Chương 88: 36-1.Pet Knight

I followed Olivia downstairs to find that the irritating laughter from outside hadn't quite finished dissipating. Julian remained positioned in front of the inn entrance with the confident ease of a man entirely certain no one would dare ask him to leave. His cloak hung with practiced perfection. One hand rested casually on his sword hilt — the entire posture arranged less for readiness than for the benefit of anyone passing on the street.

The Wave Garrison men flanked him on both sides, their expressions considerably sourer after having their sword hands acquainted with Kuroga's staff, yet unable to retaliate openly. They could only wear their aggression like poorly fitted masks, hoping it would suffice. Erina stood at the top of the entrance steps, her expression glacial. She hadn't retreated. She hadn't moved toward their carriage either.

That simple refusal to yield ground was already enough to make Julian's position look considerably less dignified than intended. Olivia descended without haste. But the moment she stepped outside, the atmosphere — which had been sliding steadily toward the kind of street brawl that ends with broken furniture — suddenly arrested itself. She wasn't dressed ostentatiously today; if anything, her choices were understated.

But that understatement had the quality of a carefully honed scabbard: unremarkable until the moment it mattered, at which point everyone present instinctively recognized that this was not someone to be casually dismissed. Julian saw her, and his gaze caught. Just for a heartbeat. But I noticed.

Olivia stopped half a step in front of Erina, offered the Princess a slight, composed curtsey, then turned to regard Julian with the particular attention of someone who had just noticed a disturbance in an otherwise orderly room.

"Was it you creating this commotion just now?" Her voice wasn't raised, but every word carried with crystalline clarity. Not accusatory. Not angry. She simply placed the word commotion in front of him with perfect composure. And precisely because the delivery was so measured, that word landed like an open-handed slap. Julian's smile held steady.

"If we have caused any disruption, the fault is entirely mine." He offered a slight bow, the gesture still infuriatingly flawless.

"However, we are here under orders to escort Her Highness back to the Capital, and the matter admits of some urgency."

"Under whose orders?" Clean. Direct. No preamble. Julian's smile thinned by one degree.

"The orders of Cliff Fort, naturally."

"Your authorization documents?" She asked again, without pause. Even I nearly turned to look at her. Julian clearly hadn't expected her to give him no breathing room whatsoever. The composure he'd been wearing finally developed its first visible crack.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I asked for your authorization documents," Olivia said, regarding him with the same tone she might use to inquire about the weather.

"If you are here under formal orders to escort Her Royal Highness, you ought to have a dispatch order, an official seal, or at minimum some form of documentation that reasonable people could verify. Surely the dignity of the Capital and Cliff Fort does not rest entirely upon your word alone?" Standing slightly behind her, I found my desire to draw steel fading considerably.

Because I was discovering that watching someone be methodically stripped of their manufactured dignity, one precisely delivered sentence at a time, was remarkably satisfying in its own right. Julian's gaze moved across Olivia's face with the particular quality of someone recalibrating an assessment.

"You are perhaps overly cautious, Miss." His smile adjusted itself for the new situation.

"Does verifying Her Highness's identity truly require me to brandish official documents in the middle of a public street?"

"It does, in fact." Not a heartbeat of hesitation.

"Particularly after your men have already positioned themselves around Her Highness at the entrance to this establishment in what any reasonable observer would describe as something considerably less than a courteous invitation." The expressions on several Wave Garrison faces shifted immediately. The pedestrians who had been watching from a cautious distance seemed to finally process what they were witnessing, their attention sharpening and gathering toward our position.

I understood then why Olivia had kept her voice so precisely calibrated from the first word. She wasn't only speaking to Julian. She was establishing the narrative for everyone within earshot. Once the framing was set — who was escorting, who was pressuring, who had conducted themselves properly and who had not — the interpretation of everything that followed would no longer be Julian's to control. Julian appeared to reach the same conclusion. His smile became considerably more controlled.

"My dear Miss—""Olivia von Eisenberg." She supplied it without embellishment. No theatrical emphasis, no particular weight placed on the syllables. But the moment the name left her lips, something shifted unmistakably in Julian's expression. He had presumably arrived expecting some frontier lord's companion or decorative travel partner. He was now discovering the error in that calculation.

"Lady Eisenberg." His tone modulated to something noticeably more careful.

"Then you understand even better why Her Highness ought not remain exposed in public any longer than necessary."

"That concern requires no reminder from you," Olivia replied with perfect composure.

"What genuinely perplexes me is this: if you are aware she should not remain exposed, why did you not present your documents first and extend a proper formal invitation? Why instead arrive with men who cannot even manage their own swords, position them at a public inn entrance, and thereby give bystanders the impression that this district has descended to the level of Angel City's outer streets?" I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.

