Dark was the night, black was the hour, murky of heart, red of blood; Rivalz was lost in the labyrinth of the Ashfords. The topiary had been reduced to undefined shapes made out only by starlight, which was dim in the face of the light pollution endemic to locales close to Tokyo. By keeping the wall of the hedge to his left, he would be out—eventually. He had cut Ariadne's thread long ago.
The crunch of gravel under his shoes—court shoes that were never meant for anything other than smooth ballroom floor—was comforting in a way that the faint strains of the Ashford's beautiful orchestra and the not-so-beautiful sounds of men stabbing their wives in the back, and their current function as Rivalz's only point of orientation, was not. Gravel only knew the simple apolitical force of gravity.
He'd been blocked on his way out by the Duke of Dorset canoodling with the Viscount Everson's daughter. Initially he had turned deeper into the maze to find an alternative way out. Now though… Rivalz wasn't certain he disliked being lost.
"You are lost in a dark forest. You see a path. It could lead you off a cliff. It could lead you further into the forest. It could lead you out. What do you do?" Millie has a book titled Philosophical Concepts for the New Age under her arm.
Rivalz thinks for a moment. "I'd follow it."
"You would act even if that action has no guarantee of working out?" She brushed stray hair behind her ears. They were on top of the school building, looking out over Tokyo Settlement, and the sun had just started to rise.
"If I were about to die in a forest, I'd rather die losing a gamble than standing still." Rivalz ran a finger along the railing, wiping off droplets of dew. "Even if you're dealt a bad hand, a rigged hand, you're better off playing the game to the end."
Millie rolled her eyes. "What if there was a game where the only winning move is not to play?"
"Can I make the other guy lose as well?" Rivalz dried his hand on his coat.
"No." Millie looked away to the settlement. "The other player will win, and you will lose no matter what you do. It's poker but you aren't dealt any cards. It's chess without a king. It's the races without a horse."
"If I were to lose no matter what," Rivalz said slowly, lending each word a special meaning in the stillness of the dawn, "but I was still at the table," he grabbed the railing, "I would play the game. I would be a coward not to."
Millie glanced at his hands, white from gripping the railing. "Courage is not being afraid of looking like a coward."
Rivalz smiled. "You can have that engraved on my headstone."
Millie walked up to Rivalz and kissed him, then raised her eyebrows.
"No time." Rivalz shook his head.
The clouds parted and Rivalz could see the way forward.
There were no dead ends in Ashford's labyrinth. There was nothing as unimaginative as a simple path to nowhere. How it had been done, Rivalz did not know, but each and every false trail led to a plinth with a statue, a birdbath, a bench—something meaningful. It was the end of the line as far as finding a way out of the labyrinth was concerned, but that didn't matter. There were no dead ends, just truly surprising destinations.
Rivalz was on the approach to an ending. The hedge shrub changed from boxwood to gorse. Rivalz did not see the change as much as he felt it as he ran his hand into the distinctive thorn prickles. The gravel gave way to stone paving and the path opened up and encircled a fish pond.
Rivalz could hear a fountain bubbling and splashing in dribs and drabs, but the fountain itself could only be seen in flashes of silver water. Around the other side of the pond was a statue. By the light of the moon Rivalz could see that it was of a man wearing a toga. It wasn't light enough for him to identify which man. He suspected it was Caesar Augustus given that the statue's head was covered, but it could be any other number of Roman priests.
Faintly he heard a bell tolling quarter to midnight.
He made his way around the pool, keeping his touch light to prevent scratches. In the moonlight he made out a plaque at the base of the statue. Rivalz reached into his coat and produced a matchbox. Striking a match, and shielding the flame from the light breeze, he read: cessante ratione legis cessat ipsa lex.
Latin never was his strong suit, so he broke the match over the back of his hand and threw it into the fishpond, before continuing his journey.
"Facta non verba," said Millie. The Student Council was in session. Council was defined by the inefficient but traditional, like any real, any old bureaucracy. Half of everything they did was meaningless outside of the mystic powers of ritual itself. "No apologies, all present."
