Sharle Millote (2)
This was a difficult situation.
I didn't know why, but I was the accused and the two of them were my judges. Tea and refreshments were promptly laid out on the table, yet the atmosphere in the parlor remained heavy.
Irelphi and Sharle sat pressed close together across from me, and Irelphi looked thoroughly worn out.
"So... Lady Millote?"
"Sharle. I hate being called by my family name. Drop the 'Lady,' too."
"Aren't you being a little too familiar?"
I knew nothing of this world's etiquette, but was it really proper to call someone by their given name the moment you met them?
"Nepi, just do as she says."
Irelphi offered her advice in a tone of complete resignation. Sharle raised her voice as though she'd witnessed something heaven-shaking.
"Ne~pi!? What are you saying, Elphi? What, are you two already so 'close' that you're on a first-name basis?"
"...You're hardly one to talk, Sharle."
It was an uncharacteristic grumble from Irelphi, who was always so unshakable. A genuinely rare sight.
"I'm special, so it's fine!"
"Haah..."
Irelphi sighed, pressing a hand to her forehead. I turned to Sharle, who was glaring belligerently at me.
"Fine, Sharle. What I'm curious about is how I supposedly blocked Irelphi's path to marriage—"
"Justiha."
Sharle's eyes flashed with murderous intensity.
"...What exactly do you mean, you blocked Duke Jus. Ti. Ha's path to marriage?"
At my words, Irelphi waved her hands in visible panic.
"Ne-Nepi! You don't really need to know about—"
"Alteon."
"...Duke Al. Te. On has no need to know."
In this country, does a count's daughter hold more power than a duke or a Founding Noble?
The scene was so incomprehensible I could almost believe it. Sharle's gaze still regarded me the way one regards lowly filth.
"See here, Duke. I don't know how you seduced Elphi with that half-decent face of yours, but even scandal-mongering has its limits!"
"I'm half-decent? Really?"
"Nep— Alteon, that is not the point right now."
"Ah, yeah. Right, it isn't."
Distracted by the unexpected thrill of a compliment(?), I'd let the point slip right past me. Still—a scandal, huh...
"Me? With Ir... Justiha?"
Who in their right mind would spend a honeymoon with a Godzilla of a monster that had once sliced its own body in two? The impulse to ask her that outright was almost overwhelming.
"Sharle, it's a misunderstanding, obviously. Nep... Alteon and I aren't like that."
"Obviously. But the whole world already sees you two as a provisional married couple!"
"No, hold on, I can't follow this conversation. Is that really something people care about so much?"
It wasn't like we were celebrities...
Sharle stared holes through me, utterly dumbfounded. It was the look one reserves for a savage. Then she slammed her palm down on the table and unburdened herself with fervor.
Thud!
"Do you have any idea what kind of woman Elphi is? The White Knight of the Empire, the Lake of the Moon, the White-Bladed Beauty—her epithets are beyond counting, and mmph—!"
"Please, stop, Sharle!"
Irelphi's face, as she clamped a hand over Sharle's mouth, looked as though lava ran in her veins instead of blood. Her crimson cheeks stood out against that snow-white hair, accentuated far beyond any reasonable necessity.
Between the sight of Irelphi and the sheer absurdity of those titles, my lips wouldn't stop twitching.
"So the fa~mous White Knight living under the same roof as me is the problem, then."
"I am not the White Knight!"
There was something faintly adorable about Irelphi's desperate denial. Honestly, if she weren't a trauma-manufacturing machine, wouldn't I have spent all my days gazing blankly at her too?
She was a beauty peerless under heaven—enough to make the hypothesis feel entirely plausible. Small wonder the world's attention was fixed on her.
"Justiha. How far am I allowed to take this?"
I asked pointedly, and on purpose.
"I don't know either. It seems this will require discussion on several fronts."
In other words, I would need to sit down with the Emperor again. Naturally, Sharle caught on that some circumstance was being withheld from her.
"Elphi... is it something you find hard to tell me?"
