12. The Invincible Legion Commander, Valerian (1)

“Well?”

What was he asking me? How I felt about him taking Leo, the traitor, back in? What I thought of his chess? I turned it over for a while and decided not to answer, because tipping my hand this early would have been reckless. Valerian, for his part, didn’t bother pressing me and simply went on with the game.

A strange déjà vu settled over me. Somewhere there was a familiar scent of oak, and the afterimage of someone watching a chess game long ago, and laid over that afterimage, a slightly younger Valerian. That was when I understood.

Arden used to play chess with Valerian fairly often.

This bone-deep wave of longing wasn’t mine. In my entire life, had I ever once smelled oak?

Damn it.

Settling myself, soothing this sentimental haze of nostalgia, was harder than I’d expected. This was not on the schedule.

I looked up and silently begged Eve for help.

But Eve hadn’t picked up on anything wrong with me at all.

If anything, she was humming happily to herself as she took a sightseeing tour of Valerian’s room. I could tell right away she was going to be no help.

I’m not Arden. Get a grip.

If I let my mind go slack even a little, Arden’s memories, those soft, swelling, overwhelming feelings, would swallow me whole. So I scrambled for an emotional sedative. The best way to wipe a smile off your face is to think of something sad, or so the saying goes, and I forcibly dragged out the single most tragic, infuriating, blood-tears-streaming moment of my entire life.

Five years. The Lord of the East raid, into which I’d poured my entire youth. The boss at 0.1% HP. And then, in the instant before the killing blow, that goddamn blue screen filling my monitor, and the acrid smoke of burnt electronics rising from the rig.

“…”

The effect was magnificent. The swelling brotherly admiration and excitement that had filled my chest moments ago vanished in an instant, like ash gone cold, and in its place came only a gamer’s deep, dark fury and emptiness.

Yeah. That’s me.

The side effect was that I’d gone past “calmed” all the way to “eyes dead like a man who’d seen the end of the world,” but whatever. By the time I’d dry-washed my face and got my composure back, Valerian was sliding the black pieces across the board to me.

“It’s been a while. I’ll let you teach me a move.”

.

.

.

Tap.

Valerian’s white pawn advanced, declaring the match open, and I answered with a black knight. Soon our hands were moving busily. Like opponents who had played each other dozens of times, we read each other’s intent and slipped into the gaps, in a rapid back-and-forth that left no room to breathe. We were only a few minutes in, yet pieces were toppling off the board like mushrooms after rain. Going by each side’s losses, our skill looked evenly matched.

“You were waiting for me.”

With the turmoil forced down, I finally opened the conversation. Valerian had received my sudden visit far too smoothly, and everything about it suggested he’d been prepared to some degree. He must have heard a report on Leo from the servants, because otherwise none of this added up.

I’d assumed someone with Valerian’s personality wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought.

But the very fact that we were sitting here playing chess out of the blue made it plain that Valerian had apparently been paying Arden some attention.

Just to be clear:

This was not on the schedule.

“What makes you think so?”
“Because otherwise the eldest son of House Arne would hardly be sitting around playing chess at his leisure, Brother.”

Tock.

I knocked one of Valerian’s pieces off the board as I spoke.

“Have you heard things about me?”

At my probe Valerian fell into a long pause, but whether it was about his next move or about how to answer me, I couldn’t tell. At last he moved a piece, took one of mine, and spoke.

“Do you mean the part where you, who used to stagger about like a chick on the verge of dying, are now in good health and have begun training your body? Or the part where, despite knowing of a servant’s betrayal, you took him in? Determine clearly which proposition you intend before you open your mouth.”

I had to click my tongue inwardly. I’d tried to probe Valerian and lost the initiative instead. That phrase of his in particular, a servant’s betrayal, was maddeningly ambiguous. Did he still think Leo was a spy planted to assassinate me, or did he know Leo had come over to my side completely? The man across from me was, without question, several levels above.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt my insides cooking like this.

Going too long without answering would only amplify his suspicion, so with no choice left, I pried my throat open and dragged out something, anything.

“Illness, as we know, can come on suddenly. By the same token, it can also turn for the better in ways we cannot account for. All my life, every branch has grown only in the wrong direction. Perhaps now the buds are finally trying to flower.”

Even under this cascading torrent of utter nonsense, Valerian’s expression didn’t change. He brushed my long-winded health excuse aside the way one brushes aside the noise around a chess board, lightly and dismissively.

“Is that so.”

With just those words, he moved a piece and captured my bishop in one stroke.

I couldn’t keep my brow from furrowing. The bishop was a critical piece, and losing it put me at a sudden disadvantage.

“That’s not everything you came to say.”

That single move had left my black pawns isolated, cut off from their lines, and before I’d noticed, our back-and-forth had collapsed into me playing pure defense, trying only to lose as few pieces as possible. The initiative in the conversation and the state of the board: bit by bit, Valerian was eroding both out from under me.

He propped his chin on his hand and looked down at me.

“At this rate I should have just done my paperwork instead.”

His eyes, already losing interest, drifted to my fingertips, and under that gaze my hand froze in midair.

Without my noticing, Eve had appeared by my side, and she was looking at me with an anxious face.

That’s right. Of course.

“I can’t very well end it here.”

The character with Eve’s form, my character, had beaten Valerian down over and over. Over and over, hell. I must have killed him hundreds of times. And here I was, frozen up against a man like that. I’d lost the opening skirmish, that much was true, but that didn’t mean I had failed.

“Brother.”

I stopped beating around the bush.

“About Leo. I took him in knowing he was a traitor.”
“…Hmm.”

Testing the waters hadn’t worked.

My opponent is The Invincible Legion Commander, Valerian.

