by Mamare Touno
“That’s fine. We haven’t actually been decorated or whatever yet, and that’s a fact. However, gentlemen, is it right for you nobles to conduct a full conference by yourselves, then demand one-sided cooperation from the Round Table Council and Akiba? Are you telling us we have a duty to submit to demands from a conference we didn’t participate in? What do you think, Baron Clendit?”
“That’s not… It was never intended that you… I mean, you do not. You have it all wrong, Sir Michitaka.”
“I’m not a ‘sir.’ Like I keep telling you, we haven’t been decorated.”
“P-please don’t say such things. …You believe we, the lords of the League of Free Cities, are…colluding? With each other… That we are relying on numbers and demanding that the town of Akiba send soldiers? That is most decidedly not the case, and…”
Michitaka’s ferocity left poor Baron Clendit discombobulated and at a loss for words.
“Hm. Then demanding soldiers from Akiba was an arbitrary decision by Marquis Kilivar and had nothing to do with the general consensus of the League of Free Cities. Is that what you’re saying?”
Shiroe responded to Baron Clendit’s words.
At that, it was Marquis Kilivar’s turn to lose his composure.
“Wha—?! Do you mean to say that I, blinded by personal interest, would arbitrarily advance matters regarding an incident like this?! Gentlemen! Count Kashiwazaki! Marquis Taihaku! Elder Suwa Lakeside!! Why will you not say anything to the Adventurers?!”
“Well…”
“Certainly, it is not the general consensus. It isn’t… But. At the very least, it is true that we have heard such voices in our midst, and that there are a significant number of them. Or do you intend to tell us that Akiba’s proud, ultimate forces care nothing for Yamato’s calamity?”
A greasy, middle-aged lord pressed Michitaka in a voice that seemed to cling stickily.
“We’re not dogs or cats. ‘You don’t die, so go clear out the goblins’? Is that what you’re telling us? As if anyone who went along with hogwash like that and drove his comrades out onto the battlefield could gain the trust of the people of Akiba!”
Michitaka was on the verge of completely blowing his top. Shiroe pulled his arm, drawing him back into his chair.
As far as their roles were concerned, it wasn’t a problem if Michitaka objected. Still, if he let his emotions get the better of him and kept yelling like this, and the information about the memory loss got leaked to the People of the Earth, things could get troublesome.
Hm… This isn’t good…
Shiroe thought he’d made a bit of a blunder.
Marquis Kilivar and Michitaka’s confrontation had completely deadlocked the conference. Personally, Shiroe didn’t mind sending troops or cooperating with this expedition. In fact, ultimately, he thought they’d need to cooperate.
Given the option, he’d intended to take a bit more time to search for common ground, but a fissure had developed in the conference before he’d had the chance. As things stood, it would be hard for him to add his opinion.
Come to think of it, it was a mistake to say we’d draw out compromises without setting specific goals… Capital, for example, or economic cooperation, or possibly the conclusion of a treaty. Either way, going in without setting targets was a bad move.
An oppressive mood hung over the frozen conference.
Even Old Duke Sergiad was unable to speak in an atmosphere like this one. Just as Shiroe, racking his brains, was about to attempt to raise a question somehow… Without warning, the big double doors opened.
A lovely girl entered, bringing with her a cool wind that must have been blowing through the corridor.
The girl, who wore a dress the color of a pale dawn and had put up her silver hair, was Raynesia.
5
Raynesia was mentally kicking herself.
As a matter of fact, she’d been kicking herself absolutely nonstop for a while now.
Raynesia was kicking herself so assiduously that if those who knew her as she usually was could have seen her, they would have wept sentimental tears. Setting aside the fact that, since kicking oneself is usually an unproductive act, the adjective assiduously is not generally used to describe it…
Raynesia didn’t have the wherewithal to pay attention to little things like that today.
For instance, the great hall was even bigger than she’d imagined.
To be perfectly honest, Raynesia had been listening to what was going on from an adjoining room.
Of course, as the daughter of a duke, Raynesia would never do something as ill-mannered as eavesdropping (and did not have the skills for it). Elissa was the one who had done the listening.
Although she’d burst in as though compelled to do so by the way the conference was going, her knees were quaking, and her heart was hammering. As a young lady of the aristocracy, Raynesia excelled at smiling elegantly and dancing in public, but this was the first time she’d ever made an appearance at a political affair like this one. What was more, there hadn’t been any plans for her to do so in the future.
Aristocratic culture held sway over the League of Free Cities, and the nobles did not consider women, particularly unmarried women, to be full-fledged adults. She had never been allowed to speak on an occasion like this one, and no doubt she never would be. Raynesia had been raised to be “an ideal, modest, ladylike young woman,” and so she knew this very well. It was one of the reasons the incident she was in the middle of perpetrating frightened her.
However, something in Raynesia’s heart had pushed her into motion, and it wouldn’t allow her to hide in the shadows of her parents or the knights.
So even while, internally, Raynesia perspired great drops of cold sweat, outwardly she crossed to the center of the conference room on graceful feet.
“That’s…”
“As beautiful as ever…”
“That’s Duke Cowen’s granddaughter, Princess Raynesia, isn’t it?”
