But no matter how many times he raised his staff in the direction of the lady’s servant, he found no weapons or any trace of martial skill. It was possible, of course, that he was looking at a man who had been highly trained in the art of concealing his identity. Or equally possible that he was simply a harmless rickshaw puller.
When Mitsuru arrived, he found the servant in his usual place, crouched in the shade under his favorite shrub. When he spied Mitsuru approaching, he swiftly stood, took the paho’s reins in his hand, and helped Mitsuru dismount.
Lady Zophie smiled pleasantly from a high-backed chair in the gazebo. The seating here wasn’t too comfortable, and the lady routinely brought a large cushion with her. An intricately embroidered cloth had been draped over a circular table. A silver teapot gleamed in the sunlight.
Whenever the lady came to have tea here, a full entourage of ten female servants would appear bearing teapots, teacups, and cakes. While they drank, the servants would pour tea, and those with nothing to do would hover by the lady and her guest, waiting with bated breath, ready to fill any request directed toward them. The first time he’d come, it had been rather difficult to enjoy his cup of tea with such excessively attentive service. The lady’s calm acceptance had seemed bizarre to say the least. This, Mitsuru thought, is what it means to be royalty. If there was always a crowd of people waiting to please you from the moment you were born, he supposed anyone could grow used to it.
Personally, Mitsuru thought the whole thing was an unneccessary extravagance. To have ten people serving one person seemed an egregious waste of resources. He knew things had been much the same in the real world once upon a time. In a way, visiting Vision was like getting in a time machine to visit the past of his own world.
“It’s quite cold today, isn’t it? Perhaps not the best day for having tea in a garden,” the emperor’s daughter said, rising from her chair to greet him. Over by a shrub, her servant bowed on his knees, placing his fists upon the ground in greeting. Mitsuru took his seat opposite the lady.
“Yet I find the sky a remarkable blue. It is so beautiful, I fear it might purify my soul just to gaze at it.”
“Such modesty! Did you know, perhaps, that my name Zophie means the color blue in an ancient tongue of our people?”
The emperor’s daughter happily gave instructions to her lady servants, and soon the table was covered with fragrant tea and a selection of cakes. All the while she talked in a pleasant, lilting voice. She began by telling him how splendid she had felt upon waking that morning, going on to complain about how difficult her history lectures had been, and how much time it had taken her to stitch the pattern for her new ball gown, and how she’d heard of a new play that was garnering much praise in the capital…
Zophie was all of fifteen years old. She was the daughter of the emperor, yet in many ways she was still just a little girl. She was as giddy and talkative as any girl one might meet in the town. Mitsuru, in general, spoke little, taking in all that she said while making the occasional requisite comment or murmur of approval.
On occasion he would smile or nod, be surprised or impressed. She seemed to revel in Mitsuru’s every gesture, and seem quite pleased that she’d found this clever fellow to enjoy conversation with—even if he was a shade on the young side. Mitsuru, for his part, enjoyed these times for his own private reason, which he could never tell her.
When he first went to meet with the emperor’s daughter, he’d been so surprised his breath was taken away. Her face looked like someone he knew. They were almost identical.
The woman was his aunt—his father’s youngest sister.
After Mitsuru’s father, enraged at his wife’s infidelity, had killed Mitsuru’s mother and his little sister, then taken his own life, Mitsuru had been shuttled around between various relatives, eventually ending up with his young aunt. In truth, he’d been pressed on her. Here was a young woman, just graduated from college, who doubtlessly sympathized with Mitsuru, yet certainly lacked the means and wherewithal to raise a young boy. She tried being nice to him and that failed, and when she tried to control him, she lost control of herself and ended up crying and screaming.
She was not, in general, a happy person. Her eyes always had a sad, forlorn look to them.
Mitsuru grew to hate his father. Had he not committed suicide, Mitsuru would have killed him with his own bare hands. That all-consuming rage opened the Porta Nectere. It provided Mitsuru the chance to enter Vision.
Everything about the emperor’s daughter reminded him of his aunt. Her little affectations. The shifts in her expression. The timbre of her voice. Everything. He thought his aunt must have been like this when she was a high school student, beautiful and unafraid of what lay ahead.
The Watcher of the gate, Wayfinder Lau, told Mitsuru he would encounter people in Vision who closely resembled those he knew in the real world.
—Even though they may look like two peas in a pod, the people you meet here are not who they are in the real world. They may have not a single thing in common. It is merely your own energy that causes them to appear the way they do.
Mitsuru had taken Wayfinder Lau’s words to heart, and, for better or for worse, he hadn’t yet met anyone resembling someone from the real world in his travels until now. Lady Zophie was the first.
And now, staring at her face from such a close distance, he began to wonder if Vision wasn’t really more than just something created by the surplus imaginative energies of people in the real world. Perhaps the real world and Vision were like two sides of a coin, each complementing the other. Making the other whole.
What had been discarded in the real world, what had never seen form, those dreams that never came true, these were what made Vision. That was why Halnera required a sacrifice from both worlds.
If this were the case, then Zophie’s easy smile and unfettered happiness belonged by all rights to his aunt back in the real world. Mitsuru would reach the Tower of Destiny and straighten out his twisted fate. On the morning he returned to the real world, all the happiness that had been Zophie’s would be returned to his aunt. This he promised himself.
It made the task before Mitsuru quite simple. The relationship between his aunt and Zophie was a perfect example. He would merely apply the same principle to his mother, his little sister, and himself.
Perhaps this is why, before he claimed the final gemstone, he had been confronted with this challenge and forced to do a little self-reflection. The Tower of Destiny had given him this encounter with Lady Zophie to prepare him.
That is why, in Zophie’s mindless prattle, he felt the weight of his mission. The enormity of what he stood to gain made his heart race.
“Master Mitsuru?”
Mitsuru snapped back into focus. Zophie was looking directly at him. He was afraid his attention had wandered in the middle of their discussion. “My apologies! My mind began to drift off into the clouds.”
Zophie smiled brightly. Her hairpin—an elaborate affair covered with stones of many colors and bound with a silver chain—swayed elegantly. “Do not worry on my behalf, for I know what it is that concerns you and causes your mind to wander. I know the source of this concern is my father…”
Mitsuru’s face tightened.
Zophie turned to her servants standing ready. “I must speak on a very important matter with Master Mitsuru. I will call for you when I need you,” she ordered.
The servants shuffled quietly off, leaving them alone in the Garden of Victory.
“Sending your servants away?” Mitsuru asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Of course, sending them away does not ensure that one of Adju Lupa’s men does not hear our every word, but I care not. For it was none other than Adju Lupa himself who suggested I speak to you on this matter, Master Mitsuru.”
Mitsuru was not surprised to hear that they might be observed. He had assumed that Sigdora’s eyes gleamed in every dark corner. But he was startled to hear the revelation that followed. “What is it that Lord Lupa said?”
Zophie bit her lip lightly, glancing in the direction of the shrub where her manservant waited. “Before I speak of that, may I ask you, Master Mitsuru, if you have divined the true nature of the man who pulls my rickshaw?”