25. My True Identity Is…

“Tonight, once again, the Empire’s blades pounded against our walls. They smear us as traitors and try to lay waste to our lands.”

Astraea pressed a hand to her chest in an exaggerated, sorrowful gesture. The bob shimmered as it swayed, brushing against the pale line of her neck.

“But do not fear!”

Astraea lifted her head and beamed. With that single smile, the air in the banquet hall shifted.

“We are Arne. Masters of the north wind, the steel-blooded line that bows to no one! Though the Empire’s banner may blanket this land, our faith and our pride will never bend!”

“They will never bend!”

The soldiers pounded their fists on the tables in unison, roaring back.

“In honor of your sacrifices, I shall share the blessings the Goddess has bestowed upon us.”

At her gesture, the handmaidens moved, and red liquid spilled from golden urns to fill the soldiers’ cups.

“Raise your cups. The blood and the suffering you spilled today shall return tomorrow as glory. To victory.”

Astraea drained a goblet of wine.

“To victory!!”

The soldiers fell over each other to tip the red wine down their throats. A ruddy flush bloomed on the faces of the men who’d emptied their cups. The wounded who’d been writhing in pain a moment ago suddenly went slack-eyed and dreamy, then broke into addled, ear-to-ear grins and slung their arms around their fellows’ shoulders.

On the surface, it was an ordinary military feast, soldiers drowning the terror of war in drink.

Drinking, in a situation like this?

We were in the middle of a siege, hemmed in on every side by the Imperial army. A lavish banquet, at the very moment when every last scrap of supply ought to count. A commander should have been tightening her soldiers’ resolve, not loosening it, yet here she was pouring liquor down their throats and short-circuiting their reason.

“Complete lunatics.”

Beside me, Beron growled, his fist clenched tight.

I turned my gaze toward Astraea, still basking in the soldiers’ cheers atop the dais. As if she had no more business with them, she pivoted on her heel and stepped down off the platform.

The banquet hall was pure pandemonium, but Eve, bobbing along above my head, kept feeding me the Saintess’s movements.

Soldiers staggered drunkenly, sprawled across the floor, and danced wildly on top of the tables, blocking our path. On top of that, sticky wine and food slicked the floor so badly it was hard to even lift a foot.

“Out of the way, you bastards! Coming through!”

I bellowed in the rough voice of a hardened jailer, clearing a path with my club. The drunken soldiers started to spit curses back, then took one look at my jailer’s uniform and cackled, stepping aside. Beron kept his head low and stuck right behind me.

We pushed through the crowd and reached the arched doorway through which Astraea had vanished.

— Kreeeak.

The instant we stepped through, the banquet hall’s din cut off as if by magic. What greeted us wasn’t a room, but a short corridor.

In place of the sweat-and-food reek that had been crawling up my nose moments ago, the soft, sweet scent of lilies filled the hallway. Framed religious paintings hung along the walls, and a red carpet swallowed our footsteps. At the far end, a faint light leaked through the seam of a heavy oak door.

I shot Beron a meaningful look and crept up to the door, holding my breath.

“Come in.”

No matter how lightly we’d tried to walk, we hadn’t quite managed to hide our footsteps. Thinking we’d go unnoticed had been wishful thinking.

I pushed the door open, and a softly candlelit, old-fashioned room came into view. It looked like the bedchamber where she actually slept.

Astraea stood by the window, gazing up at the night sky. She turned slowly and fixed her eyes on us.

“Has something gone wrong at the banquet?”

Her gaze swept over my jailer’s uniform and Beron’s prisoner garb. Unfazed, I bowed at the waist.

“Surely not, my lady.”

I imitated the gruffest, most unrefined jailer’s voice I could and yanked the chain of Beron’s manacles behind me.

“I’ve been ordered to bring up the elf.”

I forced Beron to his knees and added,

“I’ve now completed the Saintess’s instructions.”

The pretense was that the order had come down through some intermediary. It was the best play I could come up with.

“Ah. The elf’s turn already?”

