To Britain, Seeking the Enemy (2)
A short while later, the royal limousine turned onto a street where buildings seven stories high — an architectural style seldom seen in Korea — stood packed together in one long, unbroken row.
"We're here."
So this was the Savoy. I stepped down from Lydia's limousine, followed the porter in, and the hall lobby opened around me: a floor of black-and-white tile, and rich dark-brown hardwood worked through every elegant line of the place.
Check-in hours are usually fixed, but no one moved to stop us. The escort team must have reserved ahead and checked us in already. And even if they hadn't — a princess in the party, and someone was going to bar the door? I had no sooner entered with Lydia than a middle-aged gentleman came forward and bowed to her from the waist.
"Welcome to the Savoy. I am Alex Ritzman, general manager."
"Ah. That is... well..."
He had greeted her and not me, and Lydia flustered, shooting him a look and glancing my way as if to say I was the guest who mattered.
The manager caught his own mistake a beat too late. His face tightened, and he bent toward me to offer the greeting he'd missed — but I stopped him with a short laugh.
"My father looks exhausted, so I'd appreciate it if you showed us to the rooms we reserved. Quickly."
"I'm fine."
"Don't lie. You didn't sleep a wink on the plane. You've even got dark circles under your eyes."
"Ahem."
His color still a little off from the blunder, the manager offered a brief apology and led us up to a lavish, sprawling suite on the top floor.
"Our hotel began in the late nineteenth century as the Savoy Theatre, and in 1889 became the first modern hotel in London. Countless luminaries and distinguished guests have stayed with us, and the house has long stood as a leading stage of society. Furthermore..."
While we were on our way to the rooms, he quietly recited the hotel's history. Listen closely and it was a kind of boast: world-famous figures had often slept here, and the place had deep ties to the British royal family. A hotel with a long pedigree, or so he would have us believe. And the rooms waiting for us were one of only two Royal Suites in the building.
The Royal Suite, once I actually saw it, was smaller than my house.
Three bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, three baths, four toilets, and a reception room tacked on besides. It didn't have the broad, generous proportions of a place designed that way from the start, the way mine did; it felt rebuilt, every last inch of space pressed into service. Even so, the care showed in everything from the interior decoration down to the smallest ornament. Furniture, objects, finish — all of it antique in character, settled so naturally that each piece seemed to have always belonged exactly where it stood, and arranged so as never to cross a guest's path. A Royal Suite in a five-star hotel. No argument there.
I was turning through the rooms, quietly impressed, when Spatial Perception caught Lydia secretly signaling the general manager.
"Manager Ritzman. That gentleman is the Grand Master of the renowned new raid team, Grand Blue. I ask that you not repeat a discourtesy like the one just now, and that you attend him properly."
"I shall serve him with all my heart and sincerity, as carefully as the tongue in my own mouth."
Not that I cared. If some unknown brat shows up alongside your own country's princess, of course you greet the princess first. I hadn't even shown my face to make the reservation.
When I returned to the reception room by the entrance, the hotel manager bent at the waist with all the courtesy a man could muster and spoke.
"I beg you to forgive the rudeness born of my ignorance a moment ago. Should anything prove inconvenient, you have only to say so. I will see it resolved at once."
"We'll be in your care for the length of our stay."
I accepted the apology and looked down over the Thames from the great window, and the manager withdrew on a sigh of relief he didn't think anyone could see.
But why did Lydia keep calling me Grand Master? I didn't care what anyone called me, so long as it wasn't Blue Genius — and yet Grand Master carried a weight of its own. That was burdensome in its own right.
"I'm going to rest."
"Please show my father to a bedroom."
"Yes. The bedrooms are this way."
A bodyguard showed him in. Dad loosened his tie and collapsed into a sleep like death. I checked the clock. Five in the morning. Back in Korea, would that be nine at night?
