There Are Bad Dogs in the World - 4
What was a man supposed to feel, meeting the grandchild of a daughter he had not seen in twenty years? His daughter had been someone he only managed to see again after word arrived that she was dead — and so whatever he felt toward House Taylor leaned, if anything, toward the bitter end of things.
And so the word grandson had stirred nothing in particular when he first heard it. Only a mild curiosity about the person his daughter had brought into the world.
"I imagine I learned it from my mother."
The unabashed confidence gave the old man pause, yet it also stirred a strange déjà vu. The boy knew perfectly well that he was trying to bring the conversation to a close — and still he showed no trace of displeasure. If anything, he seemed determined to coax the Count's interest back to life.
What, he wondered, did the word mother mean to the grandson sitting before him? The Count studied the boy's eyes for a moment and smiled faintly to himself. At the very least, the word did not seem to carry any bitterness — and for that much alone, he was quietly glad.
His daughter had been sickly, and yet she had lived more vibrantly than anyone he had ever known. It was Serena who had stepped forward and offered herself to a political marriage before the notion had even crossed his mind — and whether that choice ever bore the fruit she hoped for, he could no longer say.
The rumors surrounding her son Robert were a shambles, and her daughter Yuria was treading a path no different from her father's. In the end, he had concluded, nothing Serena had envisioned ever came to pass. That was what he believed — right up until the day he met Robert.
"The North, the Church, the Imperial Family — all three powers already stand with me. Once I am Family Head, their support will help settle the house into stability."
"Can you be certain of that? Certain that the support they send will hold even after you take the seat?"
"I am certain."
What the boy placed such certainty in, the Count could not fathom. To draw in the Grand Duke and the Saintess both was remarkable enough — but to harbor not one shred of doubt in what he believed... It was like watching Serena all over again. Over that strangely lifted corner of the boy's mouth, another face superimposed itself.
He regarded it for a long moment, then exhaled a small sigh and slowly shut his eyes. ...There was not a single thing about the boy that resembled her. His eyes were the peculiar cold blue unique to the Taylors, and if anything about him recalled Serena, it could only be some part of his face. Even that was hard to find, buried beneath an expression that sat unusually dark.
Those hollow eyes looked as though they had weathered every storm the world had to offer; it felt like gazing upon an old man older than himself. Perhaps it was only his imagination — but surely the boy had endured a great deal under the name of Taylor.
No doubt he had come here seeking the Count's backing. He understood that well enough, and yet he had no wish to entangle himself with House Taylor. It was the place where Serena had died — the place he had never wanted to send her to. There could be no affection left in him for such a house.
He had meant to send the boy away the moment he arrived. Instead, against all sense, he found himself intrigued. What his grandson shared with his daughter was not her face but something else entirely — the way he spoke, the way he produced preparations no one could have anticipated. In all of it, he was the very image of the Serena he once knew.
"A political marriage? I don't think it's such a bad thing. I met that Arthur Taylor person once, you know. Couldn't he change, given the chance?"
Declaring that Arthur Taylor — newly seated as Family Head, his reputation in tatters — could yet change, and then quietly making preparations for her own secret marriage... It looked little different from her grandson arriving at his door with the Grand Duke's seal in hand. Things no sane man would so much as attempt — and, for reasons the Count could not begin to guess, results that succeeded to an uncanny degree.
Judged coldly, the plan Robert had built seemed quite sound. The Imperial Family, the North, the South — and if he went on drawing the nobility into his fold, he might not merely match Yuria Taylor's strength but bury it outright.
He would refrain from lending his own hand, of course. But with names like those carried on a man's back, the board had already tilted beyond recognition.
And then there were the rumors, which had begun to change of late. That Robert Taylor had become an entirely different man — kind words were attaching themselves, one by one, to a young lord who had never known anything but scorn. That their source lay not in the capital but in the outskirts of the territories was a fact of no small weight. It meant the powers of the central region could no longer keep a perfect grip on what lay beyond it.
He can hold his own. Objectively, that was the assessment — plain enough. And yet the Count found his attention settling on Robert the man himself.
Was this Robert Taylor — or someone trying to walk a somewhat different road? If he were cut from the same cloth as the current Young Matriarch, it would make no difference whom he backed. If anything, throwing his weight behind Yuria — who held the same posture as the sitting Family Head — would bring stability that much sooner.
But whenever he looked at Robert, he could not shake the feeling of brushing against some stray fragment of his daughter — in the words he chose, and in the thoughts that shone through them. After a moment's weighing, the Count quietly parted his lips.
"What I find myself curious about is what comes after. How do you intend to handle the aftermath?"
At the word aftermath, Robert's expression dimmed slightly. It was a question that had gnawed at him without pause. Once he took the seat, the faction Yuria had built would demand a reckoning — and to keep the cycle from repeating, the ending had to be clean.
Sever the chain of misfortune at its link. Better that everything should end within his own generation, so that this wretched tradition would never be handed down again. Was that not why he meant to erase the very name of Taylor? If the house were to perish under a charge of treason, that would be the cleanest ending of all.
