The Fugitive Breathed His Last
As we stepped out into the corridor, the knights scattered in perfect order.
The Princess issued the first command.
"Block the eastern stairwell and the connecting hallway to the west wing first. Control everyone moving between the records archive, the medicine storehouse, and the Correction Officer's office."
The knights answered briefly and split apart.
The clatter of armor faded swiftly into the depths of the corridor.
The Lady brushed past my side and spoke.
"Lord Elberhart."
"Yes?"
"If you sense even the slightest strange presence, tell me at once."
I nodded without a word.
There was no point in hiding it anymore.
Since last night, this sense of mine had been standing on edge a full step ahead of my will.
We turned toward the eastern connecting stairs.
The palace corridors at midday were almost painfully bright.
There was nowhere to hide, and twice as many eyes watching.
Officials bowed their heads even as they stole glances at us.
The Princess, the Lady, and between them a bandaged low-ranking noble.
By now the rumor would already have spread through the entire palace and then some.
When we reached the head of the stairs, a knight came running from the opposite direction.
"Your Highness! No traces yet on the west wing side."
The Princess did not break stride as she asked,
"And the quarters?"
"Assistant Secretary Leo Benhart's room was empty. His coat and personal documents are gone as well."
It was possible he had staged a midnight flight.
Without thinking, I rested my hand on the stair railing.
A faint tremor traveled through the cold metal into my fingertips.
My feet stopped of their own accord.
"Your Highness."
The Princess looked back.
I stared silently down the stairs.
Wherever someone has just passed, a trace of mana always remains.
The one who leaves the trace may never notice, but to the one searching, it catches like a lingering after-echo.
"…Below."
The Lady's gaze dropped at once.
"…How do you know?"
"I can't be certain, but I can feel the traces of someone being dragged down in a hurry."
Two knights immediately raced down the stairs.
The Princess did not hesitate either.
The Lady and I followed close behind.
Below the stairs lay a servants' passage almost never used in ordinary times.
With not a single window, the air was damp, and instead of the refined tea fragrance of the upper floors, a musty dust smell hung thick.
And cutting through that unpleasant air came another scent.
The exact bitter medicinal smell I had caught in the medicine storehouse.
"This way."
As I took the lead and turned, one of the knights stepped in front of me with a hard expression.
"Lord Elberhart, do not get too far ahead."
"Then find him first."
Even as I said it I kept walking, and from behind the Princess spoke shortly.
"Guards. Stop watching and stay with him."
Two knights immediately took positions on either side of me.
At the end of the corridor stood a single door to an unused waste-heat room.
I had heard it was once used for inspecting the hot-water pipes in winter.
Now it was merely sealed and left to rot.
On the floor before that door, black marks were stamped into the stone.
Drag marks.
The scuffs left when someone had been forced to shift a heavy weight and their heels had scraped.
Beside them sat a single fleck of dried mud and a tiny, hardened blotch of dark red.
The Lady knelt to examine it.
"…Blood."
The Princess's voice dropped low.
"The door."
A knight stepped forward as if ready to kick it in at once, but I stopped him.
"Wait. Listen."
Every gaze swung toward me at once.
A faint smell was seeping out from under the door crack.
The same metallic black aura I had sensed in the barrier chamber last night.
"Even if he's still alive in there, he won't last long."
The Princess finished it in a single sentence.
"It doesn't matter. Break it down."
Bang!
The old door panel slammed inward and a cloud of dust billowed up.
Inside was dark and narrow.
Discarded metal pipes and a broken stove were piled against the walls, and between the gaps on the floor a person lay half-propped as if collapsed.
It was Leo Benhart.
He wore only a hastily thrown-on coat over the lower-rank uniform of the Correction Office.
His collar was torn, and dried blood clung to the corner of his mouth.
What stood out most were his hands.
The tips of two fingers on his right hand were blackened as if burned.
And on the inner wrist, thin black thread-like marks had crawled upward.
He was alive.
But only in the barest sense—his breath was hanging by a thread.
One knight bolted outside to summon a healer.
I dropped to my knees beside Leo before that.
His eyelids trembled, barely perceptible.
"Can you hear me."
Instead of answering, Leo dragged in a rough, metallic breath.
It was the sound of an airway already ruined deep inside.
Before I knew it the Princess had come to stand at my back.
"Can he speak?"
Leo's eyes opened with difficulty.
His focus swam, found the Princess, then stopped on my bandaged hand.
