The Scent of the Serpent
"Even if that knight is a demon, it makes no difference. It's not as though anyone's asking us to fight him."
"......"
"All we have to do is get the magistrate out."
The captain of the guard had no particular attachment to this city anyway. Just as Gurrik had said, a city's guard captain was usually a former mercenary. Getting paid for years in a city didn't mean he intended to bury his bones there.
If the city fell, he could simply take his property and go elsewhere!
But the Kingdom of Slovek wanted the magistrate. In case of emergency, they had said, bring the magistrate out with you. The captain could not simply ignore that order.
I should have kept a closer watch...
He had never imagined that enemies arriving with only an advance force would push in so boldly. Nor that the others would betray them so quickly.
One way or another, there was only one thing to do now. He had to get the magistrate out, however he could.
The subordinates who remained were these men and no others, which meant he had no choice but to soothe and persuade them.
"According to what our informant says, the magistrate is under house arrest in his estate. He'll stay there until the Duke passes judgment. They're guarding to keep him from escaping outward, but no one expects anyone to come rescue him from outside. And the guard there isn't all that strict, from what I hear."
Once he started making promises — gold crowns first, then even a fief — the mercenaries gradually shook off their fear and began to listen with interest.
So what if the enemy was a demon? As long as they never ran into him, this was a chance at a fortune overnight.
"...Is that really true?"
"I'm coming with you. This is a matter of my own neck — do you think I'd lie about it?"
At the captain's words, the mercenaries nodded, their eyes gleaming. Sneak the magistrate out quietly and escape beyond the city walls, and the rest of their lives could be spent living fat and easy in some village.
Books were precious things, and things that did not circulate widely. Even so, they were rarely written in the imperial tongue. Even the monks who copied manuscripts in the monasteries used the Ancient Imperial Language.
Naturally, the books Johan had picked out were also written in the Ancient Imperial Language.
"Now that I've chosen them, something occurs to me. Can Lord Lepiata read Ancient Imperial?"
Loving books did not mean knowing the ancient tongue. A book's value alone was enough to display one's refinement simply by owning it.
In the first place, nobles could just hire lectors to read for them.
"Hard to say... I think it'll be fine."
"?"
"Even if he doesn't know it, he has his dignity to maintain. He won't admit he can't read them."
"......"
Johan stared at Swetlgr as if he were an idiot. Swetlgr averted his eyes, looking sheepish.
"You said he liked books."
"No one ever said anything about which books he likes..."
"Never mind."
The books Johan had chosen were nothing particularly unusual. The Baptism of Saint Gereos, The Soleo Gospel, The Four Seasons of Duke Milene...
Because they were so difficult to produce, books were usually either tied to the Church or meant to express a noble's authority. Anything beyond that would have tipped into genuinely suspicious territory.
The moment Brunhilde saw Johan, she pulled him into a crushing embrace. She was smaller than Johan, but she was still a knight taller and stronger than most men, and Johan slipped his hands in and slowly pushed her arms away.
Take this city twice and I'll have cracked ribs.
"Thank you so much for your valorous deeds! The young lord is very pleased as well."
"I only did what had to be done. Is the lord inside?"
"Yes! The others have already arrived."
Johan nodded, rubbing his side. Kaenerna, standing beside them, asked a question.
"What your page is carrying looks like books. Did you bring books as a gift, by any chance?"
"I did. How are you feeling?"
"My mana hasn't fully recovered and my head aches like the morning after a drinking binge, but it's bearable."
Swetlgr had been reluctant to insert himself into the gathering at all. Kaenerna, by contrast, thoroughly enjoyed dealing with the powerful.
She served the imperial faction for now, but the more strings she could grab onto for a quick change of allegiance, the better.
That was why Johan had invited her along — partly to smooth things over with her, too.
"Sorry for forcing magic on you for no reason."
"...?"
Kaenerna looked at Johan as if he'd lost his mind. Normally, when a mage's magic ran wild, the proper response was to kill them or at the very least bare your blade.
