The Pretender's Sister
Cecil de Malong - 2
“But Your Majesty!” the woman addressed as Cecilia protested in fluent Eranian to Philip. “That person introduced herself as Ricardus!”
To render the name Richelle in Eranian required it to become Ricardus, and no matter how one interpreted it, the name was unmistakably masculine. It was only natural that she would be furious at being given a man’s name. Yet Philip saw the matter differently.
“If you had properly learned the Zylan tongue—or even Derim, for that matter—this misunderstanding would never have occurred!” he said. “She must have introduced herself correctly at first. Isn’t that right, Ricky?”
“O-of course, Philippus,” Richard replied, almost involuntarily, unnerved by the desperate look on Philip’s face.
Philip gave Cecil no chance to argue. “And if you had changed your clothes when you were supposed to, we wouldn’t be witnessing this disgraceful scene. To commit a fault and then blame another—where is such rudeness to be found? Apologize at once.”
“……I cannot do that, Your Majesty.”
Cecil’s expression was sullen. “Though I may have behaved rudely, I am nonetheless a legitimate member of the Zylanian royal house. I cannot possibly apologize to a usurper of the throne.”
Only then did Richard grasp the woman’s true identity. A woman fluent in Eranian who was not a nun could only be a princess or a noblewoman of equivalent rank. Add to that her striking resemblance to Philip, her casual manner of speech, her insistence that she was the rightful Zylanian royal, and the fact that she had called the Queen of Zylan a pretender to her face—and the picture became perfectly clear.
“So you are Cecilia of Malong.”
“It seems you still don’t understand the situation. I am Cecilia of Zylan, Ricarda.”
Count Raoul of Malong was a man who possessed everything except the throne, and he had done nearly everything in his power to seize it. Braving accusations of incest, he had married off almost every relative into the royal houses of neighboring kingdoms. For the crown of Derim—which he judged offered the highest chance of success—he had even sent his own younger sister as a bride. Yet all that effort had come to nothing. Philip’s elder brother, Charles XI, had died without an heir, and the nineteen-year-old Cecil had ended up living as a dependent in the palace of the newly ascended Philip.
She seemed to believe she would marry Philip after Charles. Richard told her, “Then go whine about it to your loser of a brother Raoul, Lady Cecilia.”
“Loser? You dare insult a member of the Zylanian royal family?”
“A member of the Zylanian royal family who doesn’t even speak the Zylanian language.”
Cecil was no ordinary woman. She spun on her heel and shouted, “Do not stop me, Your Majesty!”
Philip answered in Zylanian, “Be careful, Ricky. She’s your kind.”
“I understand what you mean, but calling a ‘shrew’ one of ‘my kind’ is rather insulting.”
“I apologize for that part. Still, be careful.”
“Hmph.”
Richard watched Cecil’s footwork closely. Her weight shifts were perfectly balanced; she was clearly a well-trained knight. When she seized the sword leaning against the wall, he asked Philip, “Isn’t that your sword?”
“She’s always been like that.”
“She drew it? That’s regicide.”
“……She’s still young. Can’t you overlook it?”
The moment Richard tried to answer Philip, Cecil lunged straight at his face with the blade. He found himself honestly impressed by her strike.
“Remarkable. Aren’t you only nineteen?”
“You are correct.”
“Is this truly Raoul’s sister?”
“I agree. It is truly fortunate for both me and him that she was born a woman, Ricky.”
She was far more than a merely well-trained knight. She was strong enough to run three average knights through within three sword strokes. He answered Philip, “I’m not sure I’d call it fortunate……”
He evaded Cecil’s attacks skillfully, but not without cost. Her blade left irreparable wounds throughout Philip’s chamber. The desk, bookshelves, bed, wardrobe, books, and clothing racks were slashed and shattered.
At Richard’s words, Philip covered his face with both hands. “……Understood. I’ll include the damages in my ransom.”
While Richard and Philip conversed with casual ease, Cecil was in no such mood. She ground her teeth and let out a frustrated groan.
“Ugh……!”
