“Yeah, I know. But that was a thousand years ago.”
“True. But consider the cultural level: the Eldant Empire isn’t that far from the Heian Era, or maybe the Kamakura?”
“Well...”
He was right. People want various different things out of marriage, but when the goal was purely to produce a child who would carry on the family lineage to the next generation, then any girl who could get pregnant was ready to get married. It was really only in the modern era that we had come to think of eighteen or twenty years old as the line between being a child and being an adult—it was an idea with precious little history yet. You could even say that seventeen was the prime of the marrying years.
“I’m telling you,” Hikaru-san insisted, “I can hardly believe Her Majesty hasn’t been betrothed already at this point in her life.”
“I really wonder...”
“Still, when you’re an empress, you have to find a spouse of suitable status. He may be the prince of another nation, but at least he’s a prince; there shouldn’t be any objection there. Prime Minister Zahar told us this sort of thing wasn’t unusual, remember?”
“Well...”
“The prime minister said that?” Myusel cocked her head, curious, as if she couldn’t quite follow what we were saying. It was like she didn’t know why Prime Minister Zahar’s name should come up in discussing Petralka’s marriage.
“So, uh,” I said, trying to put it briefly. According to Prime Minister Zahar, the Eldant Empire and the Kingdom of Zwelberich had been engaged with each other for generations, and in that time several members of the respective imperial and royal families had intermarried. It was easy enough to imagine that this had a partly political purpose: it helped solidify the alliance. Or, if you were feeling less charitable, provide hostages... and when it came to having hostages, it needed to be someone important, like an empress or a prince of the blood.
From that particular perspective, it was impossible to ask anything more from Prince Rubert as a match for Petralka. Being the sixth prince of his country, he didn’t stand much chance of inheriting the throne—but he was still a direct descendent of the current king, and as such an appropriate partner for her. All of this combined meant Rubert’s proposal shouldn’t have been especially surprising. What seemed to shock the Eldant court more than anything wasn’t the proposal; it was the simple fact that there had been no warning, no feelers sent out. Rubert had simply shown up and asked.
“Of course, none of that means Zahar necessarily agrees with the marriage,” I said.
“Is... Is that so...” Myusel said, casting her eyes on the ground as if deep in thought.
“Not to mention... we have no idea what Petralka thinks about it yet,” I added with a pained smile.
It had been only just yesterday that Myusel had been telling me Petralka was in love with me—though to be fair, I had yet to hear it from the proverbial horse’s mouth. With or without me, though, if Petralka had been seriously thinking about marriage, that would have made it even stranger that the subject had never come up before. My guess was it wasn’t a thought she had really considered. All the more reason she would be taken aback by Prince Rubert’s offer. I had to assume she had a lot on her mind right now.
Of course, if Petralka really loved Prince Rubert, that would be great, right? It seemed like they knew each other from way back, plus he was handsome and seemed nice—Petralka had every reason to want to marry him. And yet... in all this time, I had never heard her so much as mention Rubert’s name. So while she might feel friendly toward him, I thought it was fair to say that she wasn’t in love with him.
Anyway, it all just seemed so sudden.
“When you get married...” I said, “I mean, you’re supposed to marry someone you really love, right? Right, Brooke, Cerise-san?”
“Er?” The two people I had named had obviously not expected to be part of this conversation. They had been quietly eating their dinners; now they both raised their long heads in surprise.
Brooke and Cerise Darwin: this husband-and-wife pair were not human. They belonged to a group of people called lizardmen, and the way they looked—and the way they lived—were noticeably distinct from humans. To put it bluntly, they looked like walking lizards. They had tough hides, no hair, and their body temperature was highly influenced by the environment. That is, they were reptiles.
They worked here at the mansion: Brooke was our gardener, and Cerise-san was a maid, like Myusel. They both had colorful life stories, and while they had been separated for a while, now they were living happily together.
At the moment, though, neither of them was saying anything. They just looked at each other, almost like they were confused by what I had said.
