The Song of Fire and Ice (2)
"I'm sorry—what did you just say?"
Laszlo asked, his eyes going round with bewilderment.
No doubt about it. When I'd gripped his wrist, I had sent a single thread of qi drifting through his body, and the current had met no resistance anywhere along its path. The boy had been born with the makings of a first-rate Daoist.
Had my master felt this same way, the day he first found me? The saddest little brat in the world—and behind those gloomy eyes, a natural talent for the Daoist arts.
"Hey, you..."
I held his gaze, steady and unblinking. He tensed and swallowed hard.
"Want to come live at my place?"
"Young Master."
Thalia cut in.
"Count Abaro may not take kindly to that."
I followed the flick of her eyes. A fat man with blue hair—presumably Laszlo's father—was glaring at me like he wanted me six feet under.
And that glare said it all: why on earth would you waste your breath on trash like that? He was probably backing one of my two dear brothers.
"Laszlo."
I released his hand as I spoke.
"If it ever gets to be too much, send word to me. However I can help, I will."
He wasn't even looking at me anymore. His head held nothing but the fear of his father. A pity—but for now, letting him go was the only option.
Well, nothing to be done about it. It wasn't as if I could buy somebody else's child for a handful of coins, the way certain people do.
Everything after this depended entirely on his own will. If our thread of fate somehow held, it would grow into the bond of master and disciple; if it snapped, he would simply remain one more pitiable little boy in my memory.
"Let's go."
I set down the pastry I'd been holding.
"I've got a rough read on the mood now."
The banquet hall had divided itself into two great camps—one clustered around Chris, the other around Mabel—and Mabel's was unmistakably the smaller of the two.
That the eldest son commanded so little support came down entirely to his ability. Even to me, who knew next to nothing about Awoken Abilities, it was an absurd power. And that power was...
"What was Mabel's Awoken Ability again?"
"Song of Growth, sir. When he sings, crops grow faster."
Right. Song of Growth.
If his dream in life were gardening, perhaps it would do. As the son of a duke, it was about the worst possible fit imaginable.
The duchy was anything but stable—you needed only to look at how Father was forever riding out on subjugation campaigns. On land this uneasy, who in their right mind passes the title to a boy whose talent is singing at blades of grass?
Chris's power, on the other hand...
Veritas.
A supreme-class mental-type Awoken Ability that forced its commands upon others. Told to live, a person lived; told to die, they died.
When I'd first heard the stories, all I could manage was a hollow laugh. Wasn't the man practically a god?
Born with power like that, anyone who valued their life would fall in line of their own accord.
And yet one question kept gnawing at me. If his gift was really that overwhelming, why did he never once turn it on our older brother—or on me?
I knew for a fact the man had no patience to speak of.
There had to be something—an activation condition, a price to be paid, anything—to explain why he stayed so docile.
Suddenly, the hall erupted into commotion. Chris was striding toward Mabel, a swarm of followers at his heels.
Five years apart, and Chris had grown into someone I barely recognized.
The boy had been famous for his striking looks since the age of six, and now, past ten, he was every inch the beautiful young lord. The formal coat—gold thread embroidered on black—suited him handsomely, and his insolent expression sat on his face like an ornament picked to match the outfit.
At his approach, Mabel's supporters scattered in every direction like a colony of squirrels that had spotted a cat. Chris walked on, unhurried and unhindered, and planted himself squarely in front of Mabel.
"Vitten."
I turned to him, urgent.
"Something to drink. Anything."
A spectacle like this simply had to come with a drink.
Vitten hurried off on his procurement mission. It was my first time seeing Mabel in person: a sturdy boy with orange hair cropped short, a build that made his knight training believable, and an easy, affable smile that filled the air around him with warmth.
"Mabel, my dear brother."
Chris opened the exchange.
"Why are you still lingering on the estate? If you wanted to be a knight, shouldn't you have followed Father?"
"Father says it isn't time yet."
Mabel replied, gentle as ever.
"If I'm not yet strong enough to fight monsters, then I ought to go sing for the fields instead. The weeds would shoot up nice and thick and tangle the monsters' feet, wouldn't they?"
Roars of laughter broke out across the hall.
"Chris. Every Awoken Ability has its own use. Mine may not bind a monster's feet, but it can serve faithfully enough elsewhere."
"Oh, absolutely—there are plenty of places you'd be useful, Brother. Places crawling with hicks, where they raise pigs and tend vegetables and shovel manure out of the latrine every single morning."
Hm. Rivals or not, that was still his own brother and the family's eldest son. Could he really say that straight to his face?
"Hahahaha!"
"The outhouse—what a perfect fit for him."
"He's not wrong, is he? Farming is such noble, important work. Heh heh."
Mockery rained down from the nobles on Chris's side.
Ah. So it was acceptable.
Save for Mabel's tiny knot of retainers, nearly everyone present was jeering in perfect unison—and Mabel bore it all so steadfastly that I almost felt respect for the man.
Then again, this country didn't exactly believe in character education, did it? By the age of seven I hadn't heard so much as a whisper of the Analects or the Dao De Jing, and the lessons awaiting me looked to be mostly about fighting. No wonder the whole hall stood there in lavish clothes, reciting the most rotten things imaginable.
"Of course, if there is a place that needs me, I will run there gladly. For the family's sake, a little dirt on my clothes is nothing at all."
Magnificent. Truly, my dear brother Mabel.
