The Trial (2)
Princess Kaziah, the eldest Imperial Princess and heir to the throne, had not set foot in high society for years.
Her relationship with Noel, her official fiancé, had grown so cold that the Empress had seized the opening to stir up all of the Imperial Capital in an effort to expand the influence of her own sons.
That Kaziah, who had kept to the shadows all this while, would suddenly appear at a trial — it was hardly surprising that people were stunned.
"Princess Kaziah, huh..."
Somehow, the sound of that name felt both familiar and utterly foreign to him.
But then, it would have to. It belonged to the person who had once been betrothed to a boy — the young heir of House Aramis — back when he was still a child.
Jeez.
Kallen simply scattered the creeping distraction before it could take root.
Betrothal or not, they'd never so much as properly met face to face.
And after he'd failed to draw the sword, even that had quietly dissolved into nothing.
As far as he was concerned now, she was a complete stranger, and there was no reason to waste thoughts on her.
"All of Caliburn's in an absolute frenzy over it. I mean, someone who's holed herself up for years suddenly showing her face. Well, I suppose it just goes to show how serious this whole affair is..."
Judith's chattering rattled on regardless.
"And that's not all. The Aten Church's main branch is sending high priests and demon hunters to sit on the jury. Every last one of them trembles with rage at the mere mention of demonic swords."
"Good grief..."
"The professors are discussing how to respond, but... let's be honest, it's a death sentence either way. There's nothing anybo— hyuk!"
Kallen's fist came down squarely on the head of the smirking Judith.
"How dare you...!"
Teary-eyed, Judith clutched the crown of her head and glared at him like she wanted him dead.
Kallen only flexed his hand open and shut, replying with complete indifference.
"Don't go saying things like that so carelessly."
"But it's true..."
"Tsk."
"..."
Judith's lips jutted out even further.
Kallen mulled it over for a moment, then let out a heavy sigh.
"Damn it. This is no time to be lying around doing nothing. I need to hurry... ngh."
The moment he stepped down from the bed, he seized at his chest and staggered.
Judith shot up in alarm and rushed to support him.
"N-no, you can't move yet! Your wounds could reopen—"
"I'm fine at this point."
Kallen waved her off, shaking his head as though it were nothing.
Judith simply could not understand this man.
"...What do you even think you can do? Her execution is already as good as decided."
Her cold voice rang out, desperate instead of cutting.
By now Judith had planted herself bodily in front of Kallen, blocking his path.
"She's the one who stabbed you, too — Forts. So why, why would you go this far for..."
"She's still my student, isn't she?"
And Kallen just chuckled, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I have to at least try something."
"E-even so... heeugh...!"
Mid-protest, Judith suddenly let out a high, catlike whimper.
"Anyway — thanks for nursing me, hm? Turns out you have a cute side after all."
At some point Kallen had turned her around, and his rough hand was now patting away just above Judith's hips, all but cupping them.
"A-aaah... hn...!"
Under that flagrantly, shamelessly lingering touch, Judith instead froze stiff, as though she'd been struck by a fainting spell.
"I'm off?"
"Y-you...! Wait...!"
Only then did she reach out for him, but Kallen was already waving and strolling out of the ward, far into the distance.
Judith could do nothing but stare blankly after his retreating back.
Long after he'd vanished, she stood there, biting down hard on her lip as his words sank in.
"My... student..."
Kallen flung open the door of the meeting room.
The professors, who had been deep in a busy flurry of discussion, all turned toward him at once.
"Professor Kallen! I was just about to go looking for you!"
Blithe, who had been groaning with her head in her hands, brightened visibly, rose from her seat, and came over to him.
"You've recovered faster than I expected. How are you feeling?"
"Oh, perfectly fine... hm?"
Kallen's head tilted quizzically as he waved a casual hand.
He'd caught, without quite meaning to, the strange undercurrent hanging in the meeting room — one aimed squarely at him.
Even Simon's glare, resentful as ever, seemed sharper today than usual.
As if she'd been waiting for this, Blithe clapped her hands together crisply and called out.
"Right! Now that the man himself is here, let's end the discussion here. Everyone else, please give your best to your own assigned duties!"
The professors rose and drained out of the chaotic meeting room like an ebbing tide.
In an instant only Blithe and Kallen remained, and he spoke up, bewildered.
"'The man himself'? What on earth is that supposed to..."
"Listen carefully, Professor Kallen."
For once, Blithe's face was serious as she began.
"Garnet Forts... you do know her trial is being held here in Caliburn?"
