After He Left (1)
The knight was gone.
Not a single newspaper carried the fact, and the departure of one man drew hardly any notice. More precisely, people did not know.
The nobles had surely kept a tight grip on whatever information existed about him. Even so, there was another reason for the silence: no one placed much weight on the leaving of a single individual.
One mere person.
That person had simply vanished from the kingdom.
Of course, that same person had saved the kingdom more than once, and had committed the unprecedented act of beating the king in the middle of a banquet hall. Unfortunately, human memory is a volatile thing, and worse, most of the world had never truly known the feats the knight had accomplished. The times he saved the kingdom had never properly caught the public eye, and even the few achievements that did surface were dismissed as exaggeration or empty rumor and buried more often than not.
The Beating of King Edmund had cast a little light his way, but in practice every spotlight gathered on Crown Princess Isis, and attention on the knight himself stayed low. Pressure from the Noble Council had also kept the papers from covering him properly, so among the common people there was scarcely anyone who knew what sort of man he really was.
His exile, then, was known only to those in a position to know it. Even those who caught some version of the rumor were likely to forget. And then there was this.
"King Edmund to the guillotine!"
"Send the traitor to the block!"
"These disgusting bastards...!"
The kingdom's chaos only made memory evaporate faster, and that, too, was why interest died.
Boom!
"Soldiers!"
"Run...!"
Resentment toward the royal house still poured into the streets, and violent protests rose one after another. Ten more days had passed since the knight's departure, and by now the demonstrations had become as ordinary as daily life. When a crowd spilled out, people went on minding their shops, selling their goods, and leaving for work at merchant companies and workshops as if nothing were amiss.
In one sense, it was daily life set right again. In another, it was a daily life that had taken on a slightly different color. Creatures that go by the name of human possess a talent for adaptation, and even in the midst of turmoil they were growing used to the turmoil itself.
Ironically enough.
Bang!
"How long do you mean to leave the protesters be?"
"Calm yourself."
"Do I look like a man who can stay calm? Those lowborn wretches dare to—"
"Hm..."
A gathering of the realm's vital institutions — the Noble Council, the Merchant Alliance, the Guild Union, the Mercenary Confederation, and the Temple.
These were not people with the leisure to sit through an idle meeting. Even a session once every two years would have been called frequent, and yet the Grand Council was already opening for the second time.
The subject, of course, was the chaos overtaking the kingdom. Common folk had already begun to accept the protests, and the intellectuals ranting at their edges, as part of ordinary life. Those who held the kingdom's power could not, and should not have. What those crowds were doing was, in truth, a reach at their own authority.
Well.
"Lowborn, is it? Are we to understand that we are included among the stock named in that remark?"
"?!"
"Hm. I see. So that's how it is."
"C-compose yourself. He only spoke that way because he was worked up. He did not mean such words for all of you!"
"Well. We'll know once the lid comes off."
"..."
Someone swallowed.
The members of the Noble Council glared murder at the colleague who had let his mouth run. That single remark had turned the eyes of the Guild Union, the Merchant Alliance, the Mercenary Confederation, and the Temple unmistakably cold.
"I-it was a slip of the tongue. What I meant was not—"
He scrambled to gather his words back up and correct them.
Chairs scraped.
"I'll be taking my leave. I don't expect any meaningful conversation to come of remaining in this seat."
"!!!"
The Guild Union was the first to shove back from the table and walk out.
"Ah, this isn't particularly because of the councilor's remark. It's simply that... there's precious little meat on any of this talk. I wondered what could possibly justify summoning a Grand Council, and this is what we get. Haah. Enough."
It was not, in other words, merely the nobles' foul language. The assembly itself had no meaning. The proof sat in the empty chairs: not a single great noble had attended, and the crown princess had not shown herself either.
This could not be called a Grand Council. It was nothing but waste. With that certainty plain, the Guild Union withdrew.
"W-wait! Please, wait!"
"What are we supposed to do if you leave like this?!"
They tried to stop the guildsmen. The guildsmen did not so much as listen. It was a departure worthy of people who hated wasted time above all else.
And then—
Another scrape of chairs.
"W-well then, we too shall be rising."
