The Trial

Ask Aiden what he thought of a place like a courtroom, and he’d tell you honestly that it wasn’t much to his liking. That was natural enough for a man whose main line of work was fraud, so for him to walk into one of his own accord had to count as a highly unusual event.

…No.

Or perhaps, given the headlong aggression he was showing right now, it was only natural after all.

Noelle kept stealing glances at Aiden in the seat beside her, trying to read his mood. The moment he’d heard the Prince was here, hadn’t he turned up on the spot, without a thought for those usual preferences of his? And of all things, the trial under way was exactly the kind to make him angry. It would decide what was to be done with Levant, who had attacked Katya the other day.

“…”

As for the point she did not like.

It was that the Prince and the Administrative Minister had both plainly seen her and Aiden arrive, yet neither had shown any particular reaction. She had the feeling they’d ‘known’ the two of them would come, as if something had been set up in advance. She didn’t like it one bit.

“…Aiden, are you really sure you’ll be all right?”

Why else would she keep asking him that, over and over? It was hardly a fitting question from someone who had always charged into the enemy’s lines first on the battlefield and never once looked back, but one glance was enough to see that Aiden was in a dangerous state.

“I’m not all right, though.”

His answer alone was enough to confirm it.

“Pardon?”
“I don’t much like having to sit here and wait in the first place.”

“…”

While Noelle was still at a loss for words, Aiden turned his glare on the Prince, who sat on the dais with his eyes closed. There was a sunken anger packed tight into that gaze.

Every so often the brakes on this man vanish outright.

Noelle sighed inwardly. Interfering with a member of the imperial family in the course of his official duties was a grave offense in itself, so she’d only just finished talking Aiden into waiting at least until the trial was over. She had felt it several times now: this man would slide smoothly past anything that concerned himself, but the moment something happened to one of the people around him, he lost his head.

“Different sex, but he’s a lot like Teresa. Don’t you think?”

Just like the Lord Protector, who had been Noelle’s teacher.

“…”

Before she knew it, Noelle had clenched the hand resting in her lap. She was doing her utmost not to let it show, but the sight from last night still clung to the inside of her head like black soot.

Why?

As the widely known lore had it.

The conditions for a spirit to appear on the material plane were to have attained a certain level of achievement, and.

to have a fierce ‘lingering attachment’ left behind.

And Teresa had appeared as a ghost like that and attacked her, as though that attack were the ‘lingering attachment’ she’d carried out of life. As though it were the very reason she hadn’t yet been able to ascend fully to the netherworld.

Why?

The moment her thoughts got that far, her grip tightened until the fist she already held curled went white. What rose in her mind was the memory of that night, and the words Teresa had left her the last time she saw her.

“I’ll stay behind, Noelle.”
“You know it as well as I do. You’re going to be greater than me.”
“You, the people—”
“—you have to protect them.”
“Got it?”

What put a stop to her brooding.

It was the moment she realized blood was running out between her palms.

“…”

Noelle quietly covered it and closed her eyes.

This is dangerous.

She had to keep her composure, all the more so in front of the Prince and the Administrative Minister. There was no telling what Aiden might do, so she at least had to hold herself steady.

“—and so the defendants did, on the date noted above, cause an incident in the vicinity of the capital headquarters, which—”

A glance to the side showed Aiden frowning at the Administrative Minister, who was in full flow at the witness stand. Honestly, Noelle sympathized with that reaction completely.

The Administrative Minister. Rad Ilja Barfon.

On the outside he looked wholly harmless, but there was a smell to him.

A hunter, a predator, or.

A viper.

Something with that kind of sinister cast. And what he said next was probably enough on its own to make the feeling stronger still.

“—And as it happens, the parties concerned are here with us as well.”

As he said it, Rad’s gaze came to rest on Aiden and Noelle in the gallery.

“…?”

He’d dragged the two of them into the middle of the proceedings so casually, so naturally, that Noelle’s face creased into a frown.

