The Second

To Stella, Aiden Kellermain was the man who had been piling hard labor on her all day long. Mostly that was because her beloved Dame Noelle fussed over him from morning to night, but either way, Stella could hardly call it welcome.

“—Aiden.”

In that respect, there had been no need for him to saddle her with an extra job this intense on top of everything else.

“What in the world is this?”

Stella’s voice was hollow with disbelief. Right under her nose lay Prince Daniel, beaten to a bloody pulp, producing nothing but a wheeze. He was conscious, but plainly in no state to get a single word out.

The man who had actually put the prince in that state, meanwhile, only shrugged.

“If I said there was a reason for all of it, would you believe me?”
“It will have to be a reason sufficient to justify inflicting grievous injury on royalty.”

Stella’s voice had gone hard. However much his position amounted to exile in all but name, he was still royalty, which was more than enough grounds for a dispute between nations.

“And the burden of proof, too, will clearly fall on our side. The authority of royalty is such that—”

But what burst out of Aiden’s mouth did not fit the conversation in the slightest.

“Do we actually have to prove it?”
“…Pardon?”

Stella’s question came out blank, and Aiden went on flatly.

“Royalty gets excommunicated too, if the crime goes past a certain point. Right?”
“—That is true. But why raise it now, so suddenly?”
“There was that kidnapping of Viscount Cromwell’s daughter in the capital a while back, wasn’t there?”

“…”

“It made quite the noise. That young, beautiful daughter of a viscount, kidnapped and gone missing.”

Stella’s face hardened until its earlier stiffness was nothing by comparison. Part of it was that not one thread of this conversation connected, but that was not all.

Prince Daniel’s reaction to hearing it was far too strange. She caught it at once: a man so badly hurt he could barely speak, yet flinching hard, as though he had been struck by lightning.

As though.

Wasn’t that the look of a man caught out in one stroke, over a wrongdoing he had never dreamed would come to light?

“If the culprit happened to be right here, that would get a little interesting. Wouldn’t it.”

“…”

Surely not.

Surely not, was what she wanted to think. A royal, exiled to a foreign country, laying hands on a noble of that very country? If it was true, the felony was grave enough that excommunication from the royal house would surprise no one.

“Do you have proof?”
“No proof, but it’s right here, isn’t it. The means to tell truth from lies.”
“…Pardon?”
“If we can find out nothing more than whether he is lying, that is proof enough, isn’t it?”

Stella’s eyes narrowed. Such an object did exist, certainly. Just as certainly, the man in front of her had no business knowing of its existence so casually.

“Private.”

Eyes still narrowed, she spoke evenly to a soldier standing nearby.

“Bring me an item from the magic-device laboratory on the first floor. Say ‘the Detector’ and they will know what you mean.”
“—Understood!”

If the soldier’s answer dragged a little, it was probably because some instinct had already told them that things were turning in a tremendously ominous direction. Nor, most likely, was that instinct far wrong: before long the ‘lie detector’ the Imperial military had been secretly developing was catching Prince Daniel out item by item as he babbled that he had absolutely never done any such thing.

“…This is enough to drive a person mad.”

Stella could not help the groan, and she had two reasons for it. This chain of events, one thing erupting after another the way beans are roasted over a lightning flash, had become a colossal affair of the sort that went all the way up to the Imperial Palace.

And that meant a whole night of overtime was now a certainty.

The investigation thereafter went through without a hitch.

According to the report, a thorough search of Prince Daniel’s lodgings and every place he had been turned up the clothing and personal effects of Viscount Cromwell’s daughter, along with traces of his attempt to cover up what he had done, and of every other ‘sundry’ crime besides.

“—That concludes the report.”

As Stella finished in front of her, Noelle pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed them.

“And what does the Holy Kingdom say.”
“They expressed their gratitude.”
“…What?”
“They say he was a cast-off¹ they had no choice but to keep on as royalty under the Holy Kingdom’s own statutes, and that they are grateful to be rid of him cleanly. And that should Aiden ever have cause to come to the Holy Kingdom, they will host him most lavishly.”

