The Uninvited Escort
Back at the dormitory, Arendt spread out all at once the materials Priestess Lumiel had given him and the map he had been poring over for days.
Thud!
A fairly weighty sound reverberated off the floor.
He had also contacted Count Stadler by communication orb and requested additional materials.
The keywords were God of Darkness and God of Night.
According to the Count, many of the books found in the mine ruins had yet to be fully deciphered. He had also promised to dig through his entire private library on the Count's own account, so it would likely take quite some time.
'I'll leave it at that for now.'
Tracking Blake's traces took priority for the moment.
'I need to find out what he did there.'
He had even traveled alongside Vincent, so there was bound to be something.
At some point, Arcus's existence had been wiped clean from his mind.
But the very next day, Arendt forgot his role immersion entirely and felt genuinely, honestly irritated for the first time in ages.
"......"
A hellish silence filled the spacious drawing room.
Cantares was struggling to suppress the twitching at the corners of his mouth as he fought back laughter, while an unfamiliar man was awkwardly pretending to look elsewhere.
Arthur and Richt, who had accompanied Arendt, were every bit as stunned.
And Laios, caught between the scheming Crown Prince and an Arendt who looked openly displeased, simply pressed a hand to his forehead and heaved sigh after sigh.
The cause of it all was exactly one person.
"......This is the first time we've met at such close quarters, I believe? A pleasure, Sir Arendt. I am Henri, second son of Duke Lancelot. My father has spoken of you often."
Despite the uncomfortable atmosphere, Henri introduced himself with unbending composure.
Arendt glanced at him with frosty eyes, then tilted his chin toward Arcus, who stood stiffly at attention behind Henri.
"And that one?"
"He serves as my guard and attendant."
"Your guard?"
"Yes, my guard."
"An imperial knight is accompanying us, and you still need a guard?"
"Yes, indeed. I can hardly use the Imperial Knights as my personal escort, after all."
Dripping cold sweat like a summer rain, Henri stood his ground nonetheless.
"I see. Your guard."
"......"
"And can you handle a sword?"
"As you well know, Sir Arendt, young Lord Arcus also graduated from a promising academy. He may not compare to yourself, who made such a name as a knight, but he is hardly lacking in ability."
"Is that so."
Arendt answered flatly and glared at Arcus once more.
This was a situation he had never anticipated.
He hadn't imagined for a second that Henri and Arcus were acquainted. And by the looks of it, Cantares and Laios were equally in the dark.
'Roughly, I get the picture.'
When the Crown Prince ordered the knights to accompany him to the border region, Henri must have attached a condition—that Arcus be allowed to travel with them. And that condition would have been pressed on him closely by Arcus himself, whose lingering attachment to his younger brother was plain to see. The ill-natured Crown Prince, naturally, had not let such an entertaining opportunity slip past.
Cantares, who had been snickering under his breath, hastily feigned innocence under Arendt's icy stare. Beside him, Zereon was wearing a strained smile.
"Well, it's no matter. It's hardly a thing a mere apprentice knight is in a position to comment on."
Still standing askew, Arendt looked Arcus dead in the eye.
"I don't know how much use a young lord who can't even keep his titles straight will be as a guard, but I suppose it doesn't matter."
"......"
"I am a little curious, though. If your swordsmanship is as exceptional as they say, the day will surely come when I can see it for myself."
From that fine, elegantly smiling face, a chill poured forth as though he had activated the Frost-Tinged Touch.
Watching the spectacle, Arthur whispered so only Richt could hear.
"That bastard... that's him saying he'll beat the guy half to death one day under the excuse of sizing him up, isn't it?"
"Surely not..."
Yet Richt, who answered thus, didn't look entirely confident either. Beating his own brother senseless seemed entirely within Arendt's range of possibilities.
Henri, squeezed between the brothers and sweating buckets, hurriedly extended a handshake to Laios.
"We're in your care, Commander Laios."
"Yes, the honor is mine."
True to form, Laios collected his expression at once and clasped the young man's hand.
Henri continued.
"I understand this mission is a simple inspection, undertaken without any grand purpose. The reason you've taken it on personally, Commander, is because ruffians have been appearing more frequently across the realm of late."
That was the official reason Cantares had put forward for this expedition.
"I also hear the knights have some business of their own to attend to along the way, so please don't mind me in the slightest—just see to your duties as you see fit."
But Henri seemed to have grasped the hidden meaning as well.
He had a kindly face, yet he was clearly no innocent. It was plain he fully understood why he had been chosen, too.
"Your consideration is appreciated."
Laios stepped forward as the group's representative and returned the courtesy.
Whatever else might be said, the Duke's second son seemed undeniably the right man for this job.
Clicking his tongue in irritation, Arendt shot another glare at Cantares. The Crown Prince, who had been pretending to fuss with something for a moment, broke at last into a wide, mischievous grin.
"The journey won't be a short one, so you might as well enjoy the trip. Set out tomorrow as soon as preparations are complete."
"Yes, sir."
The sound of crisp answers rang out around the room.
Rather than join the chorus, Arendt strode straight up to where the Crown Prince was seated.
"Your Highness, do you have a moment?"
"Hm? Oh—sure."
Sensing something ominous, Cantares nodded anyway.
Head bowed, Arendt whispered something in his ear.
"......"
"......"
The smile that had never left the Crown Prince's face warped slightly.
