As our efforts to capture the royal capital began winding down, I was able to visit a once-familiar house for the first time in seven years.
“Just follow the road,” I said. “It leads straight there. I’ll leave it to you.”
“Yes, sir,” a young employee from Ho Company said with a bow of his head.
I watched as he climbed onto a horse with a shovel attached to its saddle and rode off uphill in the direction I’d pointed. He was wearing a longsword at his waist because he’d been my escort on the way here.
When I turned back to the house, I found the head maid waiting by the entrance. She bowed deeply to me as I approached. There was a young girl, who appeared to be about ten, by her side.
“Welcome home, my lord.”
“Oh. W-Welcome home, my lord.”
“Who’s the girl?” I asked, looking at her.
She nervously looked up at me.
“Riccie, go on and introduce yourself.”
“Ah... My name is Riccie. I’m a maid-in-training. I, um, nice to meet you.”
Somehow, just looking at her put me at ease. I was immediately fond of her, like I’d gotten a sense of her good-natured personality already.
The head maid took a step closer and whispered in my ear. “She’s a well-behaved child. Princess Carol is always too tense in my presence... I brought her from the manor hoping that she might help the princess relax.”
That explained everything. As always, the head maid was attentive down to the finest of details.
“Good to have you with us. Do your best,” I said, placing my hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“Yes, sir.” She spoke quietly, presumably because Carol was resting upstairs.
I opened the door and entered the house.
The layout was familiar. The stove and furniture were right where I expected, even though I hadn’t been here in so long. The old memories were guiding my mental state back to what it had once been, and a powerful sense of nostalgia filled me.
I knew that if I opened the door ahead of me, I’d find Rook’s study, long unused. Behind another door, I’d find a room with a large bed where a married couple had once slept. I could remember its crude structure and leather-covered legs. Rook had made it himself one weekend. Maybe Riccie and the head maid were sleeping in it these days.
As I stepped inside, I saw the kitchen and the stove Suzuya had always used. It was designed such that the smoke could escape via a chimney, but a little always escaped through a few lacquered joints regardless. It had given the room a smoky smell whenever Suzuya had cooked.
On the way up the stairs, I noticed places where woodwork had been renewed, along with other evidence of recent repairs here and there. I remembered how the staircase had creaked whenever anyone climbed it. It must’ve been seen as a problem, because now the stairs were silent under my feet.
I opened the door to my old room and found Carol peering at me from the bed.
“Hey...” I greeted her. “Feels like we haven’t seen each other in a while.”
“Yeah. It’s nice to see you.”
Carol’s voice was vanishingly soft, and her cheeks were a little sunken compared to ten days ago. Nevertheless, she smiled with pure happiness when she saw my face.
Carol had a brand-new bedsheet, stuffed with plentiful cotton, pulled up to below her chest. She was resting her back against linens that had been sloped a little to help her sit up. In her position, she had a clear view out of the window. She’d probably seen me coming.
There wasn’t much of a garden outside—or any colorful flowers, for that matter—but the scenery was idyllic nonetheless.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
I sat down on a round stool. It didn’t have a backrest, so I assumed the head maid and the girl used it often—it was ideal for someone who needed to face various directions in the course of their work.
“Not bad. The air’s nice here.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Sibiak experienced a slight sea breeze that carried the odors of the city streets as far as the academy grounds. The air here had to be much cleaner.
“And it’s really quiet. Is this where you grew up?” Carol asked.
“Yeah. This was my room until I was six, though it’s had some work done since then.”
The room didn’t feel nostalgic. The flooring had been replaced, the walls were resurfaced with fresh white plaster, and the window—with its large pane of glass—was completely new. The bed too had gone from being child-sized to something bigger. Only the pillars and ceiling looked familiar at all.
“I like it here,” Carol said. “It’s the perfect place to rest.”
“That’s what I thought. I always preferred it over Kalakumo. It’s so...hectic over there.”
Kalakumo was home to the Ho family’s head household. No wonder, then, that tensions were high there during times of war.
“Oh, thanks for thinking about me.” Carol looked pleased for a moment, but her smile soon vanished. With some trepidation, she asked, “So...what happened to the royal capital?”
Carol was in a remote place where news wouldn’t reach her, and her whereabouts were being kept secret. A few members of a trusted family were positioned around the house to defend it, and the head of the family was under strict orders to keep the location secret. Anyone seeking Carol would have to search hard to find her.
I’d made it clear to the people of Ho Province that they’d be digging their own grave if they went looking for anyone or anything that I’d advised them not to be concerned about. If any of my own subordinates disobeyed this instruction, they’d be interrogated, then charged with treason.
In this state of isolation, Carol’s only source of information was the head maid, who lacked Myalo’s skill for intelligence gathering. Since the maid was devoted to nursing Carol, she was essentially in the dark about the situation at the royal capital besides a few things she might’ve overheard. Even if she did overhear something, though, she generally kept such things to herself.
“The fighting ended five days ago. There was barely any bloodshed.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Carol didn’t believe me. To be fair, it would’ve been an exaggeration to say there hadn’t been any bloodshed at all.
“It’s the truth. I positioned a large army near Sibiak’s south, which left the second order unable to move. That gave us a chance to attack the royal castle by kingeagle. The first order then came to our aid during the fight on Royal Castle Island. Once the castle fell, the second order had nowhere to run. They surrendered quickly without a full-scale battle.”
“You’re telling me the royal capital fell in just ten days without much bloodshed?”
“The second order was all they had.”
“Ha ha... Should’ve known. No one has ever taken that city, but you did it in just ten days.”
Everyone kept telling me I’d done something incredible, but I didn’t see it that way.
“There’s never been a situation like this. There’d always been a queen in the royal capital. Who’d want to give their life to defend an empty throne?”
In every rebellion up to now, both halves of the royal guard had fought hard as a unified whole. If the first order had stood against us, the losses we’d have endured during the battle would’ve been too great to overlook.
No one had recognized Carla as the legitimate queen once we’d finished distributing our flyers. I’d even heard reports of trouble at her coronation, resulting in numerous arrests. One man had even been publicly executed for throwing an egg at her.
“And my mother...?”
“She passed away.”
“Oh...” There wasn’t even a hint of surprise in Carol’s voice. She must’ve half accepted the reality already.
“A national funeral was held at some point during those ten days. The witches oversaw the whole thing with all the proper formalities followed, as you might expect. If we’re going to hold our own service, we should wait a while.”
“Yeah... That sounds right. If we don’t like what they put on her tombstone, we can change it.”
“I already intend to remake her tombstone. It doesn’t state her true cause of death.”
Queen Shimoné’s current tombstone was merely a placeholder anyway. An impressive carving couldn’t be completed in just a few days, and the witches obviously hadn’t been able to start work on it while the assassination had been in the planning stages. Since there were constant visitors to her grave, we’d just erased the offending parts of the existing inscription as a temporary measure.
“Please do.”
Understandably, Carol was in low spirits. I wished we didn’t have to discuss any of this. But she had to know. If I’d told her to forget about it and focus on getting better, curiosity would have eaten away at her.
“And Carla? What happened to Carla?”
I knew this question had been coming—Carla was her little sister, after all—but it was still hard to say.