Chapter 4:
And Now, Our Happy Ending
WHEN TAILONG SET THE DATE of the duel one month in the future as part of his plot, I met with the other saints and begged them to take some time out of their packed schedules to help us.
I hadn’t seen either of them since the day I passed my saint’s exam. I was nervous, but these were gifted and virtuous women who exceeded me in both experience and ability. And so, to protect the nation and its people from danger, they agreed to protect Nash and Jill.
Everything was going according to plan, but I hadn’t anticipated Liu coming back from the dead after Johann defeated him.
The conversation played out once more:
“I owe you my gratitude, Johann Olbrun. Killing Master Liu was the one bothersome chore I had left on my to-do list.”
“Y-you wanted to kill him?! Why?!”
“He was in the way! He could have just shut his mouth and followed orders—that would have made the lives of the prime minister and me so much easier! But that idiotic prince had to let his emotions take him on a fool’s errand!”
“Was this the emperor’s bidding?! To kill one of his potential successors?!”
“Ha ha! It wasn’t the emperor’s bidding. The prime minister wanted this done. You played your part well, Mr. Johann. You played right into the prime minister’s hand.”
Liu had cast his voice-capturing spell to seal the entire conversation onto paper, securing proof of Tailong’s betrayal.
“Tailong, old buddy, now I’ve got proof of your sinister plot with the prime minister.”
“M-Master Liu…h-how…”
“You really let me down, Tailong. I only had to lie down and die for a moment for you to go singing like a bird.”
Tailong swore under his breath. “Wh-when did you and Johann conspire all of this?”
From the confidence he exuded, even I wondered if Liu and Johann were in on the act and Liu had just faked his death. But Liu’s chest was most certainly cut open—he was still bleeding freely.
“We didn’t conspire. I just knew that Johann was the real deal. And when I lowered my sword and swung twice to show him I was willing to die…he used discretion on me. Still, he cut me real good, and I truly did come close to death. I even lost consciousness for a spell.”
Lowering your sword and swinging it twice…that was the Renese ritual to show that you were willing to be killed by someone you respected. Had Liu given Johann such a signal during their duel?
“Johann, is this true?” Eric asked.
“Yes, he did perform such a gesture,” Johann said. “And indeed, I held back a little in response. Then this man, with his very last breath, ran in for the kill…”
That’s right, Liu had fought back until the very end. Because of his ferocity in the duel, I never noticed that he’d shown Johann such a gesture of respect.
“Well, Jojo, I thought you’d dodge that attack easy.”
“I’ll have you know, I almost died.”
“Ha ha! Well, who cares? You’d just have Sainty here heal ya.”
Liu might have found the whole thing amusing, but Johann was undeniably almost killed. And the imperial prince was every bit as wounded as Johann. It was a miracle that he could even speak right now.
“I-impossible… How could my plan fail so horribly?”
“Sorry, but your plan was full of holes,” Liu smirked. “That’s why all I had to do was wait for you to screw up.”
“L-lies! You were in the middle of a duel! And you really did nearly die! You’ve got to be out of your mind!”
I actually agreed with Tailong. There was no communication beforehand, and it was all so haphazard—you could hardly call it a brilliant strategy.
“Yeah, probably. But I figured if I had to die, I wouldn’t mind if it was Jojo who killed me. Remember what I said? My signal was a longshot. All I needed was for him to let down his guard for a second, and I’d succeed. It really is reassuring, to know that Linny chose such a strong man as her partner. That’s what I cared about most. My life was secondary.”
What an enigma. Did he really just happily put his life on the line…without any forethought? What sort of environment would produce such a mindset? I couldn’t imagine it.
“If Jojo were a wimp, I’d have my work cut out for me, but he wasn’t weak, ya see.” Liu said, as blood continued to drip. “And the cherry on top was that your plan got foiled by the crown prince and Sainty here. Take the L, Tailong. We lost.”
Tailong was rendered speechless.
For somebody who almost died, he sure talks a lot…
Johann won the duel, ensuring Lingsha a permanent place in Elshaid. Meanwhile, I’d foiled the Death Poison kidnapping plot behind the scenes by enlisting the help of the other two saints.
