Beggar Siblings - Escape
"Your Highness. Are you running away again?"
Leo's heart sank. When he turned around, the Baron was bowing gracefully, as if he were greeting royalty.
Looking at Leo's pale face, the Baron spoke in a tone filled with peculiar sentiment.
"Hahaha. You seem surprised. I met you a few times when you were very young... You probably don't remember. But I recognized you immediately the moment I saw you. Both of you are alive."
"......"
"Seeing you grown up like this fills me with emotion... but it's unfortunate. If Your Highness is alive, 'our' Conrad Kingdom will be in turmoil. Please, do not forgive me."
He mouthed the word 'our' without actually voicing it.
Then, he bowed deeply once more, signaling a farewell, and gestured to the trembling female knight, Irene, behind the iron gate.
Leo realized he could no longer stand there foolishly. He started running with all his might, and the enraged female knight chased after him.
Irene, hastily drawing her sword, was not merely trying to capture Leo.
Irene was born in the house of a tenant farmer bound to the Marquis' estate.
Though she was extremely poor, she had a good physique from birth and did odd jobs at the castle on the estate.
One day, a knight discovered her talent. With the Marquis' support, Irene was able to learn swordsmanship.
With her exceptional talent, she quickly became a knight and was called to work at the Marquis' mansion in the capital.
Having never experienced romance in her life, Irene fell in love for the first time there.
Unfortunately, it was with the Marquis' son.
At first, she silently screamed at herself, asking if she had gone mad. It was a love that could never be realized. She had to remain the Marquis' sword and a useful tool.
However, Irene couldn't help but eagerly await the days she would be assigned to guard Torton Tatian.
She even secretly asked her colleagues to switch shifts with her and took on extra duties on her days off.
It wasn't work for her. After all, he was someone she couldn't help but love.
Despite being a noble, Torton Tatian never mistreated his subordinates.
He was so kind that during winter, he would have the knight who was supposed to ride next to the coachman sit inside the carriage to avoid the cold.
This became such a habit that he always had the knight sit next to him.
Every time Irene sat next to him, she felt immensely, truly happy. She was content even if her love remained unrequited for a lifetime.
Then one day, while on duty in the Marquis's office, Irene overheard a shocking conversation.
"There will be an assassination attempt while traveling by carriage. Inform the knight guarding Torton tomorrow not to protect him."
"Understood."
Marquis Benar Tatian ordered the butler, and Irene struggled to keep herself from collapsing.
The Marquis's orders were absolute.
Since the order had been given, it was certain that Torton would meet his fate.
Throughout the seemingly endless hours of her shift, she alternated between gazing at the Marquis she respected, thinking of the man she loved, glaring resentfully at the Marquis, and biting her tongue, calling herself an ungrateful wretch.
Irene never knew that the Marquis watched her departing figure with a gentle smile, and by sheer luck, she found out that her colleague, who was supposed to guard Torton Tatian the next day, had taken leave, and the duty had fallen to her.
"Torton, leaving the carriage door open is against regulations."
The next day, Irene cited a regulation she had never mentioned before. Torton was momentarily puzzled but smiled softly and locked the door.
This was the best plan she could think of.
A way to protect him without completely defying the Marquis' orders...
Of course, if the assassin had truly intended to harm him, Irene would have eventually drawn her sword.
According to her plan, the assassination failed.
When Torton Tatian was stabbed by the assassin who broke through the door, Irene lost her composure, but going to the church for treatment was the priority.
Fortunately, Torton Tatian survived.
Later, she was scolded by the respected Marquis and was given all sorts of menial tasks that were never assigned to knights as punishment, but she didn't care about her honor as long as she protected the one she loved.
And when Torton Tatian's bloated body floated up from the lake in the north of Orville, her loyalty to the Marquis no longer mattered.
After that, Irene felt tormented every time she saw the new adopted son the Marquis had taken in, so she avoided him. She kept thinking she just wanted to return to her hometown.
But as the daughter of a tenant farmer, she was practically the Marquis' property, so she could only live in emptiness.
Until today, when she heard that the flashy adopted son was the one who killed him.
That's right. That bastard must have killed Torton Tatian and deceived the Marquis.
That damn bastard!
Irene chased after the despicable dog who was fleeing in haste.
* * *
Startled by the commotion outside, Lena stopped in confusion and focused on the noise.
The urgent shouts of the men and the sound of hurried footsteps indicated that something was wrong.
- Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud!
As Lena was about to go outside to check the situation, someone came running towards her room with heavy steps.
"Lena! Lena!"
Without knocking, the person who burst into her room shouting was Santian Rauno.
He inherited his curly brown hair from his mother and had a broad forehead like his father. And his nose was round...
“Lena! What are you doing? Hurry up and come out!”
“What? Why?”
“Quickly!”
Santian grabbed Lena's wrist and ran towards the basement, as if there was no time to explain further.
The Rauno family was under attack.
With Count Hermann Forte away on the battlefield, Marquis Tatian mobilized Orville's defense soldiers to surround the Rauno family's mansion.
Five knights of the Marquis led soldiers to invade the mansion. They were ordered to capture a girl with golden eyes, if such a girl existed, and kill the rest.
Upon hearing that Lena and Leo were the prince and princess exiled from the Kingdom of Conrad long ago, Marquis Benar Tatian laughed heartily.
He was delighted because his speculation that Leo was from a prestigious foreign family turned out to be correct.
The Marquis enjoyed piecing together information to make deductions. He would cast bait towards an uncertain future, rejoice if things went as expected, and savor pondering the reasons if they did not.
