The Conqueror from a Dying Kingdom: Volume 7, page 11
“No, it’s fine. Actually, maybe it is her.”
“Could it be...?” Dimitri appeared to doubt the idea.
“I’m just saying it’s possible. The second order has no way of winning. It makes sense that a witch might come to me with one of her trusted assassins hoping for an opportunity to kill me. If they’re going to be captured after their defeat anyway, it looks like a good deal.”
“Ah... Yes, you’re right. But would a witch really have the backbone for such an attempt?”
“I’m just speculating. In any case, I’ll take care of her. Encourage the second order to surrender. A victory by nightfall might be quick, but not quick enough.”
Once night arrived, we’d have a hard time stopping witches from escaping the royal capital under the cover of darkness. I wanted the second order to surrender while there was still light so that we could position our soldiers to block all ways out of the city.
“Yes, sir! I’ll get right on it.”
“Counting on you.”
Now I needed to find Myalo.
IV
I boarded a carriage and headed for the royal castle together with Myalo and the body double.
According to my watch, it was 3 p.m. The battle had started in the morning, but now sunset would soon approach.
To the south, Dimitri had already begun accepting the second order’s surrender. There’d been some resistance, but the overall force had lost its morale. There was no way they’d continue fighting when the enemy that surrounded them had offered an alternative.
The surrender was proceeding at three posts we’d set up for disarming the soldiers. Aside from those guilty of crimes—particularly atrocities—each soldier would be offered a pardon in exchange for agreeing to a year of military service, effective immediately.
“Haaalt!” a loud voice cried as we neared the drawbridge, bringing our carriage to a stop.
I opened the carriage door and got out to deal with it myself.
“Y-Your Excellency! My apologies!” cried the voice’s owner.
“No, it’s fine. I wanted to take a look at the bridge anyway.”
Royal Castle Island already had a new bridge made from large logs that we’d had prepared in advance. The logs were bound to one another with flat planks laid on top, and there were also ramps on either end to make it easier to climb the additional height the new bridge created. It was a crude thing made of bare wood, but it probably wouldn’t slow down traffic. We’d be using it until we had the drawbridge repaired.
“Continue to inspect traffic as you are. I appreciate your work.” After a few words of gratitude, I boarded the carriage again.
When the coach driver cracked the whip, we immediately began moving.
“...And that’s why His Excellency would like cooperation from the witches.”
As the carriage rattled over the hard ground, Myalo continued giving her explanation to the gagged body double—assuming that was what she was.
“The witches ensure that the royal capital functions as a city. That’s clear to everyone. Without the power of witches, Sibiak would have never grown into a flourishing city, nor would its prosperity have persisted. His Excellency holds those efforts in high regard. The sole problem is the lack of an open market. If commercial entities had better freedom to operate, it would be more in line with His Excellency’s desires.”
As expected, Myalo was proving herself ideal for this task. She was able to string together an explanation without needing time to prepare a script.
Meanwhile, I did my best not to ruin her efforts. If my face said, “You’d have to be an idiot to believe that,” it would give the game away, so I did my best to keep my face straight.
“Now, I hope you’ve understood what His Excellency envisions. He has no desire to go door-to-door and arrest every witch that’s hiding. Ideally, those who cooperate and serve him will be given the same jobs as before. Witch families will accept money from merchants in good conscience, and Sibiak will function more efficiently than at any time in history. Cooperation from the witches is an essential part of this vision.” Myalo turned to me. “Isn’t that correct?”
“Exactly. We might be fighting today so I can settle a few scores with witches, but I can’t deny that they serve a useful function. You might say they’re a worthy opponent. And when I’ve got strong enemies, I get them on my side. It’s how I operate.”
This ruse would’ve been a lot easier if I hadn’t shared my true feelings inside the tent.
“We’re escorting you to the northern side of the city where we’ll release you unconditionally,” Myalo continued. “In return, we hope you’ll act as our messenger and set up peace negotiations. Please do us this favor.”
Royal Castle Island’s north bridge was still under repair. Only three logs had been sent to replace the burned bridge, making it far from complete.
“Your Excellency! My apologies! The repair works are behind schedule.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told the carpenter as I climbed down from the carriage. “Is it still possible for someone to cross? It looks like it’s all nailed together.”
There were three logs at the right side that were secured with nails and large staples so that they wouldn’t roll around while someone walked over them.
“Yes, sir. I believe it’s safe.”
“Okay, Myalo. Get her across.”
“Yes, sir.”
Myalo took the body double by the hand and began walking over the makeshift bridge toward the city’s northern half. That was where Witches’ Forest lay.
“Watch your step,” Myalo said as she carefully guided the body double.
“Hey,” a woman waiting by the side of the road called to me.
“Is that you, Tillet?” I replied quietly. “I trust you know what to do.”
“Just leave it to me. Her accomplices are already waiting for her on the other side. I’ll wait a moment before crossing.”
It would look suspicious if a royal sword followed directly behind the old woman, so Tillet was being a little careful.
“I’m counting on you. I won’t accept failure here.”
