SN Chapter 20

The rumor spread as if it had grown legs.

Dame Rosaline, newly assigned to escort duty, had turned an assassin into mincemeat. A few maids who'd been clearing blood off the floors. A few soldiers who had taken the body into custody. From those witnesses, her tale of valor began to amplify and travel. Truth mixed with exaggeration turned sensational and moved through mouths with considerable enthusiasm.

Assassination attempts against Rikardis had always been fervent. But a direct assault in broad daylight—weapons drawn, the assassin disguised as castle staff—that was rare. It was evident that the malice surrounding him was intensifying and the methods were growing more sophisticated.

The dangerous attempt that could have been the first and, as a success, the last—had been collapsed by a single escort knight. Expectations for a newly assigned lone guard had been very low, which only made Rosaline's achievement shine brighter.

Rosaline's trainee knights Eberhardt and Rhaetisia heard the news not long after. Word had it that when five assassins had tried to harm Prince Rikardis, Dame Rosaline had whirled around as though she'd grown eight arms and taken them all. Through a storm of poison and hidden weapons, she had emerged without so much as a scratch, and where she had passed, blood had flowed like a river—or something to that effect. The amplified, sensationalized version traveled from mouth to mouth with great enthusiasm.

Rhaetisia spotted Rosaline entering the training grounds and elbowed Eberhardt in the ribs. Eberhardt, who had several uniform buttons undone and his posture slack, hurriedly tidied himself.

"Glory of Idelabheim, cleaver of the Black Moon!"

"Glory of Idelabheim, cleaver of the Black Moon!"

She looked exactly as the rumors had it: not a scratch. Dried blood was caked into the white of her uniform, offering the only evidence of just how fierce the encounter had been. Rosaline returned their salutes with a composed expression.

"May Idelabheim's glory be with you."

She stood with the crimson evening sky spread wide behind her, shadow falling across her face. It suited the nickname she had already acquired in barely half a day—the Reaper of Moonstone Castle. They looked at her with unguarded reverence.

Her first day on escort duty. A fierce battle with assassins. And she had still found time to come to the training grounds to look in on her trainees. They stood at strict attention. Rosaline scanned them from head to foot. Despite the cool breeze, their sweat hadn't dried—evidence of diligence.

Raymond and Kallix had both told her various things. The White Night Order had many trainee knights. But within the order, most weren't even called knights—they were called trainees, which was something else entirely. Promotion to lower knight was the greatest goal for them: to be recognized, at last, as an actual knight. Rhaetisia was from fallen nobility. A woman. Eberhardt. Commoner. All trainees were desperate, but these two were particularly so. Hard work without a backing house meant practical difficulties that accumulated. Setting aside the financial aspect, they hadn't even been given an environment where they could properly learn swordsmanship.

Conviction, and the faction that supported it—all of that came after. The single largest criterion separating lower knights from trainee knights was swordsmanship. The reason these two still remained as trainees was that they hadn't cleared the standard set between them and the lower knights.

Rosaline had been given the task of pulling them across it.

She had thought about it carefully the night before. What these two lacked. What humans lacked. She had a rough sense of the answer. But first she needed to assess where they actually stood. She picked up a practice sword from the corner of the training ground where it had been rolling quietly by itself. The blunt weight of the wood felt familiar. She turned it in her hands.

"Let's see first. Rhaetisia, Eberhardt."

They scrambled and faltered. Meanwhile Rosaline raised the sword in front of her face: the preparation stance before sparring. The two trainees looked sideways at each other and hesitated.

You go first? Should I go first?

They deferred to each other through their eyes. The image of Nestor, who had received a thorough education from her not long ago, flickered dimly in both their minds. He was still walking about, his face the color of a rotting plum. Rosaline regarded her two hesitating trainees and spoke. Her level voice dropped into the training ground like something heavy set down.

"Both of you."

"What? Yes!"

"Yes!"

They grabbed practice swords in a hurry. One against two. Rosaline looked them over as they stood gripping their weapons and making every effort not to visibly tense. Clumsy stances, learned only on the surface of things. Gaps in every direction—had a magical beast been standing in front of them—devoured ages ago.

