Stubbornness (3)
Stubbornness (3)
A day had passed since Alice visited. There was no new word in the interim.
The command the emperor had given me still had not been rescinded. Alice evidently had not managed to see the emperor yet. Well, I had heard he was away.
The luggage Alice had unpacked... I had not repacked it yet. For the time being, I had simply returned the items she took from the bag to where they belonged.
Since Alice had personally unpacked my things, I decided to feel out the situation a little before packing again.
No matter how adamant Alice became, she would not easily persuade that iron-stubborn emperor. Even though he loved his daughter, he was an emperor whose own objectives came first.
Outwardly, he always claimed it was "for the empire," but in reality he was pathologically obsessed with state affairs, an enthusiast of governance for its own sake. If he determined that something could harm his governance, he was willing to discard even his own daughter without hesitation.
The Riklant Autonomous State had never yet appeared in the main game, though it existed in the setting. Only enough to serve as a hint that it might play an important role in a sequel.
Game production had surely already begun, but I had arrived in this world long before release, so I had not even seen a trailer.
The prevailing speculation among fans was that the sequel would involve the protagonist, having retreated to the then-unstable Riklant Republic still plagued by warlords, clearing out those warlords and building enough trust to find a place to settle.
If I had utterly cleaned out the warlords before then, that speculation would become meaningless, of course... but I did not think the emperor planned to deal with "all" of them. He would likely leave enough of them to trouble the autonomous state while giving them just enough of a taste to make them want to lean on the empire.
If he had truly intended to sweep away every warlord, he would simply have sent the regular army.
Then again, there was a strong possibility that the autonomous state would have refused if he had tried to send the army like that.
What sovereign nation in the world would welcome another country dispatching its military, claiming it would solve the nation's internal criminals? No matter how you looked at it, that was plainly an infringement on sovereignty. The ulterior motive was far too transparent.
"...... Oh, wait."
Could that be why the emperor had intended to send "me"?
If he dispatched an entire imperial army unit, the Riklant Republic would naturally oppose it, but they might not complain as loudly about a single assassin being sent.
No, perhaps he had not even planned to send me in a military capacity. He could smuggle me among diplomats, or even openly send me as an imperial princess. That would work too.
...... If it were me, I could create gaps among those official schedules, move freely within the autonomous state, and carry out assassination missions.
Uh.......
Hasn't the level of the emperor's trust in me become, well, rather excessively inflated?
Had the original Claire been trusted to this extent? No matter how much he relied on her, I didn't recall him sending Claire off all alone for a mission like this.
I rested my hand on my forehead and sank into thought.
If I had gone to the autonomous state without thinking and roamed around blowing off the heads of warlord leaders, the future might have been seriously altered.
Then again, this was Millennium Company, the sort of developer that sometimes took pleasure in landing a solid sucker punch on players. They probably wouldn't have written a story so easily guessed by the users.
Should I refuse?
I considered the question seriously.
If the emperor genuinely trusted me, if he sincerely believed what I said, there was also the option of going there, doing nothing at all, and returning. Even if I told a lie, the emperor would think, "In that case, she must have had a good reason."
The problem was whether the emperor really, truly trusted me one hundred percent, without a single shred of doubt.
And I could produce the answer to that particular worry without any deep reflection.
The emperor was absolutely not a man who trusted anyone one hundred percent. The only thing the emperor believed in was his own conviction. Naturally, if I, who normally executed every mission flawlessly, came back empty-handed, he might start doubting my word.
He might accept up to "there were unavoidable circumstances." But he would never imagine that those "unavoidable circumstances" were a physical reason that prevented me from assassinating the target. He would entangle it in politics and guess.
And once things began to move like that, the emperor's actions would diverge too far from my predictions.
That was not a good thing.
I was moving in order to avert choices that would inevitably leave several people dead. If the emperor started acting differently from my expectations, that would become the reason I could no longer use anything resembling foresight going forward.
The reason I had not yet actually attempted to assassinate the emperor, and the reason I was following his words for now, was all to minimize variables and create a situation favorable to me. Not that killing him would leave me without new opportunities, but the further apart those opportunities became, the harder they were to stitch together.
"......."
I sat in my chair, propped my chin in my hand, and quietly deliberated, but a conclusion still did not come.
Even if I used Alice as an excuse, after I had already said I would do it, changing my story now would only make the emperor suspect me again.
Mm.
There was no answer.
Just as I thought that—
The door suddenly burst open.
"......."
It was something that had happened so frequently over the past ten years that I was not all that startled. It was certainly less startling than being sliced by Lucas's sword.
It would definitely be Alice again this time.
If she had gone to see the emperor, she would surely have been flatly refused, so she would have opened the door looking thoroughly dejected.
So the reason she had come looking for me now was probably not to boast that she had received new word from the emperor. She had come to fetch me on her way to see the emperor. Alice was always brimming with confidence right before she faced him.
"It's done!"
"Pardon?"
But the moment I heard Alice shout like that, my mind went momentarily blank.
What was done?
I turned my head and saw Alice laughing triumphantly. The light pouring through the window made her hair flash gold.
With both hands planted on her hips, grinning like a victorious general, Alice declared,
"You don't have to go to the north!"
"......."
I stared at Alice for a moment, then spoke.