“Then allow me to put one interesting proposition to you.”

Rad went on, beaming smile after smile.

“Those of you who know will know, but there was an interesting incident last night, wasn’t there?”

The instant she heard it, Noelle’s expression hardened, because that was certainly not a topic that should come spilling out here, like this, out of nowhere.

“The weapons-smuggling case at the capital wharf, some time ago. A serious-crime scene that even had a hellfire bomb in it. And then, needless to say, the terror incident inside the capital headquarters, and the Lord Protector’s vengeful spirit that turned up yesterday…”

A finger that had been gliding smoothly through the air came to jab at one single spot.

It was unmistakably a gesture pointing at Noelle. The picture of it was much like a staged play, but.

there was unmistakable malice lodged inside it.

“Isn’t there one common denominator running through all of them? They all seem to have gone off in the vicinity of a certain someone, don’t they?”

On one point, at least, he was worth agreeing with. It was an interesting proposition. Certainly.

A look around showed the judge, the defendants and the plaintiff all keeping silent, the whole assembly fixed on nothing but the Administrative Minister’s words, as though this place were his stage, whole and entire.

He is pulling his tricks this openly?

Noelle stared at the Administrative Minister in disbelief. By now she could even understand Aiden beside her glaring murder at a man he was seeing for the first time. As though they’d known from the start that the two of them would come here, that side was plainly aware of them and had dug a pit and left it waiting.

“…What are you trying to say, Administrative Minister?”

She countered in a voice gone stiff and hard, and the Administrative Minister stroked his chin and slowly opened his mouth.

“It’s only that, for a coincidence, the point of origin of every incident lately does seem to lie all around you. Amusing, isn’t it? Rather as though the Lionhearted herself were stirring up every sort of chaos in the capital. Ah, I’m not saying that’s actually the case, mind you?”

Rad added it with a slight smile.

“Not yet.”

He was a man with an outstanding gift for making whoever watched him boil.

“…In short.”

Noelle answered evenly, in a voice that had gone past anger into something like sheer disbelief.

“Smuggling weapons into the Empire, committing terror inside the capital headquarters in broad daylight, and the Lord Protector’s vengeful spirit rising again — all of it happened in connection with me?”
“I’m saying one could suspect as much.”

“…”

Truly, it was so absurd that it didn’t even make her angry. She couldn’t even find a reason to respond.

“I would call that an observation unsuited to the place and the occasion. As for an accusation, only testimony given through lawful procedure carries any weight.”
“Ah, quite so.”

The Administrative Minister snapped his fingers, much as though cueing an ‘actor’ cast in advance.

“So then, do tell us. Levant, there in the dock by lawful procedure. Who was behind this terror incident at the capital headquarters?”
“…I acted at the Lionhearted’s instigation.”

Levant said it flatly. The words dropped with no warning at all, and everyone present flinched.

“And the reason?”
“The motive was that she did not care for the consort, so she had it done. A political attack.”

The moment those words landed, a violent reaction broke out all around them. Whatever was true of the people who had arranged their stories in advance, shock rose all at once on the faces of the unconnected parties in attendance. This was a trial attended by the Administrative Minister and the Prince, and the words had come from none other than a Knight at the core of the Imperial military, a war veteran at that. However absurd the story, it was hard to write it off entirely as a lie.

Whichever way the truth fell, the news itself was a shocking scandal, and before long it would spread out in ripple after ripple. That alone led straight to the ruin of her image.

“…”

Noelle ground her teeth.

She didn’t need to look to see the situation. In exchange for saying that and taking every punishment on their own head, Levant would have struck a bargain that the people under them went free. Whatever lay between the two of them, Levant looked after their subordinates terribly well, so talking them round wouldn’t have been difficult.

It was a farce, plain to anyone’s eyes: an attack flung out with no care for how it looked, purely to pin the thing on her. Yet what galled her more was the intent behind it, because the object here wasn’t simply to ruin her image.

The target of the attack isn’t me.

