†††
SHIT, this is such a pain in the ass.
I used words like that as a matter of course in my previous life, but I couldn’t now. It didn’t matter what I was on the inside; I was now the daughter of a duke.
I swallowed them back with a smile. An assassin should always avoid making the foolish mistake of dropping the role they were given, no matter what situation they found themselves in.
And, yes, I am a first-rate assassin. I am proud of that fact, and I had my professional pride to maintain as well.
“Prince Shaghad, what was that?”
I must be tired. I’m just hearing things. I must be.
Yes, I’m sure of it. Could you take what you said back? Tell me it was just a momentary whim?
“I want you to teach me,” he said.
I am begging you. Don’t give me any more work.
“I’m a mere noble girl. I don’t believe I could teach you anything, Your Highness.”
“I need you.”
For some reason, Tiegel jerked behind me in reaction to something. I focused my senses on the surrounding area, but no one was there other than the three of us. What in the world did he react to? I looked at him, but he didn’t say anything. It must not have been a big deal, then.
The bigger problem was him.
“You are not a mere noble girl,” said Shaghad. “You’re stronger than any knight I know.”
Knights aren’t like assassins. You really can’t compare them.
“I need skills to survive, skills to fight,” he continued.
“If you’re simply seeking strength, perhaps you could ask Prince Evan for his help?” I suggested. “He should be able to introduce you to an excellent tutor.”
And Evan wouldn’t have a reason to refuse since it would be good to have Rienbul owe Astra.
What Astra was wary of was the current king of Rienbul dying and an incompetent king taking his place while things were the way they were. Fool kings didn’t just damage their own country; they dragged surrounding countries into their mess as well, causing rot inside and out.
I saw countries collapse like that in my past life.
It was just the nature of a country to be at risk of collapsing at the slightest thing, no matter how powerful a country it was. That’s why Astra was working with Rienbul.
“What I want is not a knight’s strength,” said Shaghad.
His eyes locked on me, and I felt a shudder run down my spine.
From the cold? Fear? No, neither of those. It was anticipation. Anticipation of a spice that would liven up my everyday life that had fallen into a rut.
“I can use a sword,” he said. “I’m confident in my skills as my grandfather had me taught by teachers he personally employs. But it’s not enough to survive. There’s a limit to what you can do with a knightly fighting style. I want to learn. I want you to teach me how to fight like an assassin, what you can’t learn from a knight.”
Tiegel started to move, but I held up a hand to stop him.
I looked at Shaghad. He looked straight back into my eyes. I approached him, but he didn’t cower or run. I touched his cheek and moved closer. I was so close I would brush his lips if I moved any closer. So close he could hear my whisper. Even though there was no one near, I was being extra cautious. And this way was more likely to shake him up, drawing out his true feelings.
“Assuming you’re not a complete idiot,” I said, “you would have had some questions when a noble girl was assigned as your guard and perhaps considered what it meant for the future. Did you ever consider the fact that I might be an assassin sent to kill you? If I were, I might kill you in this so-called training. Did you consider that?”
“I-I did.”
There was something almost cute and age-appropriate about how his face turned bright red all the way to his ears as he avoided meeting my eyes. He was so thrown off kilter that I felt less annoyed about having to deal with yet another annoying task.
“B-But I want to take that risk,” he said. “I don’t know who’s my ally and who’s my enemy. I have no idea where my enemies might be hiding, so I need to confirm with my own eyes who I can trust rather than rely on someone else to arrange something for me. I don’t know if you’re truly my guard, but I also don’t think you’re an assassin sent by my father and Lady Anita. Your aura is similar to the assassins I’ve dealt with before, but far sharper, colder. And your hostility has never been directed at me. And, most importantly, you’re far stronger than them.”
I see. So long as he’s incapable of reading minds, Shaghad can’t trust anyone assigned to him by someone else, whether it’s by Evan, Astra’s king, or Shaghad’s own grandfather. The best strategy, after all, is to betray someone whose trust you’ve gained.
That’s why he used all the experience and instincts he’d developed through surviving all these attempts on his life to determine that I was not his enemy, at least not right now. And he wanted my strength.
“Humans betray. You must not trust them without good reason. All you can trust are the skills you’ve honed.”