Not because the line was inherently amusing, but because I was watching the same men who had turned green when I mentioned Angel City earlier now be stepped on again — this time with aristocratic precision — and find themselves entirely unable to respond. Julian's expression finally showed something other than practiced ease. Though he maintained the surface courtesy.

"Your words are rather severe. My men are here to ensure Her Highness's safety, not to cause her distress."

"Safety?" Olivia repeated the word softly. She smiled for the first time — thinly, precisely, like the first layer of ice forming on still water.

"If this is what safety looks like under the Capital's standards, then those standards are considerably more rustic than I had been led to believe." Even I felt a chill at the back of my neck. She wasn't just calling Julian uncouth. She was using the entire Capital's reputation as a weight to press him down with. If Julian accepted the framing, he was acknowledging that his conduct represented the Capital's standards. If he rejected it, he had to admit the fault was his own. Both paths led somewhere unflattering.

He held his silence for two beats before forcing the smile back into place.

"Lady Eisenberg has quite the gift for words."

"You flatter me," Olivia said, her tone unchanged.

"Though I am considerably more concerned with procedure than with eloquence. Her Highness is at present in our company — safe, lucid, and has expressed no desire to depart with you immediately. If you are genuinely here to escort rather than to compel, then kindly present the appropriate documentation first." Erina chose that exact moment to speak.

"I will not accompany anyone who cannot produce proper dispatch orders." Clean. Final. Delivered without so much as a glance in Julian's direction. A perfectly placed finishing stroke. The tension that had been sitting in my chest since morning finally eased by a fraction. Julian's gaze moved between Erina and Olivia, and this time the cultivated warmth was visibly struggling to maintain its shape.

"Your Highness, I must ask that you not make this more difficult than necessary."

"You are the one creating difficulty," Erina said coldly.

"Not I." I caught the motion of one Wave Garrison man behind Julian starting to step forward — then Julian's raised hand cut the motion short. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. The performance was finally over.

"Very well." He looked at Olivia, his voice dropping from its earlier register.

"If documentation is what you require, I shall have it retrieved."

"Not retrieved," Olivia said. His brow furrowed.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you ought to retrieve it yourself," she said, regarding him with perfect calm.

"Since it was you and your men who created this misunderstanding at the inn entrance today, if what eventually arrives is something that fails basic verification, we will at least know clearly whether our next step should be to close the door or contact the local authorities." I turned my head and coughed once. Not from discomfort. Because I was genuinely at risk of laughing. Contact the authorities.

Everyone present understood that in terms of rank and standing, Julian had almost certainly never had anyone threaten to report him to the authorities in the same tone one might use to describe returning a defective purchase. From Olivia's mouth, it sounded like the most natural thing in the world. Julian stared at her, and I watched the moment he understood — clearly, finally — that if he pushed any harder, the only reputation in danger was his own. His men weren't clean enough.

His approach hadn't been formal enough. The Princess herself was refusing to cooperate. If he resorted to force and word spread, the story wouldn't be escort party meets minor resistance. It would be Wave Garrison surrounds Princess at public inn without authorization. He might want to overturn the table. But he'd be the first thing crushed underneath it. After a moment, he exhaled slowly and rearranged his expression.

"Very well." The smile returned, but it had lost whatever had made it easy before.

"Since your party insists on proper procedure, I shall conduct myself accordingly. I will return shortly with the requisite documentation." Olivia inclined her head with composed grace.

"We shall await you." Julian didn't leave immediately. He looked at me once more — and this time there was nothing courteous about it. Just clear, sharp malice. He had filed my face away somewhere specific. But he said nothing further. He simply turned and raised one hand.

"Move out." The Wave Garrison men followed, expressions uniformly dissatisfied. One of them shot a venomous glare at Kuroga as he passed. Kuroga, demonstrating admirable composure, gave his staff a casual spin, flicked his tail once in a manner that clearly communicated go ahead, then, and stared back until the man thought better of it. Julian's barked command from down the street ended any remaining hesitation.

I stood on the entrance steps and watched until their backs disappeared around the corner before finally releasing the breath I'd been managing.

"... I genuinely almost cut him down." Olivia didn't even turn her head.

"I know." She said it with such perfect certainty — as though my homicidal impulse had simply been another variable in her calculations. Erina stood nearby, the rigid composure she'd maintained for the crowd finally allowing itself to relax slightly. Her expression, however, remained grim. I looked from the empty street corner to Olivia's profile, and felt something almost absurd settle over me. In Angel City, I had carved a path through problems with steel and stubbornness.

Here, what had actually forced an entire group to retreat was a sequence of sentences, each one colder than the last, delivered under the banner of proper procedure. And the most absurd part was this: I found it more satisfying than cutting anyone down would have been. Olivia finally turned her head slightly and met my eyes.

