Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
Coleone Wayne Bareta Alfred.
The old monster of House Alfred.
The head who held the dark underside of the Ernese Empire in his fist.
He confirmed that Uriel had entered, looked quietly out the window, drew the curtains, and sat. Then, without a word—though it was still morning—he poured wine into a fine silver cup and lifted it to his lips.
"……"
In a room where nothing existed but silence, beneath a thin drift of dark, Uriel felt the blood drying out of her whole body, like a flower wilting where it stood.
Time passed at its leisure. When the cup was empty at last, Coleone drew a cigarette from his breast and gave her a small tilt of the head.
She was not foolish enough to miss what the gesture meant. She set a little flame to the tip.
Smoke spread thick through the room.
"Uriel."
"Yes……"
"It has been so long since I saw you that you seem to have forgotten your place."
He took up the silver cup he had set down, turned it idly in his fingers, and—face blank—hurled it at her head.
Thud—!
She could not dare to block it. The best she could manage was to duck her head.
A trickle. Red blood ran from high on her forehead and slowly covered her right eye.
"I waited long enough while I emptied that cup. Is this a moment in which you may stand straight and look me in the face?"
"I am… sorry……"
She did not even think to wipe the blood away. With her right eye shut, she sank wretchedly to her knees.
"Now that the means for the imperial First Prince to interfere in the Kingdom of Robelium are gone, the best move left to us ends in a draw, and nothing more."
Of course, the Second Prince might still fail to set Robelium's First Prince on the throne. But Brutein would keep the word it had already given. It would back the Second Prince beneath the banner of Ruerug.
A house that handled sixty percent of the principal ores circulating through the empire was committing its wealth to the effort. Failure would be the richer joke.
"Uriel."
"Yes……"
"Is it not amusing? None of this would have come to pass had you simply not left your seat. Give them no opening for their little play, and the matter would have ended lukewarm and unfinished. But you could not manage even that simple thing, and in the end you brought this down on us."
He was not wrong.
There was, however, something she might have said. Even if it had not been Uriel herself, Prince Inas might have stepped out on the pretext of the privy and come face to face with Ferzen all the same.
"I am sorry……"
But she could not defend herself that way. It had been her own judgment to attend that banquet in place of the family head—her elder brother—who had been ill.
In this world there was no choice that did not carry its consequence. Uriel, born and raised in House Alfred, felt that truth in her bones.
"Do you feel wronged?"
"I……"
"Everyone in the world fights the situation given them with whatever weapon they hold. And you mean to offer the paltry excuse that the enemy's weapon was simply the stronger?"
"……"
"Had this been war, and not politics, only your severed head would have come home."
"Please… give me a chance to make it right……"
"Yes. A chance to make it right……"
Coleone rose with a thin, unpleasant smile. Leaning on his cane, he came forward one step at a time until he stood over the kneeling Uriel and looked down at her.
"If I give you the chance, how do you mean to recover it? It means nothing unless you turn Robelium's First Prince into a piece in the Second Prince's hand."
"……"
"Are you the sort of creature who could manage that?"
Thud!
Boom—!
The cane came down and drove Uriel's forehead, already streaked with running blood, into the floor. Tears slipped from her at the pain, but she clenched her teeth and swallowed the scream.
"Uriel."
"Yes……"
"The imperial house means to take the daughter of Count Asran—the present head of the North—as the next empress. And the son under him, who will soon turn twenty, is not yet married."
This had not been his intention. Coleone had been confident he could make the First Prince the crown prince. But that had gone awry, and so he needed insurance.
"You will marry his son. I will arrange the match."
"Ah……"
"Is this not the chance to recover that you wanted? And……"
The cane bore down harder.
"Have you forgotten that you were raised from the very start for precisely this use? Since that day eleven years ago, you have only been surplus for a while."
Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred.
Yes. Because she had been born already holding magic, Coleone had raised her with a certain doting care as a vessel of the highest grade, meant for the mixing of Brutein blood. He had fed her Fragrance Fruit from the time she was a child. That was how far it had gone.
Fragrance Fruit—a peculiar fruit of this world. There were many kinds. Eat one steadily for five years or more, and the eater's body-scent changed into the scent of that fruit. From that moment the scent became a faint, bewitching fragrance that quietly stirred the desire of whoever smelled it. Courtesans who had to be paid vast sums for a single night sometimes took Fragrance Fruit in place of coin.
Uriel hated that scent of hers and hid it every time beneath perfume, so most people had never noticed it at all.
"No answer. Uriel."
Breathing out smoke, Coleone extended a foot and lightly tipped up the chin of the woman bowed before him.
