Chapter 86 - The King's Silence (4)

Elizaveta was in a good mood. In fact, she had maintained unprecedentedly high spirits these past few days. She even hummed to herself now and then.

“Applications close today, correct?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Hehe, ohoho... Very well. Let us see just how illustrious these nobles who covet me are. Bring it here.”

Elizaveta unfolded the list her guard officer handed her and read it for some time.

Hmm, the ducal House Sheretif. Interesting.

Count Golovinye was even entering in person? Wasn't he nearly thirty years her senior? The lecher.

Count Yermokov too? She had been certain this fellow had sided with them. The two-faced swine.

And, uh...

Oh.

“What is this? There seems to be a misprint on the list.”

“Pardon?”

“There is a peculiar name here.”

Elizaveta spread the list out and pointed to one corner.

“Edelflat Coenwulf. Isn't this person an elf?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“No, not ‘Yes, Your Highness.’ Did you not find this odd?”

“My inquiries confirmed that Sir Coenwulf did indeed submit an application personally.”

“... What?”

The attendant officer continued, his expression impassive.

“The application came through official channels, with Miss Elpihera Grikencos and Sir Veolgrin Grikencos vouching for her.”

“An elf...? For my marriage...? No, how did they even find out...?”

“Well, they are elves.”

That alone was answer enough. The elves surely knew even the illicit affairs of provincial noble houses throughout the United Kingdoms.

All those devious pointy-ears ever did was gather rumors like crows. They poked their noses everywhere, listening, recording, and making whatever use of the rumors they pleased.

Thus, conducting any sort of conspiracy without the elves knowing was exceedingly difficult. Just as Krasilof's Counterintelligence Command specialized in domestic intelligence, the elves of the Kallion archipelago specialized in foreign intelligence—perhaps to an even greater degree.

“Fools. They must not have known about the clause barring foreigners. The sheer gall of them. Why must they meddle in our internal affairs so brazenly?”

“Well... Um. Your Highness, about that...”

“What is it?”

“There is... no clause barring foreigners.”

“What...?”

For one thing, no one had ever imagined foreigners would learn of this information, much less exploit it. Strictly speaking, the distinction between foreign and domestic nobility was rather blurred in this era. Marriages between nobles of allied countries were extremely common, so long as the countries were not enemies.

Thus, before simply barring foreigners, one first had to determine exactly who qualified as one. Requiring entrants to hold land within the country would exclude landless nobles of the robe and life peers. Requiring an oath of loyalty to the sovereign would greatly expand the eligible pool, even to nobles whose ancestry was more than half foreign.

Amid this tangled web of premodern blood ties, a clause barring foreigners would be rather meaningless.

“Ugh... But... Ghh... If we expressly ban e-elves...!”

“That would cause a diplomatic incident.”

Allow foreigners from the United Kingdoms, but single out elves for rejection? That lot would collectively erupt in outrage. Elves could discriminate against humans, but humans discriminating against elves was intolerable.

There was a strong chance that most magical-engineering products, along with imports that could neither be produced domestically nor replaced, would all be cut off at once.

Elizaveta sighed and muttered.

“No, but this person is... a woman to begin with.”

“According to Sir Veolgrin, there is a precedent.”

“A precedent.”

“Yes. Apparently, there was a case of a woman entering a duel as someone's proxy...”

“In our country?”

“Yes. He cited a statute on trial by combat from 136 years ago.”

“Must I not even ask why he knows our history and laws so precisely when I do not?”

“They are elves, Your Highness.”

“Ah...”

Elizaveta buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

“Is there... any chance Vanka can defeat Sir Coenwulf...?”

“Sir Coenwulf has served in the same campaign as Sir Ivan Petrovich before. It is therefore highly likely that she is already familiar with Sir Petrovich's tactics.”

“So, what are his chances?”

“... On open terrain, where he could freely employ ambushes and withdrawals... I would put them above fifty percent...”

Elizaveta clenched her teeth, recalling Coenwulf's epithets.

The Elves' Adjudicator. The Queen's Champion. The Undefeated. The Ever-Victorious Knight. Her countless other epithets were irrelevant. They all meant she was the person the elven Privy Council sent when someone needed to be defeated in a duel.

In other words, she was the fighter even those arrogant elves could trust with a duel they absolutely must not lose. In a fair fight in the ring, with each side's armaments known to the other, Coenwulf had never been defeated.

“Why, whyyyy... You pointy-eared bastards. Why are you doing this to me...!”

Getting married just once was so fucking hard!

And her marriageable years were starting to run out!!

Oblivious to the eyes around her, Elizaveta hurled her teacup to the floor and fought back tears. The guard officers stared at the ceiling, doing their best to ignore these “royal utterances they dared not hear.”

Roughly two days remained until the tournament. All she could do now was wait and believe in Ivan's victory, like any nobleman's daughter praying that the knight she admired would win the joust.

* * *

Breathing heavily and quietly, Ivan slowly turned his awareness to the mana within his body. He felt it flowing along his blood vessels and muscle fibers with increasing clarity. This was a kind of “meditation,” something he could not employ during combat.

His mana flowed without obstruction. That meant every organ in his body was working normally—or, more precisely, “functionally.”

Some foolish martial artists wasted their time spouting nonsense about sudden enlightenment or Zen contemplation through meditation, but a trained agent did no such thing.

For agents, meditation was a functional inspection. It meant checking that every part of the body worked properly; if anything, it was akin to maintaining one's weapons. An agent sufficiently trained in the proper mindset came to regard their own body as another weapon.

“Colonel, sir.”

“Mm.”

As he was making unhurried preparations for his next training session, an attendant opened the door and addressed him.

“You have visitors.”

“... Visitors?”

