"Master did?"
Harriett seemed nervous about it but kept silent, she was hesitant to voice her concerns. Emp decided to leave the two at that for now and go train instead while he waited for dinner. It was true he was a bit curious about why she seemed so nervous but it was probably just because she expected him to do something the others would consider crazy again. It was for the best to let her think about it for a while or he would lose all the time he had to train on more of the morals lessons he would get in the afternoon anyway.
He went into the small empty room and did a bunch of exercises he almost never did. His current goal was to train without the hammer to see if there would be an improvement. With that being the case, he didn"t have anything to train with for now and just did as many push-ups and sit-ups as he could.
When He came back later to eat, the both of them had a grave air to them.
"Huh... What happened while I was gone?"
Maybe they had received some message while he was in the other room?
Harriett took a deep breath before she answered.
"Celtine and me talked about how to help master through the tea party and we came to the conclusion that we can"t, we are sorry master."
Was it really just that?
"Is that tea party that special? We are just gathering to eat some cake are we not?"
"Master does not understand, tea parties are something only n.o.ble women do, neither of us knows what will happen there. I heard those are verbal battlefields, I fear master will be thoroughly defeated."
A verbal battlefield? No one would die though, how could it be compared to a battlefield? In any case, it seemed to distress them.
"Should I just go tell her I won"t go?"
"Master shouldn"t, if my understanding is correct, that party is happening because of master. If you do not go, you will deny the party"s existence itself."
"Then, since I have to go and there is nothing you can do to help, why are you both so upset?"
"I don"t understand the meaning behind master"s words."
Wait, she said she didn"t understand the meaning behind his words? Could he do that as well? Could they really just ask for the answer like that? That would be really helpful! What a great information he just got! Smiling at what he had learned, he told her what he meant.
"Since there is nothing you can do to stop it or help me, it will happen no matter what. There is no reason to fret over something that will not change."
"But I just can"t stop worrying for master. Not being able to do anything is the very reason why I worry."
How to rea.s.sure her then? He thought about it for a moment and came up with another approach as he sat at the table for dinner.
"They already know I am bad with words, everyone does. There is no glory in defeating me with them, nothing to be gained. Even if I lose, I do not believe my life will be changed over some words exchanged over slices of cake. What sort of consequences are you expecting?"
"Maybe master is right." Conceded Harriett. "Maybe I am making a fuss over nothing again, like for the entrance ceremony. Please, excuse my conduct."
She seemed to regain a lot of her composure and bowed in apology. Neither of them seemed to be really over it yet but he expected them to calm down once they had some time to think about it and relax. They didn"t speak a word of it anymore, ate the dinner Harriett prepared and made their way to Giselle Blackbull"s office.
Emp didn"t forget to drop Celtine off of his shoulders before he knocked on her door.
"If it is you Emp, you may come in." The teacher answered almost immediately.
Emp pushed the door open and slipped inside, leaving Harriett to close it behind the three of them. Giselle"s office was neatly arranged and proper, there were only a few paintings on the walls but they were carefully placed and very impressive to look at. On the left wall, there was a large window hidden behind thick curtains she had closed to stop the wind from disturbing the papers on her dark wooden desk. Emp wondered what sort of wood this was while she welcomed him.
"Good afternoon mister Muracier. I am pleasantly surprised that you know about knocking on doors before entering."
That was a knowledge he had been born with, he remembered doing it on Chinui"s door the very first day. Thinking about this, why wasn"t he born with all the related knowledge? He added it to the list of the questions he wanted to ask his creators the next time he met them.
"Good afternoon to you as well madam Blackbull. Hum... Before we start, Heinrich the magic teacher knew who I was, is this normal?"
"It is, the ancient told him. He was asked to be very careful and not let you get injured with magic, more than other students. Not only in his cla.s.s but outside of it as well. After all, the future cannot be predicted and we never know when someone will decide to target our students for leverage against someone. Every generation, there are a few students like that who the mage is tasked to protect."
That seemed unfair for the others but there was nothing Emp could really do about it. At least now he knew this wasn"t strange.
