Chapter 8
The Generous Command
The guard glanced at the other man to check him. The letter of introduction bore the signature of Gerald la Shore, Captain of the Royal Guard, and when he read that the reason for entering the palace was to retrieve the corpse of Marie Trijia, the queen consort, no, now demoted to royal consort, his face went pale as he stared blankly at the other man. When the other man pulled down the end of his hood, as if his gaze were burdensome, the guard’s face clouded over. Your life is truly pitiful. How far gone must your life be, to retrieve the corpse of someone who killed herself. Nodding as if he understood completely the wish not to show his face, the guard returned the letter of introduction, and before him, Rafael Evans bowed his head even lower.
“Take care.”
The guard’s voice was excessively pitying. When the soldier standing guard on the opposite side asked with a look what was going on, the guard answered with a look as well. I’ll tell you later. Between the two of them, Rafael leapt lightly onto his horse and kicked its flank.
The horse ran. Feeling the scabbard strapped to his back rattle, Rafael glanced around. It was a somewhat different road from the map he had checked. It seemed they had done some rebuilding in the meantime, for all that it was said to be a palace map from twenty years ago.
Am I lost. Rafael looked around, furrowing his brow. Strange, even if it was a palace map from twenty years ago, the roads should have been roughly similar, so why did everything feel so different. Perhaps the map itself was a lie. He had bought it at an antiquarian bookshop, so it might have been a fake map.
Rafael stopped his horse and looked around. There was no such place on the map he had memorized. It seemed he had really come the wrong way. Realizing his information was wrong, he resolutely turned his horse around. He intended to go back to where the guard was and ask the way to the queen’s palace. That was before he saw the fox spring out of the bushes.
Just looking at it, the fox seemed badly injured. Rafael hesitated a moment, then got down from his horse after all. It was a silver fox. It was a precious animal because of its fur, yet here it was, easy to see, like a dog wandering the back alleys, and thinking that the palace really was impressive, Rafael grabbed the silver fox. As the fox bared its teeth as if to bite him, Rafael blocked it with his hand, unwound the bandage from his wrist, gagged the fox’s mouth with it, and was about to apply pressure and check the injured place when it happened.
“Rapi, you’re here!”
Thinking it strange that this voice from afar felt familiar, Rafael turned his head. By the time he turned, Gerald had already run up to him and jumped down from his horse.
“So that’s why you weren’t there, you went the other way. I told you… Rapi? What’s that?” Gerald knelt on one knee beside Rafael, who was crouching down, and checked what was in Rafael’s hand, then his face hardened. But Rafael was looking down at the silver fox, not at Gerald, so he did not see Gerald’s face.
“A gunshot wound, then?”
Rafael muttered.
The bullet was considerable in size. Rafael looked closely at the wound and let out a long breath. Gerald, looking at the wound over Rafael’s shoulder as Rafael breathed thinly and slowly to move carefully, muttered quietly, “Damn it.” At Gerald’s savage voice, so different from the excitable, clear-headed man he had seemed all along, Rafael turned his head.
“Fuck. Right, it was today. Damn it.”
And Rafael and Gerald raised their heads at the same time. They felt the sound of hooves and the trembling of the ground at the same time, which an ordinary person would not have heard. They looked at each other. Rafael instinctively tried to hide, then realized he had presented a letter of introduction and entered the palace, and tried to simply stand there, but Gerald was faster. Gerald took the red blanket laid on Rafael’s horse and threw it over Rafael’s body.
Rafael’s vision was covered by the red cloth. He clenched the hand he had been about to use to push the blanket away into a fist and stood still. This was the palace, and the other man was the Captain of the Royal Guard. He was not someone it would be good to cause trouble with.
Besides, someone was riding toward them from afar. Gerald seemed to be trying to hide him from someone’s sight. Why, he did not know.
“Captain Shore?” a voice said.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
It seemed to be the king’s voice. Rafael moved his head slightly inside the blanket. At even that small movement, Gerald tightened the arm he had gripped over the blanket. Feeling Gerald’s tension, Rafael wanted to see the king. What kind of person could make a good-natured, excitable man so tense.
“Haven’t you seen a silver fox? I definitely hit it, but I can’t see it.”
“I have not seen it.”
“You haven’t seen it…? I have a feeling blood is pooling strangely beside you. Are my eyes bad, or is there something wrong with your eyeballs?”
“I can see it too, but it is blood I know nothing about.”
Hmm, the king snorted. It was a somewhat languid voice, Rafael thought.
