It was the law of Lotsa that nobles bore no accountability for beating or killing commoners.
But there was no denying that Antonic Marcelo’s crimes were hideous—draining the living blood from small children. And so the King chose to close the case by placing the punishment on the household steward alone.
Antonic Marcelo crowed with delight and presented the King with a sizable fortune.
And so the case was closed.
Everyone believed it was over.
“Explain this to me. Why has the Order taken Antonic Marcelo into custody?”
Chesa asked with an expression of pure disbelief. Hyderlin was equally bewildered by the situation. She had barely tasted a brief period of calm before word came of the Order’s sudden action, and the shock left her thoroughly off-balance.
Still, she maintained what composure she could and delivered her report to the King.
“The Order claims that Antonic Marcelo is… a witch-worshipper.”
“…A witch-worshipper?”
Chesa repeated it as though he suspected he had misheard. But Hyderlin informed him, in the most matter-of-fact of tones, that there was nothing wrong with his hearing.
“Yes, Your Majesty. Bathing in the blood of small children is, according to the Order, one of the wicked arts practiced by witches in the old days—a direct repudiation of the divine will which commands that all living creatures accept the lifespans allotted to them. So runs the Order’s argument.”
And so the Order had taken Antonic Marcelo into their own custody and dragged him beneath the great cathedral. By now, Antonic was almost certainly experiencing firsthand the particular refinements the Order had developed over the centuries in the service of combating witchcraft and heresy.
Chesa’s face twisted with irritation as he let out a long, disgusted breath.
“This is absurd. Antonic Marcelo is nothing more than a fool who placed his whole faith in some revolting folk remedy. He is not a witch-worshipper.”
“The Order appears to see it somewhat differently. And apparently, a number of objects considered to be sacrilegious were recovered from the Marcelo estate.”
“Sacrilegious objects?”
“Quite a few items rooted in superstition, they say. Reportedly, more than a dozen charms and sachets intended to pray for health and long life were found on the premises.”
The Order had always prohibited the possession of superstitious objects, but enforcement had been so lax as to be nearly nonexistent. As a result, amulets wishing for wealth or health were common among ordinary people. This accusation, in other words, was barely distinguishable from a petty pretext.
“By that standard, more than half of Lotsa would be witch-worshippers and blasphemers. Since when has the Order been so utterly without flexibility…”
The King exhaled deeply and pressed a hand to his forehead.
“…Has Margarite said anything about this?”
“Well… a few hours ago, she made a public declaration that she would absolutely not stand by and permit a criminal who had worshipped witches and exploited innocent children to go unpunished.”
The Saint was loved by the whole of the nation. Because of this, her voice on matters of religion carried considerable weight.
Chesa sighed.
“Then there is nothing I can do. I’ll have to settle for soothing the outraged nobility.”
“Sir Sarg. It was you, wasn’t it?”
Hyderlin leaned against the wall and asked.
“Why did you do it?”
Sarg was standing before a bookcase, turning pages. He answered in a low voice without looking up.
“This is an archive, Milady. Please lower your voice.”
“I asked you why you did it.”
Despite Sarg’s quiet correction, Hyderlin did not lower her voice. Her words rang out with unusual clarity through the silence of the archive.
Sarg looked up at her, his brow drawing together slightly.
“Follow me, please.”
Sarg passed her by and walked out of the archive. Hyderlin watched the back of his robed figure for a moment, then followed him at a measured pace.
It was a day of exceptionally fine sunlight. A small courtyard garden stood just outside the archive attached to the Kroitze Cathedral. Here and there, priests and Holy Knights could be found sitting with their legs stretched out in the warmth, or strolling in quiet conversation.
“So was it you?”
“Only a blind prophet could make sense of something said without context. What is it you’re asking?”
“The Antonic Marcelo matter. Was it your doing?”
Sarg, who had stopped walking, turned to face her. The sunlight broke apart across his hair.
“…Yes. It was. It wasn’t particularly difficult, as it turned out.”
Something like a smile ghosted across the corner of his mouth, then disappeared. Disillusionment? Self-mockery? It was impossible to say.
“Why?”
“I believe I mentioned it before, Milady. That if the law could not punish the guilty, I would find another means.”
Hyderlin remembered. Sarg had put the ring back into her hand and turned away, walking toward the end of the corridor where light and shadow fell together. She had watched his back for a long time.
But the answer she wanted to hear was something different.
“…That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking the fundamental why.”
“……”
“What you did was like throwing a stone into the lake of the nobility. When your actions become known, you will earn the hostility of many noble families—that much is certain. Even your father, Duke Gloriosa, will find it difficult to regard it with any approval.”
For just a moment, something like a ripple of displeasure moved across Sarg’s face. Hyderlin could not read the reason for it. In truth, she had no room to think about it.
“I am asking why Gloriosa’s son would accept such a multitude of costs—all of those losses—simply to take pity on those of low station and take a stand against the nobility.”
Sarg replied, with a certain stiffness:
“Does compassion require a reason?”
Hyderlin nodded heavily.
“It does.”
“……”
“For me… it does.”
If such a thing existed in this world—a reason that kept a person from rusting—she would have something to believe in as she made her way through life.
