Perzen von Schweik Brutein
Those who carry mana walk one of three broad paths, and the most representative of them is that of the elemental magician—those who can turn their own mana into fire, water, or lightning, and who can interfere with the air and with the earth itself.
Of course, a person who holds every one of those possibilities all but does not exist. Just as one is either born bearing mana or born without it, the form into which mana transforms, and where it is able to reach, is an inborn gift.
Fwoosh!
A small flame caught along the webs the Erbet Arachne had strung in a line. It swayed there a moment, then, as if it had found the way it was meant to go, raced outward and remade the whole of the webbing into threads of fire.
Crackle!
Unable to bear the heat, the strands snapped midway. The young Erbet Arachne that had been charging dropped in a panic to the ground and hid themselves in the snow.
Whoosh!
But the onrushing fire swept over the surroundings like a tide and burned the young ones hidden in the snow to a wretched end. They vanished without even the chance to show the pain of a death that flared and crumbled—clean as a handful of powder dissolving into water, gone along the vapor that spread as they evaporated.
At that, the corner of my mouth curled of its own accord. The misaligned patterns of the young arachne, which had been circling endlessly through my mind, were gone at last, and the pleasure of it rose in me unbidden.
Crack!
I had scarcely begun to savor the aftertaste when something smashed through the famously unyielding trees of the North and revealed a body some three meters long. A full-grown mother—an adult Erbet Arachne—came at me in a savage charge.
Being a spider, an Erbet Arachne has three pairs of eyes, and those eyes hold a curious trait: their color shifts with the emotion the creature harbors. I had heard that if one could extract them when grief turned them blue, collectors would pay a considerable price.
"So even a monster that cannot speak possesses a mother's love."
Watching those blue eyes, rippling as if with a current, I straightened the sleeve that had crumpled in on itself.
Perzen suffered only from an extreme compulsion. His feelings had not withered and dried, and so he was a man well able to sympathize with the aching grief of a parent whose child had died...... And yet, the moment those misaligned patterns rose again in my mind, I found I could no longer understand why the mother Erbet Arachne was raging. From Perzen's point of view, at least, such things were not young that a living creature had borne. They were nothing but defective goods.
Fwoosh!
The flames wavered as if dancing in a troupe, wrapped the mother arachne, and spread wide to follow every movement she made to escape. That wavering was as beautiful as a flower that had passed through winter, met the spring, and opened from bud into bloom—so when her movements grew sluggish and the fire began to draw inward like petals falling, I even felt a strange regret.
Crackle!
The Erbet Arachne's body, burning meekly now without a shred of resistance, began to drop away in sticky spatters of embers. I took out a scrap of cloth, wiped my glasses, and tucked it back into my inner pocket.
Bayern von Griel Brutain, twenty-seventh head of House Brutein, was an elemental magician of the Euclid rank, Perzen's own equal. Enslaving him, and manifesting the abilities he had wielded in life, consumed a considerable amount of mana. Under the deep fatigue pressing down on my body, I offered the twenty-seventh head a bow of the head, moved him back into his coffin, quietly returned him to subspace, and climbed into the carriage.
"......"
Whether from the sudden stop, Euphemia had her head leaned to the right and was breathing in soft, even little breaths. I let out a thin sigh, shifted over to the left, and gave a single order.
"Depart."
Then I closed my eyes for a short while.
"Brutein... no. I suppose I must call you Count Luerg now. More to the point, are you leaving already? It was only four days ago that you stopped briefly in our domain."
"One cannot defy an imperial summons."
"That is true..."
Sleeping in the open was out of the question, so I had decided to call at Baron Roberon's domain, where we arrived toward evening, stay a single night, and then set out.
Trouble.
Whatever else Perzen might allow, he did not sit down to a meal with three or more people. I could starve and be done with it, but I could not force the same on Euphemia, and so I had not refused the dinner they pressed upon us. Honestly, the worry was already running ahead of me.
"Oh... here it is. Please, enjoy. The North may have little else to boast of, but our wine is a point of pride, so I had them bring out something I had been saving."
"Is that so."
Ignoring him outright would not do, so I answered in short, clipped phrases, and stole a glance at Euphemia seated beside me.
Knife in the left hand. Fork in the right...
Perzen is ambidextrous. More precisely, he had been right-handed, and became ambidextrous later.
Then I take the knife in my right hand and the fork in my left. The problem is...
The baron and the baroness, sitting across from us.
Fortunately, the baron—seated in the place symmetrical to mine—held his knife in his left hand and his fork in his right, the same as Euphemia. If the baroness then began the meal holding knife and fork as I meant to, I could fill myself with wine and food without incident and sink into a sound sleep.
"......"
But as if to make a mockery of that desperate plea, the baron's wife took the knife in her left hand and the fork in her right.
Ha...
Once it came to that, no matter what obscene contortions I forced on both hands, a proper symmetry was impossible.
My stomach turned. My breath came short. I bit down on my lip and tried to crush the fit—it was like the pangs of withdrawal—but the recoil brought a splitting ache behind my eyes, and I could not help but frown.
Wine...
Yes. If ever a moment called for wine, it was this.
