the finest noble house. People did nothing but bless that love.
…Except.
"Plenty of people envied it. The great nobles were already crushed under the Military God's authority, and then a fairy went and stood with Pendragon on top of that. It was more than they could bear. So some of them…"
"Tried to seduce the fairy?"
"That's right."
"…Are they insane? No—do they not have heads?"
Fairies are not human. To them, affection is no volatile thing that burns off the way it does for people. It is a jewel, remaining forever, keeping its shape. To scheme at stealing a fairy's affection was worse than stupid. It was the sort of thought that made you suspect a sickness of the mind.
And sure enough.
"A lot of the ones who tried their tricks vanished without a sound, they say. His Highness's revenge for them touching his lover was revenge enough, but the royal house in its prime was strong enough to overwhelm every great noble put together. Ruin was the only possible result."
Truly foolish men. Would you believe the affair was written into the textbooks as a historical case of what human folly and desire look like? Ironic, and a stupidity that ought never to have been repeated—but they do say foolish history repeats itself.
"No one knew. That there would be an idiot who genuinely loved the lady—another man's woman—and courted her in earnest."
Roses. At the time he was nothing more than one heir among Loengrin's, a young man, and like the other fools he courted the fairy. If anything set him apart from those other fools, it was this.
"That madman meant it."
Unlike the rest, Roses Loengrin had truly fallen for the Fairy Woman—a beauty and a charm that surpassed comprehension, her gaze, her scent. Overcome by all of it, he confessed on the spot. And because of that…
"It was chaos. His Highness tried to kill Roses, but the previous head leading Loengrin then was a man of real character, and close to the Military God besides. He asked to mediate, and fortunately Roses was forgiven on the condition that several of Loengrin's interests were stripped away. The problem was…"
"…?"
"…that the courtship went on even after His Highness and the lady were formally husband and wife."
"Th-that's not a problem, that's a disaster, isn't it? And that duke let a man like that live? Really…?"
"……There's no way."
That day Blake lost his reason. He tore out Roses's arms and eyes, and cut off both legs as well. In the end he crushed the lungs to pulp, and in the instant he moved to take the heart and the throat next—
"…the temple and Loengrin stepped in and stopped His Highness. They say he lived by swearing never to come near the lady again. After that, that mad bastard Roses managed to regenerate his arms and legs with the help of Holy Law, but he couldn't fully repair the crushed lungs, so he suffers from asthma, and the new eyes aren't complete either. One of them can't see at all, I heard. He brought it on himself. I don't even pity him."
Of course, Roses was forgiven then not only because Loengrin and the temple intervened. It was also a time of upheaval: Blake had been chosen by the Magic Sword and was stepping down from the station of crown prince. The Military God, too, had taken to his bed for a while, sick with disappointment at losing a trustworthy heir. In a sense, Roses's survival was a miracle of countless coincidences and strokes of luck piled one on another.
So Roses ought to have lived in gratitude. Permanent asthma, and the sight of one eye gone—but he had survived by another's mercy. Meaning that to live quiet as a dead mouse still would not have been enough.
And yet—!
"He's a crazy bastard. Doesn't know his place, and he keeps pulling these bizarre stunts."
In the present, with the years gone by, Loengrin was running wild. Remaking Holy Knights into Half-Fiends was only the start; the very look of them cooperating with the Blood Cross Army was already nothing but an eyesore. And the day before, they had actually tried to lay hands on Irene Windler—Galahad's daughter!
In truth, war had been avoided only by cutting off the tail. Given one decisive justification, Galahad was of a mind to strike Loengrin at any moment. No—in truth, even now.
"Since the Holy Knights intruded on the Academy, Galahad has been slowly tightening the leash on Loengrin. Starting with their money, quietly removing the groups that cooperate with them…"
"No, you don't have to tell me. You people handle that bloody business among yourselves."
"Bloody? It's only self-defense."
"……"
"Anyway, if they keep at it like this, Loengrin will collapse on its own within two years. We have more than enough strength for that."