“Yes. Miss Isabelle and Miss Esidisi are here. They would like to see you, Colonel. What should I do?”

“How did civilians get through the command's front gate?”

“Well... Um. Lieutenant Colonel Orlov brought them himself.”

“Show them to the reception room. I'll be there shortly.”

Ivan slowly rose and removed his blindfold.

TICK, TICK.

The white mana lamps blazed to life. He surveyed the room once and let out a deep sigh.

“How much longer do you intend to lie there?”

“Urrrgh...”

“Urk... Ugh...”

“Your level of training is even more pathetic than I expected. I'll have to tell Dmitry to resubmit the training plan.”

He thought he heard someone mutter, “You demon...” but ignored it.

What a deplorable age this was, steeped in peace, with not a properly trained agent left. He had run them through just one cycle of basic dark-adaptation training for indoor engagements, yet not one had managed to keep up.

At this rate, he would be better off gathering the little ones and teaching them. Clicking his tongue, Ivan left the room.

* * *

“Mister!!”

Ivan tilted his head at Isabelle's noisy greeting. Wasn't this rather excessive a welcome after only three days?

“Why haven't you come to my house!”

“Ah.”

Come to think of it, he had made that promise. Only then did he understand Isabelle's anger. He regretted it too. Still, a soldier could hardly place a hobby above duty.

When he explained this, Isabelle's expression turned strange.

“What duels?”

“A tournament hosted by Her Highness the Princess.”

“No, not that. What? Marriage is the prize?”

“Mm.”

Was it difficult to understand that Elizaveta merely intended to suppress opposition among the nobility and demonstrate royal authority? They were young children; perhaps they could not grasp complex political matters all at once.

They were foreign nobles, of course, but neither could influence the course of events just two days away, so Ivan decided to elaborate. The operation targeted the country's high nobility to begin with. Esidisi, a foreign royal, and Isabelle, a foreign noble, had no opportunity to exploit it.

“No, forget all that! You said marriage!”

“Mm.”

“The prize for winning!”

“Calling it a prize is rather undignified.”

“Dignity, my ass! Are you out of your mind? Mister, snap out of it. You're getting married! Doesn't that mean you're gritting your teeth and training this hard because you want to get married!”

That line of reasoning skipped over an extraordinary number of steps. What a shame the Knight Department's curriculum included no essay-writing course.

As Ivan struggled to find a response, Pavel chimed in with a grin.

“Commander, take it from someone who's been around longer. You must be careful about marriage.”

“What bullshit is this?”

“No, never mind. Don't even bother being careful. Life is too short even if you spend it enjoying yourself.”

“That's right! You have to be careful! And get permission from both sets of parents!”

That last cry came from Esidisi. She was immensely proud to be the only one here who had obtained parental permission.

Ivan nodded quietly. At their age, talk of marriage and tournaments might indeed sound romantic. With a delicate political situation and a ruthless purge of political enemies wrapped in such romantic trappings, the public would surely view it as a beautiful occasion as well.

Here, once again, Elizaveta's subtle political skill shone through. Ivan felt another swell of pride.

“And why do you even need to train, mister? I can't imagine you losing no matter who enters!”

“Nobles are strong, Isabelle.”

Did she not know even something this simple? That nobles were strong was “common sense.”

Ivan clicked his tongue inwardly. The people of this premodern fantasy world sometimes displayed just such a lack of common sense. It was difficult to get used to.

Of course nobles were strong. Wasn't this a world where mana and superhumans actually existed?

Nobles had not existed on Earth because they possessed some innate, God-given right to rule. They had begun as warlords capable of exercising actual military force—or, on a smaller scale, as the “strongest person in the neighborhood.”

These warlords “protected” people who lacked the strength to defend themselves and gained ruling privileges in exchange. A society in which such figures developed was called a feudal society.

Earth's lack of mana had allowed feudalism to collapse as social systems developed, but this world was different. Possessing military might meant being superhuman. As mana-wielding superhumans passed their noble privileges down through generations, a form of selective breeding for superior traits inevitably concentrated that might.

Therefore, nobles were strong. The higher their rank, the stronger they were—beyond what ordinary people could imagine. The history of a bloodline was the history of its accumulated victories, and the legacy amassed through those victories further entrenched its privileges.

As he delivered this explanation, leaving out Earth's history, the expressions around him grew increasingly peculiar.

“Are you really one to talk, mister?”

“What?”

“Those ‘high nobles’ would withdraw if they knew beforehand you were entering, and to face them, you insist you need to be fully prepared, so you've done... this... this...”

Isabelle gesticulated wildly at the bandaged soldiers around them. A most undignified display. Every one of those soldiers was a brave agent devoted to Krasilof and deserved respect.

Unperturbed, Isabelle shouted.

“So the reason you're preparing so hard, beating everyone here to a pulp, is because nobles are strong?”

“Mm.”

“And what you get for defeating those strong nobles is the position of this country's Princess's husband?”

“To summarize, yes.”

“Aaaaaah!! Eshi!! Tell your dad!”

“Okay! I'll write to him right now!”

As Esidisi and Isabelle rose, shouting at the tops of their voices, Dmitry appeared through the doorway and gently pushed their shoulders.

“Now, ladies, you needn't worry about that. Our commander is in serious trouble.”

“Dmitry.”

“Yes, sir. Oh dear, have I got some extraordinary information for you.”

Dmitry pulled a rolled-up sheet of paper from inside his coat and handed it over. As Ivan unfolded it, Isabelle and Esidisi hurried to his side to read along.

It was a list. Presumably of the participating nobles. At the very bottom was a name frantically underlined in red.

[Edelflat Coenwulf. Kallion, Privy Council.]

“Oh.”