Yet this knight was apologizing. Of course, she knew Johan was an unusual knight who had dabbled in magic himself, but even accounting for that...
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because I never expected an apology...?"
"I made you participate, so it's my fault. I'll be careful not to let it happen again."
"You'll make a truly fine lord someday."
"Is that sarcasm?"
"No. Nobles who treat mages that way are rare — it's a compliment. Normally they're a bit more..."
"A nuisance? Arrogant, you mean?"
"I was going to say they act like sons of bitches, but I suppose that's not far off either."
Those who didn't know better assumed Kaenerna, a court mage, had beguiled the Emperor and lined her own pockets. But Kaenerna had troubles of her own.
For a mage like her, the relationship with her employer was everything. If that relationship soured, the people beneath her would have her life.
Everything she had done, and everything she had not done, was blamed on magic. That was simply the nature of the craft.
So she had to make even the most impossible demands look at least plausible.
"Nobles believe magic can do anything. They pay their gold crowns and assume everything becomes possible. Do you know what Cardirian wanted?"
"Hmm. No idea."
"The Elixir of Youth. He wanted me to make him young and healthy again."
Kaenerna snorted as she said it.
"Is that possible?"
"How would I know? What I knew for certain was that I had no idea how to do it... Can you imagine how much of a headache it was to make him accept that?"
"Sounds nightmarish. Why serve such a master?"
"There's a lot of gold. They're all the same breed anyway, so you might as well serve the one with the deepest purse."
It was a strangely convincing argument. Johan nodded — and the moment he nodded in earnest agreement, Kaenerna looked dumbfounded.
Kaenerna, following Johan inside, froze at the sight of the orc visible in the courtyard.
"Wait... that orc."
"What about him?"
"Isn't that an orc of the Aliham family?"
Orcs worshipped no gods and clawed after money with single-minded ferocity. Kings and nobles despised orcs, yet whenever money ran short, they always came knocking on orc doors.
The Aliham family was famously wealthy even among them. Keeping an orc like that in one's retinue meant something far from ordinary.
"Impressive. Keeping a creature like that around. I can't imagine what you did to manage it... Ah. Of course, orcs are godless blasphemers, as you know."
Mid-admiration, Kaenerna caught herself, remembering Johan was standing right there. It would have been unbearable to praise such a thing in front of a devout knight.
"Wow. His family really has that much money? Do you happen to know how one might go about befriending an orc?"
"......"
The guests all wore expressions of utter bewilderment. Johan smiled with satisfaction. Soon enough, they too would learn just how silent Lord Lepiata was.
Suffer a little, all of you!
The knights and mercenary captains kept nervous faces and minded their posture. They had already heard the rumors. The man was the Duke's own blood — all the more reason to tread carefully.
But Johan had overlooked something: this was not a private audience. It was a banquet meant to be enjoyed by many.
Lepiata offered a few brief words of praise, and once the wine had made a few rounds, the mercenary captains opened their mouths and started chattering among themselves of their own accord. They extolled Lepiata, praised House Brudhe, and heaped abuse on the traitors of the city.
Lepiata never needed to open his mouth. Even in silence, the mercenaries kept the conversation flowing back and forth, supplying the words for him.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
There was no reason to be angry over something like this, but somehow, inexplicably, it felt like an injustice. Such was the human heart. Johan felt sour about the whole thing. Kaenerna tapped his foot and asked,
"Something wrong?"
"No. Nothing worth mentioning."
"Then you might want to say a few words anyway."
"This is a gathering where talking isn't really necessary."
Johan's words sounded insolent, but they were also true. Every mercenary and knight present knew it. They knew who had climbed over the city walls.
It was the men who had done little who talked the most at gatherings like this; the man who had done the most could sit in silence while praise flowed in beside him of its own accord.
Still, seating the magistrate over there — what is he thinking?
Johan found it strange. The magistrate sat beside them wearing the face of a traitor to the realm.
