Third Arc: Twenty-Eighth Chapter

"First, the question is which of you the culprit was aiming for..."

"Huh? Someone besides Michael was targeted?!"

There had been no one on the balcony but Michael and me, I thought, so had there been a disturbance somewhere else too? Was that someone all right? Michael's pale face, seared into my mind, flashed back, and cold sweat ran down my spine. But seeing me flustered, Elliot sighed with an exasperated look.

"Cosette, it's you, obviously. The arrow struck my brother's back, but without him there it would surely have struck you. My brother being in your room was the irregular thing to begin with, so if anything it makes more sense to think you were the target."

"Me?! No way! But there's no reason for anyone to target me..."

There's no... well, there is. I don't want to admit it, but if there was a reason to target me, it would be Michael's proposal. Up until yesterday I had wandered around the city just fine, no trouble at all.

"But it hasn't even been a full day since Michael, s-since he confessed to me. That's far too fast, surely."

At my words, Elliot put a hand to his chin thoughtfully and spoke.

"Hmph. By my guess, either of you, Lady Cosette or my brother, would have done just as well, wouldn't it?"

"Either of us. That's rather infuriating, somehow. But going by that idea, the enemy's aim would be to prevent the marriage of King Michael and Cosette, then?"

"That's true! In that case, it wouldn't have mattered whether it was me or Michael! And so the culprit is..."

There I broke off and, along with Lady Remie, looked at Elliot. Someone trying to prevent Michael and me from being joined. Knowing nothing of Lumelica's family affairs, I hadn't the faintest idea.

"...The mastermind is most likely a Lumelican court noble. Among them, one of the ones trying to push me forward. I think it's the work of those nobles."

"Push you forward?"

"Why you, Elliot? You said you had given up your claim to the throne."

At Elliot's words, not just I but Lady Remie too raised a doubtful voice. Elliot was Michael's younger brother. By rights his claim to the throne was first in line. But at the time of Michael's accession he had fled Lumelica and become a merchant. Then, after some years, having found success in trade, when he returned to Lumelica, as punishment for having fled without leave, Michael had stripped him of his claim to the throne, and he had given up his royal standing as well, or so it was said.

"Punishment, they called it, but it was my brother's, well, it was like the best parting gift he could give me. I hated being royalty, and I wanted to accomplish something by my own strength. My brother understood that, and set me free."

But at that time, and even now, Michael still had no queen, and of course no crown prince to be the next king. In such a situation, stripping the first-in-line Elliot of his claim was no easy thing, even for a king. Yet for his brother's wish, Michael pushed past the objections around him and chose the path of freeing Elliot, even playing out a falling-out with him to do it.

That Elliot was the son of a concubine also helped make those around them misread the two as being on bad terms. By acting out that discord, the court nobles of Michael's faction seized the chance to drive Elliot out, and the stage set itself naturally. And so Elliot had managed, neatly, to give up his royal standing.

"So that means you have no claim to the throne, right? Then why would there be any need to target Michael..."

It wasn't Elliot's fault. But my tone came out harsh in spite of myself, and a tear slipped from the corner of my eye. The time I had spent with Michael was still only a little, but I had felt strangely close to him. For me, it was the first time, my past life included, that someone close had suffered a life-threatening wound right before my eyes, and maybe I was confused. As I pressed down my trembling hands and desperately choked back tears, Elliot turned pained eyes on me. The moment I saw that look, my eyes flew open.

That's right. Elliot, as family, was having a harder time of it than me. I mustn't be the one crying. This was no time for tears.

"...I'm sorry."

"It's all right. You were shocked, weren't you? Anyone would be confused with something like that happening in front of them. More to the point, let's go on. I have no claim to the throne. That much is certain. But there are a good many who wish for me to be restored to royalty, and to take the throne."

"Does that... have something to do with your mother, Elliot?"

At Lady Remie's words, Elliot nodded bitterly.

"That's right. First of all, I've cut ties with my mother. At the same time as I stopped being royalty. That's why I haven't even introduced her to Remie. But she doesn't seem to see it that way. Again and again she's told me to return to the royal family."

It seemed Elliot's mother was quite a power-hungry woman. A big part of why Elliot had fled, it seemed, was that he had grown sick of the scheming and power struggles of a mother trying to put her son on the throne.

"Frankly, I'm not made of the stuff of kings. A mere merchant is about my limit. It's my brother who's fit for the throne. But my mother is desperate about it. She's been quiet these past few years, so I thought she'd given up, but I let my guard down."

As he said this, Elliot twisted his lips in frustration and pain. When Lady Remie gently laid her own hand over his, I noticed that he had been clenching his fist hard enough to draw blood.

Elliot was being modest, but a mere merchant though he called himself, he was the greatest merchant in all Lumelica. Even if he did become king, he would hardly be found wanting. In other words, that was how deeply Elliot respected and acknowledged Michael.

"The ones wishing for my return to royalty are my mother, and the nobles of her faction. It's highly likely they're the ones who plotted my brother's assassination too."

"I see. But even if the plot succeeded and something happened to Michael, wouldn't the claim just pass up to the next person? Would that lead straight to your restoration to royalty, Elliot?"

"The current first in line is my uncle, my late father's elder brother, an old man of seventy-five. He himself has openly said it's impossible for him to take the throne. And the one who was second in line, a six-year-old cousin, died the other day of a plague. Below that they're either equally aged, or relations so distant it isn't even clear they count as royalty."

"How dreadful..."

In Lumelica, women have no claim to the throne. So while the dead cousin's mother is a princess, she has no claim.

"Naturally, my brother has been pressed from all sides to settle down soon. But he can't take a wife from a noble house under my mother's influence, and any noble not under her influence gets interfered with, so it never went anywhere. It was precisely because my brother stayed single that my mother's faction kept up a surface calm, and the marriage talk kept getting put off, too. And now, for the first time, my brother has moved to marry of his own accord."

"Then this incident happening was..."

"...Yeah. The plan itself may have been in place already. But they must have rushed to act, too."

Even if the plan had been laid some time ago, the trigger for the assassination actually being carried out was, without a doubt, Michael proposing to me. If Michael and I married and had a child, Elliot's return to royalty and the restoration of his claim would recede even further.

"With respect, Lady Cosette, your bloodline is sound, and you have no entanglements with the Lumelican nobility. On top of that, you're a leading earl's daughter regarded even in Altria as a candidate for crown princess, and you run a thriving trading company. There could hardly be anyone so convenient as a queen. They must have feared that by joining with someone like you, my brother's power would grow."

Hmm, I didn't think I myself was worth that much, but seen from the outside, maybe that was how it looked. At least on the commercial side, expanding my sales channels in Lumelica had been one of my aims in coming here, and with a king's backing it would have been that much easier. If I pushed those along as queen, the international relationship between Altria and Lumelica would surely grow closer. Thought of that way, I really was a useful marriage partner for the king of Lumelica.

"Haah. Once it comes to this, the cousin's plague itself starts to look suspicious in the first place."

At Lady Remie's words, all we could do was nod with dark faces. Whether the cousin's death by illness had really been an illness, there was no knowing. There was no way, now, to confirm it.

"...True. If only we could learn the cause and circumstances of the cousin's death in detail, at least..."

"He was poisoned."

"Huh...?"

The door of the room, which had held only the three of us, opened quietly, and at the words Anje threw out, her face peeking in from the darkness, the three of us were dumbfounded.