“Master, we—”
“When we became spouses, it was by th’ order of our chief.”
“Huh?”
It was? So what they wanted had had nothing to do with it? Come to think of it, they had mentioned something about this before. Brooke had been a big hero of the lizardman people, and Cerise-san was the daughter of a powerful member of the Tribal Council. They had known each other and been close for some time, so they had no reason to object—but their marriage was still a strategic one.
“’Course... ’tweren’t, ahem, as though I were against the match...”
“Me, either... In fact, I was very happy when it was decided.”
The two of them looked at each other.
“............Cerise.”
“............Brooke.”
Oooooookay.
It could be hard to read lizardman faces, but it was pretty obvious this was—you know. Them gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes, or whatever. Totally smitten. Head over heels. Falling in love all over again. Arrrrgh! Just explode, you damn Reals!
“If even the two of you had an arranged marriage,” Hikaru-san said with a bit of a smirk, dragging us back on topic, “then there’s no way the empress gets to marry for love. As Shinichi-san might put it—” (and here he pretended to imitate my voice) “—you see it all the time in manga and light novels.”
“Okay, true, but...”
Marriages among nobles were often political, dictated by circumstances—at least as far as I could tell. Hikaru-san was right, most of my knowledge of the subject came from manga and novels and stuff; it wasn’t like I was a scholar of this sort of thing. But it seemed pretty plausible. So I was aware of the reality. And yet...
“Unfortunately,” Hikaru-san said, “this isn’t an issue we can do anything about by talking about it.”
“Yeah, well, I mean, you’re right, but... you know?”
“It’s hard to let go of, isn’t it?” Hikaru-san smiled, not quite nicely. “Don’t know what you have till you’ve lost it, eh?”
“I haven’t lost anything! That’s not what we’re talking about, right?!”
Besides, Petralka and Rubert’s marriage wasn’t even settled yet! I-I-I was so not shaken by this! Not moved! Not upset! Agh, Myusel, don’t you give me that anxious look, too!
“Anyway, what matters is, we can’t change anything by talking about it, and you’re right about that! Yep!” I was very eager to be done with this conversation. I was just about to force myself to start eating again when I noticed something. “Elvia...?”
The girl sitting across from me wasn’t moving. Elvia Harneiman was part of a beast person tribe, a werewolf. She used to be a spy, sent here by the neighboring country of Bahairam, but now she was the mansion’s resident artist. (Yet another long story.) Just like you might expect from a “werewolf,” she had animal ears on her head and a fuzzy tail growing out of her behind.
The hair on her head, the same brown color as her ears and tail, didn’t quite reach her shoulders (a good length for keeping it out of the way), and her body was lean and taut. She was obviously the active type. She wore a sort of tube top that showed a lot of skin, including her midriff, but it wasn’t so much erotic as it contributed to the impression of en
ergy. It was probably linked to the fact that, for better or for worse, she was a very open person.
As a beast person, Elvia had exceptional physical abilities, which also meant she ate a lot of food to fuel herself. I didn’t know where she put it all in that compact body, but seeing her pack dinner away was a common sight at our table. And now she wasn’t eating. Very unusual.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Er, is somethin’ the matter with Minori-sama?” There was a hint of hesitation—in fact, maybe fear—in Elvia’s voice.
We all followed her gaze to discover (as you might guess) Minori-san. She had her spoon in her right hand, her fork in her left, and was holding them up in front of her face. Okay, nothing too weird about that—but the way she was moving was very strange. Whatever she was doing with her utensils, it obviously wasn’t eating dinner.
“‘No, stop, Fork!’” she said. “‘I already have my heart set on Knife!’ ‘Him? He can never do anything but hurt you. Pick me instead. I’ll stab you right through the heart.’” Minori-san, muttering to herself, clanged her fork and her spoon together. “‘I... I can’t do it?! Is your heart really that hard...?!’ Hoo hoo... hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!” The edges of Minori-san’s lips turned up, and she laughed to herself.
