What an Academy Is For (2)
"They'll all just run, I expect. Trembling head to toe while they shove the commoner students into the Abyss."
"Wretched. I don't even know if I ought to be enjoying a sight like that."
"Oh ho."
"What? What's with that face?"
For a maid, she was staring at her own mistress with outright fascination. What on earth had the previous version of this woman been, to earn a look like that?
"The young lady I knew was never this sort of person. Only now have you become someone who suits our North."
"Is that so."
"Unlike before, you seem somehow without feeling, and that is a little regrettable. Hmm."
"Did the old me laugh a great deal, or something?"
She'd probably been the typical noble young lady, but I don't laugh well. A noblewoman's laugh? Not a chance. Offer me a fortune to hide my mouth behind a fan and titter like that woman earlier, and I'd sooner bite through my tongue and be done with it.
"You were much like the other nobles. Not that you were especially given to luxury. Shall I say there's a wide gap between then and now? No—if anything, the young lady you are now is the strange one."
The same as the other nobles. So even as a grand duke's daughter, I'd ended up in the body of the most commonplace noble girl there was.
"Hmm. Even so, I can't imitate that."
"Hmm. I think the way you are now is far better, myself."
"Let's finish up and go, then. I can already hear the young ladies sneering."
I couldn't very well thrash every last one of them. From here on, I'd have to grind them under with my mouth—that was the shape of it. What a bother. Nobles live such exhausting lives. Still, I'd have to sit the liberal arts course.
"Yes. Hmm. Then, what about studying another major as well?"
"Is there anything?"
"Where you're enrolled now is either a place meant solely for young ladies, or it builds nothing but the barest minimum of fighting strength."
"Let's see. Liberal arts, the Department of Politics, the Department of Magic. History."
Call it three or call it four—Tatiana would still have leaned toward the liberal arts. It was what a young lady needed, after all.
"Truth be told, the noble young ladies all crowd into the liberal arts. You're of the Clyde house of the North, and there isn't a separate heir at present, so I think you could use that as grounds to transfer into the practical combat course."
"The North runs that way, so it ought to be possible."
"Over there you'll find a few young lords attached to the military, and a large share of commoners as well."
Then that was the better place. Better to drop the liberal arts altogether. From what some noble had once told me, Phelione was that sort of institution: the Department of Liberal Arts was where young ladies chiefly took their bridal lessons, where the girls and the houses cultivated their ties, and where commoners set out to flaunt their skill before the nobility in hopes of becoming retainers.
"Do I not have to wear something like an academy uniform?"
"There is a set uniform. There's one in your room as well."
Laura brought the uniform out of the room. Black and white, neatly mingled. Regrettably so.
"A skirt."
"Yes. A skirt."
A skirt that climbed above the knee. Wearing the thing as it was would be too much, whatever else was true. If all I had to do was kill the Demon King, I wouldn't care what I put on—but a skirt was a different matter. It looked inconvenient for a fight, besides. If I were a mage, perhaps. Did I really need to wear it? There was such a thing as a man's pride.
"Do I absolutely have to wear this? It puts me off."
"Awakened a man's personality in there, have you? Hmm. Well, it isn't required. The Phelione uniform does come in trousers for women. Mostly the young ladies of military houses wear them."
Of course. In the end, noble young ladies are a breed that lives to show the world how unlike everyone else they are.
"Is that so."
"Of course, to a commoner this uniform costs more than a house, so they wear it all the same."
"I'll keep it here for now, and put it on only when I truly have to."
I folded the uniform roughly and shoved it into the dresser. Laura tipped her head at the sight of me.
"You dislike skirts?"
"I have to swing a sword. Wear a skirt, and I'll be thinking about it the whole time."
It would flap and flutter, and someone might see up the inside. If anything, I wanted to applaud the noble girls who went about in something this cumbersome.
"There is armor for that, you know."
"Unlike armor, this can show the underwear underneath when I'm flying about."
Women's underthings, I could accept. The body wasn't built like a man's. But I had no wish to be exposed mid-swing in a skirt. It wasn't quite revulsion. It was just—well. A bit much, let's say.
"For the time being, I think you'll have to go to the liberal arts."
"Why?"
Going to sit through that sort of thing. I was already sick to death of the hassle.
"You're set to complete it through this year, from what I saw."
"And if I don't go?"
"It's a course every noble is required to take, so His Grace the Grand Duke told you to attend that one, at least."
"What a pain."
Wasn't the Department of Liberal Arts nothing but a place for running one's mouth? Laura had said the young lords came to it in the first place largely to find themselves a partner for marriage. To think the academy itself was a meeting ground of that sort. And so, for the moment, I had come to sit the liberal arts class.
"Well! And who is this! If it isn't the young lady of von Clyde, guardian house of the North!"
Ah. Another one in the same vein as that woman from earlier. A man, this time, dressed so finely in an imperial military uniform that I couldn't tell whether this was the academy or merely some high-society salon. A glance around showed noble brats working their mouths, as if they'd been waiting for the chance to pile on behind him and curse me.
"And who might you be."
"Hmm? Surely you don't mean to say you've forgotten me?"
"I truly haven't the faintest idea. What is certain is that you seem far too rude toward Clyde."
Laura stepped forward. This one seemed to have some connection to me as well.
"And which of us has been the rude one all this—"
"That will do. Before my lady returned, she was set upon by bandits and lost her memory from the shock."
