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This lovely, sweet, and beautiful young woman wore a resplendent dress.
“ ”
The dress, red as blood, fluttered as she walked along. A discernible youth hung about her even though her back was straight and her posture impeccable. From her eyes, almond-shaped and crimson, to her skin, as pale and as delicate as porcelain, to her finely sculpted facial features, everything about her seemed to shine; these were portents of her great and terrible future.
Six servants attended her as she proceeded down the red carpet with supreme self-assurance. When she passed through the great doors that stood open at the end of the carpet, she was greeted with a luxurious dining hall and nine more servants.
Once she reached the centermost seat of a long table bedecked with a white cloth, one of the servants pulled out a chair for her, and the preparation for her meal began. A cart full of eating utensils was wheeled in to supply the girl’s place setting. She was the only one actually using the dining hall; everyone else was present merely to facilitate her meal.
As the dishes were being readied, the girl rather abruptly turned to the servant standing at her side and said, “What are my plans for today?”
The servant bowed with utmost respect and replied, “Milady’s room is prepared for your studies once you’ve finished dining. Also, Master Vincent requests that you have lunch with him.”
“My studies, hmm? I hope this meal isn’t as bland and uninteresting as those lessons. But you say my elder brother is here; that’s good news. I’ve been waiting to avenge the humiliation of my earlier loss at shatranj.”
Where the servant spoke quietly and humbly, the girl was haughty. She nodded; the servant made no remark on her condescending attitude but took a single step backward, still bowing, and rejoined the line of attendants.
Approving of the carefully observed decorum, the girl said, “Very well,” and faced forward once more. While she had been talking to the servant, her meal had been laid out, and the first course, a steaming hot soup, sat before her.
“If you’ll permit me, milady.”
“Mm.”
Just because the food was ready didn’t mean she could simply start eating. Instead, one of the servants stepped forward and, after humbly asking for permission, delicately picked up a spoon. She took a spoonful of the soup and brought it not to the girl’s mouth, but to her own.
It was simple; she was tasting for poison. Any noble of significance would have someone on hand to check their food.
The girl was used to this; she hardly reacted as the woman sampled the dish, checking the flavor and confirming it was safe for consumption. Virtually all the young woman’s food was screened in this way, which ultimately meant she hardly ever got to eat freshly made dishes while they were still hot. She understood, of course, that it was a necessary precaution.
“How wearisome…” The words formed on her lips but barely left them; no one knew she had spoken but her.
Not heeding the girl’s whispering, the food taster finished her job. When her turn finally came to have some of the now-cold soup, the girl looked at the dish with an exasperated expression that crossed her beautiful face.
“ ”
She took a spoonful of soup and brought to her mouth. The way she immediately went back for another mouthful was, perhaps, an expression of her desire to get this dreary meal out of the way as quickly as possible. Well, so long as she observed proper dining etiquette, no one here could or would object no matter how fast she ate.
And in any case, neither speed nor manners were an issue any longer.
“ Hrk…”
A strangled noise escaped the girl’s lips, and the spoon fell from her hand. Instead of her eating utensil, she grabbed at the tablecloth, pulling it toward herself and sending the dishes and silverware everywhere.
“Kah— Ghhh—”
With her other hand, she clutched at her throat, gasping. Her red eyes shot open, their natural crimson color now made even more brilliant by the tears of blood that rolled down her cheeks. Blood likewise flowed from her nose and mouth.
The servants around her were aghast at the unimaginable scene, yet all they could do was watch. Only one of their number stood in silent stupefaction: the food taster, who was bleeding from her head just like the young woman. “I d…did it,” she rasped, managing to smile despite what must have been supreme agony. Then she collapsed, knees first, and the fact that she didn’t even bother to throw out her hands as she tumbled to the floor was proof that she was already dead. She’d ingested the same poison as the young lady yet had managed to fight the effects long enough to convince her the food was safe. She’d held on to make sure her plan worked—truly, she had done everything an assassin could do.
Her tenacity had come at the cost of her life, but it had paid off.
“M—th—”
The girl’s chair toppled over, and she fell hard. To the bitter end, her arms and legs spasmed as if clinging to life, but eventually, even her twitching stopped, and silence descended upon the dining hall.
“ ”
Two bodies, the assassin and her target, lay next to each other on the floor. It was as if time had stopped; the corpses weren’t going anywhere, of course, but the remaining servants were terrified of making even a single wrong move. If any of them made a sound, time might start moving again, and then this might all be their fault. Such was the strange but overwhelming certainty that gripped the servants and kept them from acting.
At that moment…
“What, what? Is the assassin dead, too?”
“ ”
The girl who appeared in the doorway of the dining hall regarded the two bodies with something close to boredom.
