Chapter 51
50. Beggar Siblings – Escape
“Prince, are you running away again?”
Leo’s heart dropped. When he turned back, the Count was greeting him with the decorum expected of nobility.
“Ha ha ha. I see you’re surprised. I met you a few times when you were very young… but I suppose you don’t remember? However, the moment I laid eyes on you, I recognized you immediately. Both of you are still alive.”
“……”
“It brings me great joy to see you grown up, but… it’s regrettable. If the prince is alive, ‘we’ in the Conrad Kingdom have trouble. Please, don’t forgive me.”
He silently mouthed the word “we” without voicing it.
Then, he deeply bowed once more, a gesture filled with farewell, and beckoned to the shivering Female Knight, Irène, behind the iron bars of the main gate.
Leo realized it was no longer the time to stand around like a fool. He began to run with all his might, and the furious knight chased after him.
Drawing her sword hastily, Irène wasn’t simply trying to catch Leo.
Irène was born in a peasant’s house bound to the Marquis’s territory.
Though her family was destitute, she was naturally strong and worked as a servant in the castle.
One day, a knight discovered her talent. With the Marquis’s support, Irène could learn swordsmanship.
With her exceptional talent, she quickly became a knight and was called to serve in the Marquis’s mansion in the capital city.
Irène, who had never experienced love in her life, fell in love for the first time there.
Of all people, it had to be the Marquis’s son.
At first, she screamed in silent disbelief. This was a love that could never be. She had to remain a sword for the Marquis and a useful tool.
Yet, she couldn’t help but eagerly anticipate the days when she would protect Lord Toton Tatian.
She even secretly asked her fellow knights to swap shifts and would take on extra duties on her days off.
Because that wasn’t merely work for her. And he was someone she couldn’t help but love.
Despite being a noble, Toton Tatian wasn’t the kind to treat subordinates poorly. How kind he was, ensuring that knights guarding him would not freeze in the winter by letting them ride in the carriage.
It became such a habit that he always had a knight sit next to him.
Every time Irène sat beside him, she was more than enough, truly enough, happy. Even if it meant remaining unrequited in love for a lifetime, she didn’t mind.
Then one day, while working in the Marquis’s office, Irène heard the thunderous news.
“There will be an assassination while traveling in the carriage. Tell the knight escorting Toton not to protect him tomorrow.”
“Understood.”
Marquis Benard Tatian gave the order to his butler, and Irène struggled to keep herself from collapsing.
The Marquis’s orders were absolute.
With such a command, he was inevitably destined to die.
Throughout her seemingly endless shift, she gazed at her respected Marquis’s back, recalled the man she loved, glared reproachfully at the Marquis, and repetitively bit her tongue, scolding herself for being ungrateful.
Irène didn’t know that the Marquis had watched her leave with a gentle smile and, by sheer luck, discovered that the knight scheduled to escort Lord Toton the next day had gotten a leave of absence, allowing her to take his place.
“Toton, keeping the carriage door open violates regulations.”
The next day, Irène brought up a regulation she had never mentioned before. Toton looked puzzled for a moment but smiled gently as he locked the door.
This was the best plan she could conceive.
A way to safeguard him without directly going against the Marquis’s orders…
Of course, if assassins were truly trying to harm him, she wouldn’t have been able to hold back from drawing her sword.
As if according to her plan, the assassination failed.
When an assassin broke through the door and stabbed Toton Tatian, Irène’s eyes went wide, but medical treatment at the church came first.
Fortunately, Toton Tatian survived.
Later, while she received a scolding from the respected Marquis and was assigned myriad duties as punishment, it didn’t matter to her because she had protected the man she loved.
And when Toton Tatian resurfaced from the lake north of Orville, swollen and gasping, her loyalty to the Marquis barely registered.
After that, every time Irène saw the adopted son the Marquis had taken in, she felt tortured and avoided him. All she could think about was wanting to return home.
However, as a peasant’s daughter, she was essentially the Marquis’s property, leaving her to live emptily.
Today, until she heard that the flashy adopted son was the one who killed him, that was her state of mind.
Yes, that kid was definitely the one who killed Lord Toton Tatian and deceived the Marquis too.
That damn kid!
No, ‘that’ damn kid!
Irène outrageously chased after that scoundrel who was hastily fleeing.
*
Startled by the noise outside, Lena froze in confusion and focused intently on the sounds.
The urgent shouts of men and hurried footsteps indicated that something was amiss.
– Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
As Lena prepared to step outside to assess the situation, someone came crashing into her room.
“Lena! Lena!”
Storming in without knocking, it was Santian Rauno.
He inherited his mother’s brown curls and, resembling his father, had a broad forehead. The tip of his nose was round…
“Lena! What are you doing? Come out quickly!”
“What? Why?”
“Hurry!”
As if there was no time for further discussion, Santian grabbed Lena’s wrist and dashed towards the basement.
The Rauno Family was under attack.
With Count Hermann Forte absent at the battlefield, Marquis Tatian had mobilized the defensive soldiers of Orville to besiege the Rauno Family mansion.
And five of the Marquis’s knights led the soldiers to invade the mansion. They were ordered to capture any girl with golden eyes, and kill the rest.
Upon hearing that Lena and Leo were the exiled prince and princess of the Conrad Kingdom, Marquis Benard Tatian laughed heartily.
His speculation that Leo might hail from a noble family turned out to be correct, and he was quite pleased.
The Marquis enjoyed piecing together information to form deductions. He threw out bait toward an uncertain future, rejoicing when it flowed as he expected, and if it didn’t, he took joy in pondering the reasons for it.
