The Qualifications of a King's Consort
Ruri led Ferda out of the dragon's lair to a particular place.
It lay within a castle built into the mountainside, visible even from a distance.
A path climbed straight up beside the cave that led to the lair; following it brought them at once into the grand hall beyond the main gates.
"Immaculate," Ferda murmured.
He could feel how sincerely Baldrova had approached this marriage. Otherwise she would never have erected so fine a castle atop her own lair, nor shaped every detail to human standards.
It was built for the Third Prince's engagement, they said.
Marriage to Grand Duke Baldrova would have granted the Third Prince the power that came with her. In effect he would have become king of the eastern lands, and so a residence befitting that station had been prepared.
Then the catastrophe that tore everything apart down to consonants and vowels had erupted. The place had become, for all practical purposes, unused.
After the Third Prince's death Ferda had expected it to fall into neglect. Yet it remained strangely well kept. This was not the hurried cleaning of someone who had heard he was coming; every careful detail spoke of steady, daily care.
"Who manages this castle?"
"I do."
"No one else?"
"I alone attend the Master."
"Then all of this…"
"I manage everything myself. I trust that answers you sufficiently."
Ruri's replies stayed relentlessly curt. Accepting the engagement clearly sat very ill with her.
Like a dog.
Not an insult—literally like a dog. A dog that sensed the affection it received turning elsewhere, and growled in threat. Ferda could let it pass.
As long as it doesn't bite me, it's fine.
A watchdog only needed to guard the house.
The room Ruri led him to was a vast bedchamber.
About five of the rooms I used to occupy put together.
It rivaled not only his father Eremvald's but the imperial emperor's own sleeping quarters.
"This is the guest bedchamber."
"A guest room of this size?"
"The guest of a dragon, of the Sovereign. No ordinary visitor."
Even at the least, a dragon stood equal to an emperor of the empire. Being shown into such a room told Ferda clearly enough where he currently ranked.
"So for the moment I am merely a 'guest'?"
"Yes. Since you are not yet the fiancé, you are 'merely' a guest."
"Do you always show guests such open hostility?"
The question was pure curiosity.
"No. I simply dislike humans."
"Honest of you."
"And among them, I dislike you the most."
"Far too honest."
"There is no reason to hide it."
Ruri gave a blank-faced little shrug of her shoulders. The sheer irritating quality of it almost begged him to hit her.
"True. Better not to hide it at all."
Ferda genuinely believed so. A hundred times better than nobles who smiled sweetly while planning to plant a knife in your back.
Each time he accepted her words so calmly, Ruri shot him a look that said she disliked him all the more.
"I have a question."
"What is it?"
"Are you not afraid of me?"
Ferda tilted his head.
"Why should I be?"
"Because I tried to snap your neck. Had the Master not given the signal, I would have broken it then and there."
Crrrack.
Ruri clenched her slender fist and opened it again; the sound that issued was murderous.
I would have died…
He had known from the start that she harbored killing intent. Still, Ferda had never intended to dodge her hand.
If the engagement failed, I had no reason left to live anyway.
Dying then would not have been so bad. He buried the thought and changed the subject.
"Let's postpone any pointless ranking contests. So when is the engagement ceremony?"
"One month from now."
"Will it be official?"
"If inviting people who do not care and making a spectacle of it is what you call official, then no. We will hold a simple ceremony in the lair. Just the three of us."
"Three?"
"The Master, myself, and the guest."
She helpfully indicated Ferda with a tilt of her chin.
"Understood. One month."
"While we are on the subject, there is one more thing."
Ruri continued.
"The engagement is one month away, but that is also a deadline."
"Deadline for what?"
"The deadline by which you must prove you possess the ability to be her fiancé."
Ferda thought it over once more.
Getting married is ridiculously hard.
"Did Grand Duke Baldrova order this?"
"No. This is my will."
"Arbitrary, then. Is a servant allowed to show will?"
"When it is necessary, it must be done. To be frank, our Master is far too soft for her reputation."
She really is brutally honest.
"You already know it yourself. That is why you never bowed your head before the Tyrant Baldrova. Across all of history, you are the only human who could stand before a dragon with that attitude."
"I see."
"I let it pass because the Master herself wished to become engaged to a human. But unlike her, I am not soft."
Ruri's eyes flashed sharp as a well-honed blade laid against the throat.
"I believe the consort of a great Sovereign must possess a 'standing' to match."
Dragon and human. The gulf between them dwarfed even that between emperor and beggar. In short, she had set an absurd condition.
"So? Is a mere human supposed to gain power equal to a dragon's right this instant?"
"Hardly. I hold no great expectation that you will suddenly become strong."
Ruri snorted.
"You need only show that you possess ability."
She raised her small fist.
"Will is unnecessary. Will alone solves nothing. What matters is that you, frail as you are, demonstrate even a thread of potential within one month."
Her tone was crisp and final.
"That is the first gate for the fiancé who will inherit Castle Baldrova."
Having taken all of it in with both eyes and both ears, Ferda thought:
My fiancée has found herself a truly good person.
Her mouth was foul and she hated him with every fiber, yet Ferda found himself liking Ruri. She despised humans, yet she demanded of him, without concealment, exactly what a fiancé needed. That meant she was more loyal to Baldrova than she was filled with hatred for him.
Loyal to this degree… why did I never see her even once?
When Ferda had stormed Baldrova's lair, Ruri had not been there. He tilted his head at the strangeness, then set it aside as unimportant.
"Very well. Suppose I show ability. How far must I rise? To the level of the imperial emperor?"
Ruri shook her head.
"At least enough that the other 'Sovereigns' will not look down on you."
In other words, ability that easily surpassed an emperor of the empire.
"I see."
"?"
When Ferda answered so calmly, Ruri tilted her head.