She swiftly had him sit down on a chair facing her and told him what he was there for. Between them, a long trail of steam rose lazily from an ornate and flowery teapot she kept near a set of cups on her desk.
"So, unlike Heinrich, no one is supposed to learn about your ident.i.ty. Sadly, as I told you the last time we met, you are doing a very poor job at hiding it. Today, you aren"t getting out of this room before you learn how to keep that secret properly."
He knew then that it would be a long afternoon. The teacher spent an extended period of time explaining to him how and why he needed to learn to lie. When Galana told him every n.o.ble lied, he never expected to one day be lectured for hours on the subject.
"You need to keep the secrets of your family for the good ans safety of it." She would say, "Information is a powerful weapon, keep it to yourself and keep it away from your enemies."
She presented him a list of information he should never disclose, a second list of things he could say to close allies and then proceeded to tell him that there were no such thing as a close ally. Anyone could betray him at any moment. But then what was the point of the second list?
She seemed to have a very bleak overview of the world. Everyone was on their own side she would say, they were always looking for an opportunity to gain more than what they had. The higher up you are, the more chances you have of being targeted. The less those around you know about you, the less likely you are to get betrayed because they won"t have anything on you.
"But that is impossible, I am sure they must have at least one friend they can trust. What about their families?"
"I won"t speak for your own family but it does happen sometimes that family members betray each other if the prize is big enough. As for friends, there is no way I will answer you with a yes as you are now, you would never be able to make the difference. For now you must a.s.sume that anyone could betray you, including me. It will be easier to keep your secrets for now if you see everyone else as a threat."
That didn"t seem like a good thing to him. Not only that but he really didn"t like to lie. He told her so and she released a long sigh of exasperation.
"Of course, the Muraciers can"t betray their words and will never lie. I had forgotten because of how senselessly ridiculous it was. That just makes it all even harder for us both. I never understood your family"s obsession with keeping your words."
"Is it not a good thing instead? It must be much easier to make allies if they know I will not go back on my words."
"In this particular case, not at all since they aren"t supposed to know you are a Muracier. All of this is exasperating!"
She poured some tea in her own cup and took a sip of it to appease her frustration.
"How am I supposed to help you keep your secret if you won"t even make the effort to lie convincingly?"
It wasn"t his intention to go against her every words though. He just couldn"t agree with what she was saying.
"Is there no other way to hide it than lie? I am not even sure of the reason I am hiding that name in the first place."
"Well, there are many things you do not know including who the other students really are. You have no idea why more than half of your own group is in this school am I not correct?"
"Is it not to study?" Tried Emp.
What would they be doing in the school if not to study?
"Of course but why here? Private tutors exists everywhere, they could study at home. Yes, the imperial school is good, excellent even but is it really worth the large fee and the long travel away from your home? For some it is but very rarely is it for the learning opportunity alone. Do you even know why you are here yourself?"
"Because Chinui told me to come."
He had said he couldn"t teach him everything he had to learn.
"That is quite the simplistic answer you have here. I will not pry further into it. Speaking of prying, this is a great way to hide the truth. Tell everyone what they want to hear in the most simple way you can."
"The most simple way I can?"
"Yes, we all know that the reason as to why you are here is linked to the reason why the great general Muracier hasn"t made a public appearance in such a long time but instead of truly telling me what I wanted to hear, you just said that he told you to come. This is not what I wanted to know but it would be improper of me to dig further into it so I had to give up. Do the same when people ask about you. Tell them something they should already know and could make up an answer without telling the whole thing."
He wasn"t completely sure of how to do that but she had him practice it for a while after that. Asking questions upon question while expecting him to answer them all correctly.
The hardest to answer were those like: What is the name of your father? First of all, how was he to answer without really answering and second of all, which one?
He was sure she meant Chinui but like every time this kind of thing came up, it was confusing to answer. Even if she told him that his father"s name wasn"t really what they were after here, he had a hard time coming up with an answer.
The afternoon, even thought it was a bit draining, wasn"t that terrible until later when she asked for the cooperation of the two slaves, it was only then that things got really tiring.
"You two as well, you have a responsibility towards your master. You need to tell me if he does something strange so that I will be able to correct it. This is for his own good, and yours by extension."