In House Alfred, every child but the heir lived as a tool of the house. And so, aside from assent—
"Yes…… I will… obey……"
—Uriel had no choice she could make.
"A moment ago you forgot your place, and now you show resistance in an answer that ought to need no hesitation. Did I leave you unattended too long? A useless self has grown in you. Your head has swollen past anything that suits you, and you make yourself a nuisance."
Tsk.
Clicking his tongue with a blank face, Coleone reversed his grip on the cane, hooked the crook around Uriel's neck, and hauled her roughly up.
"Kh—!"
"The arrangements will take quite some time. Until then I mean to wring out every drop of useless water that has soaked into you. Otherwise you will only be a burden upon Count Asran."
Thud.
"Cough……!"
He pulled the cane free of her throat, turned, sat once more, and went on.
"From this hour, I take everything back. Learn with your own body how much benefit the name Alfred—which you took for granted—has been giving you. In twenty-three years of life, there is nothing you built yourself. Uriel."
"……"
"The professorship at the Academy as well. Without the surname Alfred, would you ever have been chosen?"
Coleone smiled that thin smile.
At his dismissal she rose, unsteady on her feet. She bowed carefully from the waist and left the room.
Until he called her again, only the name Uriel would exist, and he had said he would take everything back. She could not remain in this mansion either. Dazed, forgetting even the wound still bleeding on her head, she came down to the first floor and reached for the door.
No. She could not open it.
A maid stood in her way. The woman said nothing at all. She simply held out the clothes she had been carrying in her arms.
"Ah…… right……"
Uriel let out a strengthless, bitter little laugh and looked down at herself. Of course, looking down did little good. Her breasts were so large they blocked the view, and she could see only a part of herself.
"Wait."
The Azalea dress she was wearing had also been bought with House Alfred's money. It was not hers. She stepped into an empty receiving room nearby and quietly began to undress.
When she stood fully naked, she gathered up the clothes the maid had given her.
"Not quite a beggar's rags……"
She did not know when she would be summoned again, but even through that span she would have to go to the Academy and lecture. These were the barest clothes that could still keep up appearances.
Changed and presentable, she came out of the receiving room. The maid did not so much as meet her eyes. She went in, collected Uriel's dress, and vanished somewhere.
"Ha……"
At least, Uriel thought, it was a small mercy that so much of the blood had been wiped away.
She opened the door, left the mansion, and set out for the Academy.
There was no lecture today. But she had nowhere to sleep, so she would have to pass the night in her office. And if she went to the Academy, a physician could treat the wound on her head for nothing.
The money in her hands now came to zero bern.
She did draw a salary as a professor, but it was paid once a year. The people who held professorships were not poor enough to need their coin by the month. Those paid monthly were the assistants who worked beneath them, and the other clerks.
I don't know……
Problem after problem rose in her mind, but she did not even want to think about them, so she simply walked. On foot, her body suffered twice what it did when she came by carriage. True summer was coming on, and the sunlight pouring down was viciously hot. Beads of sweat gathered in the valley of her breasts.
Yes. Because of these damned, enormous breasts, her shoulders ached with every step.
Her heels clicked over the stone. At last she reached the Academy's main gate. The clock read one in the afternoon. Students from Education Hall A, their lectures finished, were spilling out to eat.
Lizzy……
No. To ask that child for help was more than she could do. Uriel had her pride.
She found a physician, had the slightly torn wound on her head treated, and climbed to the fourth floor of the main building. She wanted to think of nothing now. She only wanted to close her eyes. She had not slept properly the night before to begin with.
Another click of her heel, and she stopped before the office that bore her nameplate.
She reached for the handle, then turned her head aside.
"……"
Why am I looking at this?
She clenched her teeth, meant to ignore it, and tried to open her own door.
But—
Click.
With the turn of a handle, Ferzen and Euphemia came out of Office 404 together. His left hand was wound about her waist, gentle and perfectly mannered, and the gaze he turned on her was soaked through with affection.
……
He has no lecture today either.
"Returning from a lecture, Professor Uriel?"
"……"
"Don't overexert yourself."
He offered the short greeting in a purely professional tone, and went on his way.
Uriel stood a long while without moving. At last she managed to open her own office, go inside, and lie down on the sofa.
"……Bastard."
The wound on her head. He must have seen it. He might at least have asked how she had been hurt. He must have known, too, that what he had done at the banquet had put her in trouble.
"……"
Yes. It had been strange to expect anything. Alfred and Brutein had always been like this. In truth, this was only what was natural.
And yet—
"……Son of a bitch."
Cursing Ferzen, Uriel closed her eyes.