I laid a Healing Touch on him where he lay corpse-still, closed the bedroom door behind me, and turned to the five members of the security team standing locked at attention.
"Who's in charge?"
"Han Suhee, captain of Security Team Two. Master!"
She stepped forward and answered smartly — hair cropped short as a man's, fine-boned features, the look of a handsome youth.
I took a moment to study how they were dressed. All five wore black suits cut to a razor line, and beneath them full-body tights. Those, too, looked like armor woven from aberrant byproducts. Custom-made telescopic batons besides, and guards that didn't show at a glance, shielding the vitals. Dressed like that, they looked more than equal to a protection detail.
"How does the security work while my father's in Britain?"
"Besides the five of us, ten more are staying in standard rooms at the Savoy. Active protection runs in two shifts — six Physical Reinforcement, two wind-element, two Recovery. The remaining five form a front team and handle backup for the detail."
Captain Han Suhee answered the moment I asked, as if she had been waiting for it. A C-Class Physical Reinforcement user. The rest ranged from low to mid D-Class. Against other ability users, that ought to be security enough.
"Then I'll leave the rest to you. If my father wakes and looks for me, tell him I stepped out on an errand."
"Yes, sir!"
"Oh — and there may be reason to get in touch, so give me your Certifier mail address as well."
"Yes, sir!"
I was heading out with Franc, Lydia, and the triplets when a man and a woman in crisp suits — hotel uniforms, by the look of them — came up and asked if there was anything they could do.
"We're fine."
"Understood. Should you need anything, you have only to say the word."
Who were they, offering help like that? I was still wondering as we came out of the hotel when Lydia stepped in to explain.
"They're the Savoy's concierges. They provide every service a guest of the hotel might need."
"Ah. Concierges."
The only thing I might have needed help with was the location of the Edelberg estate, and a map would do for that. As for House Aldion, where our Franc was born — I could just ask Franc and go.
Beside me she stood with sparkling eyes, full of expectation. Expectation of what, exactly? The more I looked at Lydia, the stranger a young lady she was.
First I'd search the internet and find the Edelbergs. After that, maybe the Aldions.
"Well then, I'll see you later. I've got somewhere to be."
"Pardon? If you tell me where you're going, I'll have the limousine take you."
"I'm thinking of paying the Edelberg family a visit and turning the place upside down. You sure it's all right for Lydia, a royal princess, to be the one dropping me off?"
Lydia went rigid.
"Their daughter stabbed me in the back. From what I hear, they're saying she ran off — some bitch who left home — so it has nothing to do with them. Does that even make sense to you?"
"Th-that is... the current head of the Edelberg family is a noble serving as deputy director of the Grokis Institute. The Grokis Institute maintains close ties with the Ability User Alliance and the IWO, and..."
"And? It's the most famous Phase research institute there is, so of course the ties are close. So what!"
Midway through the talk, one of the triplets did something odd. I had been watching through Spatial Perception, and the moment I saw her quietly move to activate her Certifier, I switched on Mana Mode — Acceleration, closed the distance in an instant, and caught her arm. Her eyes blew wide as saucers.
From her side of it, I might as well have teleported.
I lifted the arm of whichever of the three it was — Olivia, Lily, or Chloe — pointed at the Certifier flickering faintly at her wrist, and spoke.
"I don't know who you were about to report to, but let me warn you. Don't try to control what I do. Don't think about countermeasures. We do this the natural way. The natural way. Okay?"
I growled it like a threat and flicked a small Wall of Space off my fingertip, and the triplet in my grip flinched. I tapped her cheek with my palm and turned to Lydia. She looked thoroughly shaken — startled, it seemed, by what one of the triplets had done.
Had Lydia not known?
Against a contingency, I'd brought five Superior-grade Phase Stones, each worth ten million in Phase Power, meaning to use them the way one uses a potion. Good thing I had. With these, I could pick a fight with Britain itself if I had to.
