Chapter 213
When I arrive at the banquet hall, the place is packed with people.
I don't notice at first, but the ones who came this way with me from the meeting room peel off one by one, each heading for wherever their own people have gathered. Foreigners here for the conference, in other words. Envoys, to be precise? Which means that room just now held only the most important person from each delegation.
Wait. Truly?
They took me into a gathering like that and introduced me?
The more I think about it, the more it seems right. If you mean to sell me dear, it's best to tell only the highest-ranking people. The rarer a thing is, the higher its value climbs. And offering important information to only a chosen few is said to generate trust all by itself. That's what the memories claim, but are people really so guileless?
Hypion will manage well enough on his own. If it collapses, then let it collapse—an environment ripe for harvesting Warmth will spread, and that is good. If he governs well, Harvesters will mix in among his descendants, and that is also good. I've arranged the board so that I'm content whichever way the current runs. Unless someone does what Victoria tried last time, drowning the whole of it and setting out to kill every living thing there, there will be profit. I never meant to chase Warmth on so tight a schedule in the first place. Loose, always, but filled in slowly, so as to fail as little as possible.
I've come to the banquet hall, yet there isn't much for me to do. My task is simply to stand still. And now that I look, Kanna and Polaris are here as well. Polaris is staring at me, standing at the center of the hall, with a startled face. Kanna is busy making the rounds of greetings alongside her parents.
But... what is this?
Kanna, circulating at Duke Theodore's side, comes face to face with Sorindiges, and both their expressions turn exceedingly subtle. Even looking through the memories, Kanna has never held any romantic feeling for Sorindiges. A cripple can never become queen, after all. If anything, what I remember is her being rather busy mediating fights among the young ladies. No—strictly speaking, that is still in progress.
I can grant that Kanna looks at him that way because she has met the person who puts her through such trouble. But why does Sorindiges look at her like that? I don't really understand. Duke Theodore seems to catch the atmosphere as well, yet he lets it pass without a word. And so that strangely tense little scene goes by.
Afterward I simply stand a little apart from Hypion. Polaris's gaze, though, clings to me in an odd way. I meet those eyes and lift a hand in a wave, and what I get back is a wry smile before the gaze turns away to exchange greetings with someone familiar.
Is there any reason to smile with a face like that?
Hypion, at any rate, is glued fast to Aurora's side just now, and around the two of them the blue-skinned Harvesters catch the eye. Two are knights, but one was originally nothing more than a common soldier. From the memories I hold, this is someone who has no business being in a place like this. They brought him because they needed him. Are they trying to keep Aurora's blue skin from standing out? Not a bad thought.
Perhaps because I watched the making of the Harvesters with my own eyes, a few suspicious glances brush them at the start, but those vanish quickly. In their place, the gazes pour onto me—the one who made them.
Aha.
Did they stand me here to scatter the attention aimed at Aurora? Isn't that shielding her a bit too much? This country has two princesses and one prince. Isn't that playing favorites far too openly?
No... He is the king. If anything, he can do exactly that. A king, should the need arise, can shut even his own child in a rice chest and leave them to starve. No—not starvation. Death by confinement is the proper term. In any case, a king is someone who can force his likes and dislikes upon the world.
Ordinarily, when favoritism in a royal house falls upon one child, the others ought to grow jealous... Yet Sorindiges, of course, and even the eldest daughter, Lunasia, like Aurora a great deal. This place is strange. Perhaps, because she was meant to die, they treated her kindly until affection set in, and that is how it came to this. Affection taking root is a good thing. The odds that the children Aurora bears will survive have risen.
Anyway. I don't know what will become of the Harvesters in this royal house. Honestly, I would like to make Sorindiges a Harvester, but unless some accident occurs or an illness takes hold, that will be difficult. If someone becomes a Harvester only after bearing a child, the child lies outside my influence. Not that I ought to wish for it to happen that way. Better that I keep my own hands clean. When I still my breath, I have to swallow it properly. I don't swallow anything that fails to reach the tip of my tongue, so that when I do, it goes down in a single gulp. I have time enough.
And so I stand still, together with the young knight they first assigned to me. I thought it would end without any particular conversation between us, but after a considerable stretch of time the knight suddenly comes up and whispers, low.
"Standing like that—isn't it uncomfortable?"
From his expression, he is being considerate of me. There really are a great many good people here.
"It's work."
Ordinarily, saying it that way means you'll endure the discomfort, but I truly don't find it hard to stand like this. Explain it, though, and it will sound as if I'm being considerate of Hypion. Or as if I'm being kept under someone's thumb. See? The people who were watching me from beyond the Harvesters' line of sight prick up their ears the moment I answer. It isn't a distance at which sound ought to carry. Is there some sort of magic? Or do they simply have good ears? Judging by the flinch from the one with animal ears, it may only be good hearing. Which means I need to watch my words. Keeping that in mind, I look at the knight and ask.
