Inevitability (3)
"……Pardon?"
I managed to keep the shock from my face and answered in a tone of genuine confusion.
"We are asking whether you told Us not to go for Our own sake."
"……Forgive me, but I don't understand. There's no connection between those two things at all, is there?"
I answered with deliberate shamelessness and scrambled desperately for what to say next.
Because — for the moment, at least — she was right.
My purpose was Lady Luna's unification of the continent.
At the very beginning, I had followed Lady Luna simply because the conclusion had been that she was the one who would achieve unification. But by now, I genuinely wanted her to be the one to do it, if at all possible.
And the single most important condition for her to achieve that unification was this: that the Serpina Army continue to be led by Lady Serpina, for as long as possible.
In the end, I had saved Lady Serpina's life.
So her words were, for all practical purposes, the correct answer I had never once revealed to her.
The only problem was one thing.
How on earth had Serpina figured out that I had said those words to save her life?
"……."
Serpina looked at me with a strange expression.
None of the usual pressure was there — none of that gaze of an absolute sovereign looking down upon those beneath her.
What stood before me was…… I hesitated even to put it this way, but — a frightened girl.
The figure of Serpina von Aingart felt, for a moment, like nothing more than an ordinary woman.
I carefully read her face, then parted my lips first, with deliberate weight.
"I…… if I may, could I hear your reasoning for thinking that?"
Before doing anything reckless, I needed to hear her logic.
"……Very well."
Serpina closed her eyes slowly, then, as if steeling herself for something, led me toward the desk.
On the broad surface of the desk, a single map of the continent lay alone.
"Had it not been for your counsel…… We would likely have assembled an envoy the very next day and set out for the Brans Army at once. With the initiative already in our hands, few would expect Us to go all the way to Anel Castle. You would not have expected it either."
"If my lord had moved, the natural assumption would have been that you were only going as far as the border."
"Yes. You know that as well. Of course you do……."
I had no idea what kind of riddle she was leading me into, but for now I would play along.
Serpina was no fool. If she had summoned me and was pressing this hard, it meant her logic was already complete.
And the fact that a map is laid out here…… means the answer is on it.
If I could not break her reasoning with my own strength, there was only one thing left for me to do.
Climb on top of it.
I studied the map in silence and listened carefully to her words.
"Looking at the map, the nearest place from here is Cohat Castle."
She pointed to Cohat Castle with her finger as she spoke.
Naturally, my attention sharpened further on the map.
"If one calculates the time required to reach it…… and the time to form an alliance there and return—"
……!
I saw it.
The moment she named "the time required" and "the time to return" — the moment she brought time into it — I understood exactly what she was talking about.
"You're referring to the landslide."
"!!!!"
At my words, she stared at me with eyes gone wide, the whites showing all around.
One look at that face was enough to tell me my answer had been correct.
What I had kept firmly in mind while studying the map was the fact that Serpina was asking me whether I had tried to save her.
If so, then somewhere on this map there had to be a clue to her death.
A clue to death on the map? That alone compressed the possible ways she could die to a drastic few.
And the reason it compressed down to a natural disaster was the moment she pointed to Cohat Castle on the border.
No matter how many rebel forces might have been waiting for a chance at her, an ambush inside her own territory was less likely than a natural disaster.
But Serpina did not possess a mind of Intelligence 100 like mine, and even if she had, she still could not have known precisely where and how a natural disaster would strike.
Which meant it had to be a form of natural disaster that even someone as logical as Serpina could reasonably predict on her own.
Something like, A bolt of lightning was going to strike you on the road, so you were worried about that, weren't you? — that kind of conclusion was far too absurd for someone of Serpina's temperament to ever voice.
Lightning leaves no evidence. The idea that someone would witness the scene and report it was too contrived, too improbable a hypothesis.
And crucially, lightning requires rain — and the northern continent had been enjoying calm weather for some time.
If one went all the way to the deep south the weather might differ somewhat, but the distance in question was nowhere near that far.
