The Lecture
An unexpected harvest. One I had never seen coming.
Before long the imperial house would hold a grand banquet. That banquet would be the signal flare announcing, in earnest, that the Ernes Empire meant to try its strength against the Elmark Empire over two kingdoms whose thrones were soon to change hands—and, at the same time, the opening ceremony of a war to usurp the imperial crown.
The invitation would come addressed to me in name, but not one of those in attendance would expect me to appear. In twenty-four years I had never once shown my face at such a gathering.
To walk in from the very start already holding Rosenberg in my hand... that alone is no small advantage.
It would not matter if Laura failed to persuade her father, the present head of Rosenberg. I would simply take that truth and apply pressure with it. Using Laura as a bridgehead was, in the most literal sense, the smallest concession. My life hung on this. If it did not unfold as it should, how could I extend her any further courtesy?
"Ah... Young master, welcome home."
As I entered the mansion, a maid who had been cleaning bowed low.
"Is Euphemia asleep?"
"Yes. My lady is sleeping."
"I see."
It was nearly seven. I bathed first, then went and opened the wardrobe. To call it a wardrobe was generous; where clothes for going out were concerned, it held nothing but Azalea's solid-colored suits, laid out by each of the three colors.
......
The sight alone caught the breath in my throat, and yet my mind settled as calm as a still lake.
A few days ago, because of Lizzie, I had disposed of one black suit. In truth I had thrown out a red and a blue as well. Four of each color had been prepared, and unless I restored the balance that way the discomfort was more than I could bear. And so, ironically, if Lizzie later made restitution for the suit, I would have to stop by Azalea once more and order one red and one blue—an inefficient waste—just to even the numbers again.
If I had not been born the heir of Brutein...
I would surely have been fated to sit on the pavement and beg. Perhaps even begging would have been beyond me. If the alms tossed my way came to three copper coins, I would only have taken offense. I let out a hollow laugh at a fancy even I found absurd, changed my clothes, and, finding a little time still left on the clock, made my way toward the bedroom.
Did she fall asleep late last night...
It was drawing on eight, and still she showed no thought of rising. I sat at the pillow of the sleeping Euphemia and brushed back her soft hair. Curled like an infant in a shrimp's sleep, she was in the perfect shape for me to press myself against her back and knead her breasts.
"...Ciel."
"......"
Just as I was about to lean over her, Euphemia's small voice muttered in her sleep, and I frowned. Ciel. How could I fail to know that name? Was she, even now in the dream, seeking out some little refuge of her own and tasting a modest happiness there? The thought fouled my mood so sharply that I felt along her neck and, by reflex, murmured a single line.
"...You'll have to be punished, Euphemia."
It was nothing more than a near-instinctive word, a kind of recoil.
"Nn..."
As if a nightmare had suddenly taken her, Euphemia slowly knit her brow, then stretched her body straight and gathered both hands meekly over her chest.
"Ha..."
At the sight a pleased laugh broke from me of its own accord. A freshness that dissolved the displeasure all at once. Already, in Euphemia's unconscious, the trigger I had trained into her was clearly engraved.
Following the soft hush of her breath, I laid my hand on the belly that rose and fell, and pressed down with a little force.
"Hk... nn..."
Her fine lashes trembled.
"Hik..."
When I crooked my index finger and pressed lightly at her navel, she let out a thin, startled moan. Truly, a lovely instrument, played to the measure of my hand. I wanted to toy with her a little longer, but there was no time left.
"I'll be back."
I kissed the straight bridge of her nose, rose, left the bedroom, and climbed into the carriage waiting in the garden.
Come to think of it...
Was today Euphemia's fertile window? I had been counting her cycle all along; I would not be wrong.
I was up all night against my will, and there's a lecture today, so my body will complain of a heavier fatigue than usual...
Even so, I could not afford to skip so much as a single day of this window. The moment Euphemia carried my child would be the moment she was wholly bound to me.
And yet...
When she later nursed the child, one breast would naturally be left free. Would I truly be able to endure that sight? Perhaps I would fail, and lie across Euphemia's lap beside the baby, suckling at her breast in one cozy little row.
......
No. A wet nurse who gave milk would settle the matter. I would not disgrace myself that way. I cast the useless fancy aside and leaned back at ease.
It was a morning of remarkably gentle sunlight.
It hurts...
Seated in her faculty office on the fourth floor of the Academy's main building, Uriel slowly tapped about her shoulders, then gently kneaded the undersides of her breasts. Her monthly bleeding had begun today, and the discomfort the change brought her was anything but welcome. The cramps themselves were almost nothing, but strangely, in this span her breasts swelled so sharply that her shoulders seized hard and she suffered a fierce ache through them. Worse, the clothes cut to her usual figure clung tight enough to choke her breath, and with every step they swayed so blatantly that she could not ignore how obvious it was. She wondered what it might have been like if they were only a little smaller, but that was a distant wish.
So many of them have come...
