Do You Know Who I Am?

Word had reached Pai that the traps set inside the Great Labyrinth were the work of demon worshippers, so she had expected an Inquisitor to come calling before long.

I didn’t think it would be this fast, though.

They had come storming in the moment the Victory Festival ended, which meant they had been on the move for over a month at the very least.

Keith must have had the report, and he didn’t so much as share it… Should I be sponging off Kalada as well?

Information was at stake, so it was a question she would have to take her time over. For now, Pai decided to deal with the business in front of her.

“Go quietly back to the Second Drill Ground and I’ll let it go as though it never happened.”

“Shut your mouth. You have insulted House Hwigare and the Paladin Order both at once!”

The men closed in, growling. The hands groping at their waists looked to be searching for weapons.

Anna yelped, ‘Eeek,’ and hid herself behind Pai.

She wanted to fetch someone else, but the men had ringed them in and cut off any way out. Petty beyond words.

“We won’t go easy on you for being women.”

“Wow. Terrifying.”

Pai’s indifference grated on the men’s nerves all the more.

“The way I see it, the insult was your own doing. Do you imagine an Inquisitor will cover for men who trotted out the will of God and then tried to lay hands on a woman? You’ll be lucky if they don’t have you gelded for fouling the honor of the Paladin Order.”

“Wh-what did you…!”

“Second — do you think your master will take you back, when you have fallen out of favor with the Paladin Order and come trudging home without even finishing the mission?”

“Khuk, we’ll just cut the tongues out of you two bitches, then!”

“Do you know who I am?”

That question threw the soldiers into utter confusion. Unless she was bluffing, it was a line that could only be used in one particular context.

Her hair was carelessly tied and her shirt and trousers were coarse cloth, so there was no telling her station. One thing was certain, all the same.

She was… beautiful.

Nor was she simply beautiful. She was excessively so, more than enough to catch the Regent Duke’s eye and be taken into his favor.

For a woman being doted on, her clothes were worn and a mess, and that was their one shred of hope.

“Wh-who… might you be?”

Pai sneered openly at the soldiers hemming and hawing in their fright.

“You are addressing the lover of His Grace the Regent Duke.”

“A-and one who shares his bed near enough every day of the week, at that!”

Anna poked her head out over Pai’s shoulder and shouted. Then she stuck her thumb up smartly, wearing a look that said, ‘I did well, didn’t I.’

It wasn’t as though she was wrong… Pai scratched at her jaw and spoke to the men, whose faces had gone a sickly blue.

“Tongue or finger, have a go at cutting one off.”

Was there a soldier alive who did not know that Keith Paragon, now seated as Regent Duke, had been the Mercenary King, a man with neither blood nor tears in him?

For exalted persons, the woman they love sometimes matters more than honor.

“Or else chant ‘Be good to women!’ and run fifty laps of the drill ground, and then clear off.”

“W-we were wrong!”

“Spare us our liiives!”

“B-be good! To women!”

The soldiers flung their tools and weapons down on the ground and set off running their laps.

The story that the soldiers sent to prepare the camp were tearing around the drill ground chanting a bizarre slogan reached Kashen’s ears as well.

The squire, freckles dotted over his cheeks, had heard the whole business from beginning to end, and he was thoroughly worked up.

“This is an outrageous way to treat us, truly!”

“Yes. Outrageous.”

“I saw how things stood from the moment they gave us such a shabby welcome, but how can they humiliate us like this? We must lodge a formal protest.”

“Tomasi.”

Perched on the edge of the bed inspecting his sword, the Inquisitor called the squire’s name gently. Tomasi swallowed dryly and came to attention in front of him.

“A man is made noble not by his mouth but by his deeds. Yet they dare to invoke God with filthy mouths while their conduct is worse than a street thug’s, which is no different from dragging my name and the Archbishop’s through the mud.”