"And you?"
"It's work for me too. Impressive. You can't be used to this sort of thing, and yet you can stand so still. I know. I've had parade drill myself."
When he says parade drill, his expression pinches slightly. Mm. Of course. It wouldn't be strange for there to be training in holding a posture this stiff. All the more so for a knight who enters the royal household this way—they might even use him as ornament. He speaks quite kindly. And his face truly does look worried.
But the moment I answer, gazes come flying that prick at my skin. Wondering what it is, I turn my eyes that way. Several people of the station one would ordinarily call a young lady. And, moving along the edge, a single maid. An emotion I know well. Among the feelings bound up with dying wretchedly, it ranks near the very top.
Jealousy.
Mmm. Yes. I'm a girl too, aren't I? He is a man who objectively counts among the handsome, and therefore a creature who can be approached on sexual grounds. Jealousy aimed at an object of reproduction is a perfectly natural phenomenon. I understand.
I'm turning over whether I might make use of it when a memory gleams up to say that pretending not to notice is best. Another memory gleams as well—that it is delicious to take a jealous child, melt them down, and eat them—but I would like to replace the searcher with a better one. I want memories of humans with peculiar appetites like this excluded from the search. And isn't there far too much of this jealous-lover business anyway? I witness it often enough with Victoria in the dormitory. No—it has only been a matter of days since she entered the dormitory, and already such things are happening, and here it is the same. Is it a shortage of entertainment? Or is this not cheap, immediate pleasure, but ordinary behavior? Since it concerns relations between people, this does seem to be normal. Those who like one another meet, mate, clear away any rivals, stake their claim, and stamp it with the brand called marriage.
No. There is no need to go out of my way and inform anyone that, in truth, plenty of royal houses share their maternal line while the paternal line is severed. You don't have to light up at me about how it is the same in every world. Daegon's memory. I'm talking to you.
Honestly. Anyway. There is no need to make enemies for nothing. I can't say it doesn't already feel a little late, but there is no need to feed the flames. Even a royal household would dislike being dragged into talk of this sort, and if a tool starts moving of its own accord, Hypion will be put in a difficult position.
It is better to have no personality. That makes one convenient to use. That is why a company shouts at a new hire about what they even know how to do, grinds down their self-respect, and then dominates them in the mind—don't try anything else, just listen to what I say. They don't need people who know how to think properly. They want something that performs exactly the function desired. So they use it for as long as they wish, then use it up and throw it away. A bloated society runs that way. Because it is convenient. There is a reason the word cog exists.
It is the same reason that, in some remote corner, they feed people pesticide until they are left disabled, put the survivors to use as they are, and throw the dead into the sea so that it is as if they never existed. In a faded memory, the things called zombies have their origin in that same place. Tools that do not think. Convenient to use. Treated as a tool like that, a person's mind breaks. If they are a person.
I am not a person. If anything, I am the enemy of that. So if anything, I hope to be treated that way.
Hehe.
When I say nothing more and hold my place, the man studies me for a moment, then comes to stand near me again and resumes the escort. It would be nice if this ended just as it is, with nothing happening at all.
I am thinking that when, a little later, he makes a small gesture. Wondering what it is, I see him point a finger farther inward. There is a pillar near the spot where I stand apart.
Hm?
Ah. He is suggesting I rest. Behind the pillar is a terrace, and that is a place meant for resting to begin with. If someone is there, you tacitly avoid it; and when you go in, there is a rule that you close the curtain and leave a hem of clothing hanging out in front. Not a written rule, of course, but habitus. Habitus. A rule shared only by those who occupy that position.
In any case, I have no need to rest, so I shake my head. And then Kanna sees me and comes over. She walks straight up to me, looking me full in the face, and stops the escort as he eases a step forward.
"I mean to talk for a moment. I will, however, frame it as a request in the name of Kanna Temerlein Theodore. Would you stand in front and see that we are left to rest?"
She lays a hard stress on rest, and the escort looks straight at Kanna, then leads the two of us to the place he had indicated a moment ago. He ushers us out onto the terrace, draws the curtain, and takes up his post in front of it.
"Hello."
"You really never do change."
Kanna wears a wry smile.
"Holding the same posture in a place like that is miserable. Sit for a bit."
With that she indicates a chair on the terrace. I sit, and she sits as well.
"So now it's time to rest."
"Mm. Exactly."
Kanna laughs, a stifled little giggle, as if to say I understood perfectly.