Out of Nowhere

Without any warning, Patrick suddenly cried out.

“M-Melius! Uncle Melius!”

So they were uncle and nephew.

Melius himself showed almost no change in expression.

His own nephew was tied to a tree, bawling, and he simply took it in stride.

“Rigen, son of Librata.”

“Melius, son of Condar.”

I offered the elven greeting first, and Melius looked mildly surprised.

He turned his gaze to Patrick, bound to the tree, and spoke.

“That boy is the son of my elder brother, Corcas. What happened here?”

“He was causing quite a bit of trouble, so I’m in the middle of educating him. This is what you get when you don’t do it yourself.”

“Patrick. You didn’t send word that you were coming. Explain.”

Melius turned to Patrick and demanded an account.

Patrick kept glancing over at me as he fumbled through his explanation.

“……A major incident broke out at Marquis Burzak’s family, so we came to investigate.”

“An investigation? With whom? Surely you weren’t the one leading it?”

“……”

Patrick said nothing, watching my reaction.

He hadn’t breathed a word about who the elves had actually sent as their investigator — not once, from start to finish.

It was rare for him to hold his tongue like this even when he was terrified of me.

Melius pressed sharply.

“So? Why are you the one taking a beating from the son of Librata? This man is uncommonly well-versed in elven culture, and he knows the proper salutation. And given the relationship between Librata and our people, he wouldn’t have gone straight to striking you the moment he saw you. So what did you do?”

“Oh, so you think highly of me.”

“……”

Melius glanced at me briefly, then went back to interrogating Patrick.

His nephew had been beaten badly enough to wet himself, and yet Melius hadn’t come at me shouting. He was working through this with remarkable composure.

Either he was simply very rational — or he had never thought particularly well of Patrick to begin with.

“You must have committed some offense you can’t bring yourself to say out loud. Am I right?”

“……”

“Speak. If you did something unforgivable, I need to know the full extent of it. And if the son of Librata went too far, I’ll be the one to push back on his behalf.”

“It’s just, it was……”

Patrick stammered.

“……The humans were just lounging around, so I told them to get up.”

“And that alone was reason enough to strike you?”

“The humans wouldn’t listen, so I just……”

“Speak plainly.”

“……I showed a little magic.”

“So because they wouldn’t do what you said, you threatened them with that pathetic little trick of yours? And did you even send word ahead that you were coming to Librata?”

Melius pressed sharply.

Elves placed enormous value on their own customs even when dealing with other races.

The etiquette of visits, of invitations.

Patrick hesitated. I spoke up.

“I was told you were arriving tomorrow. And yet here you are today.”

“……That is an extraordinary breach of courtesy. We wouldn’t even have been properly prepared to receive you. If anything, you should be the one begging Librata’s forgiveness. And instead, you arrive uninvited, insult people who are in the middle of a meal, threaten them by raising your magic, and all of this knowing full well that I was staying here?”

Melius’s voice climbed with every word.

“Is that all of it? If you’re hiding anything, say it now. If something further comes to light during a thorough investigation, the punishment will be considerably harsher.”

“It’s just……”

Patrick hesitated, then spoke.

“……I said Sirik Karakas was already dead and gone.”

“What did you just say?”

Oh.

Something shifted in the air Melius was putting out.

The elf who had come out in his nightcap, composed and methodical as he questioned his nephew — he was beginning to simmer.

“Say that again, son of Corcas. Did I hear correctly? Those words that make my ears want to rot right off my head, are they true?”

“Hey, calm down……”

When an elf curses with reference to ears, it means they are truly at the end of their rope.

I had moved to intervene without even thinking, and Melius wheeled around to face me.

“He said something disrespectful about the emperor?”

“……Well, he said the emperor was dead and done with, yes?”

“……”

Melius walked toward Patrick without breaking stride.

Crack! Crack!

He slapped the boy across the face and then backhanded him in one fluid motion.

