Private Tutoring (1)
Neville straightened his back and took in the great castle towering before his eyes. Thick clouds smothered the sky, and though it was the middle of the day, the whole world had gone dim and gray.
Krrr-rumble.
Every roll of thunder squeezed Neville's heart in its fist. He did his best to smother the stray thoughts, but he could do nothing about the creeping sense of foreboding.
If it weren't for the academy recommendation riding on this...
No — if not for the lovely child soon to be born, his dear Miren, he never would have taken this job in the first place. Tutoring a noble's young lord paid handsomely precisely because the work was so punishing.
And the young lord in question was no ordinary noble. He was the heir of House Esterzy, masters of the vast northern territories.
But how am I supposed to get inside?
There was no sign whatsoever of the main gate showing any intention of opening. Under normal circumstances a servant would have come out to meet him long before this. Neville drifted along the row of windows, peering in at the building's interior.
Creeeak.
That was when it happened. Out of nowhere, a small side door set flush into the wall swung open, and a woman appeared carrying a lamp — a woman in her early thirties, with a kind, honest face.
"Are you the etiquette tutor?"
"Yes. My name is Neville."
"The main gate is under repair. This way, please."
Neville drew a long, steadying breath and followed her inside.
Candles were lit along the corridor, but they were no match for the gloom. As he walked on after that faint light, his gaze was caught by a frame hanging on the wall.
"...What a curious painting."
Something that was half script and half picture lay coiled across a sheet of yellow paper. It seemed to hold a pattern of some kind, but deciphering it was beyond his learning.
"The young lord is very fond of drawing, you see."
Neville dredged up a few of the rumors he'd heard about Young Lord Iden. It was true — he had heard it said that the boy had a talent for painting.
"Oh, and there is one thing you must be careful about."
The woman looked back over her shoulder, her tone that of a gentle warning.
"You must follow me closely. Far too many people have let their eyes wander and lost their way in here... You understand, don't you?"
"Yes."
Neville nodded, thinking all the while what on earth there was to get lost in along a perfectly straight corridor.
"Young Lord Iden is in the room at the very end of the corridor. Don't let your gaze wander under any circumstances — just keep close to me."
The woman impressed it upon him one more time.
For no reason he could name, Neville tensed and put his senses on edge. The moment he did, everything began to feel suspect. He could have sworn a suit of armor had moved on its own; he could have sworn he'd heard someone calling his name.
Each time, he murmured his unborn child's name like a prayer. Miren, Miren...
"Young Lord, the etiquette tutor, Master Neville, has arrived."
Neville's eyes flew wide open as he looked around — and found himself standing on the threshold of a drawing room glowing with antique grandeur. There, he discovered the most inscrutable being his living eyes had ever beheld.
A child as smooth as porcelain and as beautiful as a flower.
"Hello."
The moment the child gave a little wave, Neville dropped to his knees in a desperate scramble.
"M-my greetings, Your Highness! I-I am to oversee Your Highness's education starting today—!"
"Neville, isn't it?"
The child's lips curved in a gentle arc. It was a warm, unguarded smile.
A parade of faces flashed through Neville's mind — every young lord he had endured in his years of playing etiquette tutor. Each and every one as full of himself as his house was powerful.
Drunk on their own excellence, they had never once deigned to listen to a word he said. Listening would have been a mercy — he counted himself lucky on the days they didn't use him as a test dummy for their Awoken abilities.
Among them had been Chris Esterzy, the duke's second son. The hours spent with that little devil held the place of honor as the most painful chapter of Neville's memory.
"First, please allow me to present you with a book. It compiles every rule of etiquette you must learn, Young Lord."
Neville set his satchel on the desk — but the book was so thick it refused to come out of the bag.
Then something touched the back of his hand, cold enough to chill him to the marrow. The child had reached out one small hand, and now he drew the book free as easily as pulling a radish from the earth.
"Ah — thank you."
Gratitude aside, Neville was astonished by the boy's cooperativeness.
Trivial as it seemed, in all his years as a tutor he had never once experienced anything like it. For a noble child who had been waited on hand and foot his whole life to display this kind of tact in his very first lesson was simply not how the world worked.
You could have told Neville the boy was on his second lap through life, and he would have believed every word.
"If there's anything you're missing, just say the word — anything at all. I've waited seven years for this lesson."
The boy spread the book open and smiled. A bell tolled, dong, dong, somewhere in Neville's skull. In a head stuffed to the rafters with protocol, the boy already ranked as a duke in his own right.
Thirteen years left to live.
I couldn't swear I'd die at exactly twenty, but ruminating on my past life, I was certain the end would come somewhere around there.
I had toyed with the idea of throwing the title and everything else to the wind and roaming the mountains and wilds chasing down monster materials, but that would be nothing more than a rehash of my last life. Waiting with open hands for some fated opportunity to find me as I drifted across the world with no destination — versus becoming Grand Duke and wielding staggering wealth and manpower at will. The latter won, hands down.
