Prologue
“Hey, you hear?”
“About the Kingdom marching on us? Sure.”
“That’s the one. Think there’s anything in it?”
“Search me. If it’s true, though, we’re not talking about a border scuffle. We’re talking about a war.”
“Grim thing to be saying out loud…”
The rumor had worked its way through every quarter of the imperial capital, and nobody could say where it had started. The Kingdom’s army was coming over the border.
Hardly anyone waved it off as idle talk, either. Relations between the two nations had been souring for a while now, ever since the Kingdom’s prince broke off his engagement to the Empire’s princess without warning. From a rift that public, war was no great leap.
So rumor or not, the Empire had to make ready. Sooner or later the Kingdom would strike a spark, and it wouldn’t be a small one.
“The invasion is supposed to come about a week from now. There’s every chance it falls on the same day the foreign delegations arrive.”
Princess Valtrune was working through the security arrangements in the Provisional Elite Corps’ council room. Her officers stood around the relief map of the Dyrst region with Ritziareite at their head, listening and nodding, the room wound tight.
“So our task is to throw them back, and quickly, the moment an incursion is confirmed anywhere in Dyrst.”
“Yes. It may be nothing more than a rumor going around the streets, but it isn’t one we can afford to ignore. I want a security posture without gaps, whatever else happens, no harm is to come to the delegations.”
The mood had been heavy ever since the invitations went out to the neighboring nations. For Princess Valtrune, this was one undertaking that couldn’t be allowed to fail.
What she had arranged amounted to a debut. The Provisional Elite Corps presented to the world; a tour of the workings that yield the ‘Divine Demon Orb,’ a rare gem that comes out of the ground nowhere else on earth but the Empire’s Dyrst region. There wasn’t an item on the itinerary a foreign power wouldn’t want a look at.
“Securing that much ground will be difficult with the numbers we have, Your Highness…”
“I’ve had several of the roads along the border closed. Short of a long detour, the only approach left to them is open plain, no cover of any kind.”
“Understood. Then I’ll weight our deployment toward the high ground around it.”
“…Any other questions? No? Good, this all looks sound. Ritziareite, take the plan to the rest of the Corps.”
Princess Valtrune looked across the table and fixed her eyes on Ritziareite.
“Ma’am!”
Ritziareite snapped to attention and returned a flawless salute, her answer ringing.
“I’m counting on you.”
“Leave it to me. I will not let an inspection tour Lady Valtrune is hosting fail!”
She had kept growing since command of the Corps landed on her. She handled the army more smoothly than the Ritziareite of the previous timeline ever had, and she had turned into a commander you could lean on.
The Corps’ council went forward with the two of them at its center, Princess Valtrune and Ritziareite.
And two shadows had been watching that council through the gap in the door.
“…Hm. She’s turned into a general people can actually lean on, hasn’t she. And so young, still.”
“You sound like somebody’s mother, General Epika.”
“Quiet, you. Or rather, how much longer do you intend to keep eavesdropping? My time isn’t free either.”
Arms folded outside the council-room door, Epika grumbled and dug an elbow into my side.
I took my hand off the door and drew back from the room.
“…Shall we, then.”
“You needn’t tell me twice.”
She started walking, falling in behind me.
“You’re the Princess’s personal knight. Don’t tell me you called me all the way out here just to make me listen at a door.”
“Of course not. My business has nothing to do with the Provisional Elite Corps. I asked for you, General Epika, because there is something else I wanted to discuss.”
“Oh. Good.”
Everything done out in the open belongs to Princess Valtrune, and to Ritziareite, who leads the Corps; dealing with the awkward things behind it is what a princess’s personal knight is for.
“The short version, since we’re walking. On the day of Rune-sama’s inspection tour, at the same hour as the Kingdom’s invasion, I intend to sweep away the anti-Princess nobles.”
“—! I see. So that’s your game.”
“The ones at the front of the stage can stay at the front of the stage.”
“And black-hearted creatures like us go first into the dirty work.”
