46.
‘What a tenacious woman.’
The aide clicked his tongue inwardly.
By the time she had run ten laps, the woman’s eyes had already lost focus, and she ran while dragging her feet.
In truth, even that much was enough to surpass the stamina of most people around her age.
‘I heard she was ill for a long time.’
It was not the sort of stamina someone who had suffered a serious illness as a child should possess.
But what set the aide even more on edge was the woman’s composed attitude.
If she tried running and found she couldn’t do it, she ought to change her mind, or at the very least complain to him.
If not that, she could beg to reduce the number of laps, quietly shorten the route, or pretend to run while walking and resting…….
There were plenty of ways a woman could respond when she was overtaxed.
And yet, why?
She must never have run to her limits like this even once in her life.
She should have had no experience whatsoever in enduring anything.
‘Does she want to get that close to the Duke……?’
The aide recalled the former lovers who had boldly fought in front of the residence without even lowering their voices.
From what he had heard, they had been forced into it after taking a potion, yet the way the two fought truly made them look like lovers who had dated and broken up.
Especially in how sordid it was.
Though it left a bad taste in his mouth, it had nothing to do with the aide anyway.
‘I’ll frighten her as much as possible and drive her out.’
And until then, the aide had confidently predicted that it would not be all that difficult.
* * *
Time slipped by day after day, and before I knew it, it was the tenth day.
I familiarly went to find the aide, who would be waiting at the entrance of the residence.
When he saw me, he gave a slight nod, then primly turned his gaze away.
Today, for some reason, he was with a group of people.
They were knights in uniforms I had grown used to seeing as I came and went, and we exchanged appropriate nods.
I found that exact distance—without any particular favor or malice—quite satisfactory in its own way.
“Are we being dispatched?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the objective?”
“Arrest.”
It seemed the leadership had already been captured, and now they were in the process of rooting out, one by one, the underlings involved in the crimes.
It must have been because it was not a particularly important mission that I was allowed to join.
In terms of rank, I was directly below the aide, but compared to most of the knights, my position could be called ambiguous.
That was because I did not come from the knight order. Nor had I come as an administrator.
Therefore, if a disturbance broke out, there might be problems in the chain of command…….
But since I would, in any case, act alone whenever possible from now on, it was not something to worry about much.
We simply had to go on as we were now, pretending not to notice one another.
When I looked back, the aide threatened me as if he had been waiting for it.
“Who are you looking for right now? If you’re taking this mission lightly…….”
“I looked back because I sensed someone’s presence.”
“His Grace the Duke did not come to work today.”
“…….”
The aide truly was an obstinate man who could not be reasoned with.
Here was someone even worse than the Duke, his superior.
At least the Duke knew how to listen when I spoke.
When someone hurriedly ran out of the building behind us, the aide glanced at me for an instant, then quickly turned his head away.
‘See? I was right. I told you it felt like someone was coming.’
I grumbled inwardly and shrugged.
It seemed some message had arrived late, and after familiarly receiving and checking something, the aide nimbly mounted his horse.
And that day, I discovered one unexpected fact.
“Oh, it’s you?”
The black horse I had chosen during the hunting festival was standing boldly before my eyes.
‘The Duke must have taken care of it that day.’
On the day of the hunting festival, I had had no room to look after even the horse, and after I woke, I had naturally assumed it had returned to the imperial palace.
There was no particular explanation, but everyone mounted their own horses as if they had been waiting, so it was not difficult to confirm that the horse before me had been prepared for me.
Feeling oddly pleased, I climbed onto the horse.
“We meet again.”
When I patted the nape of its neck and murmured softly, the black horse nodded as though it understood.
We began to gallop forward as a group.
The place we arrived at not long afterward was, well.
It was a place familiar even to my eyes. Though it had been a while since I last set foot there.
A back alley in the shadows, where all sorts of crimes flowed as naturally as water.
This place, where the stench of the gutters and hostility toward outsiders were laid bare, was the very street I had once combed through with a fine-toothed comb to find the culprit who had instigated the potion incident.
Back then, I had unintentionally gotten quite a few people arrested as well.
Caught in sudden recollection, I dismounted and moved after the group led by the aide.
After swiftly traversing a narrow, filthy alley, the knight order entered the building at once.
Some surrounded the building and meticulously blocked off the escape routes.
I waited outside for the moment in case I got in the way, and no sooner had a commotion broken out inside than I began hearing the sounds of people being subdued one after another.