"No matter that you are the heir apparent, at this moment you do not outrank the one who currently sits on the throne."
At my level voice, Alice gave a sharp little "hmph."
"I know that too, you know. I may look like this, but I am a real imperial princess. If you really don't believe me, take a look at this."
As she spoke, Alice lifted the hand she had placed on her right hip.
Only then did I notice that the hand was holding an imperial order.
[I, Arthur III, Emperor of the Aetherna Empire, do hereby rescind the northern dispatch previously commanded to Sylvia Fangriffon.]
It was not a formal order. It was a document so shabby that calling it an imperial order was embarrassing, just a scrap of paper torn off and scrawled roughly with a fountain pen.
But the handwriting on it was one I had often seen.
The signature as well.
"...... Forgery of official documents, or impersonation, is a serious crime. If this purports to be in His Imperial Majesty's name—"
"It is not!"
At my words, Alice shrieked.
"If you're really so suspicious, go verify it yourself! Even I wouldn't lie about something like this!"
"......."
If Alice was going that far......
...... Could it be real?
If it was real, how in the world had she pulled it off?
I barely managed to keep my expression blank, but my dazed mood must have shown through, because Alice looked at me imperiously and exclaimed,
"There, satisfied? Now we're going to the academy together! Well, though I suppose packing will still take a while!"
This time I will definitely beat you in academics! The imperial princess's expression as she added that was endlessly bright.
Uh.......
No, really, I truly could not figure this out.
How on earth?
Even in the midst of that confusion, one corner of my mind was clenching its fist and cheering.
*
A few minutes earlier—
Crash!
The sound of something shattering was rarely heard in the Imperial Audience Chamber. The maidservants who worked in the imperial palace were all daughters of noble houses who had received a high level of education, and they naturally never made the mistake of dropping and breaking the palace's valuable objects.
No one ever deliberately broke anything, either; people seldom brought tableware into the Audience Chamber and ate there.
But this time was different.
The sound was that of a small glass vial breaking on the floor. And among the shattered glass fragments, a transparent liquid splattered in every direction. The quantity was so small, however, that it did not even reach the emperor's clothes.
"...... What is the meaning of this?"
Watching his own daughter commit such an outrageous act of violence right in front of the emperor himself, the emperor asked directly.
Lucas, standing guard beside him, also wore an expression of utter disbelief, but Alice airily ignored his look.
On an ordinary day she would have shrunk endlessly before the emperor, before her father. Moreover, the atmosphere at that moment was exceedingly poor.
But Alice was furious to the very ends of her hair.
And an angry Fangriffon generally lost all sense of restraint.
Alice was a Fangriffon too.
She had never been this angry at her father before. Alice wanted to surpass Sylvia, but she had never wished for Sylvia to be prevented from even reaching the starting line of their competition.
"This is morphine. It came from Sylvia's room."
"Oh?"
At those words, the emperor's expression shifted at once—from displeasure to interest.
"Sylvia had morphine?"
His reaction was not strange. The emperor was, in many ways, the one who used Sylvia's abilities to the greatest benefit. The assassination had been a single occasion, but there was no talent equal to Sylvia when it came to gathering various kinds of intelligence.
It was difficult to imagine that such a Sylvia would ever need morphine. She had never been struck by a bullet or a blade in the first place.
Lucas seemed equally taken aback. His usual sardonic smile had vanished somewhere, and his eyes were wide open. Although the situation was what it was, Alice found that point a little satisfying.
"She said it was for emergencies. If a problem arose and she had to fight without even a chance to heal her wounds, she would use it."
"...... Ho-oh."
If the statement had come from that very "Sylvia" herself, it could not be dismissed. Sylvia "being wounded" and having to "fight without a moment to heal" sounded grave.
What sort of danger, exactly?
"...... Your Majesty."
On an ordinary day she would have said "Father," but at this moment she stood before the emperor as an imperial princess. What she was about to say was not merely the words of a daughter but, just as Sylvia had put it, the words of the heir apparent. No, the words of a candidate for that position.
"Sylvia told me that I am the one who will become the next emperor."
"......."
The emperor was listening.
"She said that if she herself became that candidate, she would use any means necessary to hand the position to me."
"Hm."
The emperor was watching his daughter with careful attention.
"Therefore, Your Majesty. Sylvia is my person. Not His Imperial Majesty's."
Having said that, Alice showed a smile.
It was more a bluff than a heartfelt smile, a smile that was strained with tension, and trembling a little.
But a Fangriffon did not run away.
For she was a "Fangriffon."
"Sylvia may well be a Gryphon. But the first emperor, Fangriffon, was no Gryphon. Fangriffon is not the Gryphon itself, but the Gryphon's master. The one who seizes the Gryphon and rides atop it. The one who commands the flock. One need not necessarily be stronger than the Gryphon."
Indeed. Not Gryphon, but Fangriffon. It meant the master of the Gryphons.
When commanding a group, brute arms were not the only correct answer. Especially if that group was a group of humans.
"Therefore, I shall take charge of Sylvia. Of course, if you have need of her, I could lend her to you. But at least this time, that will not be the case."
Sylvia, that very Sylvia, was supporting the "real imperial princess" as the next emperor.
And the imperial princess had grasped the meaning of that.
Having grasped it, she was now declaring that fact to the present emperor.
And the emperor who heard that declaration smiled.