Chương 106: 42-2: King

The doors opened. I had assumed a throne hall would simply be a large room for conversation. I was catastrophically wrong. This space wasn't designed for dialogue. It was engineered to make a person step inside and immediately question whether their breathing was offensively loud. The vaulted ceiling climbed to cyclopean heights that stopped making architectural sense and became something else entirely—a deliberate assault on human scale.

The crimson carpet stretching toward the throne was less a walkway than a river, long enough that its terminus seemed to belong to another country. The monolithic pillars flanking it were thick enough to chain leviathans to, and the sheer volume of empty air swallowed sound at the edges, leaving footsteps half-absorbed before they could reach the walls. Past a certain scale, grandeur ceases to be impressive and becomes actively hostile. This wasn't what magnificent architecture.

This was did they build this specifically to make people feel they deserve execution simply for entering? I was shifting forward when one of the black-robed guards beside the nearest pillar snapped his halberd horizontally across my path—fast enough that it felt less like a warning and more like neck measurements being taken.

"Commoners halt at one thousand paces," Olivia murmured beside me, supplying the world's least welcome piece of etiquette. … Right. Rules were rules. I dropped to one knee without argument. If a room was this determined to make you kneel, standing would only demonstrate slower reflexes, not greater dignity. The problem was the distance. From a thousand paces, I couldn't even make out the king's face—just a silhouette on the throne flanked by two standing shadows.

The central figure appeared to say something that didn't reach us at all, then one of his companions raised his voice in a booming projection:"Advance to one hundred paces!" Progress of sorts. We had graduated from dying without knowing who ordered it to at least seeing the face of your executioner clearly. We moved forward. At one hundred paces, the figures resolved into actual people. Three men before the throne. The center one required no introduction.

To the king's right stood Gales Eberhart—having seen him just yesterday, that face hammered from iron plate wasn't one I'd misplace soon. The unfamiliar man on the other side wasn't dressed as a soldier, but he stood with the absolute stillness of someone who understood he could redirect half the empire with a single finger and felt no need to demonstrate it. This was undoubtedly one of those legendary imperial steersmen—the Grand Chancellor.

The sort of entity people like us were supposed to avoid by several kingdoms' worth of distance. Then the man seated at the center—Varein Eckhaus III—finally spoke.

"There's no need to be so tense," he said.

"I simply wished to properly meet these promising young people." I nearly looked around to see if he was addressing someone buried beneath the floorboards. In a hall engineered to compress your sense of self-worth before you'd taken three steps, following thousand-pace protocols and halberd demonstrations, delivering there's no need to be tense produced roughly the psychological effect of patting someone's shoulder at the foot of a guillotine while saying don't worry, it's quick. Very comforting.

Please never comfort me again.

"Cedric Rosa," the king said.

"Which one is he?"

"I am." Before I'd finished speaking, the Chancellor beside the throne cut in:"You may stand to answer." Not the king's voice. Varein himself sounded measured—the steady cadence of an ordinary middle-aged man who'd never needed to raise his voice. But this voice carried the particular authority of someone accustomed to instant compliance, not through volume but through the simple weight of established reality. I stood and finally got a proper look at the king. Honestly? My first impression was surprisingly mundane.

Not because he wasn't dangerous. Because he looked so thoroughly ordinary. The kind of well-fed, well-rested middle-aged uncle you might pass on the street without a second glance. Someone you'd assume owned a comfortable business and slept soundly. Except he was currently sitting on that throne with an iron crown on his head, which transformed him from ordinary man to the empire, wearing a face. The cognitive dissonance was genuinely unsettling.

Like looking at an unremarkable blade while knowing the entire continent agreed it had taken heads before. Varein III regarded me, his tone mild.

"You saved Erina," he said.

