Ciel Midford
"Have you said all you came to say?"
"……Yes."
She was curious what had brought Perzen here, but it was plain enough that asking would win her no answer. For House Alfred, the most dangerous possibility had always been a single one: that Brutein might step in under the borrowed name of Luerg. If that were the case, digging after him would turn up nothing—Brutein never left a trace—and there was nothing to do but watch the road Perzen walked.
"I am astonished you sought me out only to say that. Why on earth does my chastity interest you so?"
It was nearly enough to make one suspect a unicorn in some former life.
"Don't misunderstand. I have no interest. Even if it hadn't been me, anyone would have said something, seeing you carry on like that in a public place."
"……"
It was not, in honesty, a false word, and so Perzen met it with silence. When Uriel turned her head aside, he stepped out onto the terrace with Euphemia.
Yes—the very moment they came through the terrace doors.
"Ah……"
Someone standing before the door collided with Euphemia. Curtains were drawn across the glass, so that one could not see out from within nor in from without; Euphemia was partly to blame for failing to take care, and yet the other had been standing far too near.
The man she struck must have been holding a wineglass. At the jolt, the wine he had poured broke across his clothes in a fragrant rush—and that man was the second prince of the Kingdom of Robelium.
The First Prince enjoyed the backing of House Alfred, so it was not strange to find him in Uriel's vicinity. But Perzen knew of the secret meeting the two had shared, and the devices set deliberately in place were plain to his eye. The wineglass, above all. For all that it had spilled over the clothes, the glass was still half full of wine. He had filled it to the brim, all but on purpose. The moment Perzen and Euphemia stepped out, the man must already have been sketching this scene.
"I……"
Euphemia started to speak, then closed her mouth. She had meant to begin with an apology and an offer to have the clothes cleaned, but Perzen's word came back to her—bow your head to no one but His Majesty the Emperor—and she could not tell how she ought to open her mouth. She, too, had noticed how close he had been standing to the door, and the fear rose that to apologize first might be to bend. The conflict climbed within her.
Once, she would have offered the apology before anything else. But Euphemia, shaped to Perzen's hand, held his word as the first of all things. Then, the instant she saw Ciel standing at the man's side, she understood. The one before her was the lord Ciel served—the second prince of the Kingdom of Robelium.
And so she went forward with the collar still about her throat. Past the point where the leash drew taut, she broke his command. She meant to give a desperate apology and settle the matter, but……
Drip.
Drip……
In the silence that had stretched too long, the white clothes of Robelium's second prince, already stained, were steeped a vivid purple, and the wine the cloth could not drink fell to the floor. In that same moment his mouth opened before Euphemia's could.
"A chess piece of the empire…… cannot be granted even a decent apology, even at a time like this?"
What he had planned was something else. Yet watching Euphemia hold her silence so long, the second prince of Robelium judged that seizing on this, and refusing to let it go, would look far more natural. And Perzen drew Euphemia back as she moved to step forward, and—
"My wife was careless, it is true, but were you not standing far too close to the door, Your Highness? Each of us is at fault, so let us bring the matter to an end here. As for the soiled clothes, I shall place a separate commission with Azelia and see that you are compensated with something finer still."
He took the line willingly, and raised the curtain on the play.
Watching Perzen take up the line that had been left for him, the second prince of Robelium could not help but admire the polish of the slight. No opening was given, and even if one remained, the words were chosen so they might always be dismissed as a slip. It felt nothing but practiced.
"Chess piece or not, I do not carry an honor so cheap it can be bought and cast aside. And these clothes! They are plainly the work of Azelia. Why…… because a prince of a minor kingdom wears them, did they look to your eye like some worthless scrap of cloth?"
"I misspoke."
"You admit the mistake, and still you will not offer so much as a simple apology. Very well. I suppose I was wearing a pearl necklace about a pig's neck, and you mean to call that fault on both sides as well?"
"……"
"Is it so difficult to own a wrong and give an apology? Does that feel, to you, like bending? Is the honor of the Ernes Empire some superior thing that sets the measure of good and evil as it pleases, and judges the matter at its own discretion? A magnificent judge has descended among us."
