The Red Knight Seeks No Reward

Chapter 9

A Token of Goodwill

For the first time in ages, Judith had a dream—a strange lucid dream.

In it, Jeromell was mocking a woman who was on stage at the imperial opera hall singing an encore. “How many gems do you think the emperor had to scrape out of the Rosetta Empire to put a tiara that enormous on the second princess’ empty head?” he said.

Judith would have replied, had it not been for the fact that he was insulting the imperial family.

“The empire is as filthy rich as always,” he continued.

A tiara set with two hundred and forty diamonds glittered on the head of the second imperial princess. The emperor had summoned the finest craftsmen to make it for the princess to wear during her first full opera performance. The tiara sparkled, like nothing more expensive existed in the world. There were diamonds the size of a baby’s fist and chains of diamonds linking the circlet to her hair. Judith watched it, mesmerized. It’s beautiful.

The princess was a member of the imperial family. Judith may have become a knight, but she was still a commoner. The princess was far too noble to even dare to look at, let alone compare herself with. Both the princess’s position and the tiara she wore marked them as being worlds apart.

Even knowing such things, Judith’s heart was filled with strange feelings. What’s so great about a princess anyway? she wondered. They had been born with the same number of limbs—the princess just happened to have an emperor for a father. But Judith had been born with so little that she couldn’t even afford a simple hair ornament, let alone a tiara. If only I’d been born rich and privileged…

“Are you interested in the tiara?” Jeromell asked.

“No, sir.”

“Is that hesitation I hear?” he said, mockingly. “That’s unusual. I wouldn’t have suspected you to be more interested in a tiara than a piece of gold.”

Judith was silent.

“Do you desire it?”

She remained silent, which wasn’t common for her to do in the face of Jeromell’s questions. The captain turned his head as if he had heard her answer. The opera hall suddenly transformed into the imperial princess’s residence.

“You’re late, Dame Judith.”

“Captain…”

“Don’t stand there like an idiot. Close the door.” Jeromell was now wiping off his hand, which was stained with the princess’s blood. Judith was certain that the person lying face down on the floor was the imperial princess, and that she was dead. No one could have survived losing that much blood.

Thump. Thump.

Judith felt her heart racing.

“I apologize for calling you on your day off,” Jeromell said. It was his specialty to apologize without a trace of remorse.

Judith didn’t ask what had happened, and offered a different question. “What would you like me to do?”

“Clean this up.”

“There will be too many people looking for her body if we dispose of it. It may involve you, Captain…”

“Then you can disguise it as a suicide.” He tossed the towel he had used to wipe off the blood into the fireplace.

Disguise it as a suicide? How on earth do I do that? Judith’s heart pounded insistently as she stared at the body of the princess. She pretended it wasn’t the case, but she had long since lost her composure.

She heard Jeromell click his tongue. When she turned, he was pointing toward the palace stairs.

Judith grasped his meaning easily. “Yes, sir.” She bit down on her trembling lips.

She walked up the stairs with the princess’s body draped over her shoulders. Jeromell was watching from a distance as if judging how far she would go and how she would do it.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Judith wondered whose heartbeat she was hearing. Is it the past me, or the current me?

She quickly realized what she had to do, but she struggled to commit. She couldn’t believe that she would be forced to desecrate the corpse of the imperial princess. Part of her told herself that she shouldn’t do it, but she felt compelled to give in, to simply follow the orders she was given and not to fight it.

Judith wished to feel at ease, so she thought no more and did as she was told. She threw the corpse down the stairs as hard as she could. The woman’s black hair, once arranged under the tiara, was now coiled and bunched in disarray as it caught on the stairs. Spots of blood stained the staircase as the body rolled down. The surprisingly loud thud it made as it hit each stair rang in Judith’s ears. The princess’s shoe fell off, and finally, there was a crack as her neck snapped. As Judith simply stared at the limp corpse, she felt as if her own neck had been broken.

Jeromell was leaning against the stair railing. He stared at the princess’s body, then looked up at Judith. “Well done,” he said. His gaze held neither shock nor contempt. He simply tossed her the compliment as he would toss a ball to a dog.

To finish her work, Jeromell yanked the corpse down to the landing. “You and I were patrolling the imperial princess’s palace tonight. We heard her scream and came running.”

“Yes, sir.”

That was what they would report—that the imperial princess’s death was unequivocally due to an accidental fall. The blood from her head quickly pooled on the floor.

As it was a death in the imperial family, a closer examination would quickly reveal that it was not a case of slipping and falling down the stairs. But the truth would remain a secret, as the investigators would be the very black knight and captain who had been responsible for covering it up.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Judith’s heart was beating even faster than before, and she could not seem to calm it.

“It’s nice to have a subordinate who listens well,” Jeromell said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“This is an unofficial assignment, so there will be no compensation.”

With that, the captain set down a glass box of some sort. Judith couldn’t take her eyes off it. Inside the glass box was the unmistakable Opera Jubilee tiara, the very ornament the emperor had given to the princess to congratulate her on her performance. The iridescent tiara shone almost blindingly. Judith reached for the box as if she was bewitched.

“Even the most precious tiara can’t possibly be more valuable than the imperial princess’s life,” Jeromell said.

Her hand flinched at his comment.

“Still, it wouldn’t be surprising if someone took advantage of the commotion and stole it. Don’t you think so?”

Judith nodded at the sweet whisper.

Jeromell looked content, perhaps because he had a subordinate whom he could manipulate as easily as his tongue in his own mouth. “I trust you will continue to work for me.”

Judith was unable to respond. She swallowed her fear as it stuck in her parched throat. In front of a dusty window, she opened the glass box. With a small click, it slid open smoothly.