For the first time in a long time, I remembered something the person who taught me my assassin skills regularly told me in my previous life. Perhaps I saw something of myself when I first met him in Shaghad.
I wonder if my teacher felt how I feel right now. When he was drunk, he used to always say polishing a diamond in the rough gave a thrill different from assassinating. Apparently, I was his pride and joy when he’d made me into a full-fledged assassin.
His hands sent me plunging into darkness, and now I would be doing the same thing, it seemed. And to a prince.
“It doesn’t matter the reason; every person who learns how to kill someday falls into the murky depths.” That was also something he said. It continued: “But we don’t have any other path. People can’t live an upstanding life in this rotten world. Everyone can fall, deep, deep, to the very bottom.”
Maybe this boy should fall, too, just like a slum child despite being a prince.
“That could be amusing,” I murmured.
“Hm?”
“All right. As you wish. I’ll teach you.”
“Thank you! Uh, ahem.” He cleared his throat, perhaps self-conscious about celebrating because of the happiness that hit him. Then he held a hand out to me. “Thank you, Master Selena.”
“Just Selena is fine.”
“Of course, Selena.”
There were two things I wanted to see: how he would change once he’d learned the art of killing and what those who thought he was weak looked like when he crushed them.
I never thought I was interested in other people, so this feeling bubbling up in me was new. That’s what made me agree to teach Shaghad the assassin’s trade.
I didn’t want others to learn of his training, so we agreed to meet in the dead of night on a mountain I’d previously used for training, and then we parted ways.
“Do you have any objections?” I asked Tiegel once Shaghad was gone. He’d been silent the entire time Shaghad and I were talking, and his expression didn’t change, but he must not have been interested in hiding his displeasure because I felt it in his eyes as they bore into my back.
I looked at him, but he turned his entire face away to break eye contact and avoid my gaze. “I couldn’t possibly have any complaints about something you’ve decided, my lady.”
So he said, but he didn’t seem satisfied. “If he can handle things, then we’ll have an easier time on our nightly guard duties,” I said.
“It’s not that much of a burden. It’s…a precious time the two of us spend together.”
I didn’t catch that last part, but I knew Tiegel loved his work. He was a surviving member of the war tribes. He didn’t have good opinions of his people, though, and had an aversion to killing when I first met him. But he loved his killing work now.
I guess you really can’t fight your blood.
Tiegel seemed to force down his feelings of displeasure and gave a sigh of acceptance before fishing something out of his pocket.
“What’s this?” I asked as he showed me a long spike the same red as his eyes with a butterfly decoration on one end.
“If I may,” he said, then put it into my hair. “It’s called a kanzashi; it’s a type of hairpin from another country. I found it in the market the other day. The tip is pointed, so you should be able to use it if it comes down to it.”
“You’re telling me to stab people?”
“Yes. It would be hard to kill them with it, but you could at least frighten them. I started thinking when Lord Rick gave you the metal fan about what other sort of items would be all right to take in somewhere where weapons were limited since we would be in a lot of those places on this mission.”
“And so, you bought this hairpin?”
“Yes.”
Why are they all giving me deadly weapons? Am I the only one worrying about what’ll happen if I accidentally use them on our guests? I left the daggers behind, which I usually have on me, to avoid that exact situation. And yet…
“Deadly weapons…” I murmured.
“My lady?”
It seemed Tiegel still didn’t understand what a life really was. “Tiegel, remember this: I don’t need swords or daggers or even that gun Rick made to kill people. A pen is enough.”
“A…pen? The sort you write with?”
“Yes, that sort of pen. Just one. That’s enough.” I touched his neck where his carotid was. His body moved slightly in reaction, perhaps from the instinctual fear living creatures have for that. “Here, Tiegel. I can stab the pen here.”
He laid his hand over mine as if checking where it was. “And they would die? With just that?”
“Yes, they would die. People regularly die in a way that makes others ask, ‘With just that?’”
And yet, some moron somewhere prattled on about how lives have weight. I’m sick of that claim. If lives really had weight, they couldn’t be taken so easily.
“I can kill with just a single pen,” I said.
“If that’s so, Lady Selena, would you kill me someday?” He took the hand I held to his neck and kissed it. “I will most likely die by someone’s hand someday. People who have killed many generally do. If I’m meant to be killed, I want it to be by you.”