Outside In (2)
After I woke in the infirmary, the rumors had already reached me in full. I knew exactly how badly the empire had unraveled because of what we had done.
“The mistress of the imperial house has sealed every gate leading to the capital.” The words referred to nothing less than the unprecedented catastrophe of Vancite’s death during the field training. The imperial family, thrown into utter panic, had locked the realm down to prevent internal collapse. Yet the entire disaster was an own goal of their own making.
If the crown prince’s seat stood empty, they simply needed to install a new one. Reading the situation from a distance, the truth was obvious: they had barred the gates because there was no other legitimate successor to claim the throne.
Sabrina—if that was her name; I could not recall it precisely—could hardly produce another heir at her age. As for the remaining imperial grandchildren, Vancite had already slaughtered most of them himself to secure his position. There were virtually no candidates left.
Of course, except for Cryan—the one Vancite had spared.
He had been struck from the family register, but if the throne truly sat vacant, restoring him would have been simple. Sabrina, however, would rather die than allow it. Perhaps she simply wished to deny the reality of her son’s death. To acknowledge Cryan would be to admit how far her own prestige had fallen.
Therefore, fearing the sparks of rebellion that would inevitably rise from this stalemate was not irrational. If I possessed real power and the clear will of a warlord, even I would have moved. The empire was a feast waiting for whoever planted a flag and took the emperor’s head. Only a stone Buddha could have resisted.
Yet openly claiming the title of emperor would be excessive. The smarter play would be to install a suitable puppet—someone like Cryan—as the face of the regime while pulling every string from behind. The calculation was not complicated.
Thus the great blockade of the capital was, for the moment, an effective way to smother any black-faction scheming. But it carried obvious limits. Severing both human and material traffic would eventually devour the capital’s own flesh. And the mood of the capital was the lifeblood of the imperial family.
The palace, therefore, would want this hopeless deadlock resolved before their endurance gave out. Since they possessed no internal solution, it made perfect sense that they would try to eliminate the root of the problem.
Cryan. The sole surviving son of the current emperor. The perfect trophy for a coup. Without him, any uprising would lose its justification.
When I imagined myself as a warlord, I had concluded a coup was inevitable. When I imagined myself as the imperial family, the first priority was likewise to secure Cryan and end the crisis.
I did not know which side the hulking men surrounding him belonged to, but their purpose was one hundred percent clear.
“Yohan… these bastards…”
Cryan was still in pain. He lay groaning in his bed, barely able to ask for my help. His condition must have been worse than it looked if he could not even speak properly. So I stepped forward at once, advancing with every intention of beating every last son of a bitch to the ground.
“This has nothing to do with you. Get lost.”
The men closed ranks around Cryan and tried to drive me away. One who looked particularly strong planted himself in front of me, glaring as though he would charge at any second.
But he was still far beneath my eye level.
“……Who the hell are you?”
I had no intention of playing along. I tilted my head down and muttered, “I came to visit a sick friend. When I see him being threatened for no reason, is it still none of my business if I step in? Depending on the situation, I see no reason to hold back.”
“This—this bastard…”
The air crackled, ready to ignite. Then the unusually short man among them—the one who looked like he desperately needed a good beating—stepped forward and calmed the room.
“Easy, easy, everyone.”
He soothed the group I had frozen in place, then produced the imperial emblem from his coat.
So that’s which side they’re on.
“There is no need for such hostility, my mountainous friend. I am Javer, chief of staff of the imperial direct knight order, the Blazing Flower Unit. I have come on the imperial family’s orders.”
“Orders…?”
I glared, suspicion thick in my voice. He smiled broadly.
“Yes. It is His Majesty’s personal decree.”
“What decree?”
“As you know, we have suffered the grave tragedy of the crown prince’s assassination.” He shrugged. “Amid that chaos, troubling rumors reached us—that the deposed prince Cryan had been at odds with the crown prince and engaged in suspicious activities. There are even whispers that he was the mastermind behind contact with the demon realm.”
Haha. Really?
“Baseless rumors. Did you come to threaten us after securing clear evidence?”
He refused to be cowed. Instead he stepped lightly forward and looked up at me with eyes I immediately disliked.
“We possess no such evidence. Nevertheless, His Majesty has commanded that the deposed prince Cryan be returned to the palace at once.”
“Returned to the palace…?”
“For a personal audience. In other words, an interrogation. Since His Majesty himself has spoken, there can be no objection. You gentlemen would not dream of defying an imperial decree, would you?”
The order reeked of ulterior motives. Yet my instincts screamed louder than my suspicion: if we handed Cryan over now, we would never see him again.
…Damn it. Should I just kill them all?
At that exact moment, the young lady who had been watching silently from behind finally spoke.
“Ha. What utter nonsense.”
Her characteristically cold voice froze the entire room.
“I understand your words well enough, but common courtesy should precede such vile demands, you fools.”
“…What? No—Your Highness the Grand Duchess?!”
Javer clearly recognized her. It would have been stranger if he had not; the face of Vitagarde’s sole grand duchess had spread across the continent.
Yet Karalin merely darkened her expression. She stepped directly in front of the man who had called himself chief of staff and pressed him exactly as he had tried to press me.
“A chief of staff is nothing more than an untitled military officer. The man before you is not someone you may address so casually.”
Javer’s face drained of color.
“…Then the person in front of me is… Yohan… the Lord of Steel…?”
“Ha. You investigated Cryan so thoroughly, yet you possess no information on the Lord of Steel?”
