The Cogwheel Declares (5)
One meter. No more.
That was all the distance between the king and Lee Han—near enough that a single long stride would put him on the man in an instant.
Silence held across that meter. Then the soldiers and the attending knights all roared at once.
"You bastard!"
"In whose presence do you dare!"
"Insulting His Majesty! Has anyone ever seen such a mannerless wretch—"
The king's loyal retainers moved to threaten the knight at once, spears and swords coming free as they closed in, every one of them intent on tearing him apart.
Their browbeating, however—
"From this moment on—"
A thin hiss. A crack. Glass and stone giving way at once.
"You had better think very carefully before you open your mouths."
"……"
It died. Quietly, and fast.
No. They were forced to shut their mouths.
The reason? They were overwhelmed.
Every one of the men who had been bellowing a moment before clamped his jaw and shook. Nor was it only them. All who heard that voice locked where they stood, trembling, their faces gone pale and rigid.
"…Lion's Roar. That's what that was, isn't it?"
His disciples knew what their master had done. But it was not an ordinary Lion's Roar. Only yesterday the art had been a thunderous shout that crushed whoever stood against it. Now he had used it by doing nothing more than loading his voice with spirit. And even without the shout, the force was nothing ordinary. Glass cups burst. Hairline cracks ran through the walls. The air itself grew unbearably heavy. A single man's presence overwhelmed the whole of the banquet hall, and among the nobles were some who could not even draw a proper breath.
Then, in the space of a blink, the pressure was gone.
More of them would feel it as a wordless warning than as mercy. As if to prove as much—
"There won't be a second time."
He said it plainly, and not one of them contradicted him or rose against the words. In less than two minutes he had the whole of his surroundings in his grip, and he looked up at the king again.
The king still looked down on the knight from the throne. And yet, somehow—
"From here on, I'm the one asking the questions. Lie, and that's when my patience runs out. So answer well."
No answer came.
"You didn't answer. Fine. Ten percent of my patience just vanished."
The king's eyes flew wide.
An odd illusion took hold: that the knight looking up was the one who stood higher.
King Edmund's eyes shook as if he had lost his mind. It would not have been too much to call it an earthquake in his pupils, and his knees, faintly, seemed to tremble as well.
He might have trained his Fighting Art to a high level. It did not matter. He could not hope to hold his ground against a knight who had stepped past Champion—
Between the two of them lay a gap as wide, quite literally, as the one between a day-old puppy and a tank.
Even so—
"I-I cannot begin to understand what you are saying…."
Edmund was a king. Not the king of some petty realm, but the sovereign of Pendragon, the great power that held the southern continent in its grip. So long as he still possessed a king's dignity and pride, his self-respect and his duty, King Edmund had to stand tall. He had to have a spirit to match. He was far weaker than the knight before him, yes. But Edmund, who still had a king's bearing, opened his mouth and forced the dignity through.
"I-Ihan Turtle. I do not know what misunderstanding drives you to this lawless act, but what you are doing now is no different from treason."
Someone might have admired it. He did not give ground even before a man vastly stronger than himself, and he opened his mouth to demand what ought to be demanded. It was something even the knight would have had to grant—
"First question. Do you admit that you've been sponsoring those Blood Cross Army fanatic bastards for thirty years?"
Silence.
"I'm asking if you admit it."
Far from granting him anything, the knight looked at the king the way one looks at filth. The king felt the humiliation of that gaze. What was worse than the humiliation—
"Wh-what are you saying!!"
The Blood Cross Army. The slander that he had sponsored a power which had fallen on the Royal Capital again and again and done terrible damage. The king cried out, aghast. Spreading some absurd rumor—where had he even heard it?
The reaction changed nothing.
"I asked you. Is it true you sponsored them?"
The knight was unruffled. No. He was cold. Answer only what you were asked: that was all his face allowed.
"Kh!"
King Edmund felt the disgrace, the shame, and at last he answered. For the moment, preserving himself was the only sensible—
"…I did not sponsor them. I cannot imagine what nonsense you are talking."