Silently, Judith put on the tiara and peered at her reflection in the window. Her gray hair was the shade of a cloudy winter sky, and the glittering tiara stood out beautifully against it. The item she coveted was now hers, and it suited her perfectly. Yet she stood there for a long moment of despair, as if she were malfunctioning.

Jeromell approached her and spoke, his eyes exactly the same as she remembered in her last moments, when he looked at her like she was vermin or a dog. “Don’t forget the goodwill I showed you,” he said. “I’m warning you not to disappoint me.”

That was the last thing he said in her dream. Judith’s eyes fluttered open.

Waking up, she immediately gagged. She ran to the sink and retched up her guts. Afterward, she felt slightly better, though her thumping heart hurt like it would shatter. With trembling hands, Judith scrubbed her face with cold water until her cheeks stung. Her mouth felt dry even as she rinsed it over and over again.

That was the worst… Worse than dreaming of being chased by a killer. The word “nightmare” didn’t even come close to describing the terror she felt. But it hadn’t been just a dream—they were memories of things she had really done in the past.

The death of the second imperial princess Isephina was quickly forgotten. She had been suffering from mania, with frequent seizures and fits of hysterics. That was why her maids had been absent that night. While it was unfortunate that the princess had fallen and died, there was nothing to be done. After a small funeral, everyone had forgotten everything about her, even the tiara that had been given to her.

With cold hands, Judith wiped the dripping water from her face. The tips of her fingers were trembling. That tiara… Is it still there? It can’t be…

Even knowing the princess would fade from memory, Judith couldn’t bear what she was feeling. It took quite a while for her to stop shaking. Seeing her uniform hung up on the wall calmed her slightly. The white uniform, designed like a riding suit, belonged to the Order of Red Knights—that alone was a tremendous comfort to Judith.

“It’s okay…” Judith told herself. It’s okay, everything is fine.

She walked over to the wall and pulled down the uniform, along with her identification badge. The flat badge had her name and affiliation written on it. She had just received it the day before.

—Order of Red Knights. Judith.

It was just a bronze badge with the imperial seal and her name embossed on it, but in that moment, it seemed more precious than the princess’s tiara. She hugged her uniform close. Somehow, her tears threatened to fall. Her heart had been racing furiously, but now it was beating as calmly as someone who had finally found peace.

***

“She’s late,” Desian spat.

“She’ll come when she comes,” Kaillou replied.

“Don’t be ridiculous. How can a new recruit be late on her first day?”

“Maybe she doesn’t know where the captain’s office is?”

“You gotta be kidding me…” Desian’s green eyes were dripping with coldness. His expression suggested that he would make this novice knight run two hundred laps around the imperial palace if she didn’t arrive soon.

The atmosphere in the captain’s office was different from usual. Normally, Kaillou would have been infuriated faster than anyone else, but this time he was the relaxed one while his adjutant was agitated. “Give her the benefit of the doubt,” the captain said. “Besides, new knights don’t know the way to the captain’s office. They rarely have to come here.”

“All the more reason for her to have left earlier to find it. It’s not like just anyone gets invited to the captain’s office!”

“Why are you so worked up? It’s only been twenty minutes. Calm down.”

“Only twenty minutes? Are you hearing yourself?”

“Why are you so angry?” Kaillou was grateful that his mother had given him strong eardrums the could endure Desian’s shouting.

“This is all because you recruited her yourself. You shouldn’t have let the rookie see how much you favor her. Look how it’s gone straight to her head! You should have made it less obvious!” Desian seemed to have decided to unleash a day’s worth of nagging on Kaillou all at once. Without taking a breath, he continued, “Why did you bother doing something so unlike yourself?!”

“My, my. You were just praising me for my judgment, and now you’re getting angry at me for it?” Desian’s irritable attitude finally broke Kaillou’s patience, though the captain didn’t have much to begin with. “How many personalities do you have hiding in that head of yours? If I split your skull in half, will I find someone else hiding in there? You told me I did well not so long ago!” The adjutant had applauded him for recruiting the aether master, but now he was complaining that he had basically spoiled her. Kaillou found this gravely unfair.

With impeccable timing, the door to the captain’s office swung open. It was Judith. “I apologize for being late. Black— Ah, Red Knight Judith, at your service, sir.”

Kaillou noticed immediately that she had cut her hair. It had been trimmed neatly around her neck, but aside from that, her uniform was disheveled, and she was out of breath.

Before the captain could speak, Desian cut in to reprimand her. “Do you know what time it is?!”

“My deepest apologies, sir.”

“I have never seen a new knight arrive this late before. Do you not take the red knights seriously?”

“I do, sir.” Judith looked at the floor guiltily.

Desian was never one to treat new recruits kindly. He wouldn’t wait around for ages for them to get their acts together, either. He wanted their best performance from day one. “Listen carefully. You are new. Captain Kaillou did recruit you himself, but do you think that gets you a free pass to do whatever you wish? If you think that you’ll get special treatment, you’re wrong!”

“I will take that to heart, sir.”

“Timeliness is the bare minimum! You will be perfectly punctual from now on. Do you understand?”

“I have no excuses, sir. I will ensure my punctuality henceforth.”

Whether a genius or not, a novice knight had to keep a low profile and obey the hierarchy. If Judith hadn’t been called to the captain’s office personally, she would’ve heard worse from Desian. But because she had traveled back in time, she found the dressing-down closer to patronizing than petrifying—though of course, she was at fault to begin with.

“Desian, that’s enough,” Kaillou said.

“What do you mean, ‘enough,’ sir?” The adjutant’s green eyes flashed like knives as if he was only getting started.

Kaillou wondered if Desian was that desperate to leave a severe impression. He wasn’t like that when he was younger. The captain gave a silent, rueful sigh and gestured for him to stop. He then turned to the new recruit. “Dame Judith, why are you late?”