The Thread (1)
"Nngh..."
I rose from the bed, working the stiffness from my body.
I had booked the finest inn the night before and burrowed into a thick, yielding comforter, but it felt as though I had barely slept an hour. Every time I drifted off, the thug with a blade buried in his throat would greet me in my dreams, coughing up blood — and I would jolt awake screaming. The cycle repeated through the entire night.
The trembling in my hands had finally stopped, at least, but yesterday's events still played out in my mind with merciless clarity.
Was I being unusually sensitive? Because I still remembered the ethics of my previous life? Or did everyone in this world go through something like this after their first kill?
...Even so, I have to get used to it.
It was a process I was going to face eventually. It had simply arrived a little earlier than I had expected.
Repeating that to myself, I climbed into the carriage bound from Dracton to the Academy.
St. Clifford Academy was nothing like the ordinary impression the word school tended to give. It was closer to a power in its own right — one that could stand toe to toe with any great house on the continent.
The Academy's territory rivaled that of the Northern Grand Duke, whose lands were said to be the widest in the Empire. Sitting as it did against the Western Kingdoms, a constant stream of goods and the latest fashions poured into Academy lands without pause. The Headmistress held no official title whatsoever, and yet imperial protocol always accorded her the very highest honors.
The faction she commanded was formidable enough on its own. Add to that the enormous donations and shipments of supplies that arrived from every corner of society as a matter of annual custom, and it was no exaggeration to say that, should the Academy ever set its mind to it, tearing a rift through the Empire's balance of power would be the work of a moment.
And yet the faculty and everyone who belonged to the institution were respected by all — because they never turned that immense strength toward their own profit. They used it solely to raise and protect their students.
"So I've come back after all..."
I stood before the Academy's main gate, taking in that magnificent edifice I had not seen in so long.
Had the original story run its course, I would have been twiddling my thumbs somewhere in the south by now. The thought that I had defied fate and returned here sent a thrill through me I could not quite suppress.
Looking back, the past two months had been relentlessly busy. Avoiding expulsion was, without question, the greatest of those accomplishments. I had also struck up a modest acquaintance with the demonkin, solved the territory's surplus grain problem while I was at it, and even acquired a number of useful items. I had dangled Cynthia's sacred relic as bait before the upright Archbishop of Westford and, in the end, succeeded in bringing him over.
I had thrashed and clawed to step even a little aside from the grim futures waiting in the years ahead, and looking at what I had managed so far, I could reasonably call the first step a success.
But the real work started now.
The most important pieces were already in the ground; the rest I could handle as situations arose. That still left the question of how I was supposed to live at the Academy itself.
I had shown a changed face in the territory, in the demon realm, and in the Archbishop's domain — all in the name of survival. But was I allowed to do the same here?
A sudden change in a person, especially a change for the better, had a powerful way of drawing the curious. If the students, the faculty, and above all the principal figures who drove the original story came to recognize that I was no longer who I had been, troublesome things were all but guaranteed to follow.
It was the most obvious cliché in the book. A complete reversal of appearance and personality, and the original cast approaching out of curiosity — that exact scene. Handle myself poorly, and I could easily find myself living out one of those sequences I had read in countless web novels in my previous life.
I needed a method. The changed appearance I would have to live with. But if the people around me concluded that the person inside was no different from the old Edwin, they would have little reason to come looking.
So. What was I supposed to do?
Just blend in.
The conclusion I reached was, surprisingly, a simple one.
I had no desire to go around tormenting people the way I used to, on the grounds that their station was different from mine or that they happened to get on my nerves. Persecuting people who had done nothing wrong, for reasons that were purely my own, was not a habit that sat well with me.
In that case, I could simply keep my head down.
My reputation was already in the gutter. Even if I did not take the lead in making anyone's life miserable, that assessment was not going to reverse itself. They would figure the suspension had taken me down a peg, and that would be the end of it.
I just had to avoid the truly vile behavior of before, and play the part of an unpleasant noble of the sort you could find anywhere. A moderately arrogant attitude. A light snub whenever a commoner student tried to strike up a conversation...
I could do that. Honestly, it was not even difficult.
That much would be enough to keep me clear of the principal cast and see me through to graduation as Extra Number Forty-One, more or less.
The one melancholy catch was that, if I went that route, making a genuine friend among the commoner students would be nearly impossible — never mind the nobles. Half the Academy's student body was common-born, and my own way of thinking was closer to an ordinary person's than to a blue blood's. I had rather hoped I might find someone to get along with on that side of things.
It left a faintly bitter taste. But it was all right. I had priorities, and this much I would have to accept. If the loneliness ever became too much, I could always revisit the question then.
The silver lining, if there was one, was that so long as I did not go around committing the same open stupidities as before, Academy life would be manageable enough.
Edwin — I — had caused well over a dozen incidents. I was not about to claim any of it had been justified. But I had never crossed into the worst kind of human garbage: sexual crimes, murder, demon worship, that sort of thing.
What I had done had, by the Academy's regulations, clearly crossed a line, and I had been punished for it. That much was fact. But this was still an age in which barbarism lingered in every corner, and the proportion of people who treated violence itself as a grave matter — regardless of station — was not particularly high. To those people, the seriousness of what I had done might register as far milder than I myself understood it to be.
Which meant that the record I currently carried was something I could cover, one way or another.
Was I supposed to call that luck? I had been trash, sure — but at least I had not been hazardous waste.
