Surveillance in the Name of Protection
When I stepped out into the corridor, the smell of the barrier chamber fell away behind me.
The reek of scorched stone and the metallic tang of black ash.
The door shut, and the double seals locking back into place layered over one another in a low, overlapping sound at my back.
Clack.
It was a short sound, yet unnaturally clear.
The Imperial Princess did not look back.
Her golden hair brushed beneath the barrier lamps as she moved first toward the far end of the corridor.
Two knights fell in at my sides.
They had not drawn their swords, but neither was the atmosphere one that would allow me to walk out alone.
The Princess spoke as she walked ahead.
"Tonight, Sir, you will use an empty guest room in the west wing."
I asked a beat late.
"Am I to understand that as hospitality?"
"If that is what you prefer to believe."
Even put kindly, it was surveillance.
The young duchess spoke low at my side.
"For now, that may be the better arrangement."
I glanced at her.
Adelaide looked a little more worn than before, but her expression was unchanged.
She seemed the sort who sorted what could be sorted and set the rest aside for later.
"Is Lady Rubenheim usually accustomed to this sort of thing?"
"This sort of thing?"
"I mean pinning down something of unknown origin in the Imperial barrier chamber."
The young duchess was silent a moment.
The answer that came back was brief.
"No. Today was a first for me as well."
Then she looked briefly toward my hand.
"But Sir Elberhart seemed rather used to it."
"Not at all."
"Then you must simply have a nasty disposition."
I did not answer.
From the moment I had gripped the black thorn in the barrier chamber, my palm had throbbed.
Now, more than the wound itself, what unsettled me was the slick sensation that had lingered a moment in my hand and then vanished.
The Princess stopped when we reached the entrance to the west wing.
Ahead lay a short flight of stairs carpeted in red, and above them a door stamped with the Imperial crest stood closed.
Two attendants and a physician were waiting before it.
The Princess indicated the physician with a lift of her chin.
"Have him look at the hand first."
"I'm fine."
The words came out reflexively, and the Princess's gaze snapped to me.
"Whether you are fine or not is for me to decide."
I felt tired the moment I heard it.
From the young duchess's direction came a single, faint hitch of breath.
A thin sound, hard to read for emotion.
The physician took my hand and examined it.
The bleeding had already mostly stopped, but the center of the palm was split open in a long tear.
His hands paused as he peered at the wound.
"…Whether one should even call this a tear… the edges have burned away in a peculiar fashion."
The Princess asked,
"Is there a problem?"
"The edges of the wound are strangely scorched. It may have come into contact with barrier-type matter, but I have never seen this type before."
I looked quietly down at the physician's fingertips.
The way he wound the bandage was practiced, and his voice was excessively careful.
He had probably been given a rough account of what had happened inside the barrier chamber.
The Princess thought a moment, then said,
"Until the wound heals, do not strain that hand."
"Your Highness."
"What."
"A short while ago you told me to shove my hand into the barrier pedestal."
The Princess's brows rose a fraction.
"You hold a grudge longer than I expected, Sir."
"I lack stamina, so my memory is excellent in its place."
This time a breath that was almost a laugh clearly escaped from the young duchess's direction.
The Princess turned as if she had not heard.
"You will not leave this place before morning. If you need anything, tell the knight outside the door. You are absolutely not to move alone."
"Yes."
"And."
The Princess looked back at me again.
Under the pale light of the barrier lamps, her face looked colder than usual.
"What you saw, heard, and touched in the barrier chamber today—including all of it—you will speak of to no one."
"To no one."
"Yes. To no one at all."
Her voice was low and cool.
I did not bother asking what she meant.
That "no one" would naturally include Lady Walter, the people of the count's house…
and every noble who had seen me in the banquet hall.
The Princess did not linger. She turned away.
The attendants and knights moved after her.
Listening to the sound of her heels recede toward the end of the corridor, I leaned against the wall for a moment.
The door opened, and the physician withdrew first.
Only the young duchess and I remained.
Adelaide stood a little apart and looked once at the bandage on my hand.
"It would be best if you did not think of running tonight."
