[Demon Queen] Chapter 81: A Bent Back.

"So good of you to join us, Lysanthia."

The Marquis was round, and a little soft through the middle. His silks were fine, embroidered through with jewels that caught the light of the plain study and threw it back in a hundred small glints.

I had known demons who dressed this way, who hung their plunder from their own persons and called it strength. I had always found it foolish. I had respected far more the demons who walked my halls with their mana flaring, for those at least understood that power was the only thing worth displaying so openly.

On his left forearm sat a single blue Line, not so different from the ones I myself carried. Sol chirped once from atop Ash's head.

This was Lena's father. The Marquis, with his strange title. The one who ruled this whole city, of which the Academy was only a single part. The one whose daughter I had humiliated in a public arena. It did not take a great mind to understand what was happening here. I looked to the Archon. He nodded, faintly. Ash took a step in front of me, though I had not asked her to.

"And so I have," I said.

"Close the door," the Archon said. "And come inside." His gaze moved to the Marquis, and then back to us.

"If you expect a bow," I said, "you will not receive one."

The Marquis stared at me. His brief smile faded, and he nodded slowly. "That's fine." He looked down at his own hands. He was wringing them.

What was to be the trap here? A public trial, perhaps. Punishment dressed in the language of justice. Some subtler cruelty I had not yet thought of?

The man who was supposed to spring the trap only wrung his hands, and looked, even to my eyes, nervous. "Let me get a proper look at you." He turned to Ash. "You don't need to guard her so. I'm not a barbarian. And I doubt my Line could do to her what my daughter's Sigil could not."

Ash glanced back at me. I nodded, and she stepped aside, though she did not go far, and her weight stayed forward, and her left hand half hovered in the air, as if she was ready to use Parting the moment the man moved. Perhaps she was.

The Marquis's gaze traveled the length of me. It stopped on my left arm. On the white Line of the Cradle. It stopped there for a very long time.

"You defeated my daughter," he said at last. "I cannot remember the last time I heard of a Line beating a Sigil."

"I did," I said. I stood at my full height. When was the trap to come?

He nodded. His eyes had not left my arm. "I saw that black fire," he said, and his gaze shifted to my right. "That is a Sovereign mark. Is it not?"

I said nothing. I looked to the Archon. The Archon said nothing either.

"You were hiding them," the Marquis went on. "Red and green, over black and white. Why would you hide their color if they were not worth hiding? And besides," His voice dropped, almost to himself. "Elias had a black Sovereign mark. I know what one looks and feels like."

When it became clear I would say nothing to this, he continued. The man met my eyes. "You could have killed her," he said. "No, no." He shook his head. "You were going to at the end. Why didn't you?"

It was a strange question for a father to put to the woman who had nearly killed his daughter. Why had I spared her? 

When I had been the Demon Queen, hundreds of thousands had died beneath my magic for far less insult than that girl had given me. I had stared into the eyes of a weeping Goddess and felt nothing at all.

I reached for simpler reasons. The contest was already decided. A vow would hold the terms. Whether the girl breathed or not changed nothing that mattered. They were true, and they were not why.

Perhaps it was what Ash had said, in the infirmary. Of being so undeniably good that the lie could not hold. But I had thought no such grand thing in the moment. There had been no thought at all.

The girl had looked up at me from the stone. She had bled, and asked me to end it, and something in me that had ended civilizations without a second thought had not wanted to end her.

"Death is final," I said eventually. "And I did not want to do as the other one had done."

The Marquis continued to look at me, and then something in his face cracked. His lower lip trembled and he looked away. "You mean Ilyasviel," he said, this time in a whisper.

He looked down at his hands again. His shoulders drew in. When he spoke his voice cracked. He did not weep, but I could see how near he came to it. "Thank you," he said.

I looked to Ash for some sign of what to do with this. She only shrugged. She was as lost as I was. I looked up at Sol. The bird had fixed both golden eyes on the man and was regarding him with a focus I had rarely seen from her. She had not chirped once, which was downright polite of her.

The Marquis wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand. "I apologize," he said. "I've only just realized that I have been a fool for a very long time." He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to anyone else in the room.

Then he addressed the thing a father ought to have been furious about. The one thing in this strange world that seemed to matter most. I braced for it. "You took so much from her," he said. "But nothing is worth as much as her life. I was a fool not to see that before now."

He meant his daughter’s mark. A thing that was more than just power and prestige in this new world. I had taken the girl’s Sigil, and the years of effort it had taken her to reach it, all in one duel.

"The rot…the thing that took hold of her had reached the mark's root," I said. I did not know why I was explaining this to him. "It was the mark, or the girl."

He nodded, as though he had already known. "I have been a fool," he said again, "for a very long time." Then he rose from the chair.

