The Knight Holds a Banquet (4)
His guts had gone cold, yet contrary to the blood-soaked violence he had pictured, Lee Han let him off with a single light knuckle-rap.
"My lord, are you all right?"
"I can bear it."
"...My lord, that isn't me. It's a brick."
A light rap, of course, did not mean he had come through unhurt.
The student who had so insolently thrust something between an order and a notice at his master received his punishment—one infinitely milder than what the mages had suffered.
Afterward they dragged the mages, more or less dead or unconscious, and forced their way into the tavern. The door was locked.
CRASH!
"Crawl, you rat bastards."
"Eek!"
In the lawless streets of Parasite Narak, lawlessness itself was permitted. They drove out the outlaw playing tavern-keeper and seized the place by force. Lee Han then rummaged roughly through the shelves.
"Here. Unless you want that bitch dead, splash this on her and patch her up somehow."
"...Yes, sir."
Jack caught the spirits tossed his way. An ordinary tavern would never have stocked them, but a street overflowing with the wounded apparently kept disinfectant alcohol on hand. Jack went to keep alive the ones they meant to squeeze for information. Lee Han, for his part, dropped into a filthy chair and loosened his body.
"Trying not to kill them and only put them down is a real pain."
"...You seemed to handle them lightly."
"I used my head. In my own way."
"......"
"More to the point, young master."
"...I am a young master, am I."
"Objections overruled. You know you owe me, right?"
"...I am aware."
"Good. Then you've got some sense."
Had he claimed he owed nothing, the aftermath would have been a frightening thing.
I used this man.
Roen had known the mages were there, yet he could not step forward. He could not leave a trace of himself. If he fought, the trace of power in the blood of his house—of the grand ducal line—would inevitably remain, and the movements of the grand duke's heir, already under scrutiny, would be restricted.
And so.
"Honestly, that letter was closer to a gamble. I was not certain you truly knew of them, Instructor."
"Must be nice, hitting the jackpot."
"...You seemed to hate mages a great deal."
"Sharp eyes. Right. They're one of the bugs this instructor hates most."
"......"
He did not even treat them as people. His hatred of mages ran deeper than expected, and a faint satisfaction had settled over his face, as if there were a kind of accomplishment in wringing a mage's neck or crushing one flat.
"A personal curiosity, if I may. Do you bear some private grudge against mages?"
"Nothing special. I lived about ten years as an experimental slave."
"......"
"Really nothing special, right?"
"...Mm."
Even a fool with no sense of the room would have known those words were not sincere. Roen smiled bitterly, regretting that he had asked.
"—That bastard says he doesn't even remember why he went berserk six years ago."
"...Do you mean Professor Odwal?"
Say a word and he caught it. Talking to someone sharp and clever really was comfortable. There was no need to explain at length. He understood all of it. Lee Han nodded vaguely as he tended his throwing knives and hand axe.
"Yeah. That idiot."
"Hmm."
His character was warped, but it was a harsh judgment to hang on Odwal Bernard, the youngest professor of the magic faculty, whose genius was famous far and wide. Lee Han, however, had no interest in the reputation of a spell-slinger. To him they came in only two kinds: ones to kill, and ones to let live.
In that sense—
"The guy was just a stupid spell-slinger. He didn't even know he was being used."
"So there was a true culprit."
"The day before the entrance ceremony, six years ago, he says he had a drink with Hans and... no, with that nameless parasite. After that, he remembers nothing."
"Drugs, or magic that deranges the mind. Both are illegal magic."
"Well, I don't know if it's true. He never apologized to the people he hurt, and he doesn't care why he pulled that shit in the first place. A man with his conscience blown clean out. ...Maybe the bit about not remembering is a lie, too."
"A harsh assessment."
"Not harsh. Strictly the truth."
Lee Han snorted and tucked the tended weapons into his clothes. Jack stared at him as if the sight were unexpected.
"What?"
"Y-you maintain your weapons well. From the look of you, I thought you would treat them like disposable goods."
"You want to get hit?"
"...No."
"Listen, Ordinary. If you use a blade, get this through your head. Nobody who handles a weapon carelessly, or like something you throw away, is a proper fighter. This thing might be the line my life hangs on. You got that? You cocky little assassin."
"I am neither Ordinary, nor an assassin."
"Right. Former assassin, Ordinary."
"...Damn it!"
What made it sad was that he could not deny it. Lee Han, whose own former professions had been flashier still, only shook his head at a sensitivity aimed at the strangest things. The feelings of a young man in his twenties, so easily wounded by trifles, were a difficult field of study.
