A Contract Marriage for Attilenta's Revenge — Episode 6
Henrik leaned back against the sofa once more, his expression turning languid. In an instant, the cold, taut atmosphere seemed to loosen.
"You labor under a misunderstanding, my lady. I could hardly strike such a bargain with a woman not yet of age."
"Your Highness…"
The sigh swelling up in me burst out before I could stop it. I had no intention of being rude, but I couldn't help myself.
"I turn twenty-two this year."
In that moment, I saw it—the knights standing behind Henrik, their eyes going wide.
"I've heard this country has three princesses, but I've scarcely heard a word about the youngest."
I wanted to clear up this grave misunderstanding first of all.
"The King of this land will inform you. I beg you to counsel him to do so."
Rising from the sofa, I bowed my body low, like a maidservant.
At present, it would have been difficult to claim that the northern Kingdom of Bwędowska held any clear superiority over this Kingdom of Francia, whether in military force or anything else. Given my station, I had no real need to grovel so piteously.
But such a posture easily invited an opponent's carelessness—and their sympathy.
"Please take me, Your Highness. You will hardly find a woman more suited than I. I carry the name of the Kingdom of Francia and the House of Calgary, and I will never betray you."
"I won't deny that your ability is useful. So that's why the general of the south rose so swiftly through the ranks."
"Yes—and he used my ability to its fullest."
Still, there was no need to maintain a servile posture any longer. I straightened at once and fixed Henrik with an upright, unwavering gaze. His vivid amethyst eyes gleamed as he asked,
"And yet this is the treatment you received. With your ability, could you not have foreseen it?"
The words stung. In truth, my regret and my resentment had both been born of that very foolishness. Henrik had every reason to doubt the usefulness of my power.
Rather than confess my own stupidity, I chose to smooth over it with different words.
"That was my loyalty, Your Highness."
I presented myself with all the bearing of a knight.
Henrik had seen battle, and even now he stood surrounded by knights he trusted. Before them, he could hardly reproach me so easily for speaking of my devotion and loyalty.
"So you mean to say that you carry royal blood, and that you devoted yourself so utterly under a duke—and now you would pledge yourself to me. On what do you swear it?"
And perhaps inevitably, there was not a trace of sympathy or carelessness in Henrik's voice.
That cold pragmatism had surely played its part in earning him the name Black Dragon of the Battlefield.
To the ruler's reasonable question, I offered the answer I had prepared. Without a flicker of hesitation.
"If I should betray you, sever my limbs at once. Leave me nothing but my tongue and my mirror. Even under torture, I would spill everything I know."
Having spoken in all sincerity, I felt Henrik's gaze travel over me again, slowly this time.
"You are thin enough to look younger than your years, I'll grant."
I knew perfectly well how I must appear to him. No doubt Henrik was thinking that if he applied the slightest pressure, something like me would snap with ease.
"Your Highness, use me as your instrument. I ask for one thing only. Take me with you to Bwędowska."
Looking like someone unafraid of death was an easy thing for me. In truth, I wasn't greatly afraid of it.
My life and my heart were already ruined—what difference would one more death layered on top make?
Even if this ended in my death, I would give everything I had to accomplish a single goal.
"…"
Henrik's silence stretched on for quite some time.
To me, it felt like a promising sign. Never once since meeting me had he deliberated so carefully, so haltingly.
"I will consider it. You shall have my answer tomorrow."
Oh, thank goodness!
I let my smile show plainly. He would watch me clenching my fists and draw whatever conclusions he liked—it didn't matter in the least.
A woman useful to him. It was enough if he saw me as even the slightest bit so.
We had achieved that much, more or less, in a first meeting, and I was satisfied. I bowed with full courtesy.
"Thank you, Your Highness."
Attilenta, who had entered this annex begging and pleading, withdrew with perfect quietness once the conversation was done.
"Your Highness. You listened to her at great length."
Sir Krakow's face was impassive.
"An assassin would have been entertaining, no?"