“An unkind way to put it. But you’re not wrong.”
Clearing the anti-Princess nobles out of the way wasn’t optional, not if Princess Valtrune was to reach the throne. And I had already called together the people most likely to help me do it.
“Everyone but yourself, General Epika, is already gathered at the place we’re meeting in secret.”
“My. So I’m not the only one.”
“If we’re going to clear out a hostile faction, it’s only sensible to bring as much strength to bear as we can.”
“True enough.”
Since coming to the Empire I had done nothing but move, and all of it toward putting Princess Valtrune on the imperial throne. I had gone over every hostile faction corner by corner, and scraped together force enough to answer them.
“In here.”
Epika followed me to a detached manor deep in the grounds, in a corner where almost nobody came and went. At the very back of it was a wide room, and when I opened the door the rest of them were already assembled.
“Ah! You’re late, boss~!”
“Don’t make a racket over every little thing, Fadi. You’ll give me a headache.”
“Haah. About time.”
Epika took in the faces and drew her brows together.
“…I see. So this is the caliber of person you’ve gathered to wipe out the anti-Princess nobles.”
“Not to your satisfaction?”
“On the contrary. As a fighting force, wouldn’t you call it sufficient?”
Her gaze went straight down the line of them.
Fadi, a first-class assassin whose guilelessness sat over a streak of pure cold.
Dorothea, former boss of a shadow organization, gifted with magic besides, and a woman of considerable force.
Linos von Gerreschiff, second son of the Gerreschiff ducal house, a proud high noble who did everything from swordsmanship to dragon mounts competently and none of it badly.
And last, Epika von Darius, the finest mage in the Imperial army, and the daughter of House Darius.
Those four were the collaborators I had gathered to destroy the anti-Princess nobles.
“Well then. That’s everyone.”
“…So it seems. Nothing here but people with black hearts.”
Linos never troubled to soften anything, and he gave the assembled company his honest impression of it.
He was right, too. Every last person in that room had something of their own tucked away behind the ribs.
Linos wanted honor that belonged to no one else, Epika a noble’s position that nothing could shake, and we who served Princess Valtrune were here to remove, quickly, whatever threatened her claim to the throne. It was an alliance built on interests that happened to line up, and nothing more than that.
“Heh. Because you can’t get through this world without a black heart, right!”
“…Fuu. Well. It’s a world that rewards playing dirty.”
Fadi settled deep into a chair, perfectly at ease. Dorothea leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.
“What steady nerves they have.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have people who can hold themselves that loosely?”
“You’re not far enough wrong for me to argue.”
Epika delivered her verdict on the two from the underworld, unbothered as both of them were, then nodded, one corner of her mouth lifting.
“…No, it’s fine. To get out in front of a nuisance like the anti-Princess nobles, I think you need exactly this sort of crooked article.”
You couldn’t hand this operation to anyone too straight. It takes people the world has already been unfair to, people who assume there’s a second meaning, to stay level with an enemy this troublesome.
“…Well? Let’s have the outline.”
“…Fuu. Impatient men don’t get far with women.”
“Hmph. It has never once occurred to me to be liked. I came here to see my own convictions through. Skip the preamble.”
Something in his resolve must have carried, because Dorothea let it lie there, and his eyes came back to me.
“The men at the center of the anti-Princess faction are troublesome, and they work in the dark. They won’t go down at the first pull.”
“I understand that. It’s precisely why we move on the day the Kingdom’s army invades Dyrst.”
“The Kingdom’s invasion. Believing a rumor like that…”
“Rumor? Nah, that one’s real.”
“…What?”
Fadi cut across Linos’s little sneer and said it as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Which, for him, it was. That rumor had gone out into the streets on Princess Valtrune’s own instruction.
The people who put it there were the Corps’ intelligence arm, which meant Fadi and Dorothea had run it themselves, and they had taken their time working it through the Empire until it soaked in. Of course they knew it wasn’t a rumor.
“You can’t mean… you seeded it?”
