The last light of sunset covered the Port of Nantes.
The coastline was all orange-red evening glow.
It was just the hour when work ended.
The street by the sea grew gradually noisy.
The tavern landlady stood in the doorway greeting regulars.
Fishmongers and fruit sellers had set their stalls out on the pavement.
The street was full of the smells of all kinds of snacks.
Claire held the hot latte she had just bought and flared her nostrils, breathing in the warm scents of the street.
Since she was small she had liked watching this kind of marketplace scene from a distance.
It made her feel she was still living among people.
This was their fifth day in the Port of Nantes.
The merchant ship coming to take them home would enter harbor tonight.
Claire could already see the white steam drifting in from the sea.
The city had not left her a bad impression.
If Flora agreed to run away with her, they might even choose this little coastal town to live in hiding.
As for what the world would become, that would have nothing to do with them.
If possible, it would be best to bring Liz and the class monitor too.
That was the happiest life Claire could imagine.
It held everything that mattered to her.
Though if Liz heard any of this she would probably be angry enough to hit her.
These past few days the class monitor had been looking after Liz’s daily needs.
Although the class monitor said Liz had not mentioned her again, Claire understood Liz was probably still in a temper.
If she pushed close now it would only become more awkward.
This was the first time they had fought so fiercely.
What worried Claire was not how to apologize to Liz.
As the class monitor had said, once they were home and Liz had cooled down, it was impossible that she would not forgive her.
What truly troubled her was the identity with which she ought to face Liz.
Claire knew she was slow, but she was not a fool.
Even without the class monitor reminding her, she understood what Liz felt for her.
Only… although Liz was by no means a simple ordinary friend to her, her heart had long belonged to Flora.
She had thought for a long time and still did not know how to face Liz’s feelings.
Yet from the moment she reunited with Flora she had sunk into happiness on her own and had kept setting Liz aside in a kind of self-deception.
She had lied to herself that as long as she left the problem sitting there she would not lose this… friend who had always stayed by her side.
The thought cut off short.
Because she felt that thinking this way made her a complete bastard.
The sun had already vanished beneath the coastline.
Night fell over the noisy market.
The ship was already very close.
Claire took a large swallow of the latte with extra sugar and milk before she felt a little warmer.
“I thought if I sang with all my heart you would care a little more.
I thought that though love had become the past, a thousand words spoken aloud could comfort us both.”
Someone behind her sang in a bleak voice, like plucking a dust-covered string.
“Ah, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was only matching the mood.”
The person gave a light laugh.
The voice was strange yet a little familiar, with a trace of arrogance.
Claire had heard the tune of this song before.
It was a song Veda had sung.
Then the person behind her could already be identified.
Claire set the coffee on the railing, put a hand at her waist, and slowly looked back.
Behind her, Elise stood lazily in the beam of a streetlamp, arms folded.
The Sword Saint’s style of dress had changed completely.
A black-and-red dress, the upper part like a little evening jacket, yet the wide-open collar showed a small bandeau and a slender, straight collarbone.
Beneath the irregular hem were black stockings and fingerless long gloves, boldly showing the lines of her whole body.
Those rose-red lips opened and closed as if whispering a lover’s most secret words… In fact she was gnawing a lamb rib.
She tossed the finished bone onto the ground without a thought.
Someone suddenly poked her in the back.
Elise turned her head.
It was a passing old woman.
The old woman pointed at the bone on the ground with a dark face.
Elise only picked the bone up, threw it into a nearby bin, then smiled and nodded to the old woman.
If the Elise she had met last time had been a cruel, merciless black-clad killer, the present one was practically a model sister who had just stepped off the runway at West Paris Fashion Week, and the polite kind who respected the old and cared for the young at that.
The old woman’s stooped back receded.
Claire drew the Can Opener from her waist, covered the barrel with the sleeve of her other hand, and aimed the muzzle at Elise.
The corner of Elise’s mouth hooked in a teasing curve.
“Well now. Bringing that thing along for coffee. Here for an armed dine-and-dash?”
Claire gripped the Can Opener tightly, her eyes wary, yet she could not help looking Elise up and down.
She asked hesitantly, “…Why are you dressed like that?”
“This is Carolingia. How could I come all this way and not stroll Fashion Week? Don’t tell me you lot didn’t go?”