I could see her eyes behind her glasses. They should have been looking at her spoon and fork, but instead they were unfocused, staring off into the distance somewhere. It was very, very scary. No wonder Elvia had sounded concerned.
“...You can just ignore her, Elvia.”
“Y-Yeah, but...”
“She’s been this way all day.”
“G-Gee, really?”
“Too much stimulation this morning. She hasn’t managed to come back to reality yet...”
I guess after seeing two BL protagonists basically in the flesh, she hadn’t been able to restrain the fantasies. Minori-san was normally very good at not getting carried away when it wasn’t appropriate—but maybe having such a strong breaking point meant that when she finally cracked, it was hard to come back.
“Ooh hoo. Ooh hoo hoo hoo. Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!” Minori-san’s unsettling laughter continued. Myusel, Elvia, Brooke, and Cerise all looked at each other uneasily. Incidentally, Hikaru-san and I, having spent not just the carriage ride home with Minori-san but the entire time we had been waiting at the castle, were already used to it. I figured if we left her alone, the fantasy would run its course and she would come back around eventually. For the time being, I intended to treat Minori-san and her rotten internal world as if they didn’t exist, and I urged Elvia to do the same.
“Oh...” At that exact moment, Myusel looked up and blinked. “It looks like we have a visitor.”
“Huh?”
“I heard a knock at the door just now. I’ll go see who it is.” She stood up and pattered out of the kitchen.
“Did you hear anything?” I asked.
“Don’t think so...” Hikaru-san said.
Then again, Myusel was a half-elf, so her sense of hearing was sharper than ours. She went out of her way not to call attention to her pointy ears, so I just didn’t think about them much. Elvia had unusually sharp senses, too, but especially vision and smell—not so much hearing. Maybe it was because of how her ears flopped over?
In any event, Myusel could hear things that us humans—and even people like Elvia and Brooke—couldn’t. Sounds that were too small or too soft for us to pick up. It was easy to overlook, but it was actually a pretty incredible ability.
“But who would be visiting at this hour?” I said.
“No idea...” Hikaru-san shook his head. Naturally, I guess. If I couldn’t imagine who it might be, after living here so much longer than him, then he certainly wouldn’t know. I had more acquaintances in Eldant that might drop by, too...
Myusel was back quickly. “Um, Shinichi-sama...” She stopped in the dining room doorway, calling to me with some hesitation. Apologetic about interrupting my meal, I guessed.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Er...” She was clearly distressed. I was in the middle of eating, and this person hadn’t said they were coming, so she didn’t know whether to show them in.
The visitor, though, ultimately solved this problem, because they apparently didn’t care what I was doing.
“Shinichi-sensei!” a familiar voice shouted, and then two people shoved their way around Myusel.
“Huh—Loek? And Romilda?!” I was taken aback by the two faces I saw peering into the dining room. One tall young man, one short young woman. The boy had long golden hair and composed features—he was an elf, Loek Slayson. The girl had her red hair pulled into a braid on either side: the adorable dwarf, Romilda Guld. Both were students at the school Amutech ran—pupils of mine. Loek was a son of the nobility; his father was in the government. And Romilda was the daughter of the dwarf who ran the Guld Workshop, which handled jobs for the Eldant government. So although they were both demi-humans, they had comparatively high social status. Princelings (or princesslings?), if you will.
In most fantasy worlds, elves and dwarves don’t get along very well—and while these two had started out that way, it seemed like they had gotten closer recently. But still—what were they doing here? And so late?
“What the heck’s going on?” I got out of my chair and went over to them.
I was startled, though, when hands reached around Myusel—one from between Loek and Myusel, the other between her and Romilda—and took my hands.
Wh-What the heck?!
I realized that Myusel’s anxiousness earlier hadn’t been just because Loek and Romilda had shown up—it had been more about the owners of these hands.
“Shinichi-dono!”