Laura seized the moment and stepped in. I'd been meaning to lean on her for a while, and sure enough—an outstanding maid. Hmm. Even so, maid of a grand ducal house or not, was it really all right to speak to a count's son like that? Unlike other noble houses, Clyde picked its maids from the North for combat strength.
"Her memory? An attack by bandits?"
"It was fortunate His Grace the Grand Duke searched out the bandits' den so quickly. My lady was in danger."
Whatever she was thinking, Laura blurted the whole of it. Watching her, she was remarkably worked up. Could it be—was the bandit attack tied up with the nobles after all?
"Ha! How convenient your fate is. Lost your memory and came through it nicely."
"What, are you some retainer of the Second Prince?"
"That's right. I, if I may say so, am of House Count Panderson, which attends His Highness the Second Prince at his very side."
"House Count Panderson?"
A count? A count's house? Wait. Thinking on it, wasn't the rank of count absurdly low? Some mere count's house in service to a single prince, daring to face a grand duke's daughter? His face was trash sunk in its own conceit, and nothing else. At this point there was no need to prepare much of anything. The order of rank was clear. This one would make a fine sacrifice for my debut at Phelione.
"That's right. And memory loss, of all things—how very like your sort."
"Even if they call us savages. A snot-nosed brat from some count's house, daring to pitch a fit at a grand duke's daughter."
I drew Viola and set it at the insolent brat's throat. The count's whelp, who hadn't even noticed that much, realized a blade hung over his neck, and his face went the color of old paper.
"—!"
I'd only laid the flat of the blade against him, and yet his brow was twitching as if it were the most terrifying thing in the world. This was attached to the military? Attending a Second Prince who served in the army? The moment the Demon King's forces came over the border, this one would bolt, wouldn't he? No—did he even have it in him to deal with a single monster?
"Wh-when did you—?"
"Engaged to a prince who keeps trash like this for a retainer. Just how great a fool was the old me."
Poor Tatiana. Born to the guardian house of the North, and she'd lived under the thumb of a pathetic wretch like this. He wasn't worth dealing with, so I put the sword away.
"And you believe you'll come through this unharmed?"
"Your master would make an enemy of the North over nothing more than one loser of a count's brat?"
Foolish, too. Even if I'd broken with the Second Prince, would he turn hostile against one of the pillars of the Empire? And over nothing but a single worthless count?
"What did you say? von Clyde, taking the side of a young lady with a broken engagement—"
"Don't you see this crest? You'd be wrong to think our house is the same as those trash noble houses that treat their own blood as property for the sake of saving face."
Thinking I might need it, I took out the crest of von Clyde. The eyes of the count's son—whose very name I had no wish to remember—went wide.
"Th-the Grand Duke's crest?"
"If you've understood, then be quiet."
With that, I turned my back. Somehow the looks around me were different from a moment ago. Of course they were. Until just now, they'd been ready to treat me as a discarded young lady. The crest the Grand Duke had given me seemed to have been put to very good use here.
"Funny, how they duck their heads all on their own over something this small."
"That's simply how nobles are. The crest of the Northern Grand Duke, and a sword drawn on the strength of that station besides—what lunatic would dare talk back?"
I'd made use of the crest, but was it really that tremendous? A little surprising.
"Is the power of a crest truly that great?"
"Originally, only the Grand Duke's heir is given one, to use in other lands. That crest."
The Grand Duke's heir? But I wasn't the heir.
"And yet?"
"The late Grand Duke passed so suddenly, and the present Grand Duke has already ascended, so that crest isn't something His Grace particularly needs anymore."
"Because he isn't the heir. He's the Grand Duke. That would explain it."
So that man Evan had become Grand Duke the moment the fellow who was his father died, and my holding this heir's crest meant the current Grand Duke had no child—and so the thing had become mine. Was that it?
"And His Grace does not, at present, have a child he might name as heir. So the succession falls to you quite naturally, my lady."
"Meaning the crest comes to me as well, for the time being."
"Yes."
Evan. And here I'd wondered whether the man was handing me something impressive. Well. It was decent enough.
"Hmm. So that's the way of it."
In short, if the Grand Duke died, I became Grand Duke. So that was why the nobles were looking at me twice. They'd been ready to tear into me once my strings were cut, but now they saw the Northern Grand Duke with his arm around me. Surely that man Evan wasn't going to die. Becoming Grand Duke was the last thing I wanted. If it came to that, I'd be shut up in the North with no way out. Me, who didn't know the first thing about politics, taking that seat—I couldn't see it ending in any prettier a sight.
"Nothing else for it. We ought to go."
"Boring. If they'd just rushed me once, I could have grabbed them and beaten them down."
If the women had latched on, it would only have worn out my mouth. Did this mean the only people who could pick a fight with me now were those on the level of a grand ducal house? Then that woman from earlier would be about the size of it.
"Tatiana."
Why were there so many people looking for me? This time it was a blond man in a white uniform. About my age, and yes—the air about him was the very picture of royalty.
"Laura. Who is this man?"
I'd already realized who he was, inwardly, but I asked anyway, just in case. No—however they might line up one after another, this was too much. Set beside the Demon King's army, it was like facing a single company only for a legion commander to step out of the ranks. Well. Either way, it hardly mattered. Set against the Demon King's army, nobles were nothing but fools who couldn't even fight. If the Kingdom's Hero had never existed, I suspect the Empire's nobles wouldn't have existed either, in the end.
"Ah. This is His Highness the Second Prince. Prince Leo Roswell."
"You're telling me this man and I were engaged."
"Yes, my lady."
This empty husk?