Put together with the Prince’s usual behavior, the intent wasn’t hard to read. What the Prince was ultimately aiming at wasn’t her but her fiancé, sitting at her side.

However much attention Aiden had drawn one way and another, he was an outsider with no footing whatsoever in the Empire’s political world, because what he’d shown so far amounted to no more than the minimum needed to function as the Lionhearted’s consort. The only reason she’d somehow been able to make the people around her accept her marrying such a man was her own reputation and connections.

Meaning: if it was a decision handed down by ‘the’ Lionhearted, then even we cannot handle that man carelessly.

That was what the other side was aiming at. Tear down her social reputation, and they could pry her and him apart.

“—If you spread baseless rumors like that, you won’t be able to handle the fallout when the truth comes out.”

Then the best rebuttal available here was simply to deny it, calmly and stubbornly. She had never told a single lie in the first place, so it would be enough to lay everything out exactly as it was.

The problem was.

“Ah, but.”

that there was exactly one point she couldn’t defend, either.

“The Lord Protector’s vengeful spirit plainly attacked you, did it not?”

“—”

For an instant.

She felt the blood drain from her face.

“Tell us yourself, Lionhearted. Was the Lord Protector the sort to level her sword at anyone but an enemy of the Empire, even by mistake?”

“…”

“One of the saviors of the nation, someone who threw her life away for her country like so much straw? How do you mean to explain that?”

On everything else, the truth was entirely on her side.

But this one thing.

Even she couldn’t bring out any answer to it.

The reason was simple.

She didn’t know either. She hadn’t the faintest guess why Teresa’s spirit had done such a thing. No, perhaps it was because, somewhere very deep in her heart, a suspicion remained that what those people were saying might be true.

“…”

That doubt slowed her reaction, and even so brief a delay worked instantly as a weakness. The best-made lie is the one with a portion of truth mixed into it.

The expressions of the people seated around them changed. Seeing her unable to answer at once, they seemed to be thinking the Administrative Minister’s suspicion might be valid to some degree.

“…”

“…”

It was as quiet as before, and the silence held, but.

the mood was plainly flowing wherever the Administrative Minister led it. Every one of the recent affairs inside the capital was ‘the Lionhearted’s’ fault. It need never be proven; the occasion that would make everyone suspect exactly that was on the point of being made, right here.

…This is bad.

Her complexion had gone white as a sheet, and that was the one thought Noelle barely managed. With that single slip of hers just now, the mood had been dragged over entirely to the other side. From the sight of her alone, a fair number would probably leap to the conclusion that the Administrative Minister’s words were the whole truth.

Which meant.

that it would run on, smooth as water, into an attack on this ‘marriage’ itself, and her own conduct a moment ago had fired the opening salvo.

And so.

Had one person not shot up out of his seat and cut straight across the middle of the courtroom, things might well have gone that way.

“Thing is, it does sting a bit.”

Every eye turned on the man who said that in a low, flattened voice.

“Can’t figure out why you’d leave one person clean out of it.”

It was a voice of utter leisure that didn’t suit a courtroom wrapped in tension. You might even call it floating free, out of keeping with the situation.

“There’s one more, see. One more of this common denominator you’re all talking about.”

But anyone who knew the owner of that voice would judge it a little differently.

“I was at every one of those scenes you’re naming. The weapons shipment, the terror site, the vengeful spirit, the whole lot.”

This was what came out of a man barely holding down an anger that had risen to the top of his head. It was an ease pulled on like a mask, popping out only because cold reason was pinning down the rest of a head at a rolling boil.

“So I’m saying this firsthand, as someone who was right there.”

And it was clear whom that anger was aimed at.

“My wife isn’t that kind of person, so let’s cut the crap, shall we.”

Not at Rad, the Administrative Minister, who had spoken the words, but at the person who had unmistakably ‘ordered’ him to.

“Your Majesty.”¹

The one sitting on the dais, saying nothing. Aiden dropped the word after walking right up under the Prince’s nose.