MB Chapter 37

"Come to think of it, you haven't caught anything either, have you?"

"No need to worry about that. I caught my quarry first and came back for you—that's why I was late."

"The quarry came first."

"That's... how it went, yes."

Something in the phrasing sat slightly wrong, and Entzi tilted his head.

"What did you catch?"

"You'll see shortly. It's a gift meant for you, after all."

"Ah—right. There's a tradition of presenting one's quarry to one's beloved at competitions."

Beloved. They were married now, so of course it applied—and yet the word felt strange coming from her own mouth.

Goiyo's eyes narrowed slightly. Perhaps because things were so different from before the regression; lately her emotions had been taking on strange colors without warning.

Entzi gestured toward the deer floating in midair by his magic.

"That deer of yours—didn't you catch it for me as well?"

"It was entirely coincidental. Wortien didn't catch it—its foot slipped in a pooled puddle, and it seems to have knocked itself unconscious on a tree root. Extremely bad luck, from the deer's perspective."

"What does coincidence matter? If you hadn't entered the competition, that white deer would never have come to me."

"That's..."

"Coincidence is, in fact, the greatest windfall one can ever acquire. What skill achieves can be achieved a second time, a third—but coincidence happens only once."

"When you put it that way, it does sound right."

She nodded slowly, then tilted her head, looking up at him.

"Strangely, listening to you—all manner of sophistry starts sounding perfectly reasonable."

"Thank you for the compliment."

"You hear that as a compliment?"

"The ancient philosophers made their living by dressing up all manner of sophistry to sound convincing. It can only be a compliment on the quality of my rhetoric."

'Even the ancient philosophers, it seemed, were not safe from being used as objects of insult. What expression would scholars make if they heard this?'

Goiyo was exasperated—but regrettably, the Marchioness Bethelgius's way of thinking had already been infected by his.

'Just as long as I don't say it to his face.'

Goiyo laughed softly. "Right. It is a compliment."

Taken aback by the unexpected answer, Entzi attempted a nonchalant response—and cleared his throat several times.

The trees grew dense around them, sunlight breaking in thin slivers through the dark shadows of leaves. The soft sounds of insects in the grass, the whisper of grass stirring in the wind, the occasional distant gunshot—all of it swallowed by the forest, until everything seen and heard carried the scent of green.

The swish-swish of grass giving softly underfoot through her boots, her hair moving in light waves in the cool breeze—everything was vivid in a way that felt almost hallucinatory, like walking through a dream that had decided to be pleasant.

"You worked hard today, Goiyo."

"So did you."

It was strange, she thought—that a mood which had sunk to the ground should rise again in under an hour.

The two of them returned to the starting point of the hunting competition. The event was winding down, and a fair number of participants had already come back—but their gazes were all fixed on a single point, entirely oblivious to the Bethelgius couple's arrival.

Goiyo followed their eyes reflexively—and went pale.

'What is that.'

A monster, easily three times the size of an adult man.

Its blue hair—silky smooth in a way that felt deeply, inexplicably wrong—rippled in a glossy wave. The muscles of its upper body swelled grotesquely, tendons running in every direction. Its face bore an uncertain resemblance to a human face, but no amount of charitable interpretation could produce the word "beautiful."

Humanoid monsters were not unheard of. And yet the shock on every face in the crowd was unanimous, and the reason was the lower half.

Unlike the vaguely human torso, the creature's lower body was covered in iridescent scales. Upper half of a man, lower half of a fish tail. The shape was exactly like—

'The mermaid legend they say lives in the Ramona Forest...'

Goiyo did not particularly wish to finish the thought.

Whether or not he sensed her feelings, Entzi supplied the unnecessary explanation.

"The rumors of something living in the lake were so persistent that I searched every lake in the Ramona Forest. And indeed, there was something of the kind. Not particularly beautiful, as it turns out."

"I only ask to confirm—what is that."

"A mermaid. You were curious about them, weren't you?"

"I was, but—"

'I think I might have preferred the curiosity unsatisfied.'

Entzi pretended not to hear.

"I present it to you. With the sincere hope that you'll accept."

The deer floating in midair lowered itself to the mermaid's side—and the size difference was so extreme that, despite both being quarry, the deer looked like a small snack beside the monster.

The deer she had caught with such difficulty—entirely by accident—looked suddenly forlorn, and Goiyo felt inexplicably apologetic toward it.

"...Yes, thank you."

"Your response is not enthusiastic. In truth, I anticipated as much after seeing it in person—so I've prepared something else as well."

Entzi stepped over to the monster and retrieved from a bag set beside it a small ball of fluff.

A rabbit, pale yellow, its fur impossibly soft.

The creature's belly rose and fell in a slow, peaceful rhythm—only unconscious, it seemed—its coat an otherworldly color and its features impossibly endearing. Entzi was quite visibly anticipating Goiyo's reaction.

His wife, however, had gone whiter than she had a moment ago.

"After all your talk about rabbits—surely you didn't catch it yourself to make a scarf—"

Entzi's expression of shock brought her up short. She had meant it sincerely, but she recognized she had overread the situation.

