Even Within the Mansion’s Holiest Sanctuary
On the fifth floor of the mansion, in the most sacred sanctuary of all, the footsteps of an intruder who had no business being here rang out with brazen confidence.
“Then, since the upper floors are the Grand Duke’s private quarters...”
With Gareth’s indifferent instruction, the strange woman brought from the capital, Helena, stepped lightly onto the stairs leading up to the fourth floor—the innermost sanctuary of the Grand Duke’s household.
Rebecca watched the sight with a blue-white fire burning in her chest.
How... how. Why...
Her husband was allowing another woman not merely onto the third floor, where the guest rooms were located, but into the private space above it, where only the Grand Duke’s bloodline and his closest retainers were meant to stay.
“...Now, this way is the study and the reception room.”
Rebecca gathered the last of her pride as Grand Duchess and forced herself to smile with dignity while showing the woman around the mansion.
But she could not find the same warm, lively voice she had used when guiding Bayle through the house.
She was trembling.
Her eyes, her lips, her voice.
Rebecca’s gaze kept darting past Helena, who was looking around the mansion, and toward the husband standing at her side, Gareth.
Resentment and betrayal surged up inside her.
And she could not bring herself to believe it.
But Gareth, ignoring his wife’s pitiful gaze, averted his eyes from Rebecca with a hardened expression.
The moment she confirmed that, the rage surging in Rebecca’s chest finally rose high enough to block her throat.
“.......”
She could not continue the tour.
Rebecca bit down hard on her lip, then turned her eyes toward her one and only daughter, Veronica, who was staring up at her with a lost expression.
No. I can’t let her see me fall apart.
The maternal instinct that refused to lean on her daughter or show weakness steadied her will.
Rebecca drew a deep breath and spoke in a deliberately firm voice.
“Guests will be arriving this evening to celebrate Veronica’s birthday, so... Sir Karin, it would be best to hold swordsmanship lessons this morning.”
She was trying, by any means possible, to get her daughter away from this dreadful, icy atmosphere.
But her thoughtless husband, the Grand Duke, abruptly cut in.
“No, my lady. Why not have luncheon together with Helena, introduce yourselves properly, and have a pleasant chat... If guests are coming tonight, is there any need to hold sword lessons now?”
“Please. Sir Karin, Sir Bayle.”
Rebecca cut her husband off without mercy.
Then she looked back and forth between Bayle and Karin, sending them a pleading glance.
Please. Protect Veronica...
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Still, since we have a guest, wouldn’t it be rude for me not to remain, my lady?”
I interrupted with a kind, agreeable smile.
I had meant to step into this miserable luncheon so I could at least act as a buffer and help Rebecca, who was trying to endure the whole appalling situation alone.
At the very least, I wanted to make it difficult for Helena to treat the Grand Duchess lightly.
But Rebecca shook her head.
“Please... Sir Bayle. I beg you.”
There were clear tears gathering in her eyes as she looked at me.
Faced with a mother’s unyielding resolve—to prevent, above all else, her innocent daughter from being swept into the moment when she herself was falling apart—I could not insist any longer.
“...Very well, my lady.”
As I lowered my head and stepped back, even Grand Duke Gareth fell silent, his conscience apparently pricked by his wife’s attitude; he shut his mouth like a man with honey in it and did not say another word.
I exchanged a look with Karin, then carefully wrapped an arm around Veronica’s stiff little shoulders.
“Come along, Your Highness. We’d better get some exercise in first thing this morning.”
Karin also took the princess’s other hand firmly, and together we hurried Veronica away toward the training grounds.
Once we were out of the Grand Duke’s castle, the clear morning sunlight and the peaceful birdsong greeted us.
But even that serene scene could not melt the frost in Veronica’s heart.
Step, step.
On the way to the training yard, Veronica kept glancing back over her shoulder.
It seemed she could still see, framed beyond the open entrance far behind us, her mother Rebecca guiding Helena up the fourth-floor stairs, pressing trembling hands against her skirt to hide them.
In the end, the tears she had been holding back fell in a single, trembling drop.
“Hic...”
The child could not even cry out loud. She simply clutched her beloved rabbit plush toy in both arms and let the tears drip, one by one.
“My birthday is... almost here... but Mother is crying...”
A guest had arrived on the eve of the most joyful, most eagerly awaited tenth birthday party of her life.
And the poor little princess had felt, in full, the sorrow of her mother collapsing because of that guest.
...Jesus, this is insane.
My heart felt as though it were being torn apart as I looked down at those wounded little shoulders.
Karin, walking silently beside me, was frowning deeply and gripping the hilt at her waist so tightly her knuckles must have hurt, barely restraining her anger.
We had to do something—anything—to ease this gloomy mood and turn the child’s attention elsewhere.
And we also needed to lay the groundwork for dealing with Helena from the capital and the schemes that must lie behind her, through Gawain.
“Um, both of you.”
I lowered my voice and called to Karin and Veronica.
“From now on, when other guests come to the castle... especially that Helena woman from earlier, please tell them I’m still an illiterate and can’t read a thing. I think that would be best. Please tell the Grand Duke that too.”
Veronica, still sniffling, blinked up at me with round eyes at my completely abrupt request.
“Why...? Uncle Bayle, even though Mother scolds you every day, you’ve worked so hard that now you can read all the fairy tales, haven’t you?”
Huh, I went from Scar Uncle to Uncle Bayle. Nice!
Even while she was on the verge of tears, the child still remembered my efforts.