Isn't this what my son wants?
That single remark of Father's had become the milestone of my life. After all, hadn't he shown me firsthand how much easier everything becomes once you hold the title of Grand Duke?
Which was why I had such high hopes for the lessons beginning today. Statecraft above all — essential study for anyone who intends to be a ruler.
"Master Marden is running a little late."
Lily's voice was threaded with worry as she glanced at the clock.
"He really should be here by now... He is absolutely not the sort of man to forget an appointment."
"Is that so?"
"And your tutor in the liberal arts, Madam Ainsel, is late as well — without so much as a word of notice."
Don't worry, Lily. The two of them did arrive on time.
They just hadn't arrived in one piece. Marden was a trained assassin, and Ainsel was under the sway of some Awoken ability she herself knew nothing about.
My requirements had been modest. First, that they be of sound mind. Second, that they not be too flagrantly greedy for personal gain.
Meet those two conditions and they would have passed through my formation without incident. Neither managed it — and so now the two of them were off enjoying a delightful maze expedition.
"That leaves just the martial arts and statecraft instructors."
Just then, I felt it — the sense of an outsider breaching the formation. It shrilled up along my spine like a plucked zither string.
Who is it? The martial arts instructor, or the statecraft one?
...Neither, as it turned out.
The alarm traps I'd seeded throughout the formation were shrieking fit to burst. Hostility at this level could not belong to any teacher — though it might suit someone who had come to relieve me of my head.
I reached out into empty air and hooked my middle finger into a ring. Puppet No. 2 and Puppet No. 3, built from brooms, received the signal and deployed. I doubted even this one would enjoy taking a broom laced with Daoist power to the face.
That was the moment. My connection to Puppet No. 2 and Puppet No. 3 was severed, both at once.
So he means to smash straight through with brute force?
I whipped around to Lily.
"Lily!"
"Yes?"
"Go upstairs for a bit."
"Right this instant?"
"Yes — right now!"
I muscled a bewildered Lily up the stairs whether she liked it or not. The intruder was shattering every obstacle in his path, boring a dead-straight line through the formation.
I could hear it all: flower pots crumbling and bursting, tree trunks snapping with a wet crunch. Puppet No. 34 and Puppet No. 35, guarding the entrance to the drawing room, had just fallen in the line of duty.
I made sure I was ready for anything. Rising from my seat, I wove the qi of the Five Elements around my body in a tight, seamless mesh.
Anyone who believes a Daoist can't hold his own in close quarters is badly mistaken. We simply prefer not to fight by slamming our bodies into things.
BANG.
With a blast that nearly tore my eardrums loose, the door was ripped out of its frame and slammed into the wall like a thrown shuriken.
Out of the swirling dust, a young man in a black uniform strode in, unhurried, step by even step. Bronze skin. Two horns jutting from his forehead, curving inward. Hair black as the bottom of a well, and canines sharp to the point of suspicion. His eyes were a kaleidoscope of shifting color, and between his fangs a thin gray smoke was seeping upward, curl and curl again.
He looked nothing like a human being — a man with the face you would expect to find in a bestiary of monsters.
"Who are you?"
I dragged up every scrap of Daoist power I had. His presence was bearing down on the very space around him, and it was the first time since my Master that I'd known pressure like this.
"Me?"
He pointed a long finger at his own chest.
"Name's Caroi. And who might you be?"
"I am—"
"Save it. One of that bastard's brood, I'll wager. Spitting image of him, too."
He waved my words away before I could finish.
Oddly enough, I sensed no killing intent from him. Nothing clung to him but an inexhaustible nuisance.
"You're the martial arts instructor?"
"Martial arts and statecraft both. Consider it an honor, human brat. If not for that bastard's request, I'd never have stooped to trading words with your puny kind at all."
"You're teaching both of them, by yourself?"
"Never said I'd teach. Only said I was the instructor."
...What on earth was that supposed to mean?
"Catch."
He hurled a book my way — a thick volume bound in lumpy leather of highly dubious provenance. From between its pages seeped an energy of unknown origin, and I could say with certainty that it was nothing like the holy power Colin wielded.
"I penned every word of it myself. Regard it as an honor, and apply yourself to your studies without me."
The fellow tramped over and planted himself in front of the sofa, leaving behind only,
"Wake me when you've finished reading,"
before flopping down flat on the floor, a cushion settled over his head.
I looked from the book in my hands to the man and back again.
I had pinned such hopes on the statecraft. But judging by the state of him, the man seemed about as far removed from scholarship as a body could get.
Still, read it I would. You can't judge a man by his hide, after all.
And besides — this was the teacher Father treasured above all others, wasn't he?