The Banquet (5)
"...I'm sorry."
Geon had barely survived the emergency treatment. He was alive — but he had lost an arm. For a knight, that was as good as the end of his life.
His face still ashen from the blood loss, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head to the floor.
"I will repay this humiliation and dishonor with my death."
"..."
"I'm sorry, Young Lady Etria."
Etria let out a long breath at his words. Then she took hold of his remaining arm and slowly drew him to his feet.
"Sir Geon."
"Yes, Young Lady."
"I don't abandon my people. Not even if you've lost an arm — a knight's very life. Not even if you've brought shame upon me and the family. If there's a sin, it can be washed away. If there's a mistake, it can be erased."
"But..."
"So don't speak so carelessly of dying. Do you understand?"
He had lost an arm. He would never take the field as a knight again. But he could still serve as an instructor, at least to some degree. Even if that was all she could offer him, she had to take responsibility for this man's future.
This is my fault. Not because Sir Geon was weak. Not because he let his guard down.
She should have sensed that something was wrong from the moment they put forward a man so young — from the moment she agreed to a duel with live steel. Lichtenauer might have been hiding a master they'd raised in secret. They might have smuggled in some unidentified powerhouse from outside. Either was possible. And she, knowing none of it, had been only too happy to call for a duel. An innocent knight had lost his arm, and Fiore was about to be made a laughingstock. A key military asset of the family had vanished in a single instant.
"Sir Geon. How was it?"
"..."
"Be honest with me. It was only an instant — but you must have felt something."
"It's embarrassing to admit, but..."
Geon forced the words out with difficulty.
"At first, I didn't even realize what had happened."
"Neither did I. I completely lost track of that man Adel's movements."
Geon, and Etria herself, both ranked among Fiore's strong — and that was in a family crawling with formidable fighters. Yet neither of them had read the technique Adel used in the attack, nor even the movement that preceded it. That could only mean their opponent's level was far beyond anything they had imagined.
Losing to Lichtenauer is a humiliation... but it wasn't a total loss.
On the contrary, she had gained something vital. They had played a card reserved for the worst possible case — and there was a high chance that card was the young man named Adel. She still didn't know how they had prepared him. What she did know was that his usefulness had been proven. Two of Fiore's finest hadn't even been a match. If that man Adel began to move in earnest, Lichtenauer would draw the world's attention one way or another.
"He's strong. That man, Adel."
"He's already at that level. If he grows any further, we'll be in a very difficult position."
"I agree. We need to take measures quickly."
Nip it in the bud, or win him over. One of the two had to be done. Only then could they shove Lichtenauer aside as a rival house and let Fiore shine forever as the Empire's one and only sword family.
That half-breed bitch still isn't doing her job.
She might be the family's sole heir. She might be beautiful. But the master of a renowned sword family had to prove their place through the sword. Only strength made the knights beneath you follow of their own accord. And Sien, even generously assessed, was roughly on par with an ordinary knight. That might not matter much for now. But in the desperate moment when a rift opened and demonic beasts poured forth, the family head's martial power became the one thing everyone could absolutely rely on.
It was true that Fiore found Lichtenauer disagreeable. But they hadn't bared their fangs quite like this while the previous head still lived. The former head of Lichtenauer had been strong — an excellent knight. They had competed. They had checked each other. But they had never held him in contempt.
The present head, Sien Lichtenauer, was the opposite. She was no knight, and her skill with a blade was nothing remarkable. On top of that, she was a half-breed whose mother was a demon — a race so many people despised.
Which is all the more reason that woman, and that family, need to disappear.
Etria thought it with her lip caught between her teeth.
"And, Young Lady..."
"Go on."
"I hesitate to say this. Frankly, I'm a little unsettled myself..."
What could he possibly be this reluctant to say? Etria waited in silence for him to continue.
"That young man... was strange."
"Strange? What do you mean?"
"How old would you say he is, Young Lady?"
The question came out of nowhere. Etria puzzled over his intent for a moment, then answered anyway.
"...Twenty-five at the oldest."
"Yes. Mid-twenties. I think so as well. That would be the limit."
"Why the sudden question about his age?"
"I... met his eyes for an instant, and... they weren't the eyes of someone that age."
"What do you mean?"
"I felt fear."
"...What?"
Etria was thrown. Sir Geon was her personal guard. He had been thoroughly beaten today, yes — but he was a Senior Knight of Fiore, a man whose real combat experience didn't merely run deep; it overflowed. A veteran who had crossed the line between life and death more times than anyone could count. He would have stood unmoved even with a demonic beast's jaws yawning open in his face. And that same Geon claimed he had been afraid from a single meeting of eyes. Anyone who heard that and wasn't startled would have been the strange one.
