The Night the Full Moon Sets
Rustle.
I sat up in the duty room as morning came in. Nothing had changed but the bed, and still I was thoroughly tired.
"……"
Her Imperial Highness, Princess Elizabeth, was nowhere to be seen. It was 7:40 in the morning. Duty ran only until seven, so there was nothing odd in her absence. Once the sun was up, the Mimic's power would suffer its penalty again; she would have no reason to remain beside me.
She might have tidied before she left.
A petty little revenge, perhaps. I smoothed the rumpled bedding and stepped out of the duty room.
"Good morning!"
"Yes."
I returned the greetings of students already up and wandering, left the dormitory, and made for the carriage park behind the main building.
"Not the mansion. The Magic Society first."
"Understood."
I looked at the diligent coachman, risen early and waiting, then climbed into the carriage and leaned comfortably back.
The Magic Society. It called itself a society, but strictly speaking it was a members-only library that charged for the privilege. Register a paper, and whenever someone else paid to read it, the profit came to the author. The knowledge in that paper, of course, could not be carried outside without the original author's consent.
Inviting a mage of renown for private instruction was expensive in part because this Society existed.
"Welcome!"
With the clerk's greeting came a smell faintly musty, and yet not unpleasant—the deep scent of old paper. A quiet, settled air, good for concentration.
"……"
"Heh heh…… Look at this rascal. See a man, and you greet him first. You don't stand there stiff-necked, staring him dead in the eye."
I had no leisure to enjoy the atmosphere. I lowered my head.
"I trust you have been well……"
"I might as well be receiving a kowtow. Wouldn't you say?"
Court mage of the imperial household, elder of Ducal House Rosewell, and an Apollyon-rank elemental magician—Theodor El Binheim Rosewell.
"Do stop being spiteful."
Dealings with Ducal House Rosewell had been frequent since childhood, and Perzen had made a habit of kicking the staff the old man leaned on and toppling him. The cause, of course, was a severe obsessive compulsion. If he took a step with the staff in his right hand, he had to take the same step with it in his left, and since no ordinary person would ever do such a thing, how was Perzen to endure it?
"Brat. If this looks like spite to you, you're a lost cause."
"……"
"The beard hairs you tore out back then never grew back."
"Then you might have rubbed them against people's faces a little less."
So it had been the beard, not the staff.
"Be grateful I was not an elemental magician. If I had been, I would not have pulled them. I would have burned them off."
A coarse beard sweeping down over a child's skin went past unpleasant and became nothing short of torture. For the first time, I found myself in thorough sympathy with Perzen's past.
"I was widowed before I ever saw a child of my own…… How was I to know children hated it?"
"Isn't that a rather cheap way to put it?"
The same as telling a friend his new clothes looked dreadful, only to hear that his mother had bought them.
"Keh keh. So what business brings a scamp like you to the Society?"
"……Registering a paper."
"You?"
"Is there any reason I shouldn't?"
"Well…… but your paper will be buried. As it happens, I stopped by to register one of my own."
"……"
"So which classification is it?"
Was it because he was of an age to die today or tomorrow? He had no shortage of questions. I walked past him to the clerk and held out the documents and copies I had finished putting in order late the night before.
Besides the capital, the Magic Society kept five further branches across the empire, and so a submission required four copies as well.
"The classification is the recognition of compositional formulae, and access will be free for one month. As for the release…… set it for next Thursday. Two in the afternoon ought to do."
"Ah—yes, sir!"
Stammering, the clerk reached out with a badly shaking hand and carefully received the documents.
Only what had been rigorously proven could be registered as a paper, and to verify its truth, lying was impossible within the Society. One swore a mana oath at the first registration. Even now, a mana like an iron chain tipped with sharp hooks clung near my heart. Break the oath, and those hooks would pierce it through. That was why the clerk before me swallowed dry and trembled.
A proven paper on the recognition of compositional formulae. What would such a thing be worth?
"What? The recognition of compositional formulae?"
"Attend the public lecture next Wednesday—the auditorium of the Academy's Education Hall A, beginning at nine in the morning—and you may hear the contents explained from the author's own mouth a day early."
"You mean……"
"Six days left, is it. In those six days, send letters to every mage who can reach the capital. You are the clerk. You know where they live better than I do."