Even so, Yuria's fate would have to be weighed with a certain coldness. Robert hesitated a moment, then answered slowly.
"Yuria — I intend to end her with my own hands."
"You mean to kill her, then."
"If that is the only way it can be brought to a close, then I will. I have no wish to repeat, generation after generation, what happens in House Taylor. At the very least, we ought to be the last."
"...So you leave no room for the possibility of reformation."
Serena would surely have raised the possibility of change in a moment like this — just as she once had with Arthur Taylor. Just as the small warmth the Count had begun to nurse was guttering out, Robert smiled faintly and spoke.
"My mother used to say something."
"Serena, you mean."
"She said that there are no bad dogs in the world — that anyone can change. It was a habit of hers, so I remember it still, word for word."
"There are no bad dogs in the world. If something seems bad from the very start, that's just an excuse — in the end, I believe anyone can change. Who's to say Duke Taylor can't change too? Live beside him some ten years, and he might just become someone completely different from the man he is now."
Those were the words Serena always said. Anyone can change — his daughter, who had pursued a way of life utterly foreign to the Taylors', had accepted that marriage hand in hand with them.
To think the boy knew them, too. Feeling the old man's gaze reach him, Robert looked back at the Count and smiled bitterly.
Not everything his mother said was true. Perhaps it was right that no one is wicked from the start — but at the very least, those words did not apply to Yuria.
Had anyone ever tried harder than he had? Across dozens of regressions he had tried to turn Yuria inside out, down to her very roots, and still she never changed. Which meant the twisted would never right themselves. And so he could not simply stand by. Others might be spared — but Yuria Taylor had to be ended, by whatever means it took.
"And yet there are bad dogs. My sister was that kind of creature from the very beginning."
"...It appears you did make the attempt."
"I tried a great deal. If anything, I may have poured more effort into it than anyone alive."
The Count swallowed, then let out a small breath. The words did not ring false. What lay tangled within those hollow eyes was intricate beyond reading — he could not tell what the boy was thinking, only that Robert, speaking so, looked a man at war with himself. It did not feel like a lie.
"There are people who simply do not change. One might call such constancy a virtue, I suppose — but no one could call what Yuria does good."
"And the others, then?"
"I would rather not see so much blood spilled. I mean to keep as many people alive as I can and draw them to my side by whatever means it takes. Why else would I be moving as I am? You understand better than most that these are actions I would never have needed to take otherwise."
He could not argue with that. For a man to move in person under the name of Taylor was exceptional. Normally the nobles came flocking of their own accord — yet whatever his method, Robert was the one approaching them first. Winning them over, gathering them in. This visit, too, must be one thread of that design. Though that Serena was woven into the reason for it — that much, somehow, seemed certain.
"...I don't believe everything my mother said was wrong. Some people do change, if someone tries. If they mend their hearts and join me, I will take them gladly enough — but Yuria is not one of them."
The face was resolute, yet somewhere beneath it ran a thread of bitterness. Watching him, the Count felt something nameless stir. For all the boy resembled Serena, a side of him belonged to Arthur Taylor as well. That a child should take after both his parents was no marvel — but he had never imagined such a thing possible under the name of Taylor.
"Once you are Family Head — once the aftermath is settled — what will you do then?"
It may have been a question with little bearing on the matter at hand, but Robert answered it quite readily. It was something he had always kept sketched in the back of his mind. Because even after he took the seat — even as he moved to kill the Crown Prince — the house would go on existing.
"...Not much would change, I imagine."
What remained to him was barely a year and a little more. He would not spend it wholly at the ducal residence, and above all, he would be busy working his way into the Crown Prince's confidence. Some would be disappointed by the course he took after becoming Family Head; some might turn their backs on him altogether.
Had his father ever discovered such conduct, he would no doubt have come straight for him and beaten it out of him. And his mother — what would she have done?
He thought it was all right, now, to let a little of it fade. But Robert had no wish to deny his mother's influence on him. He had lived by what she always taught him — though wearied of such words, he had since abandoned most of them. Even so, one thing remained true: the wish to carry her will forward.
"But one thing is certain: something will change. Whatever it takes — toward something better."
"Nothing but vague words, all of it. Not one thing concrete — mere abstraction, and nothing more."
Had it been anyone else, the Count might have refused him outright. Truthfully, the offer held little allure — and if he lent his backing, he stood to lose more than he might gain were the boy to fail.
"I think he'll change. If I go to him and we live together, won't everything turn toward the better? Just like it did with you, Father."
And then — he simply saw Serena. The daughter he had lost twenty years ago looked back at him from the face of the grandson who had come to him after twenty. His heart was simply drawn. Even if age had dulled his judgment, surely a man could afford to believe, just this once.
"I hope it goes well for you this time."
Let it not end, someday, with nothing but word of a sudden death — so thinking, the Count gave his reply.
Robert watched him speak for a moment, then quietly smiled. The feeling gathered in that expression was a remembrance of the past. He could not know for certain who it was the old man saw superimposed upon him — but if it was his mother, then that alone was enough.