Three Weeks
Seven in the evening.
A night when even the moonlight could not reach the ground, swallowed whole behind a bank of storm clouds.
In the house where Laura's quirk was kept under watch, I sat alone in a chair and waited quietly for my guest.
Creak……
After a long while, the door opened by slow degrees. What came through it was an old man who looked every bit of seventy.
"You've arrived."
I gave him the courtesy of a formal address, if only for form's sake.
The Second Prince of the Kingdom of Robelium—disguised as that elderly man by borrowing a Mimic's power—set his cane aside, drew his stooped back up straight, and came to sit facing me.
"I hadn't thought you would read my intentions, even in outline. I was told you rarely show yourself, and yet your grasp of the situation is remarkable."
"Compared with the past, only one variable has changed. Is that not so?"
"When we met briefly at the cathedral, you did not deny what you expected…… May I take your waiting for me here as consent?"
"It goes without saying."
I smiled, faintly.
The princes of a kingdom toyed with upon the empire's chessboard did not stake their necks upon a throne. It was an empty shell, nothing more, and even the exalted station of prince was merely the qualification of a piece that might stand proxy for one empire or the other. So the kingdom's princes, each with a patron power braced at his back, put on a show of snarling at one another—and in the end moved only by whatever agreement best served the kingdom.
Until now that power had been the Ernes Empire alone, and the whole affair had amounted to nothing more than a decorous civil war among the imperial princes. This time the Elmark Empire had entered the field: the same Elmark that had abandoned two kingdoms and held fast to the Kingdom of Overn alone. The shape of things would change considerably.
And how could it not? If the ending was already fixed—if the one who took the throne was always the man chosen by Ernes's hand—then how far could anyone inflate the scraps to be won by sharpening the quarrel? Now, however, there was a rival who could not be mistaken.
Yet Elmark's removal of the trouble along its southeastern border was still comparatively recent, while Ernes had been reaching into both kingdoms for a very long time. If Elmark was to be guided toward a choice it could support without unease, a pretext had to be laid before it that left no room for doubt. Robelium mattered most of all. At present it had only two princes who might inherit the throne—only two pieces—and so it was the crucial ground. That was why, of the two, I had approached Robelium's Second Prince, the one who enjoyed the First Imperial Prince's backing. Because the First Imperial Prince was supported by House Alfred.
If a prince who held such favor tried to slip free of Ernes's embrace, Elmark too would be able to extend its hand without fear. From the kingdom's side, stirring that competition meant that whoever ultimately took the throne, a better reward than before would follow. Profit, either way. To manage it, however, they needed a collaborator who would not bend before House Alfred's standing, nor before the imperial court's watchful eye.
And as that collaborator……
No one suits the part so well as Brutein's trueborn son.
Yes. Precisely because it was something the blood of Brutein could not do, nothing could be more suitable than this.
On that very point, the self of Perzen seated deep within me was already demanding that I break off this meeting at once. I forced it down and endured. I wanted to live.
"Then I shall trust you. On the seventh of May, in the imperial court of Ernes, I will become the most outrageous scoundrel under heaven—one who dares to slight Brutein's second son. It will be nothing but an act, so show mercy to the knight who steps forward claiming he will defend my paltry honor."
"That knight—"
I had been about to say that I would choose him myself.
"I have already chosen. Sir Ciel Midford…… You would not know him. He comes of fallen nobility; in truth he is a commoner with nothing but a surname, and having no honor left to lose, he is the most suitable man."
"……"
"More than that, I find it rather frightening how smoothly this has gone. I trusted it was not impossible to draw you in, seeing that the First Imperial Prince has House Alfred at his back, but to think you would come to me with the offer first…… Was it not Brutein's first principle never to do anything harmful to the imperial house?"
Perhaps he was unsettled, now that a persimmon he had only meant to poke had rolled all the way to his feet. The Second Prince cleared his throat for no particular reason.
"I am of Brutein's direct blood, yes. My surname at present, however, is Luerg. I hope that will serve as answer enough."
"Is that so……"
"It is."
The Second Prince had asked me to stay my hand, but I had no intention of doing so. A thing may be called a play, and still an accident happens now and then. Kill Ciel Midford, and in the same stroke drag down House Alfred's influence and keep House Claudia in check—three gains for a single move. A chance that comes once in a thousand years. I could not let it slip.
One of Robelium's pieces passing over to the Elmark Empire would draw a little of the imperial court's eye, but the pretext would be supplied by the Second Prince himself in any case…… The real problem lay elsewhere. Even if I attended the banquet under the name Luerg, how was I to face, afterward, the elder brother who would be clutching the back of his head over it?
That, in any case, is a matter for later.
Judging the secret meeting sufficient as it stood, I rose from the chair. The Second Prince rose with me.
