"Ow—"
Marilou clutched her head and stumbled back a few steps. Her calf hit the base of the wall, and just as she was about to go down—
Viya picked her up the way a cat picks up a kitten.
It wasn't that Marilou was too light, or her legs too short. It was purely that Viya was appallingly strong.
Before she came to this world, Marilou had never believed a girl who looked as though a stiff breeze would fold her could uproot a willow tree with her bare hands.
These days all such prejudices had been laid to rest.
For one simple reason: Viya had strength and methods to spare.
"So careless you can't even walk. Marilou, don't tell me you want me to teach you how to walk from the beginning?"
Listening to Viya's scolding, Marilou felt a weight come off her. This was the Viya she knew.
Last night's gentle Viya really had been an afterimage, hadn't she?
Seeing that Marilou wasn't upset, Viya found it strange. She had just insulted the girl in the most direct, least roundabout way available.
From the look of things, had she actually enjoyed hearing it?
"I'm sorry, Your Holiness. I shouldn't have been so clumsy."
Marilou pressed her palms together, and once the apology was out, every trace of gloom left her face.
"What's for breakfast?"
"You..."
For no clear reason Viya thought of a scene from the book. In the book, this was where she would push Marilou's head down, look at her with loathing, and throw out a line.
"Idiot. You haven't licked me clean down there and you want to eat? It seems I've been feeding you far too well."
There was no possible way Viya could say that out loud. It would do far too much damage to the Temple's image.
So she waved a hand instead. "Come here. I'll do your hair first, then we'll eat."
Viya led Marilou into the bedroom and fetched a comb and a hair tie.
Marilou might be a girl, but Viya could never shake the feeling that she was exactly like a man. Was that really a hairstyle a girl would keep?
Viya pulled at hair as tangled as weeds, forcing the comb through it. "From now on, remember to take the tie out before you sleep. You've slept your hair into tufts."
"Oh."
Marilou listened with half an ear. In her past life, as a bloke, she had never paid the slightest attention to things like combing her hair, and what style she had on any given day depended entirely on how she'd slept the night before.
Viya worked at her hair for a long while before she got it right, into something close to her own style. Into the thickest part at the crown she slid a hairpin and pushed it through.
"Ow, ow, what are you stabbing me for?"
Marilou reached for her hair, and Viya slapped her hand down.
"Don't move. This is the style that goes with formal dress. There are clothes to put on shortly as well."
Viya pointed at the gown on the rack, its waist no thicker than a fist, and Marilou felt half her soul leave her body.
Why were these nobles so devoted to corseted dresses? The thing was an instrument of torture, honestly.
"Why do I have to wear something like that? There's no need for it at home!"
"You're attending the family banquet in a few days." Viya paused. "There'll be things that pinch far worse than this one. And your bewbs are too small; if it isn't laced tight, you'll look like a sausage, won't you?"
"What?"
Marilou pictured a sausage in a brown corseted gown doing a ballroom dance in the middle of the floor. It would probably terrify everyone standing around it.
"Well? Is there a problem with what I said?"
"There's nothing wrong with it. It's their taste that's strange. They want a tiny waist and a big chest at the same time. Am I a ginseng fruit? Do I grow to fit a mold?"
Viya pushed her lips out. "Isn't the dress the mold? I told you to work on your bust and you wouldn't listen. Although..."
"Small is cute too."
Marilou's eyes went wide. She wanted to say something and couldn't think how to argue, so she simply shut her mouth.
Endure a few more months and she'd still come out of this a hero.
Viya trimmed a few stray strands away with magic and patted Marilou's shoulder, looking entirely at ease.
"The hair's done. Go and eat."
Marilou raised her head and looked at the ugly duckling turned swan in the dressing mirror, that small face above a snow-white neck now dressed up to an exceptional standard.
She had been in this world a long time, and this was the first time she had studied herself properly. There was no question about it: she was a great beauty.
This was absolutely not Marilou preening. It was a statement of fact.
"Stop preening and get up. Time to eat."
Viya walked ahead and Marilou followed close behind, down to the ground-floor dining room, where the servants had food ready.
Marilou came up to the plate of sandwiches and was about to bite into one when Viya smacked her hand again.
"You've forgotten the prayer manners I taught you again."
"I don't believe in gods anyway. Nothing's allowed to turn into a spirit after the founding of the republic."
Marilou went on eating exactly as she pleased.
The corner of Viya's eye twitched violently. "How is showing no reverence to the gods any different from those witches?"
She had worked out that Marilou came in two forms: the meek form and the brave form.
This was very obviously the brave form, the one that was asking for a smack.
"You know about the witches?"
Marilou was somewhat surprised. She thought of the crow woman last night, chattering away in front of her about witch history and an extinguished sun. Having no idea at all what any of it meant, Marilou had treated it as though she were being lectured on some mathematical formula.
Obscure, impenetrable history was no different from a maths problem.
However simple the problem, if you can't do it, they all look the same.
Viya put her palms together and prayed to the gods. Holy light flashed around her, and only then did she take up her knife and fork and answer quietly.
"I know something of it. Witches are the Holy Church's foremost enemy, and the Church spares no effort every year in gathering word of them."
"Why hunt witches, though? Are they very wicked?"
Marilou thought back to the crow's attitude toward her last night. Not exactly kind, but you couldn't call it very wicked either.
"It's only a difference of position. A witch waking drags tragedy along behind it, and the Kingdom, after years of unbroken war against monsters, is far weaker than it was.
"I'm afraid the next witch's waking may not be far off..."
Viya's knife and fork paused over the beef, and instead she speared a piece of meat from Marilou's plate.
"My meat?"
"What do you mean, yours? You yourself belong to me, so what belongs to you belongs to me as well."
The corner of Viya's mouth curved, and she made a show of about to bite the meat off Marilou's plate.
"You..."
Marilou's hand tightened. Then she thought about it: her contract would be over soon, and she'd be graduating.
She swallowed it.
It was only a piece of meat. She speared a piece from Viya's plate and shoved it into her mouth without the slightest hesitation.
Before the beef was even down her throat, her hands were setting the knife and fork on the table with barely contained urgency, striking the posture of total victory.
"Hmph. We're even."
"This..."
For a moment Viya couldn't think what to say. Even a breakfast this dull could keep Marilou this excited.
"Your Holiness, if witches are so dangerous, are you confident you could beat one? If a witch attacked the Temple outright and carried you off, would I count as spoils of war, or as a prisoner?"
Viya: ...
"You'd love to see me defeated, wouldn't you? As for witches, I won't make claims. An ordinary witch should struggle to threaten me, and as long as it isn't that one from the legends waking, I ought to be able to put up a fight."
Viya spoke plainly, with nothing exaggerated or dressed up.
Marilou's heart surged as she listened. If she used the invitation the witches had given her and could summon that legendary witch, wouldn't that give her a way to hold Viya in check?
"What are you so worked up about? Anyone would think you were that witch. Hurry up and eat."
"Oh. I've got one more question. What do you think a falling sun means?"
Viya's hand went still around her knife and fork, her pupils shaking violently. "Where did you hear that?"