"...I heard. A trial presided over by Her Highness the Princess."
Kallen answered carefully, recalling what Judith had told him.
"Elysion has no response prepared? She may have sinned, but surely we can't just leave her to be executed—"
"Shh. That's exactly what I'm about to explain."
Blithe pressed a finger to her lips and soothed him with practiced ease.
Kallen, who had been about to argue back on instinct, shut his mouth.
Once she'd confirmed his simmering indignation had settled, she continued in a gentle murmur.
"...The Headmistress has named you, Professor Kallen, as Elysion's representative at the trial."
"I'm sorry — what?"
"Every word you say and every action you take at that trial will become Elysion's official position. It is a very... heavy role."
"No, why me of all people? If it's that important, she could just do it herself..."
Bewildered by the announcement out of nowhere, Kallen could only stare.
Appearing as a witness would have been one thing — but he'd never once imagined he'd be made her legal representative.
"Lady Talisa is pouring every ounce of her strength into holding back the mana storm blowing in from the Illusion Realm. The moment she looks away, even for an instant, a hole will tear straight through Elysion's barrier."
"Good grief... still, this is a bit much..."
Kallen shook his head slowly, then glanced sidelong at Blithe and asked,
"...Wouldn't it be better to have her do it, in that case?"
"Her?"
"Professor Ziya. I can't stand her personality, but anyone could see she's far better suited to the role."
But Blithe only shook her head lightly.
"Professor Ziya is on sick leave. She won't be appearing at Elysion for several days, I'd imagine."
"...I'm sorry, sick leave? In the middle of all this?"
Kallen's jaw dropped.
He might have gotten away with it, but the image of Professor Ziya slack-ing off was one he couldn't begin to picture — not even a fragment of it.
"That woman? That iron-willed woman? Good lord, now I've seen everything... though I did wonder why she wasn't around earlier..."
"...To be honest, it surprised me too."
Blithe rested her chin on her hand, wearing a strangely dissatisfied expression, and murmured,
"Right up until yesterday she was storming about swearing she'd file a formal protest with the Aten Church. Apparently even she took quite a shock..."
"Hm..."
"Everything's in chaos. Professor Ziya, the one person with any sense, is on sick leave... and now the trial's suddenly being presided over by that Princess Kaziah of all people..."
It went without saying that Professor Ziya had stormed out of the meeting room after furiously objecting to the decision to make Kallen Elysion's representative — but Blithe saw no need to mention that part.
The female professor's gaze turned once more, directly, upon Kallen.
"None of us want to believe Garnet truly fell that far. But it's also true that the evidence is damning. Attacking her fellow students was bad enough — she used the demonic sword's power to defile the spring and even opened a rift..."
"..."
"You're the only one at Elysion who saw the scene with his own eyes. Lady Talisa knows that, which is why she chose you as representative."
Her earnest voice carried a genuine, aching concern for both Elysion and Garnet.
"Can you really... do this?"
"..."
A professorship and students he'd never asked for, dumped in his lap.
Among all the things that made his life a nuisance, Garnet Forts had proven singularly persistent and singularly troublesome.
And Kallen had already repaid even her debt in full.
He'd stopped her body from being seized by the demonic sword and turned into a rabid killer — as a professor, one could argue he'd long since done more than his duty.
"Well. Go ahead and give it to me, then."
But with his trademark lazy smile, Kallen somehow found himself nodding.
There was no walking away now.
Duty — it was the only value left propping up a man who had lost everything.
Even shouldering the demonic sword that constantly tried to devour its master, gritting his teeth and sinking deeper into debt, had all been for that same purpose.
And Garnet had already become his duty.
Besides — her parent had asked him for this personally.
For Kallen to betray that request was simply unthinkable.
"Causing a scene is my specialty."
He said it with a crooked grin.
The windowless cell was black as the bottommost pit of hell.
The guttering candle flame revealed little more than the dim outline of the bars.
"..."
Her hands bound in iron chains, Garnet swayed where she sat, staring vacantly at the filthy stone wall.
Even the passage of time had grown blurred and uncertain.
Then, without warning, the cell door wrenched open, and a brusque voice urged her along.
"It's time, traitor."
"..."
Garnet slowly turned her head.
The eyes of the paladin assigned to escort the prisoner brimmed with nothing but thick, curdled disgust.
It was a gaze she knew all too well by now.
Without a word of protest, she dragged her chained feet forward.
Clang...
On and on they went, down a long, damp corridor.
