Why They Still Draw Breath
Ludville dispelled the illusion magic, then reached out and took the old man's pulse himself.
The beat was faint, and beneath the skin the black stain of necrosis had already spread. The old man did not look as though he had many days left.
"It's all right, young man. Lord Gawin healed me, so…"
Cloaked in a robe, Ludville walked the whole of the village and met its people. They felt no pain. They had no fear, and no sensation at all. The faint scent lying over the center of the village was the smell of a magic-based drug meant to numb the senses.
From the moment word went out that the Cardel lady had vanished, every last one of them has been like this.
It was as he had expected. Cardel was, in all likelihood, a house that turned upon a single person: its third daughter, Odelli Cardel. Even so, they hid Odelli's power completely and set Gawin Cardel at the front of everything.
This was no mere flight by a foolish youngest daughter. Odelli had borne the house's duty alone, and when she could endure it no longer, she had run.
His fist closed, slowly.
The logic holds.
For the head of a house, if a single sacrifice could preserve the family, choosing that course was a rational judgment. As a commander, Ludville could understand well enough why Cardel had done it.
"Then why…"
His breathing roughened. A revulsion his reason could not explain scraped relentlessly at his insides, gnawing his patience and his restraint away, piece by piece. Somewhere in his body, something was seething. A thick, brutal feeling—cold and scorching at once, like poison—kept screaming without end: why were vermin like these still drawing breath?
Even the name Cardel ought to be struck from history. Not one of them left.
The thought rose in him. Ludville let out a long sigh.
"Ha…"
Odelli Cardel. It seemed that the moment he became even slightly entangled with her, his madness took hold. Then why, even now, could he not bring himself to let her go—why did he keep her shut inside the castle?
Ludville sat at his desk without a word. With eyes bright and sharp, he picked apart every report concerning Cardel, page by page.
They were not mere documents. Discarded copies, figures papered over with falsehood, even the private correspondence of low-ranking officials and resonance maps that traced the flow of mana—by every path available to him, he was tearing that house open down to the bone.
"Rosenbach Village. Treatment complete, is it…"
Looking down at the report, Ludville twisted the corner of his mouth. The village had only been dressed to look whole on the surface. Inside, it had been rotting through for a long time. Not purification, but disguise. Concealment, fabrication, and exploitation.
Country villages were mostly like that.
Remote places no outsider's foot ever reached, from which not a single request for investigation ever rose. Cardel had swallowed those first, choosing spots no one was likely to notice and packaging them as if they had been properly purified.
The central domain, where a lord resided, was different. Disease, curse, and Miasma that had raged fiercely enough to make them beg for outside aid had vanished cleanly, as if they had never existed at all—by Cardel's ancient magic. The villagers walked the streets with clear eyes and faces full of life, as though they had never once been ill.
Whatever means they used…
One thing was certain. As things stood, Cardel was very likely paying a greater price than before to wield ancient magic, and doing it by a method that was hardly efficient.
Since the third daughter went missing, they've been saving people only selectively…
Which meant that Cardel's achievements until now had been results wrung out of the young lady.
"…Their seed ought to be scorched from the earth."
When he had faced the truth in the field and felt his madness about to break loose, he had thought the fierce flame would settle once he returned to the castle. But the ember of that madness would not die no matter how he pressed it down, as if it burned of its own accord even without a spark. Even tearing the name Cardel apart as if he were dissecting a body, he could not find a single reason those people should still be breathing.
Just as the rage he had smothered was slowly shoving his reason aside—
"A moment, Your Grace."
Edwin cut in, urgent.
"You aren't, are you?"
"Aren't what."
"You look as if you're thinking something mad. Wiping out a hero house that has guarded the empire for hundreds of years, for example…"
"I haven't done anything yet."
Then kindly put the murder out of your eyes before you speak…
Struck by a thoroughly ominous feeling, Edwin poured the words out without even pausing for breath.
"I agree a hundred times over that the Cardels are hypocrites. But even if we make the truth known, will the empire really cast them aside? Isn't the legacy of the Divine Beast this land's very identity?"
He pressed on, fast and desperate, straining with everything he had to read Ludville's heart.
"If Your Grace answers that with blood, the frame will stick in an instant. The monster who envied a hero's bloodline. The heretic who coveted ancient magic."
Ludville answered with a look that said this was tiresome.
"I know. You don't have to wear your mouth out explaining it."
"Knowing, and still meaning to do it, is the bigger problem! Do you actually want to become a traitor?!"
It was then that a short knock sounded, and Theodore quietly opened the door.
"Your Grace. The young lady left a private message."
At the steward's sudden appearance, the archduke and his aide stopped dead at the same instant.
"…What message."
"She says tomorrow is the promised day, and that she would like to call upon you at whatever hour is convenient for Your Grace."
Ludville's brow drew in, just slightly. His heart dropped once, hard enough to be uncomfortable, then began to race until it hurt. Between the madness and the rage he had been holding down, a strange unease was tangled with something perilously like anticipation, as if his body were reacting on its own before his mind could follow. An absurd response, as though he had swallowed one of those love potions that exist only in legends.
He stared at the faint tremor in his fingertips, curled them tight, and muttered, in a flat voice that let nothing show.
"Tomorrow already."
Edwin, who had no way of knowing what moved beneath his lord's calm, brightened with relief, glad of any chance to change the subject. He launched in, delighted.
"She must have been waiting for today all along. The moment you returned to the castle, she put in a request for an audience."
"…"
"You'll receive her, of course? As Your Grace's right hand, I absolutely have to watch that scene from the side…"
Ludville gave no answer to Edwin's endless, breathless running ahead. And yet his heart lurched again. Whether the fault lay in his mind or in his body, one of the two was certainly broken.