The Prince of Loegria who had left the castle had returned.
That rumor passed from mouth to mouth among attendants and servants, and now it was a story everyone knew, though they didn't dare say it openly.
The censure poured on the still-young prince who'd recklessly slipped out of the royal castle was enormous. His stepmother Queen Cadwin shed tears and pretended to take to her sickbed, and when even the castle's attendants began wagging their tongues about the prince's childish behavior, the enraged King Calhog slapped the prince's face again and again the moment he entered the castle, then locked him in his bedchamber.
There was only one reason the king could not punish him any more harshly than that.
-<Kiiiiik!>
-Your Majesty, Your Majesty! Your beard's on fire! What are you all just standing there for? Bring water!
-Get that damned thing out of here, now! Drive it from my sight, I say!
Because the moment the prince fell sprawling, the big lizard on his head flew up and breathed fire at Calhog. King Calhog, with half his beard burned, had to hurriedly turn away for the sake of his own dignity, and thanks to that, the prince was able to settle the matter by being locked in his bedchamber, but.
Unfortunately, the others weren't so lucky.
Pidrin and Daren, being commoners who'd committed irreverent words and deeds toward the prince, were detained. Estan, having found the prince in advance yet putting the prince's request before the Queen's orders, was to take on a squire's duties along with his own in the order of knights for the time being.
Albion's treatment was the worst of all. That the hitherto well-behaved prince had suddenly been incited to leave the royal castle, that he'd been told how to leave, that he'd been led all the way to Tintagel, was all blamed on the commoner attendant Albion.
Neither Estan, Pidrin nor Daren, nor even the prince, could resist this forced decision. Whatever had happened, what mattered to the king was not the truth but 'the honor of the royal house of Loegria.'
Leaving the royal castle without the king's orders was already a grave crime, and enticing the prince out too was a crime for which one would have nothing to say even with one's head cut off. In the end, Albion, who wouldn't come to, was thrown into the dungeon just as he was.
Since Albion had been locked up, Estan was his only visitor. Because, after hearing Calhog's threat to torture him when he woke and then cut his body to pieces, the prince had earnestly begged. To look in once in a while to see if Albion was awake.
Estan found the prince, who himself was locked in his bedchamber yet worried over a commoner attendant, a bother, but neither could he disobey the order. However illegitimate a child, a prince was a prince, wasn't he?
In the end he had to go down to the prison twice a day and look in on Albion, and even now he was going down the stairs silently chewing out the boy who obviously wouldn't have woken up.
In front of the cell, faintly smelling of moss and damp rot, he peered inside between the iron bars, and.
In the darkness hung round, pale green pupils.
"What are you doing here?"
"Aaaargh! Make a sound, will you, a sound!"
"Isn't sneaking in that creepily and peering in the weirder thing? You're noisy, so quit screaming."
This brat!
Estan, unable even to soothe his heart pounding under his pauldrons, only ruffled his hair roughly.
Right before reaching the castle they'd tried so hard to wake him and he hadn't woken then. And now seeing him up and perfectly fine, was he really a patient? Or should they have woken him even by beating him?
Paying no mind to Estan's complicated feelings, Albion, who'd been looking around, pressed flat against the rusty iron bars.
"Hey. But why am I here? This isn't the room I was staying in."
"......That you took the prince out of the castle and then think you can safely go back to your room on your return is itself outrageous."
"What? I didn't take him out. Erman followed me on his own."
"The prince says the same. But your life and death rest with His Majesty Calhog, so even the prince will hardly be able to save you."
"So do I die?"
"I suppose so."
"That won't do."
What do you mean it won't do? Estan stared at Albion's strangely offhand answers, then stepped back from the bars. He was truly sick to death of it. Of the attendant who showed not an eyelash's worth of respect to a knight despite being a commoner, and of the weak prince crying and hugging a dragon in his bedchamber.
Loegria's future is dark, dark.
"I'm leaving. For now I have to let the prince know you've woken up."
"Did Erman send you?"
"Yes. Though I can't understand at all why the prince would look after the welfare of a mere commoner."
"Hey. Never mind that, is Calhog really going to try to kill me?"
His Majesty, I tell you! His Majesty Calhog! Has this wretch learned nothing?! Estan shouted inwardly.
"......The death penalty's a foregone conclusion. Not hanging either; I hear he'll cut you in half, have you crawl, and then kill you."
"Really? That is kind of horrible. Will Erman try to save me?"
"He will. But despite the prince's efforts, there's nothing he can do. His Majesty Calhog has taken measures so the prince can't leave his bedchamber. He won't be able to bribe the executioner either."
"No wonder he didn't come himself. Still, he'll be able to come to my execution, right?"
"Probably."
"Then that's fine. Tell Erman not to worry."
"Is that all? No last words, or apology?"
"You think I would? Now get lost. I need to think."
Ah. At this point it was enough to make him dizzy.
No one would be this calm on hearing he'd be chopped in half and die. No, could it be that being a fairy half-blood, he didn't much regret human death? Did fairies, when they died, get reborn in Tir na Nog, known as the land of fairies? Was it an act, carrying on as if a death gifted by humans wasn't worth caring about, or was it real?
Estan, holding his overloaded head, staggered out of the dungeon. He wanted to put distance between himself and this incomprehensible creature as soon as possible.
But even as he climbed the last stairs he didn't know.