Sarg was quiet for a long moment. He seemed to be choosing his words with care.
“I became a Holy Knight in order to protect someone. The person I wish to protect has compassion for those of low station—she takes pity on them. She keeps turning back to look at the ones it would be perfectly acceptable to walk past. And so I…find myself turning back to look at them too.”
Sarg’s eyes were the grey of tempered steel, or of a winter sky.
“And so I swore, in the name of God, to ascend to the highest place I could reach—and from there, to fight for those in the lowest.”
There was something in those grey eyes—a fierceness and a fury, burning quietly.
It resembled starlight. It was like the stars themselves, hanging in a dark and unreachable sky, shining unchanged across centuries and millennia.
If there existed in this world a blade that never rusted and never broke, surely it would burn with exactly that light.
If I could only gaze at that light forever—that light which shines without end—
In that moment, Hyderlin encountered a premonition, and she could not avoid it.
She would spend her life, a creature of the earth, gazing endlessly up at a star in the sky. She would pass her days chasing the one thing that did not change, hopelessly, helplessly.
And she would come to love it.
Without knowing her place.
“…I made the oath, so I will keep it. That is all.”
Sarg’s rough hand was tracing the white hilt of the sword at his hip.
He would take this blade—this blade that neither rusted nor broke—and use it to cut away the rotted corners of the world, one by one, and leave them clean.
He was, in his very essence, nothing like her.
Something utterly beyond what she could ever lay a hand on, something belonging to a whole other order of being.
Sarg glanced down. His fine silver lashes swept over his eyes and hid them.
“It’s rather an unremarkable reason, and I’m afraid I’m embarrassed by it. I’m not sure it serves as an answer.”
Hyderlin snapped back to herself. She managed a reply.
“…It was more than enough.”
8. Transgressions — Part 3
“P-please, Sir Biche. Please—I beg you, spare my life. If you let me live, I’ll disappear like a mouse—I’ll never—gkh—”
Hyderlin didn’t wait for the man to finish. She drove her blade into his throat. Blood welled from his mouth.
People died so easily.
Hyderlin whipped the blade to the side, scattering blood across the earth. She rubbed her eyes, which had gone heavy and aching.
She was exhausted. All she wanted was to go back to the castle, wash her feet, and sleep.
“Sir Petaora. Clean this up.”
“Understood.”
Skalts Petaora took hold of the corpse by the ankle and shoved it into the carriage. Hyderlin turned away, wiping at her cheek where a fragment of flesh had splattered—but the blood only smeared; it wouldn’t come off.
Skalts poured oil over the carriage and tossed in a burning torch. The flames spread voraciously. The Captain of the Royal Guard and her knights turned their horses and rode away, leaving the burning carriage behind.
Hyderlin’s red curls streamed in the firelight like another flame.
She was twenty-three now, and the role of Captain had long since stopped feeling new. She performed her duties faithfully. She drove out nobles who threatened to undermine the position of her young—barely past boyhood—King. She suppressed rebellions from lords claiming independence. She employed every means available to carry out the King’s will: abduction, imprisonment, assassination, arson, theft, extortion, assault, and worse.
The Captain of the Royal Guard and her knights arrived at the palace as morning was coming in fully. Having cleaned herself of blood and flesh until no trace remained, Hyderlin made her way to the dining hall to pay her respects to the King.
The King was taking breakfast with the Saint. A scene of considerable warmth.
Chesa, laughing at something Margarite had said, glanced across at Hyderlin. The warmth went out of his eyes at once. What remained was sharp and raptor-keen.
It had already been three years since Chesa’s coronation. Hyderlin no longer felt the need to bully a twenty-one-year-old Chesa. There was no need for it. The fragile boy of eighteen who had cried before the assembled nobility was gone, replaced by a man of twenty-one who kept his own counsel, whose inner workings were difficult to read.
Hyderlin sometimes wondered where her little brother had gone. And she found the answer without much difficulty. Her little brother was with the Saint.
When Chesa was beside the Saint, he looked remarkably human. That was the polite way of putting it. To borrow the blunter language Hyderlin preferred, he looked like someone who had momentarily misplaced their wits.
It wasn’t that she found this objectionable. She was as satisfied by the sight of the King who received lords with that strange, enigmatic smile of his as she was by the sight of Chesa staring at the back of Margarite’s head with a thoroughly vacant expression.
The fact that the authoritative King she needed him to be and the decent younger brother she missed could exist within the same man gave Hyderlin a measure of relief.
She had not committed a kind of spiritual murder against her brother.
That was one of her few consolations.
“Long live His Majesty the King. All tasks as ordered have been completed.”
“Well done. You must be tired—go and rest.”
Had it been any other day, the King would have required a more detailed report. But Chesa, with Saint Margarite seated across from him, was occupied. He received Hyderlin’s salute and turned back toward Margarite.
Hyderlin smiled to herself and walked out of the dining hall. She moved through the corridor with an uncharacteristic lightness in her step.
This was a rare day off. She intended to spend it sprawled out in her room sleeping for the better half of the afternoon.
But then she saw him, and every plan she had evaporated at once.
“Oh—Sir Sarg. It’s been a while.”