Perhaps the eldest really should be duke after all? We could lock the second one in a cell, and I would simply go on cultivating my Dao in peace.
"Your drink, sir."
"Thanks."
Vitten had returned with a pink juice—some red, sweet fruit crushed fine and stirred into milk. Honestly, just being able to drink this in my new life made it worth living.
"You do talk a grand game. Strange, then, that those clothes of yours have never once touched dirt."
"That's only because you don't know me. I have my hands in the soil every single day. If you're so curious, come by my garden sometime."
"I'll pass. I keep a gardener for that."
Another storm of laughter shook the hall. Mabel's vassals flushed crimson with shame—but even now, Mabel did not lose his smile. He regarded Chris quietly for a moment, then spoke, as though something had only just occurred to him.
"More than that, it's you I worry about, Chris."
"You have leisure to spare for worrying over me?"
"Father says the youngest's talent has already outstripped yours. At this rate, I fear you'll end up searching for your usefulness somewhere else entirely."
...Huh?
"What did you just say."
Chris's voice came back laced with killing intent. Mabel, his smile serene as a windless pond, repeated himself at a pace even a monkey could follow.
"Father. Says. The youngest. Is better. Than you."
The destructive force of that one sentence was staggering. The smiles drained from every face in earshot, and confusion and unease flooded in to fill the empty space.
"His Highness rates Young Master Eden higher?"
"Impossible. He must have made it up on the spot."
"Come now—when has Lord Mabel ever spoken a careless word?"
"True. His ability may be weak, but he has never once lied."
"Wait—if that's true, what becomes of Lord Chris?"
"We shouldn't be standing here. We should be paying our respects to Young Master Eden..."
The mood churned beyond anyone's power to settle. The political footing Chris had built over years now stood one blow from collapsing under Mabel's gentle smile.
"Ha!"
Chris let out a scornful laugh.
"That worthless brat, better than me? What nonsense is—! Or have you all forgotten how he couldn't even control his own power and froze his own mother to death?"
"That is not true."
Thalia had come to my side. Her whisper was small and unyielding.
"Your lady mother's cause of death was not the cold, Young Master. It was poison."
I whipped my head toward her.
"What do you mean, poisoned?"
All this time I had believed, without a shadow of doubt, that I had frozen my own mother to death—exactly as I had in my past life.
"She was affected by your chill, Young Master—but her vitality had already collapsed long before it ever reached her."
"Then who in the hell would do such a thing?"
"Unknown. Every circumstance points to poisoning, yet no toxin was ever detected in her body."
"A poisoning with no poison? How does that even—"
A single word flashed through my mind.
"...Don't tell me. An Awoken Ability."
She nodded.
"His Highness is still searching for the one who wields such a power, to this very day."
My breathing turned rough. Six years ago—a certain beast, jamming a pastry into my mouth by force. The memory surged back, vivid enough to taste.
"Chris, all your little story proves is that the youngest's power is simply so mighty it's difficult to control. Father said much the same thing."
"Cut the crap! Father would never say that!"
"As it happens, the youngest is standing right here among us. Why don't we hear it from him directly?"
Every head in the hall—literally every single person gathered in that vast ballroom—turned toward me at once.
It was the moment the banquet changed hands. And perhaps, just perhaps, the moment the title would change hands too.
Two thoughts seized me in that instant.
First: that my dear, sunny brother Mabel had laid this entire board with deliberate intent.
Second: that whatever his intent might be, I had just climbed onto a tiger's back.
"...No invitation was ever sent to you."
Chris's teeth ground together.
"The duke's residence is my home as well, Brother."
"Don't presume. Not from a mongrel who can't even govern his own power."
"And what makes you believe I can't govern it?"
"Then you claim you can?"
I smiled sweetly and gave my glass a single swirl. The top of the drink crackled and froze solid, hardening into a neat little square of ice.
"Did you all see that?"
"Ice just formed on top of his drink!"
Cries of wonder burst from the crowd—above all from the girls.
"Freezing only the precise region he wills—what astonishing manipulation-type power."
"It's still just ice, though. I hardly think that merits His Highness's praise."
"Quite. That much could never compare to Lord Chris."
Opinions split this way and that.
"How utterly laughable."
Chris snickered.
"So what exactly is that supposed to prove? Isn't it just a nature-type Awoken Ability? Let's see now—you'd need fire to melt that teensy little ice cube. Ah, yes, a candle off that candelabra would do the trick nicely. If only that were an option for you..."
Then it happened. An enormous flame roared up from my hand. In the space of a breath it swelled into a pillar that licked the ceiling; the chandelier vanished without a trace, and the temperature of the hall climbed high enough to sting the skin.
Jaws hung open all around at the staggering sight.
"Fire and ice, both at the same time—how...!"
"This defies belief!"
"S-Solitas!"
An old man wailed the god's name. Some dropped to their knees where they stood; others were so overwhelmed by the shock that they began to struggle for breath.
This was no longer a question of one ability being strong. By everything these people knew, two powers dwelling in a single body was impossible. Just as I had been shaken to my core when I realized what a dragon was, they too were now gazing upon the awe of an entirely different world.
"Let me be perfectly clear."
Chris was failing, thoroughly and publicly, at managing his own expression. I stepped in close and murmured softly by his ear.
"When you don't know what you're talking about, it's wiser to keep that mouth of yours shut."
The blood drained from Chris's face.