The Price of Deception

A knight’s squire is, by definition, an attendant to a knight. Those of noble birth might train as chief disciples, eventually passing trials to become knights themselves, though this typically occurs around the age of twenty.

To ask the trio, who were clearly past that age, if they were squires was akin to sneering at them as mere servants.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Jack muttered, “but I think we’re allowed to be angry right now, aren’t we?”

“Don’t bother,” Nocturne scoffed. “What good will it do to just shriek when you’re so inarticulate?”

Why was this woman so intensely hostile towards them? The trio remained utterly bewildered. Her antagonism was so profound that it even compelled Faust, renowned for his composure, to finally speak.

“I don’t know what kind of answer you desire from us,” Faust began, his voice measured, “but I daresay it is not what you might expect.”

“If we were to be precise,” he continued, “we are closer to being successors, in many senses of the word.”

He had promised Nocturne the esteemed position of Debora’s apostle and leader of the Ravens of the Riverbank, ‘The Blind One’. To Jack and Faust, he had pledged the power to capture demons and the glory that would follow. Though the reality of these promises still felt distant, there was no doubt he would uphold his word.

They had never served anyone, not in the traditional sense. While they had recently made efforts to soothe and appease him due to the unstable behavior they frequently witnessed, they hadn’t actually done anything for him. Rather, they were the ones who had received.

She gazed at the seated trio for a long while, her eyes sharp and piercing. At last, she exhaled a deep, weary sigh, and finally began to speak.

“I, no, we wish for the ‘Knight of a Thousand Hands’ to never again set foot in this domain.”

What could she possibly mean? The trio remained utterly baffled. Yet, as if fully aware of the strangeness of her own words, she calmly pressed on.

“Our ancestor, Trimoss, whom he visits without fail, has long since departed this world,” she explained. “We have no idea how that man has managed to live for nearly a thousand years and still comes to our lands, but…”

Her subsequent words struck the trio like a blow to the back of the head, their eyes snapping wide open. Her low, parched voice caught fire, and the flames within it steadily intensified.

“For his sake, and for our ancestor who never wished to disappoint him, we have, for hundreds of years, played the part of our progenitor, Trimoss. My predecessors, myself, and even my children — how much longer must we endure this utterly ridiculous farce?”

Stunned by words that felt like sharp bones piercing them, the trio found themselves utterly speechless. Their mouths hung agape, barely managing to draw breath. It was Faust who finally broke the suffocating silence, exhaling a hollow sigh.

“We… we were forgetting something truly important,” Faust murmured, a dawning realization in his eyes.

“Damn it all,” Jack cursed. “We’ve been with that human for so long that I completely forgot for a moment.”

“Indeed,” Nocturne chimed in. “Normal humans don’t live for a hundred years, do they?”

It was utterly preposterous. The truth, in its stark reality, was nothing short of profoundly hollow. If this woman wasn’t Trimoss herself, then everything they had witnessed up to this point suddenly made perfect, unsettling sense.

“Now it finally makes sense,” Jack said, a grimace on his face. “From this woman’s perspective, a man she’d never seen before suddenly rushed in, embraced her, and began to molest her. Of course, she’d be utterly terrified.”

“And imagine this: he spent the entire day laughing to himself, dragging her along to dance and play, all while showering her with gold, silver, and countless treasures. She must have thought he was some kind of deranged spirit.”

After centuries, not merely days, the person would have changed entirely, becoming nothing more than a stranger. What would these descendants know of the favors he might have bestowed upon this domain or her ancestors?

He would simply be a bothersome, terrifying presence. It seemed foolish to have racked their brains over such a simple truth. Jack, who had been grumbling under his breath, suddenly lifted his head.

“But why tell us all this?” Jack questioned, his voice puzzled. “He’s right here, isn’t he?”

It was a rather simple-minded question, yet it unexpectedly struck at the very heart of the matter. The seemingly innocuous query had, without warning, pierced a dragon’s scale. In response to Jack’s question, she clenched and unclenched her damp hands, her gaze falling to the floor.

Such a deception might be plausible once or twice. However, to maintain the same appearance for hundreds of years, not merely a day or two, to the extent that he remained ‘mistaken,’ and to have sustained this elaborate lie all this time, was utterly inconceivable. Could it truly be possible without some profound emotion beyond mere pity?

“As per our ancestor’s dying wish,” she stated quietly, “I believe it is better for him to leave without ever knowing the truth.”

While Jack and Faust fell into a thoughtful silence at her words, Nocturne openly sneered, then casually refilled his wine glass.

“Ha! How incredibly naive,” Nocturne scoffed. “Are you truly taking that at face value?”

“That’s too harsh,” Jack retorted. “They did it because they thought it was for the best, didn’t they?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Nocturne sneered. “It might have been understandable for the first one or two times. At least the progenitor Trimoss and her granddaughter might have truly believed that. But what about those who continued this charade for centuries afterward?”

This wasn’t a matter of a few coins. Just what the trio witnessed today amounted to well over 100,000 gold. On top of that, he had lavishly bestowed all sorts of jewels and precious artifacts.

With such a hoard of treasures, one could easily purchase more than ten such insignificant domains. If managed prudently, they could have even transformed this land into a thriving small city.

An astonishing amount of wealth had been spent, enough to make one’s jaw drop in sheer disbelief.

