"So what exactly is this gift?" Lelouch asked as Zekram led him through the halls, arms held behind his back. "Phrasing it that way makes me assume it would be something a little more significant than a tutor."

Zekram didn't look at him as they walked. "You are correct. If it is all you wish for then she will simply be your tutor, but should you be interested I'm willing to trade her to you in a more permanent fashion."

"Trade," Lelouch echoed. "One of your pieces."

"Again, correct. My most recent acquisition in fact. I believe it was Lord Shax's predecessor who traded her to me around eighty years ago. He had been watching her family for days using his house's power of insensibility. The family was on the losing side of a revolution at the time, prisoners of war. But, as the royalist forces were nearing where they were being held, the guards took it upon themselves to murder the whole family before they could be rescued. Through luck, fate, whatever it was, the bullets streaking towards her were caught by the jewels she had sewn into her clothes to hide them. The last survivor of her line and facing her death, she awakened something. A curse. A blessing. The allegiance of a creature seeking to save her life. Sadly, not enough for a scared young girl to fight off a squad of soldiers."

So Shax Senior chose to truly resurrect her as a devil rather than rescue her and bind her into service as compensation. "She is knowledgeable in magic?"

"Shax reincarnated her as a Bishop." The old man smirked in amusement. "He claimed it was because her newfound abilities would push her towards the path of the magician. I think it's because he suddenly found himself unable to reincarnate her with only a Pawn."

"Would that not cause problems if I were to accept the trade?" Lelouch questioned, "With how cost is relative to the power of the King, I can't see myself outstripping the adult head of a pillar house as I am now."

Zekram snorted. "You might be surprised." Was there anyone the Bael progenitor wouldn't denigrate behind their back, Lelouch wondered silently. "But thankfully it wouldn't be a concern regardless. One of the little oddities of the evil pieces I discovered some time ago is that relative piece values aren't material to trades. A Pawn for a Pawn, a Queen for a Queen, a Bishop for a Bishop. How far that loophole might be stretched, I don't know. But for the trade of a single piece like this, there will be no issue."

"Hm," Lelouch murmured, "And this creature you spoke of?"

"Still with her. It bound itself to her soul in a last attempt to protect her. Now even in her second life they are entangled together," the old man answered, without actually answering the real question of what it was. But the time for questions had ended as they approached a particular door. Zekram's hand wrapped around the doorknob and pushed in. "Nastya, are you here?"

Lelouch followed him in, finding the room on the other side of the door to be a library. An empty library. He watched his elder's expression flick from confusion to mild exasperation as the two heard soft, rapid footsteps coming down the hallway.

Coming around the edge of the door, a white-haired girl stumbled into the room. "I'm so sorry Master Zekram, I needed to use the restroom!"

Soft. It was the first word that came to Lelouch's mind as he saw her. Not in the meaning of weak or as any kind of insult. It was just with her long white hair and equally pale skin, her gentle features, she appeared like a human form of a cloud or snowbank. Or even a rabbit, despite her not wearing the outfit all the other servants were. But more importantly to Lelouch, her turquoise-blue eyes showed none of the panic or haste that her body language did. She hadn't rushed here, she hadn't merely been away for a moment to relieve herself. She had chosen to not be here when they arrived to tweak Zekram's nose a little.

Judging by the tiredness of the old man's sigh, he knew it too. "Lelouch, this is one of my Bishops, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, formerly Grand Duchess and heir of the Russian monarchy." Those mischievous blue eyes grew sad at hearing that title. "Anastasia, this is my many times great grandson and your new student, Lelouch Bael, heir to the house of Bael."

"A pleasure to meet you," Lelouch offered, holding out his hand, taking hers as she returned the gesture and turning it to lay a kiss on her knuckles. He was surprised when he rose and saw a slight tinge of pink in her cheeks. He had thought she would be used to and expect such a thing. But then he remembered that was over eighty years ago and she had been a servant of Zekram for as many years.

"I shall give you two some time to get to know each other," Zekram informed them, holding the open door, "Mary will be just outside in case you need anything."

