The Grand Duchess of the North — III
"Do you know who I am?"
I had expected she probably would. Even shut away in the North, she kept a steady eye on the capital, and if the rumors had reached her, then of course she would know something about me.
Come to think of it, wouldn't it have been stranger if she didn't? When it came to ugly rumors, few in the Empire were more famous than I.
She studied me for a long moment as I asked with deliberate puzzlement, and at last a faint smile touched her lips.
"People assume I have little interest in governance. The North is always busy, they say, so I must be nothing more than a woman handy with a sword."
"I don't think that's so."
"No, most people do. But I'm different. I take quite an interest in the capital."
At her waist, the black sword set with a blue gem fairly radiated its presence. She glanced at it, felt my gaze on her, and laid a hand on the hilt.
"Interested in my sword?"
"No. Not particularly."
"Well, these days a man can make his name through scholarship, I suppose. Anyway, that's how I know of you. A man who dreamed of romance finally woke to reality and broke off his engagement—that story had made its way even to the North. Is it true?"
Less that the tale had traveled north, I judged, than that her spies were already woven through the capital itself.
When I understood her meaning and gave a thin smile, Adele grinned along with me and drew the blade. Shing— it came free with a clean ring, radiating a pale, elegant light.
No ordinary sword. I knew that at a glance, from the way its edge shone translucent in the moonlight.
Adele ran her fingers along the ice-clear steel, then lifted her eyes to me. How to put it—as an unfathomable woman, she seemed entirely unchanged.
In truth, the Grand Duchess of the North bore many names. Some called her a tyrant; others, the guardian deity who shielded the Empire's northern reaches.
Revered and reviled in the same breath, she herself gave her reputation little thought. She simply wished to live as she pleased—and she had likely come to tonight's party for no particular reason at all. If I were pressed to guess one...
She had come because she felt like coming. That would be reason enough.
"Your eyes are empty. Nothing at all like the man I heard about."
"...And how is it you know of me?"
"Rumor, nothing more. A weak, pitiful creature, useless in every way—so I heard. That poor Lady Violet, they said, marrying such a man..."
The air around Adele changed in an instant. A chill coiled around my body, and every nerve in me began screaming to run, now, while I still could.
A sensation I remembered all too well. It took no time at all to recall where I had felt it before—right at the edge of death.
And yet I did not flinch. I already knew how she would move, and I knew that holding still was the safer course.
I dropped my gaze a fraction and saw her blade resting at my throat. Though it had never touched me, blood was seeping out—as if sliced by the sheer pressure of the mana rolling off her.
This was one reason Adele's reputation was so poor. This habit of doing exactly as she pleased was precisely why few people dared come near her.
I had expected something like this at least once upon meeting her, but experiencing it this soon narrowed my eyes. Still, that was all; my gaze lifted back to hers.
Her unshaking eyes rippled briefly with blue light. There was no need to be rattled. Didn't I already know this woman rather well? The reason she had done this was surely a test.
"Well? Can you tell now whether I'm anything like the rumors?"
Death held no more fear for me, so naturally my expression remained the picture of composure.
I had been devoured alive by beasts before. A clean cut to the throat was practically a mercy, by comparison.
A flicker of surprise crossed Adele's face at my answer.
"...Nothing like the rumors at all. Now I'm certain."
"How very fortunate."
Sheathing her sword, she turned her gaze to my neck. Blood was running down beneath the thin red line, and when I raised my sleeve to wipe it away, she caught my wrist in haste.
"Wait. Not with your sleeve."
She drew a handkerchief from inside her coat, and her hand came to rest against my throat. The murderous air from moments ago had long since scattered; in place of the rough grip that had held the sword came a touch soft and warm, and slowly she began wiping away the blood.
So, just as I'd guessed—she had simply been testing what sort of man I was. Whether I was the pathetic creature of rumor, or someone worth her interest.
Had I anticipated the test, I would have played it moderately. Instead, it seemed I had shown her my true face. Which meant, in other words, that I had rather caught her fancy.
"My apologies. I didn't mean to actually cut you."
"You believe an apology settles the matter?"
So I pushed back, just a little. Ordinarily I could never speak so to her—the 'Grand Duke' of the North—but I was, undeniably, the injured party here.
Blood was soaking through the handkerchief pressed to my neck. Might learn to moderate her strength. She cut astonishingly deep, I thought, and a sigh slipped out before I could stop it.
At the narrowing of my eyes, Adele glanced away and cleared her throat. So she knew it was her fault.
Drawing steel the moment she met someone was a habit she ought to cure, though I knew well how rarely such habits died. Even the woman I'd met long after this point in time would still, without warning, press a blade to my throat.
A chronic ailment, then. And in this state, returning to the ball was out of the question.
Adele flinched at the sight of blood trailing down into my collar.
"...What do you intend to do about this?"
"I didn't think you'd be so delicate. I never even touched you, and still you bleed..."
"And when I return to the hall, what will people say? Appearing with blood streaming down my neck—they'll wonder what in the world I was doing in this state."
And there went my plan to meet the Princess as well, didn't it.
Wrinkles creased my forehead for any number of reasons, and Adele looked at me as if beholding something strange. Unlike her apology of moments ago, her golden eyes now held unmistakable puzzlement—as though she were watching some marvelous curiosity.
