Hyderlin was walking toward the execution grounds.
Heavy rain drove into her eyes. She wanted to raise her hand to shield herself from the downpour, but she could not.
Like all condemned prisoners, her hands were bound behind her back.
It was a wretched sight, unbecoming of the king’s elder sister.
Hyderlin had once been the Captain of the Royal Guard. She had commanded knights with a single sword at her hip, and had earned both the reverence and the fear of countless people. She had never once doubted that she would remain the Captain of the Royal Guard for as long as she lived.
But her certainty had been shattered with devastating ease.
“Count Biche. Is it true that you poisoned the queen?”
On the night of the king’s birthday banquet, Queen Margarite had collapsed after ingesting poison. The king flew into a rage and launched an investigation to root out the culprit.
All the evidence pointed to Hyderlin Biche.
The king had her arrested.
Hyderlin knelt on one knee before her beloved younger brother. It was the posture of a knight before her liege.
“Your Majesty. There must be some misunderstanding. Why would I ever seek to harm Her Majesty the Queen? Was it not I, above all others, who made her queen? You are a man of sharp discernment. Please, judge wisely. Someone has fabricated this evidence — of that I am certain.”
The king gave a cold, contemptuous laugh.
“Fabricated evidence. How amusing.”
He walked toward her unhurriedly and crouched down before Hyderlin, who remained on one knee. Then he brought his lips close to her ear and whispered quietly.
“I know.”
What?
“Sister. If anyone would understand what I mean, it’s you.”
The king was smiling. Hyderlin stared at that smile, her expression blank and hollow.
“…Chesa. Why would you—”
No answer came. The king rose to his feet and arranged his face into a performance of righteous fury.
“Knight. If you truly understand the meaning of chivalry, then conduct yourself accordingly.”
Hyderlin stared at him for a long moment. And at last, she accepted it.
She had been discarded.
Hyderlin was locked in a dungeon. It would have been a mercy to simply let her die, but the king was not so gracious.
The king’s interrogators tortured her until she confessed to every crime ever attributed to her. With each new wound carved into her body, her list of charges grew longer.
Attempted assassination of the queen. Sacrilege. Four counts of arson. Fifty-nine counts of murder. Hundreds of counts of coercion and assault…
Yet Hyderlin could not claim that she was innocent of it all. With the exception of the attempted assassination and the sacrilege, every charge was something she had genuinely committed.
Of course, every last act had been done in service of her brother — in service of the king.
A royal attendant bearing a scroll of parchment stood before Hyderlin in her cell and intoned with solemn gravity:
“For the crimes of attempted assassination of Her Majesty the Queen, sacrilege against the holy order, four counts of arson, and fifty-nine counts of murder, the sentence passed upon Hyderlin Parmasah Saint Lotsa-Biche, Countess of Biche, is as follows: full confiscation of all assets, and death by decapitation.”
Hyderlin let out a hollow laugh — or tried to. What came out was coughs, blood, and phlegm.
So this is all my devotion was worth.
She wheezed and muttered weakly.
“Chesa, you miserable bastard…”
After the sentence was handed down, the torture stopped. They released her from the chains bolted into the dungeon wall. The iron manacles on her wrists and the shackles around her ankles remained, but those she could endure.
The brief relief of physical comfort did not last long. Hyderlin soon found herself longing, bitterly, for the days of her torture. A fair number of visitors had come to the prison — not out of kindness, but to mock and revile her.
“I always knew you’d come to this.”
“You vile creature. I celebrate your ruin.”
“How dare you try to assassinate the holy saint!”
Nobles came to repay the humiliations the Captain of the Royal Guard had inflicted upon them. The devout came to hurl stones at the wicked woman who had tried to murder their beloved saint. Even those who had once fawned and groveled before Hyderlin out of fear had turned on her entirely.
Hyderlin accepted the former without complaint, but the latter struck her as deeply unjust.
As time wore on, however, she came to accept even that.
She had wronged Margarite. Perhaps this suffering was the price she paid for that wrong.
Time passed swiftly, and before long, the eve of her execution arrived. The taciturn guard, who rarely spoke, opened his mouth of his own accord.
“You have a visitor.”
Hyderlin lifted her heavy head with great effort. She forced her eyes to focus, though the aftereffects of torture made it difficult to hold her gaze steady. The prisoner looked through the iron bars at the figure who had come to see her.
He had the broad, powerful build of a knight.
His silver hair was neatly grown and tied back, and his lashes — the same colorless silver — were delicate as the wings of a moth. The grey irises sheltered beneath those lashes were the color of a cold winter sky.
