Chapter 28
The Fogel Continent is sometimes likened to a bird with its wings spread.
The land extending to the sides, with smaller stretches jutting out above and below, can almost be seen as its wings, head, and tail.
The Adrasia Empire, our homeland, occupies the center of the Fogel Continent—in other words, the part that resembles the bird's body.
And the part where Leo and I are being sent is its tail.
The country in the south of the continent is the Rondine Duchy, one of the two countries located in the tail region.
"One of the two countries that survived the Warring States period in the south..."
I was aboard a ship, reading through information about the country we were about to visit.
It was the Imperial mission fleet, led by Leo, the plenipotentiary ambassador. It consisted of two ships, each loaded with gifts for Rondine.
Leo was aboard one ship and I was aboard the other, just in case an accident occurred. The waters around here were fairly calm, though, so surely nothing would happen.
There was one person aboard my ship who was trembling violently.
"If you're trembling on such calm seas, you'll never be able to go anywhere else."
"I-I don't have to go anywhere else..."
The person trembling beneath the blankets on the bed was Elna.
Why was she here, and why was she trembling?
Well, it wouldn't take long to explain.
Quite simply, Royal Guards were customarily assigned to protect a plenipotentiary ambassador. My siblings had merely recommended Elna for the position. They probably wanted to remove even one person friendly to us from the Imperial Capital. I had anticipated as much, so I had left Linfia with Fiene as a precaution. She would be fine.
Sending a member of the Marquis of Valor's household who could wield a Holy Sword abroad was a serious problem, but it also had the advantage of demonstrating how seriously we took this goodwill mission.
In the end, Father accepted the three recommendations. He had probably been considering it as one possible course of action himself.
The problem was that members of the Marquis of Valor's household who could wield a Holy Sword were one of the Empire's most important military assets. Sending one abroad meant other countries had no way to defend against them. That was one problem. The other was that a Holy Sword could not be used abroad without the Emperor's permission. The first Marquis of Valor had added that safeguard in case one of his descendants betrayed the Empire and defected to another country.
This was not widely known. Members of the Marquis of Valor's household rarely left the country in the first place.
"I'll curse them...! I'll hold a grudge against them...! I'll never forgive those three...!"
"That's not very convincing when you're trembling like that."
The reason she was trembling was simple: she was afraid of the sea.
Elna was fine with baths, but rivers and seas were a different story. She was the sort of person who had a fear of water. It was practically the only weakness of the nearly perfect Elna. More precisely, it was the one weakness that her competitive nature had failed to overcome.
Looking at the sea made her nauseated and dizzy from anxiety, and she would hyperventilate. Once aboard a ship, the overwhelming fear made her body shake uncontrollably. If she went outside and saw the open ocean, she would probably faint from the shock.
"Still, how did you manage to keep this hidden all this time? I thought everyone knew."
"P-People from the Marquis of Valor's household who wield Holy Swords rarely leave the country... The Empire is mostly land, so I knew I could avoid ships. That's why I worked myself to the bone to summon my Holy Sword at twelve. I didn't want to ride on a ship..."
Elna shed a small tear.
She might have been the first person ever to summon a Holy Sword for such a ridiculous reason. And all that effort had turned out to be completely pointless, which made it even funnier.
"You laughed just now, didn't you...!? That's horrible! Your childhood friend is scared, and you're laughing at me...!?"
"Anyone would laugh if they remembered how you developed that fear of water. Especially me."
"A-Al, you have some responsibility too...!? I became afraid of water because I saw you drown...!"
She was right. When we were about eight, Elna and I were taking a bath together. I must have said something that got on her nerves, because I ended up taking a body blow from her. I then passed out, sank to the bottom of the bath, and nearly drowned.
And for some reason, after seeing that, she decided that water was terrifying and developed a fear of it.
That had to be the most absurdly unreasonable reason in history. Even the most tyrannical king would have trouble being that unreasonable.
"It was your own fault, and if anything, I could have been the one to develop a fear of water. It was divine punishment, divine punishment."
"Uuu... That's so unfair..."
Elna began to look as if she might cry, unusually meek.
If she was that afraid, she could have simply declined the mission.
Why had she come along in the first place?
"If you'd told Father, I'm sure he would have taken it into consideration."
"I-If people found out that the heiress of the Marquis of Valor's household was afraid of the sea, it would be a scandal...! A-And saying that I'm afraid of the sea would feel like admitting defeat..."
"What are you competing against?"
As I was looking at her in exasperation, the ship swayed slightly.
It was hardly a significant movement, but it seemed like a tremendous jolt to Elna.
"Aaaahhh!!?? That hurt!?"