Not that I meant to smash them flat the moment they poked me. Dad's safety was on the line.
I put on a deliberately disappointed face for Lydia, who was looking at me as if she couldn't believe any of it, and spoke.
"I'm disappointed. The Grokis Institute looked the other way while the Edelbergs cooperated with Japan, and the British royal family looked the other way at that? Seems Britain isn't interested in getting along with me."
"N-no! That can't be! Her Majesty wishes for a close relationship with you, Sir Seoha! Lily, what is going on? Explain!"
"I apologize. The Prime Minister instructed us to send a signal if it seemed diplomatic friction was about to arise."
"That's..."
At the answer from the triplet called Lily, Lydia's face went blank with shock. So this had nothing to do with the royal family?
Hah. As if. That Parliament takes its orders from the Crown is an open secret.
"Racking up negative points from the very start, I see. I'd appreciate it if you remembered that I turned Japan upside down because Japan tried to kill me. And attacked me."
"Yes..."
At the threat that wasn't quite a threat, the triplets bowed their heads, faces grave.
I turned my back on Lydia — shocked, and sunk, by the look of her — switched on my Certifier, and searched for the Edelberg estate. About twenty-five miles south of here. Run it on a Wall of Space, and it would take two or three minutes.
I was looking up at the blue-tinged sky, roughing out the time, when Lydia came back to herself, hurried over in small quick steps, caught my sleeve, and spoke in a desperate voice.
"Sir Seoha. This is not in accordance with Her Majesty's will."
I turned to her, puzzled. She let out a long sigh, bit her lip, and worked her own Certifier.
"Her Majesty trusted me, and so she didn't send a minister to hold a welcoming ceremony for you, Sir Seoha. For her to issue some other order behind my back anyway — it doesn't make sense!"
A brief ring, and then a hologram window rose, and a gracefully aged old woman appeared on the screen. I'd seen her a few times on the internet. I knew who she was. The Queen of Britain. Arceir Elicia Meln Windsor, called the Queen of Clover.
And yet.
"For our dear little Princess of Light to call at such an early hour is a rare thing. I find myself curious as to the reason."
The moment I saw her, I knew.
"There is something I must urgently ask of Your Majesty, and so I have unavoidably interrupted your dawn tea. I am sorry."
That old woman was the same breed as Yeongeun.
"...Is this true?"
Lydia told the Queen everything that had just happened and asked whether Parliament's intervention had been the royal will. The Queen of Britain — no. More than that, too many eyes were gathering.
"Lydia. Sorry."
"Yes? Ah—!"
Without so much as a by-your-leave, I caught Lydia about her slender waist, kicked off a Wall of Space, and leapt for the roof of the Savoy. We had been standing in front of the entrance, and passersby who had spotted the princess were already taking photographs and filming. We couldn't stay as we were.
I sprang a hundred feet or so and came down light on the roof. When I set the startled Lydia on her feet, she stared at me in a fluster. The triplets were scrambling, bolting into the hotel — looking for a way up from the inside, by the look of it.
I turned my gaze to the Queen's aged face floating in the hologram and found her watching me with an expression of interest.
"So this is how we come to greet each other. I'm Jung Seoha, Master of Grand Blue, the raid team of the Republic of Korea."
"A greeting is a greeting, even in a form like this, and a welcome one. I am Arceir Elicia Meln Windsor."
A woman who had aged with grace, smiling with grace — what came off her was a soft, pure whiteness, like the stem and leaves of a pasqueflower in full bloom. But those eyes. They belonged to someone who had known, all along, that Lydia would call.
She had been about to send a minister, and then, having heard what my temperament was like, sent only Lydia. She had the Prime Minister order the triplets guarding Lydia to watch me. She had ordered them to pretend to place a call where I would catch them — and arranged it so that things would come to this, Lydia calling that old woman.
Which meant the one pulling the strings from behind was the Queen of Britain herself. One glance, and it was the same light in the eyes I'd seen the first time I met Yeongeun.
