Chapter 39

Iberin couldn't stop the laughter that kept leaking out of her.

"He really doesn't have any idea, does he?"

"He doesn't. I don't know all the details, but his color was off. And to get hit with a divorce suit on top of everything else — the look he gave me said he found it incredibly tiresome."

"Which is exactly why he's letting it move this fast."

"Hmph. Pretends to be so meticulous all the time, but I can see how little he thought of me."

Emily's divorce suit was lighting the social world on fire, but Marquis Civelli's attitude was that it didn't faze him.

She really was his fourth wife, and he'd already wrung everything he could out of her.

If anything, it suited Civelli better to wait until they were officially strangers and then handle her quietly — no inconvenient rumors attached.

---

Iberin, much improved in health, was steadily preparing to leave.

In the meantime, she was helping Emily prepare for the suit.

Nais was throwing his whole heart into the case, the first one he'd taken in a while.

"Whoa, look at me — stepping into a courthouse!"

He clutched the heap of evidence against his chest and was already making a production of it from the entrance.

Soon the courtroom filled up.

This was the divorce suit of Marquis Civelli himself, and the gossip hounds had already claimed their seats.

"The trial will now begin. Counsel, please proceed."

According to the rumor mill, Emily was already an unrepentant piece of work.

She'd dragged the Civelli marquisate's reputation as low as it could go, the story went, and now she was filing for divorce to wring out compensation.

"I'll proceed. From the moment Marquise Emily Balkan Civelli — daughter of a great merchant — became marquise, she has not had a single peaceful night's sleep. Because the marquise has had to live with the agony of knowing she might be killed without anyone ever finding out."

The mysterious deaths in Emily's family, the way the family fortune had vanished.

As the opening statement went on, the looks on every face in the room twisted.

Marquis Civelli, in particular, couldn't quite hide the demon's grin that flashed across his face for a moment.

His own counsel couldn't take it any longer — he shot to his feet and shouted,

"All of that is nothing but the marquise's imagination!"

"Whether it's nothing but is exactly what the presiding judge is here to decide. I submit this evidence."

Documents that had quietly buried the mysterious deaths in Emily's family.

Information they'd gotten by pulling out the ringleaders from the building and squeezing them.

The judge's face hardened visibly as he took them.

"Hmm."

"As you'll see, there are clear circumstances suggesting the marquis was involved to some degree in the deaths of the marquise's family."

"Mere circumstance. In the course of resolving the matter, it was concluded to be accidental death, and the case was left to rest."

"This is a case in which the marquise had been married less than a year when her entire family died in accidents. There's more than enough room for suspicion."

"Suspicion, yes — but no concrete evidence."

The two sides went at each other, but Nais didn't yield a word.

If anything, every time he started to lose ground, he unloaded more evidence.

Nais was far more capable than she'd expected.

And in the end, even evidence that Marquis Civelli might be a hypnotist came out. The courtroom erupted.

Crrk —

The sound of Civelli grinding his teeth reached even Iberin's ears.

---

Civelli's divorce suit, which had been confined to the social world, now sent shockwaves through everything.

He wasn't a commoner, or a noble of obscure standing — he was a marquis of the Aleta Holy Empire.

That a man like that had been using hypnosis — treated as quackery in the empire — to kill and exploit people.

On top of which, his public image had been almost too good.

People were stunned, one and all.

Even the gossip hounds who'd shown up to fish for material were left gaping.

"Quite the racket."

Iberin looked out the window and took a sip of her ade.

Kids were running through the streets clutching newspapers and shouting.

Extra, extra!

"The hit's heavier because his image had been so polished."

But this was only the beginning.

There was still more — how many more people Civelli had used, how many more he'd killed.

"What's the emperor doing right now, I wonder?"

There was no way he didn't know Iberin was tied to all of this.

He hadn't thought well of her to begin with, and after this she'd be more squarely in his sights.

But she wasn't afraid, or anything like it.

She didn't know when she was going to die, so maybe she'd lost the capacity for fear.

"He's probably getting ready to throw Civelli to the wolves."

"Right — he was favored, wasn't he?"

"Yes. So much so that other nobles couldn't lay a hand on Civelli either."

"Long as we're at it, I'd love to send the emperor right along with him."

"He's not going to go down that easily."

"Right."

Honestly, she'd considered it.

Could she take the emperor down too while blowing this thing open with Emily?

But the answer was no.

However much this case shook the empire, Lecashe simply had no political weight.

Not a single ally to take their side — it would be throwing eggs at a boulder.

It was enough evidence to take Civelli down, but going after the emperor could backfire.

"And the boy?"

"He'll arrive in the next day or two."

The leader among the children Iberin had sent to the territory — his name was Kal.

Kal was a clever boy.

Even living as a hypnotism doll in that grim underground cell, he'd never let go of the hope of a life beyond it, and he'd held on to every word Civelli had ever said.

Hypnotism dolls.

Civelli would never have imagined they might escape.

That was why he'd left them so unguarded, and said anything he wanted to in front of them.

In the end, Kal knew the crimes Civelli had committed.

How they'd been carried out, what had been done with the bodies.