She was indeed an excellent knightess, but only by the standards of ordinary knights. Richard, on the other hand, was a knight who could face ten ordinary knights alone—and then another ten after that. As he dodged her strikes with effortless grace while continuing his conversation with Philip, Cecil gradually tired. She was stunned by the sheer caliber of his skill.
“Impossible!”
She halted her assault, gasping for breath, and cried out, “Was the rumor that you were defeated by a commoner who isn’t even a knight a lie?”
“What?”
Richard’s composure cracked. Seeing his reaction, Philip said worriedly, “Go easy on her. She’s still a maiden who hasn’t even reached twenty.”
Richard laughed harshly. Of course, both Philip and Richard were speaking in Zylanian.
“A maiden?”
In a single stride, he closed the distance and stepped deep into Cecil’s guard. She tried to bring her sword down, but Richard twisted her wrist outward.
“Aaaah!”
Cecil screamed. Her face twisted in pain, and Philip’s own face went deathly pale. He shouted at Richard in a panic.
“Ricky! She is the family of one of my most important vassals! I told you not to be rough with her!”
“Oh? Then I shall treat her very gently.”
Richard gripped her wrist, twisted it inward to force the sword from her grasp, and received it with a bow. Still holding her hand, he offered her a courteous salute, then kicked Philip’s sword across the room into a corner. He twisted her arm outward once more.
Cecil screamed and contorted her body to the right. Richard caught her waist to keep her from falling and pulled her into his embrace.
“What are you doing, Ricarda!”
“Gently.”
“What?”
Richard held her as a man holds a lady at the close of a dance, slowly lowering his face toward hers. The way her cheeks flushed deeper with every inch, the bewilderment blooming in her eyes—it was quite striking.
“What are you doing, Ricarda? As a member of the Zylanian royal family, I order you to stop this at once!”
“Well now. If both our claims are true, then we have a pretender who has laid hands on a royal body, and the younger sister of that pretender’s husband—who has swung a sword dozens of times at the rightful Queen. Which crime do you suppose weighs heavier?”
“Hah.”
The blood that had rushed to her head cooled instantly. Only then did Cecil realize what she had done. No matter how fiercely she asserted her right to the throne, she was merely a claimant, and that claim had been abandoned in the last war. That was precisely why the family of a pretender had been permitted to enter the country at all. No matter how fearless a teenager Cecil de Malong might be, she was not so foolish as to fail to understand the unbridgeable gulf between a pretender and the true Queen. And yet she had dared to swing a sword at the Queen of that very nation?
If this incident became known, the only reason her body would not be hacked to pieces and displayed as punishment for high treason was the single fact that she was a woman.
“However, I am an exceedingly merciful ruler. I can greatly reduce the severity of your crime.”
“H-how…… do you mean?”
“Like this.”
Richard bent lower, bringing his face level with hers, and pressed his lips to her mouth. The startled gaze of a woman he had not seen in nearly a month was utterly captivating. Her soft, fragrant lips touched his. Cecil struggled to pull away, but he had no intention of releasing her. He held her waist firmly while easing the pressure on the arm that gripped her wrist. She twisted and shook, trying to free herself, but only succeeded in exhausting herself further. Richard drew her tongue into his mouth with deep satisfaction. Her clumsy, inexperienced movements excited him even more, and her bewildered little sounds were thoroughly entertaining.
Philip shouted at him in horror. “W-what are you doing, Ricky?”
“Why? I am treating her very gently, just as you asked.”
“T-that is not what I meant……”
Richard smiled softly—yet wickedly—and kissed Cecil again. Still holding her, he pushed her backward onto Philip’s bed and laid her down. He climbed atop her, the wet sound of fabric shifting as he withdrew his hand from her waist. The moment he lifted his mouth from hers, Cecil’s left hand flew toward his cheek. Richard caught it with the hand that already held her right, then pinned both her arms above her head.
“Richard! That is too much!”
“No, it is not too much at all. Not for either of us.”
