Hyderlin was walking through a street.
“I thought so the last time I was here, too—this really is a filthy place. The smell is dreadful.”
It was a very familiar alley. She had investigated here once before, with Sarg, searching for missing children.
Most of the missing children, at the time, had been from this street.
And it was also a street where Margarite had frequently come to do charitable work. She seemed to have formed a deep attachment to this place.
Which was exactly why it had to be taken from her.
“I’ve heard that remnants of Leone Collozzo—who had the audacity to burn down the Kroitze Cathedral—are hiding on this street. Fire deserves fire in return. Set it alight.”
She would take everything that Margarite loved: Sarg, the cathedral, this street—all of it.
She would leave the Saint with nothing but despair and a single road forward.
And if Margarite did not take that road of her own accord, she would make clear that everything else remaining to her would be destroyed as well.
That was the method of Chesa and Hyderlin.
All this while, Margarite and Sarg had been the exceptions to that method. They would be no longer.
Then a voice cut in.
“Sir Biche. This is not only excessive—it is irrational.”
Hyderlin turned toward the source. It was Skalts Petaora.
“There is no guarantee the criminals are here. Even if they were—this street is not home to criminals alone. Innocent citizens of Lotsa live here as well. Filthy as it may be, this is their home.”
“……”
“Setting fire without any warning is wrong. Many people will die. Many will be injured.”
Skalts Petaora said it. Every word of it was correct. Hyderlin agreed with every word. But understanding something rationally and accepting it emotionally were two different things. A small, mean irritation rose in her.
Did she not know the multitude of harms this action would bring? Guilty blood or innocent blood—smearing it on her hands indiscriminately was the nature of her function.
What she felt was an irritation at Skalts for touching the conscience she had deliberately kept submerged.
She grabbed him by the collar.
“Skalts Petaora. Do I look like someone to be trifled with?”
“No.”
“Then how dare you argue with my orders?”
Things had been getting increasingly intolerable lately. One wretched criminal had prattled on without knowing his place. Her brother had poured his darkest emotions onto his sister. And now her adjutant—apparently having forgotten what a chain of command was—was answering back.
Does everyone think I’m a joke?
Is it because of my base blood that they look at me that way?
Hyderlin was seized by an irrational fury.
“I am the King’s sister and the Captain of the Royal Guard. You are not someone with any standing to speak back to me!”
She drew the short dagger at her side—not the longsword, the dagger—and dragged it in a single clean stroke from brow to lip across Skalts’s face.
The young knight screamed. The Captain of the Royal Guard threw the fistful of his collar down, leaving the knight doubled over and moaning into his own hands. She wiped the blood from the dagger onto her coat and said, with irritation:
“Now your face has a name to match.”
She was talking to Skalts. No—she was talking to herself.
“Everyone on this street is a useless beggar, a parasite, a criminal. Trash like that is better off not existing at all. Ultimately, this serves Lotsa.”
It serves the King. Therefore it serves Lotsa.
Hyderlin gestured to another knight. The knight approached cautiously and stood before her. She tore Skalts Petaora’s sword from its scabbard and handed it to him.
“You’re temporary adjutant.”
“……”
“Burn the street.”
The other knight raised no objection. He simply carried out the order in silence.
That night, the Captain of the Royal Guard returned to the palace, drank a full bottle of wine, and fell into a sleep like unconsciousness.
The slum-dwellers lost the shelter that would have carried them through the winter.
Resentment against the King rose to a roar—but did not reach the King’s ears.
The King’s attention was occupied entirely with the Order. He consoled the cathedral’s clergy on the grand scale of their loss, hinted broadly at royal support for the reconstruction of the great cathedral, and submitted an official proposal of marriage.
Rebuilding the cathedral would require enormous funds. From the lowest priest to the Archbishop himself, every voice in the Order urged Margarite to accept the King’s hand.
Sarg, who had always been there to shield her from the clergy’s pressure, was gone. He had departed on the undead campaign and, though the expected return date had passed, there had been no word from him.
Margarite accepted the marriage.
“In the same stroke, we have put the Order in the crown’s debt—and secured a marriage to a Saint loved by the nation entire, which will strengthen the authority of the royal house. Well done.”