“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m still me, does it?”
I smiled and gently patted Veronica on the head.
“And the princess noticed that I’ve been trying. That’s enough for me. Thank you, Your Highness. But sometimes it’s much more useful to look like a brute who doesn’t know his letters.”
Understanding the hidden meaning behind my words, Karin nodded.
“Understood. I will do as you wish.”
Veronica also wiped her tears with her sleeve, nodded, and sniffled.
“...Okay. I’ll spread the rumor that Uncle Bayle’s an illiterate.”
Seeing the child’s mood brighten even a little, we finally reached the center of the spacious training yard covered in sand.
“.......”
As soon as we arrived, Karin came close to my side and whispered very quietly and secretly, “Today... let’s show the princess a proper duel.”
“A proper duel?”
“Yes. Didn’t we promise that we’d give the princess a Knight Investiture Ceremony as her birthday present in a few days? I want to prove to her today, beyond all doubt, that she has two knights she can proudly rely on.”
A silent comfort for a young lord who had been wounded by seeing her mother’s sorrow: a vow that the two of them would become the sword at her side for the rest of their lives.
“Very well.”
I nodded and walked to the middle of the training yard.
I was about to head toward the rack of practice wooden swords as usual, when I suddenly stopped in my tracks.
Then I laid my hand over the hilt of the real sword at my right hip—the one that had essentially been there for display.
Shrrk—
“...!”
When I drew the steel blade from its scabbard, Karin’s eyes across from me widened.
But then—
Shing!
Karin, too, drew her real sword from her hip.
We stood in ordinary clothes, without a scrap of armor.
And between us, there was only the sharp steel of blades meant to kill.
Veronica, sitting on a bench and watching, flinched so hard she sprang to her feet.
“N-no! You should use wooden swords! What if you both get hurt?”
The little princess tried frantically to stop us, but neither Karin nor I lowered the tips of our swords.
We had made no prior agreement at all.
And yet, burdened by the heavy resolve that the Knight Investiture Ceremony we would give the princess had to be worthy of true knights, both of us were driven to draw real blades at the same time.
“Don’t worry, Your Highness.”
I smiled, raising the flat of my sword upright.
“We are the princess’s knights. We’re not so weak that we’d be injured just by touching each other’s blades.”
Karin also angled her sword downward and flashed a sharp-eyed glance.
“Please watch closely, Your Highness, and see how heavy and how keen the swords that protect you truly are.”
Clang—!
Blade met blade.
The life-and-death duel to prove our strength as the princess’s escort knights had begun.
“Huu...”
I let out a deep breath and lowered my point.
This was a real duel, with no armor.
And in a situation where we were using real swords, thrusting was effectively taboo.
Slashes could be read and deflected or knocked aside by the flat of the blade, but a thrust was different; its force ran in a straight line, and if the opponent could not avoid it, it would pierce straight through the torso. It was the sort of killing blow made for actual battle.
But...
I survived the Wall with this one thrust.
For a year, on the freezing Wall, it had been my strongest and only weapon, the one I had repeated more than ten thousand times while taking the lives of outsiders.
If it’s Karin... if it’s Karin, the teacher who trained me and the woman who will one day become the Empire’s strongest swordmaster... she’ll match my most confident thrust.
I placed my trust in Karin and stamped the ground hard.
Taaat—!
And without the slightest hesitation, I drove a thrust straight toward Karin’s heart.
Fwoosh—!
In the instant before the blade could land, Karin’s eyes flashed fiercely.
Without so much as blinking, she twisted her waist just a little and, with a sidelong glance, read the line of my incoming strike.
Then, using only a soft snap of her wrist, she struck the side of my blade sharply with the flat of her own sword.
Ka-aang—!!
Having let my thrusting force slide away completely, Karin immediately slipped into the opening left by my missed line and cut downward diagonally.
Chaeng—!
I pulled my body back as I had been taught and knocked aside Karin’s slash with the spine of my sword.
Once again, the clash of steel rang out as the two blades met.
“Haah!”
“Hup!”
Only rough breaths and the sharp, cracking sounds of colliding steel filled the training yard.
A savage exchange that looked like each of us was trying to take the other’s life.
But beneath that, there was a flow of swordplay built on trust—on reading each other’s lines, on refusing to truly wound the other, and yet still drawing out one’s own combat ability to its utmost.
“...Ah.”
A low sound escaped Veronica’s lips as she watched from the bench, holding her breath.
The gloom and tears from the morning had already vanished.
Her purple eyes were now filled only with awe at the two knights scattering dust and flinging sparks of sword aura as they fought.
Her teacher, on whom she could always rely.
And the knight who, rough-edged though he was, always made space beside him with unchanging kindness.
The fact that these two steadfast blades would protect her side for the rest of her life was building a solid wall inside the little princess’s heart, driving away her fear.
And yet.
Already within the walls of the Grand Duke’s castle.
In the corridor on the fifth floor of the Grand Duke’s castle...
In the most noble sanctuary of the mansion, the one place within the castle where only the Arteta ducal family—and even then only the household head’s personal permission—was allowed to set foot.
The footsteps of an intruder who had absolutely no business being here were ringing out with shameless composure.
“Oh my, this room is so cozy and lovely. Thank you for taking such good care of me, Your Grace.”
Led by Grand Duke Gareth and assigned a vacant room at the far end of the fifth floor, Helena smiled brightly and spoke in a coquettish tone, as though she had come to a gathering of noble young ladies.