“…”

“Since they went about proclaiming themselves the Paladin Order of their own accord, it would be right to discipline them by the temple’s rules. But that would injure Baron Hwigare’s face, so I shall settle it by handing down a hundred lashes each and sending them back.”

“A-a hundred lashes?”

Flogging that harsh kills a man or leaves him a cripple.

But Kashen said nothing, only cutting Tomasi a sharp sidelong look. Tomasi clenched his fists tight.

“Yes, yessiiir! I shall carry out your order!”

“And look into this woman they say is the Duke’s lover, as well.”

“Sir!”

Afraid of being scolded further, Tomasi hurried out of the room.

Even after he had gone, Kashen went on tending his sword a good while longer. Inwardly he never once stopped thinking about Keith Paragon.

I thought I had looked into him as thoroughly as there was to look, and now — a lover.

Getting this far had taken no small amount of time, so it was hardly strange that a woman he was seeing should have come along in the meantime. It was plainly nothing much, but he had given the order only in case something was being missed.

But the rumors Tomasi brought in the next day had an odd corner to them, too odd to be passed over lightly.

“Her origins are unclear, you say.”

“They say she came in as a maid at the time of the previous Duke’s funeral. It seems there was a bit of an uproar because the young lady ran away from home, and that is when she grew close to the Regent Duke. She is said to be a viscountess, but her hiding her station at first was suspicious, so I dug further, and there are parts that do not sit right at all.”

“A false identity?”

“No, the station itself is genuine. Only, it seems it was originally one of the titles the Regent Duke held himself.”

Tomasi whispered it as though it were a secret not meant to be overheard, but Kashen was unmoved. In noble society, a man who sets his heart on a low-born woman commonly hands her one of his own titles.

The rumor was thick everywhere that he was a block of wood, but apparently that isn’t so either.

If anything, a scheme petty enough to be endearing only raised Kashen’s estimate of Keith.

“And recently she was reported missing…”

“Missing?”

“Yes, the Regent Duke and that lover of his. There was the Victory Festival before we arrived, wasn’t there? They say the two of them vanished during the hunting contest and were found together in some cave…”

“And what of it.”

“I-it’s just that there is a rumor it wasn’t any ordinary cave but the Great Labyrinth in the Black Forest!”

“…The Black Forest.”

A story about young lovers vanishing for a few hours and turning up again is nothing to be surprised at. The work of hot blood they could not keep a hold of, no doubt.

But the Black Forest.

However bold lust might make them, no lovers short of mad would walk into the Black Forest to lie together.

Still, smoke does not rise from a chimney that was never lit.

“It is decidedly suspicious.”

The Black Forest would not have come up without some reason behind it. Uncovering that connection was Kashen’s work.

“That concludes my report, sir!”

“Well done.”

Traces of demon worshippers had been found in labyrinths all across the Empire. The Archbishop took this as a provocation against the temple.

For this mission, speed mattered as much as showing no tolerance.

And so, the moment he had the report that morning, Kashen went to meet the mage called Hamel. Hamel had signed an exclusive contract with the White Castle, and the Regent Duke’s lover, they said, was the one who had brought him in.

“That woman again.”

No ordinary person could have introduced an eccentric mage to a Regent Duke. And besides, was Hamel not a man who went about trailing the impious rumor that he was mad for demonology?

“The mage is at the Third Drill Ground. His quarters are there as well, and the lessons are usually held there too.”

“Lessons?”

“Lady Ardine awakened as a mage not long ago! I don’t know whether you have heard the rumor yourself, sir, but the young lady even came to the castle riding a silver snow elk. Heh heh, our young lady is truly destined for greatness!”

“…”

What a silver snow elk had to do with anything. Ignorant of the legends of the North, Kashen let the somehow-preening maid’s words go in one ear and out the other.

At any rate — awakened enough for a master to be put on her.

He headed straight for the Third Drill Ground. And the moment he set foot at its entrance.

— Fwiiip!

A white light grazed his collar like a shooting star.

“…”

A boy with a violet bob shrugged.

“Not sorry. Accident.”