So not lightning.
Then what?
What caught my eye then was the valley that lay along the shortest route between Aingart Castle and Cohat Castle.
In this game, crossing a valley always meant accounting for the possibility of a landslide at any moment — and once you factored that in—
There was only one answer.
Moreover, a landslide leaves its evidence behind long after it happens, so receiving a report of it would not be difficult at all.
There were even settlements nearby.
"As I thought…… you…… were trying to save me."
"……."
"But…… even if you had suddenly claimed a landslide was coming, We would not have believed you. Just as We did not before…… And if you had simply told Us the truth outright, We might well have done as We pleased out of sheer stubbornness. Honestly, We have never put much stock in talk of the heavens' movements and such."
……???
"You must have…… seen through even that — that We would think this way……?"
I swallowed the words No, not particularly…… before they could leave my mouth.
The information that Serpina "didn't put much stock in talk of the heavens' movements" was entirely new to me.
She tended to listen to what I said, and with the Mind's Eye and all the rest of it, I had vaguely assumed she was the type who would accept such things. Apparently not?
Whether she knew I was thinking this or not—
Serpina looked at me with an expression of almost painful vulnerability and spoke.
"Answer Us, Swen…… Is Our reasoning correct? Did you…… make that claim in order to save this life of Ours?"
Listening to the tremor in Serpina's voice, I thought.
What was my duty within the Serpina Army?
It was to keep her alive.
And for that, nothing mattered more than making her listen to me as fully as possible — making her trust me.
I had already seen two lords ignore my counsel at the decisive moment and throw everything away.
Serpina was not Lunarien. To earn her trust, I needed to prove something — something concrete.
And this situation right now—
Was it not a pumpkin of opportunity, rolling straight into my lap, vine and all, under the name of a chance to prove myself?
If I had been Serpina, I would have thought a little more carefully before accepting the unbelievable fact that I had predicted a landslide. And yet, looking at her now — crowded with something urgent — I read more haste than her usual brilliance.
Had something happened to push her into thinking this way?
In any case……
Wasn't the right move here simply to take what she was offering?
Thinking that lightly, I slowly bowed my head.
"……I had considered telling you honestly, but I was cautious, thinking it might sound too bizarre……."
"……!!!"
Good.
Now I would slowly raise my head and say something along the lines of, If I could save my lord's life, that alone would be enough for me.
If she asked how I knew, I could just mutter something about the heavens. The result was already in; she wouldn't press me on the details.
Thinking that far, I lifted my head and slowly parted my lips—
"If I could save my lo—"
……?
Something was wrong.
Suddenly the words would not come out.
No — more precisely, the organ designed to produce speech, my mouth, had been sealed shut.
What filled it so completely that it stopped the words I had been about to speak was…… something soft and yielding.
I recognized what it was without difficulty.
A tongue.
A three-inch tongue.
The same tongue that had somehow dragged me this far despite knowing only conclusions and never processes…… was now tangled with someone else's.
And only after realizing that far did I understand.
—That Serpina had pressed her mouth over mine.
For something so sudden, what I felt as our tongues met was not so much panic as a strange kind of relief.
As if this were not the first time.
Why……?
I had no chance to examine the image that rose in my mind. Her warm, soft tongue invaded the corners of my mouth as if scraping every surface clean.
How much time passed?
At last our mouths slowly parted…… and between us stretched a transparent thread of saliva that no one else could ever cross.
"Haa……."
Serpina looked at me with her face flushed deep red, breathing hard……
And with those golden eyes that held only one human being — me — she spoke, not as an absolute sovereign, but as a single woman.
"……Swen. We do not care who else may dwell in your heart. Whether We are your first or your second is of no consequence."
"So."
"Even a fraction of you is enough. Please…… for as long as you are at Our side in this moment, be Ours."
Looking at her as she said those words in a trembling voice, I thought—
……My first kiss tasted of yuzu.