The Reversed Hierophant Chapter 81
Revenge
Ferrante stood at the door, his arms crossed, his fingers tapping rhythmically on his elbow. When he counted to one thousand, he straightened up and stared at the closed door. Inlaid with polished mother-of-pearl and gemstones, the grand door blocked out all sound, creating a world of its own inside.
Ferrante suppressed his impatience and began counting again. When he reached the second one thousand, he heard a muffled noise from inside the room, like something heavy falling to the ground.
He quickly turned and reached out to push the door open, but at the last moment, he managed to regain his composure. Instead of pushing, he knocked. “Your Holiness, is there anything you need?”
The Pope’s deep, sharp voice immediately replied from inside, “No.”
The voice sounded natural and smooth, as if nothing had happened.
From that brief word, Ferrante judged that the Pope was likely in a very bad mood. What message had that woman brought?
The mind of the man in charge of countless black crows raced. He had a vague guess about what had happened, which made his heart jump. This was followed by even greater confusion.
If… if something had truly happened to the Queen, why would her lady-in-waiting come to Florence first instead of going to Rome?
Ferrante’s eyes narrowed slightly, a look of deep thought flashing in his dark blue pupils.
If you ignored the cold glint of steel between his fingers, it would have looked like a perfectly harmonious scene.
The sound of porcelain rolling and shattering had occurred moments earlier when Ashur, instinctively trying to rise, was forcibly pressed down by Rafael. In the struggle, she accidentally knocked over a slender decorative vase nearby.
The clock ticked steadily, and the tense atmosphere between the two gradually tightened to the breaking point in the excessive silence.
A few minutes earlier, as Ferrante counted to nine hundred fifty-six the second time, Ashur, who had been recounting the Queen’s final moments, suddenly said, “Her Majesty wished for me to deliver her last will and testament to you. This is the final version signed by her, possessing the highest legal authority.”
Rafael’s eyebrows lifted slightly. The corners of his eyes were still tinged with a moist, feverish blush, his pale purple eyes shimmering with rippling light. The skin of his cheeks and neck flushed a delicate pink, like peach blossoms, due to the emotional turmoil, a sweet and pure sight that made one’s heart race.
Ashur approached Rafael and knelt on one knee before him—just as she had done countless times before the Queen—and reached into her robes.
At that moment, they were close enough to touch each other’s throats with a single reach.
“One question, I’m a bit curious,” Rafael said suddenly. “—Why did you betray her?”
The instant these words fell, Rafael and Ashur moved simultaneously. But Ashur’s attention had been momentarily caught by Rafael’s question, causing her to react a step slower. Thus, before her hand could fully leave her garment, the Pope had already pressed against the side of her neck.
The woman’s eyes shifted. A chilling coldness radiated from the skin of her neck, and from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a cold, silvery flash.
In the young Pope’s hand was a slender, thin sleeve dagger. The sharp blade had sprung from his sleeve, extending three dangerous inches of cold steel from his fingertips, pressing precisely against Ashur’s carotid artery.
“I studied human anatomy with Lady Anastasia. Although I’m not very proficient, if my hand moves just a bit further, your beautiful neck will spurt blood like a fountain. I advise you not to challenge my patience.”
Their similar eyes met for a moment. Both saw the same coldness and hardness reflected in the other’s gaze.
Ashur gave a short, quick smile. Without hesitation, she thrust her waist and back upward, simultaneously reaching out to grab Rafael’s neck.
But Rafael was not at all startled by her sudden outburst. Just as he had warned, he showed no hesitation or doubt. Without even blinking, he sliced the blade horizontally. If the cut had landed true, it would have been enough to sever half of Ashur’s neck.
However, the blade didn’t meet warm, soft human skin, but a hard object.
Ashur had cleverly used the fabric of her cloak’s shoulder to block the sharp blade. Her arm knocked over the decorative vase on the side. The cloak seemed to have metal plates sewn into it, which made Rafael’s knife slip, narrowly grazing the skin on the side of her neck and leaving a long mark.
After a few seconds, a thin trail of blood slowly seeped from the wound.
The porcelain vase made a muffled thud as it landed on the carpet, followed by Ferrante’s tense inquiry from the door.
Rafael’s eyes remained fixed on Ashur as he casually dismissed Ferrante. They still maintained an extremely close distance, but Ashur, having failed to gain the upper hand in the sudden attack, was now completely at a disadvantage. The Pope’s blade, after its initial mistake, clearly left no gap for her to escape.
Ashur knelt silently on one knee for a long moment before saying, “I didn’t expect you would actually strike.”
She shifted her shoulder, feeling the damp blood slowly soaking through the cloth at her shoulder.
“Really? Clearly you did not take my words to heart,” Rafael replied softly. “In the name of the Holy Lord, I never lie.”
Ashur seemed amused. A hint of mockery appeared on her serious face, making her look much livelier. The woman glanced at the blade on her neck. “The Holy Lord? Does the Holy Lord command His representative to hide a sleeve dagger in his robe? This Holy Lord seems rather… unconventional.”