Casting about for how to recover the abandoned sentence, Goiyo reached for the phrase Entzi always used.

"It was a joke."

"I...see. Rather an unfunny joke, though."

For once the situation was reversed—and the words Goiyo usually spoke were coming from Entzi's mouth. She suppressed the laughter trying to surface and added, with perfect composure:

"I must be taking after my husband."

"Quite literally."

Entzi's face as he said it was so genuinely, visibly scandalized that Goiyo finally laughed.

The day after the hunting competition, a letter arrived at the Bethelgius estate.

An unsigned, suspicious letter, written in red ink. A single line.

"I have been forgiven by Rubiette."

Entzi read it aloud and twisted his mouth.

"What is it asking us to do."

"Quite. I was inclined to read it as claiming she had crawled under Rubiette's wing—but given that it was she who incited Emily Renier, it's difficult to take at face value. She can't have expected the Renier matter to go unnoticed."

"If she's that stupid, it's a tragedy."

Though not an impossibility.

On the day of the competition, receiving reports on Goiyo's movements through the secret detail, Entzi had also been briefed on Emily Renier's suspicious behavior. He had immediately assigned someone to follow her, and learned that Emily had boarded a carriage heading directly home.

The carriage was followed at a distance. But by the time it reached the Renier barony, Emily Renier's breath was already gone.

Cause of death: sudden cardiac arrest. So it appeared—but Entzi, who had gone quietly to the body that night, found a faint trace of black magic on Emily Renier's corpse. A trace so small and faint that no one but him would have found it.

Unlike the obvious message, the method of killing had apparently been meant to stay hidden.

The thought drew a cold smile from him. It was almost amusing — hiding it as though it were some kind of leverage.

All magic varied in potency depending on the practitioner, but black magic was especially true of this. The curses available to an unskilled practitioner were weak enough that anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of mana would not be touched. But ordinary people with no knowledge of mana were extremely vulnerable to curses—and regrettably, Emily Renier had been entirely ordinary. Ordinary enough to fall to Marchel Vemphis, who could use magic but whose talent was depressingly meager.

"And Rubiette's movements?"

"No change. Still favorable toward us."

"Any new arrivals?"

"Indeed, sir. The stable master's third daughter was born. A joyous occasion."

The dry joke curved the corner of Entzi's mouth.

"There may have been contact below the surface—'discreet' letters like this one, for instance. Well, the Duke of Rubiette is no incompetent—even if he's learned something about me, he wouldn't move carelessly."

"But as regards the Marchioness?"

"That the Duke of Rubiette neglects his eldest daughter is no secret. Even if the attack was misdirection, it would be plausible enough. After all, it was a competition for the nobility—there would have been emergency staff present. Even without Razine or the secret detail I assigned, it likely wouldn't have come to death."

The words left a foul taste in his own mouth. His eyes went flat.

"But was there any need for it? Attacking the Marchioness and then sending a letter claiming to be forgiven by Rubiette—it's too contradictory."

"If she already thinks of Goiyo as Bethelgius's property, the contradiction disappears. There are those who believe a transferred registry makes you that household's person, full stop. Or she could be making a declaration of war—so clear in her enmity that she'd attack her own kin."

If declaration had been the purpose, Rubiette's visible movements would have shown some sign by now. In practice, Rubiette had made no overt hostile gesture. In all likelihood, Rubiette still knew nothing about Bethelgius.

"Rubiette sees Bethelgius as an enemy—so come out swinging and fight like dogs. The only conclusion I can reach for now is that this is what Marchel wants."

"Do you believe Marchel has allied with Rubiette?"

"No. She doesn't strike me as the type to take that kind of risk herself. She's likely sheltering under some other faction's protection. Whether she told Rubiette anything about me depends on who that faction is."

Dragging Rubiette into it seemed designed to introduce confusion into his thinking. Even so, he could not quiet the vague, nagging question of why, of all targets, Marchel had chosen Goiyo.

He turned the unanswerable question over in his mind a few more times before letting out a shallow breath.

'I'll know once I've caught her myself.'

For a black magic practitioner of Marchel's limited skill, there was no method of laying a curse except direct contact with the target. Given time, she wouldn't be hard to catch.

"Look into everyone Emily Renier contacted after the lawsuit. Every place she went. All of it."

"I had already given that order before you asked."

"Well done," Entzi said, the praise entirely devoid of warmth.

Kolave's expression soured.

"Well—at this point it hardly matters whether Rubiette knows or not. All evidence is secured. Preparations are over ninety percent complete. Within the year, most likely."

"Right."

His memory rewound itself without his consent. Something he had recalled more than once now whispered back to him—in a voice the color of sepia.

'Greedy little Entzi—take Balverdi. And in return, bring Rubiette down.'

'And after that—'

"My lord?"

"...I'm tired. Leave me."

Kolave bowed and left. The sound of the door closing. Then the man was alone.

In the silence, fatigue pressed in. He covered his eyes with one large hand.

'That child will have her freedom.'