The two girls looked at each other and came to the same conclusion while the teacher sipped another gulp of tea. Harriett spoke for them both, sentencing her master to hours more of mental suffering.
"Master was invited to two different social events today, a tea party and a feast."
Giselle almost dropped her small cup and made a very annoyed noise.
"And of course, you accepted to go to both did you?" She complained as she leaned back onto her cus.h.i.+oned chair.
"Well yes, I said I had never eaten cake before and they decided to throw a party to have me taste some."
"I see, so you were trapped into accepting, with you being the main guest, you can"t chose to not go now. When is it?"
"I do not know. She haven"t sent invitations yet."
The teacher seemed a bit relieved.
"Perfect, then it means we still have some time to prepare you, who is the one hosting it, who is the organizer of it?"
"Mable." He answered.
"And of course, it had to be the small miss Mable! Are you torturing me on purpose?"
"What"s wrong?" Asked Emp, genuinely confused like the two girls.
"She"s the second worst at this after you, there is no telling what she will do. Could it not have been someone more sensible instead? Anything could happen there."
He didn"t know Mable was almost as bad as him, how did that sort of awkwardness happen? He had the excuse of not having been raised at all but Mable had parents didn"t she? He couldn"t imagine that she could be nearly as terrible as himself. Just this morning, he had been told he wasn"t listening properly by that same Mable.
"She cannot be that bad. She seems much less awkward than me."
"Let me explain it this way. You do not know the rules at all but at least you think for a long time before doing something. She, on the other hand, knows all the rules but ignore them whenever she pleases. She always acts without thinking and does what she wants."
Emp had never noticed that. Even thinking back, he couldn"t see it that way. Then again, he had been criticized for not paying attention more than twice today.
"Can you help master?" Asked Harriett in a pleading tone.
After another sigh and a refill of tea, the teacher agreed to help.
"This is a serious affair. Young man, I hope you had nothing else to do today because now, not only do I have to prepare you for the questions, I also need to teach you how to behave at a tea party and how to address n.o.ble ladies properly before this event takes place. We will be here for a while."
From then on, to the questions and answers were added many things he was expected to remember. How to sit properly, how to drink tea properly, how to address the others once again, what to not ask from them, table manners, who should eat the last slice of cake, who should eat the first and so on and so on.
By the time he was finally released, it was dark outside and the old teacher told him to stay after cla.s.s the next day to continue.
Not only was he dead tired but he had not managed to complete his main objective which was to find something to ask Harriett. Everybody was so focused on that tea party that he had found no time at all to find a subject of conversation.
"I would have never thought there were so many things to keep in mind just to go eat cake and drink tea."
"I knew this would be hard, I hope master will be fine." Told him Harriett.
"I will, I am not scared of food and tea."
Unless the food had the head of a living snake of course, then, it would be much more disturbing. Leaving that thought aside, he needed to have her talk some more to find a clue on what to buy.
"What do you think the girls will talk about at that party?"
"I don"t know master, I do not know them enough to guess. But, when I worked for my father, I overheard many n.o.ble woman talk. They mostly bragged about the jewelry their husband bought them but none of the girls here are wedded."
It was a very convenient line of discussion for him. He tried to push into it further.
"Is jewelry such a common topic?"
"It was, many n.o.ble woman do not work, or not much at least. That being the case, they often have no stories to tell and have to rely on what their husbands did, what he brought them or some piece of art they saw."
"I see, but why jewelry in particular, there must be other more interesting things to talk about no?"
"Jewelry is an easy topic because they like to argue over which has the most valuable set. Paintings are another good one because the value of a painting changes depending on who looks at it and so they can debate for a long time on this."
But hadn"t Celtine said that their value was irrelevant? Was it because they liked their value more than the jewels themselves? Or maybe humans didn"t think in the same way as the cursed-bloods?
"You said you had an earring before, was it as extravagant as those the n.o.bles were wearing?"
Harriett giggled a bit and answered with a smile.
"No, mine was just a simple silver ring while those n.o.ble woman wore finely cut stones, often dangling from pretty golden chains. It would never compare."