I would do this properly. Stay out of strange entanglements, endure a few years, and a happy life in the territory would be waiting on the other side of graduation. I would deal only with the things that looked likely to land on me directly, and leave the rest to the protagonist and his party.
Having settled on that last conclusion, I drew two slow breaths and stepped toward the gate.
The first place I visited after my return was the residential quarter inside Academy territory, where private mansions stood clustered together.
Incoming students were assigned to one of six classes, A through F, according to their entrance scores. The names were unofficial, but A through C were generally called the upper classes, and D through F the lower.
Before the disciplinary action, I had been in the upper ranks — Class B — and had been given a rather decent single room in the dormitories. Now that I had been dropped to Class D, the housing the Academy provided would be two grades lower to match, and of course it would not be a single. Several people would be expected to share.
This was still the Academy, so the facilities would hardly be unusable. But if I had an alternative, there was no reason to live there.
Places like this residential quarter existed precisely for young masters of good houses who found the prospect of communal living with commoners utterly intolerable — that was the surface story, at any rate — and as a result, the real-estate trade inside Academy territory never wanted for demand. A two-rank demotion like mine was uncommon, but a one-rank drop was handed down often enough, and it was not as though noble-born students assigned to the lower classes from the start were unheard of either.
The only real drawback was the price. Then again, the one thing the people who needed such places all had in common was that money was the one resource they were not short of.
"I did look into a secluded residence, as you requested, but the facilities in a place like that tend to be... well, limited, you understand... I do believe this is the finest property available within the conditions you set... Might I ask how it strikes you...?"
I was touring the mansion under the agent's guidance. I had asked in advance for something out of the way, for the sake of freedom of movement, and he seemed convinced I would find the amenities wanting. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he poured every ounce of effort into dressing the place up.
His worries were wasted. I liked it a great deal.
"This will do. It matches the conditions I had in mind perfectly. We'll take this one."
"I— I beg your pardon? Ah...! Yes! A truly excellent choice, if I may say so! Now, if you'll come this way..."
I did not hesitate. I stamped the contract with a cheerful thud.
The agent could not keep the smile off his face. He looked like a man who had just palmed a lemon of a property off on a young master who did not know how the world worked.
The house was a little run-down, as he had said — but that was no great problem for me. It stood at exactly the distance from its neighbors that I had wanted, a detached residence, and the lack of ornament inside, the modest simplicity of it, actually suited my tastes. I had yet to adapt to the lavish aesthetic of the nobility, after all. And it was small enough that I would not need to keep servants.
A light film of dust had settled through the rooms, but I figured I could have it cleaned well enough before the suspension lifted. That was three days away. Until then I could unpack at my leisure and put the house in order.
It was the start of my first independent life — across this existence and the last.
"This is the St. Clifford Academy Office of Academic Affairs. May I ask the purpose of your visit?"
"I came to file a dormitory withdrawal before my suspension is lifted. I've secured a separate residence."
"A suspension...? Ah. Yes... You see the sign there? If you go through to Academic Support, the staff on that side will assist you."
The attendant who had greeted me with a smile crumpled at the word suspension. Superhuman professionalism restored her expression a moment later, but still.
Come to think of it, the girls I had asked for directions earlier had pointed me the right way and then kept glancing back, whispering among themselves.
I had lost the weight, but did I still give people a bad impression? This was exactly the image I had wanted for Edwin... and yet something about it sat strangely.
"I'm Edwin Reed of Class D. I'm here to apply for dormitory withdrawal."
"Yes, one moment. Class D... Edwin Reed... R... R... Ah, here we are. Come this way and just sign... here. Um. Is that really you? Dormitory paperwork has to be filed by the person in question."
The clerk working beneath the wooden placard that read Academic Support had found my name in the stack of documents, then started looking back and forth between the papers and my face with open suspicion. Why would she— ah. The portrait on file looked nothing like me, didn't it?
"It is me. I lost some weight during the suspension."
"What... you didn't get a two-year suspension. It was two months. How does a person change that much? Don't talk nonsense. Send the actual party. I'm already irritated enough working on a Sunday..."
"There's a priest stationed at the Academy, isn't there? Can't you just have them verify my identity?"
"Did you not hear me say it's Sunday? The priest is at church, not here! I have nothing more to say, so please leave. If you keep interfering, I will call the guards and have you removed."
My protests that I was, in fact, myself did nothing. The clerk drove me out without a second thought.
This was a problem I had not imagined. I had changed too much to prove who I was. And of all days, the priest had to be out?
It was not a catastrophe, but if I failed to bring the dormitory withdrawal papers to the agent from earlier, I could run into some legally irritating complications.
I was still standing in front of the office, turning it over, when someone approached from behind and spoke.
"My boy. Is something the matter?"
I turned toward the voice on reflex. The moment I saw the speaker's face, I knew who she was.
Golden-blonde hair like a field at harvest. Green eyes that called up, unbidden, the freshness of summer. Pointed, slender ears that at a glance resembled those of a demon, though they rose at a slightly sharper angle.
She wore the appearance of a young woman, but the seasoned cadence of her speech and the dignity in her bearing were more than enough to let anyone guess at the years she had lived.
The one calling to me now was the person who had guarded this Academy for more than a hundred years, and who had seen countless graduating classes out into the world... no. Not a person. An elf.
The Headmistress of St. Clifford Academy herself.