Who's Calling Whom an Idiot
"Mmm..."
For someone who claimed she was used to staying up all night, wasn't she dropping off a little too fast?
Mariella watched Emily, dead to the world. Sleep would not come easily in surroundings so unlike her own. The space was cramped, the mattress a touch too firm—but there was none of the cold air she had braced for when she heard they would be camping, and none of the harsh sounds from outside. That, at least, was a mercy.
A thin, rasping breath tickled her ear. She shifted, putting a little distance between them.
A strange person. That had been her impression from the first moment she laid eyes on her, and it had not particularly changed. No—it had. From a strange person to an extremely strange person. Which was only fair. You had to show some semblance of being normal before anyone's opinion of you improved.
She rolled over quietly and lay flat on her back. Through eyes adjusted to the dark, the ceiling of the carriage came into view.
When I first saw her, I thought she was some child my sister was looking after for a little while.
She turned her head again. It was too dark to make her out clearly, but the faint outline was there: a small face, eyes and nose and mouth gathered in a neat little cluster. A face anyone would take for a child of about ten. Tell them this little girl was in fact eighteen, and the holder of an Epithet—one of only five in the entire Empire—and who would believe it?
So when Maria first said she wanted to introduce Emily, Mariella had taken it for one of her sister's jokes. Maria possessed an Epithet of her own, of course, and since the two of them both moved in magical academia, it was not wholly impossible. But the person in question was the Great Witch of the End. A genius who had single-handedly achieved chantless manifestation, which common sense had declared impossible, and an unrivaled prodigy who had thrown open an entirely new horizon in theoretical magic with the Three-Dimensional Magic Circle. She had published only two papers, yet both of them had smashed the paradigms handed down through the history of magical scholarship and founded a new school outright. Their impact had been that immense.
A skeptical tone had been inevitable. What came back was another shock entirely.
"It's fine. I know her. You know Milaine, right?"
She had nodded. Not that the other woman could see it.
Milaine. Dig deep enough into magical studies and the name surfaced sooner or later. Was she not the corresponding author who appeared, without fail, on her sister Maria's papers?
"That's Emily."
For an instant, her breath stopped.
"Surprised?"
What a thing to ask.
And yet, hearing it put that way, something clicked into place. The papers that listed Milaine as corresponding author were broad in scope and vast in scale. It had always been strange to suppose that Maria, a specialist in barrier studies, had written every one of them herself. In truth the rumor was already out there, half whispered and half spoken aloud: that Milaine was the one who wrote the papers, and Maria had only lent her name. What Maria had just said proved the rumor true.
And if it was true, then Maria and Emily knew each other well. No one with any sense handed the lead authorship of a paper to a complete stranger. At the very least they would know each other's faces, and be able to keep in touch.
"So. Do you want to meet her?"
After that, things moved quickly. They talked, and they set a date. She would have to stop in the capital at least once on her way to the Academy anyway, and Maria's suggestion—that they meet that day, at Mariella's own villa in the capital—sounded reasonable enough that she agreed.
And at last, the day she had dreamed of. When she arrived with a lighter step than usual, Maria welcomed her warmly.
"You're very early."
Of course she was. She could not waste a single minute, a single second. Better to be the one waiting than to keep the other person waiting.
Maria told her to wait a moment and went upstairs. If memory served, the second floor was storage. Why go up there?
She was a little tired. She had not slept the night before, busy organizing her questions, and the fatigue of the journey seemed to have settled over her as well.
A short while passed, and Maria came back down. With a girl Mariella had never seen before.
Before the thought who? could even finish forming, their eyes met.
Not a bad face. Cute, if that was the word for it. White as the hair was, it looked clean and carefully kept, and the skin was flawless, without a single blemish. But if she had to name one shortcoming... those vacant, lifeless eyes. A single element out of place, and the whole of her felt unpleasant. Awkward.
"Wh-who— whuh?!"
That feeling, of course, was swept clean away by the sound of someone tumbling down the stairs.
She would rather not dwell on what came next. Fainting on her feet—and in front of someone she was meeting for the first time. It had been mortifying.
"Haa..."
She let out a sigh. The Great Witch of the End she had actually met—Emily Staria—was, in more ways than one, a person who exceeded imagination.
"So I'm counting on you."
"As expected. You're a sly one, Sister."
Arrange a situation in which refusal is impossible, then make the offer, and accepting is the only choice left. So this was what someone on the front line of imperial politics was like.
"Emily's a little short on common sense. You only have to help her with that part."
She thought she understood why her sister had worried.