If I had never met Yeongeun, I might not have caught it. But I had been living pressed up against a woman who kept a cunning old serpent coiled in her belly, and the patterns of that kind of snake had grown familiar.
On the sloping roof Lydia couldn't hold her balance, staggering with little cries of "Ah— oh—," and when I caught her arm to steady her, she let out a small breath at last and looked to the Queen in the hologram.
Of course the Queen wanted me to come to the point. But the more words we traded, the greater the chance that I — a man with no gift for talk — would be drawn into her design. Better not to speak at all, and watch from behind. And if I did speak, then short, straight, and hard to twist.
The Queen regarded me — arms folded, mouth shut — with a gleam of interest. Lydia, who clearly hadn't dreamed of any of this, put her question to the Queen again.
"Your Majesty. The Prime Minister ordering Lily to watch Sir Seoha's every move, his every gesture. Did you know?"
She looked at the Queen as if begging her to say no. The Queen gave a bitter smile and nodded.
"I did not know the Grand Master's senses ran quite so keen. As head of the body that leads the British Commonwealth, I could not restrain my curiosity as to the Grand Master's movements, and so I granted the Prime Minister's earnest plea."
A voice both soft and strong. There was power in the cadence and the resonance; if the Queen were young again, she might turn out rather like Yeongeun. She was in her seventies, wasn't she. About ten years younger than Yeongeun — so with a little more experience and seasoning, she really might become just like her.
"So that's..."
Lydia looked genuinely disappointed by the Queen's answer. Thinking back to the confident figure she had cut coming out of the airport, she must have meant to spare no effort in living up to the expectations of a Queen who trusted her. And then, not to be trusted — to have other means used behind her back. She must have felt betrayed.
"Lydia. Let us speak of the details when you return. More to the point — Grand Master Seoha?"
"Mister will do."
The Queen of Britain addressing me like that could plant the seed of a problem, couldn't it?
"Heh. I should like to offer a breakfast banquet to Mister Blue, whom I have caused Lydia to dislike. Might that be possible?"
It was the look of a woman saying, I know you hate standing in the spotlight, but I am the Queen of Britain, asking like this — do you mean to refuse even so?
I do, actually.
"Yes. There's a place I need to visit and turn inside out first, so I'm afraid not. I can't say when that business will be finished, so a firm answer would be difficult."
"Oh my. You don't mean to say there is already a place in Britain that has touched Mister Blue's temper?"
"Ha. Asking when you already know strikes me as a little spiteful."
The Queen's expression didn't change. Her eyes did. The irises widened, just slightly. Was my answer that much more unexpected than the stories she had heard? A straight pitch really was the right call. Lydia had gone entirely sullen, staring only at the roof tiles at her feet.
"That is a reason I find difficult to let pass, from where I stand."
"And I've already said it with my own mouth, so I have to keep it. I've already turned Japan upside down, to the point that the British call me a god of destruction."
The words I'd spoken when I put Japan in its place — hand over everyone who so much as lifted a hand to help kill me. Perhaps she remembered them. The light in her eyes sank.
"I find it harder to forgive those who wound the people precious to me than those who attack me themselves."
I cut off there, as if to say she could guess the rest for herself, smiled faintly, and stared straight at the Queen — the look of a man who would not sit still if she tried to stop him, or to threaten him. Lydia, listening, seemed to catch my meaning only a moment later. She started in shock, moved to do something, and lurched as if to fall.
"S-Sir Seoha! That's— kyaa!"
Franc sighed and caught Lydia by the back as she slid. I glanced at Lydia, half-leaning on Franc, stamped a Wall of Space beneath my feet, and walked up into the air. Turning back, I threw one last line at the silent Queen.
The Queen looked at the dazzling blue Superior Phase Stone in my hand, and her white brows drew together, just slightly. A snake of Yeongeun's caliber would interpret what that meant on her own.