“Yep, that’s the one. And this came to us from a contact inside the Kingdom, so it’s solid.”
“W-Wait. Then the Kingdom’s army…”
“Mm. Should be coming over the border one week from today, near enough to the hour.”
Dorothea put out her cigarette and came over to me.
“…That’s right, isn’t it.”
“Yeah. Rune-sama knows all of it.”
“—!”
We had let the invasion be whispered about so that it would reach the ears of the anti-Princess nobles as well, all of it on Princess Valtrune’s authority.
“You put the invasion out as a rumor because you didn’t want the information confirmed.”
“Exactly so.”
“But why? There’s nothing to be gained by having it out in public.”
Epika tilted her head, and Dorothea answered in the tone of someone bringing another person round to a point.
“…The more names on the list of possible attackers, the better it suits us.”
“—You can’t be serious. You mean to hang this on the Kingdom’s army? The whole thing?”
“Hang it on them, no. If they choose to draw the wrong conclusion, that’s their business.”
Dorothea’s smile turned wolfish, and I laid the clothing I’d prepared out on the long table in the middle of the room.
“This is…”
“Uniforms. What the Kingdom’s soldiers wear. Rank and file was as far as I could get…”
Put on what was on that table and you would pass for a Kingdom soldier from your scalp to your boots. The specially cut coats their officers wore had been beyond me, but as a disguise for a common Kingdom infantryman it was flawless.
“Hmph. You intend to lie about it thoroughly, then.”
“Look, look, we’ve got proper swords over here too~”
Fadi ignored the complaint and came in with an armload of Kingdom-issue longswords.
“…How did you come by this much of it? It’s not the sort of thing that falls into your lap.”
Epika looked over the disguises and turned the question on me.
Kingdom army uniforms don’t circulate on the open market. And I was on the Empire’s side of the border now. Getting hold of Kingdom-issue equipment ought to have been impossible.
…But there was one place I could ask.
“A friend of mine is the daughter of a great trading house. I asked her, and she diverted a set of the same items her people were producing on commission for the Kingdom’s army.”
“…Ah. The Crimea Company girl.”
“Yes. She’s working hard for us as a dragon-mount soldier.”
Epika seemed to accept it; she had placed Mia at once. Her usual slapdash way of carrying herself makes it hard to picture, but Mia is the only daughter of the head of the Crimea Trading Company, a great house’s daughter, properly speaking.
With her help, most things find their way to my hand. I can ask it of her, of course, only because I built the trust first.
“So you use your friends too, if they’re useful.”
“I explained the situation and secured her agreement. There were no orders given.”
“Hmph. If you say so.”
I let the poison in the remark go past me and drew a breath.
“The Kingdom marching into imperial territory is not something we can allow to stand. Simply weathering the outrage would leave us badly out of pocket.”
Take the blow and give nothing back. There was no sense in it. And if the Kingdom’s army hadn’t been coming across our border in the first place, this deception would never have needed to exist; I was not about to be lectured for borrowing the name of men who were on their way to do us harm.
“If the Kingdom’s army attacks imperial soil, we will go under their name, and the killing of the anti-Princess nobles will be laid at their door. Surely you agree, Lord Linos, that the Kingdom’s army has no call on our mercy?”
“…It isn’t that. I dislike winning by underhanded means.”
“The anti-Princess nobles work underhandedly, by your own account. If we don’t stoop as well, we won’t get past them. And if it becomes known that the attackers were the Princess’s own people, the wind against us blows very much harder.”
“There’s no guarantee you won’t be found out.”
“No. And no guarantee we will be.”
Epika put in a word, closing off Linos’s objection, and turned a hard look on him for going on with it. She had evidently decided in favor of my plan.
“An ambush by deceit. That is not how an imperial noble conducts himself.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. What I’m certain of is that the argument will make no impression whatsoever on the anti-Princess nobles.”
“You would have me sink to their level.”
“The honest approach is not always the best one. Learn to change your footing to suit the ground, all the more so if you intend to keep living in noble society.”
