Count Hodeki, having most cordially invited Count Gray to his castle, began laying out every manner of splendid and extravagant banquet, as though he had waited his entire life for this very moment.
The place, which had originally been a modest castle used by the lord of this region, was plastered over with the vulgar wealth Hodeki had wrung from the blood and sweat of his subjects.
Rare vintage wines, the kind one might only see in the finest banquet halls of the imperial capital, were poured without end into ornately wrought silver cups, while beautiful dancing girls clad in thin silk garments exuded a dizzying fragrance as they circled the count with seductive movements.
Upon the long mahogany table, an endless procession of delicacies from land and sea, richly seasoned with southern spices, was set out.
“Your Excellency, how greatly you must have suffered to come all this long way to such a humble place! If even the lowly wine of this backwater can moisten Your Excellency’s noble throat, it would be an honor to my house, I, Hodeki, could scarcely deserve.”
Count Hodeki rubbed his hands together and bent at the waist to an almost servile degree, pouring out words laced with flattery.
His two eyes, gleaming with greed, followed Count Gray’s every movement.
It was plain to see his shallow scheme: to somehow catch the eye of Count Gray, the greatest power in the empire and the emperor’s chief aide, and thereby lay the groundwork to escape this wretched frontier and enter the central political arena.
“Now, please look this way. These girls here were specially selected by me from all across the south in order to serve Your Excellency…”
But Count Gray did not spare even a single glance for the lavish feast, nor for the dancing girls who drew near, brushing against his skin.
He sat amid the heat rising from the delicacies on the table like a shard of ice, cold and unmoving.
He watched Hodeki’s unsightly antics with eyes gone cold, then set the silver cup in his hand down on the table with a sharp clack!
“…Enough, Count Hodeki.”
His voice was not loud, but the chill, weighty killing intent contained within it froze the atmosphere of the banquet hall in an instant.
The hands of the musicians who had been playing stiffened, and the dancing girls turned pale as they backed away.
Even Hodeki’s lips, which had been spattering saliva as he flattered without pause, snapped shut.
“I did not take the trouble to come all this way with my precious time merely to receive your crude and vulgar hospitality. Delicacies, women—such things have not a shred of value to me, so remove them from my sight at once. There is something else I wish to hear from you.”
Count Gray leaned his upper body slightly forward and fixed Hodeki with a gaze as sharp as an eagle about to descend upon a rat.
Faced with the overwhelming presence of a man of supreme power, Hodeki gulped down dryly and forced a smile.
“O-of course, Your Excellency. If there is anything you desire…”
“I will ask you this. By any chance…”
Count Gray pronounced each word clearly, as though chewing and spitting out lumps of iron.
“Have you ever heard the name Ian Harper?”
The moment that name scattered into the air, Count Hodeki’s tense shoulders flinched and stiffened.
His pupils shook wildly, flashing with a strange light. For a brief moment, a suffocating silence seemed to fall, and then Hodeki’s lips twisted upward grotesquely.
“…Pfft.”
The servility vanished without a trace, and an evil, damp laugh boiled up from deep in his belly.
“Heehee, heeheeheehee…! Hahahahaha!”
Hodeki clutched his stomach and shook his shoulders, laughing madly as though he had just heard the most satisfying and amusing joke of his life.
As that bizarre, unpleasant laughter echoed chillingly through the spacious banquet hall, Count Gray’s brow furrowed deeply.
“Your Excellency, surely… heehee! Surely you did not bring your lofty person all the way to this stinking backwater over that one wretch? Over nothing else but the name Ian Harper?!”
“Answer the question. I believe I warned you that I did not come here to listen to your repulsive laughter.”
At Count Gray’s stern warning, Hodeki wiped the tears gathered at the corners of his eyes with his sleeve and forcibly stifled his laughter.
Yet triumph and greedy madness still burned vividly in his eyes.