“Our brilliant Sir Haut, however lacking in common sense, is not so idiotic that he couldn’t grasp the simple fact that humans live and die within a hundred years. Yet, after greedily accepting all the wealth he’s bestowed upon them, are they now, with their bellies finally full, going to say, ‘keep him away’?”

For the mere goodwill of one person. For just a single day’s smile.

Did only this woman receive such bounty? No, generations must have been swindling him in that very manner. Yet the domain remained utterly unchanged. If anything had improved even slightly, he would surely have noticed.

He had immediately realized she couldn’t fully utilize the mansion, simply from observing the torches hung on the walls. Treating him like a child didn’t make him one. He might lack common sense, but he was remarkably astute when it came to specialized knowledge.

“They’ve taken so much that they’re afraid to speak up,” Nocturne concluded, “but now that their bellies are full, they simply don’t want to fawn over him anymore, do they?”

“How boldly a lowborn wretch spouts such nonsense!” the woman snapped, her voice trembling with fury. “Though that accursed one may be a servant of the Knight of a Thousand Hands, how dare he insult the master of this land—”

These people had, over that long period, regularly received and consumed wealth, entirely squandering it on their own lavish living. Nocturne sneered at the lady’s words.

“The true master here is our Sir Haut,” he retorted, his voice sharp. “You are merely fed by his charity. Just look at this mansion, and you’ll understand.”

She likely knew the ancestor’s story herself. That was why she couldn’t speak the truth.

She could say nothing at all. It wasn’t that she intended to deceive him from the very beginning. She genuinely wished to sever this connection with her own hands. Yes, that was, until she saw the indiscriminately offered wealth.

A sudden fear had gripped her at the sight of such goodwill, something she had never encountered and felt she would never receive again. She dreaded what he might do in his anger if he learned the truth. Her plea for them to stop him was merely an attempt to avoid his wrath.

‘No. That’s not it, it’s not like that…’ Jack, who had been listening, murmured mournfully.

“That’s… too cruel. He was so happy today…”

It was all ruined. Utterly ruined. They had watched him, so full of joy and laughter all day. He had been so happy, believing he had met an old friend, only to discover it wasn’t her at all.

Instead, he had been continuously deceived and extorted by generations of imposters. What a truly horrifying revelation.

“You know nothing.”

Her voice trembled, yet it was resolute.

They couldn’t know. They didn’t need to know.

Yes, that was true. They had obtained immense wealth, and it was a fact that they had lived off it until now. Yet, she refused to agree with his assessment. They were not jackals.

She gritted her teeth, spitting out each word as if chewing on bone. “Only a human woman resembling our progenitor, Trimoss, can become the head of Red Rebirth. If a girl grows too tall, her knees are broken to stunt her growth; if she doesn’t grow enough, her shin bones are ground down and reinforced with iron rods to lengthen them.”

She lifted the hem of her skirt, revealing her gnarled legs. She had wanted to be a knight but couldn’t. Though it didn’t hinder her daily life, she couldn’t run properly. The trio slowly gasped, staring at her grotesque form. The hem of her dress fell back down, the richly embroidered fabric fluttering to cover her.

“If our hair color is different, we dye it; if the texture isn’t right, we burn it with a hot iron. If our eye color doesn’t match, we implant glass or endlessly pour alchemist’s reagents into them, even if it blinds us. And every head of the family is stripped of their true name. We must all become ‘Trimoss’.”

She no longer remembered her original name. She couldn’t. She had been created so that without being ‘Trimoss,’ she held no meaning whatsoever. The distant glory, if it even existed, and the immense wealth he carelessly tossed their way, none of it was truly hers.

Her role was simply Trimoss. She could possess nothing.

“I am Trimoss. That is how it was decided. That is how I was made. You have no right to condemn me. Isn’t it laughable, to wait for generations for a man whose name and face you don’t even know?”

All she knew was his epithet, ‘Knight of a Thousand Hands,’ and the fact that he was a man in peculiar attire.

It was unfair. Yes, it truly was. In fact, this was also a rather dangerous endeavor. Her very reason for existence was to greet the ‘Knight of a Thousand Hands’ whenever he might appear. To sever that connection with her own hands was to discard her own value.

He knew her as Trimoss. That was why he had been so benevolent. The Goddess of Truth had departed. She regretted and was disappointed by her favor. Yet, countless ‘Trimosses’ had failed to accomplish that task.

How could they possibly find a man who appeared roughly every century and convey the truth to him?

“It’s not that I won’t tell him directly. It’s that I can’t.”

What value would she, now useless, possess? Everything in this mansion, everything in this domain, moved and watched her. She was the mistress of this land and the lady of this mansion, yet she could wield none of a true owner’s power. She had been made that way.

What was so important that it demanded such foolishness? Neither he, who was deceived, nor she, who had to deceive, could have wanted this. It was truly pathetic. But then again, they were in a similar predicament.

“Well, your situation is pitiful,” Nocturne conceded, “but we can’t stop him. And frankly, it’s none of our business anyway.”

“You’re being truly awful,” Jack shot back.

“Hmph.” Nocturne snorted, pouring himself another drink and sipping it. “Do you have a solution? If that old man wants to do something, he just does it. Can humans stop the wind from blowing or the rain from falling? It blows if it wants to blow, and it rains if it wants to rain. Sir Haut might be human, so he’ll have some limits, but it’s not something we can do anything about. What exactly were you planning to say?”

Just as Jack bristled and started to rise, Faust extended an arm to stop him. Jack looked aggrieved, but Faust’s words were quicker.