Accomplice, or Actor
Time had passed by unknown degrees, and Arendt returned alongside Prince Matthias, who looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.
The instant the prince stepped into the room and spotted the Crown Prince, he dropped to his knees without giving anyone a chance to stop him and began to wail.
"Aaaaagh! Your Highness, Crown Prince! I beg you, forgive my foolish elder brother for his crimes! No—no, don't forgive him! But the kingdom, at least the kingdom...!"
"Whoa, whoa, just—hold on, Prince. Please calm down first. Let's start with a conversation. Whatever it is you want to say, you won't know whether I'll forgive you or not until you say it, right?"
"I'm so sorry! Huuueng, I should have stopped him from doing this, and I never even knew he was plotting such a thing!"
When neither tears nor snot showed any sign of stopping, Cantares shot Arendt a look of pure incredulity.
"Hey, what did you say to the man to get him into this state?"
"Nothing much. I merely asked whether he was prepared to lose his entire kingdom for daring to pick a fight with the Empire."
"......"
The shameless retort made him look exactly like a rotten adult who had reduced a child to tears and was feeling rather pleased about it.
Even though Prince Matthias was likely far older than this brat.
"You're the worst of the lot, you know that?"
"Thank you for the compliment."
"How was that a compliment?"
Snapping irritably, Cantares eventually gave up and raised the weeping prince to his feet himself.
The sight of his flushed face, tears welling in his eyes, was actually rather comical... but no one could bring themselves to laugh.
"I don't know what that man said to you, but for now, let it go. I have no intention of blaming the entire kingdom for the Crown Prince's personal misconduct. And besides..."
No one had actually been attacked.
The ones who'd suffered an outrage were the assassins—and your side.
But looking at the prince, Cantares simply couldn't bring himself to say any of that out loud.
He cast the knights a pleading glance for help, but they all quietly averted their eyes.
Bunch of useless bastards...
"Nothing gets solved by crying. From what I can see, you already had some inkling that Prince Alois was up to something, didn't you...?"
Instead, it was a mischievous, insufferably sly voice that answered.
Arendt sauntered over to the prince and the Crown Prince and drawled, lopsided in every sense.
"It would be in everyone's interest for you to tell us willingly."
"......This brat speaks rather harshly, but he means no harm to the Kingdom of Nephele."
Nudging Arendt aside, Cantares spoke to the prince in a soothing tone.
"Not yet."
"Hyiik...!"
But that one appended remark made the prince's face turn deathly pale.
The Crown Prince rested a hand on Matthias's shoulder and continued in a gentle voice.
"Crying solves nothing, Prince. If you have lived all this time receiving the privileges of royal blood, then you must shoulder its responsibilities as well. Wouldn't you agree?"
"......"
"You seem to have some idea of what the Crown Prince Alois has been doing, yourself..."
Cantares was smiling, to be sure—but he made no effort to hide the blade beneath it.
"So rather than weeping your apologies, it would serve you better to calmly consider how a scion of the royal house intends to resolve this situation. What do you think?"
"......Hik."
Frozen stiff before the smiling Crown Prince, Matthias could neither weep nor speak; he could only hiccup, over and over.
So complete was his paralysis that he never even noticed the moment the Crown Prince dropped his honorifics.
Watching the scene unfold, the knights thought to themselves:
So the Crown Prince, too, was no ordinary human being.
"...My brother and His Highness clashed often, even in ordinary times."
Only after the commotion had settled did Matthias finally manage to piece his story together, haltingly.
"His Highness was always worried about my brother's aggressive tendencies, and my brother would push back, saying that if we merely rested on what we had, the kingdom would never advance any further."
The ministers, caught between the two, had been forced to live like tightrope walkers, forever watching both their faces.
"And recently, the quarrels grew much worse... I believe it was because of that outsider my brother suddenly brought home."
At the mention of a third party, Arendt's brow creased slightly.
"He never properly revealed his identity—he only ever said they were 'friends.' It seemed as though he was egging my brother on, but I couldn't tell you the details. He forbade us from even speaking with him."
And not long after, the king collapsed.
"Father was quite healthy for his age. And yet he never opened his eyes again... and the physicians couldn't even determine the cause..."
Matthias had barely regained his composure, but now his voice began to tremble all over again.
"Everyone believes my brother did something. But the ministers stayed silent, out of fear that a single careless word could cost them their lives."
And then, into that situation, came the sudden decree that he would attend the summit.
"Our elder sister earnestly entreated me. She said that if my brother tried to cross the line, I had to stop him."
Accompanying his brother had been the last thing he wanted—but he had found himself nodding anyway.
"And yet you didn't manage to stop him."
"......"
At that sly remark tossed in from one side, Matthias's mouth clamped shut once more.
"To spell it all out for you: in the end, you lot couldn't stop one reckless Crown Prince, and now your kingdom is on the verge of falling to pieces. What exactly are you people even doing?"
"Koff—kof! Kof, kof!"
The prince let out a strangled cough and dissolved into a hacking fit—and Arendt, utterly without mercy, pressed on with his questioning.
"This person your brother brought with him—do you know his name? His face? He wasn't wearing a mask or anything?"
"Ah, th-that is... he wasn't wearing a mask. He was a man, and I believe he said his name was Lexion. Though I couldn't say whether that was his real name."
Lexion.
It was a name Arendt had never heard before.
Arms crossed, he sank into thought.
