Chapter 78 : Chapter 78
In the garden beyond the royal palace ballroom, Sevha searched the windows for any trace of the assassins.
It’s no wonder the king suspects his Four Knights.
Invading the royal palace and attempting to take the king’s life? The only ones in Jerom who would plan and execute such an absurd act were the Four Knights.
It wasn’t my doing, so it must have been one of the others…
As Sevha considered the culprits, he spotted footprints and immediately knew something was wrong.
The assassins didn’t flee over the castle walls. They went deeper into the palace.
Not outside, but inside. The strange trail pointed to a single, troubling possibility. He set the speculation aside for now and followed the tracks.
Deep footprints. These aren’t trained assassins.
The farther he followed the trail, the clearer the assassins’ profile became.
Uniform distance between footprints. Trained to move as a group.
As Sevha finished his analysis and stepped back inside the palace, he noticed something else. The corridor was empty. Not a single knight or guard stood watch.
The king was nearly assassinated moments ago, and there’s no one here?
Walking on, he thought how absurd it was. Then he heard a familiar voice nearby.
“Please step aside, brother.”
It was Charlotte. Perhaps on her way to find a physician, she was supporting Duce, who was covered in blood from Barsh’s assault.
Michel was blocking their path. Despite Duce’s state, Michel wore a foolish grin, seemingly pleased just to have Charlotte before him.
“Won’t you talk with me for a moment, Charlotte?”
“Brother! This is not the time!” Charlotte shouted, holding Duce tightly.
Michel’s gaze finally fell upon Duce. His face twisted as if he were looking at a disgusting insect. “Why are you acting like that toward your brother over that ugly cripple?”
Charlotte’s eyes flashed, a silent warning. But Michel just grinned his vacuous grin again, happy that she, whether her eyes were sharp or not, was looking only at him.
I thought he was a pervert, Sevha mused, but he’s a damned pervert.
He revised his assessment and strode toward them. As he passed, he deliberately bumped his shoulder against Michel’s.
At the blatant provocation, Michel’s face flushed with revulsion, as if he’d been touched by something filthy. “You dare touch me with your filthy body? Do you want to die?”
“The filth is on you, I’d say.”
“Little bastard…!”
As Sevha goaded him, he gestured with his eyes for Charlotte to leave. She immediately ducked behind Sevha, still supporting Duce.
Michel roared at her back. “Charlotte!”
She didn’t stop. Unable to comprehend her reaction, Michel shouted louder than before.
“No one loves you as much as I do!”
Charlotte disappeared around the corner without a word. Once she was clear, Sevha said what he had wanted to say from the start.
“Perverted scum.”
Michel threw a punch. Sevha met it with his own.
Just then.
“A fight? Can I join?” Angke appeared abruptly, catching both their fists in his hands. Following him, Gwen walked up, coughing.
“Why don’t you escape the crisis of being executed by His Majesty first?” Gwen said dryly. “You can kill each other after.”
Unable to deny the logic, Sevha shook off Angke’s grip and resumed his search for the footprints in the corridor. Angke, Michel, and Gwen fell in behind him.
Sevha wanted to scream at them not to follow, but he held his tongue.
As long as that liar is here, the result will be the same.
Sevha, at least, could tell. Gwen wasn’t following him; like him, he was tracking the assassins.
It seems he wasn’t lying about being the head of Jershu’s Shadow.
The trail led Sevha and the three knights to a guest room. Sevha threw the door open without hesitation, revealing a terrace. Beyond it lay a garden and, within that, a maze.
“They’re blatantly luring us in,” Gwen said.
No one disagreed.
I don’t know why, Sevha thought, but the assassins want us in that maze.
Just then, Angke leaped down from the terrace. He ran to the maze entrance and waved. “Hurry up! If you don’t come, I’m going alone!”
Sevha and the other knights vaulted over the terrace railing and followed.
I don’t want to fall for the lure, but sending the others in alone is even worse.
Sevha suspected one of them might capture an assassin and fabricate a confession. Michel and Gwen were likely thinking the same thing.
