I Like You

Just as Kashen had said in his own defense, an Inquisitor’s use of a truth serum was a right guaranteed even in law. Even so, a closer look turned up a gap in it worth digging into.

“There are several kinds of truth serum sold on the market. The ingredients vary as well; it isn’t only Amarillaksa. So far as I know, the truth serum the Paladin Order uses to question witnesses contains Simat. The plant that bears the red berries. Isn’t that so, Sir Knight?”

Pai singled out one of the paladins, a man who had been standing there unable to keep still. He answered with a sour look.

“Th… that is correct.”

“Is there a particular reason you use a drug with Simat in it?”

“Because that one produces the strongest effect.”

“Bingo.”

Pai smiled sweetly and let her gaze travel around the assembled company. Keith’s face lit up; he had caught on to the line her argument was going to take.

“Simat is a plant native to the North. Go to an apothecary and you can get hold of it without much trouble. It is expensive, true enough, but Sir Kashen does not look to me like a man in straitened circumstances.”

“…”

“Amarillaksa, by contrast, is hard to come by in the North, and as a truth serum its efficacy is not as fine as what the other ingredients give. And yet, remarkably enough, it runs on the expensive side. Because the demand for it is steady. Anyone here know why?”

“Because no trace of the compound is detected in the one who ingested the drug.”

The one to put a hand up like a model student and answer was Keith. A smile he could not hide had spread over his whole face, and his eyes were shining.

“That is truly remarkable, Miss Pai!”

Knowing a fact is one thing; stringing facts together to work out what had happened is another.

Pai stole a glance at those red eyes wavering with admiration, and hurried her case along before he could pour out another round of gooseflesh-raising talk.

“Mr. Keith is right. Which means Sir Kashen will have to state why he went to the trouble of procuring Amarillaksa, setting aside the Simat that the Paladin Order has always used and that is easier to come by besides. Reasonably, and in a way everyone here can accept.”

“…The Viscountess is remarkably well informed.”

Kashen murmured it with a twist at the corner of his mouth, and Keith cut in at once.

“Indeed. Miss Pai knows upward of eighty ways of tying a knot. Her shooting and her riding are both of a high standard. And on top of that, that beauty of hers…”

“Ahem!”

Pai cut Keith’s doting nonsense short with a violent clearing of her throat, then met Kashen’s eyes squarely once more.

“Is the explanation difficult? Don’t tell me you were scheming something foul with the truth serum? Is it that merely putting it into words gives off such a stink that you cannot possibly say it here?”

“…”

Kashen kept his mouth clamped shut and glared at her. The taut standoff held only a moment before he shrugged, as though letting the tension drain out of him.

“Might I drink a glass of water before I begin?”

Kashen’s right hand moved toward the table before anyone had given him leave. An instant before he could take hold of the cup, though, Hamel’s eyes glinted dark, and a knife on the table went whipping across and buried itself in Kashen’s palm.

— Thunk.

“Khuk!”

Kashen’s knees buckled. He clutched the bleeding hand to his chest and groaned.

“S-Sir Kashen!”

“Damn it! What are you doing, mage!”

“Halt.”

Keith, the only man in the hall carrying a sword, drew. — Shing, a clean, sharp sound, put the commotion to rest.

“Any man who moves so much as a fraction, I will cut down.”

“B-by what right do you do this!”

One of the knights objected in a small voice, and Keith gave his sword a light swing.

— Whoosh.

Sword energy red as blood threw off sparks of light into the air. — Crackle! The cuff of the knight’s sleeve was sheared away.

“Huh, huuh—!”

“Kashen Altad has planned a crime and has now attempted to destroy the evidence of it. Any man who moves from this moment will be deemed an accomplice and confined in the cells.”

Pai nodded as though to signal her agreement.

A truth serum made from Amarillaksa leaves no evidence at all in the body of the one who takes it.

But conversely, it can leave a trace on the one who used it.

If he had used a powdered preparation, the chances were high that it was still on his hands.

