MB Chapter 22

Two weeks had passed since Goiyo and Entzi's wedding.

In his study on a well-lit afternoon, the curtains drawn halfway across the windows, Entzi sat in the shadow side of the room.

A mountain of documents, each stamped and processed, had been pushed to one end of the desk. From his chair, Entzi was building a tower with a deck of cards.

Clatter. The door of the study opened. It was Kolave Peroto.

"My, does Your Lordship have that talent too?"

"What talent?"

"That tower-building, I mean."

Kolave's remark drew a short smile from Entzi, and he flicked the tower with one long finger. Already picturing the disaster that would befall the study, Kolave let out a brief, startled cry.

But the tower simply dropped to the floor in one piece—as though it had always been a single solid thing.

Entzi laughed at the blank look on Kolave's face.

"It was held together with magic."

"...My lord, please—stop using magic for pointless things."

"So what brings you here? Lunch isn't over yet."

"I was thinking it through and realized I'd forgotten to mention it. My Lady's birthday is in January."

"Pardon?"

"You hadn't asked me to prepare a gift yet, so I thought I'd check—you really didn't know, did you?"

Kolave's eyes narrowed in a manner that was almost accusatory.

"...She didn't tell me. How was I to know?"

"And has Your Lordship told My Lady your own birthday, then?"

"Goiyo doesn't need to concern herself with that."

The volume of things that arrive on my birthday as it is—why should Goiyo add to it? Her husband was not a poor man.

Ignoring the disgruntled expression on Kolave's face, Entzi leaned back in his chair.

"Kolave—how do I appear to you, lately?"

"For questions with predetermined answers, I'd humbly request the answer be provided alongside the question."

"What sort of logic leads you to assume an answer is predetermined when you don't even know what the answer is?"

"Well, for one thing—if I answer negatively, you'll have something in mind, won't you? Docking my wages, or drawing blood, or perhaps placing a curse?"

"For a man with so many words and so much fear, you certainly have a good many necks to spare."

Entzi smiled pleasantly at the thoroughly stiffened Kolave and asked:

"Have you managed to source any spare ones?"

"Ah—not yet."

"Once you find a supplier, I'd recommend stocking up on three or so. You've been particularly unrestrained lately."

"...I'll look into a new tongue instead, if it's all the same."

"Good idea. Try to find one on the quieter side."

If it isn't quiet, well—I can always remove the old one myself.

Kolave wrapped his arms around himself as a chill ran through him. Making jokes that didn't sound like jokes was his superior's particular specialty.

He set aside, neatly folded, the terrible possibility that it might not be a joke.

"What I'm asking about is as a husband. How do I appear as the husband of Goiyo Bethelgius—that is the question."

"Oh, was that it? You should have said so from the start."

Entzi Bethelgius as the husband of ... It wasn't difficult, if asked to say.

"Reasonably affectionate, and rather out of his mind."

"Out of his mind?"

"Ah—wait, Your Lordship, please hold that cutting remark! And restore that unsettling smile to its original position! Surely if you've asked a question, you ought to wait patiently for the answer? What I mean is—smitten. Utterly wife-struck. Devoted, yes, devoted."

Wife-struck...

"Well, we of course know that Your Lordship's attentiveness is all a kind of performance—but quite honestly, I wish you'd exercise a little more restraint.

The marriage is already done, so moderation ought to suffice. If My Lady, who knows nothing of all this, were to develop a genuine attachment—how she'd feel later...

She's a woman to be pitied. I wish you wouldn't pretend so sincerely, wouldn't be so kind to her."

"It's Madam, not 'My Lady'—and what strange worries you have. Shall I then turn utterly cold from this moment on, play the part of someone impossible to reach?"

Having dismissed his aide's words with quiet contempt, Entzi found himself, without quite intending to, sketching out such a scenario in his mind.

To overturn everything he had done thus far, to treat Goiyo with cold formality—how would she respond?