“As if I’d fail.”
I sensed a quiet anger burning within Tillet. She held feelings that she couldn’t conceal completely.
As we were talking, Myalo had finished helping the old woman across and returned to us. In one hand she held the gag that had been in the old woman’s mouth.
“Good work, Myalo.”
“Thank you.”
“I never got the chance to ask. Was that really her?”
We’d kept her gagged and hadn’t questioned her to confirm her identity. We’d figured it would give her more trust in us that way.
“I believe she’s the real thing. It’s difficult to prepare a body double with such a close resemblance... Though I can’t say for sure, since we didn’t interrogate her.”
“Sorry. I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted if I’d heard what she had to say.”
I was the one who’d asked to keep her gagged the whole time. I’d worried I might explode with rage on hearing her speak and kill her immediately. That was also why I’d let Myalo take her over the bridge. I didn’t know what I might’ve done the moment I felt her hand in mine.
“That’s quite all right. This is all part of my job.” Myalo smiled.
“Her accomplices are gone. I’m off.” Tillet gave us a short goodbye, then casually set out across the makeshift bridge.
Chapter 3 — The Last Sabbath
I
The northern region of the royal capital was divided into numbered blocks, with the thirteenth being home to the Witches’ Forest. Few people ever referred to it as Block Thirteen. The commonly used name was Grand Witch Square.
Manors belonging to the seven witch families and their associates stood side by side around the forest that occupied most of the block. It turned the forest on the inside into a courtyard for use by witches. Naturally, ordinary people couldn’t gain access.
A thousand years ago, in the days of the empire, this spot had belonged to a general who was stationed on the White Wolf Peninsula. Back then, there’d only been one manor with fencing surrounding the wide swath of trees. The general and his subordinates had released animals on the land so they could enjoy hunting there whenever they had free time. In other words, it had once been a hunting ground.
After Shiyalta Shaltl had taken control as queen of the region, the forest had been offered to her. Later, she’d bestowed it upon the witches who’d accompanied her, and ever since then, it had served as a base of operations for witches and their like.
In the distant past, there had been seven witches who’d supported the empire’s founder, Shamo Shaltl. They’d worked as apothecaries, making medicines using animals they’d bought from hunters and herbs they’d collected from a forest north of the Black Sea. They had been revered as the wise inhabitants of the forest and had offered their support to Shamo Shaltl as her advisers, eventually becoming a key component of the empire.
A forest was a source of natural remedies. The seven witch families descended from those original seven witches considered it important to keep a bountiful forest close to their home, lest they forget their proud origins. While the warthogs and other beasts that had once been set free in the forest had been eradicated once the witches had inherited it, deer and small creatures, such as squirrels, remained—though those were also periodically culled.
The reason the deer hadn’t all been killed was because the newly budding antlers of fawn were an important ingredient in certain medicines. The witches’ justification was superficial, however, given that the more recent generations hadn’t preserved the practices of their founders in any meaningful way. The last group to hold the old traditions dear by making any medicines at all was the Yurumi family in the Kilhina Kingdom, but since such families were given no protection by the Shiyalta Kingdom, their old practices were now lost to history.
In the center of the Witches’ Forest, a space had been cleared among the carefully managed trees to make way for a small wooden house.
Closer examination revealed that the house was the work of a skilled carpenter who’d used the finest quality wood and lined the outer walls with cedar bark. Even the roof was special, in that it was covered with naturally flat stones rather than wood planks or tiles.
The stones had once been a famous export of the now-defunct Yalta Kingdom, collected from a place known as Beard Valley. The valley was home to a geological joint in a cliff face that was a source of pieces of andesite with a highly uniform thickness. The pieces could be used as roofing tiles without much further refinement.
But, of course, there were no longer any residences that used the stone because the Yalta Kingdom had fallen long ago. Such roofs had all since been replaced, or the buildings had been torn down entirely, except for this one remaining house. The stones it used had been bought in large quantities and stockpiled by ancestors of the current witches around the time of the Yalta Kingdom’s collapse.
It was a minor source of pride for the witches that they could maintain a building that used construction techniques from the days of the empire, despite the high cost. The house had a timber construction that lacked the durability of stone, which meant it had undergone many repairs and had even been completely rebuilt multiple times. However, for all that effort, it still looked much the same as when it had been built nine hundred years or so ago.
What had changed was one of the rooms within. Once known as the concoction room, it no longer contained medicinal ingredients or the tools needed to compound them. Now, it was known simply as the storage room.
Six witches were gathered inside the house: Vivila Marmoset, Sharun Charleville, Keagul Cursefit, Jula Lacramanus, Ghulah Temper, and Kiki Enfillet. They were all gathered under the same roof. Only the head of the Gudinveil family was absent.
The aged Keagul Cursefit was just finishing her story. “...And then he set me free telling me to carry this message.”