“…”

The Holy Kingdom was led by its Pontiff, and the present holder of that seat was famous as the greatest eccentric in the whole history of the office. Going by this answer alone, the reputation was well earned.

“In fact there is someone more troublesome than the Pontiff.”
“Who.”
“‘Deathwish’ has expressed an interest in Aiden.”

“…”

“She dropped a friendly hint, along the lines of let us have a meal together sometime. True to form: the drive of an ambitious woman who stops at nothing to recruit a person she has taken a liking to.”

Noelle swept her hair back wearily.

“Deathwish, you said.”
“Yes.”
“You mean the Holy Kingdom’s Second Princess? That crown-sick creature who will use any means at all, who is only watching for her chance to take the Pontiff’s seat even if she has to kill her own brother.”
“Yes.”
“The woman said to be a rung above the current Pontiff, if you judge by skill with divinity alone.”
“…Yes.”

News like this, arriving not a day, not even a few hours, after the incident, was best read as a glimpse of what was coming. A word with no feet travels a thousand li, and today’s events would already be rippling outward to every ambitious sort who could scrape together any information within reach.

“I don’t understand why they take such an interest in Aiden. Honestly. He is an ordinary con man.”

Ordin…ary?

Stella’s eyebrow crooked, but Noelle carried on flatly.

“He wrecks a royal of the Holy Kingdom, a wielder of high-purity divinity, with one blow of his bare hand, uncovers the crime that side was hiding on the spot, and then a man who has never once set foot in the military in his life calmly proposes we make use of a classified item nobody outside the Capital Command knows about.”
“…Yes.”
“And then real evidence turned up, exactly as he said it would.”

“…”

“It’s nothing much. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Don’t you agree?”

“…”

Seeing Noelle speak in a voice half given over to resignation, Stella quietly closed her mouth. Even to her, the one delivering the report, the course of events was baffling enough to leave her breathless. If all of this was what one self-described ordinary con man had pulled off in under a day… Hm.

“Ah, Dame Noelle. If I may presume.”
“Mm?”
“Where in the world did you find a person like this, and how did you bring him in?”
“…Honestly, I don’t know either. Was he really this capable?”

Now that things had come this far, his conduct certainly stood much too far apart from the history he claimed for himself. So far, in fact, that Stella’s own grumbling, about why Noelle had brought in someone like that ‘of all people’, had gone quiet within a single day. The trouble was that even Noelle, the one who had actually brought him in, was badly shaken by the present situation.

How?

It went without saying that when someone of a standing like royalty set out to bury a crime, catching them at it was much the same as pushing an animal through the eye of a needle. All the more so for a crime this plainly filthy and sordid, where the prince would have strained every nerve to leave no loose ends. And beyond all that, the strangest part was that Aiden even knew about an item the military was still testing.

At this point it was more like pushing an elephant through the eye of a needle.

No one knew the military’s notorious security procedures better than she did. Once the label ‘classified’ was attached, nothing had ever been leaked to an outsider, and the absence of any precedent was proof enough of that paranoid streak.

And yet he had known both. The man called Aiden.

…How?

Nothing came to mind beyond that one question. How much did he know, and of what? How far did his knowledge reach? The more she thought, the faster the confusion spun. Just what was this person? What was he, really? Where on earth had he come from before this…

“Dame Noelle.”

Stella’s voice cut into her racing thoughts, hesitant in a way unlike her. She waited until Noelle gave her a curious look, and only then did she put it into words.

“There is one more question, though.”
“A question?”
“It is how those two came to fight in the first place. Do you happen to know, Dame Noelle?”
“Roughly. The prince picked the fight first, didn’t he?”

According to Lester, the Paladin who had been on the scene, the gist was this: a prince who did not care for the Lionhearted’s groom picked a fight, and Aiden struck back. Lester had no doubt explained it as plainly as possible, but boiled down, it could easily come out sounding like this.

“They say Aiden flew into a rage at being insulted as unfit to be Dame Noelle’s groom, and that this is what he did about it.”

“…”

“It raised my opinion of him a little. He does have a manly side to him, does he not?”

…There is always a world of difference between one word and the next.

The moment Noelle heard that, the corner of her mouth twisted oddly.