What was there to be so astonished about? Yet that puzzlement faded almost at once—quickly enough that I could believe I had only imagined it.
After a moment's thought, Adele strode up to me and spoke.
"Come to the North sometime. Have a drink with me."
"A drink. You're quite serious."
"I am. You know full well I don't say this to just anyone. Hm. Shall I put it more directly?"
I tilted my head at the word directly—then a guess surfaced unbidden, and my brow furrowed. And Adele confirmed it as though my guess were precisely right.
"Aha."
An honest answer, certainly. Honest enough to make her behavior from moments ago seem all the more regrettable.
It was true I felt warmer toward Adele than toward most, but I had no wish to be entangled deeply with her. So I had shown her a touch of insolence—and it seemed that had only backfired.
"Forgive my impertinence, but I find myself curious. What exactly about me pleased you?"
I assumed it was my composure in the face of the unexpected, but the answer that came back took me quite by surprise.
"Your eyes trouble me."
My parted lips froze. Struck dumb for an instant, I could not find a reply. While I was still turning over what she could possibly mean, a cold voice slid into my ear—leaving me no opening to speak.
"Even your composure just now was like a man accepting his own death. As if, knowing the sword was coming, dying would be no great matter—as if death might even come as a relief."
"...Haha."
"So next time, come to the North. I'd like to hear, at least, why you are the way you are."
The Grand Duchess's words did not run long. Having said all she intended, she made to vanish as abruptly as she had appeared.
As Adele turned, the wolf's fur caught the moonlight and glittered. To me, staring blankly at the white hair spilling down over that silver mane, she added one last thing.
It felt as though she had struck my very core, and I had no rebuttal left in me.
Adele's figure vanished across the garden in the space of a breath. Had the handkerchief not remained at my neck, I might have mistaken the whole encounter for a fever dream.
Her meaning was clear enough: come to the North. She would send a proper invitation soon enough, no doubt—she meant for me to come all the way to where I could partake, with confidence, of whatever was offered in the Grand Duchess of the North's name.
For a shallow nick on the throat, the compensation was certainly generous.
And yet, even so, there was a reason I did not care to be drawn deep into her orbit.
Because she was one who left this world before I died.
Just as I had been framed, she too was one who went to the executioner's block over a false accusation.
...What a strange twist of fate, indeed.
I stood where I was and looked toward a corner of the empty garden—or rather, at the place where she had vanished, and at the full moon hanging above it.
She looked at the moon. Pale with a light like frost, it was no different here than it was over the North.
That was why she rarely came to the capital. Unlike her life in the North, the capital came hedged with restrictions of every kind.
And yet the reason she had come for the Princess's birthday was simple. She had wanted to. More precisely—a powerful instinct had told her that she must come here.
Grrr—
She had come not by carriage but on a dire wolf larger than any carriage, and the beast, left alone in a quiet corner, let out a low growl as its mistress approached.
"There you are. Been waiting, have you?"
Awoo—
She stroked the wolf—far larger than herself—as one might pet a puppy, and it only shivered contentedly. They had grown up together since she was small; calling the creature her only friend would not have been far wrong.
Lamentable, that an animal proved more trustworthy than people.
Stroking the coarse fur, Adele turned over what had happened. The man she'd crossed in the garden, having slipped out to escape the crowds—for a chance encounter, he had stirred a surprising amount of interest.
Hadn't a fair number of the rumors drifting out of the capital been about him?
"And here I took him for a man of no account."
Weakness was one of the traits Adele despised most in a person. She knew all too well the torments of serving an indecisive superior. She had no one above her now, but there were few memories in her whole life of suffering as she had back then.
So her first feeling, upon meeting him, had been displeasure.
But it had taken very little time for that feeling to turn to interest.
The nobles who came before her all wore the same shining eyes. Whether awe or terror, she had seen that look—eyes fixed on something no longer human—so many times she knew it by heart.
Yet Robert Taylor had merely blinked in mild surprise. The emotion in his gaze had been closer to calm.
No—emptiness would be the more accurate word. Even with a sword at his throat, his eyes had not changed. That murky blue reflected nothing; the only thing mirrored in those clouded depths was her own face.
And then, audaciously, he had demanded an apology from her. She had liked that. More precisely... it would be truer to say it had snagged her attention.
"Perhaps next time I'll let him hold the sword."
But there her interest ended. He simply did not fear her, and those hollow eyes had rubbed her the wrong way. That was the whole of it. Wouldn't it be premature to call this feeling anything more?
"Let's head back. Home."
Adele murmured it as she swung up onto the wolf's back.
By rights she ought to have hunted down the source of the instinct that had dragged her to the capital, but from the moment she met Robert, the tightness in her chest had seemed to loosen all at once. The source of that instinct had been Robert. Why, she could not say.
After all, the times Adele had weighed her reasons before acting could be counted on one hand.
Reasons... as she turned the word over, the corners of her mouth curved into a soft arc. There was no need to hurry. Did life not go as the north wind blew, as the snow drifted?
They would meet again soon, most likely. And if they did not—then she would simply arrange it so.
That was the way of the North. And it was Adele's way.