BPOTWC Chapter 20

"Quentin."

"I was wrong!"

He bent forward until his forehead very nearly touched his knees.

"..."

A chill ran down his spine.

Probably from the glare being leveled at him. Even on the battlefield, it hadn't been just one or two enemy commanders who'd cried surrender at that look alone.

Maximilian's hand dropped—flat, sudden—onto Quentin's shaking, shuddering back.

"...Done well, staying this late. Go."

"Sir?"

At an answer stiff, certainly, but nowhere near reproach, Quentin lifted his head, just a little.

Maximilian had already turned back toward the window, seemingly deep in some serious thought.

He could see only the man's profile, but Quentin, who had served him for so long, could tell.

'That expression...'

It was the one he wore only when something truly serious had happened.

Most notably, on the day the deployment order for Grezekaia had come down, the Duke had worn that exact same expression.

What could it be, this time?

Quentin wanted to ask, but since he had already been told to go, he had no choice but to turn, powerless, and leave the bedroom.

"Ah."

And once he'd stepped out into the corridor, he realized he had committed an absolutely enormous blunder.

"Have I... lost my mind?"

The night of the banquet.

Crouched in the corner of her cell, Betsy heard footsteps clanking in the distance and smiled with pleasure.

There was never a knight's patrol at this hour, so she was certain it must be Sir Benson come to see her.

'To come so quickly, no less.'

Surely, with Betsy's capture, the Duke's affections toward Brielle had gone all the colder.

As the footsteps drew fully near and a knight's shadow began to appear, Betsy rose and gripped the bars.

The figure stopped in front of her cell.

But it was not Benson—only one of his subordinates, a plain soldier.

'Well, no matter.'

So long as someone let her out.

"Back up. I'm opening the door."

"Ah—of course, of course."

At the soldier's commanding tone, Betsy's pride smarted a little, but she forced a smile and stepped back at once.

'Just wait till I'm out of here.'

She would be treated splendidly, as the very hero who had freed the Duke from his false wife.

'Perhaps I might even rise to head housekeeper.'

Living in this run-down old estate was worse than dying, but a record as head housekeeper in a ducal household would let her find work anywhere in the capital afterward.

Creak.

The cell door opened at last.

At that moment, Betsy fell under the illusion that the filthy dust on the cell floor had turned into snow-white petals.

She stepped forward carefully, placing her first foot upon that beautiful path.

"The hell's wrong with this thing?"

But what on earth was this?

The soldier who had opened the door for her drove the scabbard of his sword hard into her stomach, along with a vulgar curse.

"Ngh!"

At the sharp pain, Betsy clutched her stomach at once and rolled across the floor.

"Ow, ow, it hurts!"

"Shut your damn mouth!"

At such rough treatment, Betsy glared sharply up at the soldier from where she lay on the floor.

The idiot soldier, it seemed, had mistaken her for some common criminal, no different from the rest.

"D-do you know what'll happen if I get out of here right now—!"

"What? Still hasn't come to her senses, this one?"

"The moment I'm out, I'll go straight to the Duke and tell him how you've behaved."

She smiled in triumph, expecting he'd be gripped with fear.

But the soldier's expression hardly changed at all.

"...?"

No—he even began to snicker, as though he found the whole thing absurd.

"So Sir Benson was right. Finally cracked—spouting nonsense, just like he said."

"What? W-what did Sir Benson say?"

"That you'd lost your mind! Gone completely round the bend!"

The soldier twirled one hand beside his head, mocking her.

"That can't be—!"

Betsy tried to protest, but he gave her no chance at all.

"Ah, forget it. Oi, you there!"

The soldier turned and called out with a jerk of his chin to another prisoner crouched in a corner of the cell.

"Come out for a moment—there's something I need to check."

The other prisoner rose hesitantly and shuffled out of the cell, and the soldier slammed the cell door shut behind him with a thud.

"Wait!"

Betsy crawled forward to the bars and called out to stop him.

"Is that true? That Sir Benson said such a thing? He—he couldn't have?"

"Said so, didn't I."

"Call him here. I'll say it again, myself!"

"Shut up! I swear, I'm about to—"

As the soldier responded irritably, Betsy, unable to hold back, shouted loudly:

"The Duchess is a fake!"

For a moment, silence fell over the dungeon.

"..."

The soldier stared at her, dumbfounded, then slowly shook his head.

"Benson said he was worried you'd gone properly round the bend... Well, damn. Guess he called it."

"That's not—!"

"Once a capable one snaps, there's no fixing 'em—ugh, what a shame. However did you end up in such a state?"

At that pitying look, Betsy found herself unable to say anything more.

The soldier no longer even glanced back at her, and dragged the other prisoner out of the dungeon entirely.

For a long while after that, Betsy lay collapsed against the bars, hopeless.

Something had gone wrong here—there was no question of it.

She had been so sure Benson had come around, listening to what she'd said.

There was no way he couldn't know the two of them didn't get along.

Three years of a bad marriage between them didn't just turn to closeness overnight—and it certainly wasn't going to sprout into affection, or whatever it is other couples have.

