A Caution for the Imperial Princess
Out on the hunt, Aslan watched Zeroa's back for a long moment as the other boy searched for animal tracks, then spoke.
"You'd better be careful."
The gravity in that voice made Zeroa go rigid. He asked the question carefully.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"I mean getting close to the Princess."
The warning not to get friendly with Emilia sent a dozen thoughts crashing through Zeroa's head at once. Was it simple jealousy? Did Aslan dislike her? He turned the possibilities over, watching Aslan's face, and asked again.
"Do you dislike Her Highness, Aslan?"
"No, that's not what I'm saying. The Princess is fine. She's kind, she's got a good heart — all of that."
Aslan shook his head as if the question itself were exhausting. Zeroa, who knew nothing of the filth of politics, was painfully vulnerable in matters like this. Aslan let out a sigh, hesitating as if he would rather not say it out loud.
"I feel bad putting it this way, but the Princess has no power."
Zeroa stared at him with a perfectly innocent face. He had no idea what Aslan was getting at, or what a lack of power had to do with becoming someone's friend.
"I don't know politics that well either. Philia's the one who'd explain this properly — her family's like that, so she knows."
"Is this about politics?"
"Yeah. That's it. Sixth Princess Emilia doesn't have a political base the way the others do."
"So she's having a hard time..."
Zeroa had taken it the wrong way entirely, and his first instinct was to worry about Emilia. Kindness toward her was well and good, but they had drifted off the point. Aslan gathered his thoughts, then tried again.
"What I'm saying is, just being around the Princess like this puts us in danger."
"Why is it dangerous?"
"Because the other factions don't want her to grow."
"I'm not a noble, and my family isn't wealthy."
Having someone like him around would be no great help to Emilia. He meant he was no threat at all — but that was only how he saw it. There was no chance the other factions would see it the same way.
Political factions were cruel and thorough. The moment even the smallest sprout of resistance showed itself, they moved to crush it. The less power someone had to protect themselves, the faster they were trampled and disposed of. To stand with a powerless faction, you needed something to endure with — a family name, or strength of your own.
"Don't think the other factions are going to be as nice as the Princess. The Second Prince especially — he's a vicious bastard who doesn't care what it takes. On top of that, he's got this chosen-people complex. He actually believes nobles ought to rule over everyone like in the old days. The son of a bitch."
Even as he spoke, Aslan kept an eye on their surroundings.
The Empire might have been shedding its class system, but there were still people — especially among the older generation — who longed for aristocratic society. Even as the world changed, it felt to them like something they owned was being taken away, so they clung all the harder to the nobility and watched the commoners climbing from below with the wariness they reserved for vermin.
If Zeroa kept growing closer to Emilia, if the time they spent together stretched on, it was inevitable that he would catch the Second Prince's faction's eye. And Zeroa, who had no power of any kind, would be easy prey. That much was certain.
Zeroa listened to all of it with a grave expression, then managed a faint, weary smile.
"I didn't know Her Highness was going through something like that."
Aslan had just told him it was dangerous, and the boy's first thought was still someone else's hardship. Aslan let out a small laugh. A hopelessly kind soul, this one.
He wanted nothing to do with politics and went out of his way to avoid it — but he had already decided that if Zeroa ever ran into trouble, he would help. He nodded in agreement.
"Yeah. It's hard on her. That's why she ended up at the Academy, whether she wanted to or not."
"What? But the Academy is an incredible place."
"You think it's greater than the imperial family?"
Zeroa shut his mouth.
"Most of the imperial family transfers into Legandia Academy. They stay a year or two, then they graduate."
"They really are remarkable people, then."
Praise for the Emperor, the elevation of the imperial bloodline to something near divine — for ordinary commoners, it was the most natural thing in the world. Run a country well and the people will exalt you on their own; the safer the streets become, the more they start to think of you as a hero. Zeroa simply believed they graduated quickly because they were gifted, and Aslan gave a bitter smile at that innocence.
"No, no. They're gifted... wait, I can't say it like that. That's lèse-majesté. So... right. Their purpose is different."
He had been about to say that none of the current Emperor's children had the makings of a commander, then changed course at once, afraid of the crime.
"The imperial family comes to the Academy to build connections, that's all. They look through the students for people worth pulling onto their side, and then they leave. They're too busy to sit through classes here for real."