"…Fleeing the Imperial Palace. I am not that much of a fool."
"That is not what I mean."
She spoke slowly.
"As Her Highness said, it has now become closer to protection than surveillance."
I lifted my gaze to her.
"Does the lady think so as well?"
"At the very least, if someone was able to lay hands on the barrier inside the palace—"
The young duchess closed her mouth a moment, as if choosing her words.
"—there is a chance that someone also saw your face today."
The air in the corridor felt a degree colder.
In the banquet hall and in the barrier chamber alike, I had drawn far too many eyes.
The young duchess took a step closer.
The distance between us narrowed by about a handspan.
"Be careful, Sir Elberhart."
It was a calm remark, yet it lingered strangely long.
I almost brushed it off as a joke, then stopped.
"You as well, my lady."
The young duchess blinked once.
Aside from that brief motion, there was no reaction at all.
"I am used to it."
"To this sort of thing?"
"To the reality that someone opening a door from the inside is more frightening than someone coming at you with a blade from outside."
Having said that, she turned.
The back that disappeared toward the end of the west wing corridor was quite straight.
Only some time later did I step into the guest room.
The chamber was rather large for a place meant only for sleeping.
As befit an Imperial guest room, it had everything one might need, and plain curtains hung at the window.
On the small table beside the bed, warm water and a tea steeped with medicinal herbs had already been set out.
My palm throbbed.
I shrugged off my coat, hung it over the back of a chair, and went to the window to draw the curtain a little aside.
The outer courtyard of the palace lay below.
The night was deep, yet it did not seem fully asleep.
Attendants with lanterns moved quickly back and forth, and farther off the low sound of knights changing shifts carried through the dark.
And farther still, in the direction of the banquet hall, the windows still held light that had not gone out.
By tomorrow morning the capital would be noisy.
Whether it was the broken engagement scandal or the collapse of the banquet hall, neither would pass quietly.
I stepped away from the window and sat on the edge of the bed.
Once it grew quiet, the whole of the night pressed in at once.
Serena's declaration of the broken engagement.
The crack in the banquet hall.
The Princess's gaze.
The young duchess's cold hand.
The feel of the black thorn in the barrier chamber.
None of it was welcome.
The original plan had been simple.
Leave the capital, return to the border, and it would be over.
Now I was confined to a guest room in the west wing of the palace, and from tomorrow morning I would have to move under the Princess's eyes.
I covered my face with one hand, then slowly lowered it.
That was when it happened.
Footsteps stopped outside the door.
They were not light footsteps.
Neither the heavy tread of an armed knight nor the light steps of attendants.
A presence a little more careful, a little more hesitant.
Soon a low voice came through.
"Sir Elberhart."
I raised my eyes.
The voice beyond the door was familiar.
Serena.
For a moment I said nothing.
I could also sense the knights across the corridor blocking her way.
The faintest scrape of armor.
Only after a long while did I open my mouth.
"What business do you have at this hour, my lady."
The silence beyond the door stretched.
I could not see what expression she wore, but I could guess.
It would be the face of someone who had something to say and did not herself know where to begin.
At last Serena spoke, very low.
"…Just for a moment. I wanted to see your face."
The words sank into the air of the corridor.
I looked at the door.
It was not something a woman who had discarded me before hundreds of people only a few hours earlier ought to say.
A woman who might remember my face longer than I had thought.
I started to lift my hand to the latch, then stopped.
The Princess's voice brushed through my mind.
— Speak of it to no one.
Without even approaching the door, I answered.
"Go back for tonight, my lady."
Outside the door it grew very quiet.
Serena did not withdraw at once.
With only a door between us, at a distance where our presence barely touched, I felt her choose words over and over and swallow them.
And after a long while.
"…All right."
A short reply.
With the rustle of cloth, the footsteps receded.
Only then did I bow my head.
Not opening the door had been the right thing.
Probably.
Even so, the silence left beyond the door grated more strangely than the wound in my palm.
The guest room grew quiet again.
I slowly leaned my back against the bed.
Heat rose little by little through the bandage.