Perhaps that had been where everything went wrong.
If Sarg had stayed at Margarite’s side, Margarite would have turned to Sarg for help. And Hyderlin would have remained dead, undisturbed, making good progress on the one task that belonged to corpses.
“I already told you. I left before the Kroitze Order could dismiss me. That’s why I stepped down from the guard detail.”
“That’s not an answer. What could you possibly have done to get thrown out of the order? However I think about it, you’re not the kind of person who gets dismissed from anything.”
“What do you know about me, that you talk as though you do?”
“What everyone knows. Youngest candidate for Grand Master of the order. Next in line for Pope. Living incarnation of the moral philosophy textbook. Tedious and joyless—”
Hyderlin paused for a moment. Then added, almost as an afterthought:
“—and in love with the saint.”
Sarg answered immediately.
“You know nothing.”
“Stop being difficult and just say it. What kind of incident did you cause that made you leave the side of the woman you love so dearly — your precious ‘Mac’?”
The drunk called Sak was silent for a long time. The only sound was the wind moaning outside like a ghost. Something somewhere had a gap that let in the draft.
Hyderlin was about to speak, to cut through the silence that was stretching on endlessly, when Sarg said suddenly:
“Quite a serious one.”
“An incident?”
“I had the audacity to argue for Hyderlin Biche’s innocence in front of the king and queen. And to demand they reopen the investigation.”
Hyderlin’s body jerked, as though an arrow had found her heart. Sarg continued in a dry, hollow voice.
“I kept at it for a year. By the end of it, not just Chesa, but Margarite and my own fellow knights were looking at me like I’d gone mad.”
Hyderlin felt something constrict in her throat. She swallowed it down along with a dry mouthful of air and made her voice as flat as she could.
“That was unwise. You should have left well enough alone.”
Sarg’s appearance was still deplorable. But his lips were still as straight and steady as ever. He spoke in the voice she remembered.
“She was falsely accused. She was unjustly punished. Someone had to restore her name.”
Her name… That was a word that had precious little to do with her.
“Let’s be honest. There was no name left to restore. She had done more than enough to earn a death sentence — many times over. Whatever punishment she received, she received it sooner than she might have, that’s all.”
Hyderlin assessed herself with cold precision. She had committed countless acts in the king’s name.
The worst of them was forcing Margarite to marry the king against her will.
Hyderlin remembered with perfect clarity everything she had done to arrange that wedding — and everything she had done afterward. She had killed people. Ruined people. Crippled people.
Sarg had despised her for it.
“You will certainly find yourself in hell when you die.”
Those sharp words refused to leave her. Hyderlin smiled without humor.
“You should have simply been glad to see the Countess Biche executed. You’d be Grand Master by now—”
Hyderlin noticed that her eyes were growing hot. She had been trying to stay composed, but the longer she spoke, the more something volcanic kept pressing upward inside her.
“—Grand Master of the holy order. Possibly the youngest Pope in history. Every earthly honor and reward could have been yours.”
Hyderlin had wanted to see Sarg become Grand Master. Had wanted to see him become Pope.
She had wanted to watch, with her own eyes, a man who remained honorable and unyielding even in the middle of the filthiest political world rise to the very top of it.
It might have been vicarious living, in a way.
She had wanted proof that purity could survive in a corrupted world without going extinct.
“All of that glory could have been yours, and you kicked it away with your own foot?”
Hyderlin ground the words out from between clenched teeth and then exhaled a short, sharp breath. Her chest felt blocked — suffocating.
It made her angry. Seeing a man driven off his path because of a vile woman like that.
She had always admired his rigidity, but she had never wanted him to be rigid at exactly that moment.
Sarg listened to everything she said without a word. Those grey eyes — clouded as a sky heavy with rain — were fixed on something outside the window.
“What use is honor and glory?”
A faint glimmer slid across the silver lashes and flared briefly. The drunk called Sak spoke without inflection.
“She isn’t here.”
Waaaaah.
The baby burst into sudden, piercing tears. Both of them turned toward her at the same time. Sarg exhaled and checked on the child. Thanks to that, Hyderlin was spared from having to show him her face.
Hyderlin rummaged through the pack and found the bottle. She warmed the milk and fed the baby. As the shrieking cries died away, the silence returned.
While Sarg patted the baby’s back, Hyderlin stared at the floor for a long moment.
She wanted to know what he had meant — and at the same time, didn’t want to know.
If she came to understand it, she knew instinctively that it would hurt. She knew it the way a body knows things before the mind catches up.
She was a dead woman. Her feelings should have been dead too.
The dead woman forced her own emotion down and spoke with a jeer.
“You look just like a father right now.”
“You talk too much.”
Sarg shifted the baby to his shoulder and patted her back. It was a practiced, natural movement — someone who had held children before. Hyderlin breathed out slowly and asked:
“So — do you accept that this is the princess?”
“I do.”
“Good. Then we have a deal.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll come back for Her Highness within three months — no, two months. I’ll be in your care until then. The payment would be roughly—”
“You’re going to kill the king.”
Hyderlin, who had been reaching for the coins Margarite had given her to hand over as payment, stopped. Sarg fixed his sharp gaze on her.
“If I take everything you’ve said as true — Margarite entrusted the princess to you, and the clear implication is that she’s asking you to ensure the princess’s safety. Am I right?”
“Perceptive of you.”
“Fine. Then for the princess to be truly safe, the king has to disappear. And you have reason to want him dead.”