Not unless someone had done something.

"That can't be right..."

She refused, to the very end, to abandon hope, and strained her ears for any sign of another knight or soldier coming—

But the inside of the dungeon remained utterly quiet.

〈Quentin is an idiot!〉

The next morning, the inner wall had completely reversed its assessment of Quentin, whom it had praised just the night before as "the very god of romance."

"Idiot is a mean thing to say. And Uncle Quentin is a good person."

〈No, indeed—a thoroughly hopeless nincompoop, he is!〉

"If you keep speaking ill of him like this, I won't be able to talk with you anymore. It's not polite to say bad things about people."

Clarisse said in a stern voice.

〈Very well. In any event, last night he did go on at length about His Grace's former betrothed—however embarrassed His Grace and Her Ladyship must have been, truly, might Clarisse imagine it!〉

"His former betrothed?"

〈Yes—in truth, His Grace once had another betrothed, it is so. A young lady counted among the most beautiful in the whole capital, they do say!〉

"The Duchess is one of the most beautiful too."

Clarisse said, taking the Duchess's side at once, in a voice that somehow sounded a little put out.

〈Of course she is. In any case, His Grace could not marry that betrothed.〉

"Why not?"

〈Because she married His Grace's younger brother instead.〉

Clarisse thought of the beautiful King she had seen at the battlefield.

〈And His Grace, in turn, came to marry the household his brother had chosen for him.〉

"So His Grace's former betrothed is... the Queen, now?"

〈Just so! And that awkward little matter is exactly what that lunatic—that is, Secretary Quentin—went and dug right back up.〉

"But that doesn't matter, does it."

Clarisse tilted her head slightly.

"His Grace and Her Ladyship like each other, after all."

〈Ah, dear me, it is not so simple a matter as that, if it please her to know.〉

"But it's all in the past."

〈Clarisse shall understand it too, one day, once she has a lover of her own, she will. How very much a thing the past is, to weigh so on the mind, if I may say so!〉

"I won't have a lover. I'll be far too busy repaying His Grace for his kindness."

By the time they'd gotten this far, Rosalie arrived with breakfast.

Clarisse whispered, in a small voice toward the wall, 'Have a good day—and tell Sir Outer-Wall I said the same," before spinning on her heel.

The following day.

"I've committed a crime worthy of death!" Maximilian, morning paper in hand, arrived at his office to find Quentin flat on the floor, both hands pressed together in desperate apology.

He had a fair idea why his secretary was begging forgiveness so earnestly.

"...Enough."

"I clean forgot for a moment, sir. Ah... th-that is—"

It seemed Quentin had clean forgotten the whole affair—a betrothed taken by one brother of the royal house, lost by the other.

If anything, Maximilian was almost grateful for his obliviousness.

Everyone else treated the mere mention of Maximilian's past as an unspeakable taboo.

"It's fine."

"I only worried... that I might have touched on something painful."

Quentin, having risen to his feet by now, was studying his expression closely.

Sensing that his secretary had thoroughly misunderstood something, Maximilian decided to clarify one important point.

"And it wasn't Her Majesty."

"Sir?"

"The one I chose the drinks and cookies for, as you put it."

"...There was another betrothed, before that one?"

Maximilian's smile came thin and bitter.

There had, in fact, once been a betrothal arranged by the family. Though it had been nothing more than the affair of a six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl.

To them, a betrothal had meant nothing more than a promise to make of each other a lifelong friend.

A shape entirely unlike the love or the betrothals grown men spoke of—and yet, to a young Maximilian, she had, without question, been someone tenderly, achingly dear.

"...Hm. Now you mention it."

Maximilian pretended not to notice Quentin's expression, hungry for more of the story, and began speaking of something else entirely.

"I'll be going to the wall, this year's end."

"To the wall?!"

Quentin, delighted, checked the calendar at once and clapped his hands.

"That's wonderful, sir, I've nothing on my schedule. You mean for us to go watch the New Year's fireworks together?"

"That too, but... I intend to deliver a permit to the mage who requested an investigation into the 'Fallen Golem.'"

"Ah, that eleven-year-old child mage, you mean? Are you truly going to grant that permit? I'd think the royal family wouldn't much care for it, either."

The royal family and the mage tower had gone beyond mere mutual wariness—by now, there was little left between them but hatred.

"The terms aren't unreasonable, so it shouldn't come to that. There's something buried in those ruins the royal family itself hopes to recover, and it can't be brought out without a Golem Master's assistance."

"But that boy isn't a Golem Master, is he?"

"At the very least, he is the Golem Master's... son. He'll know something of it."

"But he's only eleven! What could a child that young possibly know, to be conducting research?"

"He isn't merely a child."

The Duke drew the request document he had received earlier a little closer.

"A mage's rank isn't determined by age or experience. It's fixed by the amount of innate mana one is born with. And he..."

The Duke turned to look at Quentin.

"...is one of the Five Great Mages, even among the mage tower's own ranks."