Chapter 150

Eugène signaled to the Anti-Chevaliers, instructing each of them to take aim at a different target. The pistol, with its short barrel, was prone to poor accuracy, but at this distance, against men who were presenting their backs, it was the ideal weapon.

Three, two, one. As the final finger curled into his fist, the Anti-Chevaliers fired without hesitation, driving bullets into the backs of the enemies who were wholly preoccupied with dismantling the defensive barricade, unaware of the threat behind them.

Bang, bang, bang!

“Argh!!”

The concentrated strike was both lethal and efficient. In an instant, nearly half of the enemy force was wiped out. As their comrades, standing beside them, fell, blood spraying everywhere, the remaining attackers turned their heads in shock. By then, however, Eugène and his men had already abandoned their original positions and plunged into the smoke-choked room.

From beyond the clouded field of vision, a terrifying figure lunged forward in a blur. Acting on instinct, a young man thrust out his gun and pulled the trigger, but Eugène hooked the barrel with a strangely curved blade, twisting it sharply upward. The shot was wasted on empty air. In that same instant, the slim chance of his survival vanished as well.

Eugène slashed the inner wrist of the man who had gone pale in shock, then, while the man’s attention was drawn to the pain, spun his body as if dancing and neatly cut through his Adam’s apple. After dispatching two or three in this manner, the fighting came to an end. From the enemy’s perspective, it must have been a bitter fate. They died without ever knowing who had struck them down.

“W-who are you?”

Having struggled desperately while losing more than half of their comrades to insurgents who had appeared from nowhere, the Imperial Guard regarded them with wary eyes. It was true that the enemy of one’s enemy could be an ally, but these were men who had slain an opposing force twice their number in the blink of an eye. For guards tasked with protecting important persons, not knowing the precise identity of such individuals was reason enough for concern.

“Anti-Chevalier. His Majesty sent us.”

Eugène spoke calmly, flicking the blood from his dagger out of habit. At the sound of his voice, someone behind the barricade cautiously poked his head out. The man carefully lowered his head so that only his eyes were exposed, and finally relaxed after confirming that it truly was Baron Amieux.

“O-oh, Baron Amieux. To think you would come to our rescue. We are truly fortunate.”

The young officer, his complexion drawn and haggard, introduced himself as Sir Olloïs, a senior captain of the Imperial Guard. Leaving the Anti-Chevaliers to examine the corpses and determine the identities of the attackers on their own, Eugène stepped toward Sir Olloïs.

“What exactly happened here?”

“Well, the matter is as follows—.”

His account went thus. Having uncovered the plot of treason at Grand Feaute in advance, the Emperor, acting out of caution, had relocated the Grands to a safe house. He knew that for the conspirators to achieve their objective, the lives of the Grands would also be required.

Because too much commotion might draw unwanted attention, only a single company-sized unit of the Imperial Guard had been stationed at the estate, numbering twenty-four guards in total.

However, roughly an hour earlier, the attack had begun without warning. For guards who had received training but had never experienced real combat, it was an ordeal difficult to endure. Most critically, the attackers outnumbered them by more than two to one.

Charged with protecting many while possessing only a small number of men, they threw themselves bodily into repelling the assault, gathering the scattered Grands into one place. By the time they succeeded, however, more than half of the guards had already been slain.

“Aaaah! Let go of me, I said let go!!”

“Compose yourself, woman. Are you trying to get us all killed?”

“jODt zNDqCmJt fI fy mCJtJ NI EJLL, zNoy eOD. vm fI yOm OyLe oe IOy ECO fI ODm mCJtJ!!”

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“What is going on?”

There was no time to waste, so Eugène asked bluntly. Sir Olloïs answered with an awkward, troubled expression.

“W-well… this is most difficult to say, but His Highness Prince Sigeber and Her Highness Princess Anne Meredith are not inside. We searched desperately, but we could not determine where they were, nor were we able to find and escort them back.”

“Oh….”