"What are you saying, Sir Geon. You, afraid?"
"It wasn't the fear of being beaten, or of having my arm cut off. It was instinctive terror. The desperate struggle to stay alive. It was as if... as if..."
He bit his lip, struggling to go on, as if the words themselves refused to leave his mouth. Then, with visible effort, he forced them out.
Meanwhile, Adel found himself in a thoroughly awkward situation.
"I cannot."
"Why? Why not?"
"...I cannot."
"I'm asking you why. Why can't you?"
Adel would say nothing but no. Sien would ask nothing but why. The reason the two of them were locked in this exchange was as follows.
"Help me. I want to use a sword the way you do."
"What I use is not a formalized sword style."
"But what you used just now was clearly Lichtenauer swordsmanship."
It had been only the most basic elements, the simplest attacking motions — and yet the blade that had so thoroughly crushed Geon, a knight of Fiore, had unmistakably been Lichtenauer's. Sien, who carried that blood, could hardly have failed to recognize it.
"Adel, you were using our family's swordsmanship without any difficulty, weren't you?"
"I merely imitated what I happened to glimpse."
"Which only means your original skill is that outstanding. Don't worry. I don't want to learn sword techniques. I want to know how a sword should be swung. What kind of heart you should have when you use it. That's all. Nothing else matters — just help me with that."
"Does the Lichtenauer family not have other fine knights?"
Adel's question was perfectly reasonable. Why set aside loyal, trustworthy knights and ask an outsider like him for help with the sword?
"...If I were still just a young lady of the family, I would have. But that's not who I am anymore."
The head of Lichtenauer, a renowned sword family, asking the knights beneath her for instruction? There was hardly anything more absurd. And on top of that, an instinctive certainty kept knocking at Sien's heart — that Adel was stronger than any of those knights.
"You're the only one I have."
"..."
There were several meanings folded into Sien's words. Even so, Adel remained visibly at a loss.
I'm not the kind of man who should be teaching anyone.
All he had done, to avoid suspicion, was mimic a fragment of the Lichtenauer swordsmanship he had been watching for the past little while. In truth, his own blade was a savage killing art — nothing more, and nothing less. Set against Lichtenauer's sword, which was founded on the will to protect, the difference was stark. It didn't suit him. The very idea of him teaching swordsmanship was a contradiction. They were people who fought in order to protect. He merely fought in order to...
"Please, Adel."
"..."
But Sien was asking so earnestly. She could put questions of technique to the family's knights, she said. Everything else, she could not. And at her words, Adel felt his resolve keep slipping.
"...Very well."
In the end, he could not refuse her. He had never once imagined himself teaching anyone. Was this, too, simply part of what people called a journey?
He pictured Sien's face as she let out a breath of relief, smiling as she thanked him, and scratched at his cheek. Unbidden, the Emperor's words rose in his mind.
He shook his head sharply, flinging the stray thought away. What he needed to worry about was the sword instruction starting tomorrow.
On his way back to his room, Adel stopped short. He looked at one of the pillars of the trading company's building, and his fingers drifted, carefully, toward the sword at his hip.
"You were magnificent today."
A woman's voice slipped out from behind the pillar. Adel recognized it and took his hand off the hilt. The woman was Karina, the owner of the Legram Trading Company.
"Honestly, I was shocked. I thought you were going to lose for sure."
"Is that so."
"He's the personal guard of someone already confirmed as the next family head. He couldn't possibly be weak, and he couldn't possibly be short on experience. And he isn't just some arrogant knight, either."
"..."
"You beat a knight like that. And you didn't just beat him — you made sure he could never wear a knight's name again."
Adel looked at Karina without expression. She hadn't hidden her presence just to say something like that. His eyes told her, quite plainly, to state what she wanted — and that if she didn't answer quickly, his hand would go back to the sword.
"How frightening. Don't look at me like that. I feel like I'll get cut."
"..."
Even so, Adel did as he was told. The wary look receded, and Karina murmured to herself that he had a surprisingly gentle side.
"Adel, was it?"
"That is correct."
"Just once. I'll ask you this just once, in earnest."
"Pardon?"
"And I want you to answer me just once, in earnest."
"..."
Karina drew a slow breath, then pointed at Adel with a fingertip.
"...I don't understand what you mean."
"There's nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like a ghost — as if you never existed in this world to begin with. There's nothing on you, Adel."