Then Burn the City
"...Tell her to come around three tomorrow afternoon."
He managed to answer calmly—just as he always did, as though nothing in him had stirred. Theodore bowed his head in silence.
"And summon the physician."
"...Pardon?"
"I seem to have gone mad."
Edwin looked very much as though he wanted to ask whether His Grace was only noticing this now. He kept his mouth shut all the same. His life, it appeared, was still worth something to him.
"Or else I've taken ill."
That, he could not let pass. He added one objection.
"There was nothing wrong with you at the last regular examination. If anything, with Monsterification as far along as it is, your recovery alone puts you level with a Monster—perhaps beyond one...."
"Quiet. I told you to summon the physician, so summon the physician."
"...Yes."
A short silence followed. Through it, Ludville stared at the steward and several times parted his lips, only to close them again. Theodore had never seen him hesitate over his words, and the surprise made him ask, wary and puzzled.
"Have you some word for me, Your Grace?"
"...There was no sign the young lady had learned black magic?"
"Your Grace?!"
"No. It's nothing."
Ludville pressed a hand to his brow and let out a long breath. Then he flicked an irritated hand at the two subordinates—the gesture of a man shooing insects—and dismissed them.
"Both of you. Out."
After the door had shut, the steward and the aide, driven out into the corridor, turned bewildered faces on each other.
The next afternoon, the hour Odelli was due drew nearer by degrees. Across a long table the retainers traded their views, while Ludville sat among them as if none of it touched him—though the tips of his fingers tapped the desk like the second hand of a clock.
Watching him, Edwin entertained a disrespectful thought. Whatever else might be ailing His Grace, an instability of temper had certainly set in.
"Your Grace. An official document from the imperial household."
The political officer set a sheaf stamped with a gold-leaf seal carefully upon Ludville's desk: a thick envelope, and the formulaic courtesies proper to protocol.
Pursuant to the Forty-Seventh Annual Military Strategy Conference convened under imperial auspices, we respectfully request that you assume the chairmanship of the said conference....
He did not so much as turn to the next line. He began to fold the paper.
"...Your Grace?"
One side, then the other. With every inch the paper airplane's wings took shape, the political officer's face grew paler. When the center crease was at last sharp, Ludville opened the window.
A soft rush of air—and the airplane, stamped with the imperial crest, caught the wind and sailed beyond the castle walls.
"Your Grace! An imperial document is one thing, but to send a request for the chairmanship flying—what are we to do?"
Ludville did not so much as react. He answered with an empty face.
"Not a chairman. A stand-in for empty ceremony, I expect."
"And that is precisely the essence of the imperial house, as you well know! Empty ceremony!"
"What a bother."
"Don't drag nuisances of this sort all the way here."
The political officer could not find another word. Cold sweat on him, he fumbled the door open and hurried out. He had surely gone to fetch the paper airplane.
Edwin, who had watched the whole performance, murmured with something like admiration in his voice.
"You're handling things rather gently today."
Among the last several months, this was the mildest response yet. At least he had not flung the document straight into the fireplace to serve as kindling.
"I imagine it's because Her Grace the Archduchess is staying in the castle."
The moment the words left him, unthinking, the gaze Ludville had been resting idly beyond the window turned and found him.
"Who is this archduchess?"
"Pardon? Was that not what had been arranged?"
Wasn't that why the two of you made this appointment? Edwin asked it back, looking frankly dazed. Ludville regarded him without a word, then answered in a voice as cold as a northern winter.
"Nothing has been decided."
It was final.
No one else had spoken, and yet every retainer held the same doubt. He still hasn't decided—after a full fifteen days of not driving her out of the castle?
Then why keep her at his side? He will not send her back to Cardel. He will not allow so much as a report to the imperial house that the missing young lady has been found. He will not even set a watch on her.
Had we not been preparing to receive her as archduchess?
But the retainers kept their silence. After today, one way or another, there would be an end to it, whether he accepted the young lady or sent her back to Cardel.
Most of them, long since sickened by the procession of Blue-Eyed Women, showed little appetite for the question of an archduchess. A few, though, clearly harbored hopes.
They were the ones who had noticed how peaceful the Archducal Castle had been through the fortnight the young lady spent in it, and they wanted Ludville to take Odelli as his archduchess so the quiet days might continue. Blue eyes, and whatever else came with them—let him forget the whole business.
But in a north where no day passed without trouble, was a wish for peace too large a hope?
The conference-room door slammed open.
The political officer who had run out after the paper airplane burst back in, breath tearing at his chest. The airplane itself was forgotten.
"Your Grace, an urgent report. A plague has broken out in the port city of Belader."
In a single instant, the air in the room froze.
Odelli held the newly drafted contract against her chest.
Will he accept it this time...?
She steadied a heart drawn a little tight and made her way toward the reception room where they were to meet. It was somewhat early, but she meant to arrive first and wait. That was when someone caught her eye across the corridor.
It was Rian, the political officer. Whatever the urgency, he was sprinting headlong with a bundle of documents clutched to him.
Odelli stopped.
Has something happened?
The air felt wrong. She followed as if it were the most natural thing, killing the sound of her steps and keeping a steady distance so she would never enter his line of sight. He was bound for the conference room, and through the gap of a door he had not quite shut, his urgent voice spilled out.
"Your Grace, an urgent report. A plague has broken out in the port city of Belader."
Odelli held her breath. She pressed her ear to the door and fixed on every word.
"The speed of transmission is excessive. Fatalities have already occurred."
"How far has it spread?"
"Reports indicate that the symptoms are moving outward from the port and the commercial district. One vessel is presently under quarantine, and the number of infected within the city is still being established."
"And the cause?"
"It has not yet been clearly determined. The presentation, however, is wholly unlike prior cases."
Ludville turned his head toward the map on the table. Belader: the westernmost city of the north, the vital hub where seaborne freight converged, and a site altogether too efficient for an infection to break loose.
Brows drawn, he scanned the hastily assembled report in silence. A moment later he spoke, and there was no room in it for argument.
"Seal it."
"...Your Grace?"
"Quarantine the whole city and throw up a blockade. The moment an infected person is found, kill them. Do not let the uninfected out either. There will be no exceptions."
All at once the air in the conference room grew heavy.
"But the precise cause of the disease has not yet been identified...."
"And if it spreads while we wait?"
Ludville cut him off, cold. This was a vital city where freight converged, and the coming and going of people would be beyond comparison with anywhere else. Before the damage grew past retrieving, the spread had to be cut.
"And if even that cannot stop it...."
His gaze drove into the map.
Ludville's violet eyes shone with a pitiless clarity, as emotionless as a man sorting a rotten potato from the sound—as if anything beyond that were only useless sentiment.