But that was not the only thing that pleased him.
Leo, that boy, turned out to be a useful son after all! He had only shown pathetic incompetence, making the Marquis look at him with disdain... but his eyes had not deceived him.
Marquis Tatian had not summoned the siblings for a while, instead contacting the Conrad royal family through the church's communication, resulting in a mutually satisfactory deal.
The demand of the Yeriel royal family was simple. Kill the two of them.
However, the Marquis declared he would only kill the prince. Although the price of the deal was slightly reduced, they probably did not know how beautifully the princess had grown.
The Marquis summoned the siblings to the mansion. He could have simply surrounded and annihilated that den of thugs, but Leo was the problem.
Although pathetic, his swordsmanship was at the level of an ordinary knight. It would be difficult for a small number of soldiers to capture him, and if he escaped, the pursuit could become very lengthy.
The simplest method was to summon the siblings to the mansion, kill one, and imprison the other.
However, something unexpected happened. Leo did not bring his sister.
If he had brought Lena, Leo would never have been able to escape because of her.
Lena was led by Tian to the basement of the family mansion.
There, along with Ober, were retired gangsters, as well as women and children.
Additionally, there were more than ten passageways in the basement of the mansion.
This was the driving force that allowed the Rauno family to survive in Orville for so long.
How their ancestors managed to set up such facilities was unknown...
Ober grouped people in fives and pushed them into the emergency passageways.
“Now, let's go. We don't have much time.”
Ober said as he led Lena, Tian, an elderly woman, and an old man into the passageway.
As he said, time was running out.
Although the Rauno family's gangsters fought desperately, the five knights were an unstoppable force for them.
It was not the gangsters but the complex Rauno family mansion that hindered the knights.
The mansion was a series of connected buildings, so when Lena and Leo first entered, the siblings had to be guided for a while.
Lena walked through the narrow, dark passageway, relying on Tian's hand. She wanted to ask what had happened to her brother, but she couldn't.
She could feel that everyone walking with her was in a complicated state of mind. Even from Tian's hand, she could sense resentment and hesitation.
They all had a guess about the cause of this situation. There were never any good outcomes when entangled with nobles.
At the end of the seemingly endless passageway was a ladder, and Ober climbed up first, pushing the wooden plank blocking the entrance.
The wooden plank was covered with something like a carpet, making it difficult to open, but Ober, hanging on the ladder, struggled for a while and finally managed to open it.
Five people cautiously peeked out from a small family house. The family members seemed to have gone out to work, leaving only an old man lying in bed, who slowly raised his head.
He looked at them in confusion for a moment before finally remembering that there was a passageway here.
"...Is there a big problem?"
Ober silently nodded, and the old man got up, dusting himself off, and gestured for them to follow.
As he led the five people, he muttered to himself.
"Oh, my legs. I had forgotten, but time has flown by like this. How fleeting life is..."
The old man went outside and pulled off a cloth covering something. It had been so long that dust swirled everywhere.
What the cloth had been covering was a water cart. The water cart was much larger than a handcart but very low to the ground to make loading and unloading water easier.
As the old man helped the five people onto the water cart, he continued to mutter incessantly.
"It’s been so long since I asked you to kill that bastard... Well, now that I think about it, thank you. I was too flustered back then to even say this."
He repeated his thanks several times, not knowing to whom he was speaking, as he dragged a large water tank from the corner.
Unable to watch the old man struggle any longer, Ober and Tian helped him.
Lena and the other five were still inside Orville Castle. Now, they would hide in the water cart to escape the castle. This was a precaution that the cautious Joseph Rauno had prepared for emergencies.
"Oh, how pretty. Actually, I had a daughter too. Well, she's gone now, but I lived well with my son. We lived well."
The old man filled some of the water tanks on the cart halfway with water, then had each person get inside one.
Then he said, "Just wait a moment. I'll go and..." and mumbled something unintelligible before bringing a horse from somewhere.
To the north of the capital, Orville, there was a large lake. The water carriers would draw water from there and sell it, but it wasn't always that all the water would be sold.
This job had its own competition, and the unsold water would become sticky over time.
Thus, as much water as was brought into the capital, an equal amount of unsold, fishy-smelling water was discarded back into the lake.
Joseph Rauno took note of this.
The water carts were covered with cloth to prevent dust from falling into the water. In the dark, the water was not visible, and the soldiers did not bother to put their hands into the sticky water to check.
The old man drove the creaking water cart, and five people held their breath underwater as they passed through the city gates. The vibrations from the creaking cart and the horse's trotting created ripples on the water's surface, hiding them.
The old man, watching them leave with their soaked bodies, finally thought his job was done. He recalled his daughter who had worked in a wealthy household and turned away with a sense of loneliness.
After escaping Orville, one of the women among the five suggested they flee to her parents' house.
She proposed they take a moment to catch their breath and assess the situation there.
Since there were no specific guidelines after escaping the city, they decided to follow her suggestion.
However, after having a meal and gathering information at her parents' house, which wasn't far from Orville, they had to make a choice.
Through the church's communication, a single command had been issued to all villages and cities.
- Capture the girl with golden eyes.
The entire Bellita Kingdom was desperate to find Lena. To avoid capture, she had to flee to another kingdom.
After much deliberation, Ober and Santian Rauno decided to protect Lena. The woman and the old man who had come with them decided to stay in this village, and the three of them headed east.
During their long journey, Ober handed Lena a juice extracted from a plant called 'Defare'.
If she put this in her eyes, the color of her pupils would fade and lose their original color, and Lena put it in her eyes.
Her eyes blazed.