What Do You Mean, I'm Seriously Not Going to Kill You
1
Valkan Gardner.
Guardian of the Hero's Party — its tank — and eldest son of House Gardner.
He was a man of gentle temper. Even without ever awakening the power of his bloodline, he had trained without rest until he grew strong enough to stand among the Hero's Party.
The virtuous man who bore the shield. The guardian of peace. The hero, Valkan.
The titles that clung to him were not the least bit excessive. Valkan Gardner was, through and through, an upright man.
And yet, isn't there a saying?
Solid iron does not break no matter how hard you strike it. But if it shatters even once, that is the end.
Having lost Hestia, Valkan cast aside the shield and took up its shattered, killing edge instead, and became one of the most troublesome enemies even within the Hero's Party.
Which is to say—
"Haa…… Setting that aside, what do you think you're doing, smashing in through the window?"
"You've got it wrong. I didn't smash the window to come in. I came in, and the window simply happened to be smashed. That's all."
Best to smooth this over as nicely as he could.
"What are you even……?"
He followed the sound of her confusion and turned his head, and a woman in pure white nightclothes met his eyes. Hair the color of dry fallen leaves, a soft light brown. Eyes a far deeper shade of night. Skin so white it verged on pale.
If the members of Black Wolf were beauties fit to stand on an idol stage, Hestia was the sort of graceful beauty you might pass once on the street and find yourself remembering.
He was staring as if spellbound when Hestia, having at last finished the thought, opened her mouth.
"My apologies. It's been so long since I met anyone stupider than my brother that my mouth refused to open."
"The night is long, so it's quite all right. Make yourself at home."
"……This is my home."
"Then all the more reason to be comfortable."
With no subordinates around, he treated her as his real self would — easily, casually — and Hestia pressed a finger to her temple, sighed, and lifted her head.
"So. Who are you?"
"You ask who I am out of nowhere. I'm afraid I don't quite follow."
"I'm asking who handed that information to you, Black Wolf."
"……Hmm. I'm even less sure now. Would you care to explain it a little more plainly?"
Click.
Hestia slipped on her glasses and took a pen from the table beside her chair.
"The Gardners are famous for bodies so sound that their heads pay the price, but unfortunately I am the opposite sort. My body is frail, so my mind works all the harder to make up for it. Oh, and — I can't walk because of an accident, so kindly don't misunderstand."
Scratch, scratch.
What was she writing? Over the blank page, hard, tidy letters stacked themselves one upon another.
"Black robes, and a white mask carved with a wolf. A solid build, a tall frame. It matches the records of the attack on His Majesty the Emperor. And above all, the commotion coming from outside."
He turned an ear toward the broken window as she spoke, and the uproar reached him — Black Wolf's raid, don't be afraid, and the rest of it.
"Immediately after this morning's incident in the Central Plaza, that operation was drawn up, and before the night was out you came looking for me, the strategist. What more is there to say?"
Thud.
Hestia set the pen down and looked at him over the rims of her glasses.
"I'll ask once more. Who gave you, Black Wolf, that information?"
The information she meant could only be what he had heard from Amela that afternoon — the plan to subjugate Black Wolf by means of the Imperial First Legion and the Golden Dragon. The moment the plan was set, Black Wolf had come looking for her, the strategist, and so she had decided there must be a spy, and was asking who it was. An inference drawn from the intruder's identity and the situation at hand. A truly perfect deduction.
"The truth is always one."
"……What?"
"There's a saying like that."
He tossed the little flourish onto her razor-sharp reasoning, then crossed over and sat down opposite her.
"Anyway, remarkable. A perfect deduction, worthy of the brain of the First Legion."
"No. Until a moment ago, it wasn't perfect. But you admitted it, and so it became perfect."
"……Well. You got me."
Playing the fool, he stole a glance at the paper lying on the table. Whatever she had been scribbling all through their talk was Hestia's own last will and testament.
"I got caught too, so let's call it a draw."
"……"
He looked away as if it were nothing, and Hestia folded the page and tucked it into her clothes.
"You could have finished reading."
"I don't have a hobby of peeking at other people's secrets."
"So you aren't entirely without manners."
Hestia smiled, faint and brief, leaned back against the chair, and closed her eyes.
"In any case, killing me will do you no good. The legion will move as planned, and you and your subordinates will die. Even if you know the path of a storm, you cannot turn it from its course."