With a blindfold over her eyes she couldn't know where they were taking her, but a moment's thought made it obvious.
After walking a long while, the paladins escorting Garnet forced her down into a seat somewhere and finally tore the blindfold from her head.
"...Ngh."
The searing flood of light made her squeeze her eyes shut on reflex — she had spent so long in a dungeon where not a single ray ever fell.
And when her vision finally sharpened, the scene spread out before her drew a hollow gasp from her lips.
"Ah..."
A vast hall, drenched in brilliant sunlight, was packed to bursting with people.
High priests of the Aten Church, demon hunters, paladins, the Imperial Guard — even the local luminaries had turned out.
One thing bound every one of these wildly different people together.
Their hostility toward her.
"..."
There was not a single soul in that hall who did not harbor it.
Even the Elysion students seated in the gallery wore expressions of venomous fear and loathing as they looked at her.
And how could they not?
Today's trial had been convened to punish the wretched sinner who had heeded a demonic sword's whisper and sought to paint the world red.
"Told you she'd show her true colors..."
"What else would you expect from a traitor's blood..."
Amid the familiar murmurings, Garnet instinctively turned her head, searching the crowd for someone.
But she soon swallowed a bitter laugh and let her head drop to the floor.
As if he'd be here...
She couldn't imagine why that man's face would surface at a moment like this.
Through all the commotion, the ornate seat of honor at the far end of the hall remained conspicuously empty.
Curiosity about its owner was soon answered.
"Her Imperial Highness Kaziah, First Princess of the Empire, enters."
Behind her came the groan of the great arched doors swinging wide, and a wave of footsteps poured in.
Escorted by the Imperial Knights to the blare of mighty trumpets appeared a woman, her face veiled, pale-silver hair cascading down in lavish waves.
Even the arrogantly proud priests of the Aten Church rose from their seats and bowed in silent tribute.
They had no choice.
Before them stood one whose destiny had been fixed as noble from the moment of her birth.
Someone who could not be compared, not even remotely, to Garnet — writhing like a filthy worm in the mud.
Princess Kaziah was to preside over today's trial.
By her verdict, Garnet's fate, too, would be decided.
Garnet held no expectations whatsoever.
She knew better than anyone the sin she had committed.
Perhaps she had taken up the demonic sword unknowing — but in the end, it was she who had surrendered to its whispers and driven her fellow students and the exam officials to the very brink of death.
Princess Kaziah was famously inflexible, a stickler for rules down to the letter.
Rumor even held that it was precisely that temperament which had brought her engagement to Noel, the Sword's Successor, to ruin.
Someone like that would never forgive a traitor guilty of high crimes against the realm.
"It really is the Princess..."
"How can anyone carry themselves with such grace..."
Even the gallery buzzed with excited voices at the sight of the Princess appearing in an official capacity for the first time in years.
Behind the seated Princess, a single handmaiden and a single knight of the Imperial Guard stood flanking her like personal guards.
And then, as the Princess swept her gaze over her surroundings, it came to rest, unblinking, on a certain empty seat.
"Where is Elysion's representative?"
At the clear, resonant voice from behind the veil, a trial official dropped to his knees in a fluster.
"We... we have not yet..."
"Tch. So negligent, the one entrusted with a representative's duty... Don't tell me he's run off because he saw the battle was already lost."
Her clicking tongue dripped with unmistakable displeasure.
"There is truly no man more pitiful. Seat the unqualified, and this is what you get."
As the Princess let loose her venom exactly as her reputation promised, a heavy pall settled over the courtroom.
To Garnet, all this talk of representatives meant nothing at all.
She only thought that if he had truly run, no one could blame him.
"...We cannot wait indefinitely on one who will not come."
With a light sigh, the Princess finally waved a hand and let fall her stately decree.
"Begin."
And so, at her word, Garnet's trial commenced at last.
The interrogator who stepped forward recited her charges in a voice cold as drawn steel.
Collusion with demon humans. Plotting the murder of students and exam officials. Conspiring to offer her soul to the Demon God — the accusations rolled on without end.
Evidence followed in a relentless stream.
The paladins who had spent years hunting the demon humans of War paraded out the severed head of the old woman who had sold Garnet the demonic sword.
The students attacked during the field exam testified, without omitting a single detail, to Garnet's every erratic behavior.
"She tried to stab me in the chest with her sword! If I hadn't thought fast and dodged, I'd be stone dead right now—"
Pas, the male student from the Swordsmanship Department, held forth at the top of his lungs.
