IYTTEPAAK Chapter 26

Next raised were a golden deer banner and a blue wave standard.

"Second place: Sir Killian, personal knight of Her Highness the Golden Deer Princess. Third place: Sir Belinger, personal knight of Her Highness the Blue Wave Princess. A round of applause, if you please."

Nanaën and Killian, fell one place, pushed down by Sasha, to second; and Vivian and Belinger, who'd risked being crushed beneath the statue. These were as far as the ranks promising reward extended.

Below that came a beautifully worked amethyst banner and a deep gold one bearing a butterfly's wings, one after another.

"Fourth place: Sir Noah, personal knight of Her Highness the Amethyst Princess. Fifth place: Sir Ciel, personal knight of Her Highness the Amber Princess."

Orlette and Noah wore easy, untroubled faces—they'd expected about this much from the start.

Meanwhile Shumel, who'd luckily escaped the bottom ranks thanks to the last-minute accident, was clinging happily to Ciel.

Lilliana, not yet called, gripped her folding fan as though she meant to snap it.

"I—I got beaten... by Shumel, of all people?"

The more serious problem was that everything from here on marked the ranks facing punishment.

"Sixth place: Sir Julis, personal knight of Her Highness the Dusk-and-Dawn Princess. Seventh place: Sir Heinz, personal knight of Her Highness the New Moon Princess."

An orange safflower emblem and a black banner bearing a crescent-moon silhouette unfurled.

"And finally—"

Cehera trembled from head to foot, her face drained white.

Her emblem was a deep green tree, signifying early summer. The banner never even reached the flagpole. It just lay there, on the floor.

"Eighth place: Sir Jerome, personal knight of Her Highness the Early Summer Princess."

A nearby noble caught Cehera as she swayed. Jerome, her sworn knight, was too stiff with shock to even attend to his own mistress.

Once the results were announced, the Mad Emperor lifted his upper body slightly from where he'd been sunk deep into his chair. That alone was enough—the ballroom was swallowed in the crushing weight of a giant rising.

"So. It really was delightful, Sasha."

Axelion bared his teeth in a smile, aimed at the daughter who had delivered the reversal exactly as promised. It was a refined-looking face, and yet the smile called to mind some savage beast.

"To the knights who placed first through third, I grant passes to the Imperial Treasury. Visit within the week and each of you may choose a single treasure you desire."

"Your Majesty's grace is beyond measure."

The three knights knelt on one knee, and the three princesses lifted the hems of their gowns to offer their thanks in kind.

"Congratulations!"

"Congratulations to you!"

The entire ballroom rippled with applause and cheering. But it didn't last long.

The bigger and more raucous a celebration, the more it feels like a ruin once everything's over. That was exactly how it felt now.

Into the ballroom, where the applause and congratulations had just died away, settled a silence unfitting for a place that held several hundred people.

In the suddenly somber air, the nobles hardly dared breathe.

The Mad Emperor spoke.

"Sir Julis. Sir Heinz. Sir Jerome. The three of you will have to receive your punishment."

The named knights dropped to their knees as though they'd been condemned for high treason.

Behind them, the princesses standing at their backs bowed deeply as well, their hands trembling where they clutched their gowns.

Among the nobles gathered for the banquet, not one was ignorant of the Emperor's particular tastes.

Most tensed with fear, but a few, souls somewhere gone wrong, let their eyes light with anticipation.

"They're my daughters' toys, after all. Wouldn't do to handle them roughly and leave them damaged. I've devised punishments that leave no lasting harm, so far as it can be helped."

Of course, the empire had no shortage of methods for torturing a person to the very edge of ruin while preserving only the outer shell.

"To Julis and Heinz, I grant five days of the punishment known as the Embossed Column."

A gasp—"Hk"—broke out here and there, shock rippling through the room. That reaction alone was enough to guess at the punishment's cruelty.

Sasha explained, for Regen's benefit.

"It's a punishment where they're bound to a pillar and left there. They're permitted no food or drink at all, so once you pass three days, it becomes dangerous."

The name "the Embossed Column" was self-explanatory once you thought about it.

A prisoner drained of strength by hunger and thirst comes to resemble nothing so much as a figure carved in relief upon a marble column.