"Pfft. Why would I kill the strategist?"
"……It's useless, even if you offer me hope. I won't cling to anything."
"What are you even saying. I'm seriously not going to kill you."
If she died, Valkan's eyes would roll straight back in his head. Valkan turning dark meant the difficulty would spike, and for him — already struggling hard enough to drop dead — that was an obstacle he absolutely had to avoid. My goal is a kidnapping. Nothing more. Of course, until the Hero's Party marched home he would have to make it look as though she were dead, but before Valkan blackened he would go to him, clear up the misunderstanding, and give her back.
"So let's just be on our way."
He had shaken out Dalan's pockets and bought a new hideout all the way out at the Golden Dragon's base, precisely so he would have somewhere to keep her.
He stepped up to where Hestia sat and reached out to help her up.
Tap!
Hestia's eyes flew open. She seized his wrist and yanked him toward her.
"Yes. Let's just be on our way."
Only once they were close enough for a faint scent of lavender to reach him did he realize it. The pen that had been resting on the table was gripped in her right hand like a dagger.
His torso pitched forward. The sharp nib of the pen came knifing up beneath his jaw. And—
"But I won't be going alone."
A beautiful face drawing nearer along with death, as if she had resolved herself to something utterly. Like most people, he nearly handed over his life, drunk for an instant on that beauty — but he had always kept something far more precious than that deep in his heart, and so, by a hair's breadth, he twisted his neck clear of the pen and whispered at her ear.
"Then let's go together."
"……Eek!!"
He lifted her slender body in a single motion and slung her over his shoulder like a sack.
Thump, thump.
Only then, as if every trick she had prepared had finally run dry, did Hestia flail and shout.
"You wicked man!! You vile man!! You mean to kill me in front of my family!! You mean to shove a daughter's corpse into her parents' faces!!"
Good grief. The things she was saying were far more wicked and vile than he was.
"Nnngh……!! Isn't anyone there?! Damn it, if only my legs would move!!"
"……Even then, I think I would have caught you easily."
"Y-you piece of trash!!"
Perhaps because she realized he meant it, her voice climbed even as her struggling grew tame. Only then did he have a gap to run, and he started slowly toward the window……
"Ugh. I'm dizzy."
"……?"
"I've got a fear of heights."
"……After you came in just fine?"
"Coming in, they helped me."
Getting in had been his own choice. Getting out was not, and so he decided on a frontal breakthrough.
"The main gate is that way, isn't it?"
"……"
"Guess so."
When she went quiet, that tended to mean yes. Ruby and Dalan are drawing their attention, so there ought to be relatively few troops on this side.
He held the now-silent Hestia as a hostage and opened the door with perfect confidence.
"I knew it was the young lady's room!!"
"What are you doing!! Call the rest of those bastards over here, every last one of them!!"
"A-rank knights, front line!! The rest of you, support from the rear or do whatever you have to — grab that bastard!!"
He was met with a seething mass of reinforcements.
"Goodbye, then."
He moved calmly, shut the door again, and asked the Hestia slung over his shoulder.
"What do we do?"
"……Why are you asking me?"
"Fair point."
He had hoped. Of course it went like that.
"I'd rather not hurt them, if I can help it."
"……?"
He had intruded because he had no choice, but he didn't want to leave even the injured behind if he could avoid it. The only skills he had, though, were Black Curtain, which laid on a terror frightful enough to kill, and Sunlight Flash, which simply killed you outright.
"Is it better to be scared to death, or just to die?"
"……The former, obviously."
"Right? I thought so."
He had meant to hold back as much as he could until finer control was within reach, but— Better than dying, or killing.
The moment the decision was made, he didn't linger over it. He opened the closed door.
"He's out, now!!"
"Save the young lady!!"
"Kill Black Wolf!!"
A force of fifty at the least packed the narrow corridor in tactical order and came crashing in, so—
"Pardon me."
"Eek?!"
"C-careful!! He's using the young lady as a shield!!"
"There you go."
He bought himself a second with a friend shield, shut his eyes, and called an image to mind. A box filled with smoke. A very tiny hole opening in it, and the smoke leaking out through that hole, so that people grew wary of the box and would not draw near.
Fear in the target(s) has been detected.
Black Curtain (Ex) activates.
A still image. That was all.
And when he opened his eyes again, the image training finished—
......
Not a single one of them was moving.