Elise raised an eyebrow, arms folded, posture lazy.
Claire ignored the tease.
“Stop playing with me. The ship Headquarters sent to pick us up is about to arrive. More than a dozen good hands are on it. You still have time to run.”
Elise’s mouth curved in a mocking smile.
“Heh. If Sibyl had ordered people sent, you would already be back on the Northern Continent by now. A ship that comes after five days is a civilian vessel you contacted yourselves, isn’t it?”
Claire was at a loss for words.
The night they arrived they had found this city’s safe house.
The Cerberus Bureau had set up hundreds of safe houses around the world, managed by locals.
Sometimes they were used to transfer objects that could not see the light of day, such as the armor blueprints the class monitor had sent back to the north.
More often they sat unused.
If agents ran into danger abroad they could take refuge in a safe house, and the Bureau would allocate resources at once to organize a rescue.
Yet although the class monitor had sent an evacuation request to the Bureau at the first moment, there had been no response at all.
In the end they had been forced to borrow a merchant ship of the Linden Chamber of Commerce to go home.
Claire steadied herself and pretended calm.
“I know you came to find me. Is it for the sword? I can give it to you.”
Elise shook her head.
“Keep Gram for now. You can bring out its true power. I don’t understand the reason, but I believe Christine has her own arrangements.”
Claire’s brows drew tight.
“Christine? What do you mean, her arrangements? Does it have anything to do with the prophecy you mentioned before?”
Elise set a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture and said softly, “Those things can wait for another time. I came today with something more urgent to tell you.”
Claire said nothing.
She only stared at Elise, trying to read something from her expression.
Elise’s gaze swept the surroundings.
She said slowly, “You haven’t noticed? Even this city is showing a few omens.”
Claire gave a slight nod.
Elise was not wrong.
From noon onward great flocks of carrier pigeons had flown into the Port of Nantes from the east and the north.
At dusk a number of high-end limousines and ships had left the city one after another.
Yet the ordinary townspeople after work had not changed.
Or rather, their lives could not bear any change.
Elise’s expression grew grave.
“This morning West Paris received word. An ancient dragon from the Northern Continent occupied Rouen with three thousand steppe cavalry. Right now every Gaul in the north is fearing for himself and doing everything he can to run south.”
“What?!”
Claire’s eyes widened.
Her hand tightened on the Can Opener without her noticing.
Elise glanced at her and went on.
“You were forced to use a merchant ship to go home because you couldn’t reach the north, weren’t you? Did you never think something might have gone wrong in Londinium? For instance that the little short one’s faction lost the political fight and they’re on a war course now, so you abandoned pieces got thrown away, that sort of thing.”
“…How do you know so much?”
Claire could hear it.
Elise’s words made it clear she knew the body-double operation existed.
But who could have leaked all of that to her?
“You only need to know that the bunch from the north are after Phine Lucis. They demand that Phine go to Rouen in person to negotiate. I also know you’re the empire’s second princess. You don’t have to explain. I was right behind you when Phine called you Flora.”
Elise shrugged.
Claire was briefly stunned.
It was not because Elise knew her identity.
It was that the United Kingdom had sent troops without their knowing anything at all.
More important still, her sister was the target of this military action.
“Sis… Phine didn’t agree, did she…”
Anxiety burned in her.
The words came out before she could stop them.
“No. She agreed.”
“Impossible. How obvious a trap is that! And how would you know what she thinks?”
Claire’s emotions surged.
Her voice rose a few notes without her noticing.
“My employer knows. Don’t ask who my employer is. According to the employer, Phine has no choice but to go. Gifting the armor to Carolingia was her idea alone. If she turns and runs after being frightened like this, the name of the Order of the Hundred Flowers will cease to exist. Besides, she has been waiting for a chance like this…”
“What chance?”
“The chance to slay a dragon. Ever since Steam Armor appeared, the people of the empire have wanted to prove that Steam Knights are the strongest force in arms, and the dragon race is the strongest living thing on this earth. So every Steam Knight wants to become a dragonslayer.”
Elise paused.
Her expression grew grave.
“This chance is without doubt very tempting for Phine. In her eyes she faces only one fire dragon and barbarian cavalry that can be ignored. In fact there are also elves and the military’s vampires. It is a net designed for her alone.”
Claire was completely stunned.
She stood motionless in shock.