Three strikes in an instant.

Completely emotional.

“You mindless fool! How dare you say something like that!”

Startled, I lunged in and yanked them apart.

It was funny that I was the one doing the separating — but left to his own devices, he was going to kill the boy.

“Hey! Hey! He’s tied up!”

“……Ah. Right.”

Melius caught himself, stopped his hand, and gave a short nod.

He had calmed down. Relatively speaking.

I let go and stepped back — and Melius raised his magic and sliced through the ropes binding Patrick.

Then he started hitting him.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

“AAAGH! AAAGH! AAAAAAGH! U-Uncle! AAAGH!”

He drove his fist into the boy’s cheek, kicked him in the stomach when he covered up, and chopped down on his shoulder with the edge of his hand — working through him like a man tenderizing meat.

And he meant every single blow.

“Hey!”

I had not meant free him, then beat him.

“Hey! He’s going to die! He is actually going to die!”

“A creature like this doesn’t deserve to live! He is a disgrace to the spirit tree! I should cut the line right here!”

Even after the beating, Melius’s fury had nowhere to go.

Patrick lay sprawled across the ground, every limb flung wide, shaking from head to toe.

……He had already taken a pounding from me, and now an emotionally invested one from Melius on top of it. He was in absolute ruins.

Wham!

“Hey! That’s enough, enough……”

Melius brought his foot down toward Patrick’s head where he lay, and I grabbed him by the body and hauled him away.

He was genuinely going to kill him.

“……Phhhhhh.”

After a long stretch of grinding his teeth, Melius gave a single nod.

“It’s all right. I’ve let some of it out.”

“Let’s go inside and talk. Invite me in?”

If we stayed out here, there would be a body to deal with.

The annex.

I stepped inside, and Melius spoke at once.

“Sit down.”

“Thank you.”

An elf inviting someone into his home and immediately offering a seat — it meant he held that person in considerable regard.

What considerable regard translated to, in human terms, was a cluster of meanings: he was at ease with me, he respected me, and he felt he owed me something.

Melius gave a slight nod.

“That foolish boy committed a serious offense against you. I cannot speak for all elves, but as the son of Condar, I offer my apology.”

“No, come on…… People talk about emperors. Even kings get cursed behind closed doors.”

“That’s no way to speak of it.”

Melius’s expression went serious.

“Sirik Karakas achieved deeds worthy of reverence for all ages to come. He is the founding hero of civilization, the one who held all living beings in his care. To speak of him with contempt is no different from smearing our own faces, as citizens of this empire. And you, are you not the descendant of one of the twelve houses, chosen personally by the command of Sirik Karakas himself? When you speak the name of the first emperor, it must always be with full devotion. Not even the smallest discourtesy.”

“……”

Hey.

You too?

Alicia had been the same way — perfectly composed about everything else, but the moment the emperor came up, her eyes glazed over.

It seemed Melius was no different.

“……Are you a fan of the emperor?”

“Is there anyone who does not revere him? What kind of person would that even be?”

“……”

Right then. Noted.

Melius turned to glare out the window, still seething.

“And to think that kind of person was my nephew. You have my word, do not trouble yourself over anything that happened today. I will handle it entirely.”

“But won’t that put you in a difficult position? Not every elf is a devoted member of the emperor’s fan following, are they?”

“The faithless and the disloyal certainly exist. But that only means we must work harder to set them right.”

Melius asked abruptly.

“Do you know what the first emperor did first, once the empire had found its footing?”

“You’ll have to be more direct, I can’t tell where you’re going.”

“He went to meet the families of those who had fallen in the war against the Seven Sin God.”

Oh. Right.

That had been after the railway was finished — the first thing I had undertaken once it was done.

The opposition had been fierce, of course. My security, the sheer logistics of it. But I had pushed it through regardless.

It was something that had to be done.

Melius spoke in the tone of someone reaching back into memory.