“I beg your pardon.”

“There is nothing for which you must apologize to me. You did all that could be done under such urgent circumstances.”

Of all people, Prince Sigeber and Princess Anne Meredith. Eugène frowned as the two most familiar faces among the imperial children rose to mind. Now that he knew they were not in the drawing room, the mystery was finally resolved. He had wondered where half of the attackers had vanished to. It seemed they had realized this fact and gone in search of them.

Eugène turned to look at the Anti-Chevaliers. Though they had been faithfully attending to their tasks, they had also kept one ear open. Understanding at once why Eugène was looking their way, they focused their attention on him. After surveying those capable men, Eugène asked, not addressing anyone in particular,

“Which among you are the most agile? Three, raise your hands.”

The men exchanged glances, silently conferring, and when they reached an agreement, only three raised their hands. Eugène nodded and beckoned them to his side.

“The four of us, including myself, will search the estate. Our objective is not the annihilation of the enemy, but the location and rescue of the two imperial children. The rest of you are to remain here and reinforce the guards.”

“Understood!”

“You will come with me.”

***

They set out to search, forming pairs of two.

The aftereffects of being confined for some time and then suddenly forcing his body into motion were considerable. He had not yet exerted himself to the point of real exhaustion, yet his entire body felt stiff, and his muscles were already beginning to spasm. He had kept up his physical training, but the real problem was how little he had eaten during that time.

They did not move toward the first floor, but instead headed for this one. If one were to think very optimistically, the reason the others had not rejoined the main force yet was that they had still failed to locate the imperial children. The first floor would have been the obvious place for them to search first, so Eugène bypassed it and went straight up to this floor.

Unlike the first floor, which had been left in complete disarray, the second floor showed no clear traces of heavy fighting and looked much as it always had. Eugène was quietly surprised by how vividly he remembered every part of this place. Turn right here, and there was a corridor. Open the first door along it, and that room was where he had spent hisfirst night.

No, calling it a first night makes it sound strange…

Even though he knew this was no time for such thoughts, Eugène could not quite shake the subtle feeling as he passed by the closed door. After carefully searching the surroundings for some time, he still could not find any sign of the imperial children.

He did not encounter them, nor anyone else conducting a search. So they were not on the second floor. Finding it suspicious that he had not seen a single soul in the corridor for so long, he abandoned the search of the second floor and moved on to the third.

Here, he very nearly ran into trouble the moment he reached the landing. As he rounded a corridor that bent to one side, he almost collided head-on with someone else who was searching the area. The instant Eugène sensed the other man’s presence, he swiftly swept his legs out from under him, knocked him down, and climbed atop him, clamping a hand over his mouth.

The wide, terror-stricken eyes were familiar. The Young Lord Jemeine, said to be the younger brother of Viscount Jemeine. His name was probably Vincent? A youthful face that could not have been more than twenty years old stared up at him in unease.

At first, he had been too panicked to recognize who it was, but once the young man belatedly recognized Eugène’s face, his expression gradually hardened into something vicious. It was the look of someone who clearly understood that the man before him could only be an enemy, never an ally.

Eugène had intended to extract information from the man regarding the whereabouts of the imperial children, but upon seeing that look in his eyes, he abandoned the attempt. If he loosened his grip merely to hear him speak, the man would surely scream and draw others to them.

“Baron truly is… truly—”

As Eugène silenced the man forever and rose to his feet, one of the accompanying Anti-Chevaliers muttered under his breath. Eugène pushed the young man’s corpse into the room so that passersby in the corridor would not notice it, then turned back with a puzzled look.

“What about me?”

“…It-It is nothing.”

Should it be called decisiveness? Or mercilessness? Eugène’s judgments were instantaneous, and his actions swift. However, those snap decisions were almost never wrong, which made him trustworthy as a commander. The man, who until meeting him had harbored prejudice simply because Eugène was the Emperor’s lover, could no longer deny how narrow-minded his own thinking had been.