"Sharle."
Her eyes wobbled like a puppy caught in the rain. Irelphi agonized briefly, then ultimately looked away.
"All right. I won't ask. I know Elphi isn't some loose woman, and that she's far too aloof to open her heart to just anyone."
"'Aloof'... pfft..."
Shing—
Just as my laughter threatened to burst out in full view, a silver blade asserted its presence in my line of sight. In answer, a throbbing pain made itself known at my waist.
Can't even laugh out of fear, huh.
Even as I shook my head, Sharle nagged at my attention—she was still spoiling for a fight, fixing me with a defiant stare.
Arms crossed, she pressed on in her imperious way.
"Very well, let's say I'll let Elphi's circumstances slide. But Duke Alteon—what exactly is it that you do?"
"What do I do... hm."
I looked back on the month since my first audience with the Emperor. I would rise when the sun stood at its peak, then trail after Irelphi through her duties in my capacity as a surveillance subject.
Not that I ever lent a hand with any of it. Days of doing absolutely nothing while drifting blankly along floated up before me. Even a barley sack propped out in a field at least does its job—unlike me.
"I may well be... a man worth less than a pebble on the roadside..."
"Ha?"
Just as I was sinking into private self-loathing, Sharle drove a needle into a tender spot.
"What I'm asking is on what merit you received that title and this grand estate. The question is quite the sensation in high society at the moment, you know."
The answer was one I found rather curious myself.
Merits were the last thing this body had to its name—only sins. None of them of my own making, granted, but who was ever going to give me credit for that?
Well—perhaps the Emperor, who reads emotion and discerns right from wrong, might.
"I'm... sorry for being a duke, I suppose."
And sorry the mansion happens to be mine, too.
With nothing else to say, I ended up bowing my head. Even Sharle hadn't seen that coming, apparently, for she turned to Irelphi for an answer.
"Sorry, Sharle. That one's a little difficult to talk about as well."
"Ugh. Fine, Elphi. I'll stop pressing here. Let's just have a pleasant chat from now on."
"Good call, Sharle."
Sharle snuggled up against Irelphi and beamed. Watching the two of them, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had somehow become the unwelcome guest.
I rose from my seat.
"Duke Alteon. Sit back down. Don't even think about going anywhere—just listen."
At Sharle's imperious words, I flopped back down into my seat. Irelphi, for her part, was far too busy avoiding my gaze to help.
"Haah..."
The tea party, conducted under Sharle's command, came to an end only after a grueling three-hour campaign.
As a parting bonus, she declared that from now on she would visit as freely as if it were her own home—under the stated pretext of surprise inspections into the scandal. Since she was Irelphi's acquaintance, I had no grounds to refuse.
After all, we had agreed some time ago that half the mansion belonged to Irelphi.
As I saw Sharle off to her waiting carriage, I said:
"By the way, Lady White. Bladed. Beauty.—Sharle isn't just an ordinary count's daughter, is she?"
"Call me that one more time and I really won't let it slide."
Irelphi's warning stung. She took a moment to sort out her thoughts, then explained slowly.
"Sharle is... the Empress's hidden daughter."
"If she's her daughter, she's her daughter. What's a 'hidden daughter' supposed to mean?"
"A child born before her marriage to His Majesty. Which is why she isn't an imperial princess, either."
"Does the Emperor know...?"
"He does. The cover family, her standing as a count's daughter—all of it was granted by His Majesty himself."
"Huh."
In other words, the Empress had carried a child conceived before her marriage. A child fathered by a man who was not the Emperor.
And even knowing it, the Emperor loved the Empress ardently, and the Empress loved him just as sincerely in return. Whatever circumstances lay behind it all, I had no particular desire to pry.
It only left me thinking that the world held many different shapes of love.
What shape would Irelphi's love take?
"Well, it's hardly my affair. Shall we head inside now, La. Ke. Of. The. Moon?"
And with that, I bolted.
"I told you I really wouldn't let it slide!"
