“It appears everything is going smoothly.”
“Yeah, thankfully,” I said with a half-smile.
Petralka’s eyes flicked toward my maid.
“Myusel.”
“Y-Yes, Your Majesty!”
“How much have you managed to learn?”
“Wha? Um— I—”
“We are already on ‘Kanji Drill 2’! You will never catch up to us now! You may serve at Shinichi’s side and even receive personal instruction from him, but you will find it avails you nothing!”
“Um, y-yes, of course...!” Myusel nodded emphatically.
Petralka seemed kind of obsessed with Myusel’s progress in learning Japanese. She didn’t abuse the maid like she used to—I mean, she was even calling her by name now—but I could definitely pick up on a subtle hostility. I had to admit, it made me a little anxious. Hence, I inserted myself between the two of them and attempted to forestall the empress’s temper.
“Okay, take it easy. Myusel has to look after me and do all kinds of chores. She doesn’t exactly have a lot of time to study. Take today. Last night she had to get everything ready, make me a lunch and all—” I found myself smiling as I indicated the packed lunch Myusel had made me. “The point is, she’s working very hard, so I—”
I was going to say that I didn’t see it as favoritism that I was personally instructing her in Japanese. But Petralka was watching me silently, her lips pursed. Her arms, hanging at her sides, were balled into fists and, for no reason I could figure, shaking visibly. It was like some gauge had finally filled up. I had charged up something very dangerous. But Petralka really startled me:
“It’s always Myusel, Myusel, Myusel with you!” she shouted. It was like she had finally reached her limit, like a bomb had gone off.
Whaaaat?! Who, me?!
When it came to a contest between Petralka and Myusel, I was the only one who was willing to cover for the maid. The empress had everyone in the world to watch out for her, but Myusel—
Oops.
That was when I realized. I was wrong to think everyone adored and coddled the empress. I thought of how happy she was to sit on my knees and speak with someone from the heart.
“We even built you your ‘school’! We gave you our army to help! And yet you treat us as chaff, paying mind only to this maid!”
“That’s not true! I don’t—”
“Silence! Has she seduced you?!”
“Has she what?!”
“You, Myusel! I order you out of Shinichi’s house!” Petralka exclaimed.
Myusel’s face was pale; she was trembling.
“Oh, no...!” I said.
This really came on much too suddenly—I mean, wasn’t it pretty unfair?
But... wait just a second. Were these two girls fighting over me?!
Oh! I had never dreamed that this day might—
“This is bad.” Minori-san’s whisper brought me back down to earth (or, Eldant). “Shinichi-kun. You have to stop her, quickly.”
“Huh? But this isn’t—”
—such a big deal, is it? is what I had been about to say. I mean, she had only been ordered out of my house, and—wait. Out of my house?!
“You idiot,” Minori-san said. “We’re just renting that house from the Eldant Empire, remember? Myusel calls you ‘Master’ out of convenience, but it was the Empire that hired her. The empress is her employer!”
“Yeah, but I mean, she’s just being let go from her maid work, right?” I didn’t see the problem. Heck, maybe we could bring her on at the school, then. She could speak a few words of Japanese. Maybe we could have her be a teacher, or—
“She’s not just being fired. She’s being fired by the empress herself because they don’t get along. How do you think other people are going to react?”
“......Oh.” I went pale as the implications finally started to sink in. Minori-san was right: this wasn’t a country of laws, like Japan. There was one absolute ruler, and at least for her subjects, her word might as well have been God’s. In an extreme case, if she’d wanted to, Petralka could have killed someone here and now, and nobody would have batted an eyelash. If word got out that Myusel had been fired—in public, no less—because the empress disliked her, no noble family or merchant shop would want anything to do with her. Neither, most likely, would anyone that was currently trying to cozy up to the Eldant Empire. Like Japan. Like Matoba-san.
“Your Majesty—Your Majesty, please, have mercy!” Myusel looked like she’d been given the death penalty.