The elves naturally meant those people from Orfa University.
The military’s vampires meant the Blood Hunt Army, the unit in which the class monitor and her father had once served.
She understood.
The only ones who could mobilize an ancient dragon, beast races, elves, and vampires at the same time were the hawk faction.
But why would Veda and Sibyl allow this result?
What had happened on the Northern Continent?
“If Phine goes to that meeting as things stand, she is already a dead woman. Anyone ambushed by a net like that has only a limited number of breaths left.”
Elise said softly.
In a daze Claire glanced at the roses in a flower shop to the side.
She had liked roses as a child as well, so Phine had had the palace gardeners fill the imperial gardens with roses of every color.
When spring came many commoners gathered outside the palace to admire from afar the many-colored roses in the imperial garden.
Suddenly a lingering piano sounded from the tavern.
There had been a piano in the side hall where she and Phine had lived as children.
Claire had played very badly then, but she liked to play.
She liked sitting by the window, working the keys with her fingers and her chin.
Her only listener had been her sister.
All the doubts were pressed down by memories of her sister.
From the moment she saw Phine again at the academy, Claire had understood that she could not, in the end, cut the bond with her sister.
She wanted to save Phine.
Yet at this moment she could not say a word.
Her sister was good, that was true.
If words cost nothing she could probably say, like a lead in a play, “I’ll throw this life away to keep my sister safe!”
But did she truly have the power to save Phine?
She was only a stranded jellyfish in the tide of fate, barely able to save herself.
Even if she spent this life she could not stop a pack of blood-mad white sharks.
More fatal still, even if her all-out effort actually worked, opposing a Northern Continent army to save a candidate for imperial empress would be, no matter how it was explained, a betrayal of the United Kingdom…
It meant that everything she possessed now would leave her.
That included, of course, Liz, to whom she had not yet been able to speak an apology in person.
A long steam-whistle blast came from the harbor.
The ship that was to take them back north had entered port.
If she boarded as things stood, in a few days she would go to Liz’s little shop with a bunch of flowers to apologize.
Liz would hold her and they would weep in each other’s arms.
The class monitor would clap and put a few cute little beers in the icebox.
They would eat a happy dinner together.
Elise seemed to see through Claire’s thoughts.
“Standing at the crossroads. Hesitating, aren’t you? Thinking more is the right thing. Once you step into the torrent of fate it’s hard to climb out.”
“You came to talk me into going to Rouen to save Phine, didn’t you?”
Claire said, head down.
“It’s only a choice my employer is giving you. If you stay you have a chance to save Phine. It may also be a dead end.”
Seeing that Claire still had her head down and did not answer, Elise went on.
“Your situation now is a lot like the lead in a story Christine always told us. It happened in the age of the Twin Moons Great Khan’s eastern campaign. An ancestor of the Salamander house was then a Golden Blade imperial son-in-law serving in the Great Khan’s tent, and had even married a little lioness princess. But when the Great Khan’s iron hooves turned toward his homeland, he stood at fate’s crossroads. Choose Albion, and he would have to throw everything away and face yesterday’s comrades. Choose the Twin Moons, and he would remain the Great Khan’s most trusted Golden Blade son-in-law.”
“But in the end he still went to hold Agate. Otherwise he would not only have been unworthy of the name Salamander. He would not even have been an Albion man anymore.”
Claire lifted her head and looked straight at Elise.
Elise smiled a little.
“See? Your answer is already there. Right now you are Claire, vampire agent of the United Kingdom. But who you are in your heart, and who you choose to become, only you know.”
The sea wind carried a thread of coolness and lifted Claire’s hair.
She did not feel it at all.
A light flashed through those red eyes, as if she had settled on some resolve.
She snatched up the latte that had already gone lukewarm and drained the rest of the coffee in one swallow, as if she would use the bitterness to drive out every last hesitation.
“I’ll go back with you. But I have something to take care of first.”
Claire said softly.
A look of understanding rose at the corner of Elise’s mouth.
She nodded slightly and waved with easy freedom.
“Got it, got it. I’ll wait for you at the west gate.”
Only when Elise’s figure had vanished completely around the corner did Claire come back to herself.
She turned slowly.
Her gaze fell on the merchant ship moored at the quay.
That ship carried the safe return that should have been theirs.
Tonight it would not be waiting for a third passenger.