Inge stared over Hilde"s head as he waited for her response. She noted how a light sheen of sweat was already forming over the black-haired and sharp-featured man"s forehead. It wasn"t only the heat causing that, she wagered.Refraining from letting out an impatient sigh, Hilde asked in an uninflected tone, "What is this?"
Just as blandly, Inge answered, "This is my punishment, Princess."
From the stubborn set of his chin, she knew she won"t get anything more enlightening than that reply. She didn"t make another attempt and instead looked past his shoulder. Standing there, also saluting was Raban, whose unremarkable face was slightly lined and whose sideburns were beginning to gray.
"And you?" she asked him.
"Princess Hilde. I was charged to enforce his punishment."
"I see." She nodded towards the two other soldiers on either side of Raban. "And them?"
"When the others drew lots on who would man the biers, they lost. Now they have nothing else to do."
Hilde shrugged lightly, as if none of this meant anything to her. "So you have been punished, charged, or led by circ.u.mstances to act as my guards for this day," she said, letting a hint of affront flavor her tone as she enunciated each of their stated reasons. "I a.s.sume I do not have a say in the matter?"
"With all respect, Princess," Raban, who was the senior among the four, replied in a deadpan manner. "You are in no position to meddle in how military affairs are handled."
"Hm," said Hilde, forcing herself not to laugh after her own words were thrown back at her. "I"ll leave you all to your sentences then."
Despite her words and att.i.tude, Hilde was of course relieved. This order would have been given to them BEFORE the Lord General publicly confronted the Queen, but it spoke volumes that it had not been retracted despite the result of that confrontation.
Actually, viewed from another angle, this would explain the Lord"s rashness – and subsequent easy surrender. Behind the scenes, he had already set up the pieces necessary to s.h.i.+eld against a backlash.
Unbeknownst to his opponent, he was already several moves ahead. Perhaps he thought it wouldn"t matter in the long run that he had lost that particular contest – if his earlier gamble pays off, this loss could simply be written off as a ruse or a necessary sacrifice.
But for all that Hilde was glad at how this benefitted her, she was still being used as a p.a.w.n in someone else"s game.
The knowledge chaffed. It hurt her pride.
But…
Hilde forced her spirit into calmness. Arrogance was her former ident.i.ty"s final downfall, she fully admitted. Having gone through so much, Yong Fan Shu had come to believe that nothing more could touch her – she"d seen every kind of evil in existence, she had either escaped or defeated them all, she had set every boundary and defenses necessary to never again be devoured.
However, there was no end to the insidious ways that dark minds could and would nip at the heels of their chosen targets – that was the last and greatest lesson her past self had learned before the curtain fell.
In this life, pride and arrogance would also not serve her well. To stay in the game, she"ll need to become stronger. To become stronger, she was going to need others. Whether their help was offered in benevolence or with strings attached… well, she was in no position yet to be picky.
One day, she will always have a wide selection of desirable choices – she"ll make sure of that. Alas, for now, she"ll have to make do with the Lord General"s protection. In exchange, she"ll play the part of his p.a.w.n, "play" being the operative word.
Hilde did not miss sensing how Queen Heloise had become aware of the atrocity that was happening in her presence. For her sister to have found out sooner about what had happened outside the House of Contemplation, at least one person present at the scene had to have been loyal to her.
Hilde had been prepared to be that person. If she had found her elder sister to be someone who was willing to listen and act sensibly on the knowledge she had been given, there would now be no need for any pretense between them.
But Queen Heloise just HAD to let it slip that her younger sister was nothing more than trash in her eyes. That that so-called trash had the gall to try becoming something more, right before her very eyes, even! To stop being so frightened of her, to speak to her of truths she had absolutely no wish to hear because they touched on wounds, wounds whose existence she had been trying so hard to deny – to the kind of person the Queen was, those acts of daring could never be forgiven.
For those offenses alone, Hilde"s sister would stop at nothing to get back at her. For the treasonous ones that – even before the Lord General first dragged her name into their game – had been piling along with those relatively smaller offenses?
"Punishment?" asked Queen Heloise, her polite look of inquiry not doing much to offset the chilliness in her eyes. "For what crime? On whose orders?"
Hilde sighed, lamenting how brief the respite from her "paranoia" had been. "IF ONLY I"d just been "imagining things"…"
"The Lord General"s," she answered honestly, showing a strained smile. The next part was a half-truth, but still a truth. "For brawling."
The Queen raised an eyebrow. "By himself?"
"Where"s the other one?" Lady Ilse asked, addressing Raban. Though she"d been confused when the soldiers first appeared, she was eventually as pleased as Hilde when it became apparent that these Prince"s Guards were the answer to their dilemma. Then she heard who"d ordered them there. Despite taking the altercation and reconciliation at the throne room at face value, she nevertheless sensed something was off with this new situation.
"He"s being held somewhere, Lady Ilse, awaiting trial."
"For brawling?" repeated the Lady, incredulous. She looked pointedly at Inge. "Only him?"
The soldier Raban had been keeping his expression blank and firm before this, but at being cornered for the full information right after the Princess had tried to cloak it for whatever reason, his eyes wavered.
"For grave insult to the Queen, Lady," he answered in the end. "And to Princess Hilde."
The way he said this, it was as though the latter half held equal if not more importance than the first.
"Well, well," thought Hilde drily, almost sensing physically how the hole she was standing on just got deeper. "Here"s another would-be rebel."