Emp thought about a stone he could find on the roadside for a second before he understood she was talking about precious stones. That would have been embarra.s.sing to say out loud.
"I never saw a gem from up close before. I saw some inlaid in jewelry from afar but I never got within arm"s reach of one."
"Is master talking seriously? Master"s arm"s reach is very long. Even when it looks like you can"t reach something on the table back home, you can do it anyway." She said in admiration.
Emp wasn"t sure, he didn"t have a clear picture in his head of how far he could reach. In any case, he was convinced that this subject wouldn"t bring him closer to the answer he was looking for so he tried to turn the it into something else.
He talked about the place where he got the blessing instead and how beautiful the view was from the top of that cliff. Their conversation continued for a while but when he found himself in his bed, he had learned nothing new.
In the morning of the next day, the group had a horse riding lesson.
He discovered that Kenneth was a very talented rider, it seemed as if he had rode horses since he was a toddler. Nereus even joked that he probably learned that before he learned how to walk, just like he learned how to yell at people before he learned how to present himself properly which made the others laugh a lot.
Like every other subject they received lessons about, there were various degrees of talent in the cla.s.s and Emp wasn"t one of the best at this. He had no trouble getting on top of the animal but he found it very uncomfortable.
The others had a lot of fun when they saw that Celtine was much better than him at this.
"She is used to riding after all." The others claimed.
This was true, he felt that comparing himself to a horse was appropriate in those circ.u.mstances.
"I am probably the best horse of the school too." He declared, making everyone laugh again.
Hadley, the teacher in horse handling must have been pretty exasperated that everyone laughed throughout the whole lesson. He was just trying to teach them useful things after all.
Emp did listen to what he explained but it would probably end up being more useful to Celtine than him. He was clumsy on horseback and had a hard time adjusting to the movements of the animal.
At the very least, when he rode the horse, he thought about putting Celtine on the horse with him rather than leaving her on his shoulder before she fell off of them both. She seemed much more comfortable on it than him. She seemed to enjoy herself and sat comfortably while he struggled to control the horse. It was easy to see since he had to reach around Celtine to do so.
When he saw the mischievous look on her face as she presented the message, he couldn"t help but laugh.
Much more importantly for everyone one else but him, he was told by Mable that the party would be held in her room on the next day. He could already picture in his head the face that madam Blackbull would do when she later heard about it.
He didn"t have to wait long for it since the afternoon cla.s.s was a moral one. Those lessons, he felt, were terribly long. Not just because he had been forced to stay after them twice in a row too. The teacher talked about a lot of things, he would have never expected that there were so many things to talk about just on how to behave with other peoples. Not only that but from what he understood, she would also have to teach them about the relations.h.i.+ps between the big n.o.ble houses of the empire. This would take a while too and since Emp wasn"t planning on interacting much with them all, it already sounded like a waste of time.
In this particular lesson, she was mostly trying to focus their attentions on the individual goals of everyone. She was essentially saying that everyone had an objective and that knowing that objective was very useful in a lot of different ways.
While she urged them all to learn about the objectives of their companions, Emp wondered what would happen if anyone found what is main objective was. The chances of that happening were very low, who could guess he needed to replace an emperor on the other side of the continent?
After the cla.s.s, he was forced to stay there once more and just like he had pictured it in his mind earlier, she made quite the face when she learned when this party would be held. It reminded him of Galana"s grandma when she had heard her gran-daughter talk to him.
She exhaled all the air she had from her nose, took a deep breath again and emptied a whole cup of tea.
While she was explaining a whole lot of things to him he wondered if she could help him with tastes and preferences. It was just as strange and convoluted as the rest for him. Asking about it was surely worth the try. She was there to teach him after all.
Her answer was a bit unexpected. After she complained as to why she had to explain even that, she tried to dig out of him the thing he didn"t understand about tastes.
"You don"t have to like everything you appreciate in equal measure." She told him after a while. "I cannot picture someone who would have no likes and dislikes at all. What I think is more likely is that you like too many things and you seem to be trying to sort them all into categories. Tastes have nothing to do with logic and this is what you are trying to use to understand yourself. This is all about feelings, you do not need a reason behind any of them, they just happen."