They resumed their search with greater caution. Even so, they nearly crossed paths with the enemy several more times. On two occasions, they caught sight of movement in the distance and managed to avoid contact just in time.

Then it happened.

From the far side of the estate came the sudden sound of a young girl crying; an unabashed, wailing sob, as though she had been grievously wronged. The voice was painfully familiar. Startled, Eugène and the man exchanged glances and immediately ran toward the source of the sound.

The crying came from a space on the third floor that could well be called a central drawing room, so wide was it. Several men were roughly restraining a pitiful young girl.

“Let go! Let go, you vile brute! Do you even know who I am? How dare you lay hands on me!”

Dragged along with her skirts trailing in the dust, the girl looked as though she had already suffered greatly, as if she had been hiding elsewhere before this. Her once plump, rosy cheeks were smeared with grime, and dark red handprints marred the soft down of her neck and shoulders.

The child, whose eyes were red, protested with a trembling voice and struggled as hard as she could. But the man holding her was far from gentle.

As the little princess’s resistance grew more desperate, he yanked her disheveled hair hard enough to wrench her head back and pressed a sharp blade against her nape. It was not an empty threat. A thin cut opened at her throat, and a pale trace of blood spread across her skin.

The startled little princess flinched, and her shoulders jerked. Her lashes, heavy with tears, drew tight, and thick drops spilled down her cheeks like falling rain.

“Such a clever little imperial princess, and yet you seem unable to grasp the situation. The game of hide-and-seek is over. From here on, this is no longer a game.”

The man muttered darkly, then suddenly raised his voice and shouted toward the surrounding space.

“If there is a gentleman here, it is time to come out. The seeker has been caught already. How long do you intend to keep hiding?”

As he shouted, he deliberately shook his shoulder. The princess, violently jolted, shrieked in fright.

“Ahh!”

“You can see what is happening, can you not? If you do not come out by the time I count to three, I will not spare Your Highness’s sister!”

The reason he was acting so cruelly was to frighten the first imperial prince, whom they had not yet found, and force the child to emerge of his own accord. It was a conduct utterly devoid of noble dignity, yet the men surrounding him made no attempt to stop it. It seemed to be, to some extent, an agreed course of action.

Thank goodness. They have not found Prince Sigeber yet.

Eugène let out an involuntary breath of relief at the sight. It was regrettable for Princess Anne Meredith, but both as a hostage and as an assassination target, the first prince was of far greater value than the princess. Put bluntly, the fact that the princess was still alive even after her location had been exposed strongly suggested that they had not yet secured the prince.

“One!”

The man played the part of a cheap villain, but the gaze with which he scanned his surroundings was cold and precise, leaving no opening.

“Two!”

Go downstairs and bring more men. I will buy time.

The situation was on the brink of eruption. If the prince yielded to the threat and revealed himself, there would no longer be any need for hostages. The thought that both the princess and the prince might come to harm before his eyes left Eugène no room for hesitation. After ordering his companion to call for reinforcements, he burst into the room at the very moment the man was about to utter three.

It was around that instant that the terrified Princess Anne Meredith suddenly steeled herself. Whatever thoughts passed through her small head, she clenched her tear-filled eyes and, with fierce resolve, sank her teeth hard into the man’s hand.

Whether “Three!” or “Aagh!” burst from the man’s mouth first was a riddle even he could not untangle. No matter how young she was, being bitten with all of a child’s strength could hardly be painless. Startled, the man reflexively lashed out with the back of his hand, striking the girl and knocking her away from him.

“How insolent!”

Princess Anne Meredith, struck for the first time in her life, rolled helplessly across the floor. Her entire face burned as though it were coming apart, and blood pooled red at the corner of her mouth, torn open by the ring on the man’s finger. Even so, the brazen little girl did not lose heart. Lying prone on the floor, she lifted only her head and screamed at the top of her lungs, as if venting pure fury.

“Sigeber! Do not come out! Do not come out, no matter what!!”