Rosaline put force into her arm. Her muscles moved, barely perceptibly. A movement impossible to catch without close attention. They appeared not to have noticed—but around them, drifting, was already a vast and ominous force entirely at odds with that slight motion. Sharp as if it could take their heads at any moment.

"......"

She had nothing to say. These two were like...... fawns. No. Fawns had better threat detection than this. She had directed threat at them from the left, the right, below, above—every direction—and they were watching her with expressions that said, Well? When are you going to attack?

Rosaline sheathed her sword. The sparring ended without a single clack of wood on wood. Rhaetisia and Eberhardt couldn't conceal their bewilderment. For Rosaline, the assessment was sufficient.

Trainees did receive some basic swordsmanship instruction. But it stopped at fundamentals—how to hold and swing a sword. Even the sparring sessions, the only time they faced another blade, used protective equipment and practice swords. The result was that they grew accustomed to "sparring" as a thing unto itself rather than any proximity to actual combat. Developing a sense of crisis from swinging blunt wood at someone while worrying about their safety was, understandably, difficult.

This was what Rosaline had observed since becoming human. What they lacked was not technique. It was something more fundamental—threat to life, the sense of crisis, the thing called instinct. Severely absent across the species, except in the unusually strong. Humans were, on balance, a remarkably fragile creature. She now understood what the real task was.

"It's grave."

Both trainees deflated visibly.

"......What part is...... grave......"

"All of it is very grave."

"Ah...... yes......"

Eberhardt and Rhaetisia glanced at her sidelong. Rosaline sighed.

"From this point forward, I will be attacking Eberhardt and Rhaetisia."

"What?"

"From morning until the moment you sleep, do not lower your guard."

I will be coming for you, anytime, anywhere. Her toneless, unhurried delivery made the content more unsettling, not less. Goosebumps rose on their arms. What did that mean? No one assigned to other senior knights had mentioned training like this. The general arrangement was: trainee knights swung their swords, senior knights pointed out deficiencies or corrected their forms. Nothing unusual. Rhaetisia raised her hand hesitantly. When Rosaline gave a small nod, she asked carefully.

"Um, Dame Rosaline. Could you elaborate?"

Rosaline considered briefly, then drew a handkerchief from her pocket—embroidered thickly with flowers—and let it drop to the ground. Raymond had stitched it himself and given it to her as a gift. Under the puzzled gazes of her two trainees, she bent and reached toward it. And stopped, one hand-width short of picking it up.

"What does it look like I'm doing, Rhaetisia?"

Rhaetisia's eyes moved before she answered carefully.

"It...... looks like you're picking up the handkerchief."

"Correct."

Rosaline picked up the handkerchief. Then she stepped toward the shrubbery at the edge of the training ground and took firm hold of a thin branch. The branch bent as if it might snap at any moment. She stopped without adding more force.

"What do you think I'm about to do, Eberhardt?"

"It looks like you're going to break the branch."

"Correct."

Rosaline broke the branch.

"During our sparring just now, I also attempted to attack Rhaetisia and Eberhardt several times."

"What?"

"Pardon?"

But you were just standing there. The two were baffled. They had been certain she was simply standing there......

"You didn't notice any of it."

"Ah...... yes......"

Eberhardt had now understood what Rosaline had done and said. Of course she hadn't picked up the handkerchief. Of course she hadn't broken the branch yet. But the action she was about to take had been legible enough for anyone to read—anyone who was reading at all. During sparring as well—not to that same degree, but she must have shown clear pre-attack signals. The slight shift of pupils. Weight transferring to one foot. The muscle contracting and expanding in the hand gripping the sword.

She was telling them they had missed all of it. Rhaetisia's expression said she had understood as much. Both of them flushed. Their deficiencies, laid out plainly.

"Read them."

Not only what the eyes can see. Even the realm that instinct speaks.

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

Rhaetisia and Eberhardt's voices rang through the training ground. The Reaper of Moonstone Castle was genuinely as remarkable as the rumors said. Their chests swelled past containing. They saluted her and walked back toward the dormitory, satisfied.

The world changed one hundred and eighty degrees when Rosaline dropped like an anvil onto them from above during that completely unguarded walk home.