Did they?
"I am sure that if you really think about it, not of the reasons to what led to any of the memories but of the memories themselves, you will figure out what was good and what was bad. Considering it is you, it may all seem good but like I said, they don"t have to be equal, some memories will stand out more and feel more "good" than some other. I cannot tell you what makes something feel more likable than another because I don"t know, no one does, it just comes naturally. Not everything has to be thought about like on a battlefield."
That may have been the most valuable thing she told him of the whole afternoon.
Later that night, he was sat on his bed and thought about it deeply. Mable liked strawberry better but could not explain why, Celtine liked to sit on his shoulder because it felt a bit like flying but could not explain why she liked flying clearly. Even if she did, liking the sensation of the wind as an explanation just added the question of why she did like that. The teacher had to be right, there was no need for a reason to love something.
He couldn"t explain why he would stop in the middle of the road or a river to gaze at the landscape, he just did. Now he understood it was really because he liked it as he had a.s.sumed earlier but he could still not pinpoint the feeling hiding in it. The same could be applied to when he could see other people being happy like this morning. Seeing happiness made him feel the same way.
Dislike was much easier, that feeling was easy to identify now that he pa.s.sed through his memories. The tailor"s shop in Red-water, his encounter with the mouse, when people frowned at Celtine and when he had to bury corpses.
Was he about to understand it all or was the very act of trying to understand it making it impossible?
Thinking that he was doing all of this just to buy an earring for Harriett was chilling for him. If such a simple sounding thing was so hard, just how much work would he have to do before he became an emperor? Weren"t those tasks worlds apart in terms of difficulty?
Maybe he should just ask the book about which earring he should buy? But then Celtine would tell him that was wrong, she wanted him to figure it out on his own. Would it be cheating as well if he asked the book how to figure it out? Probably, and its answer would be dubious at best.
He could still ask the other girls about this, that would make something to talk about that was unrelated to his secrets.
Finally, the day of the tea party came. They had an archery lesson where most failed to hit the target just like Ivar had said they would. Emp tried shooting his bow with Celtine sat on his shoulder but her legs were really in the way and made everything a lot harder for him. It was impossible in fact, if he released the string with her there, it would snap at her leg, hurting her and sending the arrow astray. He wouldn"t have minded the last part though because he would have missed anyway.
He didn"t like archery, that was the thing he grasped from that cla.s.s.It felt like he was wasting his time, he would rather have trained in something else instead. Something like the training he experienced in the afternoon for example.
They had their second combat cla.s.s with Winfred who had them all train hard until everyone was covered in sweat and out of breath.
"You have to work hard to improve! There is no progress without effort!" He would say.
"But when will we fight?" Complained Brenia.
"Once you have the strength and stamina to do it! Now train harder! If you can still complain then it means you aren"t doing your best yet!"
What they were doing here reminded him a lot of how he felt once he had finished fighting the blood-spitters. By the end, he had a hard time moving a muscle and the only thing that kept him from laying down in the dirt was the girl on his shoulders.
Sometimes, she would wipe his forehead with a piece of cloth to keep the sweat out of his eyes and sometimes, she would cheer him on with a few scratched words or a tap of her small hand.
At the end, after Mable reminded him to come later to her room with the others, Kenneth came to him and told him to join up with the other guys in the entrance hall once he was free from the girls.
Since Emp had already accepted the invitation to one party, he had no reason to refuse a second one. He told Kenneth he would come and went back to his room to prepare himself.
Emp didn"t really know what to expect about those two events but he still believed that things could not be as stressful as everyone made it out to be. If they were, no one would want to partic.i.p.ate.
When the time of the cake party drew near, Harriett wished them good luck and he walked down the corridors with Celtine on his shoulders until he reached Mable"s door. Since all the doors were labelled and not only had he been told were it was but it was also located near his own, he had no trouble at all to find the place.
He knocked at the door and one of her two servants opened for him and led him inside the main room. The place was completely unlike his own. The size of the room was exactly the same but everything in it was different. It gave the strange feeling that someone had changed the layout and content of his own room even though he knew this one was Mable"s.
