Pherenike, Episode 6
Deucalion’s plea from her memory slowly receded. Pherenike shook her head coldly.
“That time” would likely come two months or so from “now.” The past in her mind crossed over into the future.
‘……If it flows exactly as it did then, Deucalion will once again make a foolish choice for me and his mother.’
He would give up proving his own innocence, and be branded with a criminal’s tattoo like a slave, bereft of all rights.
Looking back, the crux of this matter had not, in truth, been Deucalion’s death from the very beginning.
Its purpose had merely been to strip Deucalion of everything he possessed, dismiss him, and drive him into exile.
The king had always been filled with the desire to beat his second son to death like a dog, but even so, he was not a monarch who could personally murder his own son and flaunt the deed as an achievement.
Though he must have been pleasantly calculating that he could do away with his son, wandering in a foreign land, without a soul knowing.
At any rate, this resulted in somewhat castrating the fierce opposition from the Senate that ought to have followed Deucalion’s banishment from the country.
After all, the one meant to die had, for the time being, been spared.
Everyone thought that so long as he lived, there would always be a next time, and for the most part, that thought was right. Beneath the surface, the soldiers of Phaetusa still followed their master. Deucalion had a next time.
‘Even if, with victory right before his eyes, he fell at the hands of traitors.’
Thus, the Deucalion of now would not die. Yes. She, too, knew well that he would not drop dead right here before Pherenike’s eyes.
But knowledge and passion were always different things. People were terribly foolish. Pherenike climbed onto the chair again and looked, one after another, at Deucalion’s clean neck, his bloodless silver hair, the sound of his heartbeat filling her ears, the olive-colored eyes in which life dwelled, and the hand of the past that bore no ring engraved with her name.
She had most certainly saved Deucalion. She had cut open her own belly and vowed an exchange of life.
That had turned back the time of the world. Solely to drag Deucalion alone back out of death, according to her vow.
To some “time” in which “Deucalion was alive.”
And to a “safe place” where death would never descend upon him.
‘A safe place.’
Pherenike gave a sneer.
‘They’re crying out for Deucalion’s death on all sides, and this is a place safe from his death?’
Moreover, she herself, who had exchanged her life for his, was still alive. Simply because this was the past?
‘As if.’
The accounting could not possibly be that simple.
Clearly, she had failed to pay the price properly. Or perhaps it simply had not been paid “yet.”
If so, had she truly saved Deucalion?
Was this matter truly complete?
“If you remain like this, His Highness will truly have my hide, Lady Pherenike.”
Dexicos, who had hurriedly caught Pherenike’s swaying body, glared at her.
One of Deucalion’s swords, still irreverent and loyal. Their friend, whom Deucalion himself had made into her fence.
Dexicos merely had a more youthful face, as many years as they had gone back. Familiar golden-brown hair. Honest and insolent blue eyes.
‘Did you die that day too, at that time?’
Your mother must have been waiting for you. Pherenike thought blankly, then said in a small voice.
“You will not die, Dexi.”
Dexi. It was a way of calling him as though they were children again. Dexicos’s expression suddenly went blank with shock.
“Pardon?”
“The same goes for your master.”
Of course, to Dexicos, it must have sounded like a denial of reality.
But after turning her head toward the dais and looking for a moment at the king’s visibly sickly face, Pherenike stared at the empty place beside him, where Aktor had vanished before she knew it.
All at once, the feet that had been standing precariously on the chair moved hastily down to the floor. Just as Dexicos muttered a curse and tried to follow immediately, an invisible boundary was drawn between them.
His face crumpled at once, and he called Pherenike in a low voice.
“Lady Pherenike!”
Ever since they had all passed adulthood, Dexicos only called her or Deucalion by name instead of by rank when he was angry and dumbfounded.
But Pherenike had no leisure to look after him.
“Don’t follow me.”
She had only used the smallest amount of power, yet in an instant, pain came as though tearing through her belly. It was something she had never experienced before.
Pherenike bit hard into the inside of her mouth and turned away, her face composed and expressionless. Dexicos kicked over the boundary irritably and crossed it, saying in a low voice.
“Damn it, what am I, a dog? Did you think I wouldn’t be able to follow if you just tied me up with Althea however you pleased? Do you think I can’t use Orthea?”
“You can’t move for a moment. That’s enough.”
“This is sorcery. Why do you keep using Althea physically, as if it were Orthea? You’re diligently building up grudges with me—aren’t you afraid of the consequences? What if I go tattle to the Sanctuary and tell them the Sibylle should be ruined?”
“What shall I do? I’m so frightened I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“As if Lord Phaetusa being dismissed from the royal house isn’t enough? What will you do if the Sibylle is dismissed from the Sanctuary right alongside him?”
“We’d make a well-matched pair.”
“Damn it, undo this.”
“What would make you go easy on me? Shall I stand in front of your room later with my hands raised?”
“Sibylle, as one who is to become the holy Kibellaune in the future, if you keep committing such impious acts against the goddess just to shake me off……”
Even as he said that, Dexicos had been doggedly following behind her, but at last, when he stepped on the final line and light burst up, he muttered curses like a madman and retreated one step as though he had been burned.
It was at the same moment that they saw Deucalion leaving the Assembly, surrounded by the blades of the royal guards.
“……I’ll be back. Wait quietly inside the west gate.”
Instead of answering, Dexicos muttered curses as though talking to himself.
He had withdrawn from the boundary not because it hurt. It was because he knew that the longer they argued, the more greatly she would commit irreverence against the goddess. Fearless Dexicos was timid only before the gods.
The commotion inside the hall still continued. The men of House Thasos were randomly rooting out and cutting down the freemen assemblymen who had dared to vote in favor of the prince’s execution, and the king’s royal guards detained those noble men. In that state, the standoff continued.
The king was looking down at all of it with boredom. As though watching a tedious play that would not end no matter how long he waited.
Before leaving the assembly hall, she looked at Epikides for a moment as if she would kill him, then turned and hastened her steps.
As Pherenike stepped out through the small door used by the pages, she pulled the gray veil over her head a little deeper. She looked like a young, low-ranking priestess walking through the corridor.
It was common for people sent by the central sanctuary of Mount Kallike to observe the king’s Assembly.
There were not many old priests who could take seats in the Assembly on behalf of the high priest, nominally the chairman of the Antehe Assembly. However, the young priests and priestesses who attended them like shadows were, as a rule, more numerous than the servants nobles brought with them through the streets.
From the beginning, Pherenike had not attended this gathering under her own name. As the daughter of General Basilios, even if she was of noble status, formal attendance itself was impossible; and if she were attending as the next Kibellaune, then it would have been proper for her to sit in a grand seat from the start.
From the Assembly’s councilors to the pages of all sorts of nobles, the guardsmen, and the observers, nearly a thousand people were gathered in the vast circular assembly hall, and Pherenike had been in the section for freemen, where no one could recklessly recognize her.
The restraint on her wrist extinguished the light by which someone might recognize her. It was not perfect, but amid the countless crowd, it became rather close to perfect.
Unless it was a man like Deucalion, who could find her at a glance no matter where she was, no one would even know that she existed here. Not even Pherenike’s father.
And so it was quite ridiculous. The way Aktor’s guard naturally recognized her when she appeared out of nowhere and stepped aside without the slightest trace of doubt.
As though he had known in advance that she was in the Assembly, or as though she were still his lord’s fiancée, it was a matter-of-course respect.
Pherenike swept past him fiercely. Then, with quick steps, she chased after the man walking far ahead and called out.
“Lord Regent!”
Aktor slowly turned in the darkness.