Looking back, Valerian wasn’t just a powerhouse in combat but a legion commander of formidable intellect, and there was no chance a man like that would fall for clumsy acting or silence.

“You aren’t surprised?”
“Because I already knew.”

I lowered my shield, and Valerian set down his armor in turn.

“Then you understand that Leo still has his uses, Brother.”

I advanced one of my few remaining pieces a single square, and at that, Valerian let his displeasure show in his answer.

“What possible use could there be in a single common servant — and a marked traitor at that?”

House Arne was a proud knightly house, and whatever the reason behind it, betrayal was something they could not look upon kindly. But that was Valerian’s view, not mine.

“Since ancient times, what wins a war has not been overwhelming force of arms.”

Historically speaking, what decides a war is, in the end, intelligence.

“Leo can make an excellent spy, in more ways than one.”

As I’d said before, there was no such thing as failure for me. Only success, and the path to success.

I smiled and looked across at Valerian.

“And besides, Leo has already shaken your heart a little, hasn’t he, Brother? How could he possibly be useless?”
“Coddling a traitor is not the way of House Arne.”

Valerian devoured my advancing black pawn yet again.

…It’s over.

That single move had completely shattered the balance of the board, but I kept the smile in place and pressed on.

“And yet, Brother, weren’t you the very first to take him back in after he betrayed me?”

Valerian picked up one of my fallen black pawns, turned it over in his fingers as if appraising a sculpture, and then crushed it between thumb and forefinger. I watched the pawn snap in two and clatter to the floor.

“If a dog you’ve kept and raised bites you, is it the owner’s fault, or the dog’s? Whose fault would you say it is?”

Valerian was a man who would later rise to the lofty post of legion commander, and perhaps that was why his pride as a knight was even stronger than I’d assumed. But if so, then this man who held betrayal in such contempt, why was it that he—

— Just as the Empire did, all of you, too, shall die.

—would later become the foremost blade carving the Empire to pieces?

“A dog is merely a beast. I’d say the greater fault lies with the master, who has reason and still failed to control it.”
“That is sophistry!”

Bang!

Valerian slammed his hand down on the table, and the chess pieces rattled violently in place.

“If a beast bites its master, killing it as an example to the others is the way of a knight. Are you defending the traitor?”
“I am not defending him. I am speaking of efficiency.”

Sadly for him, a Valerian who had lost his composure was no longer my match.

“A hunting dog is a beast. When a beast is hungry, it will covet its master’s food; when it senses a threat, it will bare its teeth. That is its instinct.”
“And that is precisely why you must kill it as an example! To plant fear, so that it will never again betray its master!”
“And what if that hunting dog is the only one you have?”

At the counter-question Valerian’s brow narrowed, and I pressed on without missing a beat.

“Picture it, Brother. You are caught in a blinding snowstorm. Your provisions have run out, and behind you, your child is starving and weeping.”

I looked him straight in the eyes and pulled him into the scenario I’d built.

“If you don’t find game at once, you’ll all freeze to death together. But your weak human eyes and nose can find no prey in this blizzard. The only hope you have is the keen sense of smell of the beast at your side. What would you do, Brother?”

“…”

“Even if that beast is the very one that bit your hand yesterday because it was hungry.”

Valerian was silent for a long time.

“A dead dog cannot hunt. Rather than starve to death together while you stand on your pride, wouldn’t it profit you more to force the leash back on it and take it out hunting again?”

After that long silence, it took him real effort to open his mouth.

“A dog that bites its master will bare its teeth again in the end, no matter the leash. A traitor’s nature does not change.”

To the very end, Valerian wouldn’t bend his philosophy. This was the conviction he had held all his life, as the eldest son of House Arne and as a knight, and I had never intended to break the conviction itself.

His gaze swept over my thin wrist and my sickly-looking shoulders, and then he said:

“Surely you don’t imagine that a child, simply by strapping on a sturdy leash, can subdue a dog larger than himself.”
“Of course not.”

It was striking, because it meant he wasn’t going to deny the logic of my argument itself.

“What you say is plausible. But you, who lack the strength to control the leash, will in the end be torn apart by the very hunting dog you keep.”

That Valerian, Valerian, was worrying about me. He was saying that the one who’d carry out the logic, meaning me, wasn’t capable enough.

It made me happy.

And so my honest inner self came spilling out.

“Honestly, I’d much rather deal with a Leo who puts his own interests first. His desires are just so transparent.”
“His desires — transparent?”
“That’s exactly why he’s easy to handle! Next to misty feelings like loyalty or faith, a man whose hard desire you’ve got a grip on is so much easier to control!”

I rattled it off like a machine gun, and the moment after, I thought: uh-oh.

…Why am I so excited just now?

The tone I’d just used was suspiciously like that of a child desperate to show off to his big brother some new piece of knowledge he’d picked up at school. A corner of my heart was tingling. This strict, terrifying older brother was listening, actually listening, to what I had to say, and it was filling me with a strange satisfaction, a strange exhilaration.

Thump, thump, thump.

My heart was pounding.

I was—

Along with a chat-log line, Eve’s form flickered and stuttered like static. Like a video on the wrong frequency, the senses of the real world were going hazy.

“Ngh!”

I clutched at my chest. A dizzying alien memory, like an old strip of film, was being forcibly laid over the scene of reality, and the pain forced my eyes shut on their own.

The pain forced my eyes shut on their own.

“Are you all right?”

At a voice ringing by my ear, I opened my eyes. The voice was unmistakably Valerian’s, but compared to the deep baritone I had just been hearing, it was far more boyish, far softer.

And when I opened my eyes again—

“Are you hurt anywhere, Arden?”

—a younger Valerian was there, a boy who hadn’t yet shed the look of childhood.