Henrik, still lounging against the sofa, shrugged. Whatever deliberation he had once given this unfamiliar foreign princess, his expression now was one of pure leisure.
"You saw through her from the very beginning, sir."
"All the more entertaining for it."
Henrik accepted the cigar Sir Krakow offered and set it between his lips with easy familiarity. Perched carelessly on his lip, the cigar looked precarious—utterly unlike its owner's relaxed, unhurried manner.
"It could be coincidence, I'll allow. And yet I find it difficult to dismiss her as an outright liar."
Henrik looked at his loyal subordinate—Sir Krakow, who, just as she had claimed, was quietly wrestling with a difficult matter of the heart.
That knight carries feelings for Your Highness's younger sister.
Henrik had known, of course. He knew his adjutant's heart—how it ached for a sister already betrothed to another.
That a woman who had never so much as set foot in the northern kingdom, who knew none of his family, had seen through it at a first meeting—that alone was enough to inflame Henrik's interest.
It was already extraordinary that a princess who had snubbed a banquet hosted by this country's own king would come knocking at midnight on the annex where a foreign prince lodged.
And that a woman welcomed by no one in this place would, in the end, reach for the hand of a prince from abroad—that, too, was intriguing.
"A wise judgment, Your Highness. If her words hold truth, send her there to prove them. If she proves useless, send her back."
The master Sir Krakow knew had always been thus. Even in the thick of that brutal campaign, Henrik had unfailingly granted every prisoner one chance at defection.
"If a thing has use, it ought to be used. There is no question that this Antony made his name off it."
"If her claims are true, that is."
Sir Krakow held a firm conviction. It was true the woman had produced that uncanny deduction and explanation, but he had been certain his lord would not simply let his suspicion fall away.
True, she had the frail look of someone who could barely lift a sword—but spies were trained to look exactly that way.
"We have yet to properly assess the situation in the south, after all."
That, too, was part of why they had come—to eliminate an unknown variable.
"You're right. And yet—she has nerve, I'll say that for her. Who walks uninvited into my bedchamber like that? Hmm?"
Henrik smiled thinly. That gaunt, skin-and-bones body, marching straight into his private chambers without a by-your-leave.
Far bolder than the ladies who had fluttered bold glances and daring touches at him at his homeland's banquets, hoping to snare a prince—beyond any comparison.
And the words she'd chosen, of all things:
If I should betray you, sever my limbs at once. Leave me nothing but my tongue and my mirror.
No woman in Henrik's homeland would ever have let such words pass her lips. Nor the men he met in political and social gatherings alike.
It had been a very long time since Henrik had confronted a will so hardened and so cold.
On the battlefield, only rarely—and only from prisoners who would never, ever bend—had he heard such words. Kill me instead.
Though I suppose that prisoner wasn't asking to be tortured either. Usually they only want a clean end.
"Khhk…"
It began as the faintest sound in his nose, but in the end, a deep laugh broke loose from Henrik.
"She is light on her feet, at least."
His adjutant added a remark of his own. Sir Krakow knew well that what Prince Henrik needed was capable people.
The prince would do anything to achieve his aims, and use anything to achieve them. Whether that woman proved worth using was simply a matter of watching and judging.
Sir Krakow cast a glance at the local newspaper lying on the table. Word had evidently gotten out that this visit was for a peace accord between the northern Kingdom of Bwędowska and this southern realm. The truth was quite the opposite.
Still, one could hardly be full from the first bite. The small scraps of intelligence gathered at the banquet here, and the curious woman's petition—by any measure, that would be a satisfying enough result to bring before his lord.
Then, all at once, Sir Krakow found himself wondering whether that woman could survive Bwędowska's high society.
In a place where the war of succession between two princes was about to begin, those who could not survive had no place at all.
"She wouldn't make a bad worker."
Despite the day's grueling schedule, not a hair of Henrik's composure was disturbed. And then, in a voice as level as ever, he passed his verdict on her.
Sir Krakow understood at once: his lord had settled the question of what to do with the woman.