: Between When You Left (13)
Everyone is bound to die. They die somewhere, somehow. It was common for an office worker, who had no doubt they'd be going to work the next morning, to collapse and die from a chronic illness. An elderly person who said they were fine after a traffic accident would often languish for a few days before dying. Death, like this, is unpredictable.
So, it wasn't so unnatural that the Lord of Amur died upon arriving at his own mansion after leaving ours. A few days later, upon hearing the sad news that the Lord of Amur had died in his carriage, I shook my head as if it were a pity.
"I knew something was wrong, his complexion was poor from the moment he came to our mansion..."
At those words, Eve scoffed with a snort of derision. In this mansion, the only one who truly mourned the death of the Lord of Amur was Sieri. But what could be done? A person's death is just a very natural thing.
But it seemed Lady Amur's thoughts were a little different. The fact that the Lord of Amur had stopped by my mansion before his death, and that Grand Duke Rubicon, who had dueled with me, had also died, led Lady Amur to raise the suspicion that I had pulled some kind of trick.
Saying "some kind of trick" was just a euphemism; it was an attitude that overtly suspected poisoning. Even I had to admit the circumstantial evidence was perfect. A lord who died after visiting my mansion. A Grand Duke who died after dueling me. Since two people connected to me had both languished and then croaked, there was more than enough basis for suspicion.
But what was most important was that, as perfect as the circumstantial evidence was, there was no direct evidence. There couldn't be any evidence. No poison was detected in Grand Duke Rubicon's body, nor in the Lord of Amur's body. The cause of death for both was an unexplained high fever. There were no side effects on the body; they simply suffered from a high fever and died.
Lady Amur filed for a trial regarding this poisoning of the Lord and the death of Grand Duke Rubicon. She claimed the truth of the case had to be investigated again. She was insisting that there must have been poison. After all, Grand Duke Rubicon died after his duel with me, and the Lord of Amur died after marking the treaty with his blood.
If it was proven that Grand Duke Rubicon died from poison, the trial would go back to square one.
I willingly submitted my sword as evidence. My holy sword's poison is colorless and odorless, and it doesn't activate unless I say 'contest'. There was no way poison would be found. And so, the second trial began. The lord's wife, her face covered with a handkerchief, was appealing that the wicked high priest had killed her husband. She said this:
"The high priest is a very cruel man! How can you torment us to this extent? Why did you take my husband? Why did you kill Grand Duke Rubicon so cruelly?"
Despite her appeal, the judge showed a lukewarm reaction. After all, if a lord-level personnel files for a trial, the trial must be held. I counter-questioned.
"Do you have any evidence?"
At that, Lady Amur couldn't even answer and just burst out in indignation, pointing at me as she wept loudly.
"How... how could you say such a thing...! Sob... sob... High Priest! If you have a conscience, confess! Please... I'm begging you... sob... sob...!"
"Tears do not count as evidence. Since you brought me to the trial venue, I trust you have evidence."
I could be confident. Because there was no such thing as evidence. No one saw me apply poison to my sword. Nor did any poison come from the sword. There was only circumstantial evidence. If I had poisoned Lady Amur with the same method, the Lord of Amur would never have brought me to trial. Because there's no evidence.
But the one in the trial venue now wasn't the sharp-witted Lord of Amur, but the slow-witted Lady Amur. She opened the trial emotionally, and the price for that was an acquittal.
"Lady Amur. To say I used poison in the duel is a great insult. As you seem to be unaware of the position of a high priest, I will not take separate issue with this matter."
And I spoke. Lady Amur seemed to rage at every single word I said. The Lord of Amur went to the Peta Territory alone and returned as a corpse. The circumstances are clear. I said.
"As a witness, I would like to call the coachman who was serving the Lord of Amur at the time."
As if he had been waiting, the coachman popped up. The coachman had already taken this witness stand once at the start of the trial to testify about the situation. I questioned the coachman.
"Coachman. When I brought the Lord of Amur out of the underground prison, did he have any wounds?"
"He did not."
"Then have you heard any sounds of me beating or torturing the Lord of Amur?"
"Well... I do not know."
Suddenly, Lady Amur shot up from her seat and shouted.
"Aren't you a priest who can use Heal! If you heal the wound after injecting the poison..."
"If I were going to poison him, I could just make him drink it or inject it. Lady Amur. I have the strength to subdue the Lord of Amur so he cannot move an inch. Do you think someone like me couldn't make him drink a single dose of poison and would have to wound him? If I was going to kill him anyway, why would I inject poison, heal the wound, send him back up, and then poison him?"
"It must have been to make him sign the treaty! To make him sign the treaty and then kill him!"
"If that were the case, I could have just beaten him to death. Does the Amur Territory have the power to complain if I beat the Lord of Amur to death? Is there any justification that says I can't beat him to death?"
"That is..."
If I had to say, it would be to protect my reputation as the Southern High Priest. In the first place, according to the treaty, there was nothing for me to profit from by killing the lord. No one would think I'd carry out an emotional revenge, after all. I asked the lord's wife again.
"And if I had injected something suspicious, wouldn't the Lord of Amur have said at least one word to the coachman? Coachman. Did you hear such a statement from the Lord of Amur?"
"...I did not."
Of course he didn't hear it. The Lord of Amur himself probably didn't know he'd been poisoned. He probably just thought he was in a cold sweat from overexertion. He languished like that and then, at some point, he just died. The coachman said he checked inside the carriage a few times but thought he was just asleep, exhausted from mental fatigue.
The lord's wife was biting her fingernails. The judge also had an uneasy expression, but there was no evidence. The lord's wife said.
"The sword! You must have put poison on the sword!"
"Coachman. When we marked the treaty, was the Lord of Amur the only one who used his blood?"
