Spring in the Ironfall Valley was not a gentle awakening of blossoms and warm breezes. It was a violent, muddy exhalation. The melting snows turned the courtyards into sucking quagmires and flooded the lower cellars, bringing with it the nauseating stench of thawing rot.
Yet, the opening of the roads brought a wave of relief to the House of Walderose. A meager merchant caravan, desperate enough to brave the muddy passes, arrived bearing salted fish, hardtack, and news from the capital. The immediate threat of starvation receded, replaced by the chaotic energy of a household attempting to scrub away the filth of a three-month entombment.
Windows were thrown open to air out the stench of sickness. Guards spent their watches soaking in the weak sunlight rather than scanning the ridgelines. Even Elara, bolstered by the return of her milk and the promise of a full meal, began to sleep deeply through the night.
Seiyuu, however, remained vigilant. He understood that in life you are most vulnerable not when bracing for impact, but the moment immediately following a crisis, when the adrenaline faded and complacency set in.
His suspicion was validated on the evening of the second thaw.
The nursery was quiet. The hearth crackled with dry, newly split pine, filling the room with a pleasant, resinous warmth. Elara was asleep in her own chambers down the hall, exhausted from a day of overseeing the cleaning of the great hall. Magda, the grim wet nurse, had stepped out to use the privy, leaving the heavy oak door slightly ajar.
Seiyuu lay on his back, staring at the dancing shadows on the ceiling, running mental calculations on the amount of copper required to offset the exorbitant prices the merchant caravan had charged them.
A shadow eclipsed the firelight.
Seiyuu did not turn his head immediately. He allowed his eyes to lazily track toward the crib's edge, maintaining the erratic, unfocused gaze of a three-month-old.
It was Leta. She was a scullery maid, no older than sixteen, a mousy girl with a perpetually terrified expression who usually spent her days scrubbing the grease from the kitchen pots. She had no business in the nursery.
She stood over the crib, her hands trembling violently. In her right hand, she clutched a small, stoppered vial of dark blue glass. In her left, she held a silver feeding spoon.
Seiyuu quickly analyzed her biometric outputs. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. Her pupils were dilated despite the firelight. She was sweating profusely, the scent of her fear cutting through the smell of the burning pine.
An assassin, Seiyuu deduced, his heart rate remaining entirely stable. And a remarkably incompetent one. Castellan must have bought her cheaply. Silver for her starving family in exchange for slipping a drop of venom into the heir's water.
Leta opened the vial with her teeth, spitting the cork onto the stone floor. She poured a single, viscous drop of clear liquid onto the silver spoon.
Instantly, the scent hit Seiyuu's underdeveloped olfactory receptors. It was sharp, sickeningly sweet, and metallic. It smelled of crushed bitter almonds and damp earth.
Cyanide analog, or perhaps something localized to this flora. Fast-acting and fatal.
She leaned over the wooden slats of the crib. "I'm sorry, little lord," Leta whispered, her voice cracking, tears spilling hot and fast down her dirty cheeks. "I'm so sorry. But my sisters are starving. Lord Castellan promised us bread. I just need you to drink this. It won't hurt."
Your economic hardship does not excuse your stupidity, Seiyuu thought coldly. If you succeed, Castellan will have you killed to silence you. You are an expendable asset. Like hell if I will lose another life to poison.
She brought the spoon toward his lips. Seiyuu had a fraction of a second to act.
He could not grab the spoon; his motor skills lacked the precision, and his grip lacked the strength. He could not dodge; his neck muscles were still too weak to rapidly jerk his head aside. He had to rely on the limited arsenal of a newborn.
He waited until the silver rim of the spoon was an inch from his mouth.
Then, he executed a perfect, violent full-body spasm.
He threw his right arm upward in a chaotic, jerky arc, a flawless imitation of an infant's uncontrolled startle reflex. His pudgy fist collided solidly with the underside of Leta's wrist.
The strike possessed no real power, but it was entirely unexpected. Leta gasped, her grip faltering. The silver spoon jerked upward, the viscous droplet of poison flying off the metal and landing with a faint hiss on the wool blanket draped over Seiyuu's chest.
Immediately, the wool began to smoke, a foul, green vapor rising from the fabric as the chemical burned through the fibers.
Before Leta could recover, before she could even process that she had failed, Seiyuu inhaled deeply and deployed the Alarm Protocol.
He unleashed a shriek. It was a piercing, gut-wrenching scream of absolute, mortal terror, pitched at a frequency designed by evolution to trigger an immediate, violent response in any adult within earshot.
