25. My True Identity Is…

“Today, 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, making a big show of her sorrow, and her bob swayed and shimmered against the pale line of her neck.

“But do not fear!”

She lifted her head and smiled brightly. That one smile was enough to change the air in the banquet hall.

“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 roared it back at her, pounding their fists on the tables in unison.

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

She gestured and the handmaidens moved, pouring red liquid from golden urns until every soldier’s cup was full.

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

Astraea drained a goblet of wine.

“Cheers!!”

The soldiers fell over each other to get the stuff down their throats, and a ruddy flush bloomed on every face that had emptied its cup. Even the wounded, who’d been writhing in pain a moment ago, went slack-eyed and dreamy, then broke into addled, ear-to-ear grins and slung their arms around their comrades’ shoulders.

Soldiers drowning the terror of war in drink. On the surface, it was the ordinary scene you’d find at any military feast.

Drinking, in a situation like this?

We were in the middle of a siege with the Imperial army on every side, at a moment when every last scrap of supply ought to count, and she was throwing a lavish banquet. A commander should be tightening her soldiers’ resolve, yet this one was slackening it, pouring liquor down their throats until their reason short-circuited.

“Complete lunatics.”

Beron growled it beside me, his fist clenched tight.

I looked toward Astraea, still basking in the cheers atop the dais. But she seemed to have no more business with her soldiers, because she pivoted on her heel and stepped down.

The hall was pure pandemonium, but Eve bobbed along above my head and kept feeding me the Saintess’s movements. Following them was the hard part. Soldiers staggered drunk, sprawled across the floor and danced wildly on the tables, all of it right in our path, and the floor was so slick with sticky wine and food that it was hard even to lift a foot.

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

I bellowed it in the rough voice of a hardened jailer and cleared a path with my club. The drunks half-started to spit curses back, but one look at my uniform and they cackled and stepped aside. Beron kept his head down low and stuck right behind me, and we pushed through the crowd to the arched doorway where Astraea had vanished.

— Kreeeak.

The instant we stepped through, the din of the banquet cut off as if by magic. There was no room on the other side, only a short corridor. The sweat-and-food reek that had been crawling up my nose gave way to the soft, sweet scent of lilies. Framed religious paintings hung along the walls, a red carpet swallowed our footsteps, and at the far end a faint light leaked through the seam of a heavy oak door.

I shot Beron a meaningful look, held my breath and crept up to it.

“Come in.”

So however lightly we’d walked, we hadn’t quite hidden our footsteps. Thinking we wouldn’t be caught had been wishful thinking.

I pushed the door open on a softly candlelit, old-fashioned room. It looked like the bedchamber where she actually slept. Astraea stood by the window gazing up at the night sky, and now she slowly turned 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, but I just bowed at the waist, unfazed.

“Course not, my lady.”

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

“Got orders to bring up the elf, is all.”

I forced Beron to his knees on the floor and added, “That’s the Saintess’s orders carried out.”

The setup 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?”

Without a flicker of suspicion, Astraea stepped up 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?!”

The shout didn’t startle the Saintess in the least. She gave a small, contemptuous laugh, as if it amused her.

“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, the Saintess would have a hard time dodging the dagger, and for an instant I hesitated.

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, so there was no way he was the culprit behind the Saintess’s vanishing. I grabbed him by the back of the neck and flung him backward, and his dagger clattered to the floor.

“You crazy bastard!”

Beron had just squandered a golden opportunity and he 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 him, but I had no choice. I couldn’t be seen as being on his side, after all. By the time I’d thoroughly worked him over, he’d collapsed flat on the floor, out cold.

“Hoo.”

I let out a long breath and wiped off the sweat. Astraea walked over to where Beron had fallen and looked him over.

“He’s only unconscious. Not dead.”

I creased my brow like a jailer who really was furious. “Should I kill him?”

“No, there’s no need to go that far.”

She didn’t seem the slightest bit shaken, and this was a woman whose throat had nearly been punched through by a dagger seconds ago.

I started to drag Beron out by his ankles, meaning to leave the room, and the moment I opened my mouth to speak:

“By the way.”

Astraea took one step toward me, then another, and 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.”

Her gaze slid down to the club in my hand, still smeared with my own dried blood from when a real jailer had beaten me earlier. Then it moved again, up to the gash on my forehead, which was 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 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 chills 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 and 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 them 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, and I opened my eyes to a familiar ceiling. Clammy damp, the smell of mold, a hard stone floor.

“…Dammit.”

Déjà vu. The one difference was that this time I was wearing 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, and I was dangling against the wall.

“You awake?”

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

“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 something I obviously couldn’t say, so I tried to wave it off vaguely. But when I looked back at Beron, he 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.”

His eyes were lit with sheer madness. The curses and abuse kept coming after that, but by then a single thought had struck me.

The unshakable composure from the cell on. The laser-focused intent to kill the Saintess the second we got out. An elf who was no ordinary elf, one the Arne army loathed enough to shudder.

All of it led to one conclusion, so 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 vanished from his eyes, and for the briefest instant a flicker of unease took its place. I didn’t miss it.

So it was confirmed. Beron was an assassin who had infiltrated this place with the clear objective of killing the Saintess. In that case, was the true cause of her disappearance that his assassination had succeeded after all? Meaning he’d had help from someone other than me, or he’d broken out of the cell under his own power?

Beron’s voice cut through my deepening thoughts.

“…Either way, without you I’d have failed. The comrades who snuck in with me all got dragged off somewhere too. But the more I think about it, the less sense you make. Who the hell are you, really?”

There were a lot of emotions to read in his face, but I gave him only one line back.

“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 and lifted his torch to shine its 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 is so especially fond of says he wants a look at you.”

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

“This is the 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! The Saintess’s most trusted blade these days!”

Clack.

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

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

In due course, the man behind him stepped into the cell as well. He wore blood-caked armor and carried a heavy greatsword slung across his back, and 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 don’t you worry. I’ve brought every kind of torture implement we’ve got — I’ll have them screaming right before your eyes, sir, until they don’t even have the strength left to scre—”
“Get out.”

The voice was low and deep, and that one command cut off the jailer’s chatter.

“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!”

He tucked his tail and fled the cell as if running for his life, and a heavy silence settled over the room. Into that silence, Beron spoke.

“…The Blue Lion.”
“So you know me.”

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

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

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

“You’re saying you’ve got more influence than the Saintess?”
“Soon enough.”

The man flicked Beron in the forehead, and Beron dropped unconscious on the spot. Then he stepped over him as if he 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 his helmet off, 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.”