The Knight Holds an Interview (4)
"Those lowborn wretches. Always trying to crawl their way up."
Crack. The fountain pen snapped in the noble princess's hand, her dazzling silver hair whipping about her.
It had been made to order from nothing but the finest materials, as befitted a thing a princess would use. Costly stock meant considerable strength, and the ease with which she broke it was proof enough that she was no merely frail woman.
"A shame. That was quite a good pen. Do moderate your strength a little. It isn't as though you need to boast that you were raised on elixirs three meals a day."
"You let that insolent mouth run. A butler ought to worry for his master's hand, and even that would scarcely be enough."
"So it might be, for an ordinary young lady. But I rather think there are few follies to match worrying over the Princess. Heh heh."
"...Insolent."
Displeased, she clicked her tongue. Isis Pendragon shook the broken pen from her fingers and took a sip of cool tea.
"Hah. Even this will not settle the anger in my heart."
"Heh heh. Does it displease you so very much?"
"Of course. Do these lowborn things not keep needling me?"
"...You must watch your tongue. Speak so outrageously of the guilds in any public place, and you will bring disaster on yourself."
"Nonsense."
Isis let out a scornful little snort. Lowborn things. She was laying bare, without the least restraint, her cold contempt for the Guild Union.
Filthy little rats.
The Guild Union. Alongside the Noble Council, the Merchant Alliance, and the Mercenary Confederation, they were counted as a fourth pillar among the powers now holding up the kingdom. They possessed neither the honor, authority, and majesty of the Noble Council, nor did they grip the flow of coin as the Merchant Alliance did, and they were no independent warlord bloc like the Mercenary Confederation. And yet.
"Do bear it in mind. The guilds command the greatest number of people in this kingdom—no, on the continent. Mishandle them, and you are all too likely to lose the people's hearts."
"Do you think I do not know it? Do you dare lecture me?"
"Pray take it as the loyal counsel of a fretful old butler. Heh heh."
"...Hmph."
All mouth.
Isis looked at her butler with dissatisfaction plain on her face. She would have liked nothing better than to make him suffer for it, but try to trip that man and she herself was just as likely to be the one who tripped, so she had to call on her patience. Capable men, every last one of them, were insolent.
...Yes. How could I, of all people, fail to know?
Even so, acknowledging what had to be acknowledged was a sovereign's duty. Isis cooled her head, turning over Albert's words—loyal counsel, or nagging, she could not have said.
If I mean to catch the rat that irritates me, I shall have to learn that rat's habits.
To know one's enemy clearly was the first rule of any strategy meant to bring that enemy down. So Isis spoke only curtly, and let her anger rise no further. Even so.
...At times like this, I cannot help resenting the late king.
The tightness in her chest could not be helped. What, in the first place, had let the guilds' strength grow so great in the Royal Capital? None other than the late king himself, throwing his weight behind them. That had been the point from which the guilds truly began to swell. In life, the late king had said—
Should the power of the nobles or the merchants grow too great, the power of those who already hold it will grow excessive, and the people's cries of suffering will grow with it. The powerless cannot even raise a proper voice, and only those who possess raise theirs. How can that be called a righteous state?
Therefore, ought we not also need a power that lifts the people's voices, and can stand well enough against the interests already entrenched? Yes. A power for the people alone.
Therefore, let us grow the guilds' strength. A power that, the worse the tyranny of the nobles and the merchants becomes, will band together all the more tightly, if only to drag them out.
Even now, looking back, it was a formidable foresight. The powers already entrenched. The late king had seen clean through it: the more foolish and filthy the nobles and the merchants became, the more wretched the people's lives grew. And had they not learned, in the war of a few years past, that to ignore the people's discontent and leave it be was to call down a catastrophe no one could contain?
That is how Britannia fell.
The Kingdom of Britannia, Pendragon's old enemy, had fallen in part because it lost the war. But that had been only the signal flare on the road to ruin. Even before the fighting began, Britannia had already been a kingdom collapsing.
Self-Made Ruin.
That was the verdict she wanted to give it.
...It had been absurd.
Defeated or not, they held the greatest breadbasket of the southern continent, and its resources besides. They had plainly possessed the means to rise again. And yet not one of their people had wished for Britannia's restoration. Not one had hesitated to leave the kingdom lying where it fell. They had never thought to share with the people. Folly upon folly, they had raised taxes and prices only to fatten their own wealth, until the people's trust was gone. This, she thought, was the fruit of it.
Well, thanks to that, once Pendragon had won the war, the inflow of people and their folding-in had gone rather smoothly. From Pendragon's side, the enemy's foolishness was nothing but a blessing.
...Well. It wasn't as if there were no rebels.
In any case, the whole course of it had served Isis as an excellent lesson in what not to do.
A kingdom is not the sovereign's alone. It is the people's as well. The moment one loses the people's trust is the very moment this country truly falls.
The beginning of a ruined kingdom. And if she was not to set her foot on that road, then smooth dealings with the guilds—words, and meeting them face to face—were a necessary labor. A faction scraped together out of filthy gutter rats they might be, but she had to grant that they spoke for the people who had no power of their own.