Comparing the two places, his own felt really empty. He now understood better what Harriett meant when she told him he needed more furniture in the room. He had felt like he had all he needed before so he missed her point and just let her add some small things as she felt but now that he had an example, it was much clearer.
Mable must have disliked the stone walls because she covered them all in colorful draperies and lined them with short tables that were used to hold vases and pots of flowers. Her floor was covered in a fluffy rug and cus.h.i.+ons of all kinds were piled up in a corner.
In the center of the room, the table had been set for nine person. It was a really long table with an oval shape and was separated from the kitchen half of the room by more draperies hanging from the ceiling. On that table, many different cakes were laid out on silver plates and cups had been placed near the many comfortable-looking chairs.
Mable, Aglaya and Nessa were already sat around the table, awaiting the other guests. Mable in particular rattled her fingers on the table and seemed really impatient in contrast to Aglaya who acted in such a dignified way and Nessa who just happily enjoyed the tea in big gulps. All three wore long dresses in their usual style.
"Ha! Emp, finally. How come your room is so close but it takes you so long to come here?"
"Mable, don"t spout nonsense." Corrected Aglaya. "He"s the first one to get here, you"ll make him feel bad for no reason."
"Muh, sorry. I just want to eat cake already."
Aglaya giggled at her answer and signaled Emp to sit down next to her. Emp accepted Mable"s apology and lowered Celtine back on the ground before he sat. Sitting at the table with her on his shoulders would have been inappropriate so she had to stand behind his chair instead. After Celtine had steadied herself by putting a hand on the chair"s back, he greeted the three girls like he had been taught and sat with them.
"Emp." Aglaya declared once he was sat and all three welcomed him. "Since you"re the only one here for now, how about you tell us something about you."
Already? They didn"t waste time before going into the dreaded subject.
"That is true, I"m curious." Added Nessa. "You never speak at all. You seem to get along with everyone but no one knows anything about you."
"What do you want to know then?"
"Anything really, what would be interesting? I feel like asking you about your goal since the teacher asked us to think about it but at the same time, I think maybe we should wait for the rest to be here first?"
"Then, tell us, do you have a wife or not?" Nessa asked bluntly.
The other two looked at her in shock and she had to defend herself as she signaled a servant for a refill of tea.
"What? I"m just curious. From what I heard, aside from Frits, he"s one of the only other two in our group who could actually be married already. I figured it was best to ask before Josseline showed up."
"Really? Who"s the other one? Ivar?" Asked Mable.
"No, Cyril. He killed a clawed purple-cap when he was ten."
"Wow, no wonder his village decided to send him here."
Emp had no idea what was a clawed purple-cap but by their surprised reaction it was impressive. After they were done talking about his talent, they sent their attention back to Emp and awaited his answer.
"No, I do not have a wife nor any bride-to-be." He answered directly.
"Ho, I guess that was to be expected." Commented Aglaya. "After all, you still seem young and your only victory was by luck. Thinking about it, how old are you?"
That was a question Emp thought about for a long time. Guessing from the appearance and height of those he met both here and in the village, he had estimated his own physical age.
"I am twelve." Either it was that or he was really short, he hoped it was the first case. "Also, It was not my only kill, I beat a gluttonek and a lot of blood-spitters too."
"Really? Show us." Demanded Mable, way more interested in that than his age or relations.h.i.+ps.
He showed them his hunting card and while they were gazing at the long list of victories he had, he tasted the tea Mable"s servants gave him. It wasn"t a strong one, very soft and somewhat fruity. Of course, he remembered to keep the important information hidden.
"So many! There are even peoples there!" The small cake lover exclaimed.
"That"s much more impressive than I thought." Conceded Aglaya, impressed. "You must be the most successful warrior of the group aside from Brenia."
"But Brenia only got scraglings. He doesn"t have as many but his own are much more impressive." Stated Nessa.
The other two nodded their approval.
"Hey, hey Emp, tell us how you beat those guys while we wait for the others."
Aglaya and Nessa didn"t seem that into it but after Mable added a long please to her question, he decided to retell how the fight in the alley went for her.