Every objection Linos raised, Epika snuffed out.
“…Well, some things you just have to swallow, right.”
“We’ve had our hands filthy for years, so we’re used to it. A young gentleman of the nobility is another matter. Bound to stick in the throat a bit.”
Epika, Fadi and Dorothea were all in favor of putting on the Kingdom’s colors and cutting down the anti-Princess nobles. Linos alone was against it.
“Linos von Gerreschiff. If this much makes you hesitate, my advice is that you withdraw here and now. The rest of us made our peace with it long ago.”
“…”
He heard her out and shut his mouth.
If an attack on a rival faction came to light, it would cost us room to move for a long time afterward. When we cut down Marquis Rigel there had been a clear reason behind it, an order from Emperor Grode himself; this time there was no such banner to march under. We wouldn’t be using Princess Valtrune’s backing either. This time we acted on our own authority.
“From here on, I expect scheme to run into scheme again and again. I’d like to honor your wish to beat an enemy fairly and in the open, Lord Linos… but on this occasion I must ask you to follow our lead.”
“…Understood.”
“Thank you.”
Linos holds his pride as an imperial noble higher than anyone, and I don’t think that’s a fault in itself. But when it starts to dull a decision, that kind of pride is in the way.
“…There was a time when I believed the same. That if you could win head-on, you had no need of dirty methods.”
“—”
“Then I learned that there are things you cannot protect that way. To protect something, sometimes you have to bend what you believe.”
No matter how good you are with a sword, the people who matter to you still die on you, and more than once. A man has his limits, and without trying and failing and trying again, you don’t come through the hard places.
“This operation bears directly on Rune-sama’s succession. Failure isn’t permitted.”
The Kingdom’s invasion, one week out, and the killing of the anti-Princess nobles at the same hour, would put her claim beyond argument. Raise her name higher still, weaken the factions opposing her, and it wouldn’t be long before she held the whole Empire as the next Emperor.
“The force we commit to the killings will be small and it will be good. Mostly the Corps’ intelligence branch. Lord Linos, I’d ask for several capable men from the ducal house. General Epika, I want you creating a disturbance to pull attention away.”
“So we’re the ones with blood on our hands. Got it!”
“On the day, I’m assigned to scouting for the battle with the Kingdom, so field command of the killings goes to Fadi…”
“I’ll pick out a few who can command and some serious fighters. It won’t fail.”
“Heh. That’s a relief, then.”
“You two are awful!”
In practice it would be Fadi and Linos who moved against the anti-Princess nobles. How well the two of them would suit each other was anyone’s guess, but as a fighting pair there was nothing to complain about.
“…And I’m the diversion.”
“Yes. When those two begin, something loud in the vicinity would help us a great deal. With your magic, General Epika, I imagine you could arrange almost anything.”
“Fufu. I imagine I could. Though using a division commander of the Imperial army as a decoy, that’s an idea only you or His Majesty would have.”
“Not enough for you?”
“Not at all. There’s something to be said for playing the supporting part now and then.”
Epika’s magic is too strong; it draws the eye whether she wants it or not. If she was to stay unconnected to us in public, the careful thing was to keep her on the diversion.
“That’s the disposition. Any other questions?”
At that, Epika’s hand was the first to go up.
“…I understand where the rest of us stand. …So what, exactly, will you be doing?”
“I take it ‘preparing for the battle with the Kingdom’ won’t satisfy you.”
“It will not. Fighting the Kingdom is the Corps’ work. There’s no part in it for Lady Valtrune’s personal knight. So by rights, the man who proposed all this should be choosing to fight the anti-Princess nobles. And yet.”
“I’ve heard nothing to suggest you’ll be anywhere near it.”
“Exactly. You’re still keeping something from us.”
It wasn’t only Epika. Linos’s eyes had sharpened on me too.
No lifeline came from Fadi or Dorothea. A heavy silence simply settled over the room and stayed.
“Is it a question you can’t answer?”
“No.”