At her appearance and her question, the faces in the room became masks of astonishment. And who could blame them? For the girl was identical to their mistress, the one who was now dead of poison. No—not quite identical.
“ ” The girl crossed her arms and looked down at her collapsed doppelgänger. She certainly bore a striking resemblance to the dead child, but when they were side by side, it was possible to detect certain differences in the finer details of their faces. If the dead girl was the masterwork of an accomplished artist, then the one looking down at her was the very essence of that same beauty the artist had aimed for but could never achieve within the confines of this mortal realm.
As they stood there, mouths agape, the servants began to understand. This was the terrible nature of true beauty.
“Lady Prisca,” said one of the nearby servants. Two simple words. Hearing them, the girl—Prisca—turned and cocked her head. Her hair blazed orange like the sun, and her eyes were almond-shaped and as red as set rubies. Confronted with the real thing, it suddenly seemed impossible that anyone could confuse her with a lesser. She was simply made differently.
“Th-thank goodness you’re safe…”
“Hmph. Your sentiment doesn’t even qualify as trite. Do you imagine I could ever have been laid low by such insipid means? It’s not cheap, though, to find such a capable body double.” She glared at the servant, who kept her head bowed, and then walked over to the double.
A body double—someone who looked sufficiently like a person of importance to stand in their place and do dangerous things for them. Wherever plots and plans were afoot, body doubles were standard tools of the trade, and they knew very well that they performed their duties with their lives on the line.
Even so, Prisca didn’t specifically wish for her double to die in agony. Considering that they had, of course, chosen a young woman who looked very much like her, it was difficult to not find the scene disquieting.
“So there is someone who wished to make me wear a death mask like this,” she mused.
“ ”
As the girl, just eleven or twelve, contemplated the still bodies, the servants stood and quaked. Who could mock them for it, call it cowardice? Certainly no one who had seen the girl—so young and so fair, with a profile so cruel and eyes so very red.
“Chief Attendant. Come.”
“Y-yes, ma’am!”
Prisca beckoned to a woman who stepped forward on behalf of all the attendants. Fear was written on her face and in the trembling of her shoulders, fear of a child at least twenty years her junior. This earned her a “Hmph” and a look from Prisca.
Prisca motioned the woman to listen: “You are the one who decided who would serve in the household today, are you not?”
“That’s…correct, milady. Therefore, please let all responsibility for this oversight fall on me.”
“Fool. To what purpose do you think I entrusted you with that job?”
“What purpose, milady?” The attendant’s eyes widened at the question; she had clearly been expecting a dressing down at the very least.
Prisca smirked at the woman’s confusion. A hideously cruel smile, a terrible sight to behold on the lips of one so young. And yet it could almost have been called alluring. Still smiling, Prisca continued, “If I appoint someone incompetent to look after my safety, certain people even stupider than you will regard it as the perfect opportunity to make me a corpse, bringing them out of the woodwork. A perfect chance to get rid of them all at once.”
“ ”
And indeed, no sooner had Prisca spoken than the bewildered chief attendant caught her breath as every other servant pulled out a knife, a dagger, or some other weapon from the folds of their clothes.
Regarding them with her crimson eyes, Prisca made her choice almost instantaneously. She grabbed the chief attendant by the lapels and shoved her against the nearest dagger. The woman cried out as the blade tore into her flesh, but she stopped shouting almost immediately, her eyes rolling back in her head—an obvious sign the blade had been coated in some sort of quick-acting poison.
While the chief attendant was in the process of dying, Prisca leaped backward, landing on top of the table, which was still set with food. She pulled the white cloth from under her own feet and flung it over the heads of the encroaching servants—or rather, assassins.
“ ” Wordlessly, the assassins sliced through the cloth; it had only delayed them but for an instant. But that brief moment of blindness was precisely what Prisca had sought.
“Ghhh—!” A table knife had lodged itself in the throat of the closest killer, propelled by Prisca’s delicate foot. It tore through skin, and the next kick plunged it deeper. Even with his throat pierced, even with a fatal wound, the man raised his dagger in a shaking hand. But Prisca leaped again, closing the distance to grab his arm and drive his knife into the chest of another assassin. Even getting grazed by a weapon bearing such a potent toxin would be enough to induce unconsciousness. Having it plunged directly into one’s heart meant certain and immediate death.
“She’s just one girl!” cried one of the assassins, infuriated at their dismal attempts on her life.
“And yet I’m clearly too much for you to handle. Trash like you were never going to be worth more effort than this.” Prisca chuckled mockingly. Then she spun the nearest chair around, using it to strip the dagger from her opponent. It clattered across the floor, and the assassin watched it go—until Prisca drove her fingers into his eyes and stole his sight. Blinded, he fell to the floor, only for Prisca’s foot to find his neck.