But this only seemed to annoy Petralka more. She stamped her foot and shouted, “You’ve defiled yourself with Shinichi anyway—maybe you can go work in a brothel!”
“H-Hold on, Petralka—I mean, Your Majesty!” That was really going a little too far.
“You stay out of this!” Petralka glared at me, her face bright red.
It looked like I had only managed to turn her anger on me. I found myself settling back as if I were getting into a fighting stance. But if this could soothe the royal rage even a little, maybe save Myusel’s job, it would be worth it...
“Hrrgh?!”
Suddenly, totally out of the blue, a voice interrupted us. It sounded like some kind of shout—and it came from behind Petralka. We all looked to see what was happening, only to find one of Her Majesty’s bodyguards slumped to his knees. Even as we watched, he pitched forward and fell to the ground. What appeared to be a knife was buried in the chinks of the light armor on his back...
I was so stunned I couldn’t even call out. A small pool of dark-red liquid began to leak from under the guard.
“Blood...?” I whispered dumbly, hardly able to process it. I looked in the direction of the other guard, the one still on his feet, and saw a flat, silver thing sprouting from his chest. The blade was badly bent, but it was a sword.
I felt as if time itself had stopped; thick blood ran down the blade and dribbled onto the floor. The royal guard was looking at the sword in his chest as if he didn’t understand what had happened. He must have been distracted by the raging Petralka. He finally seemed to grasp what was going on, because he drew his own blade—and then ran out of strength, collapsing to the ground.
“Wha— Wha—”
Three men were standing behind the knights. I had no idea when they had arrived. They were wrapped in robes so thick that I couldn’t tell what they actually looked like. It looked like the traditional outfit of merchants from the west. It wasn’t especially unusual to see people dressed like that; they were all over the Eldant Empire.
But these men were carrying arched blades, kind of croissant-shaped and about fifty centimeters long. That wasn’t very long as swords go, but it would be the perfect size to hide under all that cloth.
Someone gave a choked cry. “Y-Yaaaaah!”
Immediately, screams burst out all over. The students and kids who had been in the hallway started running for their lives, seized by terror. But the unexpected visitors moved to stop them, drawing their weapons.
“Don’t move. We’ll kill anyone who disobeys.” The awful order only led to more screaming.
What is this? What in the world is happening?!
I couldn’t scream. I could only stare vacantly. But beside me, Minori-san was showing off what she’d learned in the JSDF. Her reactions were lightning-fast. She drew the 9mm pistol she always carried at her hip, holding it with both hands as she aimed it at the nearest invader.
“I told you not to move!” At the same moment Minori-san was drawing her gun, the robed man reached for Petralka, wrapping an arm around her and dragging her close to him. I wasn’t sure he knew what a gun was, but Minori-san’s actions and expression probably made it obvious that whatever she was holding was a weapon.
“Crap,” Minori-san muttered, and lowered her gun. Petralka was partially obscuring the man in her sights. If she fired now, she could easily hit the empress.
“U—Unhand me, vile fiend!” Petralka shouted, finally seeming to r
ealize that something was happening.
“If you resist, we’ll kill the empress!” The man held his blade to the young ruler’s white neck. Petralka, obviously grasping the gravity of the situation, shut her mouth and kept quiet.
Before we knew it, the attackers had us surrounded. There was no way out. Everyone stood there stupidly. The man who had taken Petralka hostage proclaimed, “We are the assembly of patriots, Bedouna!”
Everyone there swallowed heavily. Everyone, that was, except me. Unable to quite keep up with what was happening, I instead made a single sound:
“...Huh?”
That name pretty much screamed We’re terrorists! but none of this felt real to me, like I was watching a bad movie. It was all happening right in front of my eyes, but it was so incredible that I just wasn’t quite taking it in.
But the royal guards lying dead on the floor were real, there was no doubt about it.
