The Shackles (3)
Dionea, dusted head to toe from training, withdrew for a while to freshen up.
Which left Chester the drillmaster, Tolermi the herald, and me to receive Lord Rangvolt and Sir Ariad.
Seated at the table in the center of the hall, Rangvolt took a couple of swallows of his beer and nodded appreciatively.
"Mmm. Honey mead is a treat no matter when you drink it."
"Have you been to Longville before, my lord?"
"Once, back when I was serving as a squire. Must be fifteen years ago now."
Leaning back in his chair, Lord Rangvolt wiped the beer from his mustache and went on.
"The taste hasn't changed a bit. The honey from my own homeland is decent enough, but it can't hold a candle to Mount Graduil's."
He set his mug down on the table.
"I'd already heard you'd taken up residence here as a retainer."
"From whom, if I may ask?"
"Picked up a few things passing through Multingham."
"Eavesdropping, you say?"
He flicked a glance at Sir Ariad beside him and murmured as if sharing a secret.
"Sir Ariad simply cannot help himself — wherever he goes, he has to poke into every last corner of every alley. It was the same in Multingham."
"Oh…"
For all his pretense of discretion, Rangvolt's voice was not exactly quiet. In fact, it was rather loud. It helped that everyone gathered in the hall was holding their breath.
Sir Ariad chuckled sheepishly and scratched his freshly shaven jaw.
"I merely gathered information. According to principle — at a very basic level, mind you."
"Keep to those damn principles twice more and your purse will be empty before you ever reach home."
"And yet for a little effort, did I not gain quite a lot?"
"You've gained nothing yet. You've merely landed a promising opportunity."
"Then consider the opportunity as good as gained, Lord Rangvolt."
At the old knight's placid retort, the knight in the blue cloak grunted and shut his mouth.
Wait — what was this conversation even about?
When I made a baffled face, Lord Rangvolt gave a small shake of his head.
"We'll save that talk for when the Baroness joins us. In the meantime — I hear you crossed blades with Sir Eselda?"
"……You've heard about that too?"
"Naturally. The rumor started spreading around the time we set out, so by now there isn't a soul in Multingham who hasn't heard it."
Multingham is the capital of the Marba region, where Count Tristan's principal seat stands.
The gossip had already traveled that far? It had been less than a week since my duel with Sir Eselda and Doyle's retreat…
"I found a pack of young knights huddled together, snickering over where they'd picked up the news. Squawking that the old maid of a knight had finally outlived her prime. Tch."
When I furrowed my brow, Rangvolt's eyes glittered.
"So tell me — how did it look to you? Has the 'Lily' gone dull?"
"This is the first time I've ever met Sir Eselda, so I can't compare her to her past self, but…"
"But?"
"From what I experienced, she was nothing remotely close to a has-been."
"I see."
Rangvolt smiled thinly and stroked the tip of his mustache.
"The years may have stolen her beauty, but it seems they failed to steal her skill."
"……Her beauty, you say?"
"Hmm? You never heard? Sir Eselda's old epithet was 'the Flower on Horseback.'"
And Lord Rangvolt began to unspool the tale like a man sifting through old memories.
In her youth, Sir Eselda had been famed more for her beauty than for her swordsmanship. Countless men had courted her, and she had rebuffed every one of them with icy disdain.
"You may not have me until you break the lily."
When a lady knight at the very peak of her craft said this like a refrain, people took it as a de facto declaration of lifelong singleness.
Then a man appeared before her — a young royal guardsman, Sir Caliora.
As befitted the man who would one day be called the finest knight in the kingdom, Caliora broke the lily in just five exchanges.
Everyone expected him to take Sir Eselda to his bed — but the day after winning the duel, he vanished without a word. No one ever knew what had passed between the two of them.
From that day on, Eselda threw herself into the sword all the more fiercely, never once refusing the vanguard on the battlefield. Even after hardship had carved itself deep into that beautiful face, she remained alone.
So people took to calling her 'the fair Sir Eselda.'
Half reverence for an honorable knight, half mockery of a stubborn woman — the epithet carried both in equal measure.
Just as Rangvolt's tale drew to a close, Dionea reappeared.
In place of the training attire that had bared her slender frame, she now wore a green tunic over a black-dyed cotte.
After exchanging the customary courtesies with Ulkar's two knights, she came straight to the point.
"I hear the Third Prince labors in the High Plains of the west. What business brings his two trusted men to Longville?"
It was Lord Rangvolt who answered.
"We were merely passing through, my lady. We were bound east to carry out an order from our lord."
"……East?"
"The Southern Shore, my lady."
When Dionea fell silent, the old man beside her — Tolermi the herald — whispered in a small voice. My ears pricked up instinctively.
"The domain of the powerful high noble 'Litton Earlshore.' Lord Rangvolt there is the Count Litton's second son."
Dionea nodded at Tolermi's words and spoke.
"So you were on your way home."
"……Mm. That is so."
Rangvolt gave a wry smile, then added:
"However, what we have come to offer you does not concern my homecoming."
"Then what?"
"We bring a proposal of some urgency — one I believe Your Ladyship will wish to hear. With your leave, I will state it now."
With that, Rangvolt cast a sweeping glance around the hall.
Those gathered were only her own household and retainers, along with Prince Ulkar's knights, and so Dionea nodded readily.
"Speak freely, my lord."
"Thank you, my lady."
Rangvolt paused briefly to steady his voice.
"Word out of Multingham has it that a bitter conflict has broken out over the inheritance of the domain. With Count Tristan himself."
"……Yes. There is such a matter."
"We also heard that the Count's second son is sweeping up an army and riding this way. You appear intent on meeting him in the field — you must be deeply troubled."
Dionea shook her head, her face gone stiff.