Powder is water-soluble. He may have meant to wash his hands under cover of drinking. Then again, maybe not.

One hand propped at her hip, Pai watched Kashen’s two hands being bound.

“Take him away.”

“Yes!”

The soldiers of the White Castle kept strict order as they hauled Kashen out of the banquet hall, and Keith had the remaining paladins confined to their own rooms as well.

That left only Pai and Keith in the hall, together with the household staff, Hamel among them.

“…”

The commotion looked to have been brought to a close, but not one person there was unaware that it was in fact the beginning of something far bigger. Gratifying as it was, it was not a thing anyone could simply be glad of, and an uneasy silence filled the room.

“Anyway, I did what I was told to do.”

Hamel broke the silence first, with a stretch.

So he did square the story with Keith beforehand.

Keith gave the mage a look of thanks.

“Thank you for your trouble.”

“I’m dying of sleep. Not to be woken until noon tomorrow.”

“Wait, Hamel…!”

Pai called after him urgently, but Hamel walked off, dragging his splendid mage’s robe along the floor, and was gone.

“He could at least neutralize the drug before he goes. Unbelievable.”

“Pai.”

Keith came up and took hold of her wrist, offhandedly, as though it were nothing. The vein on the inside of her wrist began to thump.

“Let us go to the bedchamber ourselves.”

The man’s breath broke ticklishly against her ear. Pai hesitated.

This is a crime scene, though. He means to just walk off like this?!

“Let’s go… I’m sleepy. Miss Pai, you tie me. So that it can never come loose…”

“Huh—”

“O-oh my.”

The servants waiting in attendance dropped their heads low and whispered among themselves.

I’m going to lose my mind.

Sweet nothings that raised gooseflesh were the cute end of the scale. But if he lost all discretion and let slip some piece of nonsense, that would be a problem.

“Please go in and rest. I shall take responsibility for setting this place in order.”

Bishe, who had held her place from beginning to end, stepped forward. Her, Pai could trust.

In the previous life Bishe had gone on speaking nothing but the plain truth even after Luigi Husslix rose to Regent Duke, and had been driven out for it.

“Mm-hm. Please do.”

One worry lighter, Pai turned to look at Keith, who was gazing blankly at her and at nothing else.

“Let’s go. Keith.”

“You…”

The man who had been whining the whole while about going up had turned into a gravestone all at once and would not budge from the spot. Pai clenched her back teeth and muttered low.

“Pluhz, duhn’t suh uhnythuhng…”

“Earlier there was too much going on and I could not say it. From the moment Miss Pai appeared, I could see nothing but you. It suits you truly well, that dress. You are beautiful. You are beautiful, Miss Pai. You are not like other pretty women. You have an aura all your own, mysterious and free. Special… you are a truly special person to me.”

Pai could not lift her head. Bishe, stern-faced, marshaled the staff from the front and did the pair the courtesy of treating them as ghosts, but the maids’ cheeks had already gone red and their faces were barely holding the laughter in.

Mm.

This won’t do. Let’s use force.

Pai wound a slender arm around the man’s waist.

“Well then, good work, all of you.”

And she hauled him out of the banquet hall by something very close to brute force. Keith moved his feet along with unexpected meekness, so meekly that it felt like steering a scarecrow made of rice straw.

“Of course I like it when you wear a shirt and trousers as usual. I like that you tread the same ground as I do on those long, firm legs. But a dress is something different. Shall we hold a ball? Would you wear this again then? Or perhaps that time I might make you a present of a dress that suits you.”

“Now, that’s enough.”

Letting the praise that poured down like a waterfall go in one ear and out the other, she got Keith seated on the bed in the bedchamber at last. He raised his eyes to meet Pai’s, the way a docile puppy looks up at its owner.

“Hush. I understand very well how much Your Grace likes me. But you have to sleep all the same. From tomorrow we’re going to be busy.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? We are going to be extremely busy.”

“You have no idea how much I like you.”

“…”

“I like you, Pai.”

He wrapped Pai’s two hands gently in his own.

“I like you very much indeed.”