"That debt is recorded. The empire has already lost two princes—had we failed to protect our final heir as well, the consequences would have been beyond reckoning." I inclined my head appropriately, while a different thought drifted through my mind: If you were that terrified of losing her, why send her to the middle of nowhere in the first place? Obviously, I would sooner donate my skull to the palace's architectural collection than voice that sentiment. The king's gaze shifted slightly.

"There is also the matter of Saltkeep," he said.

"You prevented what might have become a significantly larger uprising." From my peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of Olivia. She sat without movement, expression unchanged by a single degree—as though he weren't discussing her family's territory or her father's death, but merely reading aloud from a document she'd already reviewed and filed. I drew a breath. Better to address this directly.

"Your Majesty." I lowered my head.

"Permission to speak." Something like interest flickered in his expression.

"Oh?" he said.

"Speak." If I didn't say it now, someone else would finish cementing the treason charges against Olivia's father. Once that kind of verdict hardened, overturning it became harder than excavating a sealed tomb.

"Duke Eisenberg was not a rebel," I said.

"He was a victim." Several sets of eyes descended on me simultaneously. Good. At least that had landed. I continued.

"He was corrupted by an abyssal parasitic organism. That drove him to madness, mutation, and loss of control. The chaos at Saltkeep didn't originate from treasonous intent—it originated from that creature." I presented the sealed jar we'd brought. An attendant stepped forward, accepted it, but didn't approach the throne directly. Instead, he diverted to Gales. Sensible protocol. If the container held a curse, toxic vapor, or something with one last bite left in it, the first casualty could not be the king.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Gales received it with unshakeable composure. He didn't touch the lid directly—he drew a short blade and used the tip to ease the seal open with methodical precision. The next moment, the malformed head was exposed. Thoroughly dead. Thoroughly grotesque.

The face barely resembled anything human anymore—flesh simultaneously swollen and collapsed, the mouth stretched into something that might once have been a grin and now only suggested fundamental wrongness. The eye sockets had caved partially inward. Even the skull's contours looked dislocated, as though something had tried to burst outward from within and nearly succeeded. Anyone insisting this represented normal human development clearly needed to reassess their social circles. The entire hall went silent.

Even the Chancellor—whose expression generally appeared to be running continuous valuations—paused for half a heartbeat. Varein III examined it briefly, apparently decided this didn't enhance his throne room's aesthetic, and waved dismissively.

"Remove it." The attendant whisked away the preserved abomination with the reverence typically reserved for sacred relics. Standing there, I felt quietly grateful I hadn't eaten a heavier breakfast. The king leaned back, appearing to mentally recalibrate the entire situation, then spoke evenly:"In that case, Saltkeep territory shall remain under Eisenberg inheritance." His gaze moved.

"The current sole heir being—" Olivia rose before he could finish, the movement so clean it was obvious she'd been prepared for this precise moment.

"I am, Your Majesty." She inclined her head with measured grace, her voice pitched to carry perfectly through the hall.

"Olivia von Eisenberg." For one instant, I felt genuine sympathy for the assembled court officials. Because they were almost certainly thinking: Excellent. The old man dies and is replaced by someone infinitely more difficult to manage. Varein III nodded, his tone brisk.

"Very well. The territory remains with your house." Simple words. But once spoken, they meant—at minimum, in name—that House Eisenberg had not been cleanly excised, and Saltkeep had not been carved up for redistribution. That wasn't merely acceptable. That was exactly what was needed. In my peripheral vision, I caught Olivia settling back into her seat. Her fingertips drew inward once—a small, controlled contraction. Just once. Her face remained unchanged, her composure intact.

But I knew what that single movement cost her, and what it meant. At that moment, the Chancellor opened his ledger, scanned briefly, then leaned to murmur something beside the king's ear. Varein III listened, then looked toward us.

"Lady von Rosenberg." I blinked, then realized he meant Alvira. She was on her feet before I'd processed it fully, the motion sharp and automatic, like someone had pulled a cord attached to her spine. But her face—usually carrying its permanent edge—was different now. Not cold. Compressed. The expression of someone using every available resource to hold something massive down. The king looked at her, his tone carrying less official distance now, something harder to categorize threading beneath it.

