Chapter 38
Chapter 38
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 38
Chapter Title: I Hate the East!
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"You're Lena Rubel's maid, right?"
The boy in priestly robes, Enji, asked with a gentle smile. Uni scanned him up and down with an annoyed look at the sudden approach and question. It was far too rude for a maidservant. Surprised by her reaction, Enji added awkwardly with a troubled expression.
"Um, you know, all the priests who enter the imperial palace are nobles."
"So?"
"Huh?"
"So what? You think I'm okay with it because you're a noble or something, even if I look like this?"
Uni shot back sharply, and Enji grew even more flustered by her response. He'd thought she was just young and ignorant, but no. This maid was ready to pick a fight with any boy who approached her, priest or noble or otherwise. Stunned by the unprecedented hostility and disdain, Enji blinked before explaining.
"That's not what I meant. I just have something to ask..."
"Then introduce yourself first and explain the situation. What is this, out of nowhere?"
Enji was at a loss for words again at Uni's retort. It was the first time in his life he'd been scolded like this by a maid. Not just a maid—even excluding his father the marquis, Prince Rubid, and His Eminence the cardinal, there was no one in the world who treated Enji so openly dismissively.
"If you don't have anything else to introduce besides being a noble, fine, I get it. I'm busy, so move."
"You said you understand?"
"Understanding and dealing with you are different things."
Uni demoted the marquis's heir to someone not worth associating with and resumed walking. She planned to see how he'd react. But just as she was about to pass him, a burst of laughter erupted from the side.
"You sure know how to talk."
Enji laughed in admiration. There was no trace of annoyance in his tone, leaving Uni flustered this time.
'What the hell is this guy?'
Uni had figured that if she snapped at him just right, this noble young master would throw a tantrum and fume.
"Right? If you have something to ask, you should introduce yourself and explain first, yeah?"
But far from getting angry, the boy—whom she guessed was some young lady's little brother—laughed ha-ha and even nodded. Then, in an exceedingly bright voice, he asked,
"Hey, are you super busy?"
"Busy."
"Then how about I help out a bit?"
Caught off guard by the unexpected offer, Uni clamped her mouth shut and stared at Enji. Her lady had told her to avoid anyone who approached, but to get friendly if they didn't seem dangerous. This guy was definitely the latter. Plus, he had none of the sleazy vibe like the Rubel family's old butler. Whether he was an idiot or just bold, he was showing his bare face plainly. Uni's cheeks puffed out slightly as she looked at him. She didn't like how much his face resembled her lady's. At the same time, that resemblance made it impossible to treat him harshly. In the end, Uni grumbled as if giving in.
"Do you know how to change bedsheets?"
***
At that moment, Lena was dressed in her uniform and just starting her busy schedule for the day. Her first task was meeting the Southern Duke. Lena followed his attendant to an empty room in the palace. The Southern Duke stood there in front of it, his face stern.
"You're here."
The Southern Duke's voice was grim. It was a far cry from the silly grin he'd worn yesterday. Lena wiped the smile from her own face and greeted him with her eyes alone. The mood between them was different from usual. Beyond that door lay a gravely ill patient.
"To think you'd come all this way..."
The attendant announced them, and waiting servants hurried out. They ushered the Southern Duke and Lena inside with utmost deference. As they entered the bedroom, labored breathing reached their ears. Even though the Southern Duke had come in person, the man in the bed didn't rise. More precisely, he couldn't. His muscles had withered away completely, leaving him unable to so much as twitch a finger.
"How is his condition?"
"We can only give him thin gruel since there's no treatment."
The man in the bed was the Southern knight who'd had his vitality drained by Clavis the day before. The fellow who'd once had a thick neck and sturdy shoulders now lay pathetically shrunken.
"The physicians say it's malnutrition. He'll recover gradually if he eats well, but since he's weakened to the limit, it's unlikely he'll return to how he was."
The Southern Duke let out a long sigh in silence. The old man's eyes, fixed in silence, burned with responsibility and rage at this cruel situation.
"Can you hear me?"
The Southern Duke leaned over the man in the bed and asked. The man barely opened his eyes.
"I'll prepare a man and carriage, so when you can move, go home. I'll send a letter to your father ahead of time."
The man moved his eyes slowly, as if intoxicated by sleep, looking back and forth between the Southern Duke and Lena standing behind him. Then his face twisted, and he began to cry. He wailed like a beast. No tears wet his eyes or mouth; he cried out laboriously. Then he repeated that he was sorry. To both the Southern Duke and Lena.
...
Having seen the straw-doll-like knight, Lena and the Southern Duke sat facing each other with troubled expressions. The two who'd survived the battlefield were accustomed to wounds and death. Even so, they couldn't remain detached this time. It was an incident that never should have happened. If they'd lost him to a wraith, they might have accepted it, but losing a knight to the emperor's whim brought a deeper sense of defeat than any battlefield loss. What drove them madder was that they couldn't even properly protest the emperor's outrage. Everything in the empire lay in the emperor's palm, and even a duke was no exception. The Southern Duke pressed a hand to his darkened eyes, his heart aching. Then Lena broke the silence.