I turned away, leaving the Queen unable to add another word and Lydia whimpering like a puppy. Franc moved Lydia to a spot where her footing was easier, then followed after me. Franc looked as if she had something she wanted to say, but first I called Captain Han Suhee of Team Two and ordered her to take even greater care with Dad's protection. Unless the Queen was a fool, I didn't think she would lay a hand on him after hearing me say it to her face. But there is always a what-if.
And then I called Yeongeun.
"Seohaaa~ You got there saaafe?"
Seeing her beam and talk in that lisping baby voice, I couldn't help smiling.
"Yeah. But the moment I arrived I got into a war of nerves with the Queen of Britain. What am I supposed to do with that."
"...What did she say?"
So even the Queen of Britain was only a she, from where Yeongeun stood. It was a little funny. I snorted, worked my Certifier, and sent her the recording of my conversation with Lydia in front of the hotel.
"The details are in what I just sent. And I'm on my way to the Edelbergs now. I'm thinking of caving in part of their house first and talking after, and I wanted your opinion, so I called."
Yeongeun received the video, skimmed it at double speed, and shrugged.
"She can't just charge out, anyway. She's a woman tied up in face, ceremony, blood, and old connections. Even just coveting the Superior Phase Stone in darling's hand, she won't move carelessly."
"You think so?"
She finished the video, then spoke again.
"Mm. You handled it well, Seoha. In the end the Queen will choose the latter of the two things you offered. For the price, just sell her one Superior-grade Phase Stone at nothing more than the going rate on the Phase Stone Exchange. The Edelbergs — steam them, fry them, do whatever you like, my dear~. Only, aside from Sophia Edelberg, I'd rather you held back on casualties if you can. If you don't, we can smooth over as much as we need to on this end."
Hwayeon had sidled up behind Yeongeun, and when I saw her give me a little wave, I smiled and waved back.
"Got it. If diplomatic negotiations break out, I'll leave the aftermath to you."
"Okay! Oh, and while you're in Britain, all sorts of countries are going to send people to come buzzing around my dear. You don't have to grit your teeth and show your face to anyone you don't want to see, so if you don't like them, just blow them off. Got iiit?"
"Got it. I will."
"Finish your business and come back, okaaay?"
"Yeah. It must be late at night in Korea by now, so get some sleep. You too, Hwayeon."
"Mm."
"Yeah."
"Good night."
I ended the call on the sight of Yeongeun and Hwayeon waving and smiling, and Franc, hands clasped behind her back, nodded.
"What?"
"It is only that you grow more remarkable by the day, Seoha — so much so that it is becoming difficult to bear."
I caught the cheeks of Franc, who could deliver a line that embarrassing without a trace of shame, and kissed her forehead. She broke into a bright little giggle and hung onto my back.
This time I called Hiarid.
What? Some strange sound was coming through!
"...Hiarid?"
"I can't understand a word you're saying. What do I do?"
"Hey. If you can understand what I'm saying, say yes."
"Yes."
"That's a relief. If the Wall of Space is fine, answer yes."
"Yes."
"Good. So even flying to the far side of the planet, there's nothing wrong with the Wall of Space. Then head back, check the Wall of Space every morning, noon, and evening, and the rest of the time stay near Mom with Miho and watch over her. If anything goes wrong, do as you always have."
"Yes."
"All right. Hanging up."
"Yes."
I ended the call and, feeling rather wonderstruck, looked at Franc.
"Strange, isn't it. By what means does she understand what I'm saying?"
"Should that ever be discovered, I believe it would draw a groundbreaking line across the whole of linguistics."
"True. If I build a research institute, I'll have to tell them to look into that, too. If everyone in the world could understand one another, I wonder if wars might thin out a little."
I watched Franc smile softly at that, then turned my gaze south.
Well then. Everything I'd left behind in Korea was settled. Time to go find the Edelberg family!