"Your contributions this time were considerable," he said.

"Unfortunately, existing treaties with the Elven Kingdom prevent me from offering you any direct imperial reward." I heard that and silently cursed on her behalf. Classic structure: praise followed immediately by the blade. But then Varein III raised his hand. An attendant stepped forward immediately, carrying a slender wooden case, descending with measured steps and presenting it to Alvira.

"This is not from the empire," the king said.

"It is entrusted to me by the Elven King." Alvira's eyelashes trembled. Barely perceptibly.

"The Oak Knight's Insignia," Varein III declared.

"From this day forward, you are an Elven Ranger." No one in the hall made a sound. But I could feel it—Alvira going completely still beside me. Not from shock. From the particular paralysis of someone who had compressed their emotions to the absolute floor, only to be struck without warning by something that landed exactly where it was aimed. She received the case with both hands. Her fingertips were trembling. Very slightly. But I saw it.

That face of hers—the one that usually looked like it was selecting which cutting remark to deploy—was barely maintaining its shape. The rims of her eyes had gone faintly red, like she was one breath away from something she would never, under any other circumstances, allow to happen in a room full of people. I had known her for a considerable time. This was the first moment I had ever genuinely thought she might cry. She lowered her head, her voice gone slightly rough.

"… Thank you, Your Majesty." I made a deliberate point of looking elsewhere. Because I understood with absolute clarity that if anyone in this room allowed even a flicker of oh, are you about to cry? to cross their face, Alvira would locate them after the audience concluded, deal with them thoroughly, and then decide at her leisure whether to resume crying. Self-preservation, properly applied. The king moved down his list.

What followed transformed gradually from something resembling a grand imperial ceremony into something resembling a department head clearing his backlog of year-end bonuses for employees he'd nearly forgotten about. Someone received gold ornaments. Someone received a commemorative medallion. Someone received a tax exemption certificate—practical, certainly, but not exactly the sweeping romantic gesture one expects from a monarch.

Imperial commendations, it turned out, felt remarkably similar to payroll processing once you were actually present for one. Then the Chancellor turned to the next page. Varein III looked at the name written there and paused. Not for long. But in this room, a king pausing for half a breath was sufficient time to mentally draft final wishes. He said quietly:"Jessi…" The pickpocket beside me—who would cheerfully lift from a corpse's pocket without breaking stride—went visibly rigid.

If Alvira had been close to tears moments ago, Jessi was currently close to cardiac arrest. The king checked the ledger again, as though verifying he hadn't misread.

"Jessi… Just Jessi…" He repeated it once, in that same quiet, measured tone. And I began giving serious consideration to a specific question on her behalf: If she fainted dead away right here in front of the throne—would that constitute a breach of imperial etiquette? Varein III looked directly at Jessi. I want to be clear: it wasn't a particularly threatening look. That was precisely the problem. When a king slams his fist and roars, at least you know what shape the danger takes.

But he was simply looking at her—calm, unhurried, like a person studying a dish that had just been served before deciding whether to pick up the knife. That was infinitely worse. Because you couldn't even predict the angle of your own execution. Then he spoke.

"What if…" Varein III asked with deliberate slowness, "I wished to make you a noble?" For one suspended moment, I genuinely wondered if kneeling this long had starved my brain of blood and produced a hallucination specifically designed to mock common sense. It wasn't just me. The entire hall took that sentence like a slap across the face. First: absolute silence. Then the assembled nobility—those who had been standing and sitting in careful poses of disinterested observation—collectively lost their composure.

The resulting murmur was precisely calibrated: not loud enough to cost anyone their head, but exactly loud enough to ensure we heard every syllable. That particular mastery of volume was the most repugnant thing about aristocratic society. I didn't need to strain to catch their meaning. Not pessimism on my part. Not inability to be happy for others. Just clear-eyed assessment of how this world actually operated. A pickpocket whose origins sat below common birth, suddenly elevated to imperial nobility? Please.

