After He Left (2)
This kingdom—no, the South—had been a powder keg for quite some time.
The fuse was the war that unified the South. They had forced through three full years of a war that was nothing but a money-devouring maw, and though they won, by some mercy, the victory bought them nothing. Wider lands were welcome enough, but Britannia was simply too vast, and even after more than three years spent picking up the pieces the kingdom still could not climb out of the red.
And into the middle of all that—
"There have already been dozens of incidents."
The Blood Cross Army. Remnants of a beaten host, packed tight with the will to bring the kingdom down, had at last grown strong enough to set off disaster after disaster.
To name only the chief of them—
— A number of illegal mages who had infiltrated the academy.
— The summoning of a host of monsters, the Ghost King among them.
— Half-fiends bred inside the Tunnels, and a Mother Worm manufactured there.
— The West's Assassins and the sultan's armies invading the South.
— A plot by the Magic Tower, true ruler of the Empire, to invade the Royal Capital.
— Half-fiends and hell-monsters appearing at the temple.
— The collapse of the temple, and the great fire.
— The Offen rebellion, and the artificial demon-humanization of knights.
— Numerous cells operating inside the kingdom.
— The vampire who sought to seize Mordred.
— The great demon sealed in Mordred, and an army of hundreds of thousands of monsters.
— The betrayal of Loengrin and the other noble houses.
— A master on the level of a Sword Saint, and half-fiends, holding the central streets.
...What was one even supposed to make of that?
"Well?"
Simon had recited the grave incidents of the past year and turned the question back on them, and the twins—
"...How come it didn't fall apart?"
"How did they even survive this?"
Even the young twin brother and sister, hearing every last one of those incidents, could not understand how the kingdom was still standing. Any single one would have been enough to make a kingdom stagger, and yet they were supposed to have come through all of them unscathed...
"They never came through them unscathed."
"Huh?"
"...?"
"Every one of those incidents was solved by a single man, with his own hands."
"......"
"...Uncle Santa?"
"That's right. Sir Lee Han solved them alone."
Absurd as it was, the calamities that would not merely have staggered the nation but burned it to ash had been stopped by one knight. There had been helpers, of course. In the end, though, they had only ever helped. Not once had they solved anything. Every disaster that rose to meet the kingdom had been met and ended by the exploits of a single knight.
And the kingdom itself—
"The kingdom did nothing."
The kingdom had certainly known the Blood Cross Army was stirring. But had it ever once sought, in earnest, to answer that threat and put an end to it?
"No. Not once."
"Then what did they do?"
"They don't even work?"
"Oh, they worked. They worked at running their mouths and fighting among themselves."
"........."
Empty talk around a table. Not solving anything, not putting a hand to the work themselves—only meetings. Meetings and nothing else, chasing their own tails like a repeat sign that never resolved.
"Isn't it astonishing? Those people never once tried to solve the problem themselves. That's why things have come to this wretched state."
The logic was simple. The kingdom had always been in chaos. Always a crisis. Always an incident. And yet there had been a man who met those crises and incidents—labors it would be no exaggeration to call calamities—head-on, and without a word. A man astonishingly tough, and astonishingly strong...
And then.
"This kingdom drove that indomitable fixer out. And over a trivial reason—the worry that he might become a threat to them."
"...Whoa."
"So?"
"That's exactly it. None of this is sudden. A powder keg that was already burning simply exploded, and they went out of their way to drive off the only fixer who could have stopped the blast. In Sir Lee Han's own words—"
"Beating the king? That is nothing but a trivial matter. What is a king? What does it matter that someone beat a traitor with no talent but incompetence? It can happen. But exiling Sir Lee Han over some worthless king, over their own authority—that is by no means a trivial matter."
Yes. What was a king, in the end? Simon could not begin to understand why they had exiled the man for giving a traitor a beating. Could they not tell right from wrong?
"No. Perhaps they simply have no intention of telling right from wrong at all."
That was why he judged the king, and the members of the Noble Council with him, to be fools. They had never solved a single thing themselves, and yet they had gone on believing they had stopped it all because they were so very capable.
"Look at a clock and you'll see a great many gears. Some ignorant fools think a gear or so can drop out and it won't matter. That is a truly ignorant thought. A clock stops if even a tiny gear breaks, and they mean to pull out the most important gear of all... There's no answer to people like that. If they had done it out of pure malice, you could teach them and talk them down. But ignorance that has crossed into stupidity—I can't even bring myself to try to fix it."
"Then?"
"What are you gonna do, mister?"
"What else is there to do."
Simon shrugged and let out a short, scoffing laugh. Once a wise investor was certain the venture he had put his money into could never be revived, there was only one thing left for him to do.
"...Close up shop."
Better to close before the whole thing went under. At least then there might be something left to salvage.
"Is that really okay?"
"You're being too negative."
The twins scolded him. Simon's way of doing things was too extreme.
But—
"No. I've made a rational judgment."
"Huh?"
"You have?"
"Of course. If those cultists' next plan is what I expect, this kingdom will split apart on its own anyway."
"...?"