His lips moved with agonizing effort.
"…You… broke it."
The air in the room went still for a beat.
I asked quietly,
"The black thorn, you mean."
Leo gave the faintest nod.
Then he erupted into a fit of coughing.
Dark red blood ran down his chin.
The Lady's eyes narrowed.
"We're too late."
The Princess spoke coldly.
"Talk while you still have breath."
Leo closed his eyes, opened them again, and labored to choose his words.
"I… did erase the ledgers. That's true."
One knight's hand went to his sword at once.
The Princess stopped him with a single gesture.
I looked down at Leo's face.
"Did you do it alone?"
The corner of his mouth twitched, barely.
It was hard to tell whether it was a smile or a spasm.
"…As if."
His breathing grew rougher.
"The key… wasn't mine."
The Princess asked low,
"Who ordered you."
Leo's gaze wandered through empty air.
Then, very small, almost a whisper, a single phrase emerged.
"White… gloves."
The Lady's and the Princess's eyes narrowed at the same moment.
I leaned closer.
"Did you see the face."
Leo slowly shook his head.
"I didn't. But… there was a scent."
"What scent."
His lips worked.
Once. Twice.
No sound came.
On the third try it finally caught.
"…Smell of rain."
Smell of rain.
An odd way to put it.
Leo coughed again.
This time his whole body heaved.
Instinctively I caught his shoulder.
In that moment his hand seized my sleeve.
The grip was weak, yet startlingly cold.
"West… no…"
His breath grew so shallow it seemed about to break.
"South… tower…"
The end of the word cracked apart.
Then the strength left his hand.
The room fell quiet.
A moment later the healer who had just arrived hurriedly checked his pulse.
The silence did not last long.
"…He's dead."
One knight swallowed a low curse.
I looked down at Leo's cooling face for a short while, then looked away.
I had expected it.
Even so, watching the breath leave right in front of you is different.
The Princess spoke very slowly.
"Let's put it in order."
No one answered.
Her gaze went straight to Leo's stiffening fingertips.
The blackened ends. The scraped wrist.
And something caught inside the sleeve.
The Lady found it first.
"…Your Highness."
She carefully drew out a scrap of cloth.
It looked like the torn edge of a sleeve.
White fabric with silver-thread embroidery, and along the edge a single faint blue line was stitched.
The Princess's eyes hardened to ice.
"This is."
The Lady said quietly,
"The lining of an Imperial Records Bureau formal uniform."
I held my breath for a second.
Someone who knew the records system.
Someone who could access the medicine storehouse and the barrier chamber.
And someone accustomed to erasing records.
The dots were connecting far too quickly.
The Princess took the scrap and unfolded it with her fingertips.
The moment she caught the faint scent clinging to the inside, her eyes shifted, just a fraction.
"Rain scent."
The Lady echoed softly,
"So that was what he meant by the smell of rain."
Only then did I understand.
The special fragrance used by the Imperial Records Bureau for document preservation.
I had heard it was used to fix the smell of paper and keep insects away.
It resembled the scent of wet stone, so someone unfamiliar might simply call it the smell of rain.
Leo had never known it by any perfume name.
The Princess folded the scrap as she spoke.
"The pieces are falling into place."
This time there was not the slightest hint of a smile.
"We'll need to change locations now."
The Lady asked,
"Are you going to the Records Bureau?"
"No reason to."
The Princess's gaze swept once over Leo's body.
"The culprit already knows we entered the medicine storehouse. If we go to the Records Bureau right now, every remaining trace will be wiped clean."
I curled my bandaged hand into a fist once.
"Then…?"
The Princess looked at me.
"We start with the southern tower he mentioned."
At those words the knights moved.
They recovered the body and sealed the passage.
The narrow waste-heat room became a flurry of activity in an instant.
I rose and looked down at Leo one last time.
He had erased the ledgers—that much was true.
But he had not opened the barrier alone.
And the final words that would have proved it, he left behind in barely two fragments before he died.
White gloves and the southern tower.
The Princess stepped out the door first and said,
"Lord Elberhart. We're lucky."
"In what possible way?"
"The clues keep presenting themselves so openly like this."
I still did not understand what she meant by that.
The Lady heard it as well and passed the door without a word.
Only this time she did not wait for my steps; she began to run ahead.
It finally felt as though we had truly begun to chase the real culprit.
The door of the waste-heat room closed behind us with a heavy thud.