The Stubbornly Disobedient Apprentice Knight
The afternoon hung in that in-between hour, the sun slipping from its midday peak toward the western sky. Even the usually bustling heart of the imperial capital was beginning to settle down as evening approached.
Inside the quiet restaurant, which never drew much of a crowd to begin with, there were only two customers.
Lawrence, the restaurant's owner, watched the young men chatting amicably with a fond, sleepy-eyed gaze.
They were men of completely opposite coloring, but the way they leaned their heads together and murmured on and on made them look, at a glance, like brothers with a wide gap in age. And since both were handsome enough to steal anyone's gaze, it was only natural that a warm smile would rise to the face of anyone watching them.
But nothing so beautiful could be true beneath the surface. For all the peace of their appearance, Cantares was seething inside.
"You know, sometimes I think you forget who I am."
"Huh? No way that could happen."
Arendt answered without looking up, snacking on cookies with one hand while lazily flipping through papers with the other.
The sight of him not even lifting his head when the Crown Prince addressed him was truly a marvel to behold.
"If I'd actually forgotten, I wouldn't have bothered coming out here. Your Highness can't possibly imagine how it feels to spend a hard-earned vacation with your superior."
"...It's not like a vacation means anything to you anyway. You'd just be cooped up in the training grounds, swinging a sword."
What was more, the documents Zereon had drafted personally and Cantares had delivered himself were exactly what Arendt had demanded. The matter still required secrecy, so the Crown Prince had deliberately carved time out of a schedule that had none to spare, all to slip away and come here.
If I get angry, I lose.
So endure it. Endure.
There was nothing to gain from losing his temper at a guy who still had half a dozen bandages plastered across his face. And to begin with, he had no confidence he'd win an argument against him anyway.
"The auction house matter is more or less settled. You thrashed around so much that I suffered for it too."
"How did it turn out?"
"For now, the story is that the attacker was finished off in a joint effort between you and the Knight Commanders."
The villain, gravely wounded and grasping at a final desperate gamble to take a hostage, had died from the apprentice knight's last blow.
The accessories the merchant guild leader had handed out were trial versions of keepsakes made from materials from the mine; caught in the field where the knights had rampaged, they had failed to withstand the violent mana and shattered.
That was the official story.
"That'll do fine. And how are people reacting?"
"What do you think?"
"A few of them were glaring at me like they wanted me dead when I came out today. If it hadn't been the palace grounds, they looked ready to spit. Meanwhile others just stared like they found me utterly fascinating."
As Arendt answered without tearing his eyes from the papers, a sigh escaped Cantares's lips.
"Then I suppose I don't need to explain."
"What a tiresome development."
"Don't say that so lightly. Things are at the point where one touch could set everything off."
"And if we just leave it alone, it won't explode?"
"..."
This damned man had a real talent for saying things that were perfectly reasonable in the most infuriating way possible.
Especially for Cantares, who was being squeezed to death between the two factions, that airy tone couldn't help but rake at his nerves.
Though the matter had been patched over to some degree, the truth of this incident had spread at least somewhat through a handful of mouths. After the last several incidents, the more perceptive nobles had already caught a faint whiff of the enemy's existence.
It was only natural that they were on high alert, given that things might escalate into outright civil war.
And in the midst of all that, it was inevitable that some would grumble about a mere apprentice knight stirring up a hornet's nest for nothing.
A groan of frustration spilled out of Cantares.
"We're supposed to approach this carefully, but more than a few people are saying the enemy only started digging in because you went and provoked them."
"Your own track record isn't much better, Your Highness. The moment you entered politics, you supposedly rallied the nobles and stabilized the empire."
"Ha, rallied them? What a joke."
An irritated retort came back at Arendt's teasing jab.
"I coaxed them, soothed them, even threatened them into gathering in one place. But how many of them are actually well-behaved?"
"Ahh, so the ones who grinned to your face and spat behind your back are starting to crawl out of the woodwork again."
"Exactly."
"And the biggest headache right now is this gentleman here?"
"Huh?"
Startled by the sudden remark, Cantares, who had been rubbing his forehead without realizing it, looked up — and Arendt spread open the paper he'd been reading.
It was a page listing the basic particulars and characteristics of various nobles. Arendt's finger was resting on one of them.
Cantares's voice went flat with disbelief almost instantly.
"...How did you know? You gremlin."
"I don't know. It just felt like it'd be him."
Arendt answered with perfect nonchalance, tidying the papers away again.
"So what exactly did he do to start this?"
"There are plenty of excuses he could give."
Tsk. Clicking his tongue, the Crown Prince gripped his glass of juice and grumbled on.
"He seems deeply displeased that the mine fell into my hands. And since the head of the Neumann Merchant Guild has turned our way as well, he reads it as the great flow of capital coming under my banner. Which, frankly, isn't entirely wrong."
Money falling into their grasp was nothing more than a byproduct — an accident that had come about because Arendt had run himself ragged back and forth. But to the nobles, it had apparently loomed as a very great threat indeed.
After all, it now looked as though the next contender for the throne had acquired financial might to boot.
Arendt nodded vaguely, satisfied, and lowered his gaze back to the documents.
Marquis Lowell de Lanford.
The name was not unfamiliar to him either.
Ah, the old coot who gave the Crown Prince no end of headaches right up to the end.
He flipped through a few more pages, and more familiar names surfaced. Among them were the names of men who would later be caught selling weapons to the enemy and executed.
Reading through those familiar names, the memory of choking down burnt sweet potatoes came flooding back.
External enemies had been a problem — but so was the rot within, thrown into chaos from the inside.