She rolled across the small bed, hit her head, and crouched down, clutching it.
Seeing her like that was something that could never happen on land, and the novelty of it put me in a good mood.
"You're completely useless on the water. If pirates attacked us here, it would be all over."
"D-Don't make fun of me...! When the time comes... Aaaahhh!!?? That rocking was huge!? Could a hole have opened in the bottom of the ship!?"
"You'd be useless even then. There's no way that happened. Unless a sea dragon appeared, I suppose."
The most terrifying thing on the sea was the sea dragon, the king of the ocean.
It was a dragon adapted to the sea. Dragons were already top-class monsters, and this one rampaged through the ocean. Its terror surpassed anything found on land. Countless sailors had died after their ships were sunk by one.
There had even been instances when the fleets of two countries at war on the sea had been sunk all at once. Elna surely knew those frightening stories as well.
The instant I mentioned sea dragons, her expression looked as if her spirit had completely broken.
"Am I going to die here?"
"Of course not, idiot. You're practically a different person now. How is this acceptable for a Royal Guard? You shouldn't accept a mission if it interferes with your duties."
"But..."
"Haaah..."
I could understand not wanting to show weakness. Besides, we were not going to fight on the sea, and no pirates would attack a mission ship with such heavy security.
Once we returned to land, she would be her usual self, so I decided to stop picking on Elna for now.
After getting my fill of revenge for all the usual things she did to me, I secretly put up a barrier. It cut us off from the outside. That should make the ship's rocking a little less severe. I normally could not use something like this, but Elna was in no state to notice, so it was fine.
"It seems to have stopped rocking quite so much..."
"It wasn't rocking much to begin with."
"A-Al, you're too insensitive... Don't you ever think about what would happen if the ship sank?"
"An Imperial mission ship has sunk only twice in the Empire's long history."
"But there's no guarantee that today isn't the third time..."
She was being far more pessimistic than usual—pessimistic enough to be a nuisance. Why was she frightened by information I had offered to reassure her?
There was no point in saying anything more. I would let her be as frightened as she wanted.
As I was thinking that, I heard a quiet knock at the door.
Elna flinched at the sound of even that knock. She was in no condition to answer, so I did it for her.
A middle-aged knight serving under Elna entered the room.
"Come in."
"Excuse me... Um, where is the captain?"
"I-I'm alive..."
"Can you come up onto the deck?"
"Are you telling me to die!? If the wind blew me overboard, I'd drown!"
"Is it a storm out there in your mind? The sky is clear today. Good grief... You can see how she is."
I looked at her subordinate in exasperation, but the knight merely gave me a wry smile. Apparently, her own people knew about this. There was no way she could have kept it hidden from them, after all.
"Then I'll just give you the report. A ship from the Albatro Duchy is requesting a meeting. We've dropped anchor, as has Prince Leonart's ship. What should we do?"
"The Albatro Duchy? So we'd already entered its waters."
The Albatro Duchy was located next to the Rondine Duchy. It was a maritime nation that conducted extensive sea trade. In the past, when the Empire was at war with another country, Albatro had supported that country, leaving it on poor terms with the Empire.
A meeting at this point, huh? They probably did not want us reaching Rondine. They called it a meeting, but in substance, it was an inspection.
"A-All the knights should stay inside... We shouldn't provoke them..."
"I agree. What did Leo say?"
"That's the thing... Prince Leonart also seems to be feeling ill, so I thought I'd ask your opinion, Captain."
"Haaah... It can't be helped. I'll pretend to be Leo and handle this."
With that, I left the room.
Leo's ship was next to ours. If I gave them a signal accepting the meeting, the Albatro Duchy would come aboard.
Surely they would not inspect every nook and cranny of an Imperial mission ship, so everything should be fine.
I crossed to the neighboring ship and headed for Leo's room.
Leo was there, looking somewhat pale. We couldn't hold a meeting with him looking like that.
"Hey. I heard you're feeling sick. Seasick?"
"Yeah... Looks like it..."
"You're not Elna, so pull yourself together."
"Sorry..."
"For now, I'll pretend to be you. Go rest on the neighboring ship."
"But..."
"Just go. Tell them that Prince Arnold is feeling ill."
"But if you say that, Your Highness's reputation will suffer yet again..."
"It's fine. It won't change anything at this point."
After informing Elna's subordinate, I moved Leo to the neighboring ship. Naturally, I did so while presenting myself to everyone around us as Prince Arnold.
I was the one left behind. I straightened my hair and clothes, put on a composed expression, and left the room.
"I accept the request for a meeting. Make the preparations."
"Yes, sir."
And that was how I switched places with Leo on the open sea.