What pleased him more was that Leo, that fellow, was indeed a useful son! He had only shown his shortcomings, yet his eyes were unmistakable.
The Marquis sent messages to the royal court of Conrad through the church’s communications without calling the siblings for a while, and there was a satisfying deal for everyone.
The request from the Eriel royal family was simple. “Kill the two.”
But the Marquis declared he would only kill the prince. The price for the deal was slightly reduced, but they certainly wouldn’t know how beautifully the princess had grown.
The Marquis summoned the siblings to his mansion. He could have easily surrounded and annihilated that scoundrel’s lair, but Leo was the problem.
Though that guy was pathetic, his swordsmanship was on par with an average knight. It would be difficult for a handful of soldiers facing him to capture him, and if he fled, the chase would likely become prolonged.
The simplest solution was to lure the siblings to the mansion, kill one, and imprison the other.
However, something unexpected happened according to the Marquis’s plans. Leo didn’t bring his sister along.
If Lena had come, Leo would have never managed to escape because of her.
Lena arrived at the basement of the family mansion, led by Tian.
There, along with Oberg, were retired thugs from the area, and a few ladies with children.
Moreover, there were more than ten passageways drilled into the mansion’s basement.
That was the key to why the Rauno Family had survived in Orville for so long.
How their ancestors had constructed such facilities was a mystery…
Oberg began to tie people together in groups of five and usher them into the emergency exits.
“Now it’s our turn. We have no time.”
Oberg said, leading Lena, Tian, and a lady and an old man through the passageway.
As he said, time was tight.
The thugs from the Rauno family fought desperately, but the five knights were a force they couldn’t contend with.
What impeded the knights was not the thugs, but the complex design of the Rauno Family mansion.
This mansion was a series of connected buildings, so when Lena and Leo had entered for the first time, they needed a guide for quite some time.
Relying on Tian’s hand, Lena walked through the narrow, dark passage. She wanted to ask about her brother, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
She could sense the complicated emotions shared among them. The resentment and hesitation seemingly seeped from the hand that held Tian’s.
They all had an inkling of the cause behind this situation. Engaging with nobles typically didn’t end well.
At the end of the seemingly endless corridor was a ladder, and Oberg climbed up first, pushing aside the wooden plank that blocked the entrance.
The plank was covered with something like a carpet, making it hard to open, but Oberg struggled for a while hanging from the ladder and finally managed to pull it off.
The five cautiously poked their heads out into a small home. It seemed the entire family was out working, as an old man lay in bed, slowly lifting his head.
After a moment of confusion, he seemed to suddenly remember that there was a passageway here.
“…Looks like something big has happened, huh?”
Oberg nodded silently, and the old man gestured for them to follow him.
He led the five while muttering.
“Oh my, my legs. I had forgotten, but has so much time really passed? It’s quite fleeting…”
The old man stepped outside and tugged on a cloth covering something. It had been so long that dust billowed everywhere.
What lay beneath the cloth was a water cart. The cart was much larger than a hand cart, yet it was built low to make it easy to load and unload water.
As he loaded the five onto the water cart, the old man kept muttering.
“Has it really been so long since I asked to have that scoundrel’s child killed… I must say, I appreciate it now, but back then, I was so flustered that I don’t think I said it.”
He repeated his gratitude several times, seemingly to no one, while dragging along a huge water barrel that had been piled in the corner.
Unable to stand watching the old man struggle, Oberg and Tian helped him.
Lena and the other four were still inside Orville Castle. Soon, they would hide in the water cart and slip out of the castle. This had been carefully prepared by Joseph Rauno in case something urgent occurred.
“Oh dear, isn’t it pretty? Actually, I had a daughter once. Well, she’s gone now, and I have been living well with my son. We lived well.”
The old man filled several barrels with water halfway and had them immerse themselves one by one.
Then he said, “Just wait a moment. I’ll go and…” in a mumble that was hard to understand and brought back a horse from somewhere.
To the north of the capital Orville, there was a large lake. People tended the water carts there, drawing water to sell, but there were times when the water didn’t sell out.
This was a competitive endeavor, so if left unsold for too long, the water would become foul.
So, the water that entered the capital was always sold out, but the unsold, foul water was dumped into the lake outside.
Joseph Rauno’s idea lay here.
The water carts were covered with a cloth roof to prevent dust from settling on the water, and in a dark setting, the water wouldn’t be visible, and soldiers wouldn’t have the inclination to plunge their hands in the murky water.
The old man drove the creaking water cart while the five held their breath under the water as they passed through the city gate. The sounds of the cart creaking and the horse trotting generated waves on the water’s surface, concealing their escape.
The old man finally believed his part was finished as he watched the soaked figures leave. He turned away, remembering his daughter who had worked in a wealthy household, feeling lonely.
After escaping from Orville, the woman among the five suggested that they flee to her parents’ house.
It was to take a breather and assess the situation.
Since there were no specific plans after fleeing Orville, they decided to follow her suggestion for the time being.
However, after eating at her parents’ house, not far from Orville, they discovered they had a choice to make.
Through the church’s communications, a single command had been issued to all towns and cities.
– Capture the girl with golden eyes.
The entire Belita Kingdom was on the lookout for Lena. If she didn’t want to be captured, she would have to flee to another kingdom.
After much deliberation, Oberg and Santian Rauno resolved to protect Lena. The lady and the old man who had come with them decided to stay in this town, and the three headed east.
During their long journey, Oberg handed Lena juice extracted from a plant called ‘Depare.’
If put in her eyes, it would fade the color of her irises, making her lose her original eye color, and Lena applied it to her eyes.
Her eyes blazed brightly.