She’d managed to set this group of adults on their heels with the sheer tenacity of her assault, but although it wasn’t a large group, they still handily outnumbered her, and they were regaining their composure and beginning to close on her again.
Prisca had another disadvantage: All she had to work with was a tablecloth and some silverware—nothing resembling a real weapon. Except…
“I’m getting rather tired of having to sully my own hands with such bothersome work,” Prisca said. She looked at her enemies with actual boredom, as if this dire situation meant nothing to her. The look in her red eyes was enough to make the assassins stop in their tracks.
If they all attacked at once, many of them might die, but someone’s dagger would reach her eventually. Just a scratch with one of the poisoned blades could be enough to take a life—even Prisca’s. In turn, the assassins gave no thought to their own lives as long as they could achieve their goal. But there was one thing they hadn’t counted on.
After one collective breath, they charged her.
“You must all be complete fools. Do you truly believe after seeing through your little ambush that I would come here alone?”
Her words seeped into them like a poison. Was there any possibility they had enough time to realize what was happening to them? The truth would remain a mystery, for they were each enveloped in flames, burned to a crisp before they had a chance to cry out.
“ ”
The assassins who had come for Prisca’s life, fourteen of them, were all simultaneously incinerated. That included those who had died in Prisca’s counterattack. The flames burned green, and Prisca clapped her hands at what truly seemed like a phantasmal spectacle of lives being consumed in fire.
“Ha, quite a fine display. The beauty of fire never wavers. Not even when the fuel is the lives of stooges like these. I grant you my praise,” Prisca said as she gazed at the still-smoldering assassins.
“It’s an honor. The highest honor.” The voice that answered came from a small figure who had interposed herself between Prisca and her aggressors.
“ ”
Outwardly, she looked to be about Prisca’s age, perhaps in her early teens. On her head were the large ears characteristic of the dog-people, and in her hand, she held what appeared to be a twig—and a rather unimpressive one at that, considering it looked like something she’d simply picked off the ground somewhere. Her young body was slender, her pale skin covered with a minimum of clothing in a way that seemed oddly provocative. Her short hair was silver, except for one distinctive lock of her bangs where there was a shock of red.
She looked at the burning assassins, then turned to Prisca with eyes that showed scant emotion and said, “Disposal complete. I’m glad you’re sa— Burp.”
“Hold on. Did you just burp at me?”
“Excuse me?” She shook her head. “No. I did not— Burp.”
“Fool. You did—that’s what it’s called.” Prisca lightly smacked the other girl with an open palm.
“Ow,” the girl said flatly. Then she touched her own ears and said, “Lady Prisca. How did I do?”
“A pointless question, but as I said, I praise you. There’s not a scratch on me. And the way you took care of that lot was a sight to see.”
“It is all thanks to the spirits.” The girl took her hand off her ears, looking somewhat shy. A pale light began to float in her open palm—a spirit. It had no corporeal form of its own, but enough mana could give it a temporary one. This was a lesser spirit, an entity with minimal strength and will.
There were some spirits that could communicate with living beings, form contracts with them to offer their powers and assistance. This girl likewise relied on spirits for her abilities. But she did not make contracts with them.
“Gulp.”
Without hesitation, she tossed the lesser spirit in her hand into her mouth and chewed.
Prisca began to smile. “A unique sight, no matter how many times I see it: a spirit eater having a meal.”
“Burp.”
Prisca crossed her arms but shrugged at the burping girl.
This girl’s special ability was not making contracts with spirits, but gaining their powers by consuming them. A unique ability to usurp the capacities of others.
Obviously, not just anyone could obtain the power of spirits by eating them. It was a sign of very, very unusual qualities, and that was why Prisca valued this girl so highly.
“Arakiya, you’ve done well to heed my orders.”
“…Because you spoke them, Lady Prisca.”
Having said the name of the girl, Arakiya, Prisca walked over the ashes of the incinerated assassins, approaching the one body that had not been burned. Her double, whose face looked so much like her own—except the way it was currently contorted in a mask of agony. Prisca crouched beside the corpse, closed its eyes, and endeavored to shift the expression to something more peaceful. “Your face was mistaken for mine at least this one time,” she said. “You deserve not to be seen like this.”
“That girl… Who was she?” Arakiya asked.
“Someone who was of use to me. Her life held that much value, I suppose. I’ll have her returned to her family, who will be suitably compensated. A reward befitting one who successfully took my place.”
As Prisca stood up, it was plain to see from her expression that her interest in the body double was already fading. She looked now around the room, then up to the ceiling, and then she muttered, “Perhaps I’ll let my brother deal with the cleanup.”
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