BPOTWC Chapter 23

Clarisse, dressed head to toe in her prisoner look, arrived at the spot where the mages' carriages stood parked.

Soldiers she'd never seen before were keeping watch nearby, but Clarisse wasn't particularly afraid.

Sir Benson, the Duke's own knight, was right there with her, after all—surely they wouldn't block her path or try anything threatening.

"Uh—wha?"

No—Clarisse was wrong.

The moment the soldiers spotted them, they came rushing straight over and blocked the way.

"Whoa!"

"What is that?!"

Faced with a crowd of armed soldiers staring wide-eyed straight at her, Clarisse flinched and pressed herself instinctively against Benson's back, hiding.

'Are the soldiers uncomfortable because a prisoner is wandering around so freely?'

But someone in trouble was supposedly in the mages' cargo wagon, so she couldn't just give up and turn back either.

"Er, Sir Benson! No one told us the ducal house was sending along such an adorable little thing?"

One soldier stepped toward Clarisse as he asked this, and Benson threw out an arm to block him.

"She's serving a sentence. Don't come any closer without leave."

Clarisse nodded along in small agreement. A prisoner couldn't simply go mingling with others without the Duke's permission.

One of the soldiers, still staring down at her with startled eyes, suddenly clapped his hands together.

It seemed he'd worked out who she was.

"Fatal cuteness—now that's a real crime. Nobody stands a chance against it."

"Bundled up in fur like that, she'll have conquered the whole royal court before long!"

"Life imprisonment, that's what it is! Life imprisonment!"

Listening quietly to all this, Clarisse gently corrected the mistake.

"I'm a death-row prisoner."

At that, they clutched their chests as though struck by sudden enlightenment and began trembling all over.

"Oh, that's right! Life imprisonment isn't nearly enough."

"If cuteness is a crime, then our little one here's earned herself a death sentence—!"

And then they went on saying something stranger still.

Her crime wasn't cuteness... though.

Confused, she glanced at Benson—already shaking his head, looks like he'd given up explaining.

"Enough, get out of the way! This prisoner has outdoor activity to attend to, by the Duke's own order."

Benson waved them off in irritation, and the soldiers looked at the pair with even greater astonishment.

"The Duke is thoughtful enough to keep track of some other household's child's outdoor activities?"

"He never struck me as the type to be bothered with kids at all—"

"No, honestly, I'd have said he had no interest in anything outside of work?"

It upset Clarisse to hear them speaking ill of the Duke, so she carefully poked her head out and spoke up.

"His Grace is a wonderful person. He listens fairly to anyone, no matter who they are."

"...!"

The soldiers, hearing this, exchanged looks of considerable surprise.

Clarisse decided to say a little more, so they could understand just how splendid the Duke really was.

"He praised me when I made a snowman. He invited me to dinner, too. And... he had this outfit made for me."

Surely that's enough now—surely they'd say the Duke was wonderful? Clarisse thought, peering carefully up at the soldiers.

"Well now..."

One of the soldiers finally let out a sound of admiration.

"However does she manage to talk so nicely?"

"Ohh, so His Grace has been good to you? Who's a good girl, then?"

"..."

It sounded exactly like teasing, and Clarisse found them just the tiniest bit annoying for it.

Sensing her mood, Benson waved his hand once more.

"Out of the way, all of you. Anyone standing in the way of outdoor activity from here on out is committing treason against the Duke."

"Terrifying, absolutely terrifying. Right, understood. We got it."

As the soldiers laughed and stepped aside, Clarisse tightened her grip on the red pebble she'd brought along in her pocket.

〈The very last cart, it is! Might the young miss be so good as to hasten—for an ill omen, I do sense it, indeed.〉

Clarisse looked up at Benson and pointed to the wagon furthest at the rear.

"I want to see that cart!"

"That one? Looks perfectly ordinary to me. Look at this instead—this splendid new carriage, its frame built from a light, sturdy material!"

"I want to see the cargo wagon. I heard someone talking in there just now, I really did."

"Talking? Surely not. That thing isn't meant to carry people."

"Even so, I want to look!"

Clarisse went scampering straight up to the cargo wagon.

"Hm, and what's supposed to be in there?"

"Yes, right here, Sir Benson."

Benson pressed his ear quietly against the locked back of the wagon.

Clarisse looked up at him with both hands folded together, and he gave a small nod.

He'd sensed a presence, it seemed.

"Stand back, it's dangerous, Clarisse. I'll gather the knights at once."

Thinking whoever had gotten into the wagon must have trespassed illegally onto ducal land, Benson gripped the sword at his hip.

〈No! Why torment our poor, blameless boy so! O girl, quickly—stay that lawless brute's hand!〉

The red pebble let out a shout.

Clarisse hopped nimbly up onto the wagon's wheel.

"Clarisse!"