Having delivered exactly one sentence, Arendt straightened back up, gave a shallow bow of the head by way of salute, and returned to Laios's side.
"We will see you tomorrow, my lord, once preparations are complete."
Laios greeted him calmly—but a touch hastily. He had no desire to find out what else might spring from Arendt's mouth.
Once the Commander of the 3rd Knight Order had led his subordinates out of the drawing room, Henri and Arcus likewise paid their respects to the Crown Prince and withdrew.
When only the two of them remained, Zereon slyly asked what Arendt had said.
"What did Sir Arendt whisper to you?"
"He said, 'How wonderful it must be, to have been born the rightful heir of the Callion imperial bloodline.'"
"Whoa..."
An exclamation of awe burst from Zereon's lips.
Loosely translated, the remark meant something along the lines of, 'If you weren't the heir to the imperial succession, you'd already be dead at my hands.'
"Will you be all right? I can't help worrying he's gone and stirred up trouble for nothing..."
"That one? Scratching him gets you nothing."
If he ever succeeded in actually provoking the man, it wouldn't stop at a mere boil.
After a brief pause, Cantares curved his lips into a slow smile.
"Still, young Lord Arcus seems to have had a change of heart. One ought to give him a chance at least once, no?"
"Is it really not just that you find it amusing?"
"Two birds, one stone."
The look Zereon gave his Crown Prince cooled several degrees.
His master had never been a docile man, granted.
'Somehow, lately he seems to be getting worse and worse...'
He felt certain that the influence of a certain apprentice knight who lived doing whatever he pleased had a great deal to do with it.
---
When performing, Arendt rarely let his private feelings seep into the work.
Even back in the theater troupe, his unshakable immersion had earned him no small praise from his fellow actors.
But for some reason, the mere existence of Arcus grated on him with an odd, outsized persistence.
'It must be the real Arendt's influence.'
Like facing a food he loathed, the aversion lodged in his body kept raising its head. And alongside it, the fact that the man was even more tenacious than expected seemed to be doing its part too.
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
Even as they rode along at an easy pace, Arcus kept circling relentlessly around Arendt's vicinity—yet he couldn't quite muster the nerve to speak, and did nothing but steal glances.
And through all of it, Arendt didn't spare him so much as a glance, which was enough to drive the onlookers out of their minds.
In the end, Arthur, unable to bear watching, sidled up close to Arendt.
"Hey. Your brother's been staring holes in you this whole time."
"Leave him be. The more he looks, the more he'll realize how handsome I am."
"......"
The man's nonsense simply never ran out.
"Besides, where exactly do I have a brother? He existed, sure—but he doesn't now. Not anymore."
"You really are..."
Still, Arthur couldn't say he completely failed to understand the feeling.
Arendt had severed ties with the Count in front of every noble in the empire—the Crown Prince included.
"And the one who should be feeling regret right now isn't me. It's him. Whatever scheme he's running, I couldn't say."
"Scheme?"
"And how exactly can you guarantee, senior, that there's zero chance he followed us on orders from the Count's house?"
"......"
At that, Arthur shut his mouth firmly.
The Arendt of today held a great deal in his hands.
The other nobles had taken one hard blow from him and written him off entirely as a lunatic, refusing even to approach—but with the Count of Eckhart, who still had blood ties to draw on, the story was a little different.
His cozy friendship with the Neumann Merchant Guild, and now his role as the Crown Prince's right-hand schemer—for all these, the Count might well be regretting, too late, that he had ever let Arendt slip away.
But still...
"I wouldn't put it past His Highness to have considered even that possibility."
At the words Arendt muttered without thinking, his brows knotted fiercely.
At that ominous air, Arthur quietly put some distance between them.
Shooting his senior a sour look, Arendt spurred his horse on and drew further away from him.
The House of Eckhart was a useless connection.
The people he could truly trust right now numbered but a handful.
Those who had shown themselves utterly steadfast in The Blue Knight of the Sacred Sword, and those who—though enemies in the novel—had turned wholly to his side.
Given the present circumstances, keeping anyone else close was not a prospect he relished.
'What a nuisance.'
Even supposing Arcus was approaching with no ulterior motive whatsoever, the presence of Count Eckhart standing behind him could not be ignored.
He had only just finished dealing with the nobles—if the Count, who had never been well-disposed toward the Crown Prince to begin with, became the nucleus of some revival, trouble was guaranteed to follow.
Arendt shot a brief glance toward the carriage Henri had boarded.
A single driver, a few attendants to serve Henri, and then three knights including Laios—and Arcus.
That was the whole of their company.
'You insolent traitor. What do you think about all this?'
Somehow, the man on the other end seemed to have mistaken who exactly was owed an apology—and there was no way to simply tell him so.
With a light shake of his head, he brushed the thought away.
If this nagging irritation was part of playing 'Arendt', then bearing it was his job too. And dodging it outright was hardly behavior befitting 'Arendt' either—so charging straight at the problem would, if anything, be easier on his conscience.
'Torment him half to death, and he's bound to make his position clear.'
The moment Arendt resolved on this, Arcus shuddered from an inexplicable chill.
A knight commander suffering from stomach trouble, a steadfast knight doing his best to look anywhere else, a knight bullied daily by his junior.
A younger brother plotting how best to torment his older brother, and the eldest son of a noble house watching that brother's every move... while the second son of a noble house drifted quietly apart at the edge of it all.
The procession moved slowly onward.
Their destination: the Border Mountain Range.