And so, the four of them had no choice but to enter the maze together.
It wasn’t long before they realized that suspecting each other was inevitable.
“A four-way path,” Michel noted.
As soon as he spoke, Sevha chose a path and started down it. The other knights followed suit, each taking a different route.
If they were really luring us, they wouldn’t have fled far…
As Sevha predicted, he hadn’t walked far before a man with a sword appeared before him. He wore a mask, but his clothes were those of a commoner.
Sevha focused on something else.
His muscles are immense. Not an assassin… a knight?
Just as Sevha surmised the man’s identity, the man broke into a run, beckoning him to follow. Wary of traps, Sevha pursued.
Before long, he came to a wide area where several paths converged.
The fleeing man stood there as if this were his destination. Around him lay several corpses, from which a purple smoke was rising.
Vile Dragonbreath.
There was almost no wind, and with no other flesh nearby, the toxic smoke rose straight up from the dead.
Did he silence his comrades? Or…
As if to answer the question, the man stabbed himself in the stomach. Immediately, something inside his clothes shattered, and purple smoke poured out, dissolving him into nothing.
“Really… what did you want, luring me here?” Sevha muttered.
Just then, a low growl echoed from beyond the rising smoke. A beast emerged, carefully avoiding the fumes. It was a lion, gaunt, its muzzle caked in blood.
“You look hungry,” Sevha said.
The lion roared and charged, its jaws wide. Sevha rolled aside, nearly brushing one of the corpses fuming with Vile Dragonbreath.
This place isn’t big enough. With that poison rising from all sides, it’s hard to dodge.
He was unarmed. One wrong move and he would dissolve. The lion, as if sensing his disadvantage, lunged again.
Sevha dodged the fangs, and the lion immediately swiped with a forepaw. As he evaded, it went for his throat.
He tried to roll backward, but more Vile Dragonbreath fumed behind him. He had no choice but to roll sideways, accepting a shallow gash on his arm from its claws.
What can I use?
There was only him, the lion, and the poison.
I’ll have to make do with what’s here.
He quickly decided, shrugging off his outer coat and gripping it like a whip. The lion roared as if finding the gesture pathetic and attacked. Sevha dodged and struck its head with the coat.
It was just a piece of cloth.
The lion paid it no mind and continued its assault, driving him back toward the smoke.
Sevha dodged and swung, but he was steadily pushed closer and closer to the fuming corpses. When he reached the very edge of the poison, the lion roared and leaped, ready to tear into him.
Now.
Sevha swung the coat with all his might. The heavy fabric billowed, pushing the Vile Dragonbreath rising behind him toward the lion’s face.
“A shame about the hide.”
The moment the poison touched it, the lion’s face melted away. It let out a scream of agony and thrashed on the ground, then rolled into another plume of smoke. Instantly, its entire body began to dissolve.
Sevha watched only long enough to be sure, then tossed the coat to the ground. Unconcerned with the lion’s fate, he turned his back and began walking through the maze again.
He encountered no one else before arriving at the center.
“Dammit.”
Just then, Angke, Michel, and Gwen emerged from the other paths, all of them bearing fresh wounds. None of them asked how the others had been injured. Instead, they spoke the truth they had all realized.
“This assassination attempt,” Gwen said, “was His Majesty’s own play.”
“I agree,” said Michel.
“Me too! I think so too!” Angke chimed in.
Though he didn’t answer, Sevha agreed. The assassins were knights. The traps were set inside the palace. They had killed themselves without a word.
It all pointed to one thing: Barsh had used his own men to stage an attack on himself.
“The assassins are all dead,” Sevha said. “They can’t prove our guilt, but we can’t prove our innocence, either. And the king… can execute those who cannot prove their innocence.”
His words hung in the air: if things continued, one of them, perhaps several, would be killed by Barsh.
“It’s better for one to die than many, right?” Angke said cheerfully. “So, who wants to die? Not me!”
Someone had to be the culprit.
As soon as he spoke, the tension between them stretched to a breaking point.
“There is a way no one has to die,” Sevha said nonchalantly. “Bring me a man who would trade his life for money.”