And he had avoided the undignified appearance of a man who kept throwing himself at a woman who had already refused him.
This time, the one whose heart had been wounded was not Chesa. It was Margarite—sold into marriage like a transaction. Therefore Chesa, who had “won,” ought to have been glad.
But Chesa murmured hollowly:
“I should have done this from the beginning. With gold and steel it’s this simple—why did I take such a long, roundabout, undignified path? Why did I act like a fool? Why did I ever make that idiotic, sincere proposal…”
Hyderlin thought she knew the reason.
Because you loved her. Because you wanted to propose like an ordinary man, with something resembling romance. Because you wanted to hear the woman you loved accept you with her own willing heart.
But Hyderlin said none of it aloud.
At some point Chesa had turned to look out the window, his face settled into emptiness. The young man who had been unable to sit still wanting to hand a woman a single flower—where had he gone? And was there nothing left now but a king who had taken what he wanted by vile means?
So it was true—everyone changed, and was transformed, and rusted.
And purity was extinct in this world.
Well. Nothing stains more easily than something pure.
The Captain of the Royal Guard closed her eyes.
The wedding was held in the dead of winter, when the snow was falling in furious sheets.
The girl whose tear-stained pearl-pale cheeks were hidden behind a bridal veil spoke through her weeping:
“I don’t want to get married. He doesn’t love me.”
“His Majesty loves the Saint dearly.”
Whatever form it took—it was love. It was simply that a king’s love was not like an ordinary man’s love, and that was the problem.
“No. Something like that can’t be love. Sir Hyderlin—let me run. Call Sir Sarg. Please…I’m begging you.”
Margarite reached out and caught the edge of Hyderlin’s sleeve with a faint, tentative grip. It was barely any force at all. But Hyderlin felt, against all reason, as though her heart had been seized.
Guilt—am I actually feeling guilt? How hypocritical.
At her silence, the bride wept.
“Cruel woman.”
“I’m sorry.”
Hyderlin reached into her coat for a handkerchief, then lifted the veil. She dried the Saint’s wet cheeks with careful hands.
“In exchange—later, I will grant you one wish. Whatever it may be.”
Was it impulse? Pity? Guilt?
She couldn’t name her own feeling with any clarity. What she could say with certainty was this: if Margarite’s wish turned out to be Hyderlin’s death, she would carry it out without hesitation.
Margarite spoke as though the words had to be forced through a throttled throat.
“Anything at all?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell the King—stop this wedding.”
The last words came out like a groan. Hyderlin paused—just for a moment, barely a heartbeat.
“That I cannot do.”
“Why not? You said you’d grant anything!”
Why, she asks. A foolish question. It appeared Margarite did not know who had placed her in this situation. To her, Hyderlin was apparently still simply “the knight who used to be close to Sarg.”
Gentle, foolish woman. Even now she hasn’t understood what is happening around her.
Hyderlin spoke slowly.
“Lady Margarite. I was the one who set fire to the cathedral.”
“…What?”
“The order to burn the slum—that was also mine.”
“……”
“The fact that the knight order has not returned despite the date having long since passed—that was also my doing.”
“……”
“I trust Your Highness doesn’t believe it was His Majesty the King who commanded all of these things.”
Hyderlin said it without affect.
“It was me.”
“……”
“It has always been me, Your Highness the Queen.”
Margarite looked at Hyderlin with a face swept entirely blank. Hyderlin smiled, the way she always smiled.
“Your Highness the Queen. You must not forget that I am the King’s knight.”
After the wedding, it was also Hyderlin who guided Margarite into the bridal chamber. Margarite cried out, asking why she was being treated so cruelly. Hyderlin soothed and persuaded and prodded her with quiet firmness.
“Please don’t make a scene. In exchange, the Order has obtained enormous wealth. With that money, it is possible to feed the poor across all of Lotsa. And of course, as queen, you will be able to do far more.”
Hyderlin wanted to believe her own words. Having said them aloud, they sounded almost convincing. So she decided to believe them.
She returned to her room and drank two full bottles of wine before collapsing into sleep.
Sarg and the Kroitze Holy Knights returned to Nadirotsa one week later.
