No Intention of Coming Peacefully

The following afternoon.

The Librata estate.

I met with Alicia in the sitting room.

Alicia was already fretting.

“The documents I’m handing you are classified. To be going over them somewhere this wide open……”

“If we’re having a secret meeting in a closed room, people will think we’re together.”

“……The two of us already spent a night in a bedroom together.”

“Ah, did we?”

I brushed that aside and turned my attention to the documents.

She had brought me the financial records of Marquis Crocell’s household.

“Let me walk you through them. That line item there……”

“He bought a lot of paintings and sculptures. Classic money laundering.”

Wealthy people spend tens or hundreds of billions acquiring art.

But does any single painting objectively hold that kind of value?

Genuine art can move the human soul, of course, but——

“Art is something you can’t assign a clear objective worth. Perfect for washing dirty money. And artwork isn’t taxed, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. But Marquis Crocell is a different case. My estimate is…… Marquis Crocell was buying art specifically to funnel money into his organization as donations.”

She laid it out plainly.

“The pieces in the estate are mostly forgeries.”

“He paid a premium for art he knew was fake?”

“Yes. That’s how he transferred House Crocell’s wealth to the organization.”

“So Marquis Crocell drove himself into financial ruin pursuing this. Which means……”

Rebellion and treason usually came from grievance. But Marquis Crocell had already enjoyed more wealth and prestige than most people could dream of.

Alicia took a slow breath.

“There’s something you need to understand about that.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m not Marquis Crocell’s biological daughter. But I’m not unrelated to him, either.”

She said it without hesitation.

“I’m his younger sister.”

“……Mm.”

Hold on.

I took a fresh look at Alicia.

A golden-haired beauty who looked to be somewhere around twenty, half-elf though she was……

“Yes. His human mother carried me. We share a mother but have different fathers.”

“Crocell hid that and passed you off publicly as his daughter? Is that even possible?”

“It is. Elves have a long infancy, but I’m a half-elf, so I grew at roughly human speed. Only a very small number of servants knew the truth. And none of them are in the world anymore.”

Disguising a half-sibling as a daughter?

In an insular noble house, it was possible.

“Bastards and affairs aren’t unheard of in noble families. What drove him to hide it so desperately?”

“I don’t know with certainty, but…… Marquis Crocell was essentially coerced into accepting the elves’ terms. He was deeply ashamed of it.”

“……”

“As I was growing up, I received a medical examination once a year from a physician the elves sent. Marquis Crocell……”

“Wait.”

I stopped her.

“The elves were sending a physician to examine you?”

“There’s apparently a hereditary disease that only half-elves contract. Marquis Crocell would always absent himself during those visits. He was deeply uncomfortable about it.”

“The elves aren’t particularly known for their medical expertise. But a disease exclusive to half-elves……”

Even I didn’t know about that.

Half-elves weren’t counted among the seven non-human races.

They couldn’t have children — mutations that ended with the first generation.

They scattered and lived in isolation, dying alone.

I pieced it together.

“A marquis with wealth and standing, yet he had no choice but to comply with the elves’ presumptuous demands. It wounded his pride, and he resolved to overturn the current empire. The motive holds.”

“Crocell started buying art five years ago. That puts his contact with the organization around the same time.”

“……”

I nodded.

Valuable intelligence, no question, but——

“This is a copy. You need the originals bearing Marquis Crocell’s seal for them to hold up as evidence in court.”

“The originals are hidden in Crocell’s estate, in a spot I know.”

“So I have to rescue you to get the originals?”

“Not at all.”

Alicia let out a small laugh.

“That was my original plan, but I’ll just give them to you outright. Take them. The location is the north stone wall of the main estate’s garden……”

“Hold on, that’s your lifeline. Shouldn’t you be using it to negotiate with the Noble Assembly or the elves?”

Alicia shook her head slowly.

“What kind of life is a traitor’s daughter supposed to have? If she’s lucky, she hangs. If she’s unlucky, she loses her head.”

“……”

“So…… consider it a gift. Take this too.”

Alicia smiled, a quiet sadness in it, and set a small box on the table.

Inside was a ring.

The betrothal token she and Librata had exchanged.

“Let’s call our engagement broken from the start. It’s the right thing for you and your family, Rigen.”

The house of a would-be father-in-law had turned out to be full of traitors.