"Did Her Highness come to build connections as well?"
Aslan shook his head. He checked their surroundings once more, asked Zeroa to keep what he was about to say a secret, and went on.
"The Princess is... exile, if you want to put a name to it."
"Exile?"
"Whether you call it exile or taking refuge depends on who's looking at it — but she left the Imperial Palace because she had no power. You can tell just from the fact that she entered as a first-year instead of transferring in."
Zeroa's eyes went wide. Emilia, who walked the academy halls with that kind smile of hers, had a shadow like this behind her, and he had never even guessed.
"From her side, she fled to the Academy to keep herself alive. From the other factions' side, they ran her out of the palace."
"Is she... safe at the Academy, then?"
Aslan shrugged, as if to say he didn't know either.
"Legandia Academy is treated like a ducal territory. No one can interfere with it directly except His Majesty the Emperor, so she should be safe. But there was already an assassination attempt, wasn't there."
The moment he mentioned the incident during the marching drill, Zeroa's eyes wavered. The memory was still vivid. That first sharp, electric tension of fighting someone who actually meant to kill him had never left him.
"Everyone's got a different story, but the only bastard who'd pull a stunt that insane at the Academy is the Second Prince. This place has alumni. It's got real authority. There aren't many people who'd dare touch it."
"They're siblings... and he's trying to kill her..."
Zeroa murmured it almost to himself, his eyes sad. He had not grown up wealthy, but he had grown up in a warm home, and this was something he could not understand. He thought of his little sister Kara's face. There was nothing in the world that would make him kill her. And yet this Second Prince had sent assassins after his own sister, the Princess. Zeroa's expression darkened at the thought of a man that frightening, that cruel.
"Anyway. Getting close to the Princess means drawing the attention of people like that. So be careful."
"...All right. I understand."
The answer came out weakly; the weight of it sat heavy on him. Even so, Zeroa thanked Aslan — for looking out for him, and for telling him all of this.
Having finally forced the grim conversation out, Aslan lifted his sword, trying to pull the mood back up as he eyed the game ahead of them.
"That thing's still a bear, right?"
He was looking at a monster called a Twinhead — a two-headed creature. It had the same shape as a bear, except that one of the heads was steadily breathing fire. Any ordinary person would have turned and run. Aslan, eyes bright with the will to fight, tossed aside the bow he had been carrying and drew his greatsword.
"It's a... bear, isn't it?"
"Bear meat tonight. We take that thing back, we win."
The Twinhead slammed a nearby tree in warning, but Aslan paid it no mind and charged. Zeroa immediately raised his shield and sword and fell in beside him.
The Twinhead was a brute that had nothing but raw strength to rely on, and it could not overcome Aslan's greatsword — a man who likewise trusted nothing but his own body. Split clean down the middle between its two heads, it died as two half-corpses.
Zeroa and Aslan each took a body and returned to the estate, and the first Emilia Cup Hunting Tournament, hosted by Diana, ended in victory for Team Beaming.
Team Trembling had managed to bring back a single rabbit, and even for that, the two of them looked wrecked. Clothes torn, covered in dust — one look at Philia and Abigail was all Aslan needed.
Those two went at it again.
He didn't know why, but they did not get along. He wanted to tell them to try being friends, but if he said it out loud their anger would only swing around onto him, so he kept his mouth shut.
"All right! Today's game will be donated to the Sapphire Villa!"
"The hell are you talking about. We caught that."
Aslan objected, and Diana answered with a brilliant smile.
"I asked the cook. Apparently butchered meat has to age for a few days before it tastes good. We're leaving tomorrow, though. So we decided to donate it."
"Then why did we even have a hunting tournament?"
"As long as it was fun, who cares? What, would you rather have spent the whole day on tea time?"
She had looked like she was enjoying villa life, but apparently even Diana had gotten restless sitting through conversation after conversation. When Aslan fell silent, she threw both hands in the air.
"But worry no more! Diana Deschubella has prepared a banquet just for all of you!"
"There's booze, right?"
"Obviously. Who throws a banquet without drinks?"
Aslan looked delighted.
Perhaps still stung by coming up empty on his first attempt, Rai had gone out for night fishing. The basket was as vacant as before, and the float had not so much as twitched, making it perfectly clear that this outing was another failure — but Rai simply stared out over the lake.
