In the Continuity of the Past (2)
“It seems best to send Amelia.”
“Then why not just send her?”
Send her and be done with it. What’s the problem?
“That girl has a rather eccentric personality in more ways than one, doesn’t she?”
“Coming from Your Majesty, that sounds rather strange.”
If anyone asked whom Amelia most resembled, the answer was obvious.
This woman right here. The empress standing before me. And yet she had the gall to pretend otherwise.
“I would like you to assist her a little.”
“So in the end, that’s how you’re playing it.”
At a glance it might look like I was simply to support the girl, but the reality would be nothing of the sort.
There was no chance that one would handle anything properly, which meant the work would fall to me.
In effect, I would be the real representative.
Ah, something was beginning to simmer in my head again.
Why not just kill them all without fretting over the details?
Why go to all this trouble of my own free will?
With sheer strength I could simply crush everything and settle the matter.
The thought struck me unbidden.
Once more the world had grown tiresome. The Empire was my country after all, but what of the others?
If the emperor would just issue the order instead of wasting time on all this nitpicking, I would drop a meteor on Atlantis’s capital this very moment.
A single request to Pector and he would move the Army of Despair for me without further fuss. Preventive war or whatever else—smash them with asymmetric power and it would be finished.
Ah. Why was I thinking like this?
Strange. No—if the emperor gave the command I would do it. Since when had I started reading her mood?
And leaning on Pector again? That was a stupid idea.
Yes. The trouble had started after that incident in the archives.
In those countless possibilities the lives I had lived had all been so varied.
First, let me think about renewing the Caern Treaty.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Coldly considered, my stepping forward wouldn’t be so bad. A little bothersome and irritating, but what choice was there?
“If anything is troubling you, speak. We can simply send the Seven Stars instead.”
“Since when have you cared so much for me?”
Since when had she cared so much for me? A flicker of irritation rose. Had it never occurred to her that summoning me here in the first place was already a form of pressure?
“I am sincere. If that is how it feels, then perhaps you are truly exhausted. You need not do this at all if you prefer.”
“No. I’ll do it. My head just went blank for a moment.”
Just for a brief moment my head had gone blank.
After what had happened in the archives, my insides were still a complete mess.
On top of that there had been the World Tree business lately; holding back the demonic energy’s erosion had been taxing my body as well.
“Now that I look, you do seem quite tired.”
“Rest has amounted to one day back in the capital at most.”
Still, that one day had been genuine rest.
It might have been the deepest sleep I had gotten in recent times. Yet somehow that single day had not been enough; fatigue and stress seemed to be piling up thicker than ever.
My head still felt hazy when the emperor suddenly took my hand.
“Are you all right? You look terribly unsettled.”
“About what?”
“You seem extremely anxious, I would say. I’ll say it again: if you dislike this, stop. I will not hold you any longer.”
Ridiculous. Making that pitiful face while holding my hand—her sincerity was highly suspect.
Was this emperor actually after me? Even so, I had once been a prospective daughter-in-law—or rather, considering the political marriage to a noble, a former daughter-in-law. What did it mean to behave like this toward a former daughter-in-law?
I had seen something once when I looked through imperial history.
They said the emperors of the Empire had always been skilled at seducing women—or men.
Not merely by threatening with rank, but by conquering the spirit and the heart.
“What’s with the sudden goosebumps?”
I tried to pull my hand free; she only gripped tighter.
“I hold you dear. I have watched you since you were small, so perhaps I am simply being foolish. When you were a candidate for daughter-in-law you seemed nothing but a child. Now anyone can see you have weathered every storm.”
“Your Majesty is truly underhanded. Speaking like that leaves me no room to refuse. Besides, if I want any ease at all, I have no choice but to take this on.”
Even if I disliked it, stepping forward this time was the wiser course.
How many people could actually be sent to Caern right now? Only me. Aslan and Amelia were both unreliable, and every one of the Seven Stars had their own set of values.
The Merchant Coalition would also be present at the renewal of the Caern Treaty. In that case anyone might pick a fight with them.
That would be unfortunate.
Since a true hegemon would be attending the table, more careful thought would be required. Which meant it was right for me to go.
This time I needed to set the board.
A board that could justify tearing up the Caern Treaty. And once this war ended, the Four Heavenly Kings would take another beating; within my lifetime the Four Heavenly Kings would be wiped out completely.
“Heh heh heh. How about it—shall we share a bed tonight?”
“Have you lost your mind? Absolutely not.”
Treating a person like a whore? Unthinkable. Absolutely not.
“Well, once the date for the Caern Treaty is set, the assembly will send someone; remain on standby until then. As for whether to choose Aslan or Amelia, that decision is yours. After all, this entire affair is as good as entirely in your hands.”