As the uproar grew, the other nobles in the banquet hall—those who had not known what was happening—began, one after another, to turn their heads. Uriel, who had been taking the air a moment beyond the terrace, opened the door and stepped inside at the sound of voices rising past all measure.
"Do you not consider that you are crossing a line?"
"A line…… Yes. I did think the generalization went too far. But are you not of the blood of Brutein, the very pride of the Ernes Empire? When the true heir of such a house comes forward like this, how am I to keep from generalizing?"
"……"
"I am a prince of a small kingdom, yet I know what honor is. Honor is this: not to bow one's head to an injustice another has committed, and to bow it to the injustice one has committed oneself. In my eyes, at least, the honor you carry is nothing but an arrogant lust for power."
Uriel did not know the whole of it, but listening to the second prince of Robelium, the color left her face. For a moment she wondered whether he was in his right mind; then, as she pieced together the way the moment was running, a faint picture drew itself in her thoughts. She was sharp enough. She grasped what the second prince was aiming at, pressing Perzen so.
There is no chance that man does not know what I know.
So it would be enough, if only Perzen did not answer him. Even if the prince tried to tear the tie loose by force, so long as their side still held a pretext by which to keep him, the Elmark Empire would not reach out so easily.
But……
"To think that one such as you is of Brutein's blood—the Ritualist of the empire has been defiled. A poisoned grail, nothing less. If my words stir anger in you and not shame, that itself will be proof enough."
The second prince of Robelium drove the words in like a wedge. At that last line, Uriel could no longer keep her place. She went to Perzen's side and caught his left arm.
Brutein was loyal to the imperial house, no matter what came. If that fidelity, which history itself had proven, still ran in Perzen's body…… might he not endure? If Brutein was intervening in the struggle for the throne under the name of Luerg, a scar would be cut into Brutein's history. If Perzen was moving of his own will alone, he would earn the imperial house's hatred.
In truth, setting every such reckoning aside, Uriel was afraid. If the chess piece of the First Prince—the piece House Alfred upheld—passed like this into the Elmark Empire, then she, who had been standing there and still failed to stop the thing before it began…… how would the elders of House Alfred punish her? Had her elder brother, who had inherited the headship, been in this place, it might have been otherwise. He was not. And so Uriel clutched Perzen's left arm in desperation.
Euphemia, beside her, did the same. Pale-faced, she seized his right arm. The matter had begun with her, and a violent dizziness had taken hold.
But Perzen gently shook their hands away. He drew the white glove from his left hand, and—
Smack!
He flung it, as one strikes, across the second prince's left cheek.
Nor did it end there. He drew the white glove from his right hand as well, and—
Smack!
He flung it, as one strikes, across the second prince's right cheek.
A soft drop.
Looking then upon the gloves that fell strengthless to the floor, and upon the second prince's cheeks flushed red, Perzen spoke.
"Inas den Preussen Robelium."
"……"
"Answer for the words you have cast."
The second prince, Inas, laughed inwardly. After this, if his elder brother—who would remain a chess piece of the Ernes Empire all the same—ascended the throne, then he himself would die without a sound or a rumor. That was all right. By raising the stakes with this, he could bring even a little more prosperity to the Kingdom of Robelium.
In truth, he was not without fear. Fear that this thrashing might prove to mean nothing at all. Yet Inas believed—in the blood that had been spilled until now, and in the blood that would be spilled hereafter. That someday it would lift the Kingdom of Robelium free of a vassal's lot. And that the weight of a crown steeped in that blood would become a true guidepost, so the descendants yet to come might never walk a road of arrogance.
Even if, in the history of a kingdom that would one day shine, he himself were recorded unchanging as its single stain—a wastrel—he could bear it.
But this much, remember!
"Of course. I shall……"
Inas den Preussen Robelium—!
"teach you what honor is."
That he had cast the dice of history!
"Hoh……"
From a distance, Gremory, standing with Princess Elizabeth, bent a deep interest upon so intriguing a turn of events. And upon the stage where her gaze rested, the player already cast—Inas den Preussen Robelium—withdrew. A new player, Ciel Midford, stepped up. The final act of the play was about to unfold.