Sarg exhaled a short, irritable breath and glanced at Hyderlin.
“This is troublesome. Should I deal with them?”
“Ah — Chesa. Damn it, Chesa. Unbelievably fast.”
These knights had been sent by the king to find the princess.
Hyderlin pulled the baby close and swept the room with her eyes. It was a small room with very little furniture — nowhere adequate to hide.
She thought for a moment, then sat down on the bed. With one free hand, she shrugged off her outer coat and her boots, then loosened the fastenings at the top of her shirt to create a more undone appearance. She leaned her back against the headboard and stretched her legs out in front of her.
Hyderlin settled into this position of perfect nonchalance and patted the baby’s back.
“You should take yours off too.”
Sarg read her intention immediately. Something strange passed across his face. A few seconds went by, and then Sarg’s expression settled into blankness.
He took off his shirt without comment and tossed it over the chair. What was exposed was the kind of packed shoulders and back one might find on a traveling knight in penance, or a carved figure — the kind of form that made it clear exactly how it had been made.
The owner of the room went to the door and opened it wide.
Outside stood two knights in royal-insignia surcoats. One was blond. The other had a scar running across his face.
The knight with the scar looked at the bare chest in front of him and said, without any readable expression:
“Good to meet you. My name is—”
“Skip it. What do you want.”
Sarg cut him off. The scar running across the scarred knight’s face twitched slightly.
“…Have you had contact with Her Majesty the Queen recently?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Have you seen Her Royal Highness the princess?”
“Would I have?”
“We’d like to have a brief look inside, as part of our search. May we come in?”
Sarg planted his arms over his chest and tilted his head at a slight angle, watching the knights. The meaning was unmistakable.
And if I say no?
The scarred knight didn’t look away. Instead, in a rather unhurried manner, he rested his hand on the sword hilt at his hip.
Then we’ll use force.
A strange standoff held in the silence. The tension snapped when Sarg shrugged a shoulder. He stepped aside, and the knights moved into the room.
And then the knights found themselves looking directly at a woman lying on Sarg’s bed, patting a baby.
“What on earth… is going on here?”
The woman held the baby closer and spoke in a voice that trembled visibly.
Two knights — the blond and the scar — wore expressions of undisguised bewilderment.
The blond knight was startled first by the fact that there was a woman in Sarg’s bed at all — and startled secondly by the infant she was holding. He turned to Sarg without thinking.
Sir Sarg, surely not—
The scarred knight was flustered for similar reasons. But he had a third reason, too. The woman’s face was not unfamiliar to him.
He found himself thinking readily of the Countess Biche — the king’s elder sister, the former Captain of the Royal Guard.
Of course the two women were not the same. The Countess Biche had a burning, vivid red head of hair and a complexion full of color. And she had radiated a kind of vitality that might almost be called madness.
The woman lying in Sarg’s bed, by contrast, had black hair and a pale, hollow face. Dark shadows lay under her eyes, lending her a look of decadent melancholy. A completely different temperature of woman from the Countess Biche.
And yet the sharp, bird-of-prey quality to her features was an almost uncanny match.
The scarred knight recalled that Sarg Gloriosa had, at one point, been abnormally fixated on the dead Countess Biche. It was something people who had worked at the palace for a long time all knew, in their own quiet way.
If that was true — what did it mean that there was a woman resembling the Countess in Sarg’s home?
The scarred knight posed a question to the woman, in an attempt to transform suspicion into confirmation.
“My name is Skalts Petaora, Captain of the Royal Guard. I’ve come at His Majesty’s order. If it’s not too much trouble, might I ask your name?”
“…Hys Gloriosa.”
The blond knight stared in open shock. The scarred knight — Skalts — turned to look at Sarg with something close to contempt and asked:
“What is your relationship to Sir Gloriosa?”
Sarg, who had been observing the situation with a carefully neutral expression, said, as though each word cost him something:
“…My wife.”
“We hadn’t heard that Sir Gloriosa was married.”
The blond knight murmured, looking somewhat rattled. Hyderlin cut in abruptly.
“We’re going to be.”
Sarg turned a murderous glare on Hyderlin. Hyderlin, rather than staring him down, shrank back. She hunched her shoulders and added, in a voice that had reduced itself almost to a whisper:
“Well — not yet, but… he said he would… and there’s the baby…”
It was only a handful of words, but they were more than enough to turn Sarg’s stomach completely inside out.
The blond knight asked, with careful courtesy:
“Is this child yours?”
“Ah, yes — our daughter. Her name is — we named her after Her Majesty the Queen — Mac…”
Hyderlin let her eyes drop.
“I know. Someone like me — it’s more than I deserve… but she’s Sarg’s daughter, so…”
Even the slight trembling at the end was pitiful in the best possible way.
Both knights looked at Sarg with an expression that blended several different emotions. It was not difficult to read what those expressions meant.