Indeed, who could have imagined that beneath the Pope’s robes lay not a gospel book or a holy thorned crozier, but an assassin’s favored sleeve dagger?
Such a vile, concealed, bloody weapon should never be associated with the holy and radiant Pontiff.
Rafael lowered his eyes faintly, not answering directly, but sidestepping the question. “But it’s proving useful now, isn’t it?”
Ashur was silent for a moment. She lifted her eyelids, and in that brief stillness, a glimmer of tears seemed to flash in her eyes.
“You’ve had a difficult life these past few years, haven’t you?” she said softly.
This almost maternal concern made Rafael freeze. The hand holding the knife tightened instantly. “Please don’t change the subject.”
In truth, ever since he had reopened his eyes in this world, he had always had a hidden blade in his sleeve. The blade was strapped to his arm when he travelled and kept under his pillow when he slept. Even when he bathed, he would not let it out of reach.
It was tragic. He possessed a world and a billion believers, yet he lived like a wretched pauper humbly surviving in the cracks.
“Fine,” Ashur said, no longer pushing the topic. “But I need to reiterate, I did not betray the Queen.”
She repeated it calmly, each word as if it had been chewed over a thousand times, gnawing through flesh and blood before being spat out, carrying a heavy scent of blood and killing intent: “In this world, I am the last person who would betray her.”
Rafael was noncommittal about her declaration. “Then how did you get here?”
Ashur and Amandra had led two separate teams to the new camp. To take care of the Queen, who was recovering from a serious illness, Ashur’s group was larger and was tasked with being the vanguard to clear the path. But it was on the path she had cleared that the army besieging the Queen appeared. How had so many people bypassed Ashur’s sweep?
Rafael was not privy to their military plan. He was simply relying on his practical experience in political struggle and had noticed a problem. As the legitimate monarch of Assyria, Amandra’s death would undoubtedly cause a huge stir. The political legacy she left behind was so vast that it was unimaginable to others. The throne of Assyria alone was enough to make people fight to the death. Even with the existence of the Queen’s own bloodline far away in Rome, what did that matter?
As long as one could get ahold of the leaderless army first, anyone could become the next Bairaetu.
To launch a coup, the most important thing isn’t to eliminate equally restless enemies, but to thoroughly eradicate the old master’s forces.
As the Queen’s most trusted lady-in-waiting, and with a portion of the military power and likely the Queen’s last will in her hands—how could Ashur have so easily passed through countless pursuers and arrived in Florence?
Similarly, as someone holding the Queen’s will and thereby able to determine the fate of all her assets, if Ashur was truly loyal to the Queen, she should have gone to Rome immediately to find the Queen’s legitimate heir, Sancha, rather than coming to Florence to find Rafael, the illegitimate son who cannot see the light of day.
With the Queen’s sudden passing, Assyria had fallen into a state of chaos, having lost its last legitimate monarch. Every second was infinitely precious. In Rafael’s opinion, Ashur’s choice to come to Florence was completely illogical.
This was true even though she had brought him the final message of the mother he had never met.
Rafael felt as if his soul had been split in two. One half controlled his body, thinking and judging with the cold calmness of a machine, casting aside all emotion and cruelly examining the value of a monarch-less Assyria. The other half floated above his body, curled into a ball, sorrowfully lost in its own world.
“Judging from both political standing and identity, you should have gone to Rome first to find Sancha and give her the will—if such a will truly exists,” Rafael said. “If you didn’t betray her, I can’t understand your reason for abandoning Rome and choosing the Papal States.”
“Or do you wish to obtain greater benefits from me?” Ashur raised her head, looking at the expressionless Pope. The speed of his thought process frightened her somewhat—that absolute rationality was enough to inspire awe in anyone. The Pope’s pace of speech was unchanged. “Although Sancha holds the titles of Queen of Rome and Grand Duchess of Assyria, it also means that all the political resources around her have been completely divided up over the years. There’s no place for someone like you, who has retired from the side of the former ruler. If you want to gain more, you can only take a desperate risk and choose a less advantageous candidate, someone who desperately needs you—an illegitimate son who cannot see the light of day, who has no one else to prove his lineage—”
His gaze was like a knife plunging into Ashur’s eyes. “Like me.”
The nobles didn’t mind the existence of illegitimate children, nor did they mind giving a portion of their wealth to their own bloodline, but this did not apply to Rafael.
He was one of the most unique people in the world. Secular morals and laws were extremely strict in their demands on him. From birth to death, he had to be flawless.
Because he was the Pope of Florence, the leader of millions of devout followers, the Holy Lord’s representative on Earth, and the highest moral exemplar in the world.
He had to be pure, glorious, noble, and great.
The Pope had to be a legitimate child—his birth must have received the blessing and permission of the Holy Lord. Otherwise, how could he become His shepherd?
“I cannot give you what you want,” Rafael said, retracting the deadly weapon, his voice cold and weary.