She wasn’t speaking in contemporary Shanish. They spoke Ancient Shanish here. It was customary to use the old tongue whenever they gathered for a sabbath in this building. Witches had long maintained traditions from the days of the empire, so it was a given that members of the seven witch families, being the highest ranking witches, had to be able to speak Ancient Shanish. Anyone too uneducated to speak the language had no right to be heard here.
“Well now... Sounds like you went through an awful lot,” Kiki Enfillet mused.
Kiki Enfillet would turn fifty-three that year. If Keagul Cursefit had spoken the truth, the disruption to the Enfillet family’s main line of business would be minimal. They held many offices in the royal castle, so it appeared a secure future lay before them.
“So what will we do now?”
“A good question. I don’t know.”
The Cursefit family’s business chiefly involved the second order, which would most likely be disbanded in the near future. The possibility of it being kept was so far removed from common sense that it wasn’t even worth considering. The Cursefit family’s business would be coming to a complete end. Once their savings ran out, it was possible they’d all be out on the street along with their associates.
“Can’t we create a private army?” Vivila Marmoset suggested. “We might be able to employ a few of the soldiers.”
The second order was responsible for security in the Witches’ Forest and for maintaining order throughout the royal capital. It looked as though hired soldiers would be needed to replace them.
“I think it’ll be more accurate to call them mercenaries. I suppose everyone can expect their job to change to some—”
“Who cares about any of that?!” Sharun Charleville cut Vivila’s sentence off with a shrill cry and a slam of the table.
The others had seen enough that this outburst didn’t shock them—though the group’s youngest member, Jula Lacramanus, did wince a little.
“Ugh.” Sharun Charleville was in the process of rising to her feet when, as a result of her advanced age, she suddenly found it difficult to breathe and had to sit back down.
She’d turned one hundred twenty that year. Ninety years prior, she’d been considered a genius by those familiar with conspiracies in the royal capital, but now she struggled to breathe.
“Haaah, haaah. Has Yuri Ho learned of our deal with the Papal State, or has he not? That’s what we need to discuss. Too many people know already. The six of us, as well as Bof and Noza...” Sharun Charleville frowned. “I said it then, and I’ll say it now—we shouldn’t have gotten them involved.”
“What good does it do to say it now?” Ghulah Temper shot back. “Even you reluctantly agreed at the time, did you not? You knew we needed some way to face the Ho and Rube families after the assassination.”
At seventy years old, Ghulah Temper was still young. She struggled with Ancient Shanish and tended to finish every sentence in the same way.
The Temper family held a powerful authority over the royal capital’s ports. Ghulah Temper had been the one who’d suggested including the Bof and Noza heads in the plan.
“I should’ve ignored you. We’ve no use for cowards who’ll never come to our aid anyway,” Sharun Charleville retorted.
“We agreed that we’d have no other chance of victory if we found ourselves attacked from either side by the Ho and Rube families, did we not? Without a contract, the Bof family would let the Rube army through. We’d be done for then, would we not?”
It had been Ghulah Temper’s opinion that wiping out the Ho family with a single strike would still leave another tenacious chieftain to deal with in the form of the Rube family. Since it wasn’t possible to assassinate the key members of both families at the same time, the next best thing was to leave the Rube family unable to intervene.
Fortunately, the Bof family’s province ran across the land like a barrier, separating Rube Province from the royal territory. If the witches had the Bof family on their side, the Rubes wouldn’t be able to march their army this far south.
However, they’d made their deals under the assumption that all the targets of the assassination would be successfully killed. Ghulah Temper’s efforts were backfiring now that the Ho family had conquered the royal capital.
“Sharun, don’t complain about what’s already done. We were all in agreement when we discussed it at an earlier sabbath,” Vivila Marmoset said.
Vivila Marmoset was sitting at the head of the table and held considerable power at this sabbath.
Though she claimed that everyone had been in agreement, there’d been no one there to represent the Gudinveil family. The women here considered it taboo to violate the Seven Witch Promise for any reason, but their customs also said that witches could be purged after betraying their own kind. A broad interpretation of the rules said it was acceptable to leave the Gudinveils out of their planning.
Queen Shimoné had welcomed Yuri Ho to the political stage with open arms. Even if the Ho family had a way to defeat the crusaders, there would’ve been no future for witches. The only family likely to survive was the one whose daughter had become one of Yuri Ho’s close associates—the Gudinveil family. The heads of the other six families had agreed that their conspiracy could only succeed if the Gudinveils were kept out of it.
“I agree that our deal with crusaders must never be exposed,” Vivila said while looking at Keagul Cursefit. “The second order is gone. There’s no one standing between us and Yuri Ho now.”
It had been Keagul Cursefit’s own idea to risk her life by going to Yuri Ho in one final attempt to assassinate him, but Vivila had hardly believed she’d go through with it.
“Noza and Bof will share our predicament if all this comes to light, will they not?” Ghulah Temper reassured her. “Lord-supremes rank above everyone, and information doesn’t leak downward. Our situation is less precarious than you’re making it out to be, is it not?”
“Quite right,” Vivila agreed. “We’d be wise to assume that the others will keep their mouths shut. They’re smart enough to do that.”
