Chapter 16

Translator: Willia

Dawn arrived like a guest that had been expected.

Valery rose as he always did, starting with straightening his bedding and moving through his fixed routine before stepping out of the guest wing. The world was a deep blue, as though it had been steeped in water.

The cool air seemed to rinse his lungs clean, and over by the barracks he could make out a dark silhouette. When he walked toward it, sure enough, Arne was standing there.

"Were you waiting?"

"Nope. I just came out myself."

Arne tossed over a heavy training vest. Valery caught it with his whole body, and the weight nearly knocked him over.

The two of them pulled on the vests and started running. A pleasant sense of competition rose between them, each pulling ahead and then falling behind the other in turn.

By the time they'd finished all five laps, he wanted nothing more than to drop everything and lie down flat. And then, in earnest, morning broke.

The two went to the training grounds to spar, and agreed to meet again after washing up. Arne was off duty today, and had promised to show Valery around the city.

Heading back toward the guest wing, Valery glanced over his shoulder. Knut, the Third Young Lord, was still locked inside the iron cage.

He wasn't looking at Valery now; slumped and limp the way he was, he looked exactly like a dead man.

Unlike the barracks, the guest wing came with the help of servants. Every morning the servants filled the bath with heated water, and Valery washed there.

He dressed properly again, threw on a short cloak, buckled a sword at his waist, and came outside. This time too, Arne had come out ahead of him and was waiting.

"Where do you want to start?"

"Let's start at the plaza. I'll give you the rough rundown there. Then we'll go around and look at each place."

True to his word, Arne started at the plaza and then showed him the gambling dens, the slums, the brothels, the sawmill, the cemetery, the docks, and even the water and sewer systems and reservoir facilities that no one could say when had been built.

He also taught him the things worth knowing to get by in the city, and the things to watch out for.

Something called the Brotherhood, thugs from this gang and that gang, various guilds, influential merchant companies that even the Duke couldn't ignore, and people tied to the Viking clans.

In short, all manner of skilled outfits and private forces of arms. The kind of people who might become an asset when it mattered, or else might become an enemy.

Each had a role within the community, and since the balance of power was more or less even, a kind of peace seemed to hold. The Duke, in effect, served as the central pivot of that power in this city.

Past noon, in the afternoon, the two bought herring stew and roasted vegetables and the like from a street vendor to take the edge off their hunger.

They sat down to eat in a place overgrown with brush, some sort of crumbling ruin, and, astonishingly, even from here the iron cage of the watchtower was visible.

Squinting and peering closely, he saw that the Third Young Lord, who that morning had hung limp as though dead, had gotten up and was now sitting hunched.

"You can even see that thing from here."

Valery said.

"It's meant to shame him."

"So when does the Third Young Lord get let out?"

"How would I know? It's up to His Excellency the Duke, that's all."

"Sounds like causing trouble isn't exactly new for him."

"When he was little, he cut open a servant's belly trying to find the watermelon thief. I wasn't here back then, so I only know because someone else told me."

"That's really something."

"But then again, part of me feels a little sorry for him."

"Sorry about what?"

At Valery's question, Arne glanced around even though no one was there, then passed it along in a whisper.

"The Third Young Lord has a different mother than the First and Second Young Lords. And that mother was beheaded. Right in front of the Third Young Lord. His Excellency the Duke did it himself."

The Third Young Lord was not a Concubine-born Son. Duke Sven had once had a Primary Wife who died young, and the Primary Wife he took in remarriage was the Third Young Lord's mother.

And when the Third Young Lord was six, she was beheaded. After that, the Duke had no wife.

"......Why?"

"That, I don't know either. Some say she tried to poison the First and Second Young Lords, some say she had an affair. Only the people involved know the truth. Don't go repeating it anywhere."

"......"

Valery looked once more toward the place with the iron cage. The Third Young Lord was just like a kitten wasting away in the gutter, ailing its way toward death.

The word mother. To Valery, that word was something unfamiliar, something that seemed forever beyond his reach.

Maybe that was why a corner of his heart ached for no good reason.

But what could be done about it. He forced it away and just ate his meal.

