Beyond the opened wall was a passage made out of stone, only wide enough for one person. There were mana lamps on the ceiling, illuminating the area with orange light. Spiral stairs led far downward.
It was dusty and reeked of mold.
As Estelle followed Sachis inside, her face caught on a spider web, causing her to grimace.
“Is this a hidden passage?” she asked.
“Just like the palace, the Tower of Albion is a remnant of the Kingdom of Ancient La Tène. It’s interspersed with secret passages and escape routes of this sort,” replied Sachis while directing his mana into a panel embedded in the wall.
With the same sound it had made when it had slid open, the wall closed back up.
“This is incredible. The wall did not look like it could lead to a passage,” said Estelle.
She hadn’t seen any seams on the wall from inside her cell.
“This is the Kingdom of Ancient La Tène’s lost technology. We may understand how to use it, but we can’t make the same kinds of things. Even if our mana technology makes progress, who knows how many centuries it will take before it reaches the level of those times...” Sachis was gazing at a wall, but he had a distant look in his eyes. “Now, we must get going before someone finds out. Come.”
“Where are we headed?” asked Estelle as she started walking behind the king.
“For now, the palace. This passage leads to various places around the city, but it’s also a labyrinth. If you leave my side, you might never get out, so be sure to stay close.”
The king’s words made Estelle a little scared.
“Your Majesty, do you have all the paths memorized?”
“I do. They get etched in here when you take the throne.” Sachis pointed at his head.
Estelle tilted her own head, not understanding what he meant.
“When they put the crown on your head at the coronation, knowledge of remnants of La Tène is burned into your mind. Sounds eerie, doesn’t it?”
Imagining it was certainly off-putting.
The Crown, the Key, the Quill, and the Holy Sword—the four regalia passed down with every coronation—were famous for being extremely powerful artifacts.
“Are you sure you should be telling me this?” asked Estelle.
“You’ll be royalty in a few months, Lady Estelle, so you would’ve found out sooner or later regardless.” Sachis smiled at her.
So he approves of me now, realized Estelle. When Arcrayne had first introduced her to him, the king hadn’t sounded pleased, and his mana had been dark too. Estelle wondered what had changed his mind. Had it been the incident with the stray dragon?
She’d more or less felt goodwill from Sachis’s mana, but it was different to have it actually show in his words and attitude.
Estelle felt joy at having the approval of a member of her loved one’s family, but then she remembered that she didn’t know Arcrayne’s whereabouts.
“Um... Is Lord Arc safe? If you happen to know, please do tell me.”
“Arc is in the palace’s dungeon. Look.”
Stopping, Sachis took out a palm-sized key from a pocket of his frock coat. The Key was covered in fine engravings and had a large mana stone embedded into it. It was clear at a glance that this was an artifact.
“Is that, perchance, the Key of the regalia?” asked Estelle.
“That’s right,” replied Sachis as he directed his mana into the Key.
Silver light emanated from the Key, and inside the light appeared a three-dimensional image of a row of beautiful white buildings—the Palace of Albion. Estelle was fascinated by how detailed the model was.
The walls of the buildings were semitransparent, and one could faintly see what went on inside.
Sachis pinched a small area of the image of the Leo Palace with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, then spread the two fingers. This greatly magnified that area, making it easier to see inside the building.
It wasn’t only the building that appeared in the image, and one could clearly see what people in it were doing too.
“Wow... I never knew the Key had such a function,” said Estelle.
The public was only told that the Key was meant for activating an ancient weapon located under the Palace of Albion. Estelle had never imagined it even let one observe what went on inside the palace.
“Does it let you see everything?” she asked.
“Nothing goes on in the palace without my knowing,” replied the king.
Arcrayne had previously told Estelle that Sachis would know if someone used telekinesis inside the palace. Perhaps that too was a feature of this key.
A chill ran down Estelle’s spine when she realized Sachis could spy on her going about her day in the palace if he wanted to.
“Allow me to make it clear that I haven’t used this in a while,” explained the king. “I swear I don’t peek inside the Libra Palace, so don’t look at me like that.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
“I can tell from the look on your face.”
Estelle brought her hands to her cheeks in a hurry.
“You should work on hiding your emotions a little better,” added Sachis.
“My apologies,” Estelle replied dejectedly.
Giving her a faint smile, Sachis held out his hand toward the image projected from the Key and magnified a different place. Now one had a clear view of Queen Truteliese and Duke Marwick talking about something. Standing behind the queen was Liedis—apparently he’d been summoned from the Royal College.
