“Lady Dirnant.”
As his voice echoed nearby, I lifted my head again. His gaze met mine, far softer than just moments before. After seeming to ponder something briefly, he spoke.
“I respect your will. Though it was an exceedingly reckless act, I will not rebuke you. Nothing should be allowed to stain your pride.”
“Thank you.”
“However.”
He directed his gaze toward me—no, toward someone standing farther behind me—before speaking again.
“It seems Lady Dirnant will have to explain herself directly to her colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
“Pardon?”
At his words, I had no choice but to follow his gaze. Standing there were my dear colleagues, their faces murderous, though I had no idea when they had arrived. After offering them an awkward smile, I quickly whipped my head around and hissed at the Duke in a low whisper.
“You should have told me!”
“I saw no particular need to do so.”
“They are going to murder me!”
“I believe you require a lesson for not cherishing your own body.”
“I don't need any such thing! It’s my body!”
“I am aware. You may explain that to your colleagues.”
“Scarlett.”
“Oh dear.”
As I gritted my teeth and argued with Duke Prodiad, Trichel’s gentle voice struck from behind me. Gentle, my foot. I suddenly recalled how terrifying Trichel could be when angry and squeezed my eyes shut.
Good grief—is this man taking revenge on me right now? But why?
Trichel’s voice sounded like a grim reaper calling to me from hell, leaving me no choice but to be dragged, half-captured, toward the reception room. Duke Prodiad, the instigator of all this—well, calling him the instigator pricked my conscience a bit, though he certainly contributed to the cause—escorted us with complete composure, as if none of this were his concern. And the moment we arrived at the reception room, the unexpected figure there showed me just how furious he had truly been.
Good heavens, he looks like a swollen bun.
Kneeling bound upon the carpet in the center of the reception room was the Lord of Sorel. Unlike when I first saw him, however, his face was dreadfully swollen, especially around his eyes and cheeks, which were puffed up tight to a pitiful degree.
Of course, Duke Prodiad hadn't laid a hand on him personally. Indeed, why would a noble duke do such a thing? After shooting an awkward smile at the knight glaring murderously beside the prisoner, I was dragged by my colleagues and forcibly seated on the sofa.
Celine sat beside me, while Trichel, Pello, and Korkel took seats on a sofa slightly across from me. Duke Prodiad remained standing, his gaze pinned on the Lord of Sorel with relentless, brooding ferocity.
Oh, my god. Insane.
A person can actually look that terrifying.
I had always thought the scariest face in the world was my mother's when I accidentally burned her documents as a child, but I had to revise my assessment. Even when furious, my mother never looked as if she were about to slaughter someone. Not that Duke Prodiad was looking at me that way, of course.
“Pardon?”
“Explain what on earth happened.”
Pello stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Looking around at the room, I let out a deep sigh. Ah, it had become an open secret. I had originally intended to keep this to myself. It wasn't for nothing that I kept my mouth shut. Explaining it would take forever, so I had wanted to keep it private, yet here we were.
In the end, I began recalling what I had discovered ever since arriving at Sorel Castle.
“I'm not sure where to begin, but… there was something odd ever since we arrived at Sorel Castle. There was nothing inside the castle. Back at the Academy, I took a course. Professor Smith’s 'History and Architecture,' which was extremely popular.”
“Oh, I took that one too.”
When Celine chipped in from beside me, I nodded. In fact, Professor Smith was a popular lecturer at the Academy. Though young, he loved traveling and didn't offer classes often, but whenever he did, enrollment was staggering. His lectures were rich with knowledge, and the quality was as superb as his witty banter.
Unlike some professors who used worn-out books as textbooks, Professor Smith always taught us with the most up-to-date materials, insisting that staying bound to textbooks would leave us lagging behind the times. He showed us the latest photographs and records, and Sorel Castle was definitely among them.
“It must have been nearly seven years ago when I took that class. I was lucky, being a student on the verge of graduating. According to what I clearly remember seeing back then, Sorel Castle possessed an immense number of relics. Since his materials were always up to date, it means that up until seven years ago, this castle was overflowing with historical artifacts.”
I paused to catch my breath and looked around.
“Yet does the present Sorel Castle look like a place that has endured seven years of war?”
“He could have sold them all.”
All trade in a war zone is prohibited, with the exception of weapons. Relics in particular are infamous for being subjected to strict transaction rules even during ordinary times, precisely to control their leakage abroad.
Pello nodded at my words.
“If you calculate it, the war broke out six years ago, which means selling them through legitimate channels would have required doing so within a single year. That's impossible. Selling relics requires strict procedures, taking at least a year before they can actually be traded on the open market. Yet the relics in Sorel Castle were numerous—truly, incredibly numerous. Enough that an entire wall was once covered with them.”
Therefore, bypassing official channels, they had to be sold through illicit routes.
“That’s why I asked Korkel the other day. On the evening of the first negotiation. To check one last time. To turn my suspicions into certainty.”
“I asked if a large volume of goods had been released into the black market through illicit channels lately. And Korkel’s answer was ‘no.’”
Korkel’s family ran one of the kingdom's foremost merchant guilds. I could vouch that no trade escaped his notice, especially underhanded dealings. Even if a transaction somehow slipped by him, so many relics hitting the market would inevitably reach the ears of the nobility. To reiterate, surveillance over the kingdom's historical artifacts was exceedingly strict.
“Well, up to that point, it was merely suspicion.”
“Suspicion?”
“If the relics weren't circulated through any channel in Winchester, there's only one answer, right? He sold them abroad.”
“Selling national relics abroad for money?!”