As the meal was winding down, Valery smiled faintly and said to Arne,

"You're too naive, Arne. Truth is, I'm a spy. A spy for Winsloe. And here you are pouring out all these secrets to me. Naive. So naive."

"......What?"

"Haha, I'm joking."

"Hey, you're not, right? You're really not, right?"

"I said I'm not. Hm, but maybe I am?"

Valery teased Arne, saying one thing and then its opposite. The despairing way Arne's face crumpled was a sight to behold.

"You shouldn't do that to a person, Wid. There's stuff you joke about and stuff you don't. But, you're really not, right?"

"Hahaha!"

Valery threw his head back and laughed.

The two of them made their rough round of the city and returned to the citadel.

It was the hour when dusk was tipping over into evening.

"See you tomorrow."

Valery said his goodbye for the day, and Arne, heading off toward the barracks, raised a hand in reply.

Valery returned to the guest wing, ate, washed, and was getting ready to sleep. But just then someone knocked at his door.

Knock, knock.

Valery slid his hand quietly toward the sword propped beside the chest of drawers and said,

"Who is it."

At Valery's words, a person holding a lantern carefully opened the door.

"Lord Wid, His Excellency the Duke summons you."

Since he'd figured there would be a private audience at some point, Valery got up and followed him.

But the place the man was heading was not the castle up on the hill; it was where the watchtower stood.

The servants and hired hands had all gone in to sleep, and they crossed a quiet courtyard.

When they reached the watchtower and stepped inside, it seemed poorly kept, with cobwebs in the corners and a bleak, desolate air about it.

The stairs were built in a spiral, and, perhaps because it was evening, their end was out of sight. Only a black abyss lurked somewhere up above.

At each floor there was a wooden platform so a Watchman could look out the window and keep watch.

But there was no sign of anyone having stayed there, no belongings either. The watchtower was meant for use in emergencies, and the truth was there had been no cause to use it for many long years.

After climbing a good while, nearing the very top, Duke Sven stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing out the window at the night view.

It was a high place, so the wind came whistling in through it. Three or four bodyguards stood near the Duke.

"I've brought him."

"Mm."

The one who had led the way hung up the lantern and leaned against the wall at the stairway entrance, as if to block the escape route.

Duke Sven stood there in the wind, then glanced back at Valery before turning his eyes to the night view again and speaking.

"Are you settling in all right?"

"Yes, thanks to you, I'm doing well."

"Good to hear. Come here."

Duke Sven beckoned him over with a gesture. When Valery drew close, he saw the Third Young Lord, Knut, caged in the iron bars right outside the window.

Because of the spikes jutting inward, Knut couldn't lean against anything and sat crouched, looking their way.

"Does this one here look like he's settling in all right?"

Duke Sven asked.

Valery didn't answer right away and looked at Knut. Knut stared right back at Valery.

The shape of his eyes gave him a cat-like impression, so that even just gazing quietly he seemed to be glaring, though he didn't truly seem to be looking with a grudge or venom in him.

And perhaps that made him all the more hardened. He'd been given neither food nor water and had spent two whole days up high in the biting wind, yet held no particular grudge.

Valery thought he understood the reason. One whose heart has died once knows another whose heart has died.

At a single glance, Valery recognized that Knut, the Third Young Lord of the ducal House Viðing, was of the same kind as himself.

An anger that was cold rather than hot, calm rather than fierce, dry and desolate. The root of that anger was emptiness, of a different grain than a burning thirst for revenge.

Valery knew that better than anyone.

"Well, I don't know how he might last as far as three days, but past that I think he'll die."

When Valery said this coolly, Duke Sven turned to look at him, seeming a little surprised.

Because even so, this was Sven's own son, and it should have been an awkward thing to answer, yet Valery showed not the slightest sign of being troubled or flustered.

That was the sort of thing Duke Sven liked.

"Then how long do I keep him locked up before he comes to his senses? When will those wild, rolling eyes of his turn gentle?"

"To my eye he looks gentle enough."

"Mm?"

"He just looks that way to me, is all."

"Mm......"

Duke Sven sank into thought for a moment. Then he came to the point.

"I have one worry on my mind. Would you help me with it?"

"I'll help."

"Without even hearing what it is?"

