Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
"You don't... have to prepare for the lecture?"
It was no ordinary rain. As if the summer rains had come early, the downpour beyond the window showed no sign of breaking, and Euphemia asked the question carefully as she watched it.
Perzen gave no answer. He lifted his head, regarded her in silence, and brought the teacup to his lips.
Count Asran's son, Gerard, had been speaking with Uriel. Whatever, at that juncture, might have earned his thanks, there was no need to reason it out. In all likelihood Uriel's marriage to the man was already moving forward in secret. The old monster of House Alfred would be thinking to bind himself more tightly to Count Asran, who, by way of insurance, was bound in the end to produce an empress.
In truth, had Count Asran not been head of the North—no, more precisely, had it not been for the condition Jeremiah had laid before His Majesty the Emperor in order to shield him—it would have been a matter of no interest whatsoever.
"Euphemia."
After a long silence, Perzen broached it, almost idly.
Euphemia flinched and let her eyes fall.
"I... don't much care for an atmosphere like this..."
He always took on that weight, and whenever he finally spoke after breaking a silence, nothing good had ever followed. Euphemia worried her hands, her face bleak.
"It is only... a simple question."
"What sort of question..."
"Tell me. If I were to take a concubine... would you be sad?"
"...?"
Without meaning to, Euphemia made a sour face. But his expression was far too serious for her to take the words as a joke.
"I... thought from the start that you might take a concubine someday. You were the one who said the blood in my body was low. Asking me this now... I don't quite understand..."
"The one who succeeds Ruerug will be your son."
At that, Euphemia wrapped her arms around her belly.
"And if this child is a daughter, not a son...?"
Her face was absurdly easy to read. A faint smile touched Perzen's lips as he went to her, kissed her cheek, and, stroking the belly where the child was growing, whispered low.
"I will keep you with child until you bear a son. Do not worry. However many daughters come of it, I will not treat them coldly."
Because Lee Seojin's self had mingled with his own, the Perzen of the present held no particular preference as to a child's sex.
"If you cannot believe me, I will say it again. Euphemia... I will keep you pregnant until you bear a son. And that child will be Ruerug's one and only heir."
It was a thing she could neither quite like nor quite dislike. Euphemia looked at him, awkward.
"You know..."
"Yes."
"Why did you take me...?"
Shut away all this while, Euphemia had begun to want, little by little, to understand the cage that had become her refuge, and Perzen, the master of it.
"..."
"You don't need a count's title that exists only as a pretext..."
"Euphemia."
"Mm..."
"As for that question, I will tell you once you have given birth safely."
She had expected him to say she had no need to know. This was not that.
"The concubine... is it because of what your older brother proposed?"
"Yes."
"But whether Ruerug can become head of the North..."
"It is possible. What worries you is whether, even if the headship is seized, it can be kept through the generations."
Ruerug was, at its foundation, the worst of domains, one that could not sustain itself.
But...
"When the First Imperial Prince becomes crown prince, I will set one condition before him. It accords with the North as it stands, so I do not expect any great resistance."
"..."
"If I hold this card and see it through, the headship should not collapse even after it passes to the next generation."
The North was taxed at a remarkably low rate compared with other territories. Because of that, more than a few domains there made a practice of acting as agents for other lords' ventures. Perzen meant to establish such a place in the North by lawful means, and to be granted full authority over it. With a link to Brutein already in hand, and this advantage besides, they would not easily walk the road to ruin.
"So... you need not worry over nothing."
In that low voice, as if settling her heart, he gently smoothed her bangs, laid her back upon the sofa, and drew her into his arms without a gap between them. He stroked the back of her head, and the affection written into the gesture was still awkward to her, still strange.
He had said he would tell her once the child was safely born. Even so, Euphemia badly wanted to know what moved this affection.
Love?
She could not tell. Even those who believed a twisted thing to be love would whisper that they liked you, that they loved you. Perzen had never once said any such thing to her.
Shaaaa...
Still the rain poured down, and threaded through it was the sound of their breathing.
"..."
"..."
The silence hanging between them was no longer uncomfortable. Euphemia shifted and pressed her face a little deeper into the firm plane of Perzen's chest. The scent peculiar to him—costly perfume, and a faint cling of tobacco—seeped into her nose.
"Quit the tobacco..."
"..."
"It's bad for the baby..."
She lifted her head a little and nuzzled into the nape of his neck, her voice soft and coaxing, as if she were scolding him.
"All right..."
At that endearing bit of counsel, Perzen smiled faintly and swept her tousled hair back behind her ear.
"I will quit."
Brief as it was, a small happiness went quietly on.
After a long suspension of classes, the lectures began again, and this one opened with a detailed notice of the final examination to be held in June.
"The groups will be formed as two teams of five and one team of four. The roster will be announced at the beginning of June, and no objection to the arrangement will be entertained. Bear that in mind."
It was to be a cooperative examination. Announce the groups early, and they might have rehearsed their coordination—but that would have meant nothing. The test would be conducted entirely through Autonomous Control.
When a corpse was enslaved under Autonomous Control, the black mage's own will did not command it. Only within the bounds of the Implementation Rate did it move freely through the situation it was given, according to the habits and conduct of its life.
"Mana will be used in equal measure. Each of you may draw upon fifteen percent, and no more."
Once comprehension and familiarity—skill and bloodline—were set aside, a black mage of Kether rank who spent one percent of their mana to enslave an ordinary corpse saw an Implementation Rate of roughly two to three percent take hold. With that rate fixed somewhere between thirty and forty percent, the result would turn on how much Feedback one had drawn from the corpse assigned to them.