“……”
“Did Margarite ask you to kill the king?”
Sarg didn’t even phrase it as a question — he simply stated it as fact. The certainty of it took away Hyderlin’s will to deny it. She just shrugged and said:
“Yes. She asked me to kill Chesa. You know the plan now — are you going to go inform on me to the king?”
“Why would I?”
Hyderlin smiled at that. She tossed the coin pouch toward him. Sarg caught it cleanly with one hand.
“Then I accept the deal.”
“Excellent!”
“With one condition.”
“Condition?”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Still working on it.”
“I have a plan.”
Sarg said it while patting the baby’s back. Hyderlin tilted her head.
“You’re full of surprises today. You have a plan to kill the king?”
“Yes. So you’ll follow my plan. That’s my condition.”
She had no idea what reason Sarg had for wanting the king dead. But reworking someone else’s existing plan was always easier than starting from scratch.
“Let me hear it first. What’s the plan?”
Sarg settled the baby on the bed and leaned down to pull a box out from underneath it.
Inside were torn envelope seals and an assortment of small objects. Sarg selected a few of the envelopes and handed them to Hyderlin. She looked at the contents.
Invitations to the queen’s birthday banquet.
There were four of them — one from three years ago, one from two years ago, one from last year, and one for this year. The older ones were written in Chesa’s own hand, but from last year’s onward, someone else appeared to have written them on his behalf.
So my name got removed from the list of people the king writes to personally. I really am quite thoroughly finished.
Hyderlin swallowed a bitterness she couldn’t fully suppress. She waved one of the invitations in the air.
“What are these, then?”
“To get to the king, we need to get into the palace. We go in during Margarite’s birthday banquet and eliminate him.”
Hyderlin pointed to the words printed at the top of the invitation: To Sir Sarg Gloriosa.
“But this invitation is addressed to Sarg Gloriosa. I can’t get in.”
“You can.”
“How?”
Sarg appeared to have forgotten the confidence of his earlier assertion. His lips moved. He hesitated for a moment, then said, in a slightly smaller voice than usual:
“…You go as my spouse.”
The awkwardness of Sarg’s manner was frankly amusing. But being a considerate person, Hyderlin merely smirked rather than openly laughing.
“So I should introduce myself to everyone as Hys Gloriosa?”
“Shut up.”
“Is that any way to talk to your wife?”
Sarg’s face went stiff all over. He made no effort to hide his displeasure as he said sharply:
“That’s enough out of you. Here.”
Sarg reached into the box and threw something to Hyderlin. She caught it from the air.
It was a silver cup set with pearls and diamonds. The prize that had been offered at the sparring match where she and Sarg had first met. Hyderlin very nearly let recognition show on her face.
Sarg said, his voice still sharp:
“I intend to coat the inside with poison and present it as a gift to Margarite.”
Hyderlin held up two fingers.
“First — poison will discolor the silver. Second — that would put Her Majesty in danger rather than the king.”
“First — I’ve already prepared a poison that doesn’t react with silver. Second — we ensure Chesa uses the cup before Margarite does.”
“Do you have a way to make the king use the cup first?”
“We’ll manage.”
“You’ll manage? And then?”
“That’s where the plan ends.”
She had leaned in expecting something, and this was what she got. Hyderlin started to sigh, then stopped herself and scratched her head instead.
“If this were the king’s birthday, I might say it’s not a bad plan. It would be natural for the birthday honoree to be the first to use a cup received as a birthday gift. But this is the queen’s birthday. What if Her Majesty uses the cup first?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
It came out cold.
“You’re saying it’s fine if the queen is poisoned?”
“It’s not an immediately fatal poison. She’ll be all right.”
“That’s not the point — I’m saying Margarite will be hurt.”
“If Margarite collapses, Chesa will be beside himself. We exploit that moment of weakness and use the antidote as a bargaining chip. Let’s see how far he’ll go for her.”
“Why are you saying something so cruel? Are you drunk?”
“Possibly.”
Sarg was entirely unbothered. He had gone past indifference into something that verged on cruelty, and it left Hyderlin with a faint, awful vertigo. She was going to have to sigh after all.
“Using the invitation to get into the palace — up to there, the plan is sound. But we need to rework everything after that. Our target is Chesa, not Her Majesty.”
Hyderlin stared hard at the invitation, as though the right idea might be found there if she looked long enough.
Her eyes landed on Sarg’s address printed on the outer envelope.
“Hm. Does the king know your address?”
“He sent the invitation there, so presumably.”
Sarg answered as though this should be obvious. Hyderlin’s unease sharpened into something more urgent.
“If I were the king, the moment I learned Beronis had disappeared, the first place I’d search would be the home of the person closest to the saint. This is dangerous.”
Hyderlin jumped up and stuffed the invitations and the silver cup into her pack. Then she turned to Sarg.
“Sarg. You should go into hiding for now.”
Bang bang!
At that moment, someone hammered at the door. The old door shuddered on its frame. Hyderlin had the feeling she already knew who was on the other side.
Sarg’s brow creased as he walked toward the door and shouted through it:
“Who is it, in the middle of the night!”
As though startled by the volume, the lantern flame flinched. Then the person on the other side of the door answered loudly:
“Apologies for the late hour. We serve the king. Is this the residence of Sarg Gloriosa?”
“It is.”
“Please open the door — we have business inside.”
“I don’t.”
“We come by order of His Majesty. If you refuse, we will break the door down. Open it.”
