The Expensive Sword
The door opened. The silver hair descended first. The torchlight turned the strands a brilliant white, and the clamor around the campfire subsided like a receding wave. She wore traveling clothes. No dress, no jewels. Yet all forty mercenaries held their breath at once. Status wasn’t carried in clothing—it was in the way she walked.
“……Hey, hey, Kyle.” Hugo jabbed him in the side. “That’s… no way… the Northern Grand Duke’s daughter? Your, uh, that person?”
Kyle didn’t answer. There was no need. The gaze of the person who had stepped down from the carriage skipped over the noise, the barrels, and the forty faces in a single sweep, landing precisely on one spot.
“Who the hell is that? A noble. And a really high-ranking one……”
“Hey, look at those escort riders. They’re in plain clothes but their posture screams soldier.”
“Northern accent. They came from the North.”
The mercenaries’ murmurs settled low over the campfire. From the direction of the warehouse, Dorte pulled Fin back by the shoulder and muttered.
“……Even a two-silver-coin escort life sure gets noisy.”
“Captain, do you know that person?”
“Don’t know her. But I think I can guess. If the woman in the world who looks for someone with eyes like that isn’t the Grand Duke’s daughter from the resignation letter rumor, I’ll quit this business for good.”
“Kyle.”
The name was called a second time. Three months ago in the banquet hall, the voice had trembled. Now it was hoarse. The voice of someone who had ridden a carriage for a full fortnight. Kyle heard the difference, and having heard it, let it pass. Fatigue was fair to everyone.
“Your Highness.”
Kyle dropped to one knee. The mercenary company stirred. The monster who had felled the Axe Demon in a single exchange, the hero who had saved forty-three lives, was now kneeling on the dirt floor without even brushing off the dust of battle. Hugo started to say “Hey, hey……” but closed his mouth. The way Elise’s face grew one shade paler was something Kyle, with his gaze lowered, did not see.
It was etiquette drilled into his body over ten years. Even after resigning, status was still status. If he disrespected the Grand Duke’s daughter in front of forty comrades, it would be the mercenary company that suffered the consequences.
“Don’t do that.”
“……”
“Stand up. Please.”
The word please hung awkwardly at the end of an imperative. It was the awkwardness of someone pronouncing a word she had never used in her life. Kyle rose. As he stood, he lowered his gaze out of habit—and then—
“Look at me.”
He raised his eyes. Five steps away stood Elise von Wallenstein. The face he now met directly for the second time had been worn down in the three months since their last encounter. The line of her cheeks had grown sharper, and shadows lay beneath her eyes. It seemed her new escort selection had been rather shoddy.
“I will be imposing on the captain for a moment. I have something to discuss with this man.”
Vargas rose from his barrel and gave only a slight nod. It was the most disrespectful greeting one could offer a grand duchess, and at the same time, a clear demonstration that she was one of their own and not to be touched. Elise did not reproach the rudeness. Far from it—she even dipped her head slightly in return. She had become someone who now understood that rudeness in defense of one’s people was no rudeness at all.
“Hey, hey. Shouldn’t we follow them? Is it okay to let them go alone?”
“Hugo.”
“What?”
“What exactly would you do if you went?”
“……Fair point. Cheer them on? Who, though?”
Hugo choked on his own question and fell silent.
The embankment was far from the campfire and therefore dark. Walter and the escorts remained by the carriage. When Walter’s eyes met Kyle’s, he gave a small shrug. The single gesture contained I’m sorry, it can’t be helped, and handle this well all at once.
Only the sound of water flowed for a long time.
“I heard you entered the canyon.”
Elise spoke first. “A place where those who enter do not come out. The hunters’ guild has given up on it, and the lord is considering sealing it off. After receiving Walter’s report, I… for a full fortnight.”
She chose her words carefully. In the end, she did not say what she had done for that entire fortnight.
“Why did you go in? I heard it wasn’t even a request. A place that brings in no money—why?”
“There was something I needed to confirm.”
“What?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“……It was a place where you could have died.”
“My life has belonged to me since the day my resignation letter was approved. I may use it however I wish.”
The words it was not approved rose in Elise’s throat and sank back down. She did not want to use that document in such a way.
“……I heard there was a subjugation. Are you injured anywhere?”
“No.”
“They were called Grey-eyed Monsters. Reports have begun coming in from the North as well. The border guards say they saw the same—”
“Your Highness.”
Kyle cut her off. Then, with precision, he asked, “State your business. It is no small matter for the Grand Duke’s daughter to abandon her territory and cross the border. Matters concerning monster movements can be handled by messenger.”
Elise’s hand tightened on her hem. She must have prepared words. Over a fortnight in a carriage, she would have revised them a thousand times. Yet those words would not come. After standing there for a long moment, she reached into her bosom and drew out a single sheet of paper. Three lines. The edges were worn.
I, Kyle, hereby resign from my position as escort knight to Her Highness Elise von Wallenstein.
“I did not approve the resignation letter.”
“I know. Please stamp your seal. Then it will be finished.”
“Finished.”
Elise rolled the word around in her mouth. Then she lifted her head.
“What if I do not wish to finish it?”
“……”
“Come back. No.”
The imperative crumbled midway. She swallowed her own words and began again from the beginning. As clumsily as someone learning the sword for the first time.
“Could you not… come back? Whether it’s salary, a title, anything you want—no, that’s not it either. This isn’t about value……”
“Your Highness.”
Kyle spoke quietly,tidy the matter. “If you have a vacancy in your escort, hire a mercenary. I am expensive.”