The disgraced former holy knight, who had apparently charmed a woman into having his child with promises of marriage he’d never kept, pressed his teeth together hard.
“…Take it down a notch.”
Did he not realize that everything he said made him look worse?
Hyderlin laughed privately and produced public tears. Her lashes were beginning to look damp, so she turned her face away and sniffled.
“I didn’t mean for you to — all right, all right…”
The blond knight, who had been watching Hyderlin with an expression of quiet sympathy, quietly offered his handkerchief. Hyderlin bowed her thanks and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
The scarred knight — Skalts — looked at Sarg with undiluted contempt.
“So it’s come to this — fixating on the dead Countess Biche and running off to find a woman who looks like her.”
“……”
“I never thought you were so licentious, Sir Gloriosa. I find it very hard to believe you were once considered a candidate for Pope.”
Sarg opened his mouth to attempt some form of self-defense, then closed it without saying anything. He had realized that there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t send his reputation diving further than it already had.
Not that his reputation had much further to go — it had long since crashed out of the sky and found itself wandering somewhere around the ninth layer of an underground hell — but being wronged still stung, and the anger that surged up was no less real for that. He suppressed his fury and spoke in a low, flat voice.
“If you’re finished here, leave.”
Against Sarg’s hopes, the knights showed no intention of going anywhere. They stood with their arms crossed, staring at him. The coldness of their expressions was remarkable.
Sarg, having abandoned all hope, said whatever came to mind.
“If you want to stand there watching me have a good time with my wife, you’re welcome to stay all night.”
The scar across Skalts’s face twitched, alive with its own indignation.
Sarg, who had been standing at the door, walked unhurriedly across the room and dropped down onto the bed beside Hyderlin. He gave Skalts a sideways look.
“Still watching?”
Skalts expressed absolute contempt with every available feature.
“Revolting.”
He spat on the floor. Sarg’s brow tightened, but he said nothing.
Skalts flung the door open and walked out. The blond knight followed. And the knights were gone.
Sarg breathed a long, deep sigh and buried his face in his hands. He looked exhausted.
Once the sound of the knights’ footsteps had faded completely, Hyderlin hopped off the bed and went to the window. The knights, now pint-sized in the distance, were walking away.
Hyderlin turned a bright smile on the anguished Sarg.
“You’re a lot more shameless than I gave you credit for.”
“Be quiet.”
“What was that? ‘Have a good time with my wife’?”
“I said be quiet.”
“Being quiet is difficult. But I can open it up for you if you’d like.”
Sarg was still sitting with his face buried in his hands. A few seconds passed before he finally lifted his head. He stared at Hyderlin with a look that blended horror and suspicion in equal measure.
“Are you — are you insane?!”
Hyderlin grinned until her face hurt. She lounged against the windowsill in an approximation of sultry.
“Come here, darling. Let me take you to heaven—”
“Get out.”
“Pardon?”
“Get out of my house!”
Hyderlin was ejected from the premises, still holding the baby. The wooden door slammed shut in her face. Thinking it had been a brief bit of fun, she rattled the door with her knuckles, still smiling.
“Sarg?”
“……”
“It’s nighttime? Really? You’re really doing this? You’re going to send me out like this? Don’t you feel bad for Her Highness?”
Sarg said nothing. Hyderlin made a small noise of displeasure and turned to the baby.
“Your Highness. You saw that awful man just now, didn’t you?”
The baby was at the stage of producing little more than babbles. There was no reply to be had. Hyderlin wasn’t particularly expecting one.
“That was Sarg. The man who was your mother’s closest and most trusted knight.”
“Ooh.”
“But that madman apparently said something along the lines of it not mattering if your mother dies. Clearly his brain has been dissolved by alcohol.”
“Uh.”
“He also apparently doesn’t care that Your Highness would be sleeping on a street in the dead of night. He doesn’t seem to find it pitiable at all.”
“Kyaah.”
“You must never grow up to be like him, Your Highness. Is that understood?”
The baby broke into a wide, toothless smile. Hyderlin smiled back.
“What a good child.”
At that moment, the firmly shut door banged open. Sarg was looking down at her with a sullen expression. Hyderlin perked up immediately.
“What. Did your conscience finally show up?”
“Yes.”
Sarg took Beronis from Hyderlin’s arms. Then he placed the pack into her now-empty ones.
“The princess has done nothing wrong. I’m only throwing out you. Good night, Hys.”
The door slammed shut again.
“Hey?”
“……”
“Really?”
“……”
“You’re really going to do this?”
“……”
“Husband! Are you really going to throw your own wife out like this?”
Click.
He even turned the lock.
Hyderlin stood in front of the door, arms full of her pack, feeling utterly forlorn. She trembled — and then called out to Sarg using words she had never in her life expected to use for him.
“Sarg! You petty, despicable, contemptible wretch!”