"Don't celebrate yet, Cedric."

"Do I look like I'm celebrating?"

"No," she said evenly.

"You look like you're considering whether to go after him and add one more cut." I found I had no adequate rebuttal. She adjusted her gloves with meticulous care, her tone carrying the same quality as someone requesting an additional course at dinner.

"He has withdrawn temporarily. He has not conceded," she said.

"Now — back inside. Before he returns with both paperwork and fresh complications, we need to prepare." Only after Julian's footsteps had completely faded from the street did I follow Olivia back into the inn. The moment the door closed, it felt as though that cloying atmosphere of performed respectability had been shut out with it. I dropped the rolled Capital map onto the table and only then realized my palm was damp with sweat.

Erina came in behind us, her expression still controlled, though the particular tension she'd been maintaining for the public had finally begun to ease. Olivia didn't sit immediately. She checked the door, then the window, before speaking with quiet authority.

"Lucas — inspect the horses again. Top up water and feed. Matthews — determine whether we can reach Cliff Fort's outer perimeter before nightfall. Jessi — watch the street. If Lord Julian — or whatever title he claims — returns with documents, I want advance notice."

"Yeah, yeah." Jessi's tone suggested complaint about the inconvenience, but she was already at the window before the words finished leaving her mouth. Matthews nodded once and headed for the door.

"Wait." Erina's voice cut in. She stood beside the table, fingertips pressing lightly into her skirt fabric — the physical gesture of someone forcing their emotions back into proper alignment.

"The Wave Garrison isn't a formal Imperial Guard unit, but they are on the Capital's official roster," she said.

"If they dared approach first, it means at least one faction already knows I'm in Raddale. The question isn't how they arrived so quickly. It's who authorized them to move so quickly." Olivia finally settled into her seat and looked up at her.

"You recognize this Julian?" Erina frowned slightly.

"I've encountered him twice at court. He's not a significant figure, but he has considerable skill at making himself agreeable. Particularly to noblewomen who are dissatisfied with their husbands and appreciate well-arranged faces." I nearly choked. Apparently I wasn't the only one who had pegged him as someone's decorative acquisition. Olivia simply nodded.

"That confirms it." I looked at her.

"Confirms what?" She removed her gloves and placed them with deliberate precision on the table.

"He wasn't here to retrieve anyone," she said.

"Or at least — not primarily."

"That much was obvious," I said, frowning.

"The man was clearly looking for a confrontation."

"The confrontation was merely the surface," Olivia said, raising her eyes to mine.

"His actual objective was assessment: who speaks on Her Highness's behalf, who loses composure first, and whether our party escorting the Princess to the Capital's threshold represents desperate people seeking rescue — or people who have other resources to rely on." I paused. When she laid it out like that, every irritating detail that had felt wrong suddenly clicked into place. Julian had never been in a hurry to physically drag anyone anywhere.

He'd let his subordinates create the provocation first — forcing me to react, forcing Erina to declare her position — and only then stepped in at the most strategically advantageous moment, as though arriving specifically to restore civility to a situation his own people had created. If Olivia hadn't intervened, if I had actually drawn steel at the entrance, the version of events reaching the Capital wouldn't have been Princess subjected to improper pressure.

It would have been rude frontier lordling draws weapon in public, holds Princess hostage, shows contempt for Capital forces. The residual heat in my spine went cold.

"He was taking our measure," I said quietly.

"For someone else."

"Precisely," Olivia said.

"And at very little cost. If we had lost our composure, they gained intelligence. If we held steady, they still returned with a useful assessment." Erina's expression darkened.

"Which means there is more than one faction waiting for me at the fortress."

"There was never going to be only one," Olivia said with the particular composure that made even grim observations sound like statements of settled fact.

"Her Highness arriving safely is one piece of intelligence. Who she arrives with is another. Who comes to meet her first, and who fails to produce proper documentation — that is a third." She tapped the table once with one fingertip.

"And the most troublesome aspect is that all three pieces can be used to contradict one another." I exhaled slowly, feeling the beginning of a headache. Angel City had been filthy, but honestly so. When someone wanted you dead, they showed you the knife first. The complications at the Capital's edge operated differently. They smiled first. They bowed first. They spoke with impeccable grace — and only then slipped the noose around your neck while you were distracted by the performance.

Erina was quiet for a long moment before asking:"What do we do now?" Olivia looked at her with aristocratic certainty.

"We don't wait," she said.

