Chapter 62

Chapter 62

After staring blankly for a moment, he soon broke into a snicker.

“Being a war hero must be nice. What, are they hoping he’ll open his eyes like a miracle? They make legends for him even when he’s sitting still. The cripple walks and the blind man sees—I’ve only ever read legends like that in scripture.”

There must be quite a few people who missed that bastard. Considering they still insisted on bringing up a man who was supposedly living like a corpse, buried away in the countryside.

“They say they really saw him.”

“They must have seen things.”

“No way. If they had eyes, there’s no mistaking that face—”

His mistress, who had been about to snap back, checked Akenaus’s expression and quickly changed her tone.

“……Rather, I mean, he’s so well known publicly. The North was a place where fighting went on the whole time, too. Anyway, they say he stopped by Sielsa. The people who saw him were making a huge fuss about it. They said his face and build were all exactly the same…… Sielsa is close to the border, you know. They were saying maybe he returned to the army and was out scouting.”

“If that were the case, word would have reached my ears first……”

……wouldn’t it?

……would it?

His certainty suddenly vanished.

Hadn’t that series of incidents that happened before also ended with an unpleasant aftertaste? Memories came vividly back to him: soldiers whose faces he didn’t recognize and whose names he didn’t know challenging him to duels regardless of time and place, or firing in a direction where there wasn’t even a target and then offering some excuse that wasn’t even an excuse, saying they had made a mistake while placing bets among themselves.

He really should have chased straight down to Derosa back then.

The one who had stopped him at the time was his father. He had been given a thorough scolding: with Valdemaera already on everyone’s lips because of a fight between blood kin, he was told not to behave any more frivolously, and asked just how far he intended to put a family quarrel on display.

At least there had been a messenger who went back and forth between the main estate and the annex, bringing news and quenching his thirst, but even that man had not been one Akenaus had personally selected. Of course, he had considered sending someone himself. But when the messenger learned of it, he subtly dissuaded him.

After all, he said, if the man had served as a soldier, his instincts would be as sharp as a beast’s; if they needlessly sent several people to stir up the mansion, they might lose even the chance to spy on the situation there altogether.

And so he had continued to hear only indirect news through someone else’s eyes and mouth. Besides, if what Ezekail had lost had been an arm or a leg, that would be one thing—but it was his eyes, wasn’t it? Sight was the most crucial sense for survival. That was why, to some extent, he had let his guard down.

A chill ran down the back of his neck. The taste of the liquor vanished. Even the pleasant haze of drunkenness disappeared.

Akenaus sprang up from his seat.

It seemed he would have to confirm it with his own eyes.

As soon as he returned to the Valdemaera mansion, Akenaus flung open the door to his father’s study and strode in.

Fortunately, the study was empty.

He began by rummaging through the desk. Nearly every piece of news that reached Valdemaera passed over this desk.

Where on this desk would there be a clue?

Akenaus pulled out the document box and overturned it. Fern Valdemaera. All sorts of documents and letters signed in his father’s stern handwriting spilled out in a heap. Akenaus quickly grasped their contents by reading only the first lines and the middle sections. There was no particular news about Ezekail inside the document box.

After noisily yanking open drawer after drawer and swiftly scanning the desk as well as the upper and lower shelves of the bookcases, Akenaus discovered a basket where letters to be burned had been gathered.

Letters that were burned usually fell into one of two categories. They were either utterly useless, or important enough that no evidence could be left behind.

In the bitter winter, a fire was always kept going in the fireplace, so documents were burned and disposed of on the spot. But the cold had not yet reached that point, so they would collect several and burn them all at once.

But news of that bastard was important enough to be classified for burning?

Even as a part of him questioned it, Akenaus diligently unfolded the papers. It was then that an envelope slipped from between the handful of documents he had picked up.

He examined the envelope front and back. With no markings on the outside, the letter looked at first glance like an empty envelope that had been swept in from somewhere by mistake. Akenaus actually thought so, and was about to throw it away as it was.

But the envelope had a subtly thick volume to it.

There was clearly something inside, yet neither the recipient’s name nor the sender’s name was written on the blank envelope.

“Aha. Now this is suspicious.”

Akenaus opened the letter. It was written in an exceedingly elegant hand. So elegant that, before he even looked at the contents, he found himself momentarily captivated.

No matter how he looked at it, it was the handwriting of a well-educated woman.

Then he read the first sentence.

“……What?”

A curse burst out of him on its own.

Surgery? He had gone blind, and surgery was possible? When poison had been used? What had happened? Had that woman botched the job? But he had seen with his own eyes how Ezekail, blinded and only floundering, had fled to the North—could that truly have been possible?

Confusion followed confusion. It seemed he would have to see what reports had come in before this.

