17
Two months had gone by since the attempted encirclement of Vincent Abelks.
“Damn you, Prisca…!”
“Silence, varlet. I have nothing to gain by speaking to you.”
The face of the man with long hair was a mask of rage as he pulled the Bright Sword from thin air. However, the half-circle slash of crimson was met and beaten back by a strike from above, forcing the magical blade out of the man’s hand.
Disarmed, the man’s eyes shot open as he witnessed a flash, a sword stroke far more beautiful and cruel than his own.
And it was the last thing he ever saw.
The slash easily separated the man’s head from his body, ensuring his death. The now-disconnected head and torso simultaneously went up in flames, great red tongues of fire that reduced the corpse to ashes.
These were the last moments of Paladio Manesk, son of the Volakian Royal Family.
“In the end, you were never more than ordinary. That was your limit.” Prisca’s judgment on the fate of this foolish older brother, who had holed himself up in his castle to await his destruction, was harsh.
The little turncoat had worked so hard to team up with Lamia and steer the Rite of Imperial Selection. As she had promised, Prisca had taken his head with her own hands. The honor was presumably lost on the now-dead man, but Prisca herself didn’t give a second thought to Paladio’s predicament. All she knew was that she had removed another obstacle between her and the throne. That was the only fact worth noting.
“Princess…”
“Arakiya? I’ve cleaned up here. How goes the rest?”
“No problems. It’s over.”
Sheathing the Bright Sword in thin air, Prisca turned as Arakiya emerged. She’d been around and about taking care of the soldiers who peppered Paladio’s base of operations, but nowhere on her exposed skin was there so much as a scratch.
Paladio’s Demon Eye abilities were the standout feature of his faction, but he lacked either the wits or the supporters to make the most of it. And so Arakiya had handily taken care of his arms and legs elsewhere while Prisca had hacked off his head.
“Lamia was at least more entertaining. I never imagined I would miss that spiteful villain.”
“ ” Arakiya didn’t respond.
“What’s the matter, Arakiya? It’s not like you to look so serious.” Prisca made a show of seating herself on her deceased brother’s throne, then turned a questioning gaze on the silent girl.
“Oh…,” Arakiya replied finally, then blinked. After a moment, she said, “Will you soon fight? With Master Vincent?”
“My brother? Yes… Yes, I suppose I will. Whether it will be soon, I can’t say, but we will eventually have to settle matters.”
Prisca, realizing that Arakiya’s demeanor had to do with Vincent’s continued existence, allowed herself to relax into a smile. Vincent Abelks was her greatest opponent in the Rite of Imperial Selection, her true test. Ever since the day she’d helped him escape Lamia’s encirclement, she’d watched as his army had grown ever larger and as he eliminated their other siblings—the other claimants to the throne—one by one.
Lamia had known this would happen; it was exactly why she’d sought to strike at Vincent early on, even if it meant working with the others. If those others had been smart, they would have continued to work together after the encirclement failed, when Vincent had been at least nominally on the back foot. But they had missed their chance, and Vincent had licked his wounds and taken the opportunity to recover.
“For such idiocy, they deserved no better than destruction,” Prisca said. After all, when one emerged victorious from the Rite of Imperial Selection, what awaited them was the throne of the Volakian Empire and all the responsibilities that went with it. Those siblings had shown that they would never have been able to bear the burden. Now with Lamia gone and Paladio dispatched, all that remained was…
“Ah, Mistress Prisca, your perspicacity never ceases to amaze.” The conversation between master and servant was interrupted by the tapping of shoes on the floor as a new figure emerged. “I must express my profound admiration.”
Prisca rested her chin on her hands and turned her crimson eyes on the newcomer, who bowed with elaborate politeness. It was a young man with white hair. Just for a second, Prisca closed one eye, searching her memory, but she soon recalled who the man was. Except that he didn’t quite look the way she remembered.
As Prisca recalled, the last time they’d met, he’d had black hair.
“Did I surprise you, milady? My apologies. My near-death experience on the occasion of our last encounter seems to have robbed me of my color.”
“So I see. Strange things do happen. But I was going to refrain from asking about this appearance of yours that I briefly found so confusing. You’re Chisha Gold, are you not?”
“I’m most honored that you remember me.” Chisha bowed again; he was indeed the young man Prisca had seen at her battle with Vincent. Prisca, who had been busy playing at sword fighting with Vincent and had then turned her attention to Lamia, didn’t know the details, but from what she had heard, Chisha had had a close encounter with Arakiya that day and sustained near-mortal wounds.
“I’ve brought a little token of His Excellency’s esteem to mark this occasion. It might seem a touch precipitous, but we do hope you’ll accept it.”
“I only took my enemy’s head a few minutes ago, and already, my brother has managed to send a messenger into this camp. How very like him. And what is this congratulatory token?”
“Fine wine, if it please you.” Chisha produced a bottle of what was known to be some of the finest wine around.
Even at the tender age of twelve, Prisca was already acquainted with the taste of alcohol. And even for someone who prided herself on having the very best of everything, as she never failed to do, that wine was not easy to obtain.
Nonetheless, she said, “Arakiya, destroy it.”
