14. Melting Point (18)
14. Melting Point (18)
Pelebin, a renowned author and former professor at the Imperial University, served as the Crown Prince's writing tutor and was his most trusted confidant. The reforms the Crown Prince had pushed forward when he assumed the regency at the start of the year, after the Emperor collapsed from illness, were almost entirely Pelebin's own design.
To that end, the reform proposals the Crown Prince had put forward struck precisely at the heart of the issues currently plaguing the empire. No one believed a mere fifteen-year-old could have come up with them on his own.
But Pelebin knew the rumors diverged wildly from the truth. While it was true that he had refined the details and fine-tuned the specifics, the core ideas had all originated from the Crown Prince himself.
During his years on the Imperial University faculty, Pelebin had guided many exceptional students, some of whom were hailed as geniuses in their day.
The Crown Prince's academic performance was respectable enough, but compared to the top-ranking talents at the university, it could hardly be called outstanding. In fact, given the advanced education he had received since childhood, one could even say it was merely average.
Yet the Crown Prince possessed a talent that exceeded all of that in one very specific domain. In games of strategy played face-to-face—Go, chess, poker—he boasted an ability virtually unmatched by any peer.
Like any cultured scholar of the era, Pelebin possessed a basic grounding in such board games. They had grown increasingly elaborate over time with the introduction of diverse pieces and rules, but the underlying strategic principles remained similar.
Even Go, considered the most demanding of them all, worked the same way. The board appeared to offer infinite possibilities, but in truth, the game was fought by wielding the "joseki"—established patterns accumulated over centuries—as cards in one's hand. The objective was to play the cards you held, steer the situation, and ultimately leave your opponent with not a single card left to play.
Victory ultimately went to whoever could hold more cards—to whoever could see more moves ahead. For that reason, the most crucial assets in competition were the mental fortitude to hold many cards at once without crumbling, and the physical stamina to maintain that state.
In that regard, the Crown Prince could not really be called an exceptional player. The number of cards he could hold at any one time was only marginally better than the best gambler in a country village.
But he had an innate gift for reading his opponent's breathing and pinpointing the means to disrupt it. He could discern every card his opponent held, then fill his own hand entirely with cards that would neutralize or counter them. Even he himself could not trace the logical thread of how he did it.
That same talent manifested in politics and administration. By reading and rereading foundational reports and established facts, he could arrive at a solution that struck the core of the problem. The recent reforms had unfolded in exactly that fashion: he would identify the critical issue, and his staff would then flesh out the details.
Though the policies he championed were largely rolled back once the Emperor regained consciousness, Pelebin felt not a shred of regret over his decision to serve this lord. That did not, however, mean he welcomed every decision the Crown Prince made with boundless enthusiasm.
As he stepped off the Nikolai's Majesty at Nizhny Borjomi Station, his expression was far from bright. None of the Crown Prince's advisers, nor the young nobles accompanying the journey, nor the knights of the Imperial Guard found this the least bit peculiar.
After all, for a dignified scholar of such grave bearing to ride in on a garishly painted train with a carved human face on the front panel and descend amid public stares—that was plainly mortifying.
Yet what now troubled Pelebin was not this ridiculous circus train. While exchanging greetings with the mayor of Borjomi, who had come to meet them at the station, and with the influential local nobles, he kept thinking about the note he had just read.
[Going off to enjoy myself for a few days.]
It had been left behind by the Crown Prince. Only moments ago, his lord had slipped away from the train with just two guards in tow.
Pelebin sighed inwardly.
The Crown Prince was no child. If he were truly the sort of person who would abandon his responsibilities on a whim simply because he wanted amusement, he would never have survived the imperial court for the past fifteen years.
Pelebin wanted to ask him why he had made this decision. But the Crown Prince himself might not be able to offer a clear answer. This choice might well have been yet another conclusion produced by his extraordinary talent.
Still, Pelebin could hazard a few guesses as to the reasons for his disappearance.
He gazed at the "Crown Prince" standing beside him.
Tall for fifteen, with broad shoulders, pleasingly developed muscles, and a neatly trimmed beard.
At present, he had not yet shed his boyish delicacy, but it was plain that adulthood would shape him into a dashing, handsome young man.
The youth now exchanging pleasantries with the nobles was, in fact, the fourth son of a provincial baron from the north. He had been chosen as a double because he bore a strong resemblance to the Crown Prince.
People naturally assumed that upon arriving in Borjomi, the Crown Prince would stay at the Imperial Retreat. So what would they think when a young man closely resembling the Crown Prince appeared in town with a retinue of nobles and a multitude of bodyguards? Using an obvious alias like "Koka," no less?
They would gossip that the Crown Prince was sneaking out for a bit of city amusement under the thinnest of disguises.
'His Highness is a man now, after all.'
'Drink, women, a little gambling.'
'Heh, young men will be young men.'
The Crown Prince's political enemies, too, would discern his intention to slip free of the Emperor's constraints through this journey and would be content with this "truth."
But that, too, was exactly the trap laid by the Crown Prince's faction.
Carousing around town with dissolute young nobles was solely the double's role. The real Crown Prince intended to sequester himself deep within the Imperial Retreat and share visions of the future with talented young people. That had been the original plan.
As late as the departure from the last station, the Crown Prince had agreed to the scheme Pelebin had devised. But barely an hour ago, after reviewing the regular intelligence reports sent by the Intelligence Department, he seemed to have detected a different "breath" in them.