"This is going to be worth watching."

She was looking forward to the final hearing.

The butler — maybe he was starting to take after her — chuckled and gave her a meaningful smile.

---

About an hour into the hearing, Kal entered.

"Witness, please make your oath."

"I will not give false testimony, and if I do, I solemnly swear to accept the punishment for it."

"Please proceed."

He was a boy still covered in wounds that hadn't healed.

She hadn't been able to see properly in the dark, but his body was a map of injuries, and one eye was even gone — torn open by a long slash.

She'd had no idea he was in that bad a state, and the shock punched through her. The other nobles' reactions didn't need to be described.

"I was Marquis Roto Civelli's hypnotism doll."

What came after was shocking, every word of it. Kal recounted, in order, how Civelli had dealt with Emily's family, what the evidence was.

"It's a lie! All of it!"

At that point Marquis Civelli started thrashing and screaming.

"Your Honor, I've never seen that boy in my life! He's framing me!"

"Silence. Marquis, control yourself."

The judge turned a look of pure disgust on Civelli as he spoke.

"Gaaah!!"

Maybe Civelli felt the weight of that look — he lost his grip on his temper entirely and howled.

The knights behind him pinned the marquis's flailing limbs, and the lawyer who'd been defending him went sallow, mouth working uselessly.

"Get off me!"

The sight of the marquis, who'd always been the picture of gravity and warmth, screaming with his hair flying every which way — there was no other word for it but ugly.

Every face in the room was set in a grimace as they watched him.

But the marquis didn't seem to feel any of it — he only kicked harder.

Soon after, an investigator arrived and handed an envelope to the judge.

The two of them held a long, hushed exchange, then the judge nodded.

"This is evidence that the marquis committed murder."

Murmur, murmur.

The hum in the chamber swelled.

"Furthermore, traces of the marquis's killings of his previous wives have also been submitted as evidence."

It was a thunderclap, plain and simple.

The courtroom dropped into utter silence.

---

Needless to say, the trial ended in Emily's victory.

Days passed, and the capital was still loud about Marquis Civelli.

He was sentenced to death, and the emperor — true to form — went straight into cutting the tail off, emphasizing how he had known nothing.

And promised compensation to the victims.

Emily, too, recovered the wealth that had been taken from her, took her compensation, and decided to close out her life in the capital.

"You're heading out to the country, I heard."

"Yes. I'm sick of people now.

Thought I'd live out the rest of my days somewhere with clean water and clean air."

"I'll be rooting for you."

"Oh, come on. Despite how it sounds, it's just a life of spending money."

"Pfft. Come visit me sometime. There's nothing there, but the air's good."

"Of course I will. Ibel, thank you."

"I'm the one who's grateful."

"Are we slathering each other's faces in gold again?"

They laughed and talked for a long while.

"Today's the execution."

The emperor must've been in something of a rush — he'd set Civelli's execution within just a few days.

He'd probably been scared the man might shoot his mouth off uselessly.

By all accounts, the moment Civelli was thrown into the palace's underground prison, they'd cut his tongue out first.

"Are you going?"

"I am. I think I'll go. Want to come along?"

"No. I'll just stay in."

"Then I'd better head out."

Honestly, Civelli's death didn't sit quite right with Iberin.

For the end of a man who'd hypnotized Lyssel and lived in luxury his whole life on the back of it, it was too easy.

After seeing Emily off, Iberin sat thinking and then asked,

"What happens to His Highness's hypnosis, though, if Civelli dies? Does it stay? Or does it disappear?"

"…That, I don't know."

She understood now why even Civelli's death left her uneasy.

It was because the whole thing wasn't over yet.

In a sense, all they'd caught was one small fish.

---

The emperor was livid.

When he'd first heard Emily had filed for divorce, he hadn't given it a thought.

But when the news came out that Marquis Civelli was a hypnotist, on top of everything else, the shock was something to behold.

The emperor's beard trembled.

"The fool!"

He hadn't even gotten another few decades of use out of him, and the man was being swept away like this.

It wasn't grief over his death — it was the pity of losing him while there was still so much use left in him.

In Aleta, hypnotists were a necessary evil.

At least to him, the emperor.

"Yel. You ought to keep this in mind too. We are individuals, yes, but we are also the sovereigns who hold up an entire nation. We must never be ruled by private feelings."

The nation believed in the god and held him sacred, but the emperor had his own duty: to keep the nation running.

And to do that, he needed Lecashe.

"…Yes."

Yelberk.

Yel had recently heard the whole truth about the empire from the emperor.

That everything he had enjoyed was, in fact, built on the trampled sacrifices of others — the knowledge tormented him.

But the emperor had no interest in such a son.

He'd had a phase like that himself, but in the end he'd become emperor, and by now even the dim flicker of guilt he'd once felt had vanished entirely.

"Now that Marquis Civelli's gone, what happens going forward?"

"You think Civelli's the only hypnotist in the empire?"

"Then…"

"Disposable parts are always plentiful. We just have to pick one of them who can climb as high as Civelli did."

He'd never been warm, but he was still his father, and Yel had believed in him and followed him.

But not anymore.