True, I — the youngest son of Librata — had been the one to expose and punish Crocell’s conspiracy.

But depending on how an investigator chose to look at it, Librata could still come under scrutiny.

“All right.”

I took the ring Alicia offered without argument.

Then I held out my own — the one I had prepared to return.

This made it official. The engagement was done.

Alicia started to sigh — then stopped.

“……What’s the document envelope under the box?”

“Read it and sign it.”

She looked over the papers and her eyes went wide.

“It says I’ve been collaborating with Librata for three years to expose Marquis Crocell’s conspiracy?”

“Thanks to you, we at Librata were able to stop Marquis Crocell. Your contributions were substantial.”

If my name kept appearing in every account of events, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out who I actually was.

Better to spread the credit around.

“But this is a lie.”

“What are you talking about? You spent three years working as an unpaid intern and now I’m offering you a full-time position, and you want to refuse?”

I kept a straight face. Alicia blinked at me.

“I…… I can’t accept this.”

“Sign it. I’ve already spoken with the count. And I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart.”

“……”

“Now I understand the shape of things. But the elves’ real intentions are still unclear to me.”

The elves didn’t recognize half-elves as their own kind.

They called them mongrels — the contaminated offspring of human blood.

“Crocell’s mother had an affair with an elf. But why would the elves cover that up and go so far as to send a physician to look after you? Normally, elves won’t exchange a single word with a half-elf.”

“Is that right?”

Alicia seemed genuinely unaware — this was apparently news to her.

That was how closed off the elves were.

I said,

“The elves are usually slow to act. But this time they moved quickly and sent a figure as significant as the Fourth Princess. There’s only one explanation.”

“They’re afraid of being exposed for whatever they arranged with Marquis Crocell?”

“It all fits together. And so if I’m going to deal with the elves, having you firmly in my corner is the most advantageous position. Do you understand now?”

“……Hahaha.”

Alicia burst out laughing.

She laughed freely for a good while, then gave a single nod.

“Yes, all right. From here on I’ll cooperate with you as much as I can. And even if you let me die in the end, I won’t hold it against you.”

“I don’t abandon people. My general preference is to keep everyone alive and put them to work.”

As emperor I had always been starved for capable people.

You can’t fix a broken person? Sure — but only those who have that luxury can afford to say it.

Alicia said it awkwardly.

“……If you need anything else, just say the word. It’s not that I’m trying to impose, just…… I expect I’ll have quite a bit of time on my hands for a while.”

She looked down at the table, unable to quite meet my eyes.

This was the first time she had tried to say something like this — it showed.

Without fully realizing it, Alicia was attempting a rather clumsy approach.

To someone with my experience, it was like watching a little chick flap its wings trying to take flight.

A sharp mind, this one — but completely hopeless at this particular sort of thing.

I smiled faintly and rose from my seat.

“Let’s just have a meal together sometime. The elves are arriving soon, so stay out of sight for now. Would you mind putting on a maid’s uniform?”

“Pardon?”

“If you’re in a maid’s uniform, no one will know you’re a noblewoman.”

“My ears will give me away. Half-elves aren’t exactly common.”

“Just an idea.”

I smiled, turned, and walked out.

And with that — the engagement was over.

Freedom!

Gloriously, indefinitely freedoom!

A little while later. The secret room at Librata.

Roderic, Melius, and I sat down to talk.

I turned to Roderic first.

“The elves we’ve been holding, how are they?”

“Garul’s watching them. They’re behaving for now. We lost Patrick in the end.”

“He was small fry, don’t worry about it. And……”

“If a princess is truly coming, Patrick is nothing but a pawn.”

Melius cut in abruptly.

Roderic glanced over with a mildly awkward look, clearly puzzled as to why the elf who hadn’t left his annex in ten years was suddenly this involved.

“Patrick was operating under Berk’s orders. Berk is a known first tier warrior from the post-war generation. Even Berk alone could level Librata.”

“Isn’t that a bit of an underestimation of us?”

Roderic bristled.

Melius said it flatly.

“Guerrilla warfare. First night, kill the soldiers and the lower-ranked knights. Second day, strike again and cut down the senior knights he has earmarked. Kill anyone who tries to send for help and leave the bodies on display to spread terror. Eventually it’s just the count and his immediate family left. Set fire to the manor and finish it.”