The sound of water filled the pause.
“……Expensive?”
“My price has gone up. Today’s subjugation earned me three shares of the lord’s reward, and I also have a stake in the company. The Grand Duke’s salary would not balance the books.”
It was a lie. Using practical talk as a shield was an old habit of his. While discussing work, he did not have to speak of anything else.
“I told you this is not about money.”
“Then what is it about?”
“……”
“If it is a matter of His Highness the Crown Prince’s dignity, I understand. It must look bad for his former fiancée’s old escort to be rolling around in a mercenary company. If you wish me to go farther away, I will head even farther south. If it is a matter of managing the Grand Duke’s people, do not worry about my mouth. I will take ten years’ worth of internal affairs to the grave.”
Each word was precise, and because it was precise, it was a blade. Elise realized, taking every slash, that in this man’s world there were only two places where she could stand: as master, or as a threat. Because those were the only two positions she had taught him in ten years.
“I broke the engagement.”
Kyle’s eyebrows moved for the first time.
“I broke the engagement with the Crown Prince. One month ago. I will bear the pressure from the imperial family. So matters of dignity—”
“That was reckless.”
“……What?”
“I know the marriage was arranged because the North needed ties to the imperial family. Breaking it severs those ties and earns the imperial family’s resentment. The loss to the Grand Duke’s house is enormous. Why would you make such a blunder—”
“What use is an engagement without you!”
Her voice struck the embankment. Kyle took the sentence, turned it once, and fitted it into the proper slot. It wasn’t difficult. A wedding procession was the empire’s greatest escort challenge. The route stretched a thousand li to the capital, thousands of guests, and infinite threats. Having to plan it without a tenth-year exclusive escort—naturally it would have become so troublesome that the engagement lost all meaning. It seemed the crime of the head of security running away had been greater than expected.
“……If it is about escorting the procession, the preliminary draft of the plan is in the knight order’s archives. I prepared it three years ago in case of emergencies—”
“This is not about escorting!”
The escorts by the carriage all turned to look, then turned away again at Walter’s gesture. Elise stood with a face shocked by her own voice. After traveling a thousand li, the answer she received was an escort plan. Her face showed she had run out of both the strength to be angry and the words to explain. The thousand-times-revised order of her words had completely collapsed. And from the ruins, the deepest words inside came out exactly as they were.
“I’m sorry.”
“……”
“I know I must apologize for ten years. For blocking your knighting, for assigning you to outer wall sentry duty, for stationing you outside the banquet hall doors, for never… never once calling your name. I know all of it. I’m sorry I realized it so late. Not because I didn’t know, but because I knew and still did it— that makes me even sorrier.”
The apology was precise. She listed every offense one by one and offered no excuses. Then she drew something from inside her collar. A leather cord. At its end hung a Wolf Tooth, catching the distant light of the campfire and glowing faintly.
“You… left this behind.”
Kyle’s gaze lingered on the tooth for a moment.
“It is a discarded item.”
“I know. I also know what it is. The one you carved yourself in your first year as an apprentice. The one you said you would wear as proof on the day you were knighted.”
It was a story she had never heard from the old kitchen woman or from Walter. Yet she knew it. Kyle did not know where to place that fact, so he set it in its usual spot.
“The servants have loose lips. I will need to tighten discipline.”
“……I wanted to return it. No, that’s a lie too.”
Elise tightened her grip on the tooth.
“I wanted to keep it. Until the day you were knighted. I wanted to… put it on you with my own hands that day. I know I have no right. After all, I was the one who blocked that knighting.”
The apology was precise, and the confession went even further. So Kyle understood all of it in his own way.
“……I understand.”
“Kyle—”
“Given the dignity of the Grand Duke’s house, it is only proper procedure to reclaim someone you once cast out once they have made a name for themselves outside. Since you have even apologized, the Grand Duke’s house has fulfilled all its obligations. You may return and stamp the seal. I am fine. I hold no resentment.”
“That is not what I—”
“Your Highness.”
For the last time, and for the first time, Kyle asked what he had always wanted to ask.
“For ten years, I was a sword. Did you not say so with your own mouth? A sword to be discarded when it grows old from use. No one apologizes to a sword they have thrown away. Therefore this apology is not for me, but for Your Highness yourself. Please lighten your guilt. That much I can give you.”
He bowed. Exactly the same angle as in the banquet hall.
“Have a safe journey on the long road ahead.”
He turned. Behind him came the sound of clothing collapsing. The sound of knees striking the dirt of the embankment. The sound of the Grand Duke’s daughter’s knees buckling behind the back of a former commoner escort.
“Don’t go…… don’t go, please……”
Kyle did not stop. If he stopped, he felt he would turn around, and if he turned around—he did not know what lay beyond that. He did not walk paths he did not know. That was how he had survived for ten years.
At the bottom of the embankment, Walter stood as if blocking the way.
“……You’re really leaving like this.”
“Make your report accurately. The canyon matter will be sent up as an official document from the lord. Tell the Northern border to prepare for the Grey-eyed Monsters as well.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Aside from that, I have nothing to give you.”
Walter raised his hand as if to grab Kyle by the collar, but in the end only gave his shoulder one rough thump.
“……I’ve watched you for ten years, and today is the first time I’ve found you detestable.”
Kyle did not slow his steps even at those words. Therefore he did not see it.
He did not see Elise von Wallenstein sitting collapsed on the dirt, clutching the worn resignation letter with both hands, letting out the sobs she had held back even behind the greenhouse at age twelve. Nor did he see how the sound of the embankment’s water covered those sobs together with her.