Tap, tap, tap.
The footsteps were obsessively well-mannered, too calm and quiet to disturb the ear. I listened to them descend as I lay in wait. Their pace was on the quicker side, and it wasn’t long before they arrived in front of me. The neat, orderly sounds came to a stop; I was standing in the narrow staircase, stance wide, blocking the way. The footsteps’ owner—Karl Anker—glared coldly down at me as I obstructed his path.
“Move.”
“I will not. Karl Anker, I have a question for you.”
“I have no obligation to tell you anything. I refuse.”
I silently took in his reply. I’d anticipated as much, but he’d turned me down even more flatly than I’d expected. Even now, I still had no idea why on earth he bore me such resentment. We’d locked horns more than once during our time at the estate, but there shouldn’t have been any reason for us to clash at this point. Did he still hold a grudge against me for forcing him to take the stand to testify to Lord Heinreid’s innocence?
Well, no matter. I turned my gaze slightly upward, locked eyes with Karl, and began my negotiations.
“I’m about to go speak with him as well. If I mishandle matters and his position becomes shaky, that will also leave you on an unsteady footing, won’t it?”
“That threat won’t work on me anymore. I am already aware that His Majesty has placed his trust in you and agreed to leave that man undisturbed for the time being. Unless the real one were to suddenly appear, his position as impostor will be stable for the foreseeable future.”
I sighed. “You really are unpleasantly observant.”
“Karl’s way too perfect at everything he does. Feels like he’s never made a mistake in his entire life... Well, except for working for me, I guess.” I recalled Lord Heinreid saying something along those lines at some point—he’d mixed in a little self-deprecating joke that I couldn’t bring myself to laugh along with.
Personally, I didn’t like having this man at His Lordship’s side in any capacity, but the fact of the matter was that Karl had never been especially close with him. However, precisely because Karl could continually maintain that distance and observe him at a remove, he could grasp a clear picture of His Lordship’s overall state and make sound judgments on that basis. I simply couldn’t do that, and I didn’t imagine I would ever be able to. That was precisely why I wanted to learn what Karl saw from his vantage point.
“Regardless, I will be asking my question,” I said. “If you want me out of your sight, then answer me.”
“Indeed, that is exactly what I would like. Very well, then—get on with it. That said, no matter what I tell you, you’ve already decided how you plan on engaging with that man, have you not?”
“Stop predicting my actions like that. It’s disturbing.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Shut up... Well, that’s what I want to ask you about, Karl. You saw all of this coming from the very start, didn’t you?”
He’d always been quick to react and impossible to read, but even so, his report to His Majesty and his admonition to me had been too precisely delivered. He’d known about Lord Heinreid’s loss of appetite, so it wasn’t impossible that he’d begun analyzing and strategizing from there—but I had a nagging hunch that this man had anticipated the entire situation from the moment Lord Heinreid had been placed in the tower. And if that was the case, then for future reference, I absolutely needed to know what his basis had been for that prediction.
However, the answer that emerged from Karl’s mouth wasn’t some complex chain of deductions. In fact, it was anticlimactically simple.
“There was no need for me to predict anything. It’s quite easy to tell when that man is depressed. His sighs become more frequent, and he has an unconscious habit of biting his nails.”
What?
My belief that Karl wasn’t particularly close with His Lordship suddenly felt shakier. This was no time to be petty, but I couldn’t help but feel a surge of frustration that Karl was privy to a side of Lord Heinreid I’d never seen.
“He really does let his guard down around you, doesn’t he? He’s never behaved that way even once in front of me.”
I couldn’t fully keep my emotions under wraps, and a bit of jealousy bled into my words. Karl, for his part, made no attempt to conceal his derision as he turned up his chin and looked down his nose at me.
“Of course he hasn’t. Why would he ever reveal his discomfort to you, knowing that you would simply reject it? It’s obvious at a glance what you wish of him, and he has been forcing himself to live up to your expectations. It’s a thoroughly warped state of affairs.”
“Warped?”
“Is it not? With his evil ways ceased, have you forgotten who that man is? He is heir by birth to the duchy of Rodvelia, a man of noble pedigree—His Grace Duke Heinreid von Rodvelia. Under any normal circumstance, a man such as you would be unworthy to stand by his side, let alone above him. You forcibly reversed your positions—distortion and strain are the natural result. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
My foolish antagonistic impulses withered away in the face of his calm, matter-of-fact verbal onslaught. The bitter mockery packed into every corner of his words made it difficult to discern his meaning. But if I unraveled it all, the essence was that Lord Heinreid wasn’t being especially open with Karl—he was being especially deferential with me. He was trying to heed my wishes, however much he had to force himself. Warped or not, that was the shape of His Lordship’s love and penance. And indeed, while I’d been consuming the sweet poison wrapped in that kindness, blind as I’d been to the truth...I couldn’t deny I’d been happy.
That ended today, though. I couldn’t keep on drinking down that poison any longer. I let out a deep sigh, realizing that what I needed to do hadn’t changed at all.
“Sorry to take up your time.”
One way or another, he had given me the answer I’d needed. I offered my brief apology, then stepped to the side. Karl made to walk on through the space I’d opened—but as he passed me, he glanced down at what I held in my hands.
“I care not in the slightest how you and he amuse yourselves, but again? Does your idiotic brain only have room for one idea?”
“Oh, go away already.”