He had instinctively realized that the card he had happened to seize possessed enough tremendous value to bring the chief aide of the imperial family of the Great Empire all the way to this frontier.
Hodeki leaned close over the table and made an offer in a secretive voice.
“Very well. If Your Excellency desires it so desperately, I shall offer up every bit of the perfect and fatal truth I hold. From that wretch’s filthy roots to the full story of every ugly play those Sterling royal scum staged against the empire. However, Your Excellency, there is no such thing as free in this world, is there?”
“…What is it you want?”
“First, a firm guarantee of my personal safety. The moment I open this mouth, those Sterling Kingdom bastards will try to take my head. And second…”
Hodeki flicked his tongue like a snake.
“When I suitably dispose of this territory and go up to the capital, please promise me, with certainty, a position among the central officials of the imperial court—even the smallest minor post will do. I believe the time has come to end this life of rotting away in this wretched backwater, bound by bloodline.”
Realizing by instinct that this cunning man was firmly gripping the leash of a tremendous truth that could shake the very foundations of the empire, Count Gray showed not a moment’s hesitation.
If it was to protect the authority of the Great Empire and the safety of the imperial family, granting one paltry request from a rotten noble like this was easier than eating cold porridge.
“Very well. I promise upon the name and honor of Gray, chief aide to the imperial family of the Great Empire.”
There was not the slightest tremor in the count’s voice.
“If the truth you speak is worth that much, I shall not only ensure that your title as an imperial count is maintained permanently, but also see to it that you receive a suitable reward and position within the imperial court. I will guarantee it. So stop wasting time and speak.”
Once Count Gray’s firm guarantee had been given, a broad smile, almost bursting with greed, finally spread across Count Hodeki’s face.
He drained the wine cup in his hand in a single gulp, then lowered his voice to the floor as though whispering the sweetest and cruelest secret in the world.
“That man who is now being treated like a cherished prince in the heart of the imperial capital, perfectly deceiving His Great Majesty the Emperor and His Highness the Crown Prince. I speak of Ian Sterling…”
Hodeki narrowed his eyes as if he were mad with delight at how great a bloody storm the name dangling from the tip of his lips would bring.
“Your Excellency. That bastard is no noble prince, no illegitimate child raised on scraps and wary glances, no anything of the sort. He is merely Ian Harper, from that barren territory at the very bottom that I bought up for a pittance—the own younger brother of the current Baron Harper.”
Count Gray’s breath caught as though it had stopped.
“Those cowards of the Sterling royal family were so terrified of the empire’s fearsome blade that they could not bear to send their real bloodline to certain death, so they played a clever little trick. They dared to disguise one clever, self-sacrificing member of the Harper family, a house that had been close to the royal family for generations, as Sterling’s First Prince and throw him to the Great Empire!”
The truth that burst from Hodeki’s mouth possessed a destructive force far beyond even the worst scenario Count Gray had envisioned in his mind.
He had thought, at most, that they had played some trick by sending a collateral royal.
To think he had not been royalty at all.
A situation that could have ended with no more than a reprimand to the king of Sterling, that foolish king had turned into treason.
“Yes, Your Excellency. The imperial family of the Great Empire is presently being played for fools by the son of some rootless baron’s house from a rural backwater. The entire Sterling royal family laughed at His Great Majesty the Emperor as a fool and sent him a trashy fake prince!”
It was the moment when every piece of the puzzle fit together with horrifying perfection.
Why the name Harper had remained on the roster, why his appearance had differed from the other Sterling royals from the start, and why he had been so quick-witted and intelligent.
Count Gray’s complexion sank with a terrifying coldness like midwinter frost.
An unprecedented fraud that had insulted the emperor and deceived the empire—and Ian, the fake prince standing at the center of it all, gaining the crown prince’s trust and hovering at the side of the empire’s Second Princess.
A dreadful silence, like the eve of a storm, settled heavily between Count Hodeki, laughing like a madman, and Count Gray, frozen in place.