Well, there was no way the Duke’s direct knight order, who had even fought in a war, would struggle because they could not catch a few thugs of the capital.
Just as I was watching the situation be settled with astonishing speed and thinking nothing of it.
Tak.
A faint noise pricked at my nerves.
For some reason, it felt out of place among the ordinary noises coming from here and there.
An inexplicably uneasy feeling, as though I should not let it pass.
Even though, with the knights holding every escape route so tightly not even water could leak through, there was no way anyone could flee.
I moved toward the direction the sound had come from.
And I saw that a window on the second floor of the building was open.
‘Was it the sound of the window opening?’
I glanced at the knight standing guard in the alley beneath the window, but he did not seem to have detected anything.
I narrowed my eyes and stared at the open window.
‘Did someone open the window and look down? To escape? But…….’
They would have seen the knight guarding beneath the window.
Passing by the people being led out of the building in a line, bound with ropes, I slipped inside.
Blood was splattered here and there on the floor.
I could also see a man who had lost his life after resisting fiercely.
I felt the aide raise one eyebrow and stare at me so hard it made my face sting, but
I had grown used to this much by now and could ignore it.
I moved toward the side where the window I had seen open from outside was located.
A low bookcase stood in front of the window, and the spot perfectly suited for stepping on had been disturbed.
As if someone had just stepped on it.
I glanced around.
The knight order, having finished searching the upper floor, was leaving the building one by one.
The aide still watched me with his arms crossed.
To be honest, the things he had taught me until now were nothing particularly special.
The principles to follow during an investigation, methods for arresting culprits…….
Overall, it was closer to “how not to be a nuisance,” I suppose.
Or it might also be called “how to at least protect your own life.”
They were things that did not mean much to me, but it seemed necessary to show him that I had learned them properly.
Feeling a shallow interest, I carefully swept my gaze over the surrounding area again.
Then the clothes scattered on the floor caught my eye.
“What are you doing?”
I brought my index finger to my lips toward the aide, who was about to approach.
The very instant the aide’s brow began to furrow, I kicked the laundry bin with all my might.
And from the heavy bin as it tipped over, a grown man came rolling out.
He shook off the heap of laundry covering him and hurriedly tried to get to his feet.
Then promptly fell flat on his face again with a splat.
Having tripped him at just the right moment, I grinned as I looked at the aide.
“What does it look like? I’m making an arrest.”
But the man, undeterred, got up again and charged at me.
I caught sight of something flashing in his hand.
In that instant, you could say my mood took a sharp turn for the worse.
Thud!
The aide came closer.
When our eyes met, I said this.
“I learned it, didn’t I? Self-defense.”
The aide looked down at the man pinned beneath me, his face planted into the floor, and fell silent.
It was as if he were saying, “This is difficult to call self-defense,” but,
what did I care?
I spun the dagger I had taken from the man once, gripped it by the blade, and held it out toward the aide.
The aide slowly reached out and took the dagger.
Unfortunately, I had no memory of ever being weak enough to fall victim to thugs who only knew how to swing blades around blindly.
I had always been fairly nimble to begin with, and I was already well used to dealing with fights by taking advantage of my small build.
A knight came and took away the man who had been pinned beneath me.
I stepped off his back and obediently released the arm I had twisted and held.
Then my eyes met his…….
The man’s eyes trembled slightly, and he hurriedly turned his head away from me.
I could even read in him a look that welcomed being bound and taken away from me instead.
I didn’t think I’d acted violently enough to warrant that.
He was the one who swung a knife in the first place, wasn’t he?
‘Is there some other reason?’
But the man never looked back at me again.
I tried to recall the faint impression he had left, then clicked my tongue.
“He’s not on the list.”
At the aide’s mutter after checking the man’s personal details, I replied somewhat coldly.
“If he’d done nothing wrong, he wouldn’t have been hiding in the first place.”
“Seeing how firm you are, did being attacked earlier leave an impression on you?”
“What’s there to leave an impression? It’s not like this is the first time I’ve been attacked like that.”
“…….”
The aide was silent for a moment.
He swept aside the laundry scattered on the floor with his military boot and asked,
“How did you know?”
“I heard breathing.”
“Breathing?”
The aide frowned. As if to say I was talking nonsense.
Unbothered, I added in a mutter.
“Breathing that was trembling with nerves, at that.”
There was no way it belonged to the knights who had raided this place.
Then that meant someone was hiding. What else could it be?
I looked at the aide with eyes that said as much, but he still wore an expression that said he did not want to accept it.