"……"
They say even a rich house takes three generations to fall, and yet here she was, boasting she could bring down a great noble house—beyond any comparison with mere wealth—inside of two years. Lee Han could only click his tongue. It did not sound like an empty boast at all.
If I can help it, I won't make an enemy of Galahad.
He wanted to sleep easy.
Learning of the old grudge between Galahad and Loengrin, and feeling anew that he had been right to suspect Loengrin, Lee Han was one thing. Opposite him—
"I see. So that's why Loengrin has been growing poor of late? Ridiculous."
The woman who had listened to their talk as still as a folding screen was nodding along. Judia Pierre. At last seeing hope of escaping this absurd dress, his eyes were bright. If Galahad itself was naming Loengrin the culprit hiding the Brass Knight Order, there would be no more need to attend the party. He wore a rare, satisfied smile. But—
"The hell are you on about. You're still going to the party."
"…Reason?"
The smile vanished at once, his face stiff with complaint. But the moment Lee Han went on in a tone that brooked no argument, that discontent died out as something trivial.
"Because we have to plan for what-ifs. Honestly, the odds Loengrin is the one hiding those brass-or-scrap-metal bastards look better than nine in ten. But you never know, right? There's that leftover one-in-ten chance they're holed up somewhere else."
"……"
"Just because those bastards are lunatics doesn't mean they're idiots. They're good at stirring people up, and they've got schemers who know how to use their heads. They're definitely up to something. Someone has to keep moving out in the open."
"…Does that someone have to be me?"
"If not you, who? And before that—if it isn't work like this, you're useless."
"……"
"More than anything, how am I supposed to walk into enemy ground dragging an unstable element who might betray me any day? I take you along and you pull some troll stunt, and it's nothing but a headache."
"……"
He put on a look of deepest grievance with all his might, but Lee Han did not so much as blink. Pierre would never admit it, but that red-haired former inquisitor was plainly a time bomb that might go off at any moment.
The fanatic personality is bad enough. The other one is a worse bomb.
The dream fiend's personality. The Judia personality, which could in a sense be called the true body, was—to state it plainly—a cruel villain with nothing even to plead. The Pierre personality, however endlessly selfish, still had a scrap of guilt and a scrap of morals. Judia's personality was a villain who would do anything to fill her own aims and her own greed.
Better to just leave this one among people.
That way a watcher could be kept at her side, and if she caused trouble it would be easier to stop. However—
"Oh my. That seems like a terribly unfair misunderstanding, doesn't it?"
"…?"
As if to oppose Lee Han's plan, an unfamiliar woman's voice came out of Pierre's mouth.
"You bitch?!"
"Bitch? You ought to call me big sister, or Mother, Pierre. And Sir Knight—isn't this too much? I know you've got some misunderstanding about me, but I'm not that bad a woman."
"Cut the bullshit, you monster!"
"Ah-ah, no naughty words! Our good Pierre mustn't talk like that."
"Don't spout nonsense, you wicked thing! Quiet for a while, and now you're shameless—!"
"Isn't the shameless one you? Living on a lease of my body."
"!!!"
"You ought to be grateful I haven't driven you out, Pierre."
"Y-you—!"
Rage, then a sudden laugh, then rage again, over and over. The sight was truly… what was one even to call it.
"Squeak?"
"Don't mind that. Kid's got a headache."
"Squeak…"
It only looked like a madwoman with a flower stuck in her hair, and at those words the flying squirrel Arpi pitied her. A sight even a beast could not help but pity.
She had suddenly begun producing two voices, as if performing a one-person play. But those who knew how tangled a human being Judia Pierre was understood that this was no act.
"A succubus of the mystery-races. I've only ever seen them on paper. Seeing one in person, they really are a wondrous people."
"Squeak, squeak."
"No. More than that thing, a flying squirrel that understands speech and can draw and write seems a lot more wondrous…"
Not that other mystery-races were any ordinary thing, but each race that bore a mystery had its own extraordinary gift. A barbarian could eat all he liked and do nothing but sleep, and far from gaining weight his muscle only increased. Dwarves, every one of them, were born with an artistic talent. Beast-humans whose lower halves took the shape of horses or fish displayed abilities suited to those forms. And dream fiends, gifted to handle dreams and desire, were famous even among the mystery-races for powers especially outstanding—and especially dangerous. If a dream fiend set her mind to evil and abused that power, one could not even begin to gauge how dangerous she would be.