***
The ballroom.
The guests were long gone. Only Barsh and his Dark Knights remained.
A moment later, Barsh sensed a presence and turned his head as Sevha and the three knights opened the door and entered. Sevha led a shabby man, clearly a beggar, by the arm.
He threw the man before Barsh.
“Your Majesty,” Sevha said, his tone confident, almost brazen, “I have brought the culprit.”
“This beggar is the one who tried to kill me?”
“You don’t believe it?” Sevha asked.
The beggar began to speak, trembling, “I… I am the culprit. I… p-plotted the assassination with my comrades.”
Barsh’s reply was instant. “That is a lie.”
Sevha’s was just as quick. “Do you have proof that it is a lie? Could it be that you know the culprit’s face?”
Just as they couldn’t prove their innocence, Barsh couldn’t prove the beggar’s. Realizing he had been outplayed, Barsh closed his eyes as if to collect his thoughts, then held out both hands.
“I do not.”
The Dark Knights placed a sword in each of his hands. He gripped the twin blades tightly and swung. The force of the blow tore the beggar’s body to pieces, spraying blood across the floor.
When the torrent subsided, Barsh’s face was revealed. He was smiling. Grinning from ear to ear, like a lion that had found amusing prey.
“So sorry, my Four Knights. I have doubted your loyalty.”
Barsh seared the faces of Sevha, Angke, Michel, and Gwen into his memory, one by one, then turned his back.
“I look forward to the next Great Hunt.”
With only those words, he left the ballroom with his Dark Knights. Sevha and the three knights looked at one another and spoke the same words in unison.
“Until the next Great Hunt.”
Then they left the ballroom through separate doors.
As Angke passed through his, Cardinal Bellek was waiting.
“Duke, are you uninjured?”
“Just a scratch.”
“A relief. I don’t understand why His Majesty would play such a prank…”
“Hmm? You really don’t know why, Cardinal?” Angke walked past Bellek and down the palace corridor. “We’re planning to kill the entire royal family, aren’t we?”
Bellek broke into a wide grin, a smile completely devoid of benevolence, filled only with ambition. “Once all the royals are dead, the Papal See will support you as the next king, Angke.”
Another door. As Michel passed through, the Second Prince, Aleio, was standing there.
“You managed to survive.”
“Hmph. You think I would die from such a clumsy prank?”
“For Father to do something like this all of a sudden…”
Michel scoffed. “He must have noticed my plan to kill him and make you king.”
“I, I…!”
“Don’t even think about running, Aleio,” Michel said, smiling like a man in the throes of ecstatic love. “You will become king, and you will give me what I want.”
Yet another door. As soon as Gwen passed through, he spoke to the empty corridor.
“I didn’t think His Majesty would do this to me, too. Where could he find a more loyal subject…”
When there was no reply, Gwen continued, “It’s time for you to decide. You saw it, didn’t you? He used his own knights for his scheme, not you. Do you know what that means? To His Majesty, a dagger is not a knight. Rather than accept this treatment…”
As the silence continued, he chuckled. “I’m telling you, let’s take the king’s head and go to the Empire.”
And the last door. As Sevha passed through and walked down the corridor, he found Duce, Charlotte, and Sherry.
Duce was covered in wounds, but he stood on his own.
Sevha walked past him. “Your sincerity didn’t reach the king, and I was nearly killed for it. It’s time to decide.”
Duce fell into step beside him. “And if I do? Can it be done?”
“If it must be done, I need to learn more. Right now, all I know about Barsh is that he holds you in utter contempt.”
The king’s staged assassination had occurred just as he was about to kill Duce. The possibility that Barsh wanted to spare the defiant prince was nil.
Duce’s survival had been a coincidence, born from Barsh’s complete disregard for him.
“A fine thing to have figured out,” Duce said.
“Isn’t it? So answer my question. Have you decided?”
“…I have. And you?”
“Of course.”
Duce and Sevha walked side by side, exchanging a look. Then, quietly enough for only the other to hear, they spoke the same words.
“Kill the king.”