Rivalz typed that into the minutes, while Lelouch (or Mr Vice-President now) handed everyone a copy of the previous meeting's minutes. As usual, no one checked it.
Millie continued. "Motions to be chaired: Weekly financial report by Miss Einstein, followed by Mr Vice-President's proposed amendments to the forbidden grounds regulations. Finally we have the golf club's request for more funds, they want new golf clubs—"
"We'll get there when we get there! Get on with the damn show," Kallen interjected. Why a woman that obviously chafed in bureaucracy was in the voluntary committee for administrative nonsense was a mystery.
"Closing balance for this week is eight hundred and ninety-four pounds, twelve shillings, and three farthings," said Nina. More money than they really knew what to do with. In a school of heirs and heiresses, money was nothing special. Half the board could probably find that money without breaking a sweat. "Inventory is down a case of whiskey—"
"Fuck," Rivalz swore softly, and gave Lelouch a hard stare. How did one drink/lose 12 bottles of whiskey in a week?
Suzaku stood up. "This council… has been illicitly supplying the student body with alcohol?"
"Did no-one read him on?" Rivalz asked.
There were uncomfortable glances all around, until Millie spoke. "Some of us like to sleep at night," she said, and gave the avatar of anti-corruption a tired look. "Now, Miss Einstein, if you please."
Nina carried on. "Down four crates of beer." The beer hadn't been any good, so was of no concern. It had been dispatched to the housemaster in return for him looking the other way on some of Shirley's… indiscretions. Keeping one's members enrolled was an essential component of having a student government, after all. "Down a case of claret." That one… was unexpected. They'd been moving some stock—nobles loved to celebrate—but it was nowhere near an entire case in a week.
Everyone stared at him. "Do you think… I just create booze out of thin air? Booze that this school has a vested interest in us not having? In excessive quantities as well?"
Lelouch theatrically looked down at last week's minutes, as if checking cue cards for a speech. "Why yes, Mr Secretary."
A fork in the labyrinth. Of course, he could choose the left one—that had been his guiding light, his strategy. He could let his actions be dictated by habit. He was faced with a decision, but one that had been made two hours earlier, when he had left the ballroom for the gardens and then the labyrinth, and had his exit blocked by the Duke of Somerset, who was succeeding in the execution but failing in discretion of feeling up Viscount Everson's daughter.
Somewhere he had made a mistake. Somewhere he had made a decision that was wrong and he couldn't get back to the party. Not on his own, not alone. He wondered about simply climbing on top of the hedge. But that wouldn't work very well.
Decisions were like power. Once you made them, even if better information came your way after the fact, they could never be taken back. You had to run with it.
Because he could, Rivalz took the right path.
Just because the Student Council did not have any real power did not mean it was useless. Its main function was to give the power that resided in its members legitimacy. It lent each of their voices authority. When Rivalz asked a student to jump, it wasn't just him. It was the voice of Millie, and Lelouch, and every student that had elected them.
Legitimacy had a number of effects on people. Most important was the way it allowed students and staff to assume that they were acting on behalf of the school. Like when Rivalz had physically thrown out an unruly student from his class; he had done so with the tacit approval of everyone in the room. The teacher had turned a blind eye, and taught on as if nothing was happening.
It was the student council doing what was necessary; not what was good.
Necessary for what? A question Rivalz found himself asking more and more these days. Like Sally-Anne Perks, who had been found hanged under the only chestnut tree at the school. Suicide. An indisputable fact, not because there was an investigation. But because everyone knew the impossible chain of reasoning any question would start.
No-one wanted to question Ms. President. There was not a student that didn't know something had happened between Ms. President and Miss Perks. But all the girls concluded that it hadn't been that harsh, and that it was necessary.
In the end, the truth was revealed. Rules were not laws for the weak nor guidelines for the wise. They were merely the kid gloves of civility that masked the knuckle dusters of power. Given enough support, even that paltry justification would be removed.