"A lie."
Edmund jerked as if struck.
"Next question, then. Did you kill the Martial God?"
"What are you saying right now!!!!"
The shout that burst out of him could not even be compared to what had come before. The Martial God: King Edmund's elder brother, and the only sovereign ever set beside the great Knight King. And this man was asking if he had killed him?
"There are things one may say, and things one may not! How dare you speak such words!!"
Lee Han said nothing.
"You wretch! To deceive Us—"
"Right. So you didn't kill the Martial God. But it's strange. You aren't telling the whole truth, either. You didn't help bring about his death, but you know some hidden circumstance."
Edmund had no answer to that.
"Next question. Did you cooperate with the Brass Knight Order?"
Nothing.
"No. Not cooperation—did you give them orders? What are you, Torn Wing?"
"…Say whatever you please!"
King Edmund made it plain he would no longer answer such nonsense, and dropped heavily onto the throne. Talk all you like. He looked tired now, weary even of responding. To the onlookers as well, it seemed the king was being hounded without answer, and pitying glances had just begun to spread toward him when—
"…Well. Your vessel was never a king's vessel. That's why you can barely play at being king, and only by stooping to cheap tricks."
King Edmund's face hardened with astonishing speed. Lee Han saw it plainly, and still went on in words that sat somewhere between an appraisal and a question.
"I saw you for the first time today, and this is how I rate you. You're not bad. Ordinary as they come to look at, but you've got backbone. You know how to put on a decent performance, and you know how to take hold of a room. You must have worked hard at it. …But that is exactly all you are. Your vessel, to put it kindly, is just barely fit to govern a count's domain. Rate you a little lower, and a village headman out in the country would be the perfect fit."
Teeth ground.
"Ah, in case you take it wrong—I'm not saying this to sneer at country headmen. The countryside has more than enough work, more than enough quarrels to settle, and ruling that is hard in its own right. So in my own way, I'm rating you highly. I'm only saying you aren't a vessel fit to rule a nation."
"…Enough."
"Pendragon blood lives a long time, so experience might paper over a vessel that falls short. Even so, you can't rule a great realm like this one. The way you go about effort is the way a mid-sized merchant house does business."
"I told you to be silent!"
"They say the seat makes the man, but only up to a point. There are seats a man simply cannot bear. In other words—"
"Did I not tell you to stop!!"
The crack of the blow rang through the hall. King Edmund roared in fury. He was angry enough that his face flushed a deep, ripe red, and his eyes took on a venomous gleam that laid the hatred bare. A face of pure murder. Frightening, without question. The knight only shrugged.
"I pity you, King Edmund. That doesn't mean I forgive you. In the end, you're the one who sponsored the heretical power your brother, the Martial God, had already broken, and raised it up again. You're the one who put my people in danger."
"No! Did We not say it was not so! Why do you persist in slandering Us!!!"
"Right. Slandering a man with no evidence would be wrong."
"At last, something sensible! Without so much as evidence, how dare you—"
"And if I have it?"
"…What?"
"What are you going to do if the evidence exists?"
Nothing.
"I'm asking what you'll do."
King Edmund fell abruptly silent, as if overwhelmed by eyes that looked at him with a boldness past confidence and into open provocation. No. Past overwhelmed. It was more like—
"…It feels rather like watching a child get caught in a lie."
Someone's murmur. Strangely, it rang in every ear. Everyone heard it plain, and no one could help agreeing. He had smoothed his expression, but for an instant—at the words that evidence existed—they had seen it. On King Edmund's face—
A crack.
The look of a man brazenly lying, caught, and thinking oh, no. A noble could not afford to be slow about such things, and a crack that small was more than enough to breed suspicion.
Coming through clear. Real clear.
The others would not hear it, but every time Lee Han spoke, he heard what King Edmund's whole body was giving away. He heard the beat of the king's heart. He smelled the truth and the lie pouring off him.
Truly—
What an honest gentleman.