Two more figures shoved their way between Loek and Romilda, on either side of Myusel—another elf and dwarf. What’s more, the elf was a dead ringer for Loek. The dwarf was a middle-aged man with a beard.
“Huh? Er...” When I took a good look, I could see two more people still behind Myusel. Women, another elf and dwarf. The dwarf happened to look a lot like Romilda. So these must be...
“My mother and father,” Loek said.
“My mom and dad,” said Romilda.
“I’m Eric Slayson,” the dwarf said. “And this is my wife, Agnes.”
“Rydel Guld, at your service. And my wife, Lorna.”
That’s right, I realized, I knew these people. They were Loek’s and Romilda’s parents. I had seen both men in the audience chamber at gatherings of important Eldant officials.
“I appreciate you trying to get some learning into my son’s thick skull.”
“Yes, and I know how hard my daughter can be to handle. Thank you for all your hard work.”
They both greeted me in about the same way, and I could see their wives bowing to me as well.
“Oh, no, it’s been a pleasure...” Loek and Romilda had actually come to save me when I had been kidnapped by Bahairam, and the various craftspeople at the Guld workshop had worked hard to create Petralka’s body double. “But why are you here? And all together...”
That was when I realized: Loek and Romilda were just there as guides. It was really their parents who wanted to talk to me. Unlike the kids, the faces of the four adults were all serious.
“Hey, what’s up?” Minori-san, apparently brought back to herself by the obviously grim nature of the meeting, came over to me.
Eric and Rydel looked at me and Minori-san, then looked at each other. They nodded, and then Eric said, “Shinichi-dono, we wish to speak to you. Or more precisely... to ask a favor.”
The adults’ story was this: among the ministers of the Eldant Empire, there were two main factions, followers of the First Imperial Prince and followers of the Second. Of course, the current ruler, Petralka, had no children; these titles referred to the previous generation—that is, the parents of Petralka and Garius, respectively. The factions originated in the time of the previous Emperor—namely, Petralka’s grandfather—but they had persis
ted unchanged until now.
These factions each supported their own candidate for the throne, conducting a covert struggle for power. This struggle had led to the standard bearers for each of the factions—Petralka’s and Garius’s parents— being poisoned, and instead of any of them taking the throne, all of them wound up dead.
The emperor had been, let’s say, less than pleased with the factionalists’ behavior, and he told them so. The infighting subsided, and they reached a sort of compromise in which Petralka would rule and Garius would be her aide, or rather her regent. This was in part, by the way, because Petralka was the daughter of the First Imperial Prince, who had after all been first in line for the succession. What’s more, it would have seemed almost impossibly strange for Garius to rule and the younger Petralka to be his regent. So this was how it had turned out. The factions had never really disappeared, but they had achieved a sort of balance, encouraged in part by the good relationship between Petralka and Garius.
“But now, that balance is being threatened,” Eric-san told me gravely. We had moved from the dining area into the living room, where I sat on one sofa and my menagerie of visitors—Loek, Romilda, and their folks—sat on the other. You might wonder why Loek and Romilda, who seemed like nothing more than guides, were still there, but apparently they served as a sort of buffer between their parents. Remember what I said about elves and dwarves not getting along? I guess it wasn’t a pure hatred thing so much as it was personalities that tended to rub each other the wrong way. But anyhow...
“Threatened?” I asked. I guess he meant that it looked like more fighting might disrupt the accord.
As I’ve said, the Slaysons and the Gulds were both important families in the Eldant aristocracy. Eric-san was more of what we might consider a foreign diplomat, while Rydel-san was involved with construction and building, but both of them apparently came down on Garius’s side.
“But wouldn’t that do more harm than good?”
I didn’t really see Petralka and Garius suddenly going after each other’s lives, but a little behind-the-scenes work by unscrupulous people around them could leave them cornered in a situation they had no control over. An absolute monarch Petralka might have been, but that didn’t mean she could neglect relations with her ministers.
Outbreak Company: Volume 12 Page 5