Leta panicked. She dropped the vial, which shattered on the stone floor, splashing the remaining poison across the hearth rug. The rug immediately began to sizzle and blacken. She turned to run, but she was too slow.
The heavy oak door slammed open. Magda, the wet nurse, filled the frame. She took in the scene in a fraction of a second—the crying baby, the fleeing maid, the smoking rug, and the acrid smell of bitter almonds.
Magda did not scream. She lunged. She caught Leta by the braid, yanking the girl backward with enough force to audibly crack her neck. Leta hit the floor screaming, and Magda was upon her, pinning her down with a knee to the spine.
Within moments, the corridor echoed with heavy boots. Lord Aldous burst into the room, a naked longsword in his hand, his eyes wild. Elara was right behind him, pushing past her husband to snatch Seiyuu from the crib, tearing the smoking, ruined blanket away from him.
"What happened?!" Aldous roared, the tip of his sword leveling at the weeping maid pinned beneath the wet nurse.
"Poison, my lord," Magda spat, hauling Leta up by the hair so Aldous could see her face. "I caught her pouring it into the boy's mouth. The little lord startled and knocked it away. Smashed the vial on the floor. See for yourself."
Aldous looked at the bubbling, hissing ruin of the rug. The color drained entirely from his face, replaced a second later by a flush of absolute, homicidal rage.
"Who gave it to you?" Aldous demanded, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm. He stepped forward, placing the cold steel of the sword against Leta's throat. "Speak, or I will peel the skin from your bones right here."
"C-Castellan!" Leta shrieked, sobbing uncontrollably. "A man in a green cloak in the village! He gave me three silvers! He said it wouldn't hurt him! He said it was just a sleeping draught!"
Aldous closed his eyes. A long, shuddering breath escaped his lips. The reality of the war had breached the nursery. The illusion of safety was shattered.
"Take her to the courtyard," Aldous commanded softly, lowering his blade. "Wake the guards. Wake everyone."
An hour later, the sun was just beginning to crest the jagged peaks of the Howling Crags, casting long, bloody shadows across the frozen mud of the courtyard.
The entire household was assembled. Guards, cooks, stable hands—all of them stood shivering in the dawn air, forming a tight ring around a heavy oak chopping block that had been hauled from the kitchens.
Seiyuu was present. Elara had tried to leave him in the nursery, but Aldous had forbidden it.
"He must see," Aldous had insisted, his voice hollow. "He must know the price of our survival."
So, Seiyuu watched from the safety of his mother's arms as two guards dragged Leta toward the block. She was no longer screaming. She was limp, a whimpering, broken thing, trailing urine through the mud.
Aldous stood by the block, resting both hands on the pommel of his executioner's sword—a massive, two-handed blade meant for war, not justice. He looked sick. His hands trembled. He was a man of honor forced to butcher a starving girl.
"Leta of the Lower Village," Aldous projected, his voice cracking slightly before he forced it to hold firm. "You have confessed to high treason and the attempted murder of the heir to the House of Walderose. For this, the law demands only one sentence."
He raised the greatsword. The steel caught the morning light, gleaming with a cold, uncaring brilliance.
Seiyuu did not look away. He focused his mind, absorbing the data. He analyzed the trajectory of the blade, the tension in his father's shoulders, the silence of the crowd.
Leta was forced to her knees, her neck pressed against the stained oak.
This is the mechanics of power in this world, Seiyuu mused silently. No boardrooms. No litigation. Only brutal application of force. She made a calculation based on poverty. Castellan made a calculation based on greed. And father makes a calculation based on survival.
With a sickening, heavy crunch of severing bone and cartilage, the blade came down.
Blood, hot and shockingly bright, sprayed across the frost-covered stones, painting a stark, crimson arc in the pale morning light. The girl's head tumbled into the mud, her eyes wide and unseeing, her jaw slack. The headless torso slumped forward, a torrent of arterial blood pooling rapidly around the block.
Elara gasped and buried her face in Seiyuu's wrappings, shielding her own eyes, but forgetting to shield his.
Seiyuu stared at the severed head of the assassin. He felt no disgust. He felt no horror.
I will not be the currency in another man's ledger, he vowed, the bottomless ambition within his soul flaring like a newly stoked forge. I will be the one keeping the accounts. And when the time comes, Castellan will pay for this insult with interest.
The execution was over. The blood would seep into the mud. And the infant with the soul of a tyrant, had learned his first, vital lesson in the art of Aethelgard's warfare.