Something Like Prisoners (0)
Concubines held no official recognition in the Empire. The institution of marriage was held sacred under the names of law and religion alike.
Concubinage was a custom unique to the Kingdom of Sandor, a vassal state of the Empire. As far as I knew, the nobles there had a culture of collecting attractive women and men the way one might collect pets. How alluring one's concubines were, and how many one kept, apparently served as a barometer of one's authority.
And yet King Sandor had abandoned his own women and fled. So much for the dignity of a king who had handed his entire tribe over to the Empire.
"Where are they being held?"
"We put them in the south tower, but they were quite the handful."
"Why?"
The tower was a special prison designed to hold powerful Awakened like Chris. Its bars were forged from Oradium, and the cells themselves were layered thick with barriers.
"Locking them up was no trouble at all. Their mouths were the problem. I never imagined there was a woman alive who could curse better than I could. If you hadn't told me to leave one of them breathing, I'd have simply killed them."
Shaka grumbled as she spoke.
"Better at cursing than you?"
Shaka was the owner of a vicious tongue that had once floored her fellow knights with mental attacks alone. If a woman like that was shaking her head, just how bad did that make the opponent?
"Yes. Shouldn't we burn her at the stake, like the witch she is?"
"…I'll head to the tower for now."
I had plenty to ask the prisoner. About the schemes Raphael was hatching. As the king's concubine, she would have overheard the intimate exchanges between Raphael and King Sandor firsthand.
Of course, there was no guarantee she would open her mouth willingly. That was why I'd brought Shaka along. Shaka's mind-reading ability tore a target's memories out at the cost of crippling their body. She had never had proper occasion to use it before — most of the enemies we'd faced so far had circumstances that earned them some measure of mercy.
But this one had set out with the express intention of boiling me alive. She had no right to complain about rough treatment.
The door of the south tower opened slowly. I climbed the stairs and came to a stop before the cell where the prisoner was held.
The prisoner was a woman in her twenties, dusky-skinned, with long, tumbling curls of brown hair. She hadn't given a thought to the cold when setting foot in the north, apparently — aside from a fur cloak draped over her shoulders, she was dressed in next to nothing.
Come to think of it, King Sandor had been bare-chested as well. His men had worn little more than scraps of cloth, too.
"Duke Iden, I presume."
The woman tilted her curls and smiled seductively.
"My name is Isolde. I'm told the one who subdued me was none other than Your Grace. All this time, I believed myself the finest illusionist in the Empire — but thanks to you, I have at last come to understand that there is a sky above the sky."
Isolde bent into a graceful bow. The motion involved a generous amount of entirely deliberate exposure. I smiled faintly and glanced back at Shaka.
"Not what I was told, Shaka."
"That's all an act, that is. That snake of a— hey! Why aren't you talking the way you did earlier, you bitch!"
"My, how uncouth."
Isolde clicked her tongue in contempt.
"However uneducated a knight may be, how could a man as fine as Your Grace keep such a vulgar creature about?"
Sparks flew from Shaka's eyes.
"Lord Iden. Can I use my Awakened ability now? I can, right? We don't need some ignorant broad whose only asset is her tits anyway."
"If you've come to interrogate me, there's really no need for such tedious effort. I am prepared to answer anything you wish to ask."
"And how am I supposed to trust you?" I asked. Isolde swept her hair up, baring the nape of her neck.
"There's no loyalty owed to a man who abandoned me and ran. It's late to be saying this, but Sandor was truly the worst of men. Nothing but bulk to him — not a shred of delicacy or beauty to be found... If a man like you had been in the south, Your Grace, I wouldn't have spared him a second glance."
"Hey, don't you dare come on to him, you unbaptized heathen. Lord Iden is engaged to someone far younger and prettier than you."
"How could a man as heroic as Your Grace content himself with a single flower? Flowers only grow more fragrant the more of them gather."
"What? What kind of bullshit is that? You want Iden to carry on affairs like you?"
"I was never married. I merely kept company with one fool for a time."
"Isolde."
The two women stopped mid-argument and looked at me.
"You still haven't answered how I'm supposed to trust you."
"That's simple enough."
Isolde's red lips traced a graceful curve.
"You remember the pathetic man who fled in terror of you, don't you?"
She meant King Sandor.
"That man's sand — it is not invincible."
Isolde smiled, and the smile meant something.
Toward late evening, I made my way to the priest's quarters in the underground. Kalman's treatment should have been finished by now.
The bell tower of the village hall tolled nine times. Nine o'clock was when one would normally wind down the day and prepare for bed, but with no real distinction between night and day down here, the streets were actually bustling.
The priest's quarters, by contrast, stood empty. A young man was diligently sweeping the bare wooden floor.
"The head of the diocese, scrubbing the floor himself."
The young man burst out laughing at my words.
"Coming from you, that sounds terribly grand. I'm the only priest here. I'm the diocese head and the lowliest acolyte all rolled into one."
The brown-haired young man gripping the mop was Daron, head of the underground diocese. There had been no time for a proper greeting earlier.
