After the two women raced out of the hall, the knights recovered from their paralysis and began giving orders to the palace guards.
Wolanski approached Elliott, who was still on the floor. “You were marvelous, Your Highness! Miss Margaret is still alive and running!”
“Y-Yeah? Ha ha, I’m glad I risked my life to protect her. But anyways, my nose won’t stop bleeding. Could someone get me some tissues?”
“Don’t run from me, you sow! I’ll mince you up finer than the meat in that thin soup they give to beggars in the slums!” Martina exclaimed.
“I won’t let you serve me up like that!” Margaret replied. “I’m worth more per kilo than that cheap pork!”
During their nonsensical exchange, Margaret kept running as though she were a sprinter.
Martina chased after her. She was wearing armor, light though it was, while swinging a sword, yet she was picking up speed.
The palace retainers ran around in confusion and terror, shocked at the destruction Martina’s blade wreaked.
Occasionally, a group of soldiers carrying large iron-bound shields would try to surround her, but Martina sent them flying into the air. Though the shields were reinforced with iron, one swing of her sword warped them.
Oh, crap. She’s gonna slice and dice me at this rate. What am I, a turnip? Margaret thought. Hey, who’re you saying has turnip thighs?!
This was no time to be reacting to her own jokes. She needed to find somewhere to hide before she ran out of breath, so Margaret kept deliberately running into tight places.
Grand Duke Vivaldi was showing the prime minister a jar that decorated the front hall of his guest rooms.
“I ordered this big jar from a young potter who’s popular right now. Quite impressive, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh-ho,” August replied. “I see he’s varied the thickness of the glaze, creating a nice gradation. Interesting...”
“Yes. I’m very proud of it. This piece will stand the test of time.”
Just then, a petty official from the Prime Minister’s Office ran up to them looking flustered.
“Your Grace! Prime Minister! Evacuate at once! We’ve received word that some knave has been rampaging through the—”
Before the official could even finish his warning, the typhoon was upon them.
“Die!” Martina screamed.
“I don’t wanna!” Margaret hollered.
Margaret took shelter behind the big jar, and Martina cleft it in twain with her longsword. For a moment, it looked as if it were undamaged, but then a seam appeared on the jar. As soon as it did, cracks spread along the cut, and then it burst into tiny pieces.
Once the storm blew past, the grand duke lamented to the prime minister, “I was sure it would stand the test of time...”
Margaret didn’t know this, but Martina was famous for going on rampages when Sykes was involved. The people of the palace who did know hid in their rooms during the chase, desperately pushing against their doors to keep them shut. Margaret realized that none of them would let her in and that she couldn’t rely on the occasional soldiers who showed up, so she ran desperately down the deserted corridors.
“I need to get away. Is there no way to put some distance between us?!”
“Stop! Don’t run from me, you sow!”
The hate-filled shouts echoing from behind Margaret were getting closer. Unlike a vengeful spirit, Martina was corporeal, so she was all the more frightening. The pithy expression, “Flesh-and-blood humans are the scariest of all,” popped into her head.
Margaret had been running for so long now that she’d lost her composure. Ahead of her, she saw a terrace at the end of a long, straight corridor. She remembered it faced a plaza with a big fountain. In other words, it went outside.
Glancing back, Margaret saw that the psycho woman behind her wasn’t even slightly winded. She’d closed the initial gap by half.
Margaret made up her mind. “Screw it. I’m doing this!”
Pumping all her strength into her legs, Margaret raced out onto the terrace and vaulted off the railing. Having leapt from the second floor, she traced a parabola through the air, flying a considerable distance before landing with a big splash in the square pond around the fountain.
Margaret floated to the surface, wiped the hair plastered to her face out of her eyes, and quickly looked back up at the terrace. Martina had apparently jumped after her, but she hadn’t flown nearly as far, so she’d slammed into the cobblestones of the plaza.
“Aw, yeah!”
Even if they’d been running at the same speed, Margaret was unburdened while Martina was weighed down by armor and a sword. Martina would have needed to jump considerably harder. Margaret had only barely made it to the pond, so Martina had never stood a chance.
Margaret pulled herself up on land and watched the soldiers catch Martina with nets. Then her legs finally gave out from under her.