"Whether I succeed or fail, answering with the result is the proper way to do it."

At that, Duke Sven threw his head back and laughed, as though delighted, and liking him all the more.

"Good, good...... I won't talk around it. I have one rotten tooth. Quite an old one. His name is Creed, the fellow they call 'the Ball-Ripper', foul even to say. In any case, not far from here in Torvik there's a city called 'Grinnen'. Kill him for me there. There's no deadline."

Anyone could see the intent was to test Valery. It wasn't some scheme or the like; now that Valery had come to this ducal house, it was the natural next step of things.

But it was a fairly difficult task. Because although Grinnen was close in distance from here, it was not a city belonging to Eldeira, the ducal territory, but a city of the neighboring Denbria Marquisate.

As is the case with most neighbors in this world, the Duke of Eldeira and the Marquis of Denbria were not on good terms. And so no troops could be dispatched to Grinnen.

On top of that, Grinnen bore the byname "The End of Despair". It was a city set in the marshes, so subduing it was no easy matter, and for that reason all manner of the world's criminals, chased and chased again, often washed up there as a final refuge.

Duke Sven had, for one reason or another, hired Contract Killers several times as well, but given the situation, they had all failed.

The problem was that the fellow was inflicting economic harm on Duke Sven in matters of trade, and, as the Duke had said, he was no better than an old rotten tooth.

That said, whether Valery succeeded or failed at the task, Duke Sven stood to lose nothing in particular. Either way, he could gauge roughly how capable Valery was.

Yet there was one fact Duke Sven could never have known even if his life depended on it. And that was that Valery knew Grinnen well.

Before regression, after the king died, the place where he had hidden for some three years was none other than Grinnen.

"Will you help this old man?"

"I will."

Valery answered at once, without dragging it out.

At first blush it sounded refreshingly decisive, which seemed a fine thing, but Duke Sven took it to mean the boy hadn't been here long, didn't know any better, and was answering with false confidence. 'He's got skill to spare, so no doubt he's brimming with confidence.'

Catching the man called the Ball-Ripper, this Creed, was not something to be managed on martial skill alone. And watching Valery answer without knowing that, Duke Sven thought too that he was indeed young, no question about it.

Judging by how, when Ketilmund was killed, he hadn't simply fled but had beaten back the enemies, he had nerve, and judging by how he'd brought back proof of a sort, he seemed to have judgment as well, but that he was hasty was Duke Sven's present verdict on Valery.

Of course, even having made that judgment, he naturally didn't let it show, and led off with praise instead.

"Refreshingly decisive. I like it."

"In exchange, let me choose the people I need."

"But of course. I'll provide whatever gear and funds you need without limit. But know this too: if you fail, my disappointment will be great."

"Understood. First, let me tell you the man I'll be taking with me right away."

"Already? Shouldn't you get a sense of their abilities first? Even among the knights, skills and specialties differ. Some are suited to fighting in the open field, some fight well in the city too; their uses vary."

"It's not that. First, I'd like to go together with the Young Master."

"......Who?"

Duke Sven asked, as though he'd misheard something.

"I mean Young Master Knut."

Valery pointed at Knut, caged in the iron bars outside the window. Knut was staring at Valery just as he had from the start.

Duke Sven, for all that he was as wily and seasoned as an old fox in every matter, hadn't seen this coming this once, and looked back and forth between Valery and Knut several times.

"What's the reason?"

"It seems there's been some misunderstanding between us in various ways, and I'd like to clear it up."

It was a lie. The truth was that he'd judged that if it came to killing Duke Sven, the strongest weapon would be the Third Young Lord himself.

Duke Sven's thoughts didn't reach that far. He took Valery's words at face value.

Finding it a little absurd, and on the other hand rather amusing, he let out a dry chuckle as he spoke. His own son, the Third Young Lord, might be in danger, yet that seemed to be the last thing on his mind.

"Ha! Fine, do as you like. You there, release Knut."

And so the kitten was set free.

Perhaps because he'd gone hungry two days up high in the biting wind, once released he gazed quietly at Valery for a moment, then collapsed in a heap and fainted.

Valery closed the window against the rough wind blowing in.