A Week in the Next Compartment
Did he just call me Cici? Me?
Strength gathered in her loosely clenched fist. A name they had only ever called each other as children. A flicker of contempt rose in Siena's eyes and faded.
"You'd best stop there."
She tilted her head sideways and stared at him squarely. Who went around using other people's pet names so comfortably, anyway? Where had all that coldness been when he was ignoring her? This air of casual familiarity, this tone of well-meaning concern—it was all unbearably cheap.
"Why? What am I doing?" Siena twisted the corner of her mouth and sneered. She smiled with maddening sweetness, probing him ever so lightly—and it stoked his temper.
"What could I possibly be doing? Hmm?"
The look in Claude's eyes as he watched her was no less sharp.
"I see."
"Do not go manufacturing the kind of gossip that ends up in the mouths of idle scholars. Shouldn't you be focusing on securing your surroundings instead?"
The smile drained from Siena's face.
"There is intelligence that unidentified individuals have been passing in and out of the Count's estate."
"...How would you know that?"
She frowned, letting the words out slowly. Of course her uncle would plant spies on her mother—that much was to be expected—but she had never imagined the information would be shared with this man.
"Move only within what you can manage. Now would be the time to mind your words and conduct, wouldn't you say?"
"Ha!"
Siena wrinkled her nose and let out an exaggerated gasp of admiration, as though she'd been deeply moved by his stinging advice.
What I can manage. His line, always. She paced a step in place as if thinking it over, then spun sharply toward Claude with a look of dawning wonder.
"How clever of you! So that's it—you were worried about me, weren't you? Out of sentiment for old times' sake."
"...What?"
Ha! Siena's clear, ringing laughter filled the space between them.
"Am I wrong? If I am, that's too bad, Claude." She gave a small, airy shake of her head and explained in a honeyed voice, her face still lit with amusement. "If you're going to overstep and hand out advice, you ought to at least have such a noble heart to back it up. Don't you think?"
She met those quick, wary eyes head-on and spoke his name—just as they had once addressed each other, back when their intimacy had looked, to outsiders, convincingly real.
"Claude, our little puppet-lord."
To the world, he was the fine heir of House Marcel, newly favored by the Emperor. But she knew all too well how precarious his position truly was. A man who had stood outside the line of succession until roughly his coming of age, only to suddenly become the Duke's heir—and on the backs of two remarkable brothers' deaths.
The Emperor had made Claude his most convenient hand in order to crush the whispers inside House Marcel—whispers asking whether every one of those tragedies had been orchestrated. The price of that favor could never have been light.
Siena reached up and gently brushed a lock of hair from his forehead with her index finger. From a distance, it would have looked a rather intimate gesture.
"Do you think playing your puppet-master's game is so different from playing mine? Let's not waste time on it, then—you and I, in much the same straits."
Her tongue had grown thorny from the crookedness of her feelings. Having withdrawn her hand, Siena dropped her gaze at once to her wristwatch. The dinner hour had long since passed.
"I'll take my leave. I don't suppose we'll have business for another year? It was truly a pleasure—and this time, let's be sure never to meet again." She let out a breath a beat too slow, then smiled brightly and set down the period at the end. "We can't be such a precious connection that we see each other two days in a row."
"Siena."
She sensed that the voice calling her name was different somehow, but ignored it and turned away. She had already given this pointless connection far too much of her time.
At last, the first morning of her vacation had dawned. It was bound to be a wonderful day.
Half of the month's leave she had scraped together over three months would be consumed by Founding Festival obligations, and another week or so would be lost to travel—but so what? She would be spending it in Gaverum, not the Imperial Capital!
"My lady, they report that the crates bound for Lord Hassar have already been loaded onto the train."
"Good work. See that they're handled properly until they reach their destination."
Leaving the reporting attendant behind her, Siena set off at a brisk, light-footed pace. That was right—Gaverum was the city near the waters where her brother Hassar was stationed. She had been preparing for this vacation since the previous year. Had she not set down the mask of Acting Count she wore so constantly for it? Had she not even played the role of the Emperor's delicate young niece?
As family, I ask you, Uncle—let me see Hassar.
It had already been four years. Four years without seeing her mother or her brother. Her mother, confined to the family estate; her brother, exiled to the front lines; and Siena herself, caged in the Imperial Capital. A noble daughter who had barely completed her coming-of-age ceremony was, in the space of a single night, parted from her family alive and thrown to the mercy of people too busy blaming her—and so four years had passed.
The Palen court wishes to expedite this marriage. The preparations will take at most a year—but surely you can grant me the chance to pay my respects to Hassar, Uncle.
Siena's own circumstances were a mess as well. By the Emperor's will, she was to marry a prince of a foreign land.
It had been decided only shortly before that the Empress and the Crown Prince, not her mother and Hassar, would attend the wedding as proxies. When she made her request, the Emperor had deliberated at length, and the words he finally produced were a marvel.
"Does Ferensa not... wish to see you as well?"
"You will bear it. You are, after all, the author of this situation."
The accusation flew out first, just as she had rehearsed it. Forcing her clenched jaw open, Siena bowed her head and feigned a tremble of tears.
"Your Majesty—Hassar is... my brother, my friend, and a father to me in my father's stead. Uncle, please let me see him. I beg you."
Siena bowed deeper than usual in her pleading. In the end, the Emperor could not turn away from that desperation—for as long as Ferensa lived, this meeting would almost certainly be the last.
Hearts fluttering, Siena arrived at the train platform and went in search of her assigned compartment. The journey would take the better part of a week, and the Founding Festival events in Gaverum had grown quite famous since the previous year, which made tickets nearly impossible to come by.
The moment the Emperor's permission came through, Siena's secretary had abandoned the office entirely and taken to sweeping every back alley in town, devoting himself wholeheartedly to the scalper trade. To secure a ticket half a year before departure—and one of the precious few premium seats, no less—that much of a price had to be paid.
Imperial kinship, acting head of a Count's house—none of it mattered here. Ticket lines were fair to everyone, after all.
"Is this the one?"
As Siena stood before her compartment, checking her ticket once more, the door of the neighboring compartment slid open with a soft rattle. She turned her head reflexively to see who it was—and her pupils blew wide.
......
The maid's voice at her back, asking what to do with the luggage, suddenly grew very distant. Siena wanted nothing so much as to sew shut the mouth that had run so freely the night before.
Claude stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe, and let his eyes sweep over the servants and baggage trailing behind her before he spoke.
"We meet again. And here I was told it would be a year."
Claude Marcel's expression was glacial. The joke was unlike him, and Siena's face hardened just as coldly.
"You knew, didn't you."
He nodded without a word. Siena waved vaguely behind her and lowered her voice to chide him.
"Aren't you the sly one? You could have given me some warning."
"You left without leaving me so much as a chance to speak."
"Ah. My fault, then."
With a deep, practiced smile, Siena closed her eyes lightly and nodded.
"Yes, it's my fault. My fault for not checking who'd be riding in the next compartment."
"I knew you would understand."
"Understanding changes nothing. Do you have any idea what I went through to get this ticket?"
Even as she flung the words out mercilessly, a discomfort in her chest made her squirm.
"Surely you aren't returning on the same—"
"I expect to return before the close of the current parliamentary session."
Siena clenched the ticket in her hand and steadied her breath. The return date, too. Of all the rotten luck.
I'm doomed.
While she floundered under the unexpected blow, he slipped in quite naturally,
"Do you still keep late hours into the small hours?"
"What?"
"Let me say this in advance: kindly keep quiet at night. I trust you'll observe common courtesy."
......
How on earth am I going to survive a week?