I could not say how many would come. Still, a classification was a classification; a fair number might gather.
As a rule, mages enrolled in the Society almost never attended when someone announced a lecture to explain a registered paper in detail. Unlike within the Society, outside it a man could inflate matters as much as he pleased. The old trick of drumming up exaggerated notice so that people would pay to read one's paper, then walking off with a tidy profit, had once been exceedingly common. These days it was usual merely to circulate a letter with a brief note of the subject.
"Then I'll leave it to you."
"Y-yes……! Please do!"
"Hey. Hey……! Perzen, you little brat! Did you say the recognition of compositional formulae? What concept is it? Have some pity and tell your old grandfather! Don't stand there so damned stiff! You little wretch who can't even keep his cock straight!"
"You've grown rather indecent……"
"Hmph. I might drop dead any day. What do I care for propriety?"
"If I must reduce it to a word: figures."
"Figures? Wasn't that concept already a failure?"
It was. This world, too, had not been without those who studied geometric figures as a means of recognizing the compositional formulae of magic. Nothing was more intuitive, and geometry was unquestionably a branch of mathematics. But the notions a figure possessed—length, then area, then volume—were less a hierarchy than measures against which one might compare the capacity of mana. In a word, mere metrics.
"If I were lying, the mana fixed near my heart by the oath would already have conducted my life to the Netherworld."
"……"
"If you are curious, come to my lecture next Wednesday. When you have a question, you must raise your hand. Even an elder is no exception."
I gave the motionless Theodor a short bow, left the Society, and climbed back into the carriage.
"Back to the mansion."
"Yes, sir!"
I was tired. I wanted to go home and sleep at once.
I missed Euphemia's warmth.
Seated on a chair by the garden flowerbed, Euphemia opened the considerable stack of letters that had arrived at the mansion and read them through. Every one of them invited her to a tea party.
And what would I do if I went……
It would mean nothing. She was not Perzen's wife, only a broodmare. If she attended and disgrace did not come crawling over her, she could count herself fortunate. A woman herself, Euphemia knew very well how cruelly one could hide an unseen blade in language and drive it into another.
To the world, he was the second son of Brutein. There would be many women to envy and resent her for having such a man as her husband. Live with him a while, and one would see that there was nothing to envy……
"The master has returned."
"Ah……"
A carriage was passing in through the front gate. The maid beside her bowed her head to say so—and with the words came an unspoken pressure to rise at once and go receive him.
"Hmph……"
Euphemia held her place, spine straight.
Perzen stepped down soon after and came walking through the garden. Finding her there, he turned his steps.
"……"
To lower her head felt like losing, so she met his approach with a steady gaze; yet as the distance closed, she could not bear the weight of it, and her eyes fell.
"I'm back."
"Wel… come."
"Tea-party invitations? Why not go?"
"No. Nothing good would come of it."
"If it displeases you, overturn the lot of them. Barring a few, I can handle the aftermath well enough."
"No. Are you trying to make a mad bitch of me?"
"If you've nothing to do, get up. We're going to the bedroom."
"I don't… want to……"
"Better to walk on your own feet than be dragged."
"……"
The maids would never heed her wishes in any case, but she did not want to be shamed in front of them, so Euphemia rose quietly and came to stand at Perzen's side.
A yellow dress, suited to the gentle spring weather. Perhaps that was why Perzen thought, all at once, that Euphemia trotting along behind him looked like a chick.
"What……"
"Nothing. Let's go in."
"Ah—"
Once inside the bedroom, Perzen set a hand to the back of Euphemia, who stood there blankly, and laid her straight down upon the bed. Without even changing his clothes, he pressed himself in against her.
"You didn't sleep before you came?"
"Sleep at a place of work, and how restful can it be?"
His voice lay thick with fatigue. He buried his face against the nape he had bared, lifting the hair at the back of her head, and for a long while kept silent, only breathing evenly.
As always, a thick forearm circled her waist, and a large hand moved over her belly.
"……"
Last night this had been a space so wide it felt hollow. His return alone made it seem cramped. Was his presence that great, or was hers especially small?
Like a vast blaze swallowing a little candle, he drew her in as though to shut her inside his arms, and forced his warmth upon her.
It was warm.
Fiercely so……