"No one will believe that blood of Brutein means to attend the banquet. The look on their faces that night should be worth seeing."
He took up his cane and bent his back into a stoop once more.
"Your Highness."
"Speak."
"Take the cane in your left hand, and walk three steps."
"……?"
"Surely you can grant a request as simple as this."
"That much, yes, but…… is there some particular meaning to it?"
Puzzled though he was, the Second Prince took the cane in his left hand and walked three steps—the same three he had taken with it in his right when he entered the room.
I had been debating from the start whether to point it out, and had been choking down the seizure of my compulsion rather than spoil the mood for nothing. Now I offered him a smile that rose from the heart, bade him farewell, and stepped outside.
"……"
The rain was still falling.
Knock, knock.
……?
Eight at night.
At the knock sounding from outside, Laura felt a stir of doubt and, with a careful heart, stroked her altar, opened the subspace, released her mana, and enslaved a corpse. There had been an attack, after all. She could not help being wary of a guest who came calling at so late an hour. And with the rain pattering down outside, the mood had turned bleak enough that Laura……
"……Laura!"
She jumped.
"……How long do you mean to keep your mother waiting out here!"
"R-r-right now! I-I'll open it……!"
Laura was thrown into confusion. Why, at this hour, would her mother—who ought to have been in Rosenberg—come to the dormitory of the Imperial Academy?
Now that she thought of it, she had heard that the wedding of House Claudia and House Alfred was held today. Had her mother received an invitation and attended?
If she meant to come, she might at least have sent a letter ahead……
Click!
"P-please…… come in……"
"A man enters your life, and you can't even look pleased to see your mother's face after so long. I have a great deal to say, so let us talk inside."
"That's……"
She had altered the letter so that it might be misunderstood, but only far enough to make it seem she harbored an ordinary affection. Hearing her mother blurt out that she had a man, Laura could not shake the sense that the woman had taken it a little too far.
"Sit down."
"……"
"Put the corpse back in its coffin, and store it in the subspace again."
"Yes……"
Meekly, Laura did as her mother said. Her father had always been too gentle, and her mother was closer to a woman of iron, so Laura found her several times harder to face than her father.
"Laura. What is it you mean to do?"
"Pardon?"
"Count Luerg."
"……"
"If he went so far as to hand over a blessed instrument free of charge, he must be considerably taken with you……"
"Th-that! I-it's my…… o-one-sided…… c-crush!"
Because of what she had written, the piano she had forced Perzen to send to Rosenberg could be read in that light as well…… Laura only understood it now.
"I attended the wedding of House Claudia and House Alfred today, and I spoke with Count Luerg while I was there……"
"Yes……"
"He said that, instead of your coming down to Rosenberg, he has come to find you now and then, and that you have taken private lessons from him several times?"
"Ah……"
She had no choice but to remain bound where she was because of the Full-Moon Quirk, and Perzen had manufactured the excuse for it himself. Laura caught that at once and nodded.
Smack!
"Ow!"
Smack!
"Th-that hurts……!"
"Your mother's heart is fit to burst, and that hurts too!"
At the hand that struck her across the back without warning, Laura's face crumpled and she tried to flee, but her mother's arm was as firm as any iron woman's, and it would not let her go.
"You are a maiden who isn't even married. If you give your body already to a man who is married, do you mean not to think of what comes after?"
"Wh-what……?"
"I told myself it couldn't be, but perhaps he sent that piano not because he likes you, but out of nothing more than a sense of debt."
"N-no……"
"You were always so calm, so careful. How is it that in love you give everything away without a thought for what follows?"
Meetings for private lessons—not truly for the sake of learning at all. Did her mother believe they meant a secret tryst? If this was not a wild flight of fancy, then nothing was. Laura's face burned scarlet, and she raised her voice.
"I-I-I! I-I'm still…… a v-v-virgin!"
"And now, of all moments, you try to wriggle out of—"
"I-it's true…… I am! I-I've never…… j-joined bodies with the p-professor!"
Crying out like a dog and a pig. Having her fingers licked with devoted care. Changing her clothes before his eyes. Taking a smack across the backside and sniffling over it. Being tied in rope, having her mouth stopped with a ball gag…… There had been no shortage of impure things. But she had truly never lain with him, and so Laura insisted upon her innocence with everything she had.
"……"
At that, Veronica—Laura's mother—seeing her daughter deny it so desperately, began to wonder whether she herself had been mistaken, and let a little of her anger subside. No. She cooled completely.
If those words were true, and Laura had kept only a wholesome tie while harboring nothing more than a private affection…… then even that alone meant Perzen had fallen for her daughter deeply enough to furnish her domain, free of charge, with a piano in which a blessing dwelled.
"Oh my……"
Looking at it now, her worry had been for nothing. Her daughter, it seemed, had been handling her man with remarkable cunning all along.