“She’s like a lake naiad on a moonlit night.”
The conference room held not only the lords, but many young knights and advisers as well. They’d become Raynesia’s admirers at first sight on the night of the ball, and these were the sort of things they were whispering to each other.
Of course, some of the gazes went past curiosity: contemptible gazes, sullied with lust.
The soft, oval outline of her cheeks. Her large eyes, filled with melancholy. The neat bridge of her nose. Her spun-silver hair was swept up today, and it harmonized beautifully with a dress that generously disclosed the beautiful line from the nape of her neck to her collarbones. Her limbs seemed slender, but their curves were quite feminine enough. The combination of all these things meant there was no one who would argue that she was not the most beautiful princess in the Free Cities.
On top of that, marrying her meant inheriting the Cowen dukedom, which boasted what was no doubt the greatest or second-greatest power in all Yamato. It was only natural that she should receive not only looks of pure longing and yearning, but proposals stained with greed.
Inside the conference room, tables had been set up in a U-shape. At the end of the room, in the center of the table that formed the short side of the U, was Baron Clendit. He was probably conducting the conference proceedings. Next to him was her grandfather, Sergiad.
Even to his granddaughter, Sergiad always seemed to be a strict, frightening grandfather. As she prayed that he’d let her get away with this, just for today, she advanced to the center of the room, then gracefully bent her knee in the traditional greeting. First to the center, then to the east. Finally to the west.
Her thoughts had been frozen for a while now.
It was as if her head had been stuffed with cotton. She couldn’t think. The elegance with which she performed the courtesies was like that of an automated doll, something she’d acquired after long training. “The real Raynesia,” who was watching it, was hiding in the depths of her heart, quaking and shivering, panic
king and holding an (imaginary) cushion over her head.
However, the instant she straightened up and raised her eyes, they met those of her target.
The paragon of rudeness whom she’d met nearly every day over this past week or so. The hypocritically courteous giant. The mind-reading menace. The devilish tormentor in the guise of a battle-tried knight.
Krusty, the representative of the Round Table Council.
To Raynesia, Krusty’s frame was so large it seemed practically colossal. He was wearing jet-black clothes with very little ornamentation, and even in the midst of this hopeless conference, his usual expression was firmly in place.
In other words: the mean-spirited expression where he hid his eyes behind thin, rectangular glasses and wore a smile so faint it was barely there at all.
Raynesia watched Krusty steadily.
Krusty also looked back at Raynesia, but before long, he whispered, hardly seeming to move his lips:
“Your chronic ‘idleness’ is better today, then?”
Was there any need to ask something so obvious?
It wasn’t better at all.
She wanted to head straight back to her comfortable room. She wanted to change into her flannel pajamas—the well-worn set, the ones that were getting stretched out of shape, which was exactly what made them so supremely comfy as far as Raynesia was concerned—and laze around in bed.
She wanted to nap to her heart’s content, without talking to anybody. After that, she wanted to crawl out of bed, eat lunch without really bothering to wash her face, then go right back to sleep.
…And so she gazed steadily at Krusty.
She didn’t have the presence of mind to smile her usual elegant-noblewoman’s smile.
She only watched Krusty, disgracefully, gritting her teeth, her lips drawn. On some level, Raynesia could feel Elissa behind her, worrying, but she didn’t even have the leeway to pay attention to that. She kept staring into Krusty’s eyes.
The conference room began to buzz.
What was this sudden turn of events?
The lords thought it might have been instigated by the leading lord, Duke Sergiad. Unable to stand the silence, dubious murmurs began to escape them.
“Raynesi…”
“Master Krusty.”
Interrupting her grandfather’s words without even looking at him, Raynesia spoke to the young foreigner.
She was hoping that her voice wouldn’t tremble.
Even as she felt a vague premonition that once she’d said it, things might never be the same again, Raynesia spoke to Krusty, prepared to abandon everything.
This man isn’t human. He’s a menace. He’s a monster, so…
Even as she shivered internally, she remembered the peaceful atmosphere Krusty wore. The tranquil air of the man who’d spent so long with her and hadn’t once tried to connect with her as an individual. The nearly supernatural insight of the man who’d never said a single kind word to her.
Right. His sociability and his hypocrisy.
When it came to keeping up superficial appearances and pretending all was as it should be, she and Krusty were accomplices.
Over this past week, the two of them had teamed up and completely fooled all of Eastal, the League of Free Cities. Using calm smiles and mild manners, they’d kept the modest secret of their respective true selves, of their idle prank, a secret to the end.
That’s right… I probably…believe in this man’s insincerity. I trust the lies of a liar. I trust him to see through me, to play along with this absurd joke…
“Yes, Lady Raynesia.”
As Krusty deferentially returned her greeting, Raynesia took a step forward. She faced him across the conference table; there was less than a meter between them.
“I am about to depart for the town of Akiba. Accompany me, please.”
Raynesia spoke clearly.
The inside of her head went perfectly silent, and even the hum of the conference seemed to come to her from a distance.