That narrative existed exclusively in the repertoire of third-rate poets, requiring two cups of cheap wine and a circle of weeping peasants around a campfire to be even remotely tolerable. Transport it to the royal capital and it stopped being a story—it became after-dinner entertainment. And this was the throne room. Even jokes required verified pedigree before they could speak here. I looked at Jessi.

Her eyes were very wide, her entire body rigid, wearing the expression of someone who had just been informed that tomorrow the sun would rise in the west—and that this decision had been approved by the Interior Ministry, filed by the military, and personally countersigned by the Grand Chancellor. The near-fainting from moments before had resolved itself. What remained was different: her soul was present, but stubbornly refusing to acknowledge reality. I sighed internally. Jessi, Jessi.

That mouth of yours—the one that could dispatch three people to confession with a single sentence, that could con and provoke its way through any situation—and now, when an emperor drops one sentence on you, you freeze like a cat hit with a stick? Varein III showed no inclination to rush her. He simply sat there and waited. Which was infinitely worse. A king didn't need to interrogate or pressure. He only needed to be willing to wait, and the people below would frighten themselves half to death in the silence.

The empire had survived this long largely because it had perfected the art of letting people tighten their own nooses. Finally, Jessi raised her head.

"I apologize, Your Majesty." Her voice was still dry but considerably steadier.

"I must respectfully decline." My eyelid twitched. Decline? She was actually declining? This was something the emperor had personally offered. Even if it came wrapped in poison, tied with rope, and surrounded by nobles waiting for her to fall—it was still from the emperor. Anyone else would have been rehearsing their gratitude speech before the words finished echoing. Instead, she couldn't even be bothered to perform token overwhelmed honor. She simply handed it back, clean and direct.

Varein III looked mildly surprised, though his expression remained economical.

"Oh?" he asked with the same mild tone.

"Would you care to explain your reasoning?" Almost involuntarily, I turned to look at her. And caught her gaze directly. She looked at me, the corner of her mouth pulling upward.

"Heh." My scalp went cold. I knew that expression. I knew it intimately. That wasn't conscience. That wasn't composure under pressure. That was the specific preview that appeared whenever she was about to cause measurable damage to everyone around her—the look of someone who, while jumping into a river, remembers to grab a companion's sleeve first, just to ensure the journey downstream isn't lonely. Every alarm in my head fired simultaneously. Wait.

She wouldn't—"Your Majesty," Jessi said, head raised, voice carrying a calm that had no business being that steady, "I already belong to young master Cedric." My vision went dark for a genuine moment. Not metaphorically. I very nearly blacked out. Because that sentence, once it entered an aristocratic ear, was incapable of producing any clean interpretation. They wouldn't consider follower, retainer, dependent, or any other perfectly reasonable meaning.

For these silk-clad predators, exactly one interpretation existed—the most debased, most vivid, most tavern-gossip-worthy version available. Naturally. The balconies erupted immediately in laughter and whispers that no amount of decorum could suppress.

"Surely not—the Rosa boy?"

"I heard he's illegitimate…"

"Ah, that explains it."

"Youth truly is something."

"How adventurous."

"No wonder she's always nearby…"

"Not very selective, is he."

"Young blood and all that—one can almost forgive it."

"In front of the throne, though."

"Which is precisely what makes it delicious." I knelt there listening to the assembled nobility carve my reputation into thin slices and pass them around like charcuterie, and found myself experiencing profound nostalgia for the gallows at Hemlock Town. At least that mechanism was efficient—rope on, drop, done. The capital's nobility operated differently. They preferred to strip you first, then savor the process at their leisure. I ground my teeth and forced out a sentence.

"I should have left you in Hemlock Town and let them hang you." Jessi heard me. She didn't turn around. Her shoulders moved—just slightly. I knew exactly what that was. She was suppressing laughter.