How to put it. It was like watching a child left at the water's edge. Leave her alone and it felt as if she might simply keel over and die, and that was somehow impossible to ignore. On top of that, her self-esteem seemed absurdly low. Why would someone who could erase a country—no, a whole continent—from the map, if she put her mind to it, go around watching other people's moods?
Better than arrogance... I suppose?
"Hah."
She sighed and closed her eyes. Tomorrow would be busier still. If she did not sleep, she would be exhausted.
"Mmm..."
Listening to the murmur from beside her, she slowly sank into sleep.
"Haaahm..."
I opened my eyes. Beside me, Mariella was asleep, breathing in soft little rasps. She had seemed like someone raised in luxury, so it was rather impressive that she could sleep at all in a place like this.
Before I woke her, I had things to take care of.
I stepped out of the carriage and opened the luggage compartment. Anything bulky, or anything I would not need right away, had been sent ahead, but the rest I had no choice but to haul myself. A damned crow who could not understand a word you said, for instance.
"Get up."
I gripped the cage in both hands and ran a light current through it.
"Ghk?! Ugh... wh-where is this..."
"You awake?"
Before Kuro could start squawking, I raised a finger to my lips. If he carried on at that volume, someone nearby would hear, and that would be a problem.
I opened the cage, took him out, and fed him the slightest thread of mana. Perched on my hand, Kuro stretched his wings and his neck as if he were in an excellent mood.
"What are you scheming?"
"Nothing like that."
The Academy forbade pets. A bird would hardly be an exception.
"Something came up, so you can't come in with me. I'll send you the location once I'm inside. Come find me tonight."
"...That sounds an awful lot like I may wander as I please until tonight."
I nodded.
"In exchange, don't cause any trouble."
"Set your mind at ease. In the first place, what could this body even do?"
"That's not really what I'm worried about. I'm worried someone will find out what you are."
"You fret overmuch."
With a flutter of wings, Kuro climbed high into the sky. That one was definitely not coming back tonight. Was I going to have to send Nero to fetch him again?
"You're already up?"
I turned, and the first thing I saw was sleep-mussed hair. Even like that, an air of nobility clung to her.
So that's what an actual noble young lady looks like...
"You could have woken me."
"Ah, no. I only just woke up myself..."
"Did you?"
Mariella parted her small mouth in a yawn. Even that was elegant.
"Shall we wash up quickly and be on our way?"
"Ah, yes!"
I extended my right hand toward her to cast. Mana stirred, and a circle began to take shape—
"Eek?!"
Mariella flattened herself against the ground. The sudden performance startled me; my mana scattered, and since triggering a spell gone unstable could turn into a real disaster, I canceled it at once.
"Wh-why did you do that...?"
"J-just now, that magic... at me...?"
"Ah, yes. I thought washing might be a bother, so I was going to cast a cleanliness spell..."
"...A cleanliness spell."
"Yes. It breaks down dust and waste. A spell I developed."
It was quite a good spell, in that the time you would have spent washing could be spent on research instead. Ria had been thoroughly revolted by it, though.
"Is that so."
Her voice had gone cold. With the expression wiped from Mariella's already frightening face, she looked even more frightening. The mood had sunk with it. Was she actually angry?
"...Hoo."
Mariella let out a long sigh and got to her feet. She did seem angry, but over which part? If I apologized without knowing, I might only make it worse, so I needed to find out.
"From now on, please say something before you use it. Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to suddenly have a magic circle aimed at you?"
"Ah..."
So that was it. Fair enough—if what I had been about to cast had been an attack spell rather than a cleanliness spell... Even so, was a reaction like that really necessary? It was not as if she could not use defensive magic...
Oh. Right.
I remembered what Ria had said. Mariella could not use magic. I had forgotten. Then a reaction like that made sense.
"...You seem to be thinking something strange, so allow me to say this in advance. Pointing a staff at someone without a word is extremely rude."
"...I didn't point a staff."
"It amounts to the same thing. The point is that you do not cast magic on other people as you please. This will not do. I will teach you noble etiquette on the way."
Mariella climbed into the carriage. I gathered the luggage and got ready to walk.
I waited outside, but she did not come out. Wondering if she had gone back to sleep, I opened the door to check—only for it to fly open as Mariella burst out.
"What are you doing out here?"
"Th-that's my line... What were you doing in there?"
"We need to depart."
"Yes, we should hurry. Come on out."
"...What?"
Had she actually thought we were riding the carriage? Getting it moving was not the problem, but with guards around I could not cast openly, and more to the point it would trip the barrier at the Academy. We would have to get off partway regardless.
"You're not getting in?"
"No. We're walking."
"What?"
"...What?"
Well. Being slow on the uptake was not a crime. I just had to explain it properly.