He looked at Ashur. Even he knew that this woman had followed Amandra through countless trials, traveling from Assyria to Rome. These years of hardship had transformed Ashur from a vibrant Assyrian maiden into the hardened woman she was today. She had not married, devoting the most beautiful and precious time of her life to the Queen. Now she sought peace and happiness for the rest of her life… perhaps power or something else. Rafael did not care.
He only felt a sense of melancholy.
Ashur, however, suddenly raised her hand and gripped the sleeve dagger. The sharp blade immediately cut into her palm, and drops of blood dripped down her wrist.
A fire ignited in the woman’s eyes. The wasteland in her gaze was scorched by a raging blaze that reached into the sky, as if to burn a hole through the heavens.
This was the flame of revenge.
“I don’t want those things!” Ashur roared in a low voice. “I don’t want wealth or power!”
Her voice was hoarse, like a mother wolf howling for her lost pup. “I want you to seek revenge! For your mother, for the Queen!”
Crimson, hot blood slid down the sleeve dagger and onto Rafael’s hand. The wet, sticky sensation made him shiver. He instinctively let go.
Ashur swallowed hard, desperately stuffing all her pained cries along with her tears deep into the sunless depths of her soul, letting them rot and ferment with thorns and mud. “You’re right. They wanted the army the Queen left behind, and they also wanted this will. They even tried to threaten me with the Queen’s body—”
At this, Ashur’s face twisted ferociously. For a moment, the woman was more terrifying than a demon. “They tried to threaten me, and I sliced off their heads. But I don’t have much time. The last thing I did before I left was capture the assassin who killed the Queen.”
A cold, ghostly fire burned maliciously in her eyes.
“That son of a bitch—that vile, despicable madman, that beast who deserves to die a horrible death—he gave the order to take the life of his fiancée’s mother from the royal palace in Calais.”
Rafael’s head snapped up. He stared intently at Ashur.
“You’re saying this was Francois IV’s order? Where’s the proof?”
“I can’t give you proof. The assassin who delivered the fatal blow committed suicide under my interrogation. This was the last information he left behind. He was terrified that the tyrant would come to kill him, so he ended his own life first,” Ashur replied.
“But even if I don’t give you proof, can you really not figure out the whole story?”
Rafael fell silent.
Of course he could. In fact, after learning who the culprit was, a sense of “I knew it” dawned on him.
But then, another thought struck him like lightning.
In his previous life, the Queen had also died on the battlefield of Assyria, but that was in the year 1084 of the Holy Calendar, two years from now.
If this was the work of Francois IV, what had caused him to act two years ahead of schedule?
The only change, the only recent change…
Rafael’s hand on his leg involuntarily clenched into a fist. His entire body began to tremble uncontrollably.
—The only change was that he had saved Duke Francois, who should have died, in front of the young emperor.
Due to the chaos on the Assyrian battlefield, he had received the incorrect news of the Queen’s death and made a wrong judgment. To check the young emperor, he had urgently ordered Julius to forcibly save Duke Francois, intending to use him as leverage against the emperor in the future. This, in a way, made his vigilance against the young emperor an open secret.
Could it be… could it be that his mistake caused Francois to become wary of the Queen prematurely, and as a way to weaken Rome, Assyria, and the Papal States, Francois acted on his murderous intent two years early?
If only… if he hadn’t done that, if he had thought about it more, if he had waited for more news…
Rafael couldn’t stop his overly pessimistic and extreme thoughts. He knew that his current thoughts were terrifying, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. His cold, rational self judged this idea to be correct and logical. In front of him was a black hole with infinite gravitational pull, threatening to devour his soul and emotions, and tear him into pieces.
Ashur was immersed in her own emotions. She didn’t notice the Pope’s subtle trembling nor his crumbling gaze.
“…After the assassin committed suicide, I escaped from Assyria. Most of the Queen’s personal guards were killed or wounded in the chaos. I ordered the rest to hide until the Queen’s heir truly appears, and I chose to come to Florence—I needed to find someone who could avenge Her Majesty. Sancha is certainly an option, but I wanted to see you first. And just now, when you raised your blade and came at me, I knew I had found the right person.”
Ashur gave a strange smile. “You and the Queen are exactly alike. Both of you have an inextinguishable fire in your hearts.”
The Queen’s fire came from the disintegration of Assyria and years of displacement. Where does the fire in your heart come from?
Her voice was like the chaotic sound of water filtered by a thick membrane. Rafael seemed to hear it, yet he couldn’t hear it clearly. He gripped the armrest of the chair tightly. Only by doing so could he prevent himself from sliding off the chair. The Pope’s soul let out a desperate cry in a space no one could see, wailing as it tried to shrink into a corner where no one could find it.
—My God, did he indirectly kill his own mother?
Author’s Note
I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to torment Rafa, but this is how the plot is arranged. I was shocked writing it myself. How could I, who wrote the outline, be so cruel, cold-blooded, and heartless?! I don’t understand!! What was I thinking back then?! It’s so cruel!!! Ashur is a fan of only the Queen. She doesn’t really care about Assyria. She only cared about it because the Queen did, but now that the Queen is dead, she… started to go crazy…