"Both knights are fine-looking men. They'll make good ornaments. Let's place them somewhere many people can admire them. Both sides of the entrance to the Grand Hall would suit nicely."

The Emperor made a point of naming the location with the heaviest foot traffic, adding one more layer of humiliation to the punishment.

The condemned aren't permitted so much as a scrap of bread or a sip of water—not even out of pity. Should anyone be caught showing mercy, they'll be chained up right alongside them.

Passing nobles will do their level best to look the other way from a prisoner's suffering.

Regen murmured quietly.

"Both Sir Julis and Sir Heinz are trained knights. Five days should be well within what they can endure."

"I hope so."

Even the punishment given to sixth and seventh place threatened a knight's life outright.

If that was true for them, then how much crueler a punishment would fall on the one who'd placed eighth?

The Emperor's eyes gleamed with a bright, terrible light.

"Princess Cehera's knight—Jerome. To you, I grant one month of the punishment known as the Altruist's Banquet Hall."

This time there was no collective gasp. The nobles' reactions, on the whole, were uncertain.

'W-what is it? Is it... a good punishment?'

Just as Jerome was struggling to get his bearings, unable to make sense of it, a figure appeared from behind him and struck the back of his neck with the edge of one hand.

The big man's frame collapsed helplessly to the floor, revealing Domynick standing behind him.

He withdrew his hand and reported, "Knocked him out, per regulation. It's more entertaining if the condemned enters the banquet hall knowing nothing at all."

"W-what sort of punishment is this, to warrant that?" Cehera asked, unable to hide her mounting unease, her voice nearly pleading.

It seemed to be a punishment vanishingly few people knew of.

Marquess Osbond, clearly the punishment's designer, stepped forward, his spectacles catching the light. A large diagram unfurled—a cross-section of a ten-story underground chamber.

"There are ten dining chambers in all, one to a floor, in an underground space of ten levels. One room, one person. Space enough. No restraints. Whatever furnishings you need—all provided. You could say it's no different from a guest suite fit for honored visitors. Except."

He tapped the central shaft running through every floor.

"Just one thing. There's no table. Once a day, by way of a pulley, a lavish banquet is lowered down, table and all. Enough to satisfy three grown men—rich meats, fresh greens, even sweet desserts. First, the guest on the first underground floor eats his fill. Then whatever remains is lowered to the guest on the second floor, who eats what's left. Then the third floor's guest eats whatever remains after that, or goes hungry if nothing does. And so the same banquet descends, floor by floor, all the way to the tenth level below ground—meaning ten people in total must make their meals out of that single spread."

Marquess Osbond looked to Cehera, as if to reassure her.

"Sir Jerome, specially—I'll place him on the first floor down."

"Th-thank goodness——"

"But should anyone on a lower floor starve to death, the floors shift accordingly."

"——!"

The more who starve below—the further down you go.

"Sir Jerome."

Regen chose his words carefully, pitching his voice for Sasha alone to hear.

"He won't be much of an altruist."

That was a fact his own mistress understood perfectly well.

Watching Jerome dragged out like a sack of grain, Cehera's face already looked as though she were staring at a corpse.

"May the divine blessing walk with the Great Emperor at every step! Render your respects as you see off His Imperial Majesty, the great and glorious ruler of the Magnalorde Empire."

The Mad Emperor, who had been standing at the landing of the central staircase, exited through the second-floor doorway.

Domynick, about to follow after him, turned the tips of his feet aside for a moment. As the nobles parted to either side to clear the path, only a single person remained standing along the straight line of his route.

Sasha.

As she tensed, Regen stepped in front of her, and Domynick's face twisted into a scowl.

"That son of a bitch, playing guard dog for his master—of all things."

"Doing it so well just makes it worse."

"......."

"Move. Unless you mean to keep your lady standing here all day."

Sasha spoke Regen's name quietly, a small signal that it was fine. Reluctantly, he stepped half a pace aside.

For all the attention he'd drawn from the entire ballroom, Domynick's business turned out to be trifling. It was no different, really, from what Julis had done.

Sasha's expression turned strange as she looked at the handkerchief held out before her. Domynick didn't care for that either.

"You'll drench yourself in wine for that bastard's sake?"

His next words came a little subdued.

"Would I have done the same, if I were your knight?"