Three Weeks
The next morning I changed my clothes and made ready to leave for the Academy.
There were no lectures that day, but I still had to hear what course they meant to take from here. There was time yet before I needed to go, so I set my attire in order and returned to the bedroom.
Euphemia, curled in on herself, looked up in puzzlement.
“You’re not… going to work?”
“There’s still time. What—hoping I’ll disappear quickly?”
“Th-that isn’t what I—! Never… n-no…”
I had answered in a flat voice, and she shook her head in a rush, denying it. She looked far more stripped of pride than usual. A pleasant sight.
The bed creaked as I climbed onto it, leaned back, and stretched both legs out at my ease.
“Come closer.”
“Mm…”
The Why? she used to throw back whenever she had the chance was gone. Meek as a puppy waiting on its master’s word, Euphemia crawled over and settled beside me. I opened my arms, and she came of her own accord, nestling lightly into them.
Breasts pressed soft against me. That particular scent of her body drifted up, faint. Warmth came through.
“My arm… it hurts…”
“This much is fine.”
I laid a hand at the small of her slender waist and, for a little while, quietly drank the moment in.
A calm spring breeze came through the open window. Warm sunlight lay soft across the bed. A laziness and a peace that made me not want to leave for work seeped in like rain soaking into cloth.
“Euphemia.”
Fifteen minutes had passed before I knew it. The hour I had to leave was close, so I called her name low.
“…Mm.”
She answered a little slowly and lifted the head she had been resting. She must have slipped into a shallow sleep; a hazy light lay in those beautiful golden eyes.
“Ah…”
A moment later she came back to herself at the feel of my leg sliding in beneath her skirt.
“Nnh… mm…”
Closing her legs would have been easier, but she did not. Foolishly, she lifted her waist little by little. Matching the height as it rose, I brought a bent knee to her groin and rubbed, slow and light.
“Anh… hah, mm…”
On all fours like a puppy, looking down at me where I lay, Euphemia flushed and let the heated sounds slip out, shy. Taking her body was good. Watching a face come undone like this was not bad either.
“Euphemia.”
“Hah, nnh… mm…”
“Lower your head a little.”
“Ah…”
She hesitated, briefly, then did as she was told and dipped her head, closing the distance to my face. Her hair tickled my cheek. And even while I toyed with her, she showed the commendable care of brushing that hair aside.
I wanted to praise her. Instead I kept a mischievous smile and urged her on.
“More.”
By now she seemed to have caught what I wanted. She squeezed both eyes shut and offered an awkward kiss of her own.
No—calling it a kiss was embarrassing. Their lips met for a moment, and parted. That was all.
Still, I thought it would do.
“Hah, anh—!”
I raised the other knee, toyed with her the rest of the way, and then got up to leave. In that brief span my once-neat clothes had taken clear creases, so I used Well-Groomed Appearance and smoothed them crisp again. I stepped to the door, took the handle, and turned it—
“H-have a good day…”
Euphemia, sprawled on the bed with her legs pressed together and panting, hurriedly pushed herself up and offered the farewell in a small voice.
It was a moment I could easily have let pass and pretended not to hear. How clumsy she was. How innocent.
“Yes.”
Doing something unasked was welcome enough. But if it came after the whip had already been swung, it only drove home for her how well that whip worked.
“I’ll be back.”
Even so, I did not dislike it.
A third of the A education hall and the main building had been buried, and the great number of hands sent to restore them had been at the work since morning.
“All professors, please proceed to the auditorium in the B education hall!”
So their voices would not be swallowed by the noise of construction, administrative assistants bellowed at the top of their lungs, placards in hand, relaying the notice to me and the other professors.
Will they suspend operations for the duration of the repairs…
They were pouring money and manpower into it. Full restoration would likely take something like two or three weeks. The imperial house would want the Academy running through that span, but wanting even that much struck me as unreasonable. Two or three weeks was an awkward length, neither short nor long, and students whose territories did not lie near the capital could not leave it anyway. The Academy’s essential purpose—holding the children of the noble houses as hostages—would continue through those weeks, even if not perfectly.
For those two or three weeks, do they carry the lost lecture days forward and shorten summer vacation? Or do they simply strike them…
They might raise some matter no one had foreseen, but in the ordinary way the imperial house had only those two choices. That was why I had told Euphemia my hours at the Academy might be adjusted.
On the way into the B education hall, at the entrance of the B dormitory beside it, dried blood that had never been properly cleaned still showed here and there. I had not been told the exact number of dead and wounded, but I did not expect the damage to be great. Commoners with a talent for Elemental Magic would not die against ordinary people. Only the black mages assigned those corpses would have died. The blood by the entrance was more likely the enemies’—those who had passed themselves off in Suspended Animation—than the students’.
“Ah, you’ve come. Professor Perzen.”
I entered the auditorium, took whatever seat was nearest, and the professor beside me offered a greeting. I did not know his name. I returned a perfunctory nod and closed my eyes. Ordinarily that ought to have been enough to keep a man from speaking.
“Who do you believe was behind it, Professor Perzen? I—”
Even the talk he offered had nothing in it worth hearing. Which was only natural. Had there been evidence clear enough to name a culprit, the imperial house would not be gathering professors in an Academy hall. It would be summoning the heads of the territories to a conference.
“Ah—! I also heard the way you subdued the Netherworld Anomaly was truly splendid!”
“I did what had to be done. It isn’t something to be praised for.”
“How modest. More than that… a means of disguising oneself as a corpse is rather unsettling, isn’t it?”
The remark drew my brow tight of its own accord. It brought back that block of an enemy, the one I had never been able to get through to.