“Whew... I’m gonna die...” Margaret mumbled.
And there Margaret lay, sleeping spread-eagled on the ground.
Rachel closed the book she was reading and looked at the prison guard, who was sitting in the front room.
“You’ve been here an awfully long time today,” Rachel remarked.
“Yeah... This seems like the safest place.”
Some days later, Martina was sitting in Sykes’s lap in one corner of the knights’ office. A romantic mood hung in the air.
“Hey, Sykes, do you love me?” she asked him.
“Yes, of course.”
“What kind of dress would you like for the wedding? I’m not confident, but do you think a mermaid dress would look good on me?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How many children do you want? I’m thinking five.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, Sykes, you silly. You need to tell me a number when I ask that.”
“Yes, of course.”
Martina was talking like they were a happy couple, but Sykes’s neck was in a brace, his face was swollen, and he just kept repeating himself like a mechanical doll. If you ignored how monotone his responses were, maybe you could’ve imagined them as a lovey-dovey couple.
Sitting on a man’s lap in public was so shameless that not even Margaret had done it, but no one in the knights’ office was going to call her out for it. Actually, they were pretending not to notice. Trying to stop Martina when she was having a romantic moment with Sykes—or at least thought she was—would be tantamount to suicide. If they really wanted to die, jumping from the castle walls would be less painful.
Sykes’s father, the commander of the knights, peered in through the window and muttered, “Let’s hope this outburst of hers can end peacefully like this.”
The other high-ranking knights whispered to one another.
“If you consider that she’s choosing questions she knows will work with his broken responses, maybe she has calmed down a fair bit?”
“Uh, I dunno. She’s just making him say what she wants.”
“If they start fighting somehow, she’ll have a relapse, and we’ll be back to where we were the other day...”
The soldiers had finally caught Martina in the middle of what almost qualified as an insurrection, so it wouldn’t have been strange if she’d taken Rachel’s place in the dungeon. However, in light of the fact that Sykes was also somewhat at fault, they overlooked her domestic abuse.
Even so, she’d still disobeyed orders, assaulted her comrades, invaded the palace, verbally abused a superior officer, breached her oath, assaulted a prince, destroyed property, obstructed official duties, disrespected a grand duke, and attempted to assassinate a baron’s daughter. It was enough to give her a short drop and a sudden stop three times over, but everyone from the grand duke to the lowest soldier wanted nothing to do with Martina when she was suffering from romance brain. Instead, her crimes were glossed over somehow, and the heads of the order of knights were asked to prevent a repeat of this affair. They were currently racking their brains for ideas.
“Let’s get them away from the palace,” suggested the vice-commander. “That’s the best way to avoid noticeable harm. This time, we’ll send Sykes with her, and she can enjoy playing at having a honeymoon somewhere remote. If she goes on a rampage there, we’ll lose maybe half a fort at most.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Sykes’s father sighed. “I originally sent Martina away to the frontier to wean her off her obsessive dependence on Sykes, but...at this point, having them tie the knot is also an option, I suppose.”
They watched from a window as Sykes mechanically agreed to everything Martina said.
“Still, Sykes is tough,” noted one of the knights. “To think he’d survive a beating like that. And remember the time he got covered in that rotten stuff from the can? He was already feeling better by the time he got out of the bath.”
“It’s one of his redeeming qualities,” Lord Abigail said, looking at his associates. “Was Miss Ferguson involved in this incident, like we thought?”
“She admits it herself. She says she sent a letter to Martina about recent events,” explained one of the knights.
“Well, if she wanted Sykes out of the picture, then sending Martina a letter about Miss Poisson would do it, yeah,” confirmed another knight.
“She’s done nothing wrong, but she’s clearly the cause of this mess,” Lord Abigail stated. He gazed up to the heavens. “If His Majesty and the others don’t return soon, I worry Miss Ferguson’s escalating harassment may turn this palace into a ruin.”
“Ha ha ha, what trick do you think she’ll pull next?”
“Don’t jinx us, okay?!” Lord Abigail hissed. “I don’t want any more of this chaos!”
Nevertheless, as long as the relationship between Prince Elliott and Miss Rachel remained as it was, there was no question that something else would happen.
Unable to imagine a future full of anything but sadness, the elite knights all slumped in despair.