At those words, the bottle in Chisha’s hand shattered, the sound ringing around the room as the wine cascaded onto the carpet.
Chisha’s smile was almost reptilian. “Some nobles would have sold themselves out of house and home for a bottle like that.”
“I’m well aware. If we hadn’t been in the midst of the Rite of Imperial Selection, I might even have accepted it. But my brother will have known perfectly well that I would destroy any gift he might send me at this moment.”
“And so he did,” Chisha said, nodding, betraying no sign that he found any of this upsetting in the slightest.
Gifts were always assumed to have some ulterior motive in the Volakian Royal Family. With assassination by poisoning being so popular, it would have been unthinkable to simply drink something another member of the family had sent without further inspection.
The reaction had no doubt been completely expected, yet even so, Vincent’s young friend watched Prisca as calmly as if the emotion had been drained from his body along with his hair color.
“Go back and tell my brother that the most obvious obstacles are gone and that it will soon be time for he and I to settle things. We can no longer act toward each other as we once did, nor should we wish to.”
“If you’ll forgive my asking, Lady Prisca, do you honestly believe you can win against my master?”
“Certainly. For this world bends itself to suit me.”
Chisha responded to this expression of Prisca’s philosophy with an admiring bow. Prisca looked away from him, waving a hand as if to say the conversation was over. She expected him to go back to Vincent and tell him that it was time to prepare for the final battle. However…
“And if the world turns for your benefit, how does the future look to you?”
“What?” Prisca’s gaze returned to Chisha, probing, seeking the meaning of the pregnant question. Then her eyes widened—for someone was kneeling on the floor before her.
“ ” It was Arakiya, her knees in the pool of wine; she was leaning down toward the alcohol that stained the ground. As the liquid slowly spread, she reached out with her quavering tongue and lapped at it audibly.
“Arakiya, what are you doing? No attendant of mine should so demean herself as to—”
“Princess. I’m…sorry…” Arakiya’s eyes were full of tears as she looked up at Prisca, who watched her in amazement. It was the first time she’d ever seen such sadness from her milk sister, and even Prisca could not help but be stopped in her tracks. Nor was it the end of her amazement, for then the strength left Arakiya’s body, and she collapsed to the floor.
Arakiya uttered only a few inarticulate groans: “Ah…hh… Hkk!” Her limbs began to spasm, her eyes rolled back in her head, and it was obvious that she was suffering in her final moments.
“ ” Prisca had only been watching for an instant before her eyes revealed that she had begun a series of cold calculations. Now that Arakiya was on the cusp of death, countless possible choices presented themselves to Prisca’s mind, rising up and then disappearing.
The average person would have taken too long to sort through them; Arakiya would have died while they were making their decision. But Prisca was not an average person. Nor was Vincent, who had foreseen what she would do.
That was why this brother and sister, closer to each other than to anyone else, had no choice but to engage in a mortal contest.
“Goddamned fool,” Prisca muttered, coming to the side of the fallen, twitching Arakiya. She sat Arakiya up in her arms and, in almost the same motion, pressed her lips to Arakiya’s mouth, then began to suck out the poisoned wine. She spat it aside, mouthful by mouthful, as if sucking poison out of a wound. This toxin, though, had been powerful enough to overcome even Arakiya; merely coming into contact with it would be enough to affect most people.
“Grr…” Prisca, too, felt the effects, but even as the poison ate away at her body, she continued to draw it out of Arakiya and spit it away.
“A most terrible pair,” Chisha remarked, observing them with true praise on his tongue. Both for Prisca, who managed to endure the poison—even if only just—as she drew it from Arakiya; and for Vincent, who had seen that this was the only possible way to poison his ever-vigilant sister. In Chisha’s eyes, both siblings were masterpieces, plotters of unrivaled ingenuity.
Arakiya had stopped spasming, and although she was unconscious, the moment of greatest danger had passed. Prisca, who had brought her to this point, wiped her lips, and she couldn’t hide the tremble in her voice as she asked Chisha, “How did my brother convince Arakiya to work with him?”
“Do you not know?” Chisha asked, tilting his head in some confusion even as he remained impressed with her boldness. “I should think you, Lady Prisca, are better placed to understand His Excellency’s thinking than I am.”
“Hmph… And yet he gave you a starring role in his little play.”
“I can only regret being unable to repay his kindness.”
Prisca stood slowly and returned to the throne. Chisha was privately astonished to see that she still walked steadily. But he was also, just as privately, relieved to see how she leaned against the backrest, betraying what a steep toll the poison had taken on her.
There was no need to say what Chisha said next, but he couldn’t help himself. “Lady Prisca.”
“Yes, what?”
“Had I not served His Excellency Vincent, I would have wholeheartedly served you, milady. It’s only a shame that I didn’t have the chance.” He shook his head.
“Ha.” Prisca laughed as if she was letting out a sharp breath. Then she looked down at Arakiya, where she lay on the floor, and wore a small smile with her lips that were now the color of blood. “I have no need for a charmless clown like you. If you wish to serve me, then at least make yourself presentable. Pretty. What a ridiculous commoner.”
She let out a long sigh, but to the bitter end, she wanted to be herself; she insisted on that final snipe.
And then she stopped breathing. That was the end of Prisca Benedict.
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