He finished tending the weapons, wore them, and turned to Roen.
"Right. You insolent young master who does nothing but order this instructor around."
"...That epithet is a little much."
"Count yourself lucky I went easy. Now let's talk about something productive."
"Speak."
Roen faced him with a stiff expression, as if he meant to dodge nothing—answer what he could, and slide past what he could not with an excuse. Having finished his countless calculations, he waited with confidence.
"Did you look for the real Hans, Dorothy, Kam, Den, and Alain? ...Those people."
"......"
Utterly unexpected. When a question came that was both common sense and obviously necessary, Roen's mouth stopped for the first time.
People whose identities and faces had been stolen by Illegal Mages. How was he to answer that? No—did he not already know the answer? In truth, once an Illegal Mage had them, that was already...
"If you haven't found the bodies, there's even a one percent chance they're alive. Even if they're dead, the remains ought to go to their families."
"......"
"You've got power, and you've got information. And you've got the vermin who know. Torture them or whatever it takes. Find them."
"......"
"You can do that, can't you?"
"...It will take time. But I will find them without fail."
"Good. That's enough."
With that, Lee Han shot up from the seat, as if he wanted nothing more. Before he knew it, Roen was the one asking.
"You are not going to ask anything?"
Was he not curious at all? How Roen had known the Illegal Mages existed. Why he had been watching them. What purpose a son of the grand ducal house was carrying. Questions so natural they hardly needed to be spoken, and the man had not put a single one of them in his mouth. It was not common sense. And yet he worried over the missing, and told him to find them.
What was this...?
"Roen Dmitri de Lionel."
The first time he had called Roen's full name. Roen flinched. He was not being scolded, and yet something lurched in his stomach. Lee Han's blue eyes fixed on him.
"I don't know what purpose you have. I don't know what you're hiding. I don't know if you mean to use me, or what scheme you're weaving. But I'm not interested."
"......"
"Why? Because I don't need to know. A person shouldn't carry too much curiosity. Curiosity and nosiness are monsters you sometimes have to hold down. Especially a paycheck nobody like me."
"...A paycheck nobody."
A post among the Silver Lion knights, and the post of an Academy instructor, could hardly be so trivial.
"To me it's all the same. Blacksmith, carpenter, baker, gardener—lives that work hard where they stand and eat their way through the day. Being a knight, or an instructor at the academy nobles attend, doesn't make me any more special than the people I just named. And other people's lives, and their right to keep them, are equal with everyone else's too."
"!"
"Roen Dmitri de Lionel. I still have no interest in what purpose you're carrying. But that doesn't mean you get to break the duty a person is bound to keep. If you spare no means, even past that duty, just to reach your goal, you'll end up the same kind of human as them."
He pointed at the Illegal Mages sprawled on the ground. Roen's eyes grew heavier, and he clenched his teeth.
He could not say it. He was already resolved. Even if he became evil, even if he became the same as them, he would do anything for his goal—for his wish.
And so he—!
Thump.
"...?"
"You damned disciple. Don't try to do everything alone. If you're young, be young enough to know how to talk to an adult. Or lean on your parents. Your parents are people of power, aren't they?"
"...What kind of logic is that?"
"Advice, because a brat looks too much like death warmed over. The thing that feels hardest to you is often nothing much, once somebody else looks at it. Remember that. Ah—and I'm not telling you to lean on me. Nobles, power, all of that—I hate the very smell of it."
"...Ha."
Truly irresponsible advice. And yet, why did those illogical, unfit words dig deeper into his chest the more he heard them? Because they were plain and sincere? Or only because of the presence the man carried? He did not know. What was clear was this.
"Somehow, I feel I have been treated like a child."
"Twenties is a child. What of it."
"Hmm..."
What he felt, unmistakably, was that the man was an adult by a long stretch more than he was. The light tap on his head, as if one were patting a child... Being treated like a child was not pleasant.
He left just like that, suddenly, without a shred of lingering. Asking nothing.
"So I get to have this sort of experience as well."
Ever since he had undergone the miracle of time, Roen had tended to treat others as younger whenever he dealt with them. Even when they were older than he was. Even when, before the miracle, they were people who had lived longer than he—few indeed could have lived a thicker span of years.
So he had looked on others as young. As greenhorns. But today—
I'm the one being treated like a greenhorn.
And that it did not feel entirely bad was a strange thing.
"...Jack."
"Yes, my lord."
"Treat these bastards, then begin the interrogation. Make them vomit every piece of information they have."
