And the Result
A few days later.
Those who had claimed to be Sidmid’s successors and plotted rebellion began to be arrested one after another.
The place where a soldier had discovered the incriminating materials turned out to be the residence of their contact. From detailed plans for an uprising to schemes to assassinate Serpina—countless secrets came to light in the process.
How the evidence had been found remained a mystery, but from Serpina’s perspective it could only be called a stroke of pure fortune.
Heaven’s luck!
That was the only phrase that could explain it. Everything that had unfolded felt far too close to coincidence.
Once they had a single thread to pull, the “impure elements” began tumbling out like potatoes yanked from the earth. It was not merely one or two people. Dozens of them were bound in ropes and dragged into Aingart Castle.
Every last one had been an officer drawing a salary from Serpina’s army. Some had been obscure figures who never drew attention; others had been men who at least earned their keep. The greatest among them was a man who had once even been recommended for the lordship of Kelstein Castle—Rahelven Yenichika.
He was the same man who, when Serpina was still a young girl, had taught her the fundamental etiquette of the imperial court. Originally a follower of Sidmid von Aingart, he had been known in recent years as a man who gave Serpina his complete loyalty.
The unwavering devotion visible even in his smallest gestures had convinced everyone that he now followed her without reservation.
……
Serpina herself had believed the same. That was why, even after she had witnessed so many ugly scenes in her life, she could not help but feel shaken when he was brought before her.
So that was how it was.
The ghost of her second brother still wandered the continent.
Serpina had earned the moniker of tyrant because of the large-scale purges she had once carried out, yet she was, surprisingly, a rather merciful ruler. To those who followed her she never stinted on compassion, and if someone possessed ability she set aside bloodline and past and gave them free rein to use that talent.
The one thing she never forgave was treason.
In the course of seizing the northern continent, countless rebellions had erupted, and every last traitor had ended as dew on the executioner’s blade. Nothing had changed now. Mercy must never be shown to those who challenged her authority. That was the destiny of one who carried the blood of the great empire of Aingart.
A few days later, in the underground dungeon of Aingart Castle.
“You have come, my lord.”
“……Lead the way.”
The day before the executions.
Serpina made her way to the solitary cell where Rahelven waited for death. When she arrived, he greeted her with the same expression he had worn in the days he taught her etiquette.
“Ahh. You have come, Princess Serpina.”
Not “my lord.”
He called her “Princess.”
Before his treason had been exposed he had readily addressed her as lord; now he refused to let the old title leave his lips. Even now, he still refused to acknowledge her.
“Foolish, Rahelven. I thought you still had your wits about you. I never imagined you would chase after a faded ideal that is already dead and gone.”
“Princess, you know only one thing and not the other. It is all right. I never truly expected anything of you in the first place.”
Rahelven laughed with a kindly face—heh heh heh—then the light died in his eyes and he fixed her with a cold stare.
“Who would sincerely follow a witch who cut off her own brothers’ heads with her own hands and drank their blood?”
“……!”
In Rahelven’s empty eyes she read a will that was not his own.
Sidmid von Aingart.
The grudge of her second brother, who had hated her, resented her, and cursed her while shedding tears of blood.
“Princess. Since we share this bond, I shall tell you something useful at the end. I…… this old man am merely the first.”
What she read in the man facing death was neither fear nor terror, but rage—and beyond that rage, a kind of pity.
“When you scooped up the blood of the imperial house with your own hands and drank it, did you not foresee this? Countless people are aiming for you, Princess. ……It will no doubt be a hard fight, but I believe this is the weight that must be borne by one who deceived everyone, coveted what she should never have taken, and finally seized it.”
Serpina already knew that much.
From the day the will of Aingart had been “given” to her…… she had anticipated everything.
“…….”
“Princess. You wear a most beautiful expression. Yet no matter how exquisite your beauty, the ugly deeds you have committed can never be forgiven. ……It would have been better if you had learned the art of survival from me rather than etiquette. Go on, then—do your best, Princess. I shall watch with joy from the other side.”
Having finished speaking, Rahelven laughed for a long while with a metallic rattle, then finally bowed his head. It was as good as saying he had nothing more to say to her.
Sensing that further conversation was impossible, Serpina turned without a word and left the dungeon.
On the road back to the royal castle…… she remembered that she had originally gone to ask him what on earth had made him decide to betray her. She had not been able to pose the question, yet she felt she had roughly received the answer.
Brother Algot.
“Serpina.”
Am I…… doing well?
“There is no one else, Serpina. Among those who carry the blood of Aingart, ■■■ ■■ ■■■ ■■ is…… only you. That is why this worthless brother intends to entrust everything to you.”
Can I truly…… with my own hands, rebuild the unified empire?
“So I ask this of you. The empire…… the divided empire, make it one again…… bring peace once more to this world…….”
I…… I……!!!!
A sharp awl wearing the shell of her brother’s voice tore her mind to shreds.
I cannot do it.
I cannot, Brother.
I…… I have no confidence that I can do it well……!
—My lord!
“……?!”
Just as she was about to fall into panic again in the corridor leading to the royal castle, the voice of the man who had once pulled her out of panic reached her once more.
“……Swen?”
Serpina hurriedly looked around. In the corridor of the royal castle there was not a single soul, let alone Swen.
Had she heard a hallucination?
Even so…… it did not feel unpleasant. Recalling the moment Swen had called her name, she found herself calming with astonishing speed once again.
……Yes. Swen.
He must have known everything from the beginning. The very reason the rebels had been caught was because Swen had insisted that conscripting troops at Amir Castle and stationing them there was the correct course. The grounds he offered had been entirely different, yet in the end it had become a divine move from Serpina’s perspective.
