IYTTEPAAK Chapter 5

The chambers granted to a princess who had received her formal investiture stood in the eastern wing of the palace.

The doorway to my quarters bore a beautiful pattern with a single silver bird carved into it in relief—and it was from this that the room had taken its name: the Silver Bird chamber. The Silver Bird chamber was the third-most splendid in the eastern wing—and that, too, was a measure of my real standing as a princess.

"To the bed."

The knights of the palace guard who had supported him this far carried out my final order and withdrew.

The moment the door was secured, my ladies-in-waiting each spoke up at once, as if releasing a breath they'd been holding.

"Goodness, gracious. To think Her Highness would bring a man into her bedchamber. This is a first."

"What's coming was always going to come, Miss Demia. Let's not make a fuss about it."

The one chattering so brightly, a young girl with a brown bob—that was Demia. The expressionless, composed one who looked like some sort of adjutant, dark-green hair cropped short—that was Hamel.

Listening to the chatter of my loyal, precious ladies-in-waiting, the tension that had built up while I faced the Mad Emperor finally drained out of me. The relief of someone who's just crossed into safe territory.

"But he's practically dead, isn't he? I do wonder whether he'll be fit to properly serve Her Highness at all—it's not very reassuring."

"He's not much to look at, that's for sure. But if this happens to be Her Highness's taste—"

Tempting, to let her run on a little more. But it seems that won't do.

"Hamel. The court physician?"

"He will arrive shortly."

"Demia, burn the pain-relief incense."

"Already done before you arrived, Your Highness."

She would have arranged it the moment I left the audience hall. The intelligence network laid throughout the palace would already have carried word that I was bringing back a gravely wounded prisoner of war.

I sat in the stool Hamel provided and looked down at him. The half of his face visible beneath the bandages was twisted in terrible agony.

If only he could manage a proper groan—but even his breath was faint through his parted lips. It would not have been strange in the least for him to lose his tenuous grip on life at any moment.

"Your Highness, the court physician has arrived."

The moment the middle-aged man, his hair just beginning to show streaks of white, laid eyes on the patient, his face crumpled and he yanked the bed curtain shut. The reason given was that my eyes should not be sullied.

The basin of clean water turned red again and again. The floor around the bed filled up with soiled bandages and empty potion vials.

"How is he?"

"Dire, Your Highness."

The physician drew the curtain open. Looking at him again, he had gone from a filthy corpse still breathing to a clean one.

"It would be faster to find a spot on him that isn't injured. I've treated the internal damage with medicine first and set the bones. His eyes—a little longer and it would have been past saving. With continued treatment, he should recover. The problem is…"

"The mana core."

"Yes. That's correct, Your Highness."

Unlike bone and flesh, a mana core was not something medicine or potions could mend.

"A knight's mana core should sit properly in the right side of the chest. His has been shattered. For an ordinary man, it would be the same as having no heart at all—as a knight, his time is finished."

I answered without much concern.

"Then restore it."

"Pardon? There is only one person capable of mending a mana core. The god-like existence of this great empire—His Majesty the Emperor himself. That grace is one granted to knights who have earned it through their own merit. There is no possibility of a wretched prisoner receiving it."

This was one of the reasons so many who wielded mana swore their loyalty to the Mad Emperor. There was something to be gained by it.

"Come to think of it, what unrivaled authority it truly is! Long live His Imperial Majesty!"

The sudden bootlicking made me uncomfortable.

"Physician. Get your words right."

"Pardon?"

"It's not that only His Imperial Majesty can do it. Anyone who holds a power of command equal to His Imperial Majesty's is capable of it."

"Th— that is... true, isn't it...?"

I pretended not to notice the physician's unspoken, impertinent look—but that's not you, is it?

More important than that was the fact that the freshly changed bandage was already going red again. The physician gave an embarrassed little cough and watched my reaction.

"I beg forgiveness for reporting this, Your Highness, but the burns and lacerations could not be treated."

"Why not?"

"This month's allotment of potions assigned to Your Highness has already been fully used…"

"You've done well. You may go."