"If he returns with legitimate documents, we may examine them — but that doesn't obligate us to hand you over. More importantly, sitting here waiting for his second attempt serves no purpose. Raddale is secure enough, but it's not a place to linger. Cliff Fort is one day's travel. We leave today." No one in the room objected. Because everyone knew she was right. Kuroga was still standing near the door, leaning on his short staff, the tip of his tail swaying in small, irregular movements.

That particular combination of posture and nervous energy practically announced that he had something to say, and that it probably wasn't something anyone would enjoy hearing. I looked at him.

"You have something else?" Kuroga cleared his throat.

"I do," he said.

"And I suspect that if I don't say it now, and you discover it later, at least one of you will want to test the tensile strength of whatever new rope you acquire — using my neck as the experimental subject." Jessi, who had been maintaining her watch at the window, immediately turned around.

"You're finally going to come clean?" Kuroga's tail went still for a moment, as though even it recognized this wasn't a comfortable conversational transition.

"I want to emphasize that I have not been deliberately deceiving you throughout our journey," he said with the careful precision of someone defusing something volatile.

"It's simply that... this particular detail is not something one announces casually in mixed company."

"The point," I said. He drew a breath like a man walking toward his own execution.

"I am a Wandering Battle-Monk." The room went completely silent. This time, even I was genuinely stunned. A Wandering Battle-Monk. I looked at him — this individual who had radiated the permanent aura of someone perpetually on the verge of liberating half a bag of dried meat from the nearest market stall — and my mind immediately connected that image to those two staff strikes outside. The precision. The angles.

The clean, unhesitating efficiency that had numbed two sword hands without drawing attention until it was already accomplished. I hadn't been imagining things. He actually knew what he was doing. And not just casually. A heartbeat later, Jessi exploded.

"You're what?" She pushed off the windowsill completely, eyes narrowing to dangerous slits.

"Say that again." Kuroga's throat bobbed.

"... Wandering Battle-Monk."

"That's complete rubbish." Jessi pointed straight at him, the fire in her voice burning considerably hotter than mine had at the inn entrance.

"If you're a Wandering Battle-Monk, then what exactly have you been doing this entire journey? Playing dead fish? Practicing your sickly chicken routine? Back outside Angel City when those thugs showed up, what was that performance where you looked ready to wet yourself?"

"That was... half genuine."

"Which half?"

"The half where I really didn't want the trouble." I nearly lost control of my expression. Jessi clearly found absolutely nothing amusing about any of this. She advanced two steps, wearing the look of someone who wanted to grab Kuroga by his scaly snout and shake him until something useful fell out.

"Of course," she said through gritted teeth.

"No wonder you were always just right. Just slow enough. Just clumsy enough. Just lucky enough to get pushed aside without actually getting hurt. You were pulling your punches the entire damn time, weren't you?" Kuroga's expression achieved catastrophic levels of awkwardness.

"Not the entire time—""And you played along with it." She cut him off without ceremony.

"You played along with all of us. Made me think you were genuinely nothing more than some street lizard who knew the routes, read the weather, and tucked his tail whenever anything remotely dangerous showed up!" Kuroga offered weakly:"I really am quite good at finding routes..."

"Shut it. That's exactly what's making me furious right now." Watching Jessi stand there with the specific outrage of someone who had just discovered they'd been the straight man in someone else's comedy routine for an entire journey, I finally understood why she was this angry. It wasn't that Kuroga could fight. It was that this particular reptile could fight, and had spent every moment of our travels convincing us — very convincingly — that he was the ultimate disposable extra.

He'd sold the performance so completely that even I had never questioned it, simply filing him away as fast-talking grey-market guide with excellent survival instincts and leaving it there. Matthews, who had been standing quietly to one side, finally spoke.

"That explains your grip on the staff." Kuroga immediately turned to look at him.

"What do you mean, explains my grip?"

"You held it like you were waiting for someone else to move first," Matthews said with characteristic directness.

"Not just defensive positioning. I noticed it earlier. Didn't see much point in mentioning it." Kuroga's tail drooped all the way to the floor.

"Why does everyone in this group see more than they say..."

"Because not everyone enjoys performing as much as you do," Jessi said with a smile that could have etched glass. Lucas returned from outside at that moment, caught the tail end of the conversation, paused, and looked at Kuroga with mild interest.

"You're a Battle-Monk?"

"... Yes."

"Ah." Lucas nodded with the untroubled expression of someone confirming a minor suspicion.

"Then I wasn't imagining things earlier. Your back trouble when you were moving those crates — that was fabricated." Kuroga's eyes went wide.

"That time was half genuine!"

"You've used that exact excuse twice now," I pointed out. For a moment, Kuroga genuinely looked like he wanted to find the nearest crack in the floorboards and disappear into it permanently. Olivia had been observing this entire exchange with composed silence. Only now did she speak, her voice carrying that particular quality of aristocratic authority.