“It looks as though they are plotting something,” said Sachis, his mana heavily darkening as he looked coldly at the people in the image.
“Your Majesty, what in the world is going on? The Sovereign’s Guard came to the Libra Palace all of a sudden, and I know not what to think...”
“I’m aware that a warrant for your and Arcrayne’s arrests has been issued in Truteliese’s name as the regent. They’re accusing you of poisoning me, are they not?”
“Correct. But the newspapers I read in my cell said you and Lord Arc came down with food poisoning...”
“My food was poisoned. Though I only pretended to consume it and threw it away.”
Estelle froze up in astonishment. “Who would do such a thing to you...?”
“Judging by everything that happened, it must’ve been Truteliese.” Sachis spoke with a calm look on his face, but his mana was utterly dark. He appeared to be quite furious. “She chose her role as Duke Marwick’s daughter and Liedis’s mother over being my wife.”
Estelle saw it as Sachis reaping what he’d sown. He’d kept the queen near him despite her and Duke Marwick continuously making attempts on Arcrayne’s life, and now he was paying the price.
Royal marriages were no simple matter. In order to maintain the royal bloodline, Rosalian queens were expected to give birth to at least two children. As the former queen, Miriallia, had only given birth to Arcrayne before her death, Sachis had had to marry Truteliese.
What had made him so affectionate toward Truteliese? Had it been her charm, or the result of his efforts to maintain the power balance with his external relatives and the nobility...?
As Estelle gazed intently at Sachis, he forced a smile.
“Is it really that shocking?” he asked. “Public opinion is leaning toward Arcrayne more and more, in part thanks to you slaying that dragon. I expected them to grow bolder in their tactics right about now. So I took advantage of it to set them up instead.”
“Is the Leo Palace not in chaos right now, with you gone?”
“It should still be a while before they find out. I left my body double there.”
Next, Sachis enlarged the image to show what appeared to be the bedroom of a person of high rank. Sleeping on the bed in the center of it was a man with a face very similar to that of Sachis.
“He really looks like you,” she said.
“He’s from Shadow of the Rose. It’s downright eerie how closely he can make himself resemble me.”
Shadow of the Rose was an intelligence organization, and just like the Sovereign’s Guard, it was under the king’s direct control. There were credible rumors of it having a hand in inexplicable incidents such as former crown prince Gilfis dying in an accident in the story known as the love with the crown at stake.
“Wait, do I owe my good treatment in the Tower of Albion to you, Your Majesty?” asked Estelle.
“In order to make the queen believe her plot succeeded, there was a need to put you in a cell. I’m truly sorry to make you go through something so frightening,” Sachis confessed apologetically. “This is where Arcrayne is.”
He’d zoomed in on another place. Between the front gate of the Palace of Albion and the twelve buildings named after the signs of the zodiac was a vast garden with a massive fountain at the center. Sachis had zoomed in on the underground space directly beneath the fountain in question. It was an intricate network of pathways and small rooms—practically a labyrinth.
Lord Arc! Estelle exclaimed inwardly, holding her breath when she saw Arcrayne in one of the rooms.
He sat leaning on the wall, shackles on his wrists and ankles. The sight made Estelle feel pity for him and anger at the queen.
“This is a special jail for the Awoken, built on the remnants of the ancient kingdom. It’s made to block your mana,” explained Sachis.
The room Arcrayne was kept in was made entirely out of a white material—the walls, the floors, and the ceiling. On top of that, the prince’s clothes and shackles were white too.
Estelle had heard about keeping a prisoner in an entirely white room as a form of torture. Apparently it was damaging to the mind to be locked in a small, purely white room with nothing in it. Recalling it made Estelle even more worried for Arcrayne.
“Now, I need to go rescue the captured prince next, but what about you?” asked the king. “You can wait in the Libra Palace if you like.”
“May I accompany you? If I would not be a burden?”
“By all means come, if that’s what you wish. I’m sure Arc will feel relieved when he sees you. He let himself be caught because you and his close attendants were taken hostage.”
His words made Estelle realize something that had slipped her mind. “Are the people of the Libra Palace safe?”
While she’d been through a lot recently, she was still ashamed to have forgotten about this until now.
“Don’t worry. The Sovereign’s Guard unit that came to seize the Libra Palace was acting under my command. They simply made it look as though they were following the queen’s orders, so they haven’t been rough with anyone. I told them to explain the situation to the employees of the Libra Palace and ask for their help in apprehending Truteliese and Duke Marwick.”
The king’s words brought Estelle relief.