At first, the factions had seemed to rally beneath the Emperor and Crown Prince to drive back the villains, but as time went on, defectors had begun slipping away one by one.
The real problem was that they noticed far too late.
In the scramble to put out the nearest fire, they had failed to rein in the men quietly scheming to stab them in the back.
Whether they had been moles from the start or traitors who'd turned midway was unclear, but either way, it was fact that their betrayal had struck the imperial family a heavy blow.
A crowd I'd have to cross swords with eventually anyway.
Which meant that if they picked a fight first, sparing him the trouble of seeking them out, he could only welcome it.
A faint smile crept over Arendt's lips.
"What's that. Why are you suddenly grinning? It's unsettling."
"Have you prepared a countermeasure?"
"What countermeasure is there to prepare? You coddle them, soothe them, and every now and then remind them exactly who holds the leash. Until they bow their heads and behave again."
"Well, well. Uncharacteristically sound reasoning, Your Highness."
"Uncharacteristically? A throne means you have to embrace even things like that. You need only look at the fact that I picked up a creature like you and put him to use."
"Where in the world would you find talent this useful? You ought to be grateful I'm on your side."
That smug little worm.
Cantares's fist tightened. What infuriated him most was that not a single word out of the brat's mouth was actually wrong.
"But anyway... I do agree with Your Highness to a point. Still, wouldn't a dose of shock therapy be in order, just this once?"
"Shock therapy?"
"Yes. From the look of them, every one of these men is a formidable serpent in his own right."
Arendt muttered lazily, chin propped on his hand.
"They're the type who'd rather gnaw away at you from the inside, slow and steady, than stab you in the back out in the open. Better to shake them loose before they've burrowed in any deeper, no?"
"Easier said than done. The moment you so much as raise a hand to shake them loose, all hell breaks loose with it. 'You offered a legitimate opinion and now you'd resort to oppression, Your Highness?' — that sort of thing. They'll paint you as an outright tyrant."
At the pointed observation, Arendt tossed a completely unrelated question at Cantares.
"Have you ever seen a play, Your Highness?"
"What? Well... yes. The palace invites troupes when there are events now and then. I've watched a few as part of my education."
The young knight pressed on.
"Then do you happen to know? Even with the same script, the entire mood changes depending on which actor takes the stage and what tone he performs in."
"I suppose... that would be true. It's the same as swordsmanship — the same technique looks entirely different depending on which knight executes it."
"And unforeseen accidents can happen at any time. One day the actor playing a crucial role falls ill and can't take the stage. Or he flubs his lines mid-performance. Or the one who's supposed to appear simply doesn't show... that sort of thing."
Arendt stopped his idle rambling abruptly and looked Cantares dead in the eye.
"A play still has to deliver its written ending, even in those circumstances."
"...But reality has no ending written for it?"
"Precisely — in reality, you have to make the ending you want. Otherwise, it's this side that loses."
If this had been the world he'd originally lived in, it would have ended with him getting cursed out by every audience member in the hall and thrown out of the troupe. Here, it would cost him his head.
"What on earth are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying that if you handle those sudden twists well, you can flip the entire story on its head."
Having said that much, Arendt allowed an enigmatic smile to spread across his face.
"The hero might end up delivering the lines meant for the most wretched villain in existence. A scheming traitor who was originally on the villain's side might defect to the good side purely in pursuit of his own interests. Isn't that how it goes?"
Someone, for instance, exactly like his present self.
Arendt folded his arms and curled his lips into a sly grin.
"The best defense is offense. The one who strikes first wins. If your strength is equal, the one who moves faster lands one more blow."
The first thing the enemies who had declared war on the empire had done was announce their existence.
Quite literally, a declaration of war.
The ones who had branded their presence vividly into people's minds had then seeped into the political sphere and swelled their ranks.
There's no reason we can't do the same.
What needed doing now was work to keep the fence-sitters — the ones who would dither and drift, unable to choose a side when events unfolded — from tipping over to the other side.
"Is that any kind of thing for a knight to say?"
"Isn't it precisely because I'm this kind of knight that I get to sit across from you, Your Highness?"
Cantares, who had been listening quietly to all of it, burst out laughing.
"Insolent brat. You dare lecture me?"
"I'm an insolent brat by nature. Consider it a bonus if you learned something."
Cantares shot a sidelong glance at the knight shrugging his shoulders and let out a long groan.
"You babble on and on, but boiled down, you're saying shake up the board with everything already in hand, yes?"
"Exactly. That's how you bend the current and steer the situation where you want it."
There was plenty to work with. The situation itself, his loyal retainers, his political rivals...
No. That's not it.
That wasn't what Arendt meant.
Cantares turned the thought over slowly in his head, then broke into laughter once more.
"There is one damnedably disobedient apprentice knight, I suppose."
"And Your Highness's station — the kind that can shake the empire with a single word — is also a rather useful tool."
Arendt shrugged.
"But it would be a burden to manage alone, so if you nudge a little of it my way, I'll handle it with skill. Not for free, of course."
"...Judging by that look, you've had another entertaining idea."
Cantares paused a moment, then slowly curled his lips upward.
"Would you call it an entertaining idea? It's certainly not for free."
"Knew it, you little rascal. What do you want?"
"Hmm, what do I need these days, I wonder."
Arendt, chin resting comfortably in his hand, rolled his eyes this way and that until they met Cantares's gaze.
"I'll think about that one gradually — and bill you later."
"You really are a rotten one."
In that moment, who was the Crown Prince and who was the apprentice knight hardly mattered at all.
There were only two mischief-makers, each cherishing a impish delight at the thought of making the other pay for it.