"I am the mistress of the Anig household."
For a moment, her deep-green eyes took on a dark light. The emotion in them was one I had seen before, somewhere.
The responsibility stained through with guilt — won by losing an old husband as the answer to long years of prayer, then defiled almost before his body was cold by sharing her bed with another man…
"There is nothing to be troubled about. I will simply do my duty."
Reading something like resolve rising on her face, Lord Rangvolt quietly swallowed his ale.
Then Sir Ariad, who had been silently observing, stepped forward.
"We hear you have sent a letter to the High Justice of the royal capital."
"Because he is the only answer there is."
A faint sigh slipped through the short silence.
"Forgive my bluntness, my lady, but the outcome you hope for will not come." The old knight added coldly, "The High Justice will not stir. He will dispatch a deputy of no higher rank than an appellate judge. That deputy will render his verdict by reading the political winds of the domain rather than the letter of the statute, and he will not dramatically turn your situation around."
"……How can you be so certain of something that hasn't even happened yet?"
"Because it has always been thus. So long as the balance of power in the capital does not change, the judgments rendered under kingdom law will not change either. Forever."
Seated in her high-backed chair, Dionea pressed her lips tight and looked down at Sir Ariad. At the unspoken 'so what am I supposed to do?' in her eyes, the old knight promptly supplied the answer.
"Which is why, if you wish to overturn those winds, you need help not from beyond the domain — but from within it."
"……From within?"
"Yes. From the powerful figures within the domain. You must petition someone with the standing to seat you as master of Longville."
At the old knight's explanation, the woman in black let out a dry, bitter laugh.
"You make it sound so easy."
"It is by no means easy."
"The Anig line might as well be extinct, and my own family is far away in the north. Who in the world am I supposed to petition?"
"That is precisely what my proposal concerns."
Sir Ariad's eyes glinted beneath his wrinkled lids.
"There is someone who wishes to see you become lord of Longville."
"Pardon? Who—"
"Lady Clarissa."
"……Lady Clarissa, you say?"
"Yes. Count Tristan's eldest daughter — and his heir."
What in the world was this nonsense?
I wasn't the only one wearing a strange expression. Dionea, of course, but also Tolermi the herald, Edita the steward — all the Anig retainers wore faces that plainly asked what kind of lunacy this was.
It was Beldin the scribe who gasped aloud. Seeming to grasp something, his face turned to disbelief as he spoke.
"Lady Clarissa is renowned for her devout and virtuous character. For a woman like her to be involved in such a scheme…"
At the young scribe's non sequitur, Sir Ariad let out a soft snort.
"If she were merely devout and virtuous, do you think Count Tristan would have named her his heir? A woman of barely twenty-four years?"
"W-well, that's because the second son, young master Doyle, is so arrogant and grasping by nature—"
"Confidence and appetite are the chief virtues a lord must possess. How could those be flaws? And besides," — Sir Ariad's smile bent a little — "the Mulin family has always been that sort of people."
When the young scribe fell silent, Dionea put the question to him.
"You say Lady Clarissa will help me?"
"Yes."
"She will help me? No — before that. Does she even have the power to do so?"
"Certainly she does."
Ariad drew out a rolled parchment from within his cloak.
"To speak precisely, what she desires is not that you become lord. It is that young master Doyle does not become lord."
"……Why not?"
"Put yourself in Lady Clarissa's position. What if, one day, you became mistress of the county — only to find your father's other legitimate son, a man even older than yourself, seizing the position of your vassal?"
Wouldn't that be a comfort, actually? No — Doyle? Never. Not that bastard.
"It would be an exquisite torment, as you can well imagine. The moment Countess Clarissa made the smallest slip, Baron Doyle — Count Tristan's son — would leap at the chance and raise every manner of storm to shake her authority."
Sir Ariad handed the parchment roll to Beldin. After a moment of standing there dumbfounded, the young scribe quickened his pace and carried it up to Dionea.
"Swear your fealty to Lady Clarissa. It is an oath you will have to swear eventually regardless — so think of it merely as doing so a little earlier than the rest."
"……Can she truly help me?"
At Dionea's doubtful question, Sir Ariad gave a fleeting bitter laugh, then quickly wiped it from his face.
"I cannot swear my old, worn eyes see true — but Lady Clarissa is more than capable."
"Heir or not, she is still only a young woman."
"She is, in all but name, the woman who rules Multingham."
"……How could that possibly be?"
"You may believe it."
Dionea swallowed dryly, unrolled the parchment, and read — then let out a short groan.
"You've already made the offer, haven't you."
"I beg your understanding, my lady. It was a matter of precious hours, so I moved with some haste."
"……You even know of the gold mine."
"Lady Clarissa very likely holds every piece of information worth having in the Marba region. It is nothing to be surprised by."
She lowered the parchment to her lap and let out a quiet breath. Then, slowly lifting her head, she met Sir Ariad's eyes.
"Is this the Third Prince's doing?"
"……It was no command of my lord's. But I would be grateful if you took it as such. In truth, it was the glow of his patronage that first led Lady Clarissa to lend an ear to my proposal."
"How unexpected. I was told the Mulin family and the Third Prince are bitter enemies."
"However a father may rail, a daughter chooses whom she loves on her own. And our lord is — as all the world knows — a man one cannot help but love."
Dionea, who had been wearing an odd expression, stole a glance at me and our eyes met briefly before she turned away again.
"Then what is it I must give the Third Prince?"
"I've not heard it from my lord's own lips, but what he desires never really changes."
Sir Ariad faced her squarely and spoke with unshakable certainty.
"Peace and happiness. So long as you preserve those, that will be enough."
A brief silence passed, and Dionea nodded — with a heavy, heavy sigh.