He took a step forward. Ash moved to put herself between us, and I stopped her with one arm across her path. The man came closer. He was shorter than I was, and something in the set of his features was unmistakably Lena's.

He drew a breath. And then he bent his back, and he bowed. "Please save my son. If you can."

I had once sat in the dirt outside a dark hut with a cold hearth. I had sat before a woman hollowed out by grief, who could not survive the failing of another hope and so had refused to hope at all. She had been a great warrior. I saw her now, in silk and jewels. In the same bend of the back.

Ren, Corrin and Edda had bowed to me. But they were the powerless, and their bowing had cost them only pride. This was the first time in either of my lives that power itself had bent to me without first being forced to its knees. His limbs were shaking. His was not a back built for bowing. It had bent all the same. 

"There is something wrong with him," the Marquis said, and the words came fast now. "Something the healers cannot touch or something they only make worse. We’re not sure. They told me only a Sovereign could undo what a Sovereign had done, and where was I to find such a thing, with the right kind of mark besides?" He lifted his head just enough to find my eyes. "I saw you in the duel. I saw that white mark close wounds no Line should close. Please. I want you to try to heal my son. If it’s at all possible…please."

I did not know what to say to him. I had expected a great many things when I first saw the man in this room. A trial with its verdict already written. An ambush from every side. I had not expected this.

Ren had told me of it when I had not yet known it would ever matter to me. Ilyasviel had fought Lena's brother, and had given him a sleep from which he had not woken. And now the boy's father had bent his back before me and it was shaking. I looked to the Archon for some sign. His face gave me nothing at all.

"I will try," I said, and the words came out close to a sigh. "I do not promise you success. But I will try."

He seized my hand in both of his. "Thank you. Thank you." The words tumbled over one another. "We should leave within the hour. My estate is not far, and if we go now, we can-"

"Leon." The Archon's voice was quiet. "She has agreed. Give her time to prepare."

The Marquis caught himself. His face reddened. He stepped back, and let go of my hand. "You're right," he said. "You're right, Valtheris. My apologies."

"Whatever you require," the Marquis said, gathering himself. "If you want gold, you can have it. If you want some holding, you can have that too. Or perhaps you want protection from those who would-" He faltered, somewhere in the middle of the offering. "Whatever this Academy cannot give you, I can try. You just have to name it."

"I have the things I need," I said. "If I require anything, I will tell you."

His gaze only grew more strange at that. He looked to the Archon, as if to confirm my truth from another’s lips. The Archon only nodded.

"There are conditions," I said instead. "What I do will be seen by no one. If I find so much as a single eye upon me, I will stop, and I will not begin again."

"O-of course." He agreed before I had finished.

I pointed at Ash. "I will require her. It may prove unnecessary. I demand her presence all the same."

The Marquis looked at her, and studied her a moment. "Lena told me about you," he said. "You're the one who made the Arbiter blaze like the sun." He looked back to me. "It will be done."

"And finally," I said. "I have a question. Questions that you can likely not answer, but you will try to find me the answer all the same. The Essence Heart that girl used, I want to know where she acquired it."

The Marquis nodded slowly. "I have been trying to find out the very same. If we find something, you will be the first person I tell."

I nodded. That was acceptable enough for me.

He turned to go and gathered himself for one more thing. "Lena will be there," he said. "As much-" He stopped. "As much as she can be, with the vow."

I said nothing. The vow, it seemed, was literal in every direction.

"Please," he said. "Take the time you need. Only do not take too long. I will wait in the Academy today."

Sol chirped. As if she were agreeing for me. "Very well," I said.

He tipped his head to me. He hesitated, and then tipped it to Ash as well. "Good day to you, Archon," he said, and he opened the door, and he closed it behind him.

A moment passed. Then came the sound of many boots on stone, a great number of them, retreating slowly into the distance. Only when the last of it had faded to nothing did Ash speak. "That," she said, "did not go the way I thought it would."

"I was afraid I would have to fight to keep you from leaving this room in chains," the Archon said. He said it softly. "It has been a long time since I have seen that man be reasonable. Four years. It was almost like looking at the man I once knew, rather than the man he became."

"A rather abrupt change," I said, "if what you claim is true." I said absently.

The Archon regarded me. His gaze dropped to my two forearms, to the black and the white laid bare. "Perhaps not so strange," he murmured. "To those who witnessed that last attack." He shook his head.

"You wished to speak to us alone," I said. "You went to some trouble to send him away."

The old man looked at me, and he smiled. "Just so."

He rose from behind his desk. He looked at me, and then at Ash, and then at Sol upon my head, each in turn. "Walk with me," he said. "I wish to speak with you both. About what you attempt…and about your future."

Sol chirped. It sounded unmistakably like a question.