“Uh. What?” The knights just kept asking the same question over and over again.
“I said, this is Lady Juana. She’s the one who ordered the cannons to be fired on the capital.” Joshua gave the same explanation to the uncomprehending knights at least a dozen times. It was the unmistakable truth that the Western Empire’s ships had fired several shots directly at the capital. The knights should have been able to see it themselves as they approached Simmons Harbor, unlike Joshua, who was inside the ship with no windows. However loud it might have been, it reverberated so much that he couldn’t tell what direction it was going, and at the distance the knights would have been, those with good vision would have been able to see the cannonball’s trajectory.
It turned out that only half of the knights Joshua had requested had made it to the harbor. Once they saw the cannonballs, the other half retreated back to the capital. It was a bombardment from a region surrounded by the sea, with no barrier border and exceptionally low monster rates. In other words, this was an unprecedented emergency. The half who made it to Simmons Harbor were most assuredly worried about how the capital was faring as well. It was plain on their faces that they wanted to hurry up and figure out what had happened so they could get back to the crisis. Yet still, though Juana was very plainly tied up before them and Joshua was very patiently explaining the situation to them, the knights just kept repeating the same baffled response.
“There’s no way. There’s just not,” the knights said, firmly shaking their heads at Joshua’s explanation. In fact, they were actually angered by the explanation. Joshua assumed they were convinced that a saint who had been officially consecrated by the church could never do such a thing. No matter how articulately the boy worded it, the knights were unreceptive to it.
“I saw Lady Juana give the order with my own eyes.” It was odd enough that Juana would be here when she should be at the castle. That alone should have been enough to convince the knights of what he was saying, but they still looked perplexed.
“That’s not what I mean. It’s... This isn’t Lady Juana. Don’t mock us with such an obvious lie!”
Apparently, they were upset about something else entirely.
“What do you mean?” Joshua furrowed his brow.
The knight looked reluctant to speak, so he whispered into Joshua’s ear. “What, haven’t you seen her? Sure, this woman’s eyes are black and her hair is nearly black. But Lady Juana’s more...y’know...young... Right, yeah! Young and cute!” It wasn’t becoming of a knight to speak ill of a lady’s appearance, so he couldn’t say it out loud.
“What? I haven’t been up close and personal with her, no, but I do attend the same academy. I know I’ve seen this woman before. Did she appear differently to the rest of you?” Joshua hadn’t spent a lot of time at school because he’d been dealing with all the people complaining about the cotton shortage, but he hadn’t been shirking his responsibility to check out the new person on everyone’s mind in the capital. If she’d changed appearances, Joshua would have been the first to know. From his perspective, the girl tied up and on her knees before him looked exactly the same as the Juana he knew from school—he was absolutely positive.
“What? I mean, the Lady Juana we know is a teenager... She’s young and cute and her face is... Huh? Wait... What kind of face did she have again?”
“Don’t be stupid, man! It was... Wait... Why can’t I remember?”
“How could you forget? I mean... Huh?”
The knights were trying to describe Juana’s beauty, but they quickly realized then that not a single one of them could recall her face. No matter how appealing they’d thought Saint Juana was, they couldn’t remember a single detail. Yet even if they couldn’t remember, they were absolutely certain that the woman tied up before them was not her. The girl saint they’d all been smitten with didn’t have such a...well...plain face. None of them would have used their precious lunch break to go get a glimpse of this girl. Other than her eyes and hair implying royal lineage, there was nothing she had in common with Lady Juana.
“Young and cute? Are you sure you’re talking about Lady Juana?” Joshua put his hand to his chin and thought for a moment. If every single knight agreed that the girl in front of them didn’t have the same face as Juana, then they might be right. Perhaps the fact that Joshua couldn’t see such an obvious difference meant he was the odd one out here. When he thought of someone being cute, Emma was the only face that came to mind. Perhaps Juana’s “cuteness” didn’t work on him, and that was why he didn’t notice a difference? No, that couldn’t have been it.
Perhaps it was their ages? From the day Juana started attending school, he’d thought she looked a bit too...old to be attending school. However, she’d been living as a commoner near the border her whole life. Compared to noblewomen, it wasn’t all that odd for a commoner to look older than their age. In fact, it was normal. Joshua knew from his work trips to all the various regions of the kingdom and all the people he’d met along the way that one’s appearance and age didn’t always match up. Even if one was young, the harder they worked, the more it would show in their appearance. When everyone was responding so positively to Juana’s appearance, Joshua only thought it was the nobles having weird interests as always. Apparently, it had all been leading up to this. At the very least, the knights had all seen Juana as young and beautiful before, and the disparity was so great that they couldn’t believe Joshua no matter how he explained that the girl before them was truly Juana. Apparently, Joshua had been seeing this version of the saint from the very start.
“I think...that could be, er...charm? Magic.” Momochi, the ninja, who had been standing invisibly behind Joshua, whispered to him. The Eastern Empire had had mages until recently, so he knew more about a mage’s capabilities than Joshua. Momochi informed him that charm magic was one that could make you look different to other people. “Lord Fukushima told me that when he would go out drinking with his mage friend, he’d desperately want to round out the night by treating him to Middle Kingdom-style soba. Soba’s not a big deal to order, but every time they went out, his friend looked like the most beautiful young lad, so he desperately wanted to spoil him...or something like that.”
“I...see?” Setting aside Lord Fukushima’s personal preferences, it seemed it would be best to think Juana had been casting charm magic ever since she’d arrived in the kingdom. It would have explained her unusually persuasive powers she’d had since becoming the saint too. The reason the knights were all unanimously convinced that the saint looked different must have been because something was canceling out her charm magic.
Joshua crouched down and whispered so that only Juana could hear him. “Are you unable to use magic right now?”
But Juana wouldn’t answer. After all that screaming at the thumb-sized mage, once the knights showed up, she went completely silent. It was as though she’d thought her work was done after having fired the cannons at the capital.
“Is she out of mana? That’s one reason a mage couldn’t use magic,” Momochi answered Joshua in Juana’s stead.
“Out of mana, huh...?” Joshua had heard that mages couldn’t use magic infinitely, just like humans couldn’t run forever. Once they were out of mana, they wouldn’t be able to use magic.