Hyderlin managed a languid smile. She was on the verge of letting out a groan, but her pride would not permit her to betray pain.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the pride of the holy order — Sir Sarg Gloriosa himself. How overwhelming, that such an esteemed personage should trouble himself to walk all the way here.”
Sarg Gloriosa had been Margarite’s sworn protector since long before she became queen — since the days when she had been known simply as the miracle-working saint.
He had earned distinguished honors across every corner of the kingdom, and despite his young age, he was widely regarded as the foremost candidate to lead the Kroitze Order of Holy Knights — and beyond that, as a prospective candidate for the papacy itself.
Given such achievements at so young an age, arrogance might have been forgivable. Yet he had none of it. He was as unyielding as a freshly forged blade, and as upright as if he were the living embodiment of a book of moral philosophy. He was humble and courteous in ways that defied every rough and violent assumption people made about knights.
Yet even that Sarg had never bothered to conceal his contempt for Hyderlin.
You will certainly find yourself in hell when you die.
That cold, cursing voice, directed at Hyderlin’s smiling face — she could still hear it, clear as though it had been spoken moments ago.
The condemned prisoner grinned lazily and spoke.
“I congratulate you on the opportunity to come and gloat.”
Hyderlin closed her eyes, bracing herself for mockery, a curse, or some variation of I always knew it would come to this. But what she heard instead was something else entirely.
“I know this wasn’t your doing. The attempt on Margarite’s life — someone else is responsible.”
Hyderlin doubted her own ears.
“Sir Biche. It is not too late. Deny the charges. I will petition His Majesty for a reinvestigation myself. There are far too many suspicious circumstances surrounding this case.”
Every person alive was certain of Hyderlin’s guilt. They pointed their fingers at the wicked woman who had sought to murder the saint. Even those who had once gone out of their way to stay on her good side had done the same without exception.
And yet the one person who had despised Hyderlin most deeply of all was the only one who believed in her innocence.
If she had been able to, Hyderlin would have laughed aloud.
“Pfh — hah, hk — hh…”
But what tore out of her was not laughter. It was a rattling, phlegm-choked cough. She waited until her ragged breathing steadied.
“Hh… haha… Oh, Sarg. Sweet, naive Sarg… And what difference would any of that make?”
“An innocent person would go free, and the guilty would be punished. Everything would be set right.”
Hyderlin shook her heavy head.
“It’s no use. The king already knows it wasn’t me.”
“……”
“I’ve been discarded.”
Sarg was looking at her with the expression of a man who had just witnessed despair made flesh.
Hyderlin felt a profound, bewildered unfamiliarity wash over her.
Why is this man — the one who has shown me nothing but contempt and hatred — looking at me like that?
It doesn’t matter. A question that will vanish along with me when I die. Better not to wonder any further.
Hyderlin smiled faintly, without warmth.
“Sarg. I’ll be going to hell, just as you said I would. If you pity me even a little, pray to God to give Hyderlin Biche a somewhat cooler spot down there.”
“Sir Biche. I—”
Sarg could not finish. His lips moved wordlessly. Those grey eyes of his wavered. For some reason, she found them difficult to look at. Hyderlin closed her eyes.
“God may ignore my prayers… but He will surely listen to yours.”
Hyderlin was still walking through the rain.
All she wore was a thin ceremonial robe. Heavy sheets of rain hammered her cheeks and chest, stripping away what little warmth remained. Her lips had long since gone blue from the exposure.
At last, she arrived at the execution grounds.
Trembling, Hyderlin climbed the steps of the scaffold.
Despite the pouring rain, a considerable crowd had gathered to witness the end of the woman who had attempted to murder the queen.
A brief, flickering thought crossed her mind.
I wonder if Sarg came.
She turned and scanned the crowd, searching for him. But everyone had pulled their hoods low, and she could not make out any faces.
In the end, she could not find Sarg.
But she could find the king. Only the king and his blood kin were permitted to wear cloth dyed that shade of royal purple.
Hyderlin gazed at the man in the deep purple hood, and felt the weight of her resentment settle over her.
Why did you do it, Chesa? Why did you lay this charge on me…?
A sudden, crushing exhaustion swept through her. What does it matter now? She was about to die.
In the face of death, the truth is worthless.
“Biche. Kneel.”
The executioner spoke. Hyderlin knelt and pressed her face down against the wooden block. Her wet hair fell forward, curtaining her vision.
She closed her eyes.
The executioner brought the axe down. Blood spattered in thick drops across the standing water below.
And so the knight, at last, kissed death.
She would sink into eternal sleep.
She would never again see the morning sun.
She would never wake again.
So it should have remained.
“Hyderlin Biche!”
“Hyderlin Biche!”
“Hyderlin Parmasah Saint Lotsa-Biche! Get up this instant!”
The dead knight opened her eyes.
