Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
A carriage...?
It was early morning, and Uriel was readying herself for work when the sound of wheels drawing to a halt came in through the rain. She turned her head.
He shouldn't have a lecture today.
She set the rising puzzlement aside, sat on the edge of the bed, and put her hair and her clothes into as neat an order as she could manage.
Knock, knock.
At the sound she knew almost at once that it was not Perzen who had come for her. He had a key to this house. If not him, who would go out of their way to seek her at such an hour?
Gerard?
No. It would not be a time when he could leave the dormitory. In the end Uriel tilted her head, rose, and opened the door.
"Ah..."
An old man stood before her with an umbrella in hand and his weight braced on a cane. At the sight of her grandfather, Coleone, she stepped back.
"G-Grandfather..."
He folded the umbrella and came inside, and his presence drew her body in on itself at once.
"June ninth. You will return to the mansion."
"No answer, I see."
"I understand..."
She gave the docile reply and lowered her eyes.
"What are those marks on your neck?"
"Ah..."
She had not put on a scarf. When he pointed to the marks there, Uriel jerked a hand up to hide them.
"Put it down."
He spoke with a frown, and she lowered her hand in bleak resignation, baring without a shred of cover the naked traces Perzen had left on her.
"Who did this?"
"Gerard? Or else..."
"Perzen... He did."
"Ha... hahaha!"
At her answer Coleone laughed with something mad in it.
"Ngh—!"
He had found the marks running on past her neck, lower still. He thrust out his cane and dragged her collar down. There was, of course, no resistance she could offer. Coleone was the brand of obedience carved into her.
A button gave with a snap. Beyond the cloth forced open lay the suggestive hollow of her breasts, and blatant red marks scored along her collarbone. Coleone took them in, and the corner of his mouth curled.
"You've been doing very well, in the time I haven't seen you."
With that, he turned his back.
"Then I shall see you in four days. Granddaughter."
"Yes... Please go safely."
Uriel covered her chest with one hand and saw him off with brittle courtesy.
The door shut, flat and final. She sat on the bed and fumbled her buttons closed.
"June ninth..."
It was not a date that hinted at anything special. It was only that, when she counted forward from the days just after her monthly bleeding, her fertile time began on the ninth. Uriel lowered her hand and stroked her lower abdomen.
This...
Was it coincidence?
The frame creaked. Her heart would not settle, so she cut the thought short, rose from the bed, and left for the Academy. Once she had stepped into her office she sat, brewed black tea, and drank.
Then, abruptly, she drew the cup from her lips.
Black tea. This, too, was something Perzen preferred. She had let it slip her mind after that day, but lately there was more and more she was coming to notice. The hobbies she kept. The foods she found delicious. The books she liked. All of it led back to him.
Even if I had not been raised to fit the mold of you...
Would this feeling have been the same?
She could not even dislike him properly. Quietly feeling the shard of him that had been left behind as love and resentment both, Uriel closed her eyes.
That someday is taking its time...
He had said he would come. She had not seen so much as the tip of his nose.
Water a flower too much, and the roots rot. Water it too little, and it withers. There ought to be some reasonable middle ground.
Do you want me thirsty all the time?
Outside, the rain still fell in a dreary patter. The monsoon had dragged on and on, and still she was thirsty. Uriel found herself pathetic.
When the morning lecture ended, Uriel left the classroom and went on her way. Lizzie had asked her to lunch. She had refused.
"Ah..."
She entered the main building and climbed toward the faculty offices, and there was Gerard, standing quietly against the wall. He must have seen her as well. His head turned, slowly.
"I apologize."
"I am aware that what I said that day went too far."
"Go on."
"Even so, I cannot accept that the fault was entirely mine. I tried to keep to the line. I tried to be considerate of you, Professor. You soothed me—you told me there was no need to be impatient—and then... If you had at least been honest, and said that your heart was still given elsewhere, I would not have felt betrayed. Neither of us is so immature as to mistake the goodwill the other shows. Are we?"
At his frankness, Uriel swept her hair back behind her ear.
He was not exactly wrong. She had not meant to, and yet she had toyed with the boy's heart all the same. And in a marriage arranged for politics, how many men would come to her in earnest, with their own private feeling mixed in? Seen that way, even granting that his words at the time had gone too far, it was difficult to call the act itself wicked. She was the woman he had been meant to marry, and she was thick with another man's marks. If his eyes had not gone wild at the sight, that would have been the stranger thing.
"You will be unhappy. He has a wife, and he does not want House Aslan's footing in the North to grow any larger, so he means to take you as a concubine, Professor."