I drew the cork, received into my glass the wine the attendants poured, quietly breathed in its biting scent, brought it to my lips, and let it run down my throat.
"Mm..."
The proof must have been considerable. My throat grew hot, as if it were on fire. I had not drunk many glasses, and yet a faint drunkenness was already coming on; thinking I would have to pace myself, I set the glass down and began to eat.
Of course, I had no room to taste any of it properly.
Though she was in the same room, the talk passed back and forth as if she were not a person there at all, and Euphemia kept her head deeply bowed and went on eating in silence. Even the servants standing nearby to attend them looked far more refined than she did now. By instinct she lost her nerve, and her shoulders drew in.
Ah...
The trace of a tear stitched shut with a needle. A color gone murky, no matter how cleanly it had been washed. The footprints of a life she had lived tenaciously, diligently, with everything she had—today they felt uncommonly shabby, and shameful. And in the moment she herself, and no one else, came to feel shame for the life she had lived, something hot surged up inside Euphemia.
Would it not be easier if she behaved frivolously, in a way that did not suit etiquette, and at least dragged down the honor of the man seated beside her? She was his wife, after all.
She turned her gaze aside with that thought, and her spirit broke in an instant. However frivolous, however vulgar, however wretchedly she sat beside him, she did not think she could soil that man's self-righteous dignity. More precisely, no third party would ever look at the two of them bound together and see a husband and wife. He had probably left her in this unsightly, shabby state for exactly that reason. As she was now, she was worth less than the tiny ring on his finger—less than an object meant to raise his own value.
The words Perzen had once let fall in that cold tone came back to her all at once, and Euphemia felt her self-respect sink even lower.
"Euphemia."
"...!"
At the low sound of her name, Euphemia flinched and lifted her head.
"Have you had enough to eat?"
The reek of brutally strong liquor came off him, thick. She wondered when he had drunk enough to get this drunk—but she was sitting right beside him, and she saw at once that his expression was deeply unpleasant. Euphemia steadied her trembling voice as best she could and answered.
"Ah, not yet..."
"Is that so."
If he had taken that foul mood in his arms and drowned it in drink, he would surely treat her as a drain for his feelings. Her stomach was already heavy, but the thought made her say she was not finished, and she forced herself to keep eating.
Of course, even after that, Perzen kept putting the same question to her. And each time, Euphemia gave the identical answer, wishing rather that he would drink himself all the way into sleep.
"Y-you seem to have drunk a great deal, Lord Luerg."
"Does it seem so..."
"I am grateful that you are enjoying the dinner I prepared, but... if your health should suffer, that would defeat the purpose. You must go down to the capital at the imperial summons, so I wonder if it might be best to leave off here and retire."
"Let us do so..."
Her face gone bloodless, Euphemia watched Perzen rise. Her mouth felt as if it were drying to the root.
"Euphemia... lend me your shoulder."
"......"
His body swayed as if he might collapse at any moment, but the words came out with exact diction. At them, Euphemia drew close and supported him.
"Hhk!"
The full weight of a solid grown man settled on her, and even Euphemia, who had borne hard labor without complaint, found it far too much.
"C-careful...!"
Crash—!
In the end, in the hall of the manor, just before the stairs that led up to the rooms, Perzen's staggering body struck a vase set out as an ornament and shattered it.
"Ah..."
Baron Roberon, who had been following anxiously behind, let out a groan with a face gone the color of ash. But he knew that Perzen was the second son of House Brutein, and so he could only weep on the inside.
"My apologies."
"I-it's quite all right. In any case, this vase is a pair with the one beside it... it has only lost a little of its value."
If they were a single work as a pair, then in truth the value was lost completely the moment one of them broke. Baron Roberon, forcing himself to deny that fact, called the attendants and ordered them to clear away the shards.
"A pair, is it..."
Hearing that, Perzen halted the step he had been about to take upward and slowly approached the vase set beside the first. A moment later, before Baron Roberon had any chance to stop him—
Crash—!
He lifted that vase and flung it cleanly down onto the floor.
"......"
"Baron."
"......"
"A pair, by rights—if they are to die, ought they not to die together, and if they are to live, to live together? Is that not the beautiful thing? In that sense, when one side is broken and the value is lost, is the value not restored to equality once both sides are broken?"
Was the drunkenness an act? His words were unslurred enough to make one think so. But if he were not drunk, how else was this to be explained? Baron Roberon had never earned a grudge deep enough to make Perzen dislike him, and that only made the fury boil hotter.
"Baron. I asked you a question."
"Y-you are... quite right."
"Yes... It is pleasant, sharing the same eye for beauty. Bill the cost to House Brutein later."
If the baron had any fault at all, it was only that his wife had failed to hold her knife and fork as Perzen wished, with a little misfortune laid over it.
"......"
Euphemia, who had watched the whole of it, saw him beckon her. She approached with a face gone paler still, bent her trembling body, and took his weight.
Creak!
Then they entered the room Baron Roberon had assigned them, and the two of them were left alone in a darkness like pitch. Euphemia felt, like an illusion, that his gaze was closing around her throat to strangle her dead.