"Aren't you being far too arrogant? Are you stupid, or do you simply look down on dragons? Either way, I find it displeasing."
"Neither."
"Do not think it will be easy. Especially not for a fragile human like you."
"Oddly enough, I do not think it will be easy either."
"Then why that attitude?"
"Do not worry about my attitude. If I show enough ability within the month to convince you, that is the end of it, is it not?"
"…"
Ruri pouted. Having her own words thrown back at her could not feel pleasant.
Overflowing with confidence.
She could not fathom the source of that confidence.
Ruri already knew how the Arken Empire used the title of Baldrova's fiancé. It had become a convenient phrase for driving out talentless half-wits. How could such a man possess talent that rivaled a Sovereign?
Yet Ferda was different.
It is enough.
He had been the youngest on the continent to reach the Eighth Circle, an archmage who had once cast a Ninth-Circle Wish spell. He was the man who had already forced the imperial emperor to kneel at his feet.
Acquiring a standing that does not yield to a dragon is possible.
If it was possible, then for Ferda it was nothing at all.
Certainty settled over his features.
"Unpleasant human."
Ruri said it with a look of pure distaste.
The castle built atop Baldrova's lair was called Baldrova Castle after her name.
Ferda spent a week there.
Daily life was not bad. The sole inconvenience was that he had to handle almost everything himself.
A noble always kept servants to wait upon him. Without at least one attendant, a noble's dignity could not stand. Told to live without retainers, most would have leapt up in outrage at being treated like water.
For Ferda it was no problem at all.
I have grown used to living alone.
If anything, having someone come to dress him would have been more awkward.
Accustomed to standing on his own, he found life in Baldrova Castle free of real discomfort.
Better than the mansion, actually.
In the Rosnova household he had always been on edge. Already despised, he had no one he could trust. Anyone who seemed to grow close was only scheming to drag him into the mire.
This Ruri creature may hate me, but compared to that she is practically a gentleman.
At least she never slipped anything strange into his food or soaped the marble floors for childish pranks. For that alone she was an adorable little mutt.
Though I do not know how long that will last.
Ruri had given him a single task: prove he was not a hopeless half-wit, that he possessed potential.
Deadline: one month.
What could he show within that time?
Ferda considered every angle of what he was capable of. The conclusion was always the same.
Only magic.
He possessed talent for magic. If he showed Ruri even a fragment of that talent, she would grant him a measure of recognition.
To use magic, one must open a mana circle.
A circle was the act of taking the mana that milled chaotically through the body and rolling it into a single circuit in the shape of a ring.
The problem was that Ferda did not know how to form one.
No—I know the method.
Possess overwhelming vengeance and hatred. If he walked the path he had once walked, he would become an Eighth-Circle mage even faster than before.
But I must not.
He recalled his master's words.
The first button is the most important. Whether the first circle is Red or Blue decides a mage's entire life. Though in your case, I suppose you need not worry about such things.
A money-grubbing fat lecher, yet a man who had fulfilled his role as a teacher of magic.
A Red Circle was a mana circuit formed by the surge of emotion. A Blue Circle was a mana circuit formed upon the foundation of calm meditation. Each had clear strengths and weaknesses.
A Blue Circle formed slowly but was stable. It allowed a mage to assess any situation with composure; fully eighty percent of mages trained to possess Blue Circles.
A Red Circle formed quickly but was unstable. Unlike the Blue that prized calm, its driving force was emotional upheaval. One could grow strong rapidly, yet that same emotion often swallowed the user and drove them mad.
What I must do is open a Blue Circle.
If he wished to avoid the same future, that was the correct path.
Yet circumstances were not on Ferda's side.
They say a Blue Circle takes at least three years to form.
He had to produce convincing results within the remaining three weeks. The time was desperately short, yet Ferda did not grow impatient.
He would manage somehow.
"Are you making preparations?"
Ruri, who until now had only quietly set down breakfast, asked a question for the first time.
Ferda speared a piece of salad with his fork and answered calmly.
"I am preparing."
"For someone who is preparing, I see no change at all."
"I am working at it with the thought that it will come if I keep at it."
"I understand."
She did not look particularly hopeful.
These past few days Ferda had studied methods and research for opening a mana circle. The only firm realization he had reached was that the two kinds of circle, though they used the same mana, were of entirely different grain.
I will not even possess the qualifications at the engagement ceremony.
To have made big talk and then accomplish nothing was unlike him. Still, he would calmly keep searching for a way today as well.
Just as he prepared to greet another morning—
Kuuuung!
A world-shaking crash and vibration rolled through the castle. It had come from nearby.
"What was that?"
Ruri answered.
"The Master is conducting a monster subjugation today."
"Monster subjugation?"
"Sweeping away the things that crawl in from the eastern edge—the Land of Evil."
Kuuung!
Ordinarily he would have thought Is that so? and let it pass. Today Ferda was different.
Perhaps…
A hunch struck him. The answer he sought might lie there.
"I want to watch that battle."
"Pardon?"
Ruri replied with her usual blank face.
"It would be better if you did not."
"Why?"
"A mortal's mind is fragile. No one who has witnessed the Master's combat has ever remained in their right mind."
Ferda recalled his former self. In those days he had been gripped by madness. He had faced the dragons called Sovereigns more than once. Yet the one that had made his blood run coldest was the Red Dragon.
I had been showing hostility then, so that may have been part of it.
Even so, standing existed. Even as an archmage he had felt fear. What of him now? He might soil himself and scream in undignified terror.
"So please abandon any idle curiosity."
"No."
Ferda shook his head at Ruri's warning.
This was no idle curiosity. It was an inquiry in search of the answer, and—
"I wish to watch. That fight."
—the duty of the one who would receive her as his partner.