"The cardinal's Authority seems more like a power that harms the living than the dead."
The Southern Duke nodded in agreement, thinking Lena was criticizing Clavis. But that wasn't what Lena wanted to say—not mere complaint.
"A power that reaps vitality? It'd be useless against wraiths, wouldn't it?"
As Lena added, the Southern Duke's expression shifted too. The emperor's Authority was a power granted by the gods to fight wraiths. It should naturally be effective against wraiths. Yet Clavis's debilitation worked on the living, not wraiths.
"...There are many ways to use an Authority."
At Lena's suspicion, the Southern Duke unwittingly defended it.
"Only the dukes know those methods. Clavis must be the same. Don't assume what you saw yesterday is his full power."
It was a warning not to doubt the emperor's Authority lightly. But his tone seemed closer to averting eyes from a frightening truth than chiding a rash youth. Sensing something off, Lena countered.
"Have you used your Authority in various ways too, Your Grace? Come to think of it, I've never seen you use it."
Lena briefly recalled her mercenary days. As he'd said, the Southern Duke never used his Authority on the battlefield. The South's Karmic Flames, paired with the North's cleaving strikes, were ideal against hordes of wraiths, yet Lena had never seen so much as a spark in the South. At her question, the Southern Duke answered with an uncomfortable face.
"Fire has no reason. It doesn't distinguish what to burn from what not to."
"Were you unable to use it for fear of involving the soldiers?"
"If it were just that, I'd have gone off alone and hurled a fireball. But it's not."
"Then..."
"Use fire too often, and you fall under its spell. In the end, you burn everything in sight."
Perplexed, Lena tilted her head. The Southern Duke added flatly.
"It's my grandfather's story. He burned wraiths so much that eventually he burned his household too—and himself—and perished."
The Southern Duke's voice was calm. It was an old tale from half a century ago, no need to agonize anew. He'd lost his family to his fire-besotted grandfather's hand. His father, mother, brothers, and sisters. His first wife and children too. Afterward, he'd inherited the Authority but abhorred it, never using it recklessly.
'So that's the South.'
Lena thought secretly as she listened. Curses lurking behind Authorities, like Lin's sadism and the North's execution obsession. Just as Lin said, everyone had them but hid them. As the pieces fell into place, Lena grew curious. What curse afflicted Clavis, who casually stole others' lives? Even a horrific one would probably just make that bastard grin unpleasantly. The plausible hypothesis conjured Clavis's smirking face, and Lena clamped her mouth shut. Meanwhile, oblivious to her thoughts, the Southern Duke sighed.
"What a mess. I need to tighten discipline among the knights, but this..."
Just that morning, he'd thought the knights would finally obey Lena. Yet less than half a day later, disaster struck. Foreseeing the young ones' moods swinging again, the Southern Duke rubbed his forehead. So Lena, thinking it was for the best, said,
"It's one thing for the expedition, but guarding the rift is coming up soon. This is tricky."
"They can't even stand watch."
"Standing still is possible. But if wraiths approach the rift..."
At Lena's concern, the Southern Duke clamped his mouth shut. The rift at Do-um Palace was to be guarded in weekly rotations by each faction. The North, having just guarded it for a week, had slain quite a few wraiths in that time. Recalling that, the Southern Duke grew grave. Lena astutely added beside him,
"I can't guard the rift alone. Fighting and blocking are different."
True enough. An executioner could slaughter charging wraiths easily, but couldn't block them all from storming the palace single-handedly. If even one slipped past Lena into the palace, it'd be the South's incompetence, fault, and responsibility entirely. As Lena confessed, the Southern Duke's face filled with anguish, and Lena—who'd baited and waited—finally got to the point.
"To fill the gap, we'll need outside help."
"Outside meaning?"
"For example, the East..."
"The East? Like hell those bastards would help!"
But contrary to Lena's setup, the Southern Duke spat curses the moment the East came up.
"Don't talk nonsense! I'd sooner make a pact with wraiths than beg the East for help!"
He even saw the Eastern Duke as worse than wraiths. Intrigued by the vehement rejection, Lena grew curious. Why did the Southern Duke fly into a rage at the mere mention of the East? He wasn't some hot-blooded kid; he was an elder nearing his final days. It seemed too extreme for mere personality clash, so Lena asked outright.
"Is there something between you and the Eastern Duke?"
"Something? Ha! What would I have with that scum? I just don't want to deal with a beast who abandons not just a duke's dignity but basic human decency!"
His face flushed red amid his snow-white brows and beard, showing he was truly furious. Still unsatisfied after shouting, he grumbled on, cursing Lin. Then he turned his ire on Lena for bringing up the East.
"But why have you been going on about the East lately?"
Worse, this old man was sharp. As Lena hesitated at the sudden question, the Southern Duke demanded again with a fierce face.
"Is it because Rubel's in the North that you're eyeing the East, or do you have some personal interest in that damned bastard?
It was a tight, obstinate question worthy of an elder, leaving no escape.