In a sense, they were a race watched with the same dread as vampires: the question of when they might cross the line into monsters.
"Oh my, could you not look at me like that? I'm not a monster. I'm a perfectly rational person of intellect. My abilities are merely a little unusual."
"…I apologize."
"Apologizing so quickly—you're the smart one. Unlike this idiot."
Pierre's personality flared, and the quarrel broke out again, but his mind was not strong enough to handle a dream fiend's personality once it had woken. Rather, Judia's very existence worked on him like a hand on a reverse scale, and did nothing but leave his mind endlessly unsteady.
Into that—
"Hey, handsome Sir Knight. Shall we make a deal?"
Judia turned those bewitching eyes on Lee Han and spoke. At her words, Lee Han—
Steel slid.
"W-wait! D-don't take out the axe! I-I didn't say anything unpleasant! I only asked you to talk!"
Judia was horrified at the sight of him reaching for the axe before any conversation at all.
"You think you've got the seniority to talk deals with me? Arrogant."
"…I'm sorry."
"Sorry, and that ends your life among people?"
"Th-that's…"
"I'm joking."
"……"
"Laugh. I said it was a joke."
"…Ha, hahaha…"
She laughed. A laugh that came out almost by reflex—a hollow laugh with not one shred of soul in it. She looked, somehow, on the verge of tears, and the others watched Lee Han and the dream fiend with strange eyes. It was absurd: a being arrogant enough to look down on the world was suddenly speaking with deference, crawling on the ground as if in surrender.
…Just what had he done with that axe?
"—So. What's this talk that's good for both of us?"
Asked as if the joking were finished, and Judia, thoroughly cowed, opened her mouth with difficulty.
"Th-that's, it's nothing special. Th-the truth is, I looked into something myself over these ten days, um… I know about the Brass Knight Order and Loengrin as well…"
It was not particularly strange. They might be called two personalities, but Pierre and Judia were all but one mind in one body. So long as they shared memory, they had no choice but to know whatever there was to know. Also—
"A-and this matter can't be called none of my business. Whatever else, because of them I went through a harsh time, in more ways than one…"
She had been kidnapped by an Illegal Mage of the Blood Cross Army and subjected to human experiment. She had created the Pierre personality so the suffering could be passed along, yes—but until then she had certainly been a victim of experiments no different from torture. That she took an interest was not strange. And so—
"I'd like to lend a hand too…. Ah, as you know, I'm really very useful? I may not look it, but I'm a dream fiend, and my abilities are varied, s-so I'll be a help…"
"Hmm."
Every time Lee Han twitched the axe, her confidence seemed to drain away, but he could tell what she meant to say. A claim he could accept. She would set out on the road of vengeance, to settle old kindness and old grievance.
Repaying a grudge is the way of the martial world.
A story Lee Han rather liked. The turn where one walks the road of revenge to pay an enemy back.
…However.
"What's the real reason?"
"Yes?"
"I can see your eyes spinning, you bewitching wench. You've got something else you want, don't you? That's why your tongue's so long. Say it. What do you actually want? Not that dogshit nonsense about grudges and revenge—tell me the truth."
"……"
"How did I know? Because a vicious breed like you couldn't possibly be without a scheme."
"…I haven't said a word. Why are you seeing straight through me?"
"I can hear it without you saying it. You take after a mage."
"……"
Judia did not know that, of all the curses Lee Han spat, likening someone to a mage was worse than any other insult. She did know, in her heart, that she was being treated badly, and she wanted to pout—but the axe, its edge gleaming, frightened her. So instead of pouting, she raised both hands as if in surrender.
And so—
"For someone who looks the way you do, you're really very sharp, Sir Knight."
Along with words that earned her a beating, she laid out her honest feelings and what she truly thought. He listened to her plan for about two minutes. His reaction—
An exclamation edged with disgust. And with it, the realization that not just anyone can become a villainess.