I honestly don’t remember the next half hour or so very clearly. I think the completely incredible events going on around me brought on a bit of amnesia. I hadn’t been this overwhelmed even to discover I’d been dragged off to another world—I guess it just goes to show what a shock it is to witness someone dying up close.
Or, maybe that’s not exactly right. I had seen death before. When my grandparents passed away, I had gone to their funerals. But this—this was different. This was somebody killing someone else for their own benefit. In other words, it was the fear of being faced with someone who had decided they didn’t mind committing murder in order to get what they wanted. We’re always taught “life is precious” and stuff, but here was someone with exactly the opposite opinion, someone whose actions defied everything I believed and who could put an end to all my philosophizing with the thrust of a knife.
“Shinichi-kun... Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san’s voice brought me back to myself.
“Oh. Uh...”
“Are you all right? You looked pretty out of it for a while there.”
“Oh... Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right.” I nodded. It was all I could do. “Where are we...?”
I took a slow look around, and realized we were in the school’s self-study-room-cum-library. Or anyway, it was the room I had been intending to use that way. It was already full of bookshelves, but they were only about half full. I planned to bring more books from my mansion or from Japan. The gaps in the books that lined the shelves gave the place an eerie sense of emptiness.
Out the window, I could see the sky dyed orange: it was twilight, and the day would soon be over. Standing just beside the window was one of the robed men. One of the “patriots” themselves.
Minori-san informed me that the Bedouna patriots were using the school as a base. But it wasn’t as if they had the entire place under observation. There were actually only nine guys in their “assembly of patriots,” all of them apparently human. It was physically impossible for such a small number of people to patrol this entire building, so they had put their hostages in this library, tying our hands behind us with rope.
Along with me and Minori-san were about five students and kids who hadn’t managed to run away. Whether that’s a lot of hostages or not is something of a matter of opinion, but it was probably more than enough for Bedouna. After all, my students were all children of the aristocracy, and one of them was the most important person in the entire country—the empress herself.
Incidentally, Myusel and Petralka, Minori-san, and myself were against the wall opposite our hostage takers. Apparently, they figured that if they just left us all together, there was no telling what we might get up to, so they had lined us up against the wall so they could keep an eye on us.
“Ie, Aresshio,” one of the patriots was saying in what appeared to be distress. “Odo eu tsuppu rereppume tiu reeto seno? Shi shisu reteppu oto tsuppu ni reeto ekarupu tiu eeto reechau?”
In point of fact, both Minori-san and I had been relieved of our rings, so we were ignorant of what they were saying. I did recognize a handful of words—for example, I knew that rereppume meant “empress,” i.e. Petralka.
“To leave empress with... the others, it’s... okay?” Myusel murmured from beside me. She was interpreting into Japanese for us! “Should she be... same place as... watching people?”
This was starting to make sense. In other words, he was asking if it was safe to keep the empress with the other hostages. She was vastly more important than the rest of us, and the man was asking his co-conspirator if she shouldn’t be given special treatment.
“Eu era ooto etaru oto kuniito guniitirebe on, eu evaa on ratoguse rekurou rofu uin narupu! Ti shi reteppu oto eetagu ruh-a egatosoo ni eno ekarupu rofu giniikau.”
The man replying with an irritable expression was the one who had first taken Petralka hostage, a huge guy with golden hair and blue eyes. His name seemed to be Alessio, and the others appeared to regard him as their leader.
According to Myusel’s slow but steady translation, these men had not been expecting Petralka to be here, and they weren’t sure what to do with her. Ultimately, however, they had decided to keep her with the other hostages. Managing to take the empress hostage was a huge coup for them, but it also meant that the empire could be expected to deal with them very differently than it might have otherwise. In a worst-case scenario, the imperial forces might just slaughter everyone to ensure the empress’s safety. In that case, keeping her somewhere separate would be even more dangerous.
Alessio was evidently saying something to the effect of, “It’s too late to be worrying about that. We don’t have the manpower to keep one of the hostages separate.”