A few students, Kayden among them, offered relatively neutral statements, but these were simply swept away, helpless, beneath the deluge of abuse hurled at Garnet.
She had been placed squarely in the middle of a well-rehearsed script.
And worn down to the last fiber, Garnet no longer had a shred of strength left to defend herself.
"...Therefore, we seek death by burning for Garnet Forts — the irredeemable traitor, the betrayer of the Empire."
The interrogator, drawing the charges to their conclusion, spoke with grim finality.
The hall erupted for an instant, but the Princess quelled it with a single gesture.
After a moment's deliberation, she turned to the high priest standing below the dais.
"Is burning not excessively cruel? Is there truly no duty to weigh even a scrap of extenuation?"
"We beg forgiveness for the reply, Your Highness, but doctrine permits no such mercy."
The high priest presiding at the trial — Seden, once an inquisitor of heretics in his youth, his face wearing a genial softness — bowed his head to Princess Kaziah.
Guarding him behind, keeping a security detail tight as a drum, stood Iron Arm Enrak, the man who had lost his hand over a decade ago in Talonde, trying to stop the traitor Nigel.
"She is a criminal of the highest order who sought to awaken a demonic sword — the Tessak of Wrath itself. Burning is, without question, the fitting sentence."
"And yet no Apostle was ever born. I heard the Tessak, too, was found broken in the paladins' hands."
"That chain of cause and effect has yet to be established, Your Highness. And even had she escaped calamity by sheer fortune, the process itself cannot be absolved."
The high priest pressed his argument with a stubbornness that belied his kindly face.
"Furthermore, she is the blood of that traitor Nigel. Once a man commits such an act, who is to say he will not commit it twice? Left alive, there is no telling what fresh, insidious scheme she might weave..."
"...I see."
The Princess's lips, faintly visible beneath her veil, were somehow pressed into a hard line.
The entire hall held its breath, waiting on her decision alone.
Garnet, head bowed low, simply closed her eyes in resignation.
So this... is how it ends.
The restoration of her honor — the vow she'd made when she entered Elysion — no longer had any path to fulfillment.
If anything, she had discovered there was a floor beneath the floor.
There was no one to blame.
Everything that had brought her to this day sprang from her own dull-wittedness.
"...Haha."
A hollow laugh spilled from the corner of her twisted mouth.
That some lingering attachment should remain even now was, frankly, absurd.
...I only wanted to talk a little longer. To ask about Father, too...
She couldn't explain why that man — the one she'd couldn't stand the sight of — should burn so piercingly vivid in her memory at a time like this.
Though of course, regret that comes too late is worth nothing at all.
"...I will now render my verdict."
At last, the Princess rose from her seat, her deliberation concluded.
Her gaze, hazy behind the veil, fell directly upon Garnet below.
"Considering all that the criminal Garnet Forts has done, one could well say that even burning would be no excessive punishment."
The moment Garnet's pale, wavering fate finally came into sharp focus.
The hall seethed hotter than ever before.
Garnet did not so much as twitch, silently accepting the sentence.
Once more, Princess Kaziah raised a hand and stilled the clamor.
"And yet, notwithstanding all of this—"
She paused deliberately, about to continue—
when a faint commotion from beyond the hall's doors drew steadily closer, as though someone were wrestling with the guards.
BOOM!
Suddenly, with a resounding crash, the great arched doors swung limply open on both sides, shuddering on their hinges.
"Hold on a second!"
It was, somehow, a very familiar voice.
Garnet's head turned of its own accord, and her eyes flew wide open.
The very person she had just been thinking of.
The one she had been glancing about for, aching, only moments ago.
"Hahh — hoo — dammit, why is every hallway in this place a labyrinth...!"
Emerging over the fallen guards was Professor Kallen, shirt collar flapping as he gulped down air in great heaves.
"..."
It was a grand entrance, as though he were the star of the proceedings.
As if he'd timed it deliberately, the crowd's hostile gazes — until that moment raining down on Garnet — swiveled to him in an instant.
"...Whew."
Catching his breath, Kallen stepped slowly into the silent hall.
Amid all the confusion, Garnet could only stare at him, dazed with disbelief.
His approaching gaze, too, found Garnet at the center of the courtroom.
When their eyes met, Kallen simply wore his usual teasing, flippant smile at the corner of his mouth.
Then he stepped boldly forward, positioning himself as though to shield her.
"Apologies for the delay. Elysion's representative at this trial — the name is Kallen."