"Why only one? It's not as if the Solitas Church is short of people."
"There's hardly any reason to come down of one's own accord into a basement crawling with monsters, is there? We're treated quite well enough up above."
"And yet here you are."
"Apparently the treatment wasn't good enough for me."
Daron laughed. I could see why Colin had introduced him as an ambitious talent. He seemed to nurse the aspiration of raising the underground to rival the surface.
"How is Kalman?"
"If you mean the patient, he left before his treatment was finished. I urged him that he hadn't healed yet, but he wouldn't hear a word of it."
"When?"
Daron glanced at the clock.
"Just a short while ago. Did you not cross paths with him on your way here?"
No, I hadn't. There were several passages linking the underground and the surface now. What bothered me more, though, was why Kalman had left the priest's quarters without even finishing his treatment.
"Ah — he also left word of thanks for you, Your Grace. And he told you not to do 'that sort of thing' again. I don't know what that sort of thing might be, but... Your Grace?"
I bolted from the priest's quarters and gave my orders to the guards waiting outside.
"Seal the gates. Now!"
The guard immediately sprinted for the surface.
I hadn't thought this through. Kalman was so loyal to the imperial family that men called him the Emperor's confidant. To come within a hair's breadth of being eliminated by Raphael, the man who would be the next Emperor — the shock of it must have been enormous.
And he wasn't the type to lean on others, either. So he was overreaching, trying to settle it with his own two hands.
My orders reached the surface in an instant. The Esterzy domain kept itself in a state of semi-wartime readiness at all times, prepared to answer any enemy provocation.
Soon the signal fires were lit. The gates of the inner and outer walls lowered in unison. The moat crossings were drawn back, and the defenders took their posts along the ramparts without a hitch.
Count Andrassy hadn't been the only one to pour money into his walls. After the Battle of Andrassy, I had devoted considerable effort to my own defenses as well. It would be no exaggeration to say that every coin left over after outfitting my soldiers had gone straight into those walls.
If Kalman was still inside the castle city, he wasn't getting out unless he smashed through the walls like a giant or drove the garrison commander into the ground.
I returned to the ducal residence and unhurriedly poured myself a glass of Sparkling Bay.
Before long, someone strode up to the office.
"My lord—"
Before the attendant could announce the visitor, the door was flung wide open.
"…Lord Kalman, the Sword Duke, is here to see you."
I looked Kalman over as I sipped my drink. It was the first time I had seen him without his coat.
Daron had apparently stripped him of his ruined clothes during treatment and dressed him in his own. Kalman in priest's garb had a certain style to him.
If anything, he looked more the part of a diocese head than the actual one did.
"What was that stunt?"
Kalman demanded without preamble.
"What stunt, all of a sudden?"
Thud.
Kalman strode over and planted both hands on the desk. His blue eyes bored into me.
"Explain why you lowered the gates to stop me."
"When a man I went to the trouble of keeping alive starts walking himself to his death, of course the gates come down."
"A price must be paid for one's sins."
Anger was threaded through Kalman's voice. And I realized he was missing one crucial fact.
"Irene is alive."
"…What?"
"She'll be at the knights' headquarters by now. One of her arms was severed, but don't worry too much. I found the arm, and I've got a priest seeing to her."
Kalman's expression took me a little by surprise. Were the two of them close enough that he would pursue revenge without a thought for his own condition?
"I am in your debt. Even so, I must return. There is a territory I must answer for."
Kalman said this in a somewhat softened tone.
"Forget the territory. Go back, and you'll be saddled with the charge of conspiring with me to assassinate the First Prince. Your title stripped, and you thrown into a dungeon. Isn't that exactly how it would go?"
"I will plead my case before His Majesty. I am not without allies among the Seven Pillars."
"Then explain the situation by letter first. See how those people react to your letter before you make a single move."
…
Kalman deliberated for a long while.
"There's no other way, is there."
At last he conceded. Even I thought there was no other way, not at this point — we had no information at all on how far their conspiracy reached.
Sandor's betrayal would have struck Kalman hard. He and Sandor were known to be on good terms, and from what I had seen with my own eyes, that much was true. Ironically, I — someone he had met only a handful of times — was now a man he could trust more than the Seven Pillars he had fought alongside for years.
"Let's get along for a while, Kalman."
"My throat burns."
Kalman picked up the bottle of Sparkling Bay left on the desk. He pulled a glass from the display stand and poured until it overflowed.
"You'll regret drinking that."
I warned him in advance. Kalman shot me an incredulous glance — then, without a moment's hesitation, downed the glass in one go.
"Pfft—!"
The drink he had swallowed in a single gulp came straight back up. Kalman gagged and retched for a good while, unable to straighten his back.
"What in the world is this? You drink this stuff and call it a beverage?"
"I told you you'd regret it."
I sipped my own drink at my leisure. It was laced with Chris's poisonous herb. Unless you shielded your insides with mana beforehand, this was exactly the state you'd end up in.