Her own pulse, the heat of her burning earlobes. She saw the change in Krusty’s expression as it narrowed, ever so slightly, with much more clarity than usual.
“Master Krusty, you swore on your knight’s sword that you would wait upon me for the duration of the conference. Hence my request. I must go to the town of Akiba.”
“To Akiba. To do what?”
“To recruit military volunteers.”
As Raynesia spoke, she felt the lords gasp. Akiba was governed by the Round Table Council. The Adventurers of Akiba were forces belonging to the Round Table Council. In this world, forces meant “knights.”
In other words, she intended to go to a town that was not her territory, and, without permission, directly urge its knights to participate in battle. To the common sense of aristocratic society, this was an act that would damage the authority of the Round Table Council, something she had no right to do.
However, if Krusty, the representative of the Round Table Council, were to accompany her on this journey to recruit volunteers, there was a possibility that the tide might turn slightly.
Of course, Raynesia had only asked Krusty to guard her, as an individual knight. Logically, even if Krusty agreed to act as her guard, it didn’t follow that the Round Table Council would have to lay down their arms. In the worst-case scenario, Raynesia might be declared an agitator and sentenced to beheading.
That said, it was also certainly possible that she might influence the Round Table Council’s decision for the better. Surely they would hesitate to behead a princess who had been guarded by their own representative.
Even so, Duke Sergiad couldn’t possibly allow his one remaining granddaughter to do something so willful, could he? A complicated groan, something between disappointment and understanding and delight, rose from the nobles.
There was probably no chance that Krusty would accept Raynesia’s extraordinary proposal. After all, it was no more than the whim of a girl.
However, Raynesia continued to look straight at Krusty.
“I imagine that’s going to be terribly, terribly troublesome…”
“—Yes,” Raynesia agreed, with a meek, ladylike expression.
However, although her profile struck the conference participants as graceful and melancholy, internally, she wasn’t nearly as calm as she appeared. She’d been driven so far into a corner that, if it had been possible, she would have liked to cling to Krusty in tears.
“Why are you doing this?”
“…You yourself said that the Adventurers are free, Master Krusty. I am only a foolish woman, you see… I know nothing of politics. I can’t even understand why my grandfather and the rest are hiding the fact that the Knights of Izumo have disappeared.”
This time, the conference was enveloped in roars of anger.
Voices criticizing Raynesia’s imprudence created such a clamor that the walls practically vibrated. To protect her mistress, Elissa drew a dagger she’d had concealed. At the sight of it, the lords, who were already on their feet, howled even more loudly.
“This is quite the beautiful mess you’ve created.”
“When I take responsibility for it, apologize along with me, if you would.”
As Raynesia answered Krusty, her face was heartily disgusted.
It was an unsuitable expression for “the single winter rose that blooms in Eastal,” but almost none of the participants in this vast conference room were up to noticing slight changes in Raynesia’s face at this point. The voices denouncing Duke Sergiad’s granddaughter for betraying the Lords’ Council and leaking secrets to the Round Table Council knew no end.
“What are you thinking?”
“So there are things even you don’t know, Master Krusty. …Nothing. I’m thinking nothing whatsoever. As a member of the House of Cowen, I merely wished not to be discourteous.”
Just then, the young man next to Krusty, the one who looked like a magic user, clapped his hands together. The sharp report shivered the air, and for the
briefest of moments, all the lords and knights in the conference room seemed paralyzed.
It was probably some sort of psychological magic.
In the momentary silence that fell, Raynesia turned around, standing as if to shield Krusty behind her, and raised her voice.
As she’d told Krusty, Raynesia wasn’t thinking at all.
She only put words together, as though impelled to by the mass that overflowed in her heart.
“The Adventurers are free! They’re human, and freer than we are. …We may be weaker than the Adventurers, but that doesn’t give us license to become aggressive about it. We have no right to relax into our weakness and use their people as our tools. I intend to go to the town of Akiba and entreat the Adventurers directly. It was Master Krusty who said the Adventurers were free, so if any Adventurers respond to my request, doubtless he will not attempt to stop them. I go to find people who will lend us their strength, even if there are only ten or fifteen of them. If they are free and we are asking a favor of them, it is only natural that we should accord them every courtesy, is it not? My grandfather taught me that treating someone with courtesy doesn’t mean using high-flown language. I plan to go to them directly, stand in the street, and plead with each Adventurer individually.”
She’d said it.
She’d finally gone and said it.
Her blood retreated. Just as Raynesia seemed about to fall, in the midst of a dizzying dimness, a hand supported her shoulder.
“Can I leave the rest to you, Shiroe?”
“Absolutely not. What a waste.”
“…To Michitaka, then.”
She felt light and detached, and the words they exchanged seemed to come to her from far away.
The sharp sound of a whistle rang out. The conference room buzzed.
The sound of hasty footsteps. Loud voices raised in some sort of argument.
Led by the hand as though she were being escorted at a ball, before she knew it, Raynesia found herself out on the terrace, in the midst of the night wind. When she looked back, she saw the conference room in chaos, and several knights who’d slipped out of it and were in hot pursuit. In the lead, she found her stern yet beloved grandfather’s face.