Irelphi came charging into the mansion after me with a yell. Her face was blotched with embarrassment, but it made for a rather lovely picture all the same.
Crash! Clatter! Bang!
...Everything after that played out in utter chaos.
In a certain alley steeped in dead silence stood a shabby door. The darkness there was so deep that even pale moonlight slid past it, a dread-inducing gloom that even vagrants gave a wide berth.
A man shrouded in a hood entered the depths of the alley without hesitation and knocked in a steady rhythm. Before long, the door swung open, and orange light briefly washed over the surroundings.
But only for a moment—the instant the hooded man slipped inside, the alley sank back into darkness and silence.
"Well, well. Been a while."
The one who'd opened the door greeted him warmly—a middle-aged man with a striking eyepatch over his right eye. The newcomer, by contrast, still concealed his presence beneath his hood.
"How is the work progressing? Have you gathered the materials?"
"Nothing but the finest goods, as you'd expect. More is still being readied, so the supply will be ample. What a windfall you are, friend—wherever did you unearth such rare information?"
"You wouldn't understand even if I told you."
"Spare me the posturing. It's we who are bending over backward to accommodate your preposterous plan, you know."
The hooded man turned his head slightly toward him. At once the eyepatched man recoiled in alarm and snatched his gaze away.
"Whoa, whoa—none of that, friend, don't look over here. I haven't the confidence to withstand it."
At that reaction, the hooded man sank his head low once more and delivered a warning.
"You will need to summon every last man you can. If we are to buy even a fleeting instant more of time."
"My, already being cast as the meat shield? But must we truly go to such lengths?"
"...What did you just say?"
A presence came seeping out of the hooded man, devouring the space around it. Heavy and sinister... and yet bearing the unmistakable air of a conqueror. The eyepatched man broke into a cold sweat and hurried to placate him.
"Ghk—enough! I was only... curious whether the White Knight was truly someone worth going to such lengths for. She's famous for her lovely face, certainly, but she has no real military deeds to speak of!"
The hooded man slowly gathered his aura back in and let it settle. Only after retching out one blood-flecked cough after another did the eyepatched man finally recover his senses.
"The Nelprugia, the order over which she presides as commander, has served as the imperial family's personal guard for generations."
"I know that well enough, but most people judge them little better than a ceremonial guard."
"...Hm. Not wrong."
The hooded man understood his sentiment. An unaccomplished commander of an order no different from an honor guard. A woman celebrated, of all things, for her looks. That was the Irelphi Justiha the world knew.
Indeed, not only the common folk—even the mighty nobles had voiced doubts about Irelphi's martial ability. But the hooded man had no intention of being swayed by outward appearances.
"Irelphi Justiha is the exception. She has no deeds because the Empire has known peace. What war record could two hundred years of peace possibly produce?"
"Fine, I understand. You've shown me something real, so I'll believe all of it. So... keep giving me—giving us—that certainty."
The man dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to the hooded man's shoe. The hooded man accepted the whole ritual without so much as a flicker.
"Give us that certainty, and every one of us will lay down his life for you. We die when you bid us die, and kill when you bid us kill. For you, and for our purpose."
"...Yes. If you believe in me, then I, in turn, swear I will bring the Eld Empire to ruin."
At the hooded man's declaration, the man downed a bottle of liquor to its dregs and asked, his face flushed scarlet:
"Khh. So—what orders have you come to issue today?"
"I must have you bring me a certain someone."
"If it's someone like the head of a powerful house, I'll be scrambling."
"Worry not. It will be no difficult task."
The hooded man rummaged within his cloak and drew out a single sheet of paper. Upon it was a portrait of a woman standing in quiet composure.
A beauty with blonde hair neatly swept back and peridot-green eyes holding a faint emerald shimmer, her girlish charm radiating from the page.
"Sharle Millote. She is the one who will become the spark from which the Eld Empire's downfall begins."
With those parting words, the hooded man melted into the darkness. All that remained fluttering in the place where he had stood was the portrait of Sharle Millote.