That behind him, far below in the prison, Albion's schemes were spinning faster and fiercer than anyone's.
***
Erman couldn't sleep. Precisely speaking, whenever he tried to close his eyes, the scaffold Albion would mount kept coming to mind and he couldn't sleep.
Meals were allowed twice a day, and only those brought directly into the bedchamber by an attendant under strict guard outside the door. When he'd gone about alone they'd treated him as if he didn't exist, and now they assigned guards to a mere meal-carrying attendant. It was enough to draw a hollow laugh.
It wasn't that Erman hadn't thought of breaking through the strict watch. Was that all? Before reaching Puil he'd also tried somehow to spirit Albion, Daren and Pidrin elsewhere.
He and Sir Estan aside, if others discovered them like this, those with no shield would obviously suffer terribly.
But Albion, unaware of Erman's heart as he anxiously stamped his feet, slept all along, and when he'd tried at least to leave him with Pidrin and Daren and help them hide for a while, they'd run into knights prowling near Puil and it all came to nothing.
Whether the king had sent them or the queen, he didn't know. It didn't matter at all now. Albion was already in the dungeon, and he had failed to protect Albion. That alone was the truth.
-Honored Dragon, please. Is there no way to save Albion? Can't you somehow send him out of the castle? At this rate Albion might die. Please.
-<Kiruk.>
With a thread of hope he'd asked the dragon too, but Erman, who couldn't understand the dragon's language, saw only a dragon tilting its head. A creature that may or may not have understood him.
He asked again and again, but the dragon only blinked its golden eyes and looked at him.
The only prince of Loegria, in a room closed on all sides, hugging only one dragon, was slowly withering to death.
Days later, the day of Albion's execution finally dawned. From dawn the air in the castle had been shifting. An ominous silence and the sound of attendants walking with even their footsteps muffled.
And at the end of that, someone knocked on the door.
"My prince. It's Estan."
"......"
"His Majesty Calhog has issued a royal command. He orders you to come down to the execution ground without fail."
Erman lay on the bed with his face buried in his pillow, not moving. After a moment the door creaked open, and he sensed an approaching presence too. Estan, seeing Erman face down with no preparations made, stood a moment, apparently rather flustered.
"Prince Erman."
"......I will get up on my own."
Erman got up. Between his tousled golden hair, eyes red as a rabbit's and eyelids raw from crying showed and disappeared.
Watching Erman change clothes alone without an attendant, Estan somehow felt odd. He had no particular interest in the half-wit prince, but having seen Erman smiling brightly on the way between Puil and Tintagel, he found the current situation most unsettling.
Where on earth was the boy who'd worn just one light short sword, picked up acorns and chased butterflies, and why was there now only a prince in a wretched state who looked as if he might throw himself out the window at any moment?
As he watched Erman pull on his shirt with a troubled mind, Estan gave a short cough. At a volume the guards and attendants waiting outside the door wouldn't hear.
"My prince."
"What is it?"
"When I last saw that fellow Albion, the guy didn't say one word of apology to you, my prince."
"That is just Albion's nature. Do not take it to heart."
"Even after I told him the punishment he was like that. If he'd truly served you, my prince, wouldn't he have said at least a word of thanks for all that time?"
The small hand buttoning paused for a moment.
"......What is it you wish to say?"
"Albion certainly is a peculiar guy who doesn't suit the royal house of Loegria. But even so, he couldn't show such a composed attitude even in the face of death."
"And so?"
"Albion can converse with a dragon. That fellow also works strange magic neither I nor you have seen, my prince, and as to whether he'll just die obediently without resisting— I can't really say."
Estan saw it clearly. Life flashing for an instant into Erman's eyes, dead as those of a rotten fish. The moment strength came into the shoulders that had drooped helplessly.
Only then did Erman turn to look at Estan. On a face that could only be described as young was a yearning. A yearning he'd never once shown since coming to the castle.
"Do you truly believe that, Sir? That Albion will not simply die, you think that?"
"It's suspicious for a guy who pulled such stunts to suddenly turn meek, isn't it?"
Estan gave a small shrug.
He hadn't said it simply to lift Erman's spirits. There was also the chill of feeling Erman might leap out the window at any moment, but Estan genuinely believed it.
That he'd asked to tell Erman not to worry, or that he hadn't begged for his life and had calmly told Estan to 'get lost,' all of it made him think so.
To be specific, there was the difference that whereas Erman thought 'Albion's a wonderful mage, so surely he can work magic to escape execution,'
Estan thought something more like 'That magic-working guy had better not be planning to throw a curse at His Majesty the King to escape execution.'
He went to Erman, did up the buttons in his stead, and tightened the string at his neck properly.
"So shouldn't you go and see for yourself, my prince, what that guy will pull?"
From clumsy fingertips a ribbon was tied. It wasn't the refined way attendants tied it but closer to the knot knights commonly used, but Erman quietly looked down at it and nodded.
"I shall do so. You will come with me too, Sir."
"It would be an honor, my prince."
A little later, a prince holding a black dragon, and a young knight following as if attending him, came out of the bedchamber and walked down the corridor. Looking down at the heavy dragon, Erman repeated in his heart.
Wait just a little longer, Albion.
I'm coming now.
If you can't get out of there, then I'll first......
The young prince's steps toward the execution ground were as calm as could be.