Astraea stepped up without a flicker of suspicion and tilted Beron’s chin up. The moment her fingers touched his face, his eyes blazed with rage.

“…My comrades.”

Beron ground his teeth and pressed on.

“Where have you taken my comrades? What have you done to all of them?!”

Far from being startled by Beron’s shout, the Saintess gave a small, contemptuous laugh, as if amused.

“That is exactly what I would ask of you, Imperial dog. Our captured kin — where are they?”
“Where are they, you ask?”

Beron reached into the front of his prisoner’s garb for the hidden dagger. At that distance, it would be hard for the Saintess to dodge a thrown blade.

I hesitated for an instant.

Because this might be the truth of the Saintess’s disappearance.

“Die!”

As if.

If it hadn’t been for me, this man would still be rotting in a cell, unable even to break out. There was no way Beron was the culprit behind the Saintess’s vanishing.

I grabbed Beron by the back of the neck and flung him backward. His dagger clattered to the floor.

“You son of a bitch!”

Beron, having squandered a golden opportunity, started to shout something, but I stomped on him without mercy.

“You dare try to assassinate the Saintess?! You crazy bastard!”

I felt bad for Beron, but I had no choice. I couldn’t be seen taking his side, after all.

After I’d thoroughly worked him over, he collapsed flat on the floor, out cold.

“Hoo.”

I let out a long breath and wiped off the sweat.

Astraea walked over to the fallen Beron, looked him over, and said,

“He’s only unconscious. Not dead.”

I creased my brow like a jailer who really was furious and answered.

“Shall I kill him?”
“No, there’s no need to go that far.”

The Saintess didn’t seem the slightest bit shaken. This was a woman whose throat had nearly been punched through by a dagger seconds ago.

I took Beron by the ankles and started dragging him toward the door, meaning to leave the room.

But the moment I opened my mouth to speak,

“By the way.”

Astraea took one step toward me, then another. She brought her face right up to mine.

“There’s a smell.”

I swallowed dryly.

“…A smell, my lady? Ah, I haven’t washed in a few days, so the sweat—”
“No. Not sweat.”

Astraea’s gaze slid down to the club in my hand, still smeared with my dried blood from where a real jailer had beaten me earlier. Then it moved up again, to the gash on my forehead, also courtesy of a jailer’s club.

“It’s the smell of blood.”

She pressed a fingertip to my forehead, swiped at the wound, and held it up to her nose. Then she sniffed the blood on the club too.

“How strange.”

Astraea tilted her head.

“The smell of the blood on this club you’re holding, and the smell of the blood running down your forehead… how can they be exactly the same?”

Her sense of smell was sharp enough to send a chill down my spine.

I dropped Beron’s legs and reflexively started to swing the club. But it was already too late.

“Liars must be punished.”

Astraea slapped her palm flat against my forehead.

— KRAKOOM!

A blinding white flash burst in front of my eyes. An immense shock hammered into my brain; there wasn’t even time to feel the pain. The strength drained out of my legs, and the world went black.

“Kuhk…!”

Through my dimming consciousness, I heard the Saintess’s icy voice.

“Move him to the basement. Such fresh ingredients have walked right in on their own two feet.”

That was the last thing I remembered.

A cold droplet of water fell on my forehead. I opened my eyes to a familiar ceiling.

Clammy damp, the smell of mold, a hard stone floor.

“…Dammit.”

Déjà vu.

The only difference was that this time I wore a jailer’s uniform instead of the black-striped prisoner outfit. Oh, and one more thing.

My hands and feet were bound in heavy steel chains, leaving me to dangle against the wall.

“You awake?”

I turned my head and saw Beron, chained to the wall right beside me, glaring at me. His face was a mess, no doubt from the beating I’d given him earlier.

“Sorry about that.”
“Save your excuses. You’re a traitor, end of story.”
“If you’d killed the Saintess right then and there, I’d have died too.”

I couldn’t fail the Trial of Wisdom was obviously not something I could say out loud.

So I tried to wave it off with something vague. But when I looked back at him, Beron was staring at me with wide, terrifyingly sharp eyes.