If, while she remained completely unaware of any hint of rebellion, a blade had come flying toward her, the situation would have been truly dire. Others might call it heaven’s luck—but she knew.
Everything was thanks to Swen!
And somehow, faintly—she felt she understood why he had deliberately not spoken of what would happen.
I need to…… talk with him.
Serpina summoned Swen at once. It was less a rational decision than an instinctive act.
“Swen, greets my lord.”
In the quiet audience chamber, the white-haired man Swen knelt before her. The moment Serpina saw him she lost her composure and, in a slightly trembling voice, slowly spoke his name.
“……Swen.”
“Yes. Please speak.”
“Did you…… know everything that would come to pass?”
“…….”
Swen raised his head and looked at Serpina. Those gray eyes were not empty. They were clear and strong, with no room for the resentful ghosts of the past to slip in.
“You know as well, Swen. Among the traitors caught this time was that woman…… Shika.”
Shika.
The woman who, at the Opinion Proposal Meeting Swen had attended, had argued that troops should be reinforced and immediately deployed to the border. Had they been stationed on the border, the number of soldiers in the northern regions where the rebellion was planned would have decreased; they would not have sent only the newly conscripted men. Whether she had considered that far was unclear, but in any case—
From Swen’s position it would have been impossible to speak his true opinion openly in that place.
No!
Even if he had said, “A rebellion will break out, so we must reinforce the troops,” would she herself have believed him?
Thinking of that, the answer was simple.
She would never have believed him.
Because there was no evidence. As long as her conviction remained that she could not decide matters of life and death on baseless claims, she would not have accepted the opinion even from the man of her dreams.
Therefore……
“Therefore you offered a somewhat hard-to-understand reason. ‘We must prepare for the Aesius Army that will come up the river,’ you said. Looking back now, that was the only choice that could lead to that conclusion, was it not……? If you claimed a peasant revolt might break out in a nearby village, or that a neighboring castle might rebel, there would be no reason to station troops there……!”
The more she spoke, the clearer it became.
She could see what Swen had truly wanted to say.
“But Swen, you could not say everything! One of the traitors was mixed in among that group, and without proper grounds I would not have listened! So…… you used the fact that you yourself had once been in the Aesius Army to create that hypothesis. A thoroughly plausible hypothesis that you thought might convince me as much as possible!”
It was a hypothesis one could construct if one wished, yet one of low probability.
A single piece of evidence he had desperately forged in order to persuade her.
And in the end—because Serpina had listened to him, she had been able to uncover the traitors.
“There are moments when one must see what is inevitably invisible. Even what is clearly visible sometimes fails to enter one’s field of view.”
“That was…… the invisible thing.”
The very moment when even the visible fails to enter one’s sight!
Now she understood.
Every single word he had spoken made sense. She understood why he had spoken with such “certainty.”
Then how had he come to know everything?
It was a crucial question, yet to the present Serpina it no longer mattered.
An ordinary person would have been crushed by this absurd situation. Serpina did not know it, but Lin Brans had been so overwhelmed by Swen’s “infallibly correct” advice that she had come to fear him.
But she was different.
What mattered to her was that he had “known” everything—and that he had not kept it to himself, but had tried by every means to convey it to her.
Even going so far as to force a plausible logic into place.
In other words, Swen had not dumped everything onto her…… he had taken her hand.
Something no one else had ever done—done by a man who had only recently arrived!
To her, who throughout her entire life had simply pressed forward while carrying alone everything that crushed her—
the first clear and beautiful compass that had appeared!
The more she thought of that proof, the more beautiful it felt, and Serpina spoke in a voice that trembled, lost in a daze.
She herself did not realize it—
—that her face had flushed red.
“You knew…… everything……! And in order to somehow let me know, you offered desperate advice…… is that not so, Swen……?”
By turning over the words “he knew everything,” Serpina naturally recalled a certain term she had once heard.
Mind’s Eye
The epithet of the legendary strategist who had served the Aingart imperial house more than a hundred years ago. A nameless great strategist whose words, though somewhat strange in sequence, had always proven correct in the end……
was now standing before her eyes.
“…….”
Swen gazed at Serpina with an expression of perfect calm, then slowly lowered his head.
“It was dangerous in many ways, yet the decision to heed my words was my lord’s own. I am merely grateful that I was able to be of help to my lord.”
“Ahh……!!”
Truly, you were never an ordinary man.
This man who appeared in my dreams…… was a man who could see through everything……!
“Swen, truly…… truly, you are a most fascinating man…… I feel a thrill for the first time in my life. Can you feel it? This heart of mine…… toward you……!”
Her flushed cheeks, her voice slightly breathless. Yet it could not be helped.
For the first time since ascending the throne…… she had met a person who shone so brightly she wanted to possess him.
And that person was the very man who had always appeared in her dreams.
The white-haired man of unknown name who, whenever she recalled him, made her chest tingle and somehow feel warm.
To Serpina this moment felt like a revelation from the heavens.
The sole light shining down from a corner of a pitch-dark sky.
Serpina rose from the throne and slowly approached the kneeling Swen. Her dazzling golden hair swayed with every step she took toward him. At last she arrived before him, matched her eye level to his—
and with a hand as white as pure jade, she lifted his chin.
Then she whispered words that felt like a dream that would never break.
“Become mine, Swen. Your body and your heart…… serve this body. If you will not……!”
Her final sentence scattered like cherry blossoms in an April breeze.
If you will not, then you———
After leaving the Aingart royal castle.
I muttered with a somewhat dazed expression.
“……Is this right?”
Something……
Something is happening……!