By rights, a man like that should have been imprisoned, or at the very least confined to his estate — not sitting there as if nothing had happened.
I expected him to hang. He's not killing him? Planning to keep him alive and use him?
Whatever had passed back and forth within the ducal family was beyond Johan's knowledge. If House Brudhe intended to keep the magistrate alive and rule the city through him, then so be it.
The magistrate had lost most of what he had, but that was still better than dying outright — so he would cooperate.
-Grrrumble.
Karamaf, who had been rolling around in a corner of the hall tearing into meat, came padding over and tugged at Johan's trousers.
At first Johan wondered if the meat hadn't suited his taste, but the beast seemed to want to tell him something. Johan excused himself and stepped outside for a moment.
"Something strange?"
-Grr.
Karamaf kept walking forward, grumbling low in his throat. The trail of scent he was following, he made clear, led to the kitchens.
A kitchen in an estate like this was naturally enormous, with plenty of hands working it. More than a dozen servants bustled back and forth between the storerooms and the ovens.
"?"
Karamaf stopped in front of a single maid. Then he let out a savage howl. Johan had no idea why, but he trusted Karamaf.
"Hmm. Let me have a look at you for a moment."
"Yes? Wh-what is the matter, my lord?"
The maid was small, her skin roughened by years of labor. Terrified that some strange knight had addressed her, she trembled violently.
...What is this?
Johan was slightly taken aback.
Johan had confidence in his own instincts. Where Karamaf had nose and ears, Johan possessed a peculiar, beast-like intuition all his own.
And yet he sensed no threat whatsoever from the person before him. Look at her however he might, she was an utterly ordinary maid.
...Did Karamaf just get it wrong?
"Come over here for now."
The maid glanced around in fright, but no servant alive would bar the path of a knight — one recognized by the young lord himself, no less. Johan led her closer to the great hearth to study her face.
"S-sir knight."
"?"
One of the servants, apparently the most senior among them, spoke up.
"If it is this you desire, I can have it brought to you separately, so if you would just—"
"No. That's fine."
The servant withdrew, grumbling inwardly. What did the man think a kitchen was for? Lust was one thing, but there were limits.
Johan sank into thought. Part of him wanted to beat the answer out of her, but he had no real certainty about who she was.
Karamaf called me over because of a smell, I suppose?
If she had been giving off a suspicious scent, he could understand the growling. But the smell might have been a misunderstanding. Anyone who worked a kitchen, handling every ingredient under the sun, could pick up any number of odors.
"?"
Johan, who had been staring hard at the maid, suddenly went still. There, visible through the maid's torn sleeve — skin, and on that skin, a serpent revealing itself.
Johan whispered, almost on instinct.
"Nessos?"
In that instant, the maid's eyes transformed. Karamaf let out a savage yowl and lunged to sink his teeth and claws into the nape of her neck.
But the maid was far faster. In a hand that had held nothing at all a moment before, a fang-shaped dagger had appeared.
Fang Extraction!
Recalling the name of the technique he had learned from Kaegal, Johan seized the maid's wrist. The enemy's eyes widened from shock into sheer disbelief.
Had Kaegal been watching, he would have bellowed, You kill first and check the corpse after! But Johan was not Kaegal. He had no intention of simply killing her.
"I swear on the gods, I have no intention of killing you. I have questions!"
The maid's face melted and changed like wax. It was the face of a middle-aged man, one Johan felt he'd seen somewhere before — and then he realized: it was the face of the servant standing right beside them.
There's a technique like THAT too?!
Kaegal had never taught him that!
With a flicker of indignation, Johan clamped down hard so the assassin couldn't escape. The assassin was stunned by Johan's strength. He tried to slip his joints loose and twist free, but never even got the chance.
Is this actually human strength?
At that moment, mercenaries with drawn blades came crashing into the kitchen.
"Nobody move! Anyone so much as twitches, I'll kill them where they stand!"
"...And who the hell are you people supposed to be?"
"Sh—shit! You said there'd be no one to fight us!"