“Yes.”
With that I left the Imperial Palace.
Being near that emperor always left me feeling strange. Beyond emotion, it was as if she were trying to peer into every corner of me.
Yes. Perhaps that human had already seen straight through me. That might be why she had mentioned the curse.
“Fuck. Same damn shape again.”
Because I had briefly let the tension leave my body, a grayish tinge had appeared around my wrist.
My body was being eroded by demonic energy once more.
“Is it because I haven’t taken that stuff? Hard to trust anything that bastard gave me.”
Wait—then had the emperor seen it? She had held this hand just now. Had she noticed something?
No. Impossible. If she had known she would never have let it pass. She was an emperor who separated public and private. She would hardly welcome a demon in the palace, and at the very least she would have interrogated me. That she had simply sent me away was proof she had not seen it.
Remarkable. How had I held it together so precisely?
If I had left even a little later, this hand would have been right under the emperor’s eyes.
“Lucky.”
Gulp.
I drank the World Tree sap—or whatever it was—that Isis had given me.
It tasted like syrup. Just sugar water. A touch sweeter than the dew of the World Tree.
Mm. My body felt a little calmer. The demonic energy that had been roiling moments earlier subsided.
Now I would slowly wrap it in mana, circulate it, and make the demonic energy murky. Complete purification or suppression was still beyond me, so gradual assimilation would be better.
The work of fusing demonic energy and mana into one. At least until then my body would hold out.
“Once the war is over, something will sort itself out.”
Or halfway through I might get fed up and go on a rampage.
I kept calling it boring, yet in truth I had never truly stepped forward of my own will and had only been dragged around by the Empire. Who could say what would come of it.
Emperor Belia stared fixedly at her own right hand—the one that had held Olivia’s only moments earlier.
Outwardly it looked unchanged, yet the brief contact had clearly transferred demonic energy.
She could simply shake it off, but Olivia was currently living with demonic energy inside her body.
To be precise, a vast quantity of demonic energy was being wrapped and contained by mana.
“My, my. What a true tomboy of a young lady.”
A genuine tomboy.
Had she not absorbed the demonic energy just then, Olivia’s body might have turned into a Main right before the palace maids’ eyes.
Even if she managed to re-wrap it in mana afterward, what had already been seen could not be unseen. The Empire’s Taesa might well have been branded a Main.
“Surely she isn’t walking the path of the Outer Way as well?”
It was probably not of her own will. There had been what she received from Isis as well. This was the result of absorbing a massive amount of demonic energy from the World Tree.
Fortunately she possessed a body that had fused mana, allowing her to endure. An ordinary human would have died long ago.
She would not die, then. Yet she could permit not the slightest mistake. The moment even a fraction of strength left that body, she would suffer greatly.
“That long-eared one actually said something useful for once. At this rate she could turn into a Main at any moment.”
Still, this was Olivia. She would handle herself well enough. As she always had. As she always would. Above all, the emperor believed firmly in Olivia.
What she had regarded until now as merely one possibility had become a certainty.
“Even so. This makes it clear. Olivia is not the daughter-in-law I knew. She is that man who once said he would lift my curse.”
Noah. The mage Noah. The Noah who had claimed he would undo her curse. No matter how she looked at it, the interior was Noah.
After living so long—once one became living history—one came to know even the things one would rather not know. Failing to know what one actually wished to know was a sorrow, yet regarding Olivia she now knew with certainty.
—You said you would lift my curse, did you not?
—Considering how bothersome you make yourself, doing that for you might not be such a bad idea.
—If you lift my curse, I will give myself to you.
—What kind of insane nonsense is that?
Yes. That was how it had gone.
In truth they had spoken of the curse several times.
That foolish man. He had had the nerve to call the emperor’s words insane nonsense.
Yet he had been desperate enough, and he had seemed to possess power equal to the claim. Certainty was difficult, but he was not a man who spoke empty boasts.
For a man like that, she had thought, it would be fine even if he embraced her. She could give her body as much as he wished.
Around the time she had been living as nothing more than a single history bound by a long curse, he had been an especially intriguing existence.
That man. He had approached as prey so utterly captivating.
“Yet at the same time that man is Olivia, and Olivia is Olivia.”
That point was fascinating as well.
She was clearly that man, and at the same time the young lady of House Ashtar. Saint and Taesa. In other words, a former daughter-in-law.
Given how thoroughly she had already been behaving like a rogue, taking a former daughter-in-law was of little consequence, yet for now it seemed better simply to watch.
Looking closely, she felt that Olivia too was connected to some curse long forgotten in the distant past.
That sensation had suddenly arisen.