The Merchant Alliance. No less than the Guild Union—perhaps more so, with the creed that time is money driven into their bones—the merchants stood in turn.
"The Temple is still in an unsettled season, so... if you'll excuse us."
The Temple followed.
"And don't call us again for the sake of some worthless meeting. Well. Scrape together a satisfying pile of gold, and that might be another matter."
With the Mercenary Confederation the last to abandon their seats, the Grand Council came to an end.
Utterly hollow.
"What is this..."
"No—what are we supposed to do about this!"
"Why is this my fault?"
"Because you ran your mouth for no reason, that's why!"
"I was only—"
"Stow the excuses. You look at the room before you open your mouth. Did you think shouting the loudest in a Grand Council made you the sharpest man in it?"
"What did you say? He sits there quiet, and you dare—!"
The councilors seized one another by the collar and began to brawl.
"...What a headache."
No one moved to stop them. Ninety percent of what the Noble Council's members ordinarily did was claw and strike at one another anyway. Debates overheating until they spilled into fists were common enough that the rest let it pass, and the problem immediately before them was so hopeless that even breaking up the fight felt like too much trouble.
"Haa... I'm going mad."
People called the parliament a breeding ground of rot, and yet it was not entirely without men of substance. There were those who knew how to turn a thought, and those with an eye for the state of the realm.
Baron Rayson.
Only a baron, but a young political noble at the head of a house that ranked among the respectable names—and his head had begun to ache.
The situation only grows more suffocating, and still no will can be gathered...
Rayson could see it. The kingdom's condition was worsening by the day.
And if one asked precisely where?
It would be easier to look for a place that isn't worsening.
King Edmund's betrayal. Whether this was the shock that betrayal had called down, or whether old wounds had been left to fester until they tore into something larger, he could not say. What he could say was that the current of the southern continent was changing with violent speed.
To take the chief examples—
Every one of them was news enough to shake the kingdom.
The remnants of Britannia. Those loathsome things were at last showing signs of rising again like the undead, peering into the kingdom's disorder for their chance.
Lord-class monsters, and not a few of them. It meant the birth of things such as a Goblin Champion, a Gnoll Emperor, an Ogre Lord, a Wyvern Warrior. If creatures like that stirred all at once, the kingdom as it stood would have to pour out nearly the whole of its strength.
The meetings of powerful clans across the regions. That all but promised the birth of warlords—the chance that an organization dreaming of hegemony, after the fashion of that empire, might come into being.
And last, the raising of private armies. That meant each power looking to its own survival. To speak plainly, though, they were rearing soldiers because of the very matters already listed. Should crises of that order come crashing down, force of arms would be what actually mattered.
Cold sweat slid down his back.
Why? Why is all of it happening at once?
Phenomena breaking in sequence, like a dam giving way, drew the sweat out of Rayson on their own, and the way ahead seemed ready to go dark before his eyes—all from a chain of events that could not have felt more sudden.
"—None of it is sudden. Those stupid bastards."
Simon clicked his tongue, jeering, as if the mere sight were enough to make him ill with anger.
Perhaps that coldness sat strangely on him. The beastkin twins escorting him tilted their heads, eyes gone round.
"Mister."
"What's wrong?"
"...Sorry. It's nothing. I look at those idiots and the curses just come out."
"What's so idiotic?"
"Why?"
"Would the two of you understand if I told you?"
"...Mm. Explain it."
"Nicely."
"...And since when did I leave the matter in your hands?"
At the twins' utterly shameless demand, Simon clicked his tongue again. Even so—perhaps because he had seen too many fools today of all days—he put into words the reason he had called other people stupid, as if shaking out a stifled mood.
"You can feel it in the air yourselves. Inside the kingdom and out, it's a mess. Incidents everywhere."
"Yeah. We know."
"Every time we see Roen, his face is stiff, too."
"Good that you know. But do you understand why the incidents are breaking out all at once?"
"Nope."
"We're still little. We don't get hard things."
"No. It isn't hard at all. People are only thinking of it as if it were difficult. The cause is simple."
"The cause?"
"Simple?"
"Yes. Simple."
They were only confused because everything had arrived together.
That was all.
There was simply no one left to clear them.