Chapter 45

Crows of the Night (4)

“Your Highness, you need to come out for a moment.”

The rapidly moving carriage suddenly stopped, and Johan’s voice was heard. His tone was somehow both flustered and urgent. Legina, opening the carriage door and stepping outside, confirmed the direction he pointed, and for a moment, she was speechless. Dozens of crows, with wings blacker than the night sky, were flying towards the Imperial Palace.

“What is this…”

Legina, watching the Imperial Palace covered in crows, urgently ordered the carriage to move again. Johan, having gathered nearby soldiers in preparation for any unforeseen circumstances, began to run swiftly behind it. And Legina wondered why crows, which usually lived in flocks but without a clear leader, were moving so organizationally in the middle of the night, when it wasn’t their usual active time, as if they had received some command. Was it related to what Hermann had said? If so, why did he give Legina such a hint? Help? Or another trap? Legina’s mind became complex.

“Your Highness! It’s dangerous! Please take shelter inside!”

Inside the Imperial Palace, it was pandemonium. Dozens of crows were attacking people or flying into buildings, shattering glass windows. And some were circling high in the sky, moving as if searching for something. Legina, who had alighted from the carriage and was surrounded by knights and soldiers, ignored their attempts to usher her into a building and began to run towards the underground prison.

She thought and thought inside the moving carriage. What was the crow Hermann warned her about, and what had she left in the Imperial Palace? After a long contemplation, she recalled the crow’s pink eyes, and at that moment, everything connected.

He’s trying to sever the tail! He’s clearly trying to dispose of the witness so he can’t speak properly or be a witness after the spell breaks!

Hermann’s intention was still unclear. However, guessing his intention could wait. First, she had to save the attacker.

“Your Highness! Stop!”

As if Legina’s guess was correct, an exceptionally large number of crows swarmed the entrance leading to the underground prison. Soldiers and knights tried to fend them off with swords, spears, and torches, but the number of crows was too great. Legina gritted her teeth at the sight and was about to rush into the entrance when Johan blocked her. Not only did he block her, but he lightly lifted her body and began to move her to a safe place where crows weren’t gathered.

“Johan! Let go! Quickly!”

“I absolutely cannot!”

“That’s an order!”

“Not this time, Your Highness!”

To Johan, a knight of Ellias and Her Highness Legina’s escort knight, something more important than his own life or honor was Legina’s safety, which he had sworn to protect. No matter how much Legina ordered, he could not allow her to go to a place where her safety was not guaranteed. He safely placed the struggling Legina in her room, then summoned the soldiers and commanded them never to open the door until safety outside was secured. And he himself rushed to the underground prison to check on the attacker’s safety, as Legina had intended to do.

The cawing of crows, the screams of people, and the shouts of battle could be heard from beyond the thick curtains covering the windows. Riga and Leon, gathered at Legina’s feet as if to protect her, growled softly.

“Y-Your Highness. What could be happening?”

“I don’t know either.”

“It will be alright. Don’t worry, Your Highness.”

Una and Selma, standing on either side of Legina, also listened to the sounds from outside with somber faces. An attack by crows… Their bodies trembled faintly, as if fear had washed over them at this unprecedented incident in the Ellias Empire’s history.

And after a long time, as dawn began to break, the commotion outside finally subsided. Legina, who hadn’t slept a wink and had been listening intently to the sounds outside, personally moved and pulled back the curtains.

“Eek!”

“Your, Your Highness, step back!”

Beyond the window, crow carcasses lay strewn about. Una gasped as if to faint, seeing them cover the ground in black, and Selma quickly pulled the curtains shut again, blocking Legina’s view. However, the tragedy had already been imprinted in her violet eyes. Legina took a step back, sighed deeply, and roughly wiped the sweat from her palms. Even without confirming it with her own eyes, she was certain that the attacker imprisoned in the underground prison had died last night.

“…I need to go to Theore.”

“Your Highness, after outside has been cleared…”

“I’m not saying I’m going outside. Tell the soldiers to open the door; I need to check on my brother’s safety.”

Selma, bowing her head at Legina’s chilling voice, persuaded the soldiers to open the door. Curtains were drawn over all the windows in the corridor, as if to conceal the nightmare of the previous night. Legina passed through the dark corridor, as dark as night, and arrived at Theore’s room. She walked past the soldier guarding the door, just as her own room had been, and entered her brother’s room. Like Legina, Theore seemed to have also spent a sleepless night, sitting on his bed with shadows under his eyes.