At first, she might be a little confused. But soon she would compose herself, and would meet his formality with formality of her own, accommodating him as though this were simply the shape of things.

They would have a bleak sort of marriage, exchanging only a few words of business and pleasantries.

Even if Entzi were to reverse course again after that, Goiyo would not change again.

Entzi knew only Goiyo Bethelgius's exterior—yet that exterior alone was sufficient for certainty.

No smile, always the same expressionless face. She might not call him by name after that. Not ever again.

Entzi's brow furrowed slightly. Something ached, just a little, at a thought so inconsequential.

"No—that won't do."

Yes. Entzi acknowledged to himself that he had become, lately, a little strange.

He had always been a capricious, impulsive man; when he wanted something done, it was not rare for him to dismantle entire plans to accommodate it.

But he had never before felt the urge to press his lips to a woman, or to throw her off-balance, or to unsettle her.

He had entertained the thought that playing the devoted fiancé, then the devoted husband, had grown habitual enough to change him—but even that he now doubted. He was no longer sure whether any of it had ever been the mask he intended.

Goiyo Bethelgius was a still woman. She wore the smile appropriate to her station, dressed in calm and composed clothes, and rarely allowed her emotions to surface even when startled or irritated.

One might have attributed this to being born and raised among the aristocracy—but Entzi had seen too many aristocratic children from similar circumstances lose control of their feelings entirely, time and again, to find that explanation convincing.

And so Goiyo was someone who was easy to be around, and at the same time someone who was not.

It would have been simpler had they confined themselves to exchanges of business—but appearing even superficially intimate required scaling a high wall.

Entzi Bethelgius had never encountered anyone quite like her. In contrast to himself, who was always pressing forward and never stopping—she was the opposite kind: a woman who stood in one place, who was quiet, as though barely present.

She was difficult. And yet, as time passed, something had loosened—and once in a while, a glimpse appeared from within those solid outer walls.

Whenever that happened, Entzi felt a thirst—his mouth running dry. He didn't know, himself, why he wanted so badly to crack the shell of someone who concealed themselves so thoroughly—but he found, undeniably, those unguarded expressions rather satisfying.

In the process, he had forgotten he was supposed to be wearing a mask—and his impulses and caprices had increased steadily in frequency.

Now, looking back on it, the one wearing the mask had not been Entzi but Goiyo. There was a difference, admittedly—hers was not a disguise but a form of self-protection.

Why had it come to this.

'I've grown a little fond of her.'

Fond—in the way one was fond of Lukurue, the round-figured butler who managed the household.

Entzi pressed his fingertips against the corners of his eyes. He had been careless, and carelessness was a failing—because the people he had dealt with until now were so entirely unlike her.

If he needed to sever it now, this fondness was light enough that he could sever it without difficulty.

Even if it grew twice as deep as it was now, Entzi was someone who could become cold whenever he needed to be. He had understood this about himself in the years since cutting off the breath of a soldier who had fought alongside him through an entire war—and after that, he had come to understand something of what the people who called him a devil in his childhood had meant.

Yes. There had never been a single thing he had been unable to sever.

And very likely, this fondness would not deepen beyond this point. A relationship does not change by one person's effort alone.

Goiyo Bethelgius—his wife, whose thoughts were unreadable—would not change at all.

'You said you have never loved anyone. And you said there would never come a day when you would love me.'

'I'll believe you. I'll take you at your word.'

He hadn't understood it at the time, but he did now—those words had almost certainly come from resignation. The understanding gave him a mild ache at the back of his skull.

'What kind of upbringing could have produced such profound and settled resignation in a person?'

The thought of instructing the useless aide standing beside him to look into Goiyo crossed his mind—but Entzi quickly buried it.

He had a feeling he should not learn any more about Goiyo than he already knew.

Instead, he asked his aide something else entirely.

"So—what date is the birthday?"

