CHAPTER 125……………………………………………..
A Bitter End (4)
“Mother merely spoke of Your Majesty’s future. She was not someone who knew how to speak in riddles, so perhaps there was something in her words that displeased you. Still, everything she said was for Your Majesty’s sake—for the sake of a better future for the Empire, she conveyed the will of the heavens. And yet—yet you had to!”
Unable to contain his rage, Dabi seized the emperor by the collar and shook him. Though the emperor was still in the prime of his life, his body had already been worn down beyond repair, and he was tossed helplessly back and forth as Dabi shook him.
“Did you really have to kill her?!”
“At the time, I was young and brimming with ambition. The world seemed laughably easy back then. Even if my mother’s status was lowly, I believed there was no one but me fit to ascend the imperial throne. All the others were nothing more than scarecrows with fancy skins. So even if your mother or her clan had said I would not become emperor, I would have laughed it off.”
“Then why did such an illustrious man slaughter a pitiful wandering tribe?”
“I didn’t like the sight of insignificant gypsies presuming to offer advice. To begin with, I never thought you lot knew anything at all. People kept calling you miraculous, so I went out of idle curiosity. But to know who I was and still dare to spew such words before me? If it hadn’t been me, anyone else would have drawn their sword as well. Your mother brought her death upon herself.”
The emperor’s voice was weak and oddly vacant, as though his mind were elsewhere.
“My mother was trying to help you. If you had listened to her, you could have avoided ending up like this. You could have become a great and virtuous ruler, remembered by the people for generations—”
“So what? What good would that do me—becoming a sage king and lingering in the people’s memory? What benefit would that bring me?”
“…What?”
Caught off guard by the question, Dabi stared at him blankly.
“Why do you think I became emperor? For the people? To be remembered by history? No. Not at all.”
The emperor shook his head again and again, a smile even curling on his lips.
“I only wanted revenge on those who looked down on me for being of low birth. And becoming emperor and shaking the Empire—it felt rather good. So how annoying do you think those impudent gypsies were, trying to give me their paltry advice?”
“……”
Silent tears streamed down Dabi’s face. For such a trivial reason, his mother and his entire clan had been killed by the emperor.
Not knowing it was such a worthless reason, Dabi had abandoned his research and spent his entire life chasing after the emperor, trying to learn why his people had been slaughtered.
If he had known, he should have simply used poison, just as Hildegard had done.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Dabi, who had regained his composure, shook his head.
“And why would I bother? Who would that please?”
Curling his lips into a spiteful grin, the emperor loosened his nightclothes and bared his naked chest. Crawling across the bed on his knees in a pitiful manner, he thrust out his chest toward Dabi.
“If you’re going to do it, do it all at once.”
But Dabi only stepped back.
“All kinds of hallucinations will torment Your Majesty. Pain as though you were in hell will aim straight for your heart. Why should I show mercy and help you? I’m sure my mother warned you even about what is happening now. You were the one who chose not to heed her advice.”
With a cold smile directed at the emperor, Dabi looked around. Then, without the emperor noticing, he dropped one of Hildegard’s earrings that he had stolen earlier around the bed.
With that, his final task in the imperial palace was complete.
Wearing a lightened expression, Dabi walked toward the window.
“I shall take my leave now.”
At Dabi’s farewell, the emperor’s eyes bulged as he pounded his own chest and screamed.
“You must take revenge! Kill me before you go! Here—stab me with your sword before you leave!”
At the emperor’s frantic screams, the sound of guards rushing over could be heard. Glancing briefly at the door, Dabi threw himself out the window. As the emperor’s screams continued, torches were lit throughout the once-silent palace grounds, and a search for the intruder began.
“This way!”
Soldiers who caught his trail chased after Dabi.
He wasn’t slow, but his body had spent a lifetime studying the stars and books alone. Unaccustomed to exercise, he quickly grew exhausted after running for a short while, his breath catching painfully in his lungs.
“Huff! Huff!”
There should have been an old side gate nearby, one used by peddlers and traders…
Standing before a wooden fence whose ends had turned yellow with the season, Dabi looked around in panic, his eyes trembling. The sound of soldiers’ boots echoed from all directions, and it felt as though a spear might fly out at any moment and pierce his back.
Though he had always spoken so glibly about how life and death were separated by a single sheet of paper, when his own life was suddenly at stake, his treacherous heart clung desperately to life. Hearing the barking of hounds in the distance, Dabi’s legs finally gave out.
As the sounds drew closer, despair overtook him. It seemed his life would not last much longer. Kneeling on the ground, Dabi let his arms hang limp and looked up at the sky. A pretty waning moon cast a pale glow across the night.
How long had it been?
Dabi frowned at a strange sense of unease. The barking of dogs that had been so close suddenly vanished, and before he realized it, everything was quiet.
As he staggered to his feet, someone silently approached and grabbed his arm. Startled, Dabi nearly cried out.
“I’m a bit late—I had to shake them off.”
The man, dressed head to toe in black with a black mask, forcibly pulled Dabi along.
“Who are you?”
At Dabi’s question, a low chuckle slipped from the man’s lips.
“And what would you do if you knew?”
“I want to know why you’re helping me. That way, I can repay you later.”
“I’m not doing this for your repayment, so don’t worry about it.”
Suddenly pressing himself against a wall, the man roughly yanked Dabi close, just as coarse in his movements as in his tone. Covering Dabi’s mouth and suppressing any sound, he waited as several soldiers passed nearby.
After confirming they were gone, the man frowned and took a proper look at Dabi. Seeing the long blond hair and the abundance of jewelry, he shook his head.
‘Dressed like that, too…’
No matter how he looked at it, Dabi’s appearance was far removed from his own sense of normalcy. Gray clicked his tongue. If this hadn’t been a task ordered by Anje, he might have abandoned Dabi long ago and let him die for all he cared.
At last reaching the side gate Dabi had been searching for, Gray shoved him forward as if throwing him away.
“Go.”
But Dabi did not move. Standing before the gate and glaring at Gray, he stubbornly asked again.
“I want to know who helped me.”
“Good grief. You talk too much.”
Listening to the renewed barking of hounds in the distance, Gray spoke hurriedly.
“Our captain said it’d be a waste to let you die, so he told me to help. That’s all.”
“Your captain?”
At Dabi’s widened eyes, Gray silently mouthed the name “Anje.” Then, looking thoroughly annoyed, he waved his hand.
“Get lost, before this becomes a bigger headache.”
After the intruder’s visit, the emperor lost consciousness and was unable to recover for several days. When the royal physician diagnosed poisoning, the empress publicly announced that there had been an intruder who attempted to assassinate the emperor.
From time to time, the emperor would writhe in pain, take strong painkillers, and then fall back asleep.
The empress never once visited the emperor, but every day she summoned the ministers and pressed them to find the intruder who had tried to kill him.
As a result, issues such as the eastern rebel army encamped near the capital or preparations for the coming winter were pushed far down the list of priorities.
Some even speculated that if winter arrived as things were, the rebels—mere farmers, after all—might scatter on their own. Reports of continuous rain and successive typhoons as autumn set in, which slowed the rebels’ advance, lent weight to such opinions.
Even so, those who voiced such views could only tilt their heads at the empress’s order to suppress the rebels.
They were people who had marched forward armed with nothing more than pitchforks and hoes. Suppressing them would not be difficult. But what came after?
Even now, public opinion was not on the side of the imperial family or the nobility. People sympathized with the rebels, saying that life must have been unbearably hard for them to abandon their homes and march all the way to the capital. Disillusionment with the emperor’s extravagant and dissipated lifestyle only further fueled that sympathy.
