Interlude: Kingdom of Menexes (5)
~King Narcisse’s Point of View~
(Continental Year 579)
The epidemic that had swept through the royal capital finally reached us as well.
Gritzini’s wife, Princess Musette, had already left the capital during the coup and was being sheltered in the domain of the Marquis of Tormare, Anju’s family estate. Their eldest son, Shukran, was with her, and we recently received news that their second son, Rododron, had been born. Thankfully, the epidemic had not yet reached the Marquisate of Tormare, which brought Gritzini some relief.
I should have sent Anju back to her family estate much earlier as well, but I couldn’t refuse her strong wish to stay, and thus she remained here.
Anju, never strong in health, began coughing recently and eventually collapsed into bed. I visited her, but all I could do was watch her struggle for breath, wheezing terribly, and pray for Argonas and the healer to arrive sooner.
The next to fall ill was Victoire.
Despite my urging for her to seek refuge in her homeland, the Kingdom of Lizmoni, she refused, insisting she could not leave me and our sons behind.
Confident in her health, she even actively took care of Anju. But this morning, I heard she had started coughing, and when I went to her room, her face was flushed bright red and she appeared delirious.
Just yesterday, she had been carrying water buckets with ease and eating normally. How could her condition have deteriorated so rapidly? Is this truly just a simple epidemic?
“Father, Duke Raftera has been found. The knights will be dispatched immediately to capture him.”
“Father, to atone for what I’ve done, I will personally apprehend him. Thank you for granting me this opportunity.”
At the end of the Water Season, word finally came that my uncle had been located. The one who would personally lead the arrest was my second son, Orhide.
Over the past few months, his body had been honed to the extreme, shedding all unnecessary fat, and his once cheerful face now looked completely different. His golden hair had turned entirely white, a testament to the depth of his wounds.
“If only I hadn’t been so foolish… It was I who directly caused Sorene and our child’s deaths, but it was Raftera who forced my hand. I will never forgive him…”
Upon learning that her husband had led the coup, Princess Sorene took her own life, unable to bear the shock.
The palace doctor confirmed after examining her body that it had been a suicide by poisoning, and worse yet, she had been carrying a child.
Based on the timeline, the child had been conceived before Orhide departed on his campaign, during a time when Duke Raftera had left the territory under the pretense of wanting to see his grandchild.
If, as suspected, the switch to new tea leaves resulted in the pregnancy, then had it not been for that tainted tea, they might have conceived sooner, and none of this—the coup, the tragedy—would have happened.
When Orhide heard this, all of his hair turned white overnight. From then on, like a berserker, he relentlessly trained within his chambers, vowing to capture Duke Raftera with his own hands.
The day after Orhide departed, I, too, fell ill.
For two days, I suffered a relentless fever, barely able to breathe, but by some miracle, I recovered.
It seemed others in the castle and lower town had experienced similar cases—some had only mild symptoms, others recovered after two or three days of fever.
The healer Argonas brought declared that the illness was caused by minuscule, invisible organisms floating in the air.
Immediate measures were taken: rinsing the mouth with water, cleansing magic cast indoors and after returning home, and distributing cloth coverings for the mouth and nose to prevent inhalation of the disease.
Thanks to this, the number of new infections dropped sharply. Instead of using recovery potions, patients were treated with antipyretics and cough suppressants, allowing for recovery before symptoms worsened.
This information quickly reached the lower town, and the apothecaries began producing the necessary medicines, causing patient numbers in the capital to plummet within two weeks.
Yet, some still suffered severe cases.
Anju passed away on the fourth day after becoming infected.
Victoire’s fever initially subsided, leading us to believe she was recovering, but two days later, her fever returned, and she suffered violent seizures atop her bed. By the time the doctor arrived, she had already drawn her last breath.
“Ahahahahaha! How does it feel, Narcisse? If I had been king, this never would have happened. Regret it, do you? I bet you do.
All because of a trivial difference in eye color, the more capable brother was cast aside, and the one born just a little earlier became king—what a farce!
Both of your sons are dead. The epidemic doesn’t discriminate by royal bloodline. The weak women and children are the first to perish, aren’t they? What a shame. Narcisse, your direct bloodline will be wiped out. Serves you right!”
The moment I arrived, Duke Edgar Raftera, bound tightly with ropes and escorted by the kingdom’s knights under Duke Gardenia’s command, spewed those venomous words upon seeing me.
The epidemic claimed women and children first, and even many strong men had fallen.
Did this man bring such a terrible plague to this country? How? And why hasn’t he fallen ill?
Through brutal torture, many truths came to light.
It turned out that he and his son had indeed secretly crossed into the Kingdom of Heilan via the Prima Viscountcy and gone into hiding.
That country was the source of this disease, and they had also developed a preventative medicine to suppress its onset.
The reason Duke Raftera remained unaffected was because he had taken that medicine.
The epidemic that had broken out in the southern territories last year was merely a test run to see how quickly the illness would spread and how rapidly the infected would die.
The first trials were conducted in Heilan, while the outbreak in the south was meant to test the effectiveness of the preventative medicine.
The inhumanity of these repeated experiments enraged me. The sheer pettiness of their motivations, and my own blindness in failing to see this coming, made me want to kill him with my own hands.
Fortunately, my grandchildren had left the capital before the outbreak and thus were not infected.
While the illness was indeed contagious from person to person, preventive measures such as cloth coverings and proper recovery allowed it to subside.
Once the disease spores scattered in the capital were eliminated with purification magic, the illness would not naturally spread again unless the source was deliberately recreated.
Duke Raftera, his son Aurelian, and Viscount Prima and his wife—Raftera’s granddaughter, Sicilian—were all publicly executed.
It was unthinkable that my reign would see public executions, but the epidemic had claimed too many lives among both commoners and nobles.
Even those who survived often suffered lingering aftereffects—loss of taste, hearing, physical abilities—and as the full extent of the damage became clear, it was obvious the consequences were catastrophic.
What do you think about this chapter?
