Chapter 68 — Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred.
Calling to mind how unusually drained she had looked today, I climbed into the carriage with Euphemia.
So that old monster had come down to the capital...
The heaviness hanging over her was almost certainly a reprimand. Removing Ciel Midford had been the essential aim, but there had also been a secondary design—to check House Alfred, tangled as it was with House Claudia—so it was not wrong to call the thing a conflict between houses.
For an age like this one...
It was all too common, the sort of thing that happened constantly. And yet, with Lee Seojin's self mixed into mine, a thread of guilt did stir. At the banquet that day, Uriel had gone so far as to catch my arm and beg me not to.
Of course, for all of that...
A little pity. No further.
I had nothing in particular to say to her. The knife was already in, and an apology now would be nothing but hypocrisy.
In any case, the problem I ought to have been turning over was not Uriel. It was the North.
The situation itself... is not bad.
What Count Asran, the present head of the North, had been promised was an empress's seat, and for that reason it was difficult for him to throw his weight behind any single prince. Suppose he backed the first prince, and the second became crown prince? His daughter might still marry the man and become empress, just as promised, but he would have to mind his step, and his footing would narrow. So he held to neutrality and divided the factions beneath him, setting some to support the first prince and others the second.
The faction behind the second prince... I am confident I can gather them in without much difficulty. Honestly, if I could not, it would make no sense.
The North's longing was to advance into the center. Count Asran, who would send forth an empress, was not a bad connection to possess. Even so, it was hard to see him as more appetizing than Ruerug, with Brutein standing at its back.
Come June, once the final examinations were over, the Academy would enter a long vacation of three months. Then I would go up to the North and finish setting the board in order.
I will have to meet the second prince and consult with him about the Kingdom of Robelium.
The schedule felt tight enough to weary me already, but I had brought it on myself, and there was nothing for it but to bear the thing in silence. I had originally been prepared even to sever my ties with Brutein. If the price of not having to was only this, then I was getting off cheaply.
Have we arrived.
As the thought ran out, the carriage drew to a stop before the Magic Association. I had been raised to Apollyon, and so the matter had to be reported and a date fixed for verification.
"Euphe..."
Had she fallen asleep over that short ride? Small wonder, if she had. Her morning sickness had begun. Ordinarily it started around the fourth week, but the moment she understood she was carrying a child, her body seemed to have changed. When she retched the instant breakfast was finished, I had been so startled I wondered whether poison had been slipped into it. In the end all she did was tear up and protest that the smell was too foul, and the memory of that shock—ten years off my life—came welling back, fresh as ever.
"I will return shortly. If anyone tries to approach, send them off."
"Yes. Understood."
I gave the coachman that brief word and stepped down from the carriage.
The wheels gave a thin creak.
Stealing a little of the lunch hour, Lizzy stopped in at the Magic Association, looked over the list of papers, and carefully approached the librarian. Her eldest brother had married the eldest daughter of House Alfred, and by that good fortune she had been able to borrow a Euclid-rank elemental mage's corpse from among those the house held. Hoping to widen her learning even a little, she meant to choose a paper that pleased her from the side of elemental magic and read it.
Elemental magic in this world kept its focus on what was strictly real and natural, yet the higher one's rank climbed, the more that "realistic" character was gradually cast off. It could hardly be otherwise. Fire and water, ice and lightning—belonging not to interference but to conversion—could have their fundamental properties changed. How many magical techniques must have been raised upon that?
Another creak. She had worried long over her choice and come out into the lobby, only to find a guest already speaking with the librarian. Lizzy went quietly around behind him and took her place in line, but the back before her was, somehow, far too familiar.
No. Familiar did not cover it. A voice she could not forget, and the particular smell of his perfume, told her at once who he was.
"Ah..."
Sensing her gaze, he turned his head.
Ferzen von Schweig Ruerug.
She had heard he was wandering at the edge of death. Had he risen from the sickbed after all, without so much as a mark?
Just die.
Lizzy possessed none of that resolve—the notion that a hollow death could not be permitted, or that she could not accept his dying by any hand but her own. If only Ferzen vanished from the world, she had no interest whatsoever in the shape his death might take.
He drew his eyes off her and turned his head back toward the librarian.
"I have come to apply for a verification of promotion."
...A promotion. A verification?
"Pardon?"
The librarian seemed no less baffled, wearing the same look she did.
"I said I have come to apply for a verification of promotion."
"Th-the Count was Euclid, as I recall..."
"I was fortunate enough to break the wall. It is not a matter you can settle at your level, Kether, so I would ask you to arrange someone capable of the verification, and a date."
"Ah—yes, of course. Once the date is settled, I will send a letter to your residence. And... congratulations! You are now the fourth in the Empire to reach Apollyon. At the age of twenty-four, no less."
The librarian pointedly refrained from adding the word youngest, and that was because of the Empire's witch—Isabel Ron Pierre Genova. She had climbed to Apollyon at the age of sixteen. But the talent had been bought at the price of the Full-Moon Quirk, and so, set beside her, Ferzen could be called by far the superior. Perhaps, over whatever life remained to him, the mana that would grow steadily alongside the aging of his body might lead him even as far as Termiel.
"I have not even been verified yet. And... I omitted something. On days when I have lectures, I can spare time only in the evening. Pass along that I wish this taken into account."
"Yes. I will arrange the schedule as quickly as I am able."
...Why.
...Why.
Did that man never fall, not even once? Was karma not a thing certain to return?