Fishing was something he had genuinely wanted to try. Once, after a battle, he had tied a line to a spear and pretended to fish in a river running red with blood, only to get caught by his adjutants and thoroughly chewed out. It had been a clumsy imitation, the way a child copies an adult — but that was how badly he had wanted to fish. Being able to let time pass in a blank-minded daze had been, for the Rai of those days, a luxury beyond anything else.
They said it was good for sorting out your thoughts, and it was true. Staring blankly at the water, all kinds of things rose to the surface. Rai thought of Emilia.
The person most likely to have pulled him out of prison was her. She had not given him a firm no, which meant she was at least involved — or she was the one who had made the decision. She had even said she could undo the slave contract, which meant she had the authority, or at least a justification she could try to use.
If Emilia was the one behind it, why had she taken him out?
Piecing together the fragments he had gotten from Leila with the talk people threw around, Emilia had come to the Academy to keep herself alive. If she had pulled him from prison simply to protect her own life, it made no sense. For something that small, the Old Raccoon would have assigned her someone who could actually shield her. He would not have gone out of his way to drag out a man as controversial as Rai.
Rai stared hard at the water, sensing a fish nosing around near the hook. It seemed interested in the bait, tapping it with its mouth, and Rai silently screamed at it to bite — then the fish turned its head and vanished, and he slumped, looking utterly defeated.
I'll have to meet the Old Raccoon to figure this out.
He could not tell what the other side actually wanted, or why they had set this board in the first place. Even if Emilia was the one who had put it in motion, the final decision rested with Emperor Julius.
During the years he had stood against the Empire, Rai had suffered through plenty of that man's brilliant, underhanded schemes, and in the end he had lost to him and been captured. More precisely, Julius had kept him from taking the field and destroyed the Keilen Kingdom — but he had failed to protect the kingdom all the same, so he had lost.
Remembering Emperor Julius, whose plots were so sharp they were nearly impossible to predict, Rai found himself wanting to punch the old man right in his smug, punchable smile, and then he sighed.
Another empty-handed night. He packed up and returned to the villa, stepping into the noisy banquet hall.
"Ooooh— Raikkang's heeere!!"
"Raikkang, Raikkang! Raikkang!"
He had lost track of time over the night fishing; everyone in the hall was already half-drunk. The only one who wasn't was Zeroa. He watched Aslan with a vacant stare — the same Aslan who had warned him to be careful, now thoroughly in his cups and hitting it off with Emilia like they were old friends — then looked over at Rai, who had just arrived.
"Instructor Rai. You're here. Did you catch much?"
"Nah. There's a convenient thing called magic, and here I am relying on this stupid stick. I had it all wrong. Tomorrow I'm going to kill every last one of those little fish bastards."
It sounded like he actually might, so Zeroa talked him down with some difficulty and sat him down at his side. Rai took in the scene with a look of genuine pleasure: Abigail drinking alone, her cheeks flushed; Aslan talking Emilia's ear off, the two of them perfectly in sync.
"What a mess. I like it."
He grabbed a bottle the moment he sat down and started chugging, and the people around him broke into applause. Once he had drained it in a single go, Diana handed him a generous cut of meat, picked up the empty bottle, and smiled with mischief in her eyes.
"This time, we're playing Two Truths and a Lie with Raikkang!"
"What's that?"
Diana shouted it with glee, and Aslan surged to his feet with a whoop. Philia and Abigail did not react as loudly, but they kept glancing at Rai as if they were looking forward to it. Zeroa gave a wry smile and filled him in.
"It's the game we were playing just now."
One person stated two truths and one lie. Everyone else had to pick out the lie. It was a simple game — but once Rai heard that you drank a glass every time you got it wrong, he understood exactly how this crowd had ended up in such a state.
"Special rules for Raikkang. Three lies and one truth. We find the truth."
Diana gathered everyone in. Of all the people here, not a soul knew anything about Rai — except Emilia. And even she only knew the stories that circulated about Elliot, the Devil of All Nations. She knew nothing of Rai's personality, or his nature.
They had lived with him for nearly a year, and he talked about himself without any particular effort to hide things — and yet, surprisingly, there was a great deal still concealed. The students, full of questions, waited for him to speak.
Rai looked at their bleary, drink-hazed eyes, and snorted.