People Lee Han knew would not have been like this. Isis. Duke Blake. Grand Duke Magnus. Had those sovereigns stood where Edmund stood, they would not have been rattled by so crude a taunt, nor let their feelings show. Not even if he claimed the evidence was real. Never.
And so Lee Han found it funny. What confidence had made the man lie so brazenly?
Pages snapped open.
"If a scrap of evidence like this is enough to rattle you, why cause the mess in the first place."
What Lee Han drew out and spread carelessly across the floor was nothing other than a ledger. A ledger dense with records.
"This ledger sets down how the money you moved in secret over the past thirty years flowed, and by what routes, all the way to the Blood Cross Army. Follow the records, and learning what you are to them won't be difficult."
Edmund said nothing.
"This isn't the only thing that'll serve as evidence, you know."
Still nothing.
"Still feeling sure of yourself? That's not bad either. Then I'll give you a chance."
A small motion of the hand. As if offering a hole to crawl out through, as if granting mercy, Lee Han pointed behind the king.
A painting hung there: the holy, noble Silver Dragon and the fairies traveling on toward Avalon in company with the Knight King. Not a mere legend or myth, but great beings who had truly existed, and who might exist still. Should any impurity taint an oath sworn upon them, it meant an eternity of agony even after death—
"—Damn these sickening Mysteries!"
A sharp, tearing crack. King Edmund hurled his staff at the painting behind him.
The court recoiled in horror. The staff had scarred the painting.
King Edmund paid none of it any mind.
"If this was how it would end, you should have made me swear upon Mystery from the start! Why subject me to this humiliation!"
"Mystery isn't all-powerful. There are any number of ways to slip out of it. And before a Mystery can bring its power to bear, there has to be a process backing up the truth. A performance, you might say. Just as you've always done."
"…Ha. Slyer than you look."
"And you play exactly as you look."
Edmund had no reply to that. A creak of teeth. He bit his lip, little by little, and glared at Lee Han, and Lee Han met the glare as if it were only to be expected.
Then King Edmund stepped forward, heavy and sudden.
"…Fine. We did it."
"We sponsored them! We sponsored the very power Our revered elder brother annihilated! We revived it! And We cooperated with it!!"
As if spewing a tantrum, Edmund closed until he was nose to nose with Lee Han and vomited his rage at the lawless traitor who had dared drag his truth into the light.
"You lawless wretch! You traitor! You are Our knight! A subject of the kingdom We rule, and you commit an act like this! Why? They call you a hero, and so you truly think you've become one? Were you planning to play the hero as well!!!"
He tapped the front of Lee Han's clothes, once, twice, provoking him.
"And you think you can punish Us even so?! We are Pendragon! The King of Pendragon! The likes of you! A mere knight! Do you imagine that revealing the truth gives you the right to punish Us?"
Yes. He was Edmund Julian de Pendragon. Thirty-first monarch of Pendragon. He might be guilty, but there was no judge who could punish him. Let every noble condemn him: did they truly think they could drag him into a prison?
"That is reality! There is nowhere—nowhere at all—that can punish Us!!"
Edmund shouted it with his head high and looked at the knight in open provocation. At the knight who would be able to do nothing. Who would stand there, powerless—
"When did I say I was going to judge you by the law?"
Edmund blinked, thrown.
"I told you from the start."
A light flick of the fingers.
"That there was always the option of ripping your tongue out first."
He looked neither resentful nor wronged. He only looked at Edmund the way one looks at a mad dog barking itself hoarse, and he took a gentle hold of Edmund's collar.
The grip tightened.
"But the tongue can wait till the end. We'll start light. Molars first."
Edmund stared, uncomprehending.
"Don't clench. They're coming out either way."
Edmund's body lifted a little into the air, and he thrashed. It looked like the lightest of holds, and yet no amount of struggling loosened it. And then—
A swing of air.
"N-now, wai—"
Smack.
The slap took him square across the cheek.
A dull, small sound. A molar came free, pathetic, dropped to the floor, and rolled.
But—
"Still thirty-one left."
Edmund's eyes blew wide in naked horror.
There were still a great many teeth to pull.