“Then let’s hear it. What you’ll be doing while the rest of us take out the trash.”
Standing against the anti-Princess nobles carried real risk, and they had offered to help knowing it. They had their own reasons, certainly, but even setting those aside, keeping secrets I didn’t need to keep was a good way to put cracks in a working trust.
“—While the Corps faces the Kingdom’s army, and while all of you are engaged with the anti-Princess nobles, I intend to strike a different enemy.”
“A different enemy?”
“…The Svell Order.”
“—!”
Dorothea said it before I could, and Epika and Linos were both caught without words at the arrival of a force neither had counted on.
“As she says. What I’ll be dealing with is the Svell Order, who will use the Kingdom’s army as a decoy and come into imperial territory behind it.”
“Religious types. In some ways worse to have against you than a whole country. Not that there’s anything to do about an enemy except break them…”
Fadi and Dorothea already knew, so neither of them moved; they only sighed as though something tiresome had come up, and let their faces go slack with it.
“…The anti-Princess nobles aren’t enough for you, nor the Kingdom, and now you’ll take on the Svell Order as well?”
“That’s the intention.”
“Three troublesome organizations at once. That isn’t sanity. I had you for a man who could weigh a risk against a return. Was I mistaken?”
It’s true that the more enemies you have, the less you can spend on any one of them. Run short of strength and your odds go with it; I could follow the logic well enough.
But it is also true that I have no leisure to knock enemies down one at a time.
Winning the factional war inside the Empire isn’t negotiable. It’s the ground everything else stands on.
The Kingdom and the Order, though, won’t move at our convenience. They are scheming to come over the border this minute.
“The Kingdom’s army and the Order will attack in one week, both of them. Facing them together isn’t a choice we get to make.”
“Then the anti-Princess nobles can wait for another occasion. Move in a hurry and you’ll have more on your hands than you can…”
“There’s no time to be leisurely about it!”
“—!”
“Boss. Easy.”
I came back to myself as fast as I did only because Fadi settled me.
“My apologies. I lost my composure.”
“…That kind of hurry. There’s something behind it, isn’t there.”
She misses very little. …But this wasn’t something I could say.
The Kingdom and the Empire go to war. The Empire falls. Every brave officer and soldier who fights on the Empire’s side dies.
—There was no telling them that.
“…Haah. I won’t ask further.”
I had expected Epika to dig. Instead she withdrew, and easily.
“You’re certain?”
“Curious, of course. But I’m hardly in a position to demand a person lay everything bare.”
“I am.”
“You, yes. Other people are different.”
She soothed Linos, who had no patience with secrets, and set her hand on my shoulder.
“You’re rattled far more often than I’d have guessed. That was quite entertaining to watch.”
She said it low, in that velvet voice, then smiled to herself, satisfied, and put a hand to the door.
“I’ll take my leave here. Those of us on the attack can meet again another day.”
She was gone before I could call after her.
A while later, Linos made for the door as well.
“…I’ll do my part. Your promise to put me in as the Imperial army’s Military Lord. Don’t forget it.”
Which left me in the room with Fadi and Dorothea.
“There they go.”
“No harm in it. Each of them will do what they said they’d do.”
Fadi was turning the Kingdom equipment over in his hands, and Dorothea lit a second cigarette without a care in the world. I was the only one backed against anything; the two of them had reserves of ease I couldn’t account for.
“…I don’t know what it is you’re afraid of, but strung this tight is poison to a body. A man who stands at the top ought to let the air out of himself now and then.”
“Ghk—?!”
Fadi had got hold of one of the Kingdom swords and was swinging it about. Trailing white smoke, Dorothea took him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out with her.
Left alone in the quiet, I closed my eyes and let my head go down.
—Strung too tight, is it.
I turned Dorothea’s words over. The more I think about the future waiting up ahead, the less any hour of rest looks possible, and breathing out will have to wait until the whole tangle is dealt with.
For now there’s nothing to do but go headlong down the road I believe is the best one. That’s the only loyalty to Princess Valtrune I have to give.