He smiled at Philip with an expression that was gentle, wicked, and strangely seductive, all while ignoring Cecil entirely and gently stroking her waist. When she tried to kick him, he sat down firmly on her pelvis. Both of them froze at the same time. Richard because the sensation of straddling a woman with a woman’s body felt profoundly wrong, and Cecil because she had noticed the damp heat between his legs.
In the brief moment of their mutual stillness, Philip asked again in Zylanian, “What exactly is not too much? You stole her lips, and now you’re practically pinning her down as if to ravish her!”
Richard recovered his smile and answered in Eranian, loud enough for Cecil to hear. “What does it matter between women?”
The words struck home. Both Cecil and Philip flinched visibly. After confirming their reactions, he continued.
“Besides, as punishment for a prisoner who attempted to assassinate the Queen, making her my maidservant in exchange for overlooking the facts seems both merciful and unlikely to complicate matters further. Don’t you agree?”
“E-even so, isn’t this a bit much, Ricky? She’s a maiden who hasn’t even turned twenty. And she is my sister-in-law, a widow, and soon to be my betrothed……”
Even as Philip spoke, he felt a wave of self-loathing. No matter that it was a political marriage born of his powerful vassal’s ambitions, it still seemed a grave violation of familial ethics. Richard was pointing exactly that out.
“A maiden, a widow, a sister-in-law, a betrothed…… What comes next? Is this girl perhaps a boy as well?”
The moment the words left his mouth, Richard regretted them. Philip looked flustered too, but fortunately Cecil did not seem to have taken the remark strangely.
She burst out angrily, “I am not! No matter how unladylike I may be, after you have seen everything there is to see and touched everything there is to touch, how can you say such a thing?”
“Her tone has become polite.”
“Indeed. Her tone has become polite.”
“Judging by that tone, I may take it that you now acknowledge me as the rightful Queen of the Kingdom of Zylan, and that you clearly recognize that your brother’s wife, Matilda of Malong, holds no right of succession to the Zylanian throne?”
“T-that is……”
No matter how proud a person of Malong, no matter how fiercely she claimed the throne, no matter how skilled a knightess she might be, maintaining such arrogance and pride in this situation was clearly impossible. Her swordsmanship had been broken, her naked body had been seen by a stranger, her first kiss had been stolen, and the most sensitive parts of her body had been freely touched. On top of that, she had been threatened that if she did not wish to die, she must obediently become a prisoner and serve. If all of it was her own fault, then for a proud person there was no choice but to meekly accept the demand.
“B-but I cannot betray my direct lord and the master of my house—my own brother.”
“That’s fine, that’s fine. This is the Kingdom of Zylan, after all. You need only acknowledge it within the territories where Zylan’s sovereignty extends. For example, within Zylan I do not claim the throne of the Kingdom of Derim for that Philippus over there, do I?”
“That is true.”
“But outside the Kingdom of Zylan, I have chosen not to……”
He searched his memory, then called to Philip. “Philippus, was it about eighty years ago?”
“I believe it was around that time.”
“Thank you. In any case, roughly eighty years ago, the Queen of that era concluded an agreement with the King of Derim of that era not to do so. Such promises are made for the sake of appearances; they do not carry truly binding force. Since you studied politics, you should understand this much, shouldn’t you?”
“W-well……”
Cecil blushed and averted her gaze from Richard. “I was so devoted to riding and swordsmanship that…… I am not very good at embroidery or music, either.”
“Hmm.”
Richard now understood why Philip had described her as one of his “kind.” It was certainly enough to warrant such an assessment. Yet at the same time, he felt another surge of irritation toward Philip—and, as a rebound from that irritation, a faint sense of affinity for Cecil began to bloom.
She said to him, “It is generous of Your Majesty to forgive me, but even if you make me your maidservant, I doubt I will be of much help……”
At her words, Richard released the arms he had been pinning and rose from atop her body. He extended his hand to her, accompanied by a bright smile.
“On the contrary, I find you even more to my liking. If you are willing, I shall indeed take you as my maidservant.”
Naturally, she could not refuse. She sat up, smiled awkwardly, and took the hand he offered.