Even so.
"Even so, I cannot say I fail to understand the Princess's fury. They are crossing the line. To think they would have begun backroom dealings with the great nobles. Dear me."
"Taking my side at this hour is already too late."
Just so. As favor came to be regarded as a right, a crack was slowly opening.
Isis set her face, ran her eyes over the documents once more, and clicked her tongue. Unpleasant, no matter how many times she looked.
"'Clandestine meetings with the great nobles and sundry merchant companies have been confirmed.' ...Shallow things. Now that their bellies are full, do they mean to take power into their hands as well?"
"I suspect it is less power they want than a strong hand in the kingdom's affairs. They have grown large, forgotten that they are dogs, and seem to fancy they have become wolves. Heh heh."
"...The situation amuses you, I see."
Isis caught a thread of laughter in Albert's tone, which had struck her as rather cutting. No matter how she looked at it, he was enjoying the sight of nobles and guilds in collusion.
Sure enough.
"Watching a fight has always been entertaining, you see."
"......"
As expected. In the eyes of that Superhuman wearing a butler's mask, a struggle for power, the birth of a new warlord—none of it seemed to merit much interest. Well, to that man's eyes, everything they did would look like nothing more than a sandcastle he could kick down whenever he pleased. An excellent butler, and one almost more than she could handle.
Isis sighed, letting her neatly combed hair fall loose. In every direction the situation ached: ill news, circumstance, and a want of justification, all heaped together. She wanted badly to bring the guilds to heel, yet she could not tell exactly what they were plotting with the nobles and the merchant companies. The schemes of the nobles and the companies themselves were no clearer. It was nothing but a pain in the head, and Isis felt quite certain that work into the night was already decided.
"Is hardship in one's youth not the very privilege of the young? Do take heart."
"...I am forty this year."
"If I may borrow a comparison Sir Lee Han is fond of, you are still in the hale flower of your youth."
"......"
"And since when does royalty complain of age? Pass one hundred and fifty, and then you may boast that you have grown old."
"Mmm..."
Somehow it sounded like an order to keep working even past a hundred, and inwardly her feelings grew complicated.
Just then—
Knock, knock.
"Princess! I'm here!"
"...If you have knocked, ought you not wait?"
"Ah, right! I'll step out and come back in."
"...Enough."
Scolding her only tired her own mouth. Faced with a maid sunny past all reason, Isis's head ached in an entirely different sense, and for a moment she pressed her fingers to the space between her brows.
Layla Winter. A maid in Isis's direct service, charged with attending her sworn younger brother.
...From the reports, she was not attending him so much as laying waste to his household.
But so small a trouble was not Isis's to fret over. What fretted her now was that the sunny maid was here at all.
"I set you at my sworn brother's side because I trusted your diligence. Why, then, are you in the Royal Castle? Do you find my orders amusing?"
Why had she forgotten her proper duty and come to the castle? Not that Isis had rebuked the maid with any real intent to punish her. It was only habit, and the girl would not understand a scolding in any case. In truth it was closer to simple curiosity, and Layla's eyes, bright in that way of hers, lit as she opened her mouth.
"It's nothing else! The knight had something he wanted passed along, so I came!"
"...That boy?"
"Yep!"
"Hm."
Isis knew he did not send word to her without cause. Now and then he might let something slip, sideways and casual, but he almost never delivered a message this directly.
...Unsettling.
And—
"The knight said to tell you, 'It looks as if I'll be having it out with the guild, so I would ask you to please see to the aftermath'! He said any pretext ought to do, so long as you make one up!"
"......"
Her unease had struck true. Isis pressed her fingers to her brow once more. But—
"Heh heh. As expected, the finest of talents. Does he not settle the Princess's worries in a single stroke? Heh heh!"
"Do not laugh. I am perfectly serious."
"Is it not delightful? He always exceeds my expectations. It pleases me."
"Nonsense."
"...Hm. For all that you say."
"......"
"You seem to be enjoying yourself."
"......"
She could not stop the satisfied smile that was blooming.
And the knight who had so brazenly asked a princess of the realm to clean up after him—
"You'd better watch that mouth. Let a single lie out of it, and I'll take your neck first."
"......"
—was in the middle of threatening the Guild Union chairman's life.
"...Ha."
The chairman was so dumbfounded that a hollow laugh escaped him of its own accord. A knight spilling a murderous presence right before his eyes, and his men strewn across the floor. Doors, desks, and the very floor of the building smashed apart. A hand axe planted bolt upright in the table, gleaming.
No way forward, and no way back. If ever there was a crisis from which a man could not retreat, would it not look exactly like this? He could not bring himself to look the knight squarely in the face.
Goddamn it. I've been caught by a genuine mad bastard...!
He was afraid even to meet those eyes.
Simon, chairman of the Guild Union, was learning all over again that what frightens a man more than any ghost is a human being with a hand axe in his grip and killing intent glittering in his eyes.