"Come to read a paper, have you."
"......"
His business finished, Ferzen addressed her.
"House Rosewell. If the author is old Theore, read the cheapest of them. The expensive ones are papers meant to snare fools with overblown advertisement. They will not be worth their price."
"Don't meddle... where you aren't needed."
The wheelchair creaked. For all of Ferzen's advice, Lizzy rolled up to the librarian, paid, and bought the paper.
"Have you forgotten you were to compensate me for the Azalea formalwear? If you can ignore counsel and spend money so indiscriminately, I take it you have already gathered the whole of the sum."
"......"
Every word raked down her nerves.
"I haven't forgotten. I remember. So... don't worry. The formalwear of yours I soiled that day—I will make it good, without fail. If I can't manage the money, I'll sell my body to raise it."
"Your thinking runs to far too great an extreme."
Ah.
That single remark, as though he were delivering a lesson. It sickened her. And how could it not.
"And just who was it that drove me out to the edge of the cliff—!"
"......"
"You, of all people... what right—what right do you even have..."
"Er..."
At the sudden flood of feeling, the librarian stared at Ferzen in alarm—partly because such a thing ought not to happen inside the Association, and partly because instinct told him these were circumstances he was not meant to witness.
"...Give me the key to an empty room."
Ferzen let out a sigh and held his hand out to the librarian.
"Y-yes!"
The first floor offered nothing but open seats, but the second and third were furnished with rooms where one might quietly read a purchased paper and pursue one's research alone.
"G-give it back!"
Lizzy's gift in black magic was this: the moment a certain implementation rate was reached, no one else could wrest control from her. And so Ferzen held the maximum—an implementation rate of ninety percent—forcibly commandeered the corpse gripping the wheelchair, and took her up to the second floor with him.
Click.
He opened the door with the key he had been given, pushed Lizzy inside, and stood leaning against the wall with it only half shut. Before anything else, she had to be made to understand that this place itself lay short of the line that would wake her trauma.
"Lizzy."
Watching her settle little by little, Ferzen spoke.
"In the Ernes Empire there are four mages of Apollyon rank, myself among them. Of those, the only black mage is myself."
"......"
"What it means, to be able to open the third floor of the Netherworld—you know that better than I."
"......"
"With Brutein's wealth, and without undue strain, the arrangement might be attempted four or five times in a year. Let the attempts accumulate, and whether one's luck runs good or ill, a successful bargain ought to be struck with an anomaly that restores what the body has lost, or heals its injuries."
"And so..."
"This is the last negotiation I extend."
"A negotiation..."
"Yes."
At his words, Lizzy's violet eyes—shot through, as ever, with a swirl of bitter feeling—trembled.
"If you were truly sorry... isn't the proper order to do it first, and only then speak? Now, after all this time... even if a leg like this were mended, it isn't as if the life that broke would come back. You are the one who did it. Don't you dare try to talk to me while you stand where the stronger party stands. I hate that cruel selfishness of yours so much..."
"......"
"Do we look, to you, as if we're thrashing about to get this leg fixed?"
"I know the heart of it. And as you say, time that has passed is mounted forever in the shape of the past. By what means is one to compensate for that? You do not know either, and so you wish me to suffer the same pain. Is that not so."
"......"
"I am sorry, but I have no mind to oblige."
"Shameless man..."
"Lizzy. House Claudia cannot get its teeth into my throat, however it thrashes. While you linger at Kether, I have risen to Apollyon. And this time I have succeeded, as well, in cutting down House Alfred's footing."
The gap would only go on widening.
"It will not end in pain. Kindle as fierce a fire as you please; you will burn nothing, and only ash will remain. No... if only ash remained, you would be fortunate. The moment you furnish me a pretext, a despair worse than that mounted past will come down upon you."
As Lizzy said, Ferzen himself was the one who had done the harm. Even granting his compulsion as the cause, he was long past the hour when confessing it could buy forgiveness. To labor, even so, so that the end of revenge might be tied off in forgiveness—that might be called the morally proper course. But with no hidden tale in which House Claudia had been the first to do wrong, could such a thing ever come to pass?
If his luck were truly good, perhaps. But Ferzen was not soft enough to sit quietly and watch House Claudia whet its knife through all that time.
Yes. Let them call it selfish.
No. It was selfish.
"Exclude mercenaries from the figures, and a person's average span is eighty years."
"......"
"The twenty-fourth of May. One twenty-three in the afternoon."
He glanced at the clock and went on.
"If, from this hour, you mean to throw away all sixty-two years of it, then refuse. It will be a choice that cannot be undone, so choose with care—"
"I don't need it... Whether we can tear your throat out or not... no one knows that."
"I see..."
So that is your choice.
"You will regret it. You will not even be able to help. You may watch your brother shatter wretchedly, and only then come clinging to me, weeping and begging."
"That won't—!"
"Come to pass?"
Ferzen smiled. Cruelly, he curled the corner of his mouth. Then he reached out and shut the door.
Click. The latch turned as well.
In the sealed room, Lizzy was left alone with Ferzen.
"Hah—hk...!"
The moment she understood, her breath caught hard in her throat. Her airway felt drawn narrow, with no sense that it would open again, and her whole body shook, past all command.
Then he began, slowly, to come closer.
Creak. Creak. She hauled the wheelchair desperately backward, trying to flee, but a wall in the corner cut her off before she knew it.
And in front of her, he was standing.