Of course, a means of falling into Suspended Animation no longer held any value. Passing as a corpse only meant something if no one knew of it, and if the knowledge had not spread in the open.
“Ah! Welcome, Professor Uriel.”
“Good morning, Professor Melvin. And… Professor Perzen as well.”
“Yes. A fine morning, Professor Uriel.”
“Your arm… how is it?”
“It’s been a day. What are you expecting when you ask?”
“That’s fair. Here. Take this.”
To Isabel’s corpse, which I held under Enslavement, Uriel passed a letter. No—calling it a letter was too plain. The envelope was excessively ornate.
“…A wedding invitation.”
“Yes.”
The wedding of Claudia’s eldest son and Alfred’s eldest daughter would, whatever else, leave House Claudia obliged to watch House Alfred’s mood. Invitations to outside guests would be entirely Alfred’s affair. Otherwise this would never have come to me.
“I’m only passing it on because I was told to…”
What the clouded trailing words left out was all too obvious.
“I’ll think about it.”
“…Please do.”
I slipped the letter quietly inside my clothes. Onto the platform came Princess Elizabeth, platinum hair falling in a beautiful sweep. Whether the cutting remarks of that day had done any good, the accessory—original past the point of decency—was no longer anywhere on her.
“Regarding yesterday’s unfortunate incident…”
The formal dressing of courtesy dragged on, tedious.
“Accordingly, for the period in which the destroyed buildings are restored, the imperial house will suspend all Academy operations save the dormitories, and those days will not be carried forward.”
It did not stray far from what I had expected.
“I therefore ask each of you to adjust this year’s first-half lecture plans for that period, and to submit them once more.”
They could have pressed harder, had they wished. No clear evidence was the same as every possibility left open, and a resolved will could have aimed that arrow wherever the imperial house pleased. They might have closed the matter as the work of nobles who bore the throne a grudge, then, the moment anyone found fault with how the Academy was run, hunted them as witches and buried them.
Of course, as I had already judged, that would be greed. Still, if they meant to test strength that way, nothing stopped them.
They mean to bury it quietly… to what end.
Would it not have been enough, at the least, to announce that Elmark was the likely hand behind it?
“…Then I ask that you keep in mind what I have said today.”
Princess Elizabeth caught her skirt in both hands, lifted it slightly, finished a courteous bow, and descended the platform. Her presence was gone.
It goes exactly as I expected. Without a hitch. All too smoothly…
I left the auditorium with a strange unease clinging to me, and Uriel, who had attached herself to my side at some point, looked at me.
“Going straight back?”
“Well…”
“I’ll buy you a meal.”
“Don’t take on a useless debt to me. Don’t regret it later.”
“I wouldn’t regret something like this…”
“I have a wife. I have no intention of sitting down to a cozy meal with a woman I’m not married to. All the more if the occasion is private.”
“My, what a devoted husband. Do you live teasing that woman every day about how big her chest is, too? If you don’t, it seems a little unfair.”
“Big as they are, they’re only big by human measure.”
“…What is that supposed to mean.”
Uriel’s eyes went sharp, and she glared.
“You could stand in a pasture and I don’t think anyone would find it strange.”
“Y-you’ve actually lost your mind…!”
She flushed, seething, and clutched her chest in a temper. I had no mind to play along. I brushed her off and walked on, then paused to look at the A education hall and the main building, still under restoration.
“This is annoying. Watching yesterday, I was hoping the Netherworld Anomaly would at least thoroughly smash the Black Magic lecture room… and of course it didn’t touch that side. Unbelievable.”
“Even a Netherworld Anomaly steers clear of shit because it’s filthy. When a war starts, it’s always the strangely competent who die first, isn’t it. Ahead of the useless ones.”
The backs were familiar. Students from my lectures.
“Even if it were smashed, it would be restored exactly as it was.”
“Ah…”
“Ah—!”
The two of them spun around together, startled.
“Th-that’s…”
“Hello… Professor.”
“You know the assignment is due by the twelfth of April. It’s been announced that lectures will be suspended for the time being, but even if your territory is close, fail to finish this quickly and you won’t take a single step out of the dormitory anyway.”
“Y-yes… of course. We’re working hard!”
“M-me too.”
“Good. Then I shall read the assignments the two of you submit very, very carefully.”
They pulled miserable faces, bowed their heads, and scurried off.
I had not wanted to hear talk like that. And yet a pointless malice welled up all the same. For the next lecture, should I deliberately bind the children of the powerful houses together with those of houses that were not, and set them a group assignment?
No. That seemed too much of a bastard’s idea. I shook my head, boarded the carriage, and returned to the mansion.
“The family head has sent a letter.”
The moment I stepped inside, a maid respectfully held out the letter that had arrived from my elder brother.
“Yes. Finish what you were doing.”
The timing was a little too neat. I went out to the flower garden, sat on a bench, and had Isabel, still under Enslavement, open the envelope.
The letter from Brutein concerned the seventh of May. It held word that a banquet would be held at the imperial palace. Perhaps he trusted I would not attend in any case; nothing more detailed was written, only lines packed close with inquiries after my health.
This…
A thought occurred to me. I opened the wedding invitation I had taken from Uriel and looked it over.
The twenty-seventh of April. So that’s it.
It was difficult to call a coincidence. The twenty-seventh of April was very likely a date chosen with an eye to those who would attend the banquet on the seventh of May. And if Alfred was going so far as to keep up the appearance of consideration…
Are the princes of both kingdoms coming as well.
I thought for a moment, then folded the invitation neatly.
I will make an uncomfortable guest, no doubt…
Not attending did not seem possible.