“He came to us, too. The elves. I was young at the time, I hadn’t been part of the final battle against the Seven Sin God. But my eldest brother had.”

“……I see.”

“My eldest brother didn’t come home. And many neighbors I had known all my life vanished as well. Half the people in the village where I grew up were simply gone. And then the first emperor came, the one responsible for all of it.”

Melius was looking somewhere far away.

“In my head, I knew it wasn’t the emperor’s fault. But I couldn’t forgive him. At the same time, I knew that if I let my temper get the better of me and went at him, it would only end badly. So I watched from a distance.”

“……”

“Do you know what he did?”

I said nothing, and Melius continued with quiet fervor.

“He apologized to every single one of them, one by one. He told each of them that his own shortcomings had kept him from saving their son. That their daughter had been a hero, beloved by her comrades. That their father had died as a squad leader of ten, protecting the soldiers under his command. He spoke to each of them, and he consoled each of them. Personally.”

“……”

“Strictly speaking, he had no obligation to. Even if it weighed on him, he could have sent someone in his place. A representative would have been perfectly acceptable.”

Melius shook his head, unhurried.

“But we all understood it. The fight against the Seven Sin God had been a terrible war, and the ones who went had gone knowing they might not return. The ones who waited had known the same. But still…… the emperor came himself, and he bowed his head, and he apologized.”

“……”

“I had not wanted to see his face. But I watched from afar and made a decision right then and there. I would fight under that emperor myself, no matter what it took. My eldest brother’s death was not meaningless. It was a precious sacrifice for a better world.”

Melius gave a slow nod.

“He passed away before I had grown into proper adulthood. One of the great sorrows of my life.”

“Mm. Yes. Understood.”

“……Mm.”

Melius, who had been pouring his heart out, came to a stop.

“From the sound of the footsteps, Patrick has fled. But think nothing of it, I will take this up with the elves directly and in the sternest possible terms.”

“But do you actually know what’s been happening here? Do you know why the elves sent someone to Librata?”

“I don’t.”

“Bold of you. Everyone else has been running themselves ragged, and you’ve been alone in your annex this whole time?”

“Something happened, it seems. You can tell me now, I’ll have it all in hand from here.”

Melius waited for his briefing with complete self-possession.

……If only he had half of Heinkel’s instincts.

Late afternoon.

Having given Melius a reasonably thorough account of recent events, I stepped out of the annex.

As he had said, Patrick was nowhere to be seen.

But Melius would take care of it.

At the very least, in this matter, Melius would side with us at Librata.

And the elves couldn’t simply disregard Melius outright.

Though, wasn’t Melius here precisely because he had little standing within the clan’s internal politics?

“Still better than nothing.”

I was making my way back to the main house when someone approached.

The dark elf, Heinkel.

“You’re coming from Melius’s quarters?”

“Take half of your instincts and give them to Melius.”

Heinkel made himself useful by moving around constantly, gathering information. Melius refused to leave his building.

Split them down the middle and it would work out perfectly.

Even delivered as a joke, Heinkel’s face was taut.

“Did you happen to hear anything?”

“Nothing he didn’t already know, which is to say, nothing at all. Melius had no idea any of this was happening. He didn’t even know the elves were sending an investigator until I told him.”

“……So he wasn’t hiding something and lying to you?”

“Not his style.”

He was simply a man who lived entirely at his own pace.

At my answer, Heinkel’s expression became even graver.

“……Then this becomes considerably more complicated.”

“Keep it simple. What’s wrong?”

“I’ve found out who the elves sent as their investigator.”

“Who?”

Heinkel looked around carefully before answering, as if checking that no one was within earshot.

“This is truly classified intelligence……”

“You’re dying to say it. Say it and die.”

“She hasn’t shown herself in public for a very long time. I’d had my suspicions, but I’ve just confirmed it.”

Heinkel said it with full gravity.

“The elves have sent the Fourth Imperial Princess.”

My expression shifted.

……My daughter.