“Anyway, who is that behind you?” At that moment, Gerald gripped Rafael’s arm hard.
“….My younger sibling.”
“Younger sibling? Didn’t you have only one younger sibling? And even that one is gone now!”
“A cousin. A little distant from me…”
He could feel the horse slowly moving closer. Gerald’s arm was trembling. Feeling Gerald tremble as he held his arm through the blanket, Rafael gave up on the idea of pulling the blanket aside slightly. He was afraid of the king. It was clearly fear, not reverence. The king had a somewhat sarcastic voice, but one that rang softly in the ear, and Rafael could not understand why Gerald was trembling so much, when the king spoke.
“The silhouette looks like a man’s.”
“She is a woman, Your Highness!”
“A cousin, you say. Was there another woman in the Shore family besides the royal consort?”
“…I am sorry, but it is Annemarie, Your Highness!”
“Oh ho, so you’ve found that missing wench?”
The king and the Shore family did not seem to be on good terms. Was it because of the queen consort’s suicide. Rafael held his breath as he listened to the king’s mocking voice. He was a sharp-eyed man. He could tell it was a man just from the dull silhouette covered by the waterproof blanket.
Unlike his trembling arm, Gerald answered glibly.
“Thanks to Lez and Your Highness.”
“Then why didn’t you report it?”
“We only found her three days ago.” Suddenly the king laughed heartily.
“Three days! What timing. Why does God time things so exquisitely. As if humans were invoking God at that very timing!” Feeling Gerald’s body temperature turn cold at the king’s words, Rafael could no longer understand why Gerald was insisting so desperately that he was a woman.
“Well, let me see Annemarie’s face.” At that instant, Gerald’s arm jumped as if struck by a whip.
“That is not a face to show Your Highness.”
Gerald’s voice still sounded composed, but Rafael could feel that Gerald was quite flustered. Yet if his arm had not been held, he would not have noticed Gerald’s bewilderment. The contrast between that trembling arm and his perfectly fine voice let Rafael feel Gerald’s desperate bluff, and he furrowed his brow. It was because he could not understand how things were going at all.
“Why not?”
“She is not wearing any makeup. I humbly beg your pardon, but many unpleasant things happened to her while she was missing…”
“If she is in such a bad state, why has she entered the palace?”
“To bring back Her Highness the royal consort!”
Gerald’s voice grew low. Even though he was trying to calm himself, it was overflowing with resentment.
“Strange. I was definitely told that the one who entered the palace was a man?”
“That man has already run off to the queen’s palace. Isn’t this the opposite side? Annemarie only came along to sort out Her Highness the royal consort’s belongings. A man like me cannot touch the belongings of so pure a person—”
“She killed herself, and she’s pure? That’s not even funny.”
The king scoffed. He was cynical even as he spoke of his wife’s suicide. Remembering Marie, who had wept bitterly saying, “You are the only one I have,” Rafael closed his eyes. When Marie was named as a candidate for Crown Princess, he had wished happiness for the twin younger sister he had only heard about. It felt awkward to wish happiness on anyone, but it was only natural to wish that his other self, who brightened his eyes just from meeting her once, would do well. But she died. His younger sister, who took lives, ended her own life herself. And her husband seemed to feel no grief at all that she had died.
Gerald’s arm trembled. He was clearly pushing all his emotions into that arm as he tried to show his usual attitude.
“Annemarie. How fortunate. That must be a relief for you all!” Rafael fiddled with the feather pen without realizing it. It was something he had carried with him ever since he obtained it.
What on earth had Marie been thinking when she killed herself. He grew curious about what her plea to save her had been about, what she had wanted to be saved from. At the time he had only thought he had to refuse, but thinking about it now… what had made Marie Trijia beg so desperately to be saved.
“Surely she was an orphan, Annemarie la Shore.” Gerald did not answer.
“She’s Shore-born, so that’s fine. Anyway, she’s just a figurehead, so it doesn’t matter whether she has divine power or not.”
A figurehead? What was that supposed to mean.
Just as Rafael pricked up his ears, Gerald’s mask fell away. Gerald groaned low, as if grinding his teeth.
“Your Highness.”
“Do you know that the only wench who can save you all submitted a marriage registration to the temple yesterday?”
The king asked, as if Gerald’s attitude did not bother him at all.
“Now, my patience is reaching its limit as well. Even if you are the most long-lived prestigious family since the founding of the kingdom, you had better not feel safe.”
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