"..."
When he finished, silence lingered. And well it might. Unless one had already been named heir, or had held a betrothal with a house of high renown, a grade from the Imperial Academy was one of the few threads by which a life might be secured, and they had reason to be tense. Those results would accumulate over three years and be used, officially, when the imperial household and the knightly orders and mage corps of many houses sat them for interview. In a word, setting aside the name of one's house, it was the only means by which they might prove their worth objectively in the world outside.
"Then... I shall begin the lecture."
He went to the blackboard, rolled up his sleeves, and took the chalk in hand.
Eleven in the morning.
The lecture done, Perzen watched Lizzy—who had not met his eyes once through the whole of class—turn her wheelchair and hurry out. Then he walked, step by heavy step, toward Laura.
"Wh-why... are you doing that?"
Blinking those characteristic crimson eyes, Laura looked up at the man who had planted himself before her. It had been some time since she faced him, and still that oppressive air of his was not a thing one grew used to.
At last, once every student had gone and he had confirmed the two of them were alone, Perzen looked down at her and spoke.
"Laura."
"Yes..."
"On the fourth of June, I can look after you. Through the three months of vacation that follow, I cannot."
"..."
"I had meant to go up to Rosenberg and rest, but I will be going to Ruerug instead... What will you do?"
While she attended the Imperial Academy it hardly mattered. But if he was to keep her with him through the whole of the vacation, the pretext would have to come from Laura herself rather than from him, or there would be talk.
"Th-that... y-you don't... h-have to w-worry..."
"Laura."
"..."
"I am not worried. But if the lie you mean to tell, so that you may remain at my side for three months, is not one you can blur into the relation of professor and student and slip free of... then, to settle that nuisance, I would have no choice in the end but to bring up matters tied to the comital house of Genova. Would I not?"
Arms folded, Perzen leaned his back comfortably against the lectern.
"You are a clever child. You will have prepared. I never gave word that I meant to spend the vacation in Rosenberg. So... let me hear this plan of yours."
"Ah..."
At that, Laura hesitated. She wanted desperately to evade an answer, but Perzen, as if he would not allow it, came very close, caught her snow-white chin, and lifted it. Her hips settled, almost of themselves, at a slant upon the desk behind her. She slid her eyes aside and opened her mouth.
"Th-that I... l-l-long for... the p-professor..."
"..."
"I... t-told them... f-from that day..."
"That you long for me."
"Yes..."
"That... is a little troublesome."
"What?"
Puzzlement rose in Laura's face. If what bound them was a one-sided love, was there anything simpler to put in order? She might cross the line alone, blinded by jealousy, and afterward sweep it clean so that not the least harm fell upon Perzen.
"Will a day ever come when you can restrain that peculiarity without my help? And in that light, once this lie of yours overheats... even if we tidy it, by what means would we meet again?"
"..."
"Thinking on it, the blessed piano I sent to Rosenberg at the time might well have looked like a bridal gift."
"..."
"In your parents' minds, it may not be a one-sided love at all. They may believe I favor you as well... and you have kept that hidden all this time."
"Th-that's..."
Laura swallowed. It was as he said. She could not speak for her father, but her mother did seem to be thinking of it in just that way.
"A child with a more impudent corner than she appears."
"N-n-no..."
The hand that had held her chin slid down toward the nape of her neck and traced her collarbone, lightly. A body white as snow, never once touched by a man, flinched at that wholly unfamiliar sensation, trembled, and drew in upon itself.
"Laura."
"Yes..."
"I will play along for now, but take your time and turn it slowly another way. The aftermath may not be as smooth as you think. In the worst case, if you do not wish me to invoke the facts of the comital house of Genova in order to set it right... there would be no choice but for you to become my concubine. Would there?"
At those words, Laura's face soured.
Perzen was twenty-four. Even adding the life that had come before, he still looked, from where Laura stood, nothing but young, and the thought of becoming his wife stirred no small revulsion in her. He need not have said it. She had never meant any such thing.
Before any pretext for their meetings, she had intended to offer that feeling as the price of a bargain, so that her father might aid him smoothly whenever Perzen wished it. Of course, she understood well enough that the situation had since grown ambiguous. She had not known her mother would receive it so favorably.
"Yes... I-I'll... d-do that."
So she answered in a small voice, and put out both hands to push away the body pressed so close. That firm chest would not give. A sturdy build, ill-suited to a black mage.
"You said you understood, and yet this... are you trying to tempt me?"
"N-no..."
She was only trying to push him off, but from his side it must have looked like groping. At that warped reading of her intent, Laura flushed.
"Then let us meet there on the fourth of June."
"Yes..."
Perzen left the lecture hall in silence.
Left alone, Laura steadied her unsettled breath.
Summer was beginning in earnest. Until now the sun had been strong, and she had worn long sleeves to protect her skin; with the rain falling, she had, for the first time in a long while, put on a short dress.
She was hot.
Sure enough, when she gently drew the cloth aside, beads of sweat ran through the small cleft of her breasts and gathered like dew upon her pink nipples.
Sniff.
"..."
The air was thick with damp besides, and a faint smell of sweat seemed to rise from her, so that Laura wanted a shower at once. She had not been aware of it, but before Perzen her body must have been drawn quite tight. It felt a little pathetic. She let out a sigh.