IWJACM Chapter 12

Rezet checked the clock set into the distant chapel wall. Only a few minutes remained until noon.

His townhouse, outside the palace grounds, sat some distance from the square. Out front, knights, squires, servants—all of them readying to return to the territory—kept the place in constant, bustling motion.

Rezet had brought a private force of some one thousand men from Lothier. Arcel, Lothier's own knight-commander, had already returned ahead of him with most of the infantry, leaving a remaining force of just under two hundred.

At the head of the ranked men, Rezet's black warhorse tossed its head, snorting.

Ruben, spotting him, gave his report.

"Your Highness, all preparations are complete. Only the spoils His Majesty granted us remain to be loaded."

"Good. Once the cargo is loaded, we depart immediately."

"Yes. …Are you not going out to the square, though?"

"Why would I go to the square?"

"Well, I mean—today's the day, isn't it. Argan princess's execution. Ought to be starting any time now."

"……."

"Square's been packed since morning—whole town's turned out. Word's already all over the capital."

Rezet's gaze slid slowly toward Ruben. Ruben, blind to the chill in his commander's eyes, kept right on talking.

"Execution of the finest beauty in all Grendel—that's exactly the kind of thing gossips live for, isn't it. Princess of a fallen empire, on top of it, even more so."

"……."

"And—apparently some of them are hoping for a miracle. That the princess might work some spell, vanish clean off the scaffold, or call down lightning, that sort of thing. You know, like in the Ghallian myth—where the hero Ghallian called down lightning to save a companion and split the execution platform clean in two, that—"

"That's enough. I can't stomach hearing any more of it."

Rezet cut off Ruben's rambling without mercy.

"Stop wasting your ears on useless things and check we haven't forgotten anything. I don't plan on setting foot anywhere near the capital again for a good while."

Ruben scratched at his chin, sheepish.

"Wasn't trying to listen—it's just, it's all anybody's talking about, everywhere you go. Anyway. You're really not going to see it?"

"Why would I go there."

"Well, I mean, you did keep her close to you for nearly two months, didn't you. And that was—"

Ruben trailed off, swallowing hard. That was—pretty close. Close as close gets. Quiet-close….

A man and a woman, both young and striking, pressed together a month and a half, about as close as two people can get—surely they hadn't gone the whole stretch without so much as touching lips?

But his commander remained just as cold as ever.

"Don't see what that's got to do with anything. Quit talking nonsense and get ready to depart."

"Er—yes, sir…."

Wrong guess, then. Ruben tilted his head.

'Seemed like more than an ordinary thing to me, though…. Guess there really was nothing there after all?'

By then, the tarps had all been secured over the wagons piled high with the spoils of war.

Just then, the bell tolled noon. Rezet's hand, adjusting the saddle, went still.

"……."

The cold, ringing peal tolled twelve times over.

Once the echo of the final toll had died away, Rezet picked up the thread of his interrupted thoughts.

At a full gallop, the ride from the capital to Lothier took three days. Even allowing for delays along the way, five days would be more than enough.

He had no intention of returning to the capital again for at least three years after this. Rezet mounted his warhorse, no hesitation left in him. He didn't look up at the chapel clock again.

"We depart."

The instant Rezet pulled the reins taut—

"Your Highness—Grand Duke!"

Someone came running toward him, urgent. The palace's own chamberlain.

"You must come to the main palace at once. His Majesty requires you urgently."

"What's happened?"

"That is…."

The chamberlain's face twisted, uneasy. His eyes swept the surroundings, nervous—too many ears here, this needed care.

"It concerns the Argan princess."

"The princess?"

Rezet's brow furrowed as he checked the time once more. Both hands of the clock pointed straight up toward the sky.

The minute hand had already swung noticeably right. Noon, gone. Time enough, more than enough, for the princess's neck to have already met the rope.

The chamberlain hurried to explain further.

"The execution did not proceed. The princess, just before she was to be led out to the square, requested an audience, saying she had something to report to His Majesty…."

A deep furrow cut into Rezet's brow. Even before the chamberlain finished explaining, a strange unease swept through him. An unpleasant certainty—that things were not going as anyone had intended.

"So—what reason does His Majesty have, summoning me?"

The chamberlain edged closer and said something too quietly for anyone else to hear. His instincts had not been wrong.

"Y-Your Highness?"

Ruben called out to his commander, startled—his lord had wrenched the horse's head around, sudden and sharp.