"...??"
The beastkin twins blinked at him, as if to ask how he could possibly predict a thing like that. Simon only tilted his head. If anything—
"After going through this much, isn't it only natural to know those cultists' patterns and their psychology? Look at their purpose, the principles behind what they do, and what's happening in the kingdom right now, and you can calculate what they'll try next. Why can't anyone manage something this simple? Honestly."
"......"
"......"
"Hm? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"...You're obnoxious."
"Geniuses. Hate 'em."
"...??"
Simon could not understand why he was being insulted.
Clink, clink. Scrape, scrape. Plates and spoons being shifted.
"......"
A tap. A light pat. Dust brushed away, something wiped clean. And yet it was so cautious that it was almost shameful to call it a sound at all—nothing but care, taken so as never to grate upon the one they served. Even so—
"...Q-quiet!"
"!!"
"Y-Your Majesty..."
"W-we beg your pardon."
"Sh-shut up! I said be qu-quiet, damn you!"
Creak—!
"Aaaaaagh!"
"Y-Your Majesty!?"
"You—bring the medicine!"
"Where is the apothecary!!"
But the one who had shouted—the king—answered the sound of his own voice with a howl of agony.
It hurts!
It hurts, horribly!
Even the faintest sound felt like an awl driving into his ears, and every time he spoke his throat burned as if a tongue of flame were surging up through it. With every breath a searing pain bloomed, as if a cactus had been jammed up his nostrils, and every time he blinked his whole face swelled and darkened as though it had been beaten black and blue.
...Everything was pain. It hurt, and it tormented him, and it was unspeakably vile. The pain came down on him in the very moment, even while he slept, eating into his mind and wearing him away by degrees.
He wanted to go mad!
If his mind would only break, he might endure it somehow. The irony was that the pain kept his thoughts perfectly, cruelly clear.
And so he—
"Aaaaaagh!"
Edmund, the reigning king of Pendragon, howled like a child. Because it hurt too much.
"Your Majesty..."
The royal servants could not hide their desolation. Holy Law could not heal him. Neither could potions, nor magic, nor alchemy. The only one who could treat him was surely the man who had laid this curse-like pain upon him, and that man had been exiled. No—even if he had not been exiled, he would never have lifted it. To that man the king was not a king at all, only an enemy he could never share the sky with...
"If it's come to this..."
The servants turned their eyes to a certain draught. A preparation the apothecary had given them, just in case. It was not truly a medicine. Even so—
"—Stop. Use that, and there will be no turning back."
"!!"
"Pathetic. Do you mean to ruin your own sovereign with your own hands? That might be amusing, I'll grant you, but save it for later. I have something to ask him myself."
"Uh... uhh..."
The servants stared, stammering, at the intruder who had appeared all at once in the king's bedchamber. Their faces, pale as pale could go, trembled at the eyes.
Steel whispered free.
"Shall I cut off those impious legs, that you dare look upon His Grace and not kneel? Or shall I take that stiff neck of yours instead?"
"!!!"
The servants saw the knights with blades leveled at their necks and their legs, and their shock doubled. When had so many of them—
"Enough, Lark. They're only like that because they're startled."
"Your Grace..."
"I said that's enough."
Calming his loyal retainers, the man who shed an overwhelming pressure passed them by and came to stand before Edmund. They ought to have stopped him. There was no one who dared stand in his way. And no wonder. That man—no. That lord—
"It has been a long time, Your Highness, my elder brother. ...No. Uncle."
"...Ble... ake."
"Yes. It is I. Your nephew. The son of your elder brother."
"B-Blake..."
Edmund forced his eyes open and glared at him. The man looking down, for his part—Duke Blake's eyes were as calm as a still lake.
"Uncle, looking upon each other's faces must be a burden for us both. You dislike me. And I have never found you particularly pleasant. But this could not be helped. You have disliked me, one-sidedly, since I was a child. It was no different after you became king."
Blake spoke flatly. Low, and yet a voice every person present could hear with perfect clarity.
Gulp...
For an instant the words the calm before the storm rose in the royal servants' minds. That low voice was frightening in some vague way—no. It was unmistakably frightening. Enough that their bodies drew in of their own accord. They trembled, hoping the fear they felt was nothing but a phantom...
"But I will say this, Uncle. Even knowing that you disliked me, I bore you no particular feeling. To me you were only an uncle. ...And yet that was not the truth of it."
...Unfortunately, that fear and that unease were no phantom.
Flame bloomed—fire that would not die.
As if, at any moment, it might burn King Edmund away.
"You were my enemy, Uncle. Fool that I was, I simply did not know it. I learned it only recently."
Steel slid forward. Blake's magic sword leveled at the point between Edmund's brows, and Edmund glared back through a gaze stained with terror, dread, and hatred. In that fleeting instant when the two sovereigns' eyes crossed, Blake—
"Why did you do it?"
"......"
"—Why."
Thud!
He drove the magic sword in between Edmund's brows and roared.
Whoosh— the flame roared. And at last the magic sword's fire swept the whole of the Royal Castle.