At my words, Korkel sprang to his feet in outrage. The Lord of Sorel, kneeling on the carpet, flinched violently. I gave him a pitiful glance before shaking my head. “Looking around the castle, there are hardly any ladies-in-waiting, no doctor, no stable master, no maids, no servants. Even at a glance, his debts must be tremendous, wouldn't you say? Well, he had no money. Then the war broke out, he couldn't sell the relics at market price, and the volume was too massive to dump on the black market. Seeing that, Sierra inevitably made their approach.”
Money was the problem. Always money.
It hardly mattered why the Lord of Sorel had squandered his castle's fortune. What mattered was that, starved of money, he couldn't resist Sierra's temptation. And beyond selling off national relics to Sierra—
“He must have acted as Sierra's spy.”
Naturally, as foolish as he was, he couldn't have been a competent spy. Still, he was the Lord of Sorel and entitled by aristocratic law to enter the military encampment. Thus, he could easily leak the army's current morale, their numbers, their supplies, and their provisions. It wouldn't have been a decisive factor, of course. To my eyes, Sierra wasn't so foolish as to employ such a simpleton as an essential spy.
“Once I formed that hypothesis, everything looked suspicious. Duke Prodiad explicitly instructed that a room on the third floor be vacated for me. Yet the Lord of Sorel risked the Duke's wrath just to assign me a room on the second floor instead.”
“Furthermore, I am His Majesty's sole niece, and rumors—which are completely baseless, mind you—claim that I am exceedingly fastidious and cold-headed—”
“A fastidious and cold-headed person, yes! Yet he gave you the second-floor room despite knowing he would risk your fury as well.”
At Korkel's interjection, I glared at him slightly. Catching my look, he chuckled awkwardly and gestured for me to continue. These people really have no sense of cooperation. When was I ever fastidious and cold-headed? I have a passionate personality. Yes, absolutely.
“So I considered it. I wondered what the difference was between the third-floor and second-floor rooms. Here, I suppose I owe the Lord of Sorel an apology.”
“To tell the truth, I despise nighttime walks. I naturally hate moving my body.”
“Th-Then…”
“I told the Lord that simply so he would assume I was just taking a walk whenever I wandered around the estate. In reality, I wasn't taking a stroll at all that night.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Reconnaissance.”
“Reconnaissance. I scouted the estate.”
It was the truth. On the very first night I arrived at Sorel Castle, I deliberately walked the grounds to anticipate any possible betrayal by the lord—well, if you could even call it betrayal—to see through his schemes and prepare for any potential danger.
“And I discovered something. The third-floor room was actually far more spacious than the second floor. Worthy of the Duke explicitly requesting it to be kept vacant. The Lord claimed it was unfit to host me, but it was actually a magnificent room.”
“So I pondered what the difference between the third and second floors could be. Were the windows different? But below both windows lay a rose garden; jumping down would mean being impaled on thorns. Then what was it? As I thought it through, I noticed it. The third-floor room had no wardrobe.”
I said with a bright smile. In contrast, the face of the Lord of Sorel turned stark white. I found myself silently thanking Professor Smith. 'Thank you, Professor. You saved my life. Thanks to your excellent teaching, I survived.'
“Do you know when Sorel Castle was built?”
“Seven hundred and thirty years ago!”
“My, Celine, that's right. You learned well. Yes, seven hundred and thirty years ago. Back then, severe discrimination still prevailed in Winchester, demanding extreme chastity from women. In particular, women were forbidden from leaving their rooms after ten in the evening. Yet men were different; they could keep countless lovers.”
That was why. Dissatisfied with the state of affairs, women had secretly built hidden passages into their castles.
“It all began at Sibello Castle in Eton. At the time, the Count of Eton granted his wife’s request to build a hidden passage so she could escape if an assassin ever entered the castle. And the Countess of Eton used that passage to enjoy secret trysts with her lover. Building the labyrinth inside the wardrobe was purely because wardrobes were exclusively the domain of women in those days. Soon, it spread like a trend among noble ladies, then among aristocrats, and then among architects. Secret passage entrances were installed in every room of the castle, creating a labyrinthine path leading outside. That corridor is so convoluted that while escaping from the inside out is simple, entering from the outside in is nearly impossible without an accomplice within. The problem, however, arose when the husbands discovered it. They realized their wives were slipping out through those passages to meet their lovers.”
When Viscount Wilt's wife was sued for adultery, the secret-passage romances that had swept through high society were finally exposed. Even so, the nobles could not bring themselves to destroy hidden passages that might preserve their own lives in an emergency.
“So they began blocking just a single entrance in their castles. The one in the lady's chambers.”
Most secret passages started in different places and converged into a single exit. But among those entrances, the ones in the mistress's chambers—
The Lord of Sorel likely had no idea about such history, looking at me with an utterly bewildered expression. I gave him a polite smile. Death was the only end for a traitor. Even if he were to die, wouldn't it be less regrettable to know how he had been found out? “I'll get straight to the point. While scouting Sorel Castle, I realized the third floor was the lady's chambers. That room had an enormous dressing room, an adjoining room for a maid, and the largest vanity in the castle. That was when it clicked. Ah, the Lord of Sorel wanted to place something in my room using the secret passage on the second floor. What would that be, then? Working with Sierra, he meant to place something dangerous in my room.”
“Up to that point, it was a deduction close to certainty; what followed was pure conjecture. After confirming with Korkel on the first day of negotiations, I considered what that dangerous thing could be. Yet killing me wouldn't bring Sierra much benefit. What it could do, however, was compel me to sign an advantageous treaty under duress.”
“Then don't tell me…”
“Then it would be an assassin. Even if assassination wasn't the goal.”
The room fell silent. Korkel looked at me as if appalled. Honestly, even I was appalled with myself.