"...Doesn't this all seem a little strange to you?"
A moment later, at the uneasy note that slipped from the apprentice knight's mouth, every head turned toward him.
"What's catching your eye?"
"The whole setup is too obvious. It's like a stage that was patched together at the last minute."
When Laios asked, Arendt answered as though he'd been waiting for the question.
"One ought to avoid situations that look unnatural to any observer. And the fact that this country was even present at this summit is, frankly, far too random to begin with."
"You have a point there, admittedly."
Cantares, listening quietly, gave a slow nod.
"Prince—when did this outsider, this Lexion, first appear?"
"Pardon? That would be... around the time talk of holding a summit first began. As I said, recent—very recent."
At Matthias's hesitant answer, Arendt scowled.
"The timing doesn't sit right. Sending assassins now, of all moments—it's absurd. If he genuinely believed that would work, he'd have to be an idiot."
More than a few of their number had already died at the hands of Arendt and the Knight Order. The lesson that assassins were no match for them had been carved into their bones by now.
"Exactly. Honestly, poisoning the food would have stood a better chance of working than charging at us with blades drawn."
"A sound observation. The boy does shove absolutely anything into his mouth without so much as a glance."
Cantares added this in all seriousness, Arthur nodded along in earnest agreement, and Arendt shot the pair a filthy look before steering the conversation back on course.
"Still, eighteen assassins—that number did carry a genuine will to kill. I don't think the attempt itself was pure misdirection."
Had it been anyone other than the Callion Empire's royal knight orders and Arendt whose strength was unknown to him, Alois might have been forgiven for the blunder—but the Cult of Cernion did not make such mistakes.
"In my opinion, if those bastards had truly resolved to eliminate someone, they wouldn't have pulled a half-baked stunt like this. If they meant to commit personnel, they'd have brought a hundred at minimum."
Suppose they were still holding back, biding their time because the moment hadn't yet come—sending a Crown Prince out to loose a handful of assassins was simply not the way they operated.
Which left only one answer.
They might have supplied him with something as trivial as Invisibility Scrolls, but the assassins themselves had been Alois's own arrangement. At the very least, he had attended this summit with the genuine intent of killing Arendt.
But—did the ones pulling his strings from behind feel the same?
Having organized his thoughts, Arendt began slowly.
"What if we assume the Crown Prince Alois is nothing more than a decoy puppet, and that there's some other purpose moving behind him?"
"......"
"Let's start from the beginning. First—why do you think they chose the Kingdom of Nephele?"
That voice, peculiarly clear and precise, burrowed into everyone's ears.
After a moment's thought, Richt offered one answer.
"I suspect Prince Alois's temperament played a part."
Easy to manipulate through flattery, consumed by ambition, and already estranged from his own king—it would have been no difficult matter to sow discord and drive him toward dreams of treason.
If the true goal had simply been to win Alois over and use him to kill Arendt, that alone would have been reason enough.
But under the hypothesis they had just built, something still felt slightly lacking.
It was then that Laios, who had been silent for a long while, finally spoke.
"Your Highness, one thing catches my attention. The King of Nephele is currently unconscious, and Crown Prince Alois and Prince Matthias are both staying here, in this place."
"......"
"That means the only one left in the Kingdom of Nephele is the Princess. Arendt—wasn't this what you were getting at?"
Under the Commander's pointed gaze, Arendt held his silence.
Which meant yes.
A moment later, the color drained from Matthias's face as the implication finally landed.
"Y-you can't mean—they're after the kingdom itself?"
"It's a valid hypothesis. If their true goal was simply to remove that Crown Prince from the board for a while, it would explain nearly everything."
At Arendt's added remark, Matthias looked ready to faint on the spot.
Whatever one called a princess, she held nothing like the authority or grip on power that a Crown Prince commanded. Right now, the royal palace of Nephele was as good as an empty house.
And as a bonus, if the Crown Prince happened to dispose of Arendt along the way, so much the better.
Beyond that, if word spread that the Crown Prince had hired assassins and he was arrested for it—well, that too would suit Lexion quite nicely.
At that point, Arthur pushed back.
"But what does he actually gain from wiping out the royal family right before our eyes?"
"Hmm. The first thing that comes to my mind is burgling an empty house..."
Trailing off, Arendt turned his gaze toward Prince Matthias.
"Anything in particular that comes to mind, Your Highness?"
"W-well... it doesn't quite make sense, but now that you mention an empty house, there is one thing."
Matthias, who had been staring blankly into the air, opened his mouth.
"But it's not something that could be taken right away... honestly, no one even knows if it truly exists. They say it's somewhere in the palace, but..."
"I'm getting irritated, so stop stammering and speak properly. We don't have time."
At Arendt's prodding, the prince nodded hurriedly and, though still faltering, began spilling the words in a rush.
"There is... a treasure said to have been passed down through the royal line. It's not widely known, but those of us in the royal family have heard it told by word of mouth. Almost no one takes it seriously."
His confidence draining away, Matthias let his sentence trail off and darted a glance at the Crown Prince.
"They say it's a relic from the age of war... I don't know its name, but it's supposed to be a book adorned with enormously precious jewels. One imbued with magical power."
A book with the power of magic.
Unlike the wavering prince, everyone present now felt certain that the hypothesis they had constructed moments ago was the correct one.
Richt murmured it like a groan.
"In other words—an Artifact."