The justification of necessity. The only way she was given that was because she was a member of the Student Council, and some aspect of Ms President coloured Millie's actions. As Ms President she held the trust of the Academy. As Ms President she had a mandate to represent the people, to use her power judiciously. No-one wanted to believe that they had elected a tyrant. Fewer still would be willing to accept that a tyrant could only exist through the tacit approval of the people. "The people" here is being used in its capacity as politik. In an act of groupthink, the student body had decided that they needed a bully.
What she had done made Rivalz's stomach churn.
It would be unfair to lay all the blame on Millie. In a chain of events designed to pass on the guilt and to muddy the waters of culpability, she had taken actions that resulted in Perks being stabbed again and again, by so many people that few had the gall to determine who had laid the blow that had broken the camel's back, like so many senators and Julius Caesar in Rome, long ago. But without Millie, it could never have happened.
No, it hadn't been funny, though he had laughed along with Shirley when she had told the entire sordid tale.
After all, it was still Millie, and he had already fallen in love with her. Not even a corpse that he himself cut down, cold and clammy, had been able to change that.
Here the labyrinth was more than hedges—there were trees. Giant trees of unnatural growth (and expense) synthesised in the laboratory, whose leaves he knew to be yellow. Mallorn trees—myth made real.
As he moved deeper into the wood, he began to hear a quick step in the gravel. A person following him. He walked until he came before a clearing, where two paths diverged. One grassy, one gravel.
Behind him, his pursuer presented a choice that was more than where to go.
His left hand braced his scabbard while his right rested on the hilt of his weapon. A gun would make a better sidearm, but guns were neither ceremonial, nor part of court dress.
An argument existed to say that a sword made a better sidearm for a noble. While a kevlar lined frock coat could stop small calibre bullets, a sword tip would slide between the fibres. Only a madman would willingly test the theory.
Rivalz did not wish to believe himself mad.
Violence—diplomacy at the point of sword—nearly always originated in the madness of emotion without reason. Better ways to break a man's ability to resist existed than merely shattering his body. Violence was like cramming for exams. A poor option—but it remained one. Like cramming for exams, it belonged to a long list of certifiably bad decisions. Logic dictated that it remain an option of last resort—life decreed that he employ it more liberally.
The sword flew into his hand and he turned in the dark to face the sound of his pursuer.
"How's life?" Lelouch asked.
They were getting ready to go on an "acquisitions" run for the student council. Rivalz was leaning on his moped, pushing it. "Life is life. One day it's going to bloody well kill me."
Lelouch laughed. It wasn't a good joke, but Rivalz was glad that he was laughing anyway. "That's how life goes. This has nothing to do with Millie, right?"
Rivalz lifted his head and smiled wryly. "Of course not. It's my English homework."
"That you handed in the day it was assigned." Lelouch leaned against the wall. The wall in turn drenched Lelouch in shadows.
"There are certain open secrets that we are both privy to. One of them is greatly disturbing to my conscience."
In the distance, a fire siren went off. A siren, issuing from the top of a fire tower. Just in case a fireman's phone and pager were broken. A way of telling them that they were needed now, to stop what they were doing and fight the fires of hell.
Rivalz reflexively checked the sky for smoke. He couldn't see any and shook his head. Even when you knew there was fire, you hardly ever saw it.
Lelouch clenched his jaw. Rivalz knew that as the subtle signal to leave off questioning. Lelouch then said, "Let us think of things conducive to our health? Let us organise… acquisitions."
"Millie kissed me." Rivalz looked off into the far distance. "And now I don't know what I want. I feel… affection for her. I am also disgusted by her."
Lelouch laughed. "Welcome to life, where there is no good, no evil, merely power and flimsy justifications." Rivalz couldn't tell if it was bitter and ironic, or a joke. It had the elements of both, and hung in the air with an irony that he couldn't quite see.
"But what does it mean, Lelouch?"
Lelouch pursed his lips before answering, "I wish I knew."
Rivalz was certain that it was Millie following him. It could be any noble, any guard sent to retrieve him. But far from the party, where the cold breeze was holding court with the trees, he could almost feel her presence.