"No. The High Priest also used his blood."
"Who knows if the high priest healed himself!"
"But no poison was detected on the sword. Are you trying to claim that I used a deadly poison that cannot be discovered even by examination, that the victim wouldn't know they'd been affected, and that leaves no trace on the corpse?"
"That..."
The lord's wife was at a loss for words again. Because claiming I used such a poison was nothing more than bullshit. It lacked plausibility. The plausibility that I would go through all that trouble to kill the Lord of Amur. I asked again.
"Then how about thinking of it this way? I hate to tarnish the honor of the deceased Grand Duke Rubicon, but it wasn't just my sword that the Lord of Amur and Grand Duke Rubicon touched.
"Ah!"
The judge let out an exclamation. But his face immediately turned ashen and he shook his head. The lord's wife shook her head. The day of the duel. Grand Duke Rubicon's sword shattered, sending fragments flying everywhere. And the ones hit by the most fragments were the Lord of Amur and Grand Duke Rubicon.
"Grand Duke Rubicon, who was struck by the most fragments, and who was suffering from the ailments of old age and was mentally weakened, died not long after."
"N-No..."
"And a few days later, the Lord of Amur, who was hit by the second most fragments after Grand Duke Rubicon, died showing the exact same symptoms as Grand Duke Rubicon. Could it be a coincidence?"
Funnily enough, many people were hit by fragments, but most were only struck in one or two places. But the Lord of Amur, who was close by, was hit by fragments all over his body, and Grand Duke Rubicon was hit concentratedly in the face.
"A-Are you saying that Grand Duke Rubicon applied poison to his sword?"
The judge asked in a trembling voice. This was the same Grand Duke Rubicon who was famous for his upright, fair, and magnanimous character. But if they could suspect me based on circumstantial evidence alone, they could suspect Grand Duke Rubicon just the same.
"I'm saying it's a possibility. I, too, cannot believe that Grand Duke Rubicon would apply poison to his sword to defeat me. But those who watched the duel that day will know. I never stabbed Grand Duke Rubicon. My sword never even touched Grand Duke Rubicon in the first place."
Scratching the back of Grand Duke Rubicon's hand was something I did very discreetly. At the scene, which was a mess of fragments, no one could have confirmed it in detail. In the official record of the duel trial, Grand Duke Rubicon was injured by his own sword and was subdued by a fist at the end.
"But isn't the time frame too different?"
Grand Duke Rubicon died not long after the duel. But if we assume the Lord of Amur was poisoned during the duel, he would have died after at least two to three days had passed.
"It's possible because the Lord of Amur is younger. There are individual differences with poison, and didn't he continuously recuperate? Rather, it could be that the poison's efficacy took hold far too quickly for Grand Duke Rubicon due to a fatal wound."
In reality, there were poisons in this world's setting whose effects activated after an interval of a day or two. The ones developed for assassination. In-game, they appear in the Attempted Assassination Quest and were known as very dangerous poisons. The judge clutched his head and shook it. It must be hard for him to accept reality.
I said.
"Your Honor. Is it a coincidence that Grand Duke Rubicon and the Lord of Amur died from the same symptoms? Perhaps, were there not more among Grand Duke Rubicon's past duel opponents who languished and died just like that?"
"...There were."
Of course there were. The guy had fucking dueled so many times, it was obvious there'd be two or three more. There were quite a few bastards who lost a duel and died of metal poisoning or Hwa-byung. Even if they tried to investigate Grand Duke Rubicon's sword, it was already shattered and had long since been melted down.
"Honorable Judge. I do not wish to blemish Grand Duke Rubicon's honor, but if we are to be suspicious, if we are to cast the suspicion of poisoning upon this duel, wouldn't it be rational for that arrow to be aimed at Grand Duke Rubicon?"
Surprisingly, the plausibility of Grand Duke Rubicon having applied poison to his sword was sufficient. Because he wanted to kill me, he came into the trial venue with a weapon from the start, he was the one who proposed the duel trial, and the two people who were hit by the most fragments died from the exact same symptoms.
Rather, there was no plausibility for me to poison him. I was the winner of the duel at that time. If I was worried about the poisoning, I could have just killed Grand Duke Rubicon. The Archdeity Church doesn't say anything about the winner of a duel killing the loser.
For the poisoning to be my doing, it would mean that instead of killing him in the duel arena where there was no risk, I'd have to arrange for Grand Duke Rubicon to be poisoned 30 minutes later, and then, after making the Lord of Amur sign a treaty that wasn't particularly profitable for me, I'd have to use the same poison to kill him. The former and the latter. If I had failed to do even one of the two, the suspicion that I was the poisoner could not have been raised.
So it makes no sense. Because there was no profit to be gained by doing so. But the profit Grand Duke Rubicon would gain was plain to see. The fame of having killed the Hero's party that defeated the Demon King. And the grudge of not wanting to grant a clean death.
And the two people who were coincidentally wounded by Grand Duke Rubicon's weapon.
A death without a logical basis complicates people's minds. And people are bound to lean toward the opinion with the highest possibility.
The judge and those attending the trial seemed to be thinking the same thing. Along with the sound of them gulping, I heard the sound of a tiny crevice forming. Crack. The sound of a crack forming in Grand Duke Rubicon's honor.
And so I received an acquittal. With this, I wouldn't be reprimanded by the Archdeity Church for killing the Lord of Amur.
Trials are always fair and impartial. Fortunately, the suspicion that Grand Duke Rubicon had applied poison seemed to have ended as just suspicion and rumor for now.
Grand Duke Rubicon must also be relieved in the heavens that he wasn't falsely accused. For some reason, it felt like a star was twinkling brightly.