"Ah, yes. I'll take my leave, Your Highness!"

Once the physician had been sent out, I gave my instructions to the ladies-in-waiting.

"He needs to recover quickly. Fill the bathtub with every potion in this chamber."

Demia nearly choked.

"But those are the ones you've spent ten years collecting. Each one is worth a house on the outskirts, isn't it?"

"You know your market prices well, Demia. Fill it."

"...Yes."

The wheeled tub was brought up beside the bed, and five cabinets were emptied out one by one, potion bottles poured out until each ran dry.

The most expensive bathwater in the world had just been made.

"Your Highness, you won't be using the top-grade ones, will you? This one alone is worth an entire estate, so—"

Demia clutched one particularly gleaming bottle to her chest as though it were something precious. It was the only one of its kind—practically an extra life of my own, in potion form.

Just then, a faint groan sounded from the bed. He was straining, with everything he had, to lift himself upright.

"Eek! The corpse is getting up, Your Highness!"

"The physician may be a flatterer, but it seems his skill isn't half bad."

Letting Demia and Hamel's remarks pass over one ear and out the other, I moved closer to him.

I meant only to press his shoulder gently and lay him back down—but without warning, my wrist was seized in a tight grip.

"How dare you lay hands on Her Highness!"

I held Hamel and Demia back even as my eyes stayed fixed on him.

Below the bandage covering his eyes, his well-shaped, curved lips looked as though they had something they needed to say.

He begged of me with a desperation that matched the force gripping my hand.

"Don't... treat—me. Don't treat me."

What?

"Just let... me... die..."

"......"

The grip crushing my wrist vanished. It seemed he'd said his piece and promptly lost consciousness on his own terms.

His hand, slid loose across the sheets, stayed caught in my eye for some time.

While I stood there looking quietly down at him, Hamel and Demia approached.

"Your Highness, I know that type well. He'll take his own life."

"That's right. Even if we go to all this trouble saving him, he'll only go and do something ungrateful after all our trouble. So, Your Highness—should we pour the potions back into their bottles?"

"Demia."

"Yes?"

I gazed at Demia's brightening face with real fondness—and then plucked the top-grade potion she'd been clutching right out of her arms.

"Ah— Your Highness!"

I smiled, my mood turned cold.

"I can't let him die. Put it in the tub."

If he, at least, could stay alive in this hell of a world, maybe I could dredge up the will to keep clawing for my own survival.

Fwoomp.

His well-built body was propped up straight against the inside of the tub. The potion-bathwater bloomed red, then stopped—it meant the bleeding had slowed and the wound had begun to close.

The area above his chest wasn't submerged, so it wasn't getting the benefit of the treatment. I used a small wooden ladle, the kind shaped for scooping, to draw up potion and wet down his neck and shoulders.

Much of the agony had drained from his expression, though there was still no sign he'd come around.

Despite the cold of the bathwater working into his body, despite the discomfort of having nowhere to rest his head, his mind was submerged somewhere far from the present.

"Everyone, out."

"The treatment on his face still isn't finished, Your Highness."

"I'll do it myself. Go on."

The ladies-in-waiting withdrew respectfully and shut the bedroom door. He and I were alone.

"......"

Had my bedroom ever been this quiet?

I trailed a hand over the water, pointlessly, just to break the silence with some sound.

I walked slowly around behind him and stood there. I dragged my fingertips up his shoulder, kneading, then closed both hands around his unguarded throat.

After a moment of feeling the pulse in his neck, I wrenched his still-senseless head back—so that I, standing above him, could look properly down at his face.

I stroked his cheek with deliberate slowness, then unwound the bandage covering his eyes.

"I really didn't want to do this by force."

...Even I found those words hateful coming out of my own mouth—and my next act was forceful to match.

I chose the left of his firmly shut eyelids and pried it open with my fingers. Over the unfocused eye, I poured the top-grade potion.

"Ngh—"

The potion wet not only his eye but his nose and mouth. He struggled as though it were choking him.

But what was truly tormenting him was something else entirely.