In the carriage park beyond the window, carriages stood packed thick enough to rival the entrance ceremony. The imperial magic corps in particular... she could see them filing into the lecture hall of Education Hall A in a body, together with the elder of House Rosewell, the court mages. Uriel breathed out her admiration, then frowned once she realized that the reason they had all gathered here was Perzen.
I still... can't believe it.
That ill-starred man, Perzen, had truly succeeded in registering with the Society a paper on the understanding of magic's compositional formulae. And of all things, the subject was figures. From a point, in which no concept exists at all, to a line possessed of length, then a plane possessed of area, a solid possessed of volume... Had that not been a concept discarded long ago, because that relation alone was never recognized as establishing a hierarchy?
Setting that aside, the choice to release the paper on that concept free of charge for a month was astonishing in itself. Even had he not made it free, people would have scrambled to pay just to read it. Then again, for a preposterous house that handled sixty percent of the ore circulating through the empire, such a sum would feel like pocket change. What was more, magical knowledge finished to this degree was ordinarily never shared in any form, but kept as a secret art transmitted only within the house. That he had not done so...
Was she supposed to call that generosity?
Brutein is Brutein, is that it...
His character might have its sharp edges, but the caliber of the man was real.
"Haa..."
Take Brutein away, and what is left of you? The words she had spoken a few days before rose unbidden in her mind, and Uriel let out a long sigh as she pulled her brimmed hat down deep. If those words were turned back upon her, it went without saying who would look the more wretched.
That arrogant pride of his, the kind that looks as if it will never break, hasn't changed a bit...
Wolves prowled around him, any one of them ready to tear out his throat at any moment, and even though their fangs might be honed all the sharper for it, he acted as if none of it were a threat at all... as if he were egging them on. Better to live as a tree that cannot endure and snaps than as a reed that bows before a gale... No. From the very start, that man meant to become a great old tree that even such a wind could not break.
"How impressive..."
In any case, it would soon be nine, so Uriel rose. She did not want to attend, but as a mage—and one walking the path of Elemental Magic—how could she abandon this knowledge?
"Ow..."
She stepped out of the faculty office, and at the breast-ache flaring through her again Uriel made a miserable face and rubbed her chest.
The vast lecture hall of Education Hall A.
Aside from Laura, absent with illness, the thirteen students of the Black Magic lecture sat rather stiffly in the front row... and yet, because of the personages seated behind them, it felt as if the breath had stopped in their throats. The whole of the imperial magic corps, the elder of House Rosewell who led them, and every mage of some renown from around the capital had gathered in this place, all gazing at the dais of a hall whose central figure had yet to arrive.
But Lizzie was not like the other students.
No...
The murmuring around her—people judging Perzen by an air of mystery and by nothing more than his being the heir of Brutein, and pouring out praise—was agony. If they meant to weigh him solely by the paper he had submitted to the Magic Society this time, she might have understood...
Just how much do you people think you know that man...
Nausea climbed her throat. This was not a seat taken to hear a lecture. She felt she had become a spectator in a theater, sitting there to watch his counterfeit worth, and she could not endure it. She enslaved the corpse that held her wheelchair and slipped out of the hall.
But a long corridor ran on from the hall's main doors. Even as she passed along it, she had to keep hearing other people's words of praise for Perzen, carried to her ears. Each time, she wanted to seize them one by one and shout her rebuttal at the top of her voice. That man was not what they thought. He had neither dignity nor nobility... he was nothing but a lump of filth with a mask forced over his face.
I can't...
But she could not. No—she could have, if she chose. She was only afraid of what would follow. To tarnish and damage a man's honor in a public place, and then fail to prove it, would become an excellent pretext—the finest of justifications—one that would leave her nothing to say even if she staked a war of territories on the matter.
Creak.
Creak.
If she did not spit this feeling out at once, she felt she would truly choke and die. Lizzie hurried up to the roof of Education Hall A and opened the iron door that barred the way.
"......"
A warm spring wind rushed in, brushing her hair back just a little and opening the breath that had felt ready to suffocate her. Everyone but her had seemed to be wearing masks and reveling at a ball... The quiet terrace she had reached as if in flight, unable to bear that artificial air, became a kind of refuge that healed Lizzie's heart like a still lake.
"Ha... mmph..."
She forced a breath out, looked up at a clear sky without a single cloud, and shouted as if she were thrashing for her life.
An innermost cry stained through with bitter grief, a grudge knotted fast. That her right foot—the one that man had trampled—ached faintly today of all days was surely no phantom pain.
Worked to a pitch, her slender shoulders heaved.
"Do you... even know, I said..."
But even pouring her feelings out like this was more than her weakened throat could bear, and it stung. Lizzie clutched the hem of her blameless skirt for no good reason and only panted, as if to force the anger down.
"Who...!"
In that instant, at the faint smell of tobacco stealing in through her nose, her heart lurched, and she turned her head.
No one. She was certain she saw no one... and yet, from the corner on the far side, a thin trail of white smoke bent on the wind and drifted toward her.
"Lizzie."
And with it, impossible to forget however she tried, a man's voice...
"Hih—hk!"
Lizzie hiccuped. At the sudden numb twitch low in her belly she clamped her legs tight on reflex and went ashen.