She stretched up onto her toes as far as she could, and through the palm-sized window she caught a glimpse of the wagon's interior.

Someone wrapped in rags lay on the floor of the cart.

But this only lasted a moment before Benson scooped her up and set her back down beneath the wagon.

"Behaving so recklessly! If you'd gotten hurt—!"

He shouted this with wide eyes, but Clarisse showed no fear at all and simply tilted her head firmly back up toward him.

"There's a child collapsed in there! You have to help right away!"

"...A child?"

At Benson's question, Clarisse stamped both feet.

"You'll see for yourself once you look inside, Sir Benson! If you don't hurry, who knows what'll happen to that child."

Benson looked somewhat uneasy about it, but he soon checked through the window as Clarisse had said and then quickly wrenched the entire lock clean off the door.

The door creaked open, and there, wrapped in gray rags... a boy, curled into a ball on the floor.

At that same moment, Maximilian was still sitting with the mages in the meeting room.

How best to respond to their demand that procedure simply be waived.

While the Duke was still deep in thought over this, the mage Nelson pressed him for an answer.

"Your Grace."

At the same instant, an urgent knock sounded at the meeting-room door.

"Your Grace, it's Benson."

Why had the man who ought to be with Clarisse come here instead?

The Duke nodded to the attendant at the door, signaling him to let it open.

Benson came striding in at once, and Maximilian asked him the one thing that mattered most first.

"Clarisse?"

"The Duchess is looking after her, Your Grace."

Only now did Maximilian nod. The knight assigned to his wife would surely be watching over Clarisse as well.

"But that isn't why I've come, Your Grace."

Benson glanced briefly at the mages standing behind the Duke, then leaned in and reported the situation in a low voice at his ear.

Having heard the whole of it, the Duke fixed Benson with a look of open astonishment.

"You're certain of this?"

"Yes, Your Grace. I confirmed it myself."

"Well done. Return and continue guarding her."

Once Benson had gone, the mages began to eye the Duke uneasily, sensing his mood.

They had noticed how heavily the air had shifted around him.

"Er... Your Grace."

Just as the mage Nelson worked up the courage to speak carefully—

Maximilian turned to face them, his expression hardened.

He said nothing at all, and yet the mages' faces had already gone pale, as though crushed beneath the sheer weight bearing down from him.

"I cannot issue the permit to you."

"N-no, there's been a misunderstanding—"

Nelson tried to offer some explanation in a trembling voice, but the Duke did not listen.

"More lies left to tell, then?"

Nelson could say nothing at all.

Maximilian sent an official letter to the mage order at once.

At this news, Nelson and the two other mages threw themselves flat to the floor, begging for mercy.

They confessed that they'd meant to shut the young mage Sinnett out entirely and claim the credit for the Fallen Golem research themselves.

Duke Maximilian had no trouble seeing that they'd done all this out of jealousy for the boy's formidable magical power and his exalted standing as one of the Five Great Mages.

'But however deep their greed runs...'

To have lost the guardian who was dearest to him, only to be pushed even further into despair for the sake of someone else's petty ambition, rather than comforted—

The Duke found it thoroughly distasteful that such unscrupulous men should be left to roam freely about his lands, but he had no authority to act against them himself, not yet.

Fortunately, the mage order responded swiftly.

Just before the new year, one of the Five Great Mages—Yona Astor's own son, Alistair Astor—came in person to the duchy.

Thirty-one this year, and already spoken of as the man most likely to become the next Mage-Commander, his name carried real weight.

He bowed before the Duke with a bearing so beautiful it startled the eye.

Were it not for the scar on his cheek and the white robe he wore, one might easily have mistaken him for some noble of the capital.

"Noah is as good as a younger brother to me. I hardly know how to thank you enough for saving him. That Nelson would do something so appalling..."

He bit his lip as though the thought pained him.

"Mage Astor, they must be given the punishment they deserve."

The Duke answered sternly, and Alistair nodded at once, as though this went without saying.

"Of course. I would like to speak further, but I'm afraid I must return to the tower immediately with these men. We'll select and send a junior mage to assist Noah in their place. So, if I might ask..."

Alistair looked at the Duke with an earnest, pleading expression.

No doubt he meant to ask that the hard-won research agreement not be broken over this.

The Duke gave a nod.

"Understood. I, too, regard this agreement as a matter of great importance. Only—I trust nothing of this kind will happen again."

"Of course not."

Alistair bowed deeply once more, then took Nelson and his companions and returned with them to the mage tower.

While Maximilian dealt with the mages, Noah Sinnett—found unconscious in the wagon—was laid to rest in a guest room.

Benson had gone off to make his report, and Clarisse remained behind with the Duchess to keep watch at the boy's side.

The boy, who might have been only a little older than Clarisse, was terribly thin—thin enough that the white robe he wore seemed too much for him—and over his face he wore a mask shaped like a cat.