“You. You’re not Imperial army.”
“…What?”

“The Empire doesn’t fear death. If a man could kill the Saintess by offering up his own neck, there isn’t a single Imperial soldier who wouldn’t do it.”

Beron’s eyes were lit with sheer madness. The curses and abuse he kept hurling at me afterward poured on without end, but a single thought struck me.

The unshakable composure from the cell onward, the laser-focused intent to kill the Saintess the second we got out, an elf the Arne army loathed to an extreme that bordered on the abnormal.

Once I’d arrived at a conclusion, I opened my mouth.

“You. You weren’t captured. You walked in here on your own from the very start, to assassinate the Saintess.”
“…”

The madness in Beron’s eyes vanished, replaced for the briefest instant by a flicker of unease. I didn’t miss it.

That settled it. Beron was an assassin who had infiltrated this place for one clear purpose: to kill the Saintess.

In that case, had the Saintess actually disappeared because Beron’s assassination had succeeded after all? Which would mean he’d had help from someone other than me, or had broken out of the cell under his own power.

Beron’s voice cut through my deepening thoughts.

“…At any rate, without you, I would have failed. The comrades who infiltrated with me were all dragged off somewhere as well. But the more I think about it, the less I can make any sense of you. Who the hell are you, really?”

A tangle of emotions crossed Beron’s face, but I gave him only one line in return.

“My true identity is…”

Thud. Thud.

Before I could finish, heavy footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor.

“So you rats are awake.”

The jailer I’d knocked out earlier appeared at the bars with a vile grin, lifting his torch to shine the light into the cell.

Behind him, a large, helmeted soldier stood like a shadow.

“Count yourselves lucky. Normally I’d skin you alive myself… but the gentleman the Saintess holds in special favor said he wanted a look at you.”

The jailer bowed and scraped to the man behind him, fawning shamelessly.

“He’s a man who charged single-handed into enemy lines, took the heads of a hundred Imperial soldiers, and came back — truly a comet of the battlefield! These days, the Saintess’s most trusted blade!”

Clack.

The jailer pushed the cell door open and stepped in first.

“These are them. The crazy bastards who dared impersonate a jailer and force their way into the Saintess’s chambers.”

A moment later, the man who’d been standing behind him stepped into the cell as well. He wore blood-caked armor and carried a heavy greatsword slung across his back. The eyes glinting through the slit of his helmet were cold.

The jailer prattled on, beside himself with excitement.

“Sir, you may not know this, but these two are filth of the worst kind! But fear not. I’ve brought every kind of torture implement at our disposal — I’ll have them screaming until they don’t even have the strength left to scre—”
“Get out.”

A low, deep voice. The man had cut the jailer’s chatter off with a single word.

“P-pardon?”
“I said get out.”

The man’s eyes glinted like a beast’s. The jailer let out a thin “Hic!” and stumbled backward.

“Y-yes, of course! Take your time, please! I’ll, ah, I’ll keep watch outside!”

The jailer tucked his tail and fled the cell as if running for his life.

A heavy silence settled over the room. Into it, Beron spoke.

“…The Blue Lion.”
“So you know me.”

The azure-maned lion was the heraldic symbol of House Arne. Which meant carrying the byname Blue Lion marked a man as no ordinary figure.

“Hard not to. You’re our number-two priority assassination target, right after the Saintess.”
“Am I still not first?”

But to my knowledge, no hero of any past generation had ever carried the byname Blue Lion. So who exactly was this man standing in front of me?

“You’re saying your influence has surpassed the Saintess’s?”
“Soon enough.”

The man flicked Beron in the forehead, and Beron dropped unconscious on the spot. Then he stepped over the sprawled body as if it were a bothersome pebble and turned his gaze on me, still chained to the wall.

Even after watching what had just been done to Beron, somehow I felt no real fear.

The man lifted off his helmet, set it on the floor, folded his arms, and snorted.

“Pathetic sight.”

At his jab, I rattled my chains at him.

“Tell me about it. The little brother’s getting put through hell, and Brother here looks pretty comfortable.”