“Tsk—that’s not true. We have ample information on Sir Yohan—”
“If you came on the emperor’s orders to investigate the crown prince’s death, you should have approached the Lord of Steel first. In this entire affair he is the central figure who barely survived, saved everyone, and slew the Iron Giant the crown prince summoned.”
She advanced on them with murderous intensity, as though she might seize them by the collar at any moment.
“Instead you investigate groundless rumors about Cryan first. Is the emperor truly so thoughtless?”
The chill in her voice could freeze bone.
“Even if this were an accident born of a one-in-a-thousand coincidence, any investigator worthy of the name should have recognized the Lord of Steel’s face the instant they saw it.”
“That’s—!”
“What exactly are you all doing?”
Thanks to the suspicions Karalin had so precisely exposed, the vague unease I had felt finally crystallized.
Aha. So these men are that sort.
I spoke the chief of staff’s name in a deliberately formal tone that emphasized the gulf in rank.
“Javer.”
“…Yes, my lord.”
“If you came bearing the emperor’s decree, you should possess the written edict he issued. Show it to me.”
Of course no such document existed. These men had not come on the emperor’s orders—nor even on Sabrina’s. Within the coup they were secretly plotting, they had clearly come to kidnap Cryan so they could install him as their puppet emperor.
Javer began to stammer openly, scrambling for any excuse.
“Th-that kind of document naturally wouldn’t exist. This was simply a verbal command, so…”
Karalin had reached the same conclusion. She let out a bright, bold laugh—girlish yet magnificent, pure Karalin.
“Hahaha! How ridiculous. If that were true, why does His Majesty employ fifteen imperial scribes?”
“That’s—”
“Every word and decree of the emperor is recorded by scribes. There are no exceptions. Even a simple order for a cup of water requires a formal edict.”
I rode the momentum she had created.
“So you intended to insult the young lady with lies.”
“Yohan. Did they insult me? This is forgery of an imperial decree and false impersonation—a crime that warrants the extermination of three generations of their clan.”
“…Yes. Please step back. I will personally arrest every last one of these traitors.”
The moment their bluff was exposed, the men panicked. Led by Javer, they bolted from the room.
“Damn it, move—!”
“But Sir Javer—”
“Shut up and run!”
They fled in a clamor of crashing footsteps. The sight was utterly pathetic. I moved to pursue them at once, but Karalin stopped me.
“No, Yohan. Do not stir up more trouble than necessary. The situation is already volatile enough.”
“…Understood.”
She clearly saw no reason to create unnecessary friction inside Sigmund’s territory.
“…Th-they left, Yohan.”
“You were here the whole time?”
Eclipse, who had been cowering behind me, finally poked her head out.
“D-don’t forget! I’m a commoner…”
“What’s wrong with being a commoner?”
“With Her Highness the Grand Duchess, her knight and attendant, Cryan who turns out to be of imperial blood, and the chief of staff of the imperial knights all facing off… what could someone like me possibly do?!”
Oh. Right. She had a point. “You’re innocent.”
“Hehehe, yes. That’s exactly what makes you you.”
Karalin gently stroked Eclipse’s pink hair.
“Eek?! Y-young lady?!”
“Enough. Let us at least greet Cryan properly.”
I left the two of them and strode straight to Cryan’s bedside. He was wrapped head to toe in casts, looking exactly like a mummy—just as I had been not long ago.
“K-khuhaha—”
Despite my sincere effort to keep my oath, I could not stop the laughter that burst out of me. He looked completely undignified.
“…Don’t laugh, Yohan. Whose fault do you think this is?”
He smiled faintly. Yes, I admit it. This was my fault.
He had supervised Karalin’s use of the Oblivion Flower, helped restrain her when her power ran wild by handing her the tools I had prepared, protected her from Vancite’s advances, and even cleverly passed her my black sword so we could track her location. He had followed her wild ride across the battlefield, thrown fresh flowers for her, and in the end delivered a proper blow to Vancite himself.
All because I had found him a single conch shell. At this point he might as well become the protagonist instead of Eclipse.
“…You did well.”
I compressed all that gratitude into three simple words. For him, that was praise enough.
He answered, “Why did you come? I’ll be up soon anyway. There’s nothing interesting to see.”
“There’s no such thing. I just came to visit.”
“Well… still, I received help again. Thank you—both of you.”
I offered him one of the unbroken conch-shell pastries.
“Eat this and recover quickly.”
“…Conch bread? What is it? I’ll eat it gratefully.”
“How’s your body?”
“Manageable. Moving on my own is still difficult, but I can manage small tasks and cast spells from the bed.”
Eclipse clapped her hands together as though the news were her own. “Th-that’s wonderful…!”
Karalin added gently, “Cryan, when I saw your condition after everything ended, I could not calm my racing heart. Your injuries were truly severe…”
“Aigo, don’t remind me. It still hurts just as much.”
“But you’re awake. That alone is a blessing. Everything is returning to how it should be.”
Just as we were settling into that warm atmosphere—
Crash! Bang—! Boom—!
The sound of something shattering echoed from the far end of the corridor outside the ward.
“…Yohan, what is that?”
“Eek?!”
“Yohan. Among everyone I know, there is only one person who would make noise like that in such a quiet place.”
“Haa…”
The instant I moved to check, the door burst open with a thunderous crash.
“Kuhahahahahahat! Yohan! Welcome to my ward! Have you all been well…?”
He was supposed to be dead. Yet the madman who had somehow survived stood there, one hand cocked on his hip in that signature pose, looking as if his body did not hurt in the slightest. In his other hand he held the hair of Javer—the very coup leader who had tried to intimidate me moments earlier.
This… crazy son of a bitch.