As far as I could tell, the nine people who had attacked my school represented the entire constituency of the “assembly of patriots.”
Alessio was pointing into the self-study room and saying, “Ta ina eu evaa taato!”
At that moment there was a thump, and a weird lump of metal was set down. It was a silver sphere almost the size of a cannonball, the bottom fixed so it wouldn’t roll. It also boasted several interlocking rings. To me, it just looked like an old globe—but judging by the way they handled it, it was something much more important than that.
“Shinichi...sama...”
“Regoobu...” a voice moaned from beside me. It was Petralka.
Myusel began to interpret for the empress. She went on, “I can’t believe they brought that here...”
“You know what that is, Petralka?” I said, Myusel translating my words back into Eldant.
Petralka nodded, a grim look on her face. “Imarufe bisurupeguze.”
Apparently, it was some sort of fire-based magical weapon; the name meant “Consuming Flame.” Describing the specifics involved a lot of technical jargon that Myusel couldn’t really interpret, but broadly speaking, it was full of very aggressive fire sprites who, when unleashed, could easily destroy my school.
“Can’t we fight it with magic or something?” I whispered, clinging to this small hope.
But Petralka immediately shook her head. “Kuuru taato.”
She nodded in Alessio’s direction. There was an amulet with a lapis lazuli crystal at his belt, and according to Petralka it would react to any magical power in the immediate vicinity by rearranging its speckled pattern. In other words, no matter how quiet we tried to be, he would know the moment someone started a magical incantation. So even if someone tried to use magic, he could stop them—or worse, kill them—before they could get the spell out.
No matter how great a magic user someone was, it was meaningless if they didn’t have time to recite their chant. It’s like how a gun is just a lump of metal if you can’t fire the bullets. Speaking of which, Minori-san’s 9mm had already been confiscated. Her actions had made it more than clear enough that it was a weapon and not something she could be left with.
I sighed. Just half a day earlier, everything had been going so nicely. How did things turn out this way?
“Doh shi taato...”
Petralka was saying, “But it’s
strange...”
Bedouna, this “assembly of patriots,” lacked resources and organization even by the standards of anti-government rebels, yet they had one of these imarufe bisurupeguze, these “Consuming Flames.” Even the Imperial Army couldn’t come up with one of those too readily. It didn’t make sense.
“What you’re saying is, there’s someone out there who gave them the money, or the knowledge, or the weapon itself—or all three. Right?” Minori-san asked.
Myusel translated, and Petralka responded with a nod, “Supaareppu...”
Even I knew this word. It meant “probably.”
Petralka was looking extremely grim. This, I presumed, was how she looked when the duties of being an empress truly called. Suddenly, the Petralka I had known to sit happily on my knees or pout angrily seemed a million miles away. Yes, I had known she was the empress, but I had never seen with my own eyes what that really meant.
In stark contrast to my reaction, Petralka talked about the terrorists as if this were a daily affair. Maybe manga, or otaku culture, or her chats with me were a way of forgetting this bleak and deadly world, just for a moment.
“...Ie.”
Suddenly, Alessio was looking at us. His hostile glare set my skin prickling. My face stiffened in fear.
“Ee shi donimu retosamu. Gunirubu mii donuora emu.”
He was pointing straight at me.
“What? Say what?!”
“Shinichi... sama...” Myusel was giving me a despairing look. “He said... ‘That one bears all the blame. Bring him.’”
“Whaaaaaat?!”
What? Huh? Me? Blame?!
I mean, yes, I am the president of Amutech, but—!
Before I understood what was happening, two men had grabbed me by the collar and forced me to my feet.
“Shinichi-sama!” Myusel cried out, worried for me. But of course, the men paid her no mind. They dragged me like a piece of luggage over to where Alessio was standing with his back to the magical weapon.
“Hey...”
When I looked up, I was surrounded by terrorists.
The Power of Moe Page 16