“Did he like me that much?”
“No one in the world could dislike you, Dame Noelle, but it does raise a question. It is far too different from the attitude he showed at first.”
“It is strange. We had never even met before—”

Noelle shut her mouth mid-sentence. Words she had heard only a short while ago were drifting back through her mind.

“By the look of it, you don’t seem to remember the old days? When you were little, for instance.”
“No, it’s nothing. I just didn’t think you would really have forgotten.”

He had said that. A certain man.

“Dame Noelle? Are you all right?”

Stella’s puzzled voice snapped Noelle back to herself, and a moment later her eyes slid softly shut.

“No.”

Then the words left her lips, tinged with bitterness.

“Acquainted… we might have been.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s nothing.”

Dame Noelle fell silent a moment, then opened her eyes again and spoke.

“Stella.”
“Yes.”
“Get in touch with the Central Intelligence Bureau.”

Stella’s eyes went round. Of all the Empire’s intelligence agencies, the Central Intelligence Bureau was the most notorious. It would never come to that, but the common view held that it could pry out even the Emperor’s most closely guarded secrets if it set its mind to it. Even the Lionhearted found contacting it a burden unless the matter was uncommonly grave.

“…Shall I commission a detailed background investigation on Aiden?”

Astonished or not, Stella had already read Noelle’s intent exactly: say ‘click’ and get ‘clack’, as only a pair who had worked together a long time could manage.

“Confirm all of it, leaving nothing out. Everything they turn up, pass it to me without dropping a single detail. And use my name as freely as you need to.”
“As you command.”

Noelle watched Stella snap off a salute and vanish, then tipped her teacup again. Once more the bitter taste lingered strongly in her mouth.

The military’s own intelligence-gathering was excellent, but in that department the Central Intelligence Bureau ran on an entirely different track. This commission would surely turn up some ‘thread’: the man’s true identity, or at the very least a clue that led toward it.

“Aiden.”

Noelle intoned it slowly.

“Aiden Kellermain.”

As though savoring the name.

“—Let’s do this, then.”

I’ll find out.
Who you are.
What it is you want.
Without fail.

“I want to go home.”

Aiden muttered it in a dazed voice.

“…”

What was all this supposed to be? In less than a day he had got himself tangled up with some terrifying person.

This is exactly why a person shouldn’t lose their temper.

The prince had kept crossing the line, so Aiden had put in a bit of effort and ground him down, and now the backlash was a little frightening. In fact Prince Slick was a villain you ran into often in the game too, a character so riddled with weak points that even Aiden’s patchy knowledge of the original could put him down in short order. His misdeeds didn’t number one or two: dig up a single one and the rest came up after it like a string of sausages.

I didn’t know the thing was classified on top of that, though.

He had only mentioned the military’s detector because it was one of the best-known key items you could use in the game. He’d had no idea that at this point in time the prototype was barely finished, or that the military was keeping it secret.

More to the point.

Gloomily, Aiden ran his eyes over the window floating in front of him.

Katya Heinkel Craven. Known as ‘Deathwish’. Among the ‘leading figures’ of the main scenario, she was the single most important linchpin of the Holy Kingdom faction. He had received the skill-copy right, sure enough, but he had no idea why she had taken an interest in him, and that part sat uneasily. Still, that was neither here nor there.

What there is to take, I’d better take, right?

Along with that window, a skill panel came scrolling down, plainly listing what Katya possessed. Most of it related to the divinity Daniel had shown before.

Aiden knew roughly what sort of skills this princess had, and which of them was the greatest, just as he had when he copied Noelle’s skill. Going by his knowledge of the original, she was, like Noelle, the holder of a unique ‘supernatural power’ that existed nowhere else in all the world: the most extraordinary ability even among the people of the Holy Kingdom, and the very source of divinity.

It nagged at him a little that yet another interest he couldn’t account for had turned up.

Let’s think about that later.

Far too much had happened in this one day. Aiden cleared the window away and let his eyes fall shut. After being harried by every kind of business from morning to night, he lost consciousness in no time at all.

That was probably why he never saw the window that rose before his eyes the moment he sank into deep sleep, as though it had been waiting.