But he couldn't run forever in the dark without guidance. So he paused, stopping with sword drawn and in hand, waiting for his pursuer to catch him.
He was thinking too much about things that he couldn't answer. In the back of his mind, he knew that someone else had already wrestled with these questions. Indeed, the answer was probably in a philosophy book. One of those hefty tombes that he had tried to read years ago, only to promptly fall asleep.
He needed to make a decision on Millie. He knew what the necessary decision was. He knew what the right decision was. There was a hard decision and an easy decision mixed in there as well. The decision he was going to make wasn't going to be one of action. It would be a decision on the principle that would dictate his actions.
He liked her, he loved her. But was it her? Was he in love with her mask of civility, or with the cutthroat animal that lay just below that stopped at nothing to enforce their will? Another question, one he didn't care to answer also lurked: Did he even dare say no to her if he wished to do so?
The light was bright, just around the corner of the hedge, so Rivalz put a smile on his face and a giggle in his voice. When one negotiates with the devil, make sure the devil has fun. Because decisions were decided not by cold reason but by emotional madness. Us versus them. I like this person so I'll retroactively justify my support for her arguments and actions.
"Found you!" Millie's voice. She was holding a flashlight fistup, in the manner that prevents easy identification of the wielder's face, positions the flashlight in a useful manner as a weapon, and prevents a possible assailant from accurately identifying center mass. She held it in her left hand, her non-dominant hand, which would leave her right hand free to wield a weapon.
"Thank God! I was honestly lost," Rivalz said, and he sheathed his sword. He was not ready to commit violence against Millie. Not when he didn't have to.
He couldn't tell if Millie was smiling or not from the glare of her torch. But he felt—with a place in him that wasn't his head—that she was smiling. "I didn't know you could become dishonestly lost."
"You know what they say about corruption and power. I gave my legs the power to walk, and they betrayed me."
Millie took his hand with her right hand (empty). "Well, now we have an excuse to be alone and uninterrupted," said Millie.
Millie leant towards him, and Rivalz let her kiss him.
Pre-dawn black: a time for those who bet everything—life, name, honour—on a duel. He was leaning on the railing at the edge of the school's roof, staring at the Tokyo settlement lights that burned like angry sodium eyes set into a black cliff of anger.
She had said she'd come. He wanted to see her alone; he never wanted to see her again. His heart had been locked in civil war against his mind, and his poor useless body had accepted a meeting with her by muscle memory alone.
Bitter morning air cut across his cheek like a blunt razor. Idly, Rivalz popped the collar of his overcoat and started fastening the buttons all the way up. He felt warm, but still shivered.
He heard footsteps; he turned around.
Millie Ashford, in all her post-ball glory. She was eminently presentable, barring the bags under her eyes and her walk that still seemed half unsteady.
"Rough night?" Rivalz asked.
She scowled. "Not as rough as today is going to be. You had the pleasure of leaving." She took her place at the railing next to him, and in that predawn dark, stared into the angry sodium lights, with their eldritch glow.
He didn't know what to say. What was there to say? That he had lost the game before it had a chance to run its course? That his bleeding heart had never had a chance against the chips a titled noble brought to the table?
She seemed to hang in the dark, lit by sodium half-light.
"I… saw the world as it really is. I'm sorry Millie." Rivalz had finally seen the earl, his phantom opponent. He saw his hands now in the darkness. "Cheer up. You'll be fine. And with that Earl of yours—"
Millie looked Rivalz in the eye, held it for just long enough that Rivalz faltered in his speech, and kissed him.
Rivalz stood there in the darkness. Under his overcoat, under his jacket, under his shirt and vest—a warmth entirely unlike the pale warmth that the sun would bring was spreading. Like the sun, he knew it had a use-by date; he didn't care. For the moment, he had her.
Millie said, "I have a question."
"Is it related to the Student Council?"
"No."
She paused, and squeezed his hand. "Are you for the game? The greatest game that's played?"
The question hung in the air, and Rivalz turned his eyes to the sky. Rivalz briefly considered replying in kind, but poetry escaped him at that moment. "Yes."