"To what degree?"
"So their minds do not break. Tell them they are absolutely not to kill them until their lifespans run out. The pain must be endless."
"I receive your command."
The crimes of the three mages who had survived were so atrocious that the ones already dead looked like meek gentlemen beside them. A woman who killed people for amusement. A man who raped women and then killed them. And one specialized in kidnapping and torture. An easy death was not something they could be granted. They simply had to be given pain until their lives ran out.
"Also, find the people who went missing. If they live, save them however you can. If they are dead, their remains must be preserved safely, however you can."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"...I only thought it pleasant, my lord, to catch the smell of a human being on you for the first time in a while."
"Nonsense."
"Haha, of course. Nothing but nonsense, haha!"
"......"
Roen was silent. More than anger at a subordinate teasing him, there was the strangeness of not having known that such a feeling still remained in him. Even so, human—somehow that was a pleasant word. It was not bad.
...I've gotten myself tangled up with a troublesome bastard.
From the moment he learned a regressor existed, he had understood that the road ahead was none too bright. And today, just as predicted, the parasite had come out. The worse problem was what came next.
They might keep coming out from here on.
That was less a prediction than a certainty. The regressor meant to set something in motion, and there were clearly people he had marked as enemies. Lee Han had been caught up in that business once.
There won't be a second time.
Today he had gone along with it only because they were the sort he hated with a particular venom. Next time, not an inch of mercy. Disciple or whatever else, he would expel the boy—the way they did it in the martial arts novels.
Hmm. It differs from book to book, but was it crush the limbs and meridians, then destroy the dantian?
Or should he consider Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation instead? That might be the more convenient of the two.
...Might it even be physically possible?
With nothing but a potion and troll's blood, separating flesh from bone while the man still lived—a human disassembly show. Turning over that savage punishment of expulsion, he walked on.
At a certain moment—
"Sir Knight! You're back."
"...Ah."
He put a period on his aimless steps. Had there been a homing instinct after all? He had walked in a blank daze, lost in thought, and the place he arrived at was, astonishingly, his own nest. A small cabin with a little yard, and there, in a maid's uniform and wearing a sunlit smile, Layla Winter was waiting for him.
"...Why are you here? What about the party?"
He had told her to enjoy the party in peace today. Why was she home? Lee Han tilted his head, and she answered with smiling eyes.
"I wanted to spend it with you, Sir Knight!"
"?"
"Ah, and Her Highness the Princess seemed to want to play, too."
Only then did he realize the cabin did not hold her alone.
Click.
"You are late."
"......"
"What is a host to do, keeping a guest waiting? It is hardly proper courtesy."
"...Is that something you say to a man who just got off work?"
She appeared with the sound of heeled shoes, and Lee Han looked at her in disbelief. A noblewoman who did not suit this tiny cabin in the least—Isis—came toward him at a haughty pace.
"...What about the banquet? Why are you here?"
"A host is meant only to host, and then withdraw, so the guests may enjoy the party. A basic matter."
"Then go back to the castle already. What are you even..."
"Seeing to a younger brother is an elder sister's duty."
"......"
"See that you open those eyes prettily."
"Give me a break..."
She did as she pleased. As always.
"Layla."
"Yes, Princess!"
"Not Princess. You are to say Your Highness."
"Hehe, yeees."
"Hmph. That will do. Bring the finger foods and the wine. ...Bring something for yourself to eat as well."
"Okaaay!"
The table was laid in no time. While he had been out, the preparations underneath had already been finished to perfection. Lee Han felt, somehow, that the two women were teasing him.
I can't even complain.
They had waited for him. In a house that had always stood empty, they had welcomed him home. For that care he could only be grateful. There was nothing to pick at. A banquet opened for him alone. As if he had given up, Lee Han dropped into the seat that had been prepared.
"...I'll gratefully accept this belated housewarming gift."
"That I came is the gift itself. Be grateful."
"No. It isn't."
"...Ill-mannered brat."
Thwack!
The fan spat fire. After that, Lee Han, Isis, and Layla lightly shared a white wine. It was neither splendid nor grand.
"Why is this so good?"
"Wine from the royal cellar. Was it not the one of which only a thousand bottles were produced in the Britannia region, some fifty years past?"
"So it really is precious."
"Precious? A mere hundred gold coins will obtain it."
"...Let's just drink."
It was, without question, a very comfortable banquet, one in which the heart had room to breathe. The hushed banquet of a knight, a princess, and a maid went on for a good long while, against a starry night pouring down like rain.