Hyderlin Biche was dead. Sarg had watched her head be taken — and watched her be put in the ground. He rejected what he was seeing immediately.
“…Who are you, really.”
“The Countess’s double.”
“Double?”
“She was a woman with a great deal of business to attend to. Stands to reason she’d have a double to send in her place to certain engagements.”
Hyderlin recited the lie she had improvised on the spot. It sounded to her roughly as convincing as a dog barking. She wasn’t sure Sarg would believe it.
Sarg studied her for a long, measuring moment. Hyderlin ignored the pounding of her heart and returned his gaze without flinching.
“I wasn’t aware Hyderlin had a double.”
There it was again — not Sir Biche. Hyderlin.
“There wouldn’t be much point in a double that people knew about.”
“Have we met before?”
“No. But I’ve seen you from a distance a few times.”
Sarg didn’t press the point further. Hyderlin breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It was a preposterous lie — but apparently, when someone is faced with a person who is the spitting image of the dead, the implausible becomes plausible enough.
“Your name?”
“Finally asking. You can call me Hys.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Real name.”
“…No family name?”
“None.”
Sarg was quiet for a moment.
“All right. Hys.”
The sensation was deeply unfamiliar. Hyderlin had the strange feeling that her cheeks were prickling.
Sarg, who had been crouching before the headstone, straightened his knees. He was a full head taller than her, which meant Hyderlin had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
“It’s been four years since Sir Biche died. What have you been doing, and why only show yourself now?”
“I was afraid I’d be executed along with the Countess. I fled to Larrochelle. I only returned to Lotsa recently.”
“Why were you lurking around me?”
“I told you — I can settle your grudge. I’ll show you how to get proper revenge on the Countess Biche.”
The wind keened through the cemetery like something frightened, and the low shrubs rustled and clattered their leaves in a melancholy song. The western sky, which had been burning red, was slowly deepening into a bruised blue-black. Hyderlin smiled brightly at the man watching her.
“If you’d be willing to help me with something first.”
At that moment, something shifted across Sarg’s face like a ripple passing over still water.
In those grey eyes — ash-grey, dull as embers — something stirred. A strange light. Heat. A flash, like a shard of a distant star.
Sarg stared at Hyderlin for a long, unbroken moment without answering. Hyderlin knew it was a foolish thing to want, but she found herself hoping, quietly, that he would never answer at all.
An opportunity like this — to look this closely at those grey eyes with nothing between them — didn’t come often.
But Sarg, as though mocking her wish, turned his head away.
Hyderlin swept the longing that had settled over her chest into the wind and let it go. By the time Sarg had turned his back on her completely, there was not a trace of it left inside her.
Sarg spoke, his voice like something weightless passing through the air.
“Follow me.”
4. A Sword That Does Not Rust
Chesa was in an uncommonly good mood. He hummed to himself as he practically floated down the corridor, and had reached the door of the royal bedchamber before he knew it. He pushed it open.
The back of a woman, gazing out through the closed window, met his eyes.
The king’s chest swelled with joy.
Chesa crossed directly to her and folded her thin shoulders gently into his arms from behind. He pressed a light kiss to the ear half-hidden by her chestnut hair, and whispered in a voice thick with feeling:
“I missed you, Margarite.”
She was thinner than the last time he had held her. Her shoulders and shoulder blades showed through her clothing. She had always been slender, but now it seemed as though skin had simply been laid over bone. Three months of running had worn on her body.
“You’re so thin, and it troubles my heart. For now, I want you to focus on eating and resting. You have no need to appear at any outside engagements — leave all the queen’s business to me and concentrate on getting well.”
Chesa gently brushed the back of her cool hand.
“Perhaps we could go somewhere warm while you recover. Nadirotsa winters are harsh — spending the cold months in Larrochelle might suit you. What do you think?”
The king’s lips moved from her earlobe to behind her ear, then to the nape of her neck, and then drifted to her shoulder. He buried his face there and murmured:
“Say something.”
“If it’s all going to be your way regardless, does my opinion matter?”
Even at Margarite’s sharp answer, Chesa didn’t miss a beat. He pressed his lips to her thin neck and smiled.
“I’d like to accommodate your wishes when I can.”
“If you had any interest in accommodating my wishes, you wouldn’t have killed my children.”
“Ah… Margarite. Not this again.”
Chesa sighed, as though weary. But, being a good husband and a good king, he answered with his customary kindness and patience.
“Do you think I don’t know your grief? Both our children, gone to God’s side so soon — the shock of it is no less for me.”
“……”
“Margarite. The way our children were taken from us — it was no one’s fault. You know that.”
Chesa gently stroked Margarite’s concave stomach.
“Your health wasn’t well when you were carrying the first one. There was nothing to be done. The miscarriage wasn’t your fault. If anything, it was mine — mine for not stopping you in time. The second one came too early. A premature baby. It’s natural she didn’t survive long.”