"Thank you sir," Anastasia said politely as he closed the door behind him, her eyes returning to her new student and potentially future King. "Master Zekram wants to trade me into your peerage," she said without preamble.

"He does," Lelouch answered, mildly surprised that she would jump into such a loaded topic. "Shall we take a seat?" His manners once again guided him as she approached the centremost table of the library, pulling the chair out for her before taking a seat himself. "I don't suppose you would tell me his true intention for doing that?"

"I make him uncomfortable," she said before anything else, "It's the only thing I'm certain of. He doesn't treat me the way he does the other servants. I'm certainly not complaining about that, but on some level I believe he wants to get rid of me."

She was being surprisingly forthcoming about this. "What about that makes you believe you make him uncomfortable? To me it sounds as though he considers you special in some way."

"Could that not be what makes him uncomfortable?" she questioned as she held the unusual, faceless doll in her arms tightly. "When he brings other servants to his bed... The sounds they make," she cringed, hiding behind her doll, an ominous presence entering the room, only to fade away just as quickly. "But with me... We merely sleep. He barely touches me."

"You're being... unusually candid speaking to a ten year old," Lelouch noted.

He saw an impish smile appear over the top of the doll's head. "I'm not worried about that. You're older than you look."

The Bael heir could feel a thrum of adrenaline course through his veins at those words, though his expression remained one of passive curiosity. "I'm not sure I follow."

"You do," she denied, still with that tiny smile, "I don't know what I mean, but Viy does, and you do."

"Viy?"

"My friend," she clarified, not clarifying anything. "He's always with me. Would you like to meet him?"

The ominous presence returned, a feeling of wrong even to the expanded worldview of devils. Sliding out of the nothing behind her, a figure of sinuous shadow crept over her form, wrapping around her shoulders. Her peaceful, impish expression entirely at odds with the otherworldly presence surrounding her.

And here Lelouch had thought his day took a turn when he saw the gang rape statue. "Hello Viy. Nice to meet you."

The beautiful girl inside the monster giggled. "You're scared of him. You shouldn't be. He's my friend. He tells me things. About the people I meet. He says you have a lot of secrets."

"Not really. Everyone has secrets. To my knowledge I only have two," Lelouch admitted, comfortable in sharing such meaningless information, especially if she was capable of revealing them anyway. That was the true wrinkle here. If this 'Viy' could ferret out secrets, did that put him in danger?

… In truth, probably not? He had seen in his research that reincarnation was a known phenomenon in this world. His geass might have been a little afield of what they were used to but in truth the greatest danger would be losing the unknown facet of his ability. The outing of such information would be detrimental certainly, but not catastrophic. No, he had no need to panic. Not yet. "Does Viy tell you Zekram's secrets? I imagine that might be a reason for him to feel uncomfortable."

The shadowy mass wrapped tighter around her as she hugged her doll. "Viy doesn't tell me Master's secrets. He says they would kill me."

A reasonable assumption. Lelouch had seriously considered geassing the girl's free will away at even a hint of his own secrets getting out. "They. The secrets?" She nodded into the doll. "I see. Could we talk alone again for a bit?"

"Viy is always here," she reminded him, "but okay."

The Bael heir relaxed slightly as he watched the creature slither back into the nowhere it came from. He wasn't eager to see that thing ever again, though he felt he would more than likely need to get used to it. "So we've established what Zekram wants. What do you want?"

"What I want?" She seemed to consider the question. "Viy thinks you're not a bad person. I wouldn't mind becoming your Bishop. You want me to teach you magic. What else would we do?"

"I don't quite know yet," Lelouch admitted honestly. He still hadn't quite found his feet in this new world. It might be years more before he could. He may have once found his path as a human, but finding his path as a devil was an entirely different experience. "I want to find more peerage members. I want to explore the human world." What on earth must Britannia look like with Washington's rebellion ending in victory? And a free Japan? He needed to see it all with his own eyes. "And I think when I'm older I'll compete in the rating games."

Anastasia smiled, hiding less behind her doll. "That all sounds much more interesting than staying in this house."

The conