Night Duty
"It is done."
"......"
At those words, First Imperial Princess Elizabeth opened the eyes she had kept shut.
"And yet it looks entirely unchanged..."
"It cannot be helped while the sun is up. During daylight, an appearance altered by borrowing the power of the Mimic shows its true face the moment it is caught in a mirror or a pane of glass."
"......"
Elizabeth turned a look of stubborn disbelief on Yufir, the black mage in imperial service, but in the end she let it pass. He had no reason to lie to her.
"If the Mimic were brought down by direct descent and made to use its power itself, that restriction would not apply. The duty shift is at night in any case, so..."
"You need not prattle on at such length."
"It was in no way done to spare the cost."
"Do you not know that the more excuses you tack on, the uglier you become..."
With a sigh, Elizabeth dismissed Yufir from the chancellor's office.
The face she had taken, borrowing the power of the anomaly that dwelt on the first floor of the Netherworld—the Mimic—was that of Professor Ilaina, the woman scheduled to stand night duty with Perzen this evening. Her house had long since thrown its support behind the Second Prince, and it had been judged a pro-imperial faction with no will to raise a banner of revolt while the imperial house pressed toward centralization. Reaching her, telling her that the princess herself would take the duty in her place tonight, and bringing her around had been no difficult matter. She had agreed, though her expression said she could not fathom why Elizabeth would do such a thing. Not to pry into that was both courtesy and proper conduct.
The sun is setting unusually early today...
Five in the afternoon. Beyond the window, even the red wash of sunset was beginning to be swallowed, little by little, by the dark. Wearing Ilaina's face, Elizabeth left the chancellor's office. In ten or twenty minutes the sun would be gone entirely. It would not matter.
More than that...
There would always be nobles who could not bear to see the imperial house grow too powerful under centralization. If they were not pressed down at the outset, their offices might in time become nothing but empty honors—tax rights seized in full, the governance of domains handed to officials dispatched from the center. Such a future, of course, lay a vast stretch of years away. The imperial house as it stood was not looking so far ahead either. Still, the Elmark Empire, after ages of strife, had at last cut away the chronic trouble in its southeast, a wish it might well have called long-cherished. Ernes, too, would have to change, and prepare.
The simplest way to check the imperial house of the present was to bring in a lion from elsewhere, the better to hold down the lion that had long lain coiled in place. In that regard, Elizabeth's inborn gift for glimpsing what another kept inside was, from the throne's point of view, a remarkably effective leash. She had put on the duty professor's face for the same reason. She was certain she would hear far cleaner, less guarded hearts that way than if she put her questions while wearing a princess's.
It is not that I doubt Brutein's loyalty, but...
History itself vanishes when no one is left to remember it. In a world so full of mortal things, could eternity even exist?
Lectures had ended. Watching the students move briskly through the grounds, Elizabeth stepped into the duty room of Dormitory A. The watch began at seven. With time still to spare, and thinking she might at least shut her eyes, she settled into the rocking chair, drew a nearby blanket over herself, and let it cover her.
Creak.
The slow rhythm, rocking forward and back, brought sleep with it.
The royal capital...
Around four in the afternoon a maid from the mansion had come in person to deliver Jeremiah's letter. I read it, and sank into a long thought.
A report had come in. Ciel Midford had been seen crossing the imperial border and entering the royal capital. The witness was master of a trading company run by Brutein. Shown a portrait of Ciel Midford, he had admitted he could not be certain, so the chance of a mistake was considerable. Even so, I judged the odds high. Objectively speaking, it would be no small feat for Ciel Midford to plant himself inside the Ernes Empire, gather strength, and only then make contact with House Alfred. The royal capital was another matter.
Three kingdoms lay between the Ernes Empire and the Elmark Empire, and those three were little more than a chessboard for the two empires—an indirect trial of strength, measured by which empire's favored princes took the greater number of thrones. From what I had heard, the kings of two kingdoms, set upon their thrones long ago with Ernes's backing, were gradually nearing the hour of their abdication. And now that Elmark had cleared away the trouble in its southeast, the contest would burn hotter than ever. It would also decide the imperial succession: which of the First Prince and the Second Prince would be named crown prince.
An age of chaos. The finest ground there is for a man who has nothing, and means to make something of it. In the language of a game, this was probably a main quest of sorts, the kind that hurries a protagonist along his growth.
Brutein kept an old tradition of loyalty to the emperor alone. The original Perzen, I was sure, would not have interfered in the slightest. The logic of it held. I had no intention of doing the same. My name was not Brutein. It was Luerg. As for a justification... I had plenty.
Time...
It was already drawing on toward five. Wondering what to do about supper, I bought a little bread and walked to the duty room of Dormitory A. It seemed easier to finish sorting the thought out there.
"......"
Someone had arrived before me. I didn't know her name. Likely the professor meant to stand the watch with me. She looked deeply asleep, and I saw no reason to wake her for nothing. I set the basket of bread down nearby and eased the door shut. Then I turned to the mirror fixed to its face, meaning to put my disheveled clothes in order and step aside—
"This is..."
The sleeping professor in the glass was not the woman I had just looked at. To the eye she had blue-black hair. In the mirror there spilled a wealth of long platinum-blonde hair: Her Highness, Princess Elizabeth.
I was a black mage, and I knew the anomalies of the Netherworld's first floor down to the last particular. It took me only a moment to understand that she had borrowed nothing but the Mimic's power, and laid another person's appearance over her own.
The problem was—
Why do a thing like this?
It wasn't that I had no guess. My name was Luerg now. She might have come to sound out whether I meant to step into the present turmoil, or to stay clear of it. But a fact that important was not something I would lay bare, imperial blood before me or not. Blessed by the god of wisdom, she ought to have had at least that much sense. Was she only thinking to prod me once?
I didn't know. Once she woke, like it or not, she would let out whatever she had come holding. Until then I decided to eat my bread in peace.
And so it became twenty-five past six. Dim night settled over the grounds. The glowstones kindled, bright, and poured their light down through the room. Princess Elizabeth, as the mirror held her, had shed the penalty that came of borrowing only the Mimic's power. The face she wore was now reflected in full.
"Mmm..."
Rustling, the First Imperial Princess stirred out of sleep.
"Ah..."
"Good to see you."
"......"
"Not quite awake yet?"
"Wh-when did you arrive, Professor Perzen...?"
"Around six, was it."
I matched her performance without a ripple, and offered the lie as if it were nothing.
"I see..."
A faint sigh of relief left her. Princess Elizabeth folded the blanket with care, set it aside, and looked at me, awkward.
"You've the look of someone with something to say."
"......"
"Say it. Fidgeting and watching my mood is more irritating still."
That, too, was an act on her part, at least in some measure, so I gave her an easy push onward. As if my gaze had overwhelmed her, she showed me a pretty hesitation, head lowered, fingers worrying at a blameless necklace.
"......"
The thing had a truly fucking awful design. My compulsion for symmetry was a severe case, I'll grant that, but everyone carries some compulsion or other. Jewels of every sort had been jammed together into something grotesque, like a right-handed painter taking up the brush in an awkward left hand and laying color down with it. If she was going to go this far, why steal only the face and leave the rest? Then again, I knew she was Her Highness Princess Elizabeth. Perhaps that was the only reason I could draw the line between them. All the better. Taking the chance to tear her sense of beauty apart and rebuild it would do no harm.
"...As Ilaina, eldest daughter of House Riviera, I dare to ask it of Count Luerg. Does Brutein mean, in the present crisis, to go on as it always has, and carry the past forward unchanged?"
"Did the current head of Riviera send you to sound my intentions?"
At Perzen's words, Elizabeth shook her head.
"I acted on my own."
"An ambitious woman. You hardly look capable enough to wear an ambition like that in the open."
"......"
"Brutein's history is not so thin that you may doubt it. I'll treat what you just said as unheard. See it for the presumptuous, careless remark it was."
"Is that so..."
She had expected a response of this kind. So Elizabeth quietly bent her ear. The sounds of the world were cut off at the root. Only her heartbeat began to sound, soft and alone, and then Perzen's inner mind came clear.
"That aside, Professor Ilaina."
"That necklace..."
"Genuinely revolting."
The three seconds in which she pierced his inner mind came to an end. Elizabeth drew her spirit back up to the surface from where it had sunk, as if it had been floating, and her face flushed a deep red. Both hands trembled.
A princess who had never once set a fashion, not even in high society. She might let nothing of it show, but that unlucky name was a scale she could not bear to have touched.
Perzen, for his part, found it strange that she offered no reaction at all, and rose. The hour was seven in the evening. Time to begin the watch.
Clack.
Perzen shut the door ahead of her and was gone. Left alone in the duty room, Elizabeth worried at her necklace and quietly opened her mouth.
"H-how rude..."
There was a peculiar lack of strength in the voice. In part it was because she had taken so bitter a scolding from Brutein's heir. The heart of it was that he had said those things even knowing she was a princess.
"It is pretty, is it not..."
How was it that not a single person could agree with her?
More than that—coming at six was a lie as well...
He had most likely stepped into the duty room just after she fell asleep. The sun would not yet have been fully down, and the Mimic's penalty would still have held. He did not seem a man with a loose tongue. Surely he would not go spreading word that the First Imperial Princess was walking about in other people's faces, prying into thoughts on the present situation...
He wouldn't.
If a rumor of that sort ever did spread, he could hardly fail to see that he himself might be named its source. Nor could he have any way of knowing about the gift that heard what lay inside a heart. He would think it no great matter. In truth, even after he had realized she was the princess, the only thing Perzen had arranged for his own satisfaction was to belittle her sense of beauty.
...A man shameless beyond all measure.
Sighing, Elizabeth went to the mirror by the door.
"......"
Then she quietly took the necklace off, and left the room.