“He’s right. That’s exactly how elves operate.”

I added.

Most humans thought of elves as vain, slow-moving creatures who cared only for ceremony.

But as emperor, I had seen them with the mask off.

“Think of them as organized criminals. When elves decide to fight, they exterminate the entire family. And that kind of guerrilla warfare is one of their specialties , they’re more than capable of it.”

“Wait, elves actually do things like that?”

Roderic couldn’t quite believe it. I laid it out plainly.

“This was before the empire was established. Everyone involved is dead, and very little made it into the written record. They’ve cleaned up their image since then.”

“……They wouldn’t actually do that to us, would they?”

“Hard to say. We’ll see. Either way, I’ve set up some precautions.”

I kept my tone light.

“For now, I’ve broken the engagement with Alicia. Since the investigator is apparently the Princess herself, I’ll meet her face to face and settle this directly.”

“Are you by chance……”

Roderic studied my face with open concern.

I laughed.

“Two people in love, separated by their families? Don’t say absurd things. Worry about yourself, get married. You’re not young anymore, so why are you still unattached?”

“You little. I can’t enter an engagement or marriage carelessly. You know why.”

“If it’s so wonderful, you should be first in line.”

“Even if the odds of my becoming emperor are slim……”

Roderic was mid-sentence when Melius spoke up.

“If the Fourth Princess is coming as the official investigator, I will side with Librata as well.”

“Really? That means openly defying whatever the elves have decided.”

I had actually called Melius here to confirm this very point.

I pressed him again.

“If you go against the Princess’s party, you may never be allowed back to the spirit tree. In the worst case, you could be exiled.”

Melius had spent ten years at Librata’s isolated estate — from an elf’s perspective, it was not unlike being banished to a remote island.

Getting home to the capital had to be his deepest wish. I had even used that as the hook when I first negotiated an arrangement with him.

But Melius shook his head without a moment’s pause.

“This situation is different.”

There was clearly a reason behind it, but he wasn’t saying what.

Regardless — in this crisis, Melius would not turn against us. That much was certain.

Then Melius went still.

“Oh. They’ve already moved.”

“What?”

The door burst open and someone came running in.

The dark elf, Heinkel.

He saw me and pressed a finger to his lips.

He meant to be quiet.

Then he snatched up a pen and wrote rapidly on a piece of paper.

「Urgent. Count Librata has been seized from his study by the elves. It appears first tier warrior Berk led the operation.」

“……”

A raid.

I looked at Melius and wrote.

「They used the Wind Blessing, didn’t they?」

A nod.

Melius confirmed it.

We continued in written exchanges from that point.

Speaking aloud risked being overheard — the elves who had just taken the study might already be listening to our every word through the walls.

Elves with their supernatural hearing were extraordinarily troublesome.

And the Wind Blessing.

In older terms, it was called step-shrinking — in modern parlance, high-speed mode.

An elf under the Wind Blessing could move faster than an ordinary person could even register.

Blinking, and they were already inside the study. That was the reality of what had just happened.

Melius wrote,

「Not many elves can use the Wind Blessing. Since it’s a head of one of the twelve houses, they won’t be able to do anything drastic outright. I’ll go and talk to them.」

I gave a short nod and wrote to Roderic.

「Roderic, gather the knights and soldiers. If it comes to it, we may need to fight the elves and extract Father. And don’t alert the rest of the household. Have everyone carry on with their usual routines. Meal preparation, cleaning, all of it.」

Roderic looked at me with a question in his eyes. I wrote again.

「I’ll move separately. To get Father out.」

Melius read that and his brow furrowed.

「Dangerous. As you well know, elves have exceptional hearing. The count’s life could be at risk if anything goes wrong.」

「Didn’t you just say they couldn’t do anything drastic to a twelve-house head?」

I shut that down and added,

「You negotiate with the elves on your end. I’ll take care of cracking their skulls on mine.」

「And how exactly? The elves will be barricaded inside the study now.」

A race with supernatural hearing, and right now they might be listening even to our side of things — which was why we were writing in silence in the first place.

Overpowering them was no simple matter. That was the conventional wisdom.

But I smiled.

「There’s always a way.」

I was the one who had developed the tactical doctrine for deploying Wind Blessing elves in emergency field situations.

Naturally, I also knew exactly how to take them apart.