Akenaus hurriedly scanned his surroundings, searching for envelopes of the same appearance. But the letter he was looking for was nowhere to be found. It seemed all the previously received letters had been burned, and only this one had somehow remained.

“Damn it.”

There was no way to know what had happened while he had taken his attention off that bastard, but one thing, at least, was certain.

If his sight had truly returned, that bastard would never stay holed up in Derosa.

Lying in wait, surprise attacks, marksmanship.

The moment he recalled the characteristics of the 37th Regiment, which had made Ezekail’s name resound in every direction, a chill swept over him.

“……Ah, damn it.”

He had not even realized he was crumpling the letter in his hand. Shoving it blindly into his pocket, Akenaus looked all around him. In an instant, the view of the lavish mansion, filled without a gap in every corner, seemed like a sniper’s hiding place. The atmosphere could not have been more ominous.

What if a bullet suddenly came flying into the back of his head? Or what if he was abruptly stabbed while he slept?

The thought alone sent a shudder through him.

Worse still, there was no one on his side in this mansion. They were all in it together.

Even while secretly receiving reports on Ezekail’s current situation, his father had not breathed a word of it to Akenaus. The messenger, too, had lied to his face shamelessly.

So that’s how it is……

He had often heard criticism that the way he kept his brother in check was not fair and square. But people said that because they knew nothing. That bastard was a soldier trained professionally to kill people. With a rifle, with a sword, and even in hand-to-hand combat, he excelled at subduing his opponents. Soldiers and civilians had entirely different attitudes when it came to battle. Naturally, as a civilian, Akenaus had to resort to new methods, didn’t he?

Once he became aware of his fear, his situation—possessing not a single weapon with which to protect himself—felt as perilous as that of a naked child. On top of that, one wall of the study was connected to the garden through a large window. Carelessly, he had been exposing his back fully to the outside all this time. It was sheer madness.

Akenaus recalled the day Ezekail lost his sight. The woman he had hired for the assassination had fled without explaining the situation, and Ezekail had also shut himself in and kept his mouth closed, so he did not know in detail what had happened in that room. But the thing that had caused everyone in the mansion at the time to be gathered all at once was the single gunshot that rang out from the bedroom. Later, the servants had found the bullet that had shattered the window, flown out, and lodged itself in a tree in the garden. So if that bastard set his mind to sniping, the inside of the study was a position that could be shot into as much as he pleased.

First, Akenaus hurriedly drew the curtains. Then he looked around the now-dim study. As it happened, inside the display cabinet were the rifles his father had collected. He took out a rifle, then turned the study upside down and gathered extra powder and bullets as well.

Still, there was a problem. Experience. He had rarely handled a rifle properly, so his memory was hazy.

“Is this how you do it?”

Soldiers were said to use an easy and efficient method of loading because they fired from horseback, but Akenaus had never really learned it. Even as he pushed in the powder and bullet, he could not be sure he was loading it correctly.

Even the feel of it in his hands was unfamiliar. And just as he finished loading the rifle, slung it against his shoulder, and began aiming here and there around him—

Suddenly sensing a shadow move, Akenaus glanced toward the door. Someone was silently opening the study door.

Without hesitation, Akenaus pulled the trigger toward the door as it inched open.

Bang!

A deafening gunshot erupted.

“Aaagh!”

The maid who had been hiding behind the door and moving cautiously screamed and collapsed to the floor.

“Ah, I guess this is how you do it.”

Since it had fired without issue, the loading had been a success. The recoil had been stronger than expected, but it was bearable.

Akenaus inspected the barrel and blew on the smoke to cool it.

“I—I…… heard a strange sound from inside the study……”

The maid, white as a sheet, stammered out an excuse as she looked up at Akenaus. It seemed the bullet that had come flying out of nowhere had frightened her so badly that she could not speak properly. Akenaus answered kindly.

“I was getting in some practice beforehand.”

“P…… Pardon?”

“If an uninvited guest trespasses, the master of the house has to stop him, even if it means shooting him, doesn’t he?”

“Wh-what on earth do you mean……”

“You don’t know what’s going on, so you’re baffled too, aren’t you? Same here. This situation is absolutely absurd and unbelievable.”

Just then, servants who had heard the gunshot came running from all over the mansion.

“What was that just now?”

“Where did that loud noise come fr—urk……”

The servants who discovered Akenaus and the maid drew in sharp breaths.

While they wondered what in the world had suddenly happened, the person holding the rifle was none other than Akenaus, so the servants merely exchanged looks pale with fear and bewilderment.

It was then. A stern voice, stretching across the crowd, rebuked Akenaus.

“What do you think you’re doing!”

It was Akenaus and Ezekail’s father, Fern Valdemaera.