“You killed my children.”
“I understand the need to blame someone. Especially me. You’re angry that I couldn’t do anything — I understand that.”
Chesa spoke with warmth, as though genuinely comforting a grieving wife. But Margarite’s voice shook, shuddering with something that sounded like fear.
“You — it was you. My children. Those poor things who never even received baptism, who never even had names. It was you.”
“My queen. My love. My dear Margarite. I’m sorry. I promised to give you everything, and I couldn’t even protect our children. I’m so sorry.”
The shoulders that had been still as stone began to tremble. The trembling that started in her shoulders spread through her whole body.
The queen shook like a leaf in a storm. Those fragile shoulders heaved and shuddered. She could not cry out, so she moaned instead.
Chesa held the barely-there body closer. He rubbed the bony arms and pressed his lips again and again to Margarite’s hair and the sides of her face.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner. Sorry that it meant losing Beronis as well.”
“……”
“That the little one too… has gone to God’s side. It grieves me.”
Margarite moaned for a long while. Chesa held her quietly all through it. As time passed, the sounds gradually faded. She had run out of the energy even to grieve.
Chesa lifted her and carried her to the bed. He wiped the tear-streaked cheeks with the utmost care. He brushed his lips over her eyelids and tasted the salt of her tears.
The king held his heartbroken wife and comforted her, as a good husband should.
“By the way, Margarite.”
He asked in a voice warm as a sun-heated stone.
“Where did you bury Beronis?”
The place Sarg led her to was a house about five minutes’ walk from the cemetery.
Old, worn houses leaned against each other with their backs to the abandoned chapel, packed close together. The narrow alley between them smelled of mildew, and bare clotheslines swayed overhead at head height.
Hyderlin followed at Sarg’s heels, holding the baby close. Sarg shoved open the back door of one of the old houses and climbed the stairs inside.
The stairs announced every step with an ominous creak. At the top of them was another door. He inserted a key into the lock and turned it, and the door swung open.
The room inside was narrow and dark, and contained nothing beyond the bare minimum of furniture. What furniture there was had clearly been there for some time and was showing its age.
Hyderlin noticed that one of the chair legs by the window had been repaired, and stared in silent horror.
“Don’t tell me this is your home.”
Sarg gave no answer, but Hyderlin took that as confirmation.
“What happened to you? Did you lose all your money? Get swindled? Did someone bleed you dry? How does a man end up like this? If people in Nadirotsa knew the Knight of Radiance — the guardian of the miracle-working saint — was living somewhere the sun never reaches, they’d be appalled. All of Lotsa would be appalled.”
Every window in the room was shut, leaving it dark and dim. Hyderlin shoved open one of the wooden shutters. Outside, the sun had already set, so it made little dramatic difference.
“Do they not even give you a stipend at the order to maintain appearances? What on earth are they doing with all those donations, if not taking care of their own knights—”
Looking out the window with the expression of a person who had had quite enough, Hyderlin suddenly realized that the cemetery was clearly visible from this position. Sarg lit the lantern and the room filled with sudden light.
“So it’s true you’ve been abroad — you don’t know the first thing about what’s been happening in Lotsa recently.”
Sarg dropped down onto the edge of the bed. Not the most hospitable behavior with a guest in the room, but the only chair was the one by the window, and Hyderlin was standing at it.
Hyderlin didn’t ignore the implicit offer and sat down in the window chair.
“Is there something I should know?”
“I left the Kroitze Order a long time ago. Stepped down from guarding Queen Margarite too. Three years ago now, more or less.”
“What? You quit? You actually quit?”
Hyderlin was genuinely shocked. She had suspected as much since finding him face-down in a tavern, but having it confirmed from his own mouth was another thing entirely.
Not long before Hyderlin had been framed and thrown into prison, the Kroitze Order’s current leader had said something in an unofficial setting.
“Three years at the outside before I retire and go back to my home village. I want to spend my days fishing. My successor? Do you even need to ask? The Knight of Radiance, obviously.”
It had been an open secret that Sarg was set to become the next Grand Master of the Kroitze Order. Which meant that at this point, Sarg should have been managing the order’s affairs as its leader. Not rotting away in a place like this, drinking himself to death.
Hyderlin jumped up and pointed at him.
“Are you out of your mind?! If you’d kept your position, you’d be Grand Master by now! You resigned a lifetime appointment with regular pay, prestige, and a clear path to the top!”
“……”
“You idiot! Did you have any idea what you were throwing away? You’d have made Pope at this rate — and it’s not too late! Get a shave and a haircut right now! Put on your dress uniform and go crawl back to the cathedral on your hands and knees!”
Sarg, who had been picking at a hangnail in a show of listening only loosely, remarked flatly:
“Are you done?”
“I am not done!”