The blue, translucent whale—Wortien—grew larger each time Goiyo called for it. Just a little at a time, but still.

Wortien had first appeared the size of a fist. Now it was the size of two.

What it could still do was no more than wriggle its fins or extinguish a small candle flame—but the simple fact that it was growing was enough to rekindle something in Goiyo that she had thought quite forgotten.

And so Goiyo worried that this small whale, born from negative emotion, might disappear if she began to feel something as innocent as excitement—but she was given a firm assurance that whatever her feelings might become, Wortien would not disappear.

'Though she hadn't been told what the emotion was.'

When Goiyo let her thoughts drift elsewhere for a moment, Wortien wavered and vanished.

She reached to call the whale back—then became aware of the fatigue already pressing heavy against her limbs, and gave it up.

The vital energy required to summon even a small whale was not itself small.

Instead, Goiyo's thoughts drifted in another direction. Toward the one who had helped her summon the whale—toward her husband.

Since the time had reversed, her impression of Entzi Bethelgius had changed considerably.

To Goiyo, when she had first opened her eyes again, he had been a dangerous and cold man. As though the old saying—that what is brilliant always carries poison—had been coined for him alone.

A word overheard in passing and the dangerous impression she had caught in that brief exchange were engraved deep in her memory.

But the man she had actually met, when she had steeled herself for this marriage, was so different from that memory that she wondered if she had been mistaken.

He was spectacularly lovely to look at, yes—dazzlingly so. But that was all. Goiyo felt no threat from Entzi, no sense of danger.

He simply seemed a young man of easy charm and practiced eloquence.

Even Goiyo, who knew all of it to be a mask, occasionally doubted herself—wondering if she might have been wrong.

Does he truly need to conceal himself so thoroughly? The question arose now and then, but each time it dispersed, weak and aimless.

She knew his objective, but she knew nothing of the path he intended to take to reach it. It would be better, she decided, to assume he had his reasons and not think about it at all.

Questions invited doubt, and doubt might invite hope. From the moment hope appeared, it was already hell—this Goiyo knew well.

As her image of him had shifted, so had her feelings toward him changed, if only a little.

Entzi had already become, in the bleak world that was Goiyo Bethelgius's existence, the person nearest to her.

The nearest person, of course, did not mean someone of great consequence. Nearness was not the same as preciousness.

'Surely I haven't gone and developed feelings for him.'

The thought passed through her for a single instant, and Goiyo felt something cold move through her from head to toe. But the cold subsided as quickly as it had come.

Fortunately, when she brought his face to mind, no flutter followed. And unlike the time with Therio Alte, she did not find herself picturing any future they might share.

'No matter how I imagine it, the end of it is only my head on the floor.'

What she held toward Entzi—she was satisfied it was no more than the ordinary human warmth one might feel toward a kind and pleasant mask. A manageable thing.

And really, it was only natural. Even with no great estimation of herself, Goiyo believed she was not the sort of fool who would repeat the same mistake twice.

Do not love. Do not hope. Do not expect anything of him.

All Goiyo could do was wait for the end to come, and allow herself to sink, in the meanwhile, into this brief and shallow peace. That was the greatest happiness available to Goiyo Bethelgius.

She leaned back against the sofa and exhaled—thin and slow. Her hand, reaching for the teacup Annie had brought and left on the table, caught on a pile of papers instead.

The pile of invitations, arriving with grotesque regularity, day after day. Goiyo looked down at them through narrowed eyes.

Since arriving at the Bethelgius mansion, Goiyo's daily life had been peaceful. Dining occasionally in the rose garden had grown familiar; so had the food arriving with the extravagance of a work of art, and moving through the mansion where no corner was plain or unadorned. Familiarity had made it ordinary. And the other word for ordinary was tedium.

Goiyo's hand reached out and lifted one of the invitations at random.

'Perhaps I might go to a tea party.'

The invitation she had taken at random bore the name: Elly Bermus.