The glimpse he caught of his commander's face, passing—set hard enough to frighten.

When the princess first stepped into the audience chamber, Noyre was, privately, surprised—this was the first time he'd laid eyes on the Argan princess himself.

Her complexion was haggard, the clothes on her back wretched. Heavy manacles and chains, conspicuously oversized for her wrists, hung from her hands. And yet none of it could hide the beauty that was hers, by nature.

Noyre understood at once, without a word needed, that Argan's Emperor hadn't hidden his sister past the age of majority for nothing.

Elizabetha Arzeika showed every mark of a woman who'd spent her whole life cherished and doted on, cradled in someone's arms. Even at twenty-two—well past the age of majority—unfinished, unpracticed traits still showed on her, here and there.

Eyes wet with tears, her gaze skittering, unsteady—her breath unsteady the same way. Plain to see—she stood right at the edge of breaking, death's terror pressing down on her.

Even Noyre—a man who cut away anything useless, ruthlessly, without a shred of mercy—felt, for one moment, a flicker of pity at how pitifully she shook.

'Bad, if she starts begging to be spared.'

Beautiful, sure enough, exactly as the rumors said. But that was the whole of it. The princess was worth more dead than alive.

In exchange for handing her corpse over to Ughel, Van Yela was to receive a portion of Argan's territory that Ughel now held. Why the barbarians insisted on hauling off a dead woman's head as a trophy, Noyre couldn't say—but from where Van Yela stood, it was a profitable trade regardless. The north always needed fertile land.

"I hear the princess has final words she wishes to say to me."

So originally, he'd had no intention at all of hearing out whatever she meant to say.

But the moment the words left her lovely lips, every decision he'd made before was wiped clean from his mind.

"What did you say?"

Noyre doubted his own ears. He very nearly forgot himself enough to dig a finger into his ear—and only barely held it back.

"Princess, what did you just—If my ears haven't failed me, I believe you just said… that you're carrying the Duke's child."

"You heard correctly."

The princess said it, forceful. A muscle in Noyre's face twitched—just barely.

"So that means, you and the Grand Duke—"

He weighed a moment—plain language, or something softened, out of regard for the princess's face. The princess added, hurriedly,

"I seduced him first. This isn't something to hold Duke Kyrstan responsible for—don't lay any blame on him."

Noyre, after a long moment, barked out a strangled laugh.

"Ha—Princess doesn't know my brother very well, it seems."

Rezet Kyrstan, brought low by a woman's seduction, spending the night with her? That held about as much water as word he'd drunk the bitter cup of defeat on some battlefield.

Any ordinary woman, and he wouldn't have spared the claim so much as a snort.

But this woman in front of him was no ordinary woman, was she?

Noyre studied the princess intently for a long moment, then turned his head aside, pretending to stroke his chin in thought. Quietly, he issued an order to his chamberlain.

"Fetch the Grand Duke here immediately. Whatever he's doing, wherever he is—have him come to the audience chamber at once."

Even Rezet Kyrstan—a man who treated women same as a stone lying in the road—would find it hard to feel nothing at all, in front of a woman like this.

More than that—the princess's bearing itself snagged at him. However her body trembled, now and again, her back stayed straight—and though her gaze wavered, it never once broke away. There was something strange in the princess—something that made people believe her, almost despite themselves.

Noyre probed her, slowly.

"Duke Kyrstan is no human. He is a yon'gyn. Does the princess understand how extremely difficult it is for a human to carry a yon'gyn's seed—and say this all the same?"

Elise shook her head. Now that the real questioning had begun in earnest, her complexion—already pale—went bluer still. Noyre pressed her sharply.

"So you did it not knowing. Then how did you come to know you were carrying? You were taken by the Van Yela army only two months back. Proof, to be this certain?"

"My twin brother was a mage."

The princess answered, breath thin and small.

"He used to check the mana running through me, to keep track of my condition. I'm no mage myself, but mana—I can feel it, at least a little."

Elise held out her left hand, palm open before her. A cluster of radiant light rose above her palm—one instant, then gone.

The light had leapt from the magic circuit inscribed on the inside of her left forearm—but to Noyre, who knew nothing of magic, it looked, for all the world, like powder scattered from shattered stars.

'Never heard the princess could handle mana.'

Real interest—unmistakable—had begun to kindle in Noyre's eyes.