What, exactly, had his lord perceived?
While Pelebin remained lost in troubled thought, the Crown Prince's party entered the square in front of the station. The crowd nodded at the handsome appearance of the Crown Prince, remarking that he was just as the rumors said.
"Koka" did indeed resemble the Crown Prince. More precisely, he resembled the Crown Prince's publicly known appearance—the one achieved when the real Crown Prince wore height-increasing boots, tucked muscle-padding under his clothes, and applied a false chin beard and other touches to his face.
The people of the Imperial Palace had never thought it strange that the Crown Prince, pretty as a child, was growing into a fine-featured young man. But what they saw was not his true appearance.
Even now, at fifteen, the Crown Prince remained strikingly pretty.
Seeing his bare, unadorned body was enough to make one wonder if he was truly male. Smooth, utterly hairless skin, narrow shoulders, a slender waist, full hips, long, straight legs, and a chest that rose just a little. If not for the absence of a certain protruding object between his legs, anyone would take him for a woman.
His tendency to apply such excessively masculine makeup and padding was solely to conceal that atypical body.
Pelebin thought that this was one reason the Crown Prince had abruptly changed his mind. Staying together at the hot springs would naturally increase the chances of encountering each other naked. Only about ten people in the world were aware of his body's nature.
Cases of men whose masculinity simply failed to manifest were hardly unheard of. The Crown Prince's case, admittedly, was on the more extreme end. Pelebin attributed the cause to the "Curse of the Blue Blood."
The Kievans, originally a nomadic people, interacted less with their neighbors than agricultural societies and frequently married among cousins.
Nomadic groups are often reputed to place such high importance on exogamy that they would offer a guest the service of their wife for the night; but that very reputation could conversely be interpreted as a sign that consanguineous marriages were so commonplace they welcomed any opportunity to mix bloodlines.
Such consanguineous marriages were especially severe among the bloodline-conscious nobility. It was said that as recently as a hundred years ago, nobles were so intermarried that not a single person among them was unrelated to another within a generation or two.
Thanks to that, the Kievan nobility often suffered from bizarre afflictions known as the Curse of the Blue Blood. Even now, long after the law had suppressed close-kin marriage, certain families still endured hereditary diseases.
It was highly likely that the Crown Prince's body was a consequence of that curse. He might never be able to function as a man in the fullest sense. But the imperial succession could easily be resolved through a collateral line.
The real issue was the Crown Prince's own state of mind. In his early teens, he might not be profoundly aware of it, but as the years passed, it could fester into a deep-seated complex. There had been an emperor in ages past, a virtuous ruler, who was accidentally struck by a poisoned enemy arrow and rendered impotent—he gradually succumbed to frustration and inferiority and degenerated into a tyrant.
Pelebin hoped his lord would wisely overcome his own complex.
***
The Kiev Dialect draws a subtle distinction between masculine and feminine speech. Even reading the same sentence, one can distinguish whether the speaker is male or female by the endings attached to nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
The reason Wonderstein had initially judged Nika to be a boy lay in his manner of speaking. He used a thoroughly masculine Kiev Dialect.
But the moment they shook hands, he realized the other party was not male. He had a habit, whenever meeting someone for the first time, of scanning their body with the Evolution Lab.
After the handshake, Wonderstein studied the other's attire more closely. Short gray hair under a beanie, a duffle coat—commonly called a toppoki coat. He had padded himself to appear as bulky as possible, but Wonderstein, now a seasoned observer of human bodies, easily detected the traces of a female form beneath.
Yet he did not find it strange that she dressed and carried herself like a boy. Women from military families or who grew up among many brothers often spoke in masculine dialect, and even when that was not the case, traveling in male disguise was not uncommon.
"What are you staring at?"
Nika gave him a displeased look. He had a fair idea why the man was scrutinizing him, but the matter was a sore spot for Nika personally. Had he been here in his capacity as Crown Prince, he would have immediately charged the man with lèse-majesté and forced him to his knees.
"Heh, I've been rude. My apologies."
Though he apologized, his eyes and mouth remained smiling, as if humoring a cute child's tantrum. Nika bristled and snapped.
"In case you misunderstand, let me be clear...I...am a man!"
"Ah, yes. If you say so."
Had Wonderstein seen him completely naked with his own eyes, he might have believed Nika really was a man. But the Evolution Lab's scanning function read only genetic and tissue-level biometric data. Thus, he could not help but see him as a woman.
The others, who had been busy exchanging their own greetings, finally sensed the odd tension swirling between the two.
The man and woman seated on either side of Nika exchanged wry smiles.
His Highness has already run into trouble the moment he stepped out.
Under normal circumstances, both would have stepped in to uphold their lord's dignity, but they held their peace now. Partly because the Crown Prince was on a Secret Royal Inspection, but also because they considered this complex about his appearance something he would have to overcome eventually.
There had once been an imperial line whose members had such severely protruding jaws they could not even chew food; this was nothing by comparison.
Wonderstein, seeing the fury in Nika's glare, realized his own smile might come across as mocking. To shift the mood, he drew a deck of cards from his coat—the same card game his troupe had been obsessed with lately.
"It'll take about two hours to reach the hotel. How about a card game?"
"...Fine."
Challenging him to a game of cards, was he?
The corner of Nika's mouth curled up.
He wanted to see that man's face, which seemed capable of nothing but smiling, finally twist into something else.