In short, our Renese guests had no choice but to return home empty-handed.
“Ah… Well, Crown Prince Eric, Saint Leia, you certainly handled this splendidly. If I didn’t have one last trick up my sleeve, I would have lost. Ha ha… But you see, I captured a hostage for just such an occasion: Margrave Linboldt.”
At Tailong’s signal, two masked men appeared at the top of a ridge, holding a tied-up Margrave Linboldt. One of the masked men held a knife pressed against the margrave’s throat.
“Eric…” I murmured uneasily.
“Something’s off,” Eric replied. “I also had my spies watching Margrave Linboldt, and none of them mentioned anything about him getting tied up.”
He was right—we did have spies watching Linboldt. But now he was here as Tailong’s hostage. How could this have possibly happened?
As Eric and I exchanged bewildered glances, Tailong’s smug confidence returned. “I guess you were so preoccupied with using the saints to protect the people who can use Death Poison that you failed to notice that the margrave was swapped with a body double a while ago.”
Eric and I gasped when we heard Tailong say “body double.” That had to have been why Tailong met with the margrave on three separate occasions.
“Prince Eric! I cannot begin to apologize!” Linboldt cried. “I was only trying to ensure the eternal glory of Elshaid, but I’m such a disgrace! Please let them slit my throat—just stop that bastard, Tailong!”
His face twisted with bitter remorse, Linboldt begged us not to rescue him. He felt responsible for this predicament, and he was willing to sacrifice himself to atone for it.
“Leia, I know he’s been awfully rude to you, but the margrave is one of a kind. I don’t want to lose him.”
“I understand, Eric. I’ll save him.”
The margrave might have opposed our marriage, but he only did what he thought was best for Elshaid. Deep down, Eric and Linboldt shared the same values.
And even if that wasn’t the case, I’m a saint—I can’t let someone die on my watch.
Even if Linboldt were a horrible person, it would be no different. If someone was in danger, I rescued them.
It was the virtue most important to a saint: clemency.
“Ha ha ha ha! Oh, are you actually going to try to save the hostage?! Those masked men are Renese elite, not to mention that I have this phoenix. Saint Leia, Crown Prince Eric, if you really value the margrave’s life, then—”
“O Chains of Light, bind the margrave!”
In no time, I traced a summoning circle and sent chains of light all the way out to the margrave and his captors, binding the former and yanking him toward me. The masked man who had held him at knifepoint just watched the whole thing happen in a stupefied daze.
“Saintly Wind, pierce!”
Then I produced a gust of wind at my back that pushed me toward the margrave.
“Lady Westoria! You rode on a wind attack; you could have killed yourself!”
“Margrave Linboldt, run as far away as you can. I will stop your captors.”
Just as I landed with the margrave a few meters away and set him safely on the ground, the masked men caught up to us. I swiftly produced another summoning circle to cast another Light Chain spell—
“We’re Renese warriors! No Elshaidian wench is gonna beat us!”
“Mrmf?!”
It took everything in me just to tie up the man with the knife. Meanwhile, the other man kicked me in the stomach, and I almost fell to my knees.
“D-don’t protect me, Lady Westoria… Just let them kill me!”
“I’m fine, Margrave—Saintly Winds, pierce!”
“Garf!”
I pushed through the pain and blasted the other man away with a spell. The gale caught him and smashed him against a boulder, knocking him out.
“Curses! After all that trouble, our hostage turned out to be useless. But my soldiers are the elitest of the elite! Men, kill them all!”
Silence.
“Er—wh-when did all my soldiers…”
The soldiers with whom Tailong originally came here were splayed on the ground. And of course they were. If I was fighting, that meant my friends were also fighting…
“Don’t forget about us, Tailong.”
“Lady Leia’s magic healed me back into fighting shape, you see.”
“Oh yes, I finally got to blast someone away!”
The trio of Eric, Johann, and Lingsha made short work of Tailong’s soldiers. Judging by his devastated expression, he had probably underestimated them.