"I know."
Perzen had told her so himself. In private feeling toward her, at least, the Gerard standing before her was surely the greater of the two. But that private feeling had been raised, all the same, upon political ground gained through House Alfred. And what mattered most—
"Pouring your grievances out on me won't mean anything. Develop whatever private tie you like. The one who decides where it ends is Alfred. My grandfather."
"To draw the line so coldly, now of all times... Very well. I understand. But I would ask one thing. I was told the engagement ceremony fell through ten years ago. There was no real point of contact after that, either. So why do you like that man, Professor?"
His fist was clenched, and he was working hard to seem unshaken. Uriel gave him one bleak smile, and then she spoke.
"What do you mean...?"
"Pour molten iron into a mold and let it harden, and it takes that shape. Doesn't it?"
She had told him, sideways, a thing that might well be called her shame, and she thought it the greatest kindness she could offer. Gerard still wore a face that did not understand. She passed him, went into her office, crossed to the sofa, and lay down as she was.
"Haa..."
She was tired. Deeply so.
June sixth.
As if the monsoon had at last announced its end, a thin sunlight fell through the window for the first time in a long while. Perzen's brow twitched, and he slowly opened his eyes.
Keeping Laura in hand—her reason still with her even as she suffered that perverse affliction—must have cost him more than a little. Yesterday he had slept straight through except when he ate, and only now did he feel his body creeping back toward something like normal.
Was the dawn a little cold?
He turned his head. Euphemia was asleep curled tight as a shrimp. It was a habit left from the nights in that shabby room in Ruerug: when the cold found her in her sleep, she drew herself in just so. The sight was endearing. Perzen made sure the hour was still early, then fitted himself against her back and drew her in, as if to pass his warmth into her.
Does she have a fever...?
Her temperature was higher than usual. He reached out and laid a hand against her forehead. Hot would have been the wrong word, but she was warm. A mild fever, then. The physician had told him beforehand that early pregnancy could bring exactly this, so he did not startle. He shook Euphemia awake with care. Sure enough, her eyes opened on a weariness heavier than usual. Even lifting her upper body seemed too much, and she managed only to rest her head against his knee.
"...Rest. I'll send for a physician. The work at the Academy won't suffer in any real way if you aren't there."
"Mm..."
It was early, not yet seven, but summoning a physician whenever he wished was no difficult thing. Before he left for work, Perzen received the female physician who was to examine Euphemia.
"It doesn't appear tied to abdominal pain, so I don't believe you need to worry greatly. There is a fever-reducing painkiller, but... I was told she has entered the fifth week. If that is so, I would not recommend the medicine unless the symptoms are severe."
"Is the effect on the child severe?"
"The probability is low, but it is not as if there are no cases. The finding comes from epidemiological study, so it is reasonably credible. As for the degree of harm, the comparison showed relatively weak blood vessels. There were no miscarriages."
At the physician's answer, Perzen looked at Euphemia. No miscarriages, at least. From here, the choice was hers.
"I won't take it... I'll be all right if I just lie down. If I rest comfortably for a day, I think I'll be fine again."
"Is that so. Still, just in case..."
He told the physician to remain at the mansion through the day. The fee in a case like this was considerable, and she made no particular effort to refuse. She saw off Perzen, who was leaving for the work he would otherwise have shared with Euphemia, and then nursed Euphemia in the maids' stead, as if it were simply another part of waiting on her.
Judging by everything she had seen, the chance of the symptoms worsening from here was vanishingly small. If she were unlucky enough to land on that chance, however, the odds were excellent that her head would come off for it.
Of course, no one held the authority to put a physician to death on the spot for a medical accident, so long as the thing remained a mistake. Officially, that is. The authority to kill.
And so, unless birth, house, and connections stood as shelter, a physician who met with a medical accident while treating or operating upon nobles—above all, nobles of real power—was usually passed through dirty hands and murdered in brutal secrecy. Becoming a physician of the imperial household was every physician's dream for exactly that reason. There were very few who could kill a physician the imperial family protected.
Perzen arrived at the Academy by carriage, and by chance, in the moment he opened the door and stepped down, he came face to face with Uriel.
She ought to still be walking to work. What business does she have at the carriage park?
"I was on my way back from the flower beds. I wasn't waiting for you, so take that irritating look off your face. Honestly. It's ridiculous..."
It was not an excuse. She meant it, and so the strange look on him—as if he had decided to misread the coincidence—drew a hollow little laugh of disbelief from her. She started off at once. She had not gone far before she glanced back, and realized that the plain green-haired woman he always kept at his side was nowhere to be seen.