“Theore, are you alright?”

“Uh, um…”

“Sir Jesse?”

“He told me not to come out, then he left.”

Theore was nervously biting his lip, as the incident last night was certainly not ordinary, leaving even the Imperial Family’s escort knights absent from their posts. Legina sat on the edge of the bed and gently stroked Theore’s head.

“You don’t need to be anxious. Nothing in this Imperial Palace can harm you.”

“Who said I was anxious?! Hey, and! You speak clearly! You always hit me with that club, and now what? Nothing can harm me?!”

“It’s admirable that you’re not intimidated even in this situation, but… Theore, you truly have no intention of grasping the situation, do you?”

“Why, why?! Are you going to hit me again?! I’m not going to tolerate it anymore!”

Theore, who had been sulking just moments before, bristled and rose from his seat at her lightly laughing reply. It was quite fortunate that troublemakers, with just a little provocation, would forget reality and run wild, so there was no need to try to reassure him.

“My beloved brother. Surely you’re not resting easy because Titi isn’t in my hand, are you? There are chairs in your room too, you know?”

“…You old witch… Is that a threat?!”

“It is a threat.”

Theore flinched and trembled at Legina’s brightly smiling and resolute response. Now, the commotion of the previous night no longer lingered in his mind. All that remained was the desperate urgency to somehow act before that damned sister threw a chair. And as if realizing that fact, Legina glanced at a chair. The attendants standing in Theore’s room had already taken shelter in a corner of the room. Legina, nodding, certainly believing the attendants were more perceptive than their master, rose from the bed and stood with her back to the thickly curtained window, smiling.

An hour later, Legina, having resolved the situation by reluctantly hitting her brother’s backside directly with her palm, thanks to Selma insisting that a chair was absolutely out of the question, was walking towards the underground prison. The path was so clean that one wouldn’t know there had been a struggle with crows before dawn. Legina, feeling anew the competence of the Imperial Palace workers, reached the underground prison.

“Greetings to Your Highness.”

“Greetings to Your Highness.”

Legina, meeting Johan and Jesse who were guarding the entrance to the underground prison and receiving their greetings, lightly furrowed her brows. The two had blocked her path.

“Johan, move aside.”

“There is no need for Your Highness to enter.”

“Johan.”

“He is dead.”

Johan spoke as if he knew what Legina intended to confirm.

“How?”

“…By the crows… He died in a way that Your Highness would find unpleasant to hear in detail.”

“What did you find out from him before he died?”

“They say nothing. As you instructed, we also carefully examined his eyes, but they remained hazy until the last moment we checked.”

She had lost a card in vain, without learning anything substantial. Legina clenched her fist tightly, glared at the entrance of the underground prison, and then took a deep breath. Yes, it was just one unplanned card. Even without it, her plans wouldn’t be derailed.

As she steeled her resolve, Jesse’s small mutterings reached Legina’s ears.

“It wasn’t a witch’s magic, was it? What happened?”

“Sir Lady? What did you just say?”

“…It’s Jesse, not Lady.”

“Yes, Sir Lady. Didn’t you just say ‘witch’ a moment ago?”

Jesse, who had been sulkily slumping his shoulders, raised his head. No matter what he was called, he had been questioned by the Imperial Princess, so he had to answer.

“It’s nothing much. My father said that crows flying at night are witches’ messengers.”

“Crows flying at night?”

At that moment, Hermann’s words, that no crows fly at night, came to mind.

“Come to think of it, my lord. You told me a while ago that Riga and Leon were black wolf-dogs and mentioned witches, didn’t you?”

“Yes, well…”

It might be an overthinking, but the story of witches continued to bother her. She couldn’t be certain if extinct witches were directly related to recent events, but she had a premonition that she shouldn’t just dismiss it.

“I’d like to meet your father, Count Tarahan, if possible.”

“I apologize, Your Highness. That might be difficult.”

“Why?”

“He left for somewhere else again a week ago.”

Count Tarahan’s wanderlust was a rather well-known rumor within the Empire. When he left, he would be gone for a few months at the shortest, or several years at the longest, so his eldest son had taken over the estate’s affairs as acting count from a very young age with his mother’s help.

“When will he return?”

“I’m not sure… His last journey was short, so this one might be long.”

It was truly regrettable. Legina forced herself to suppress a sigh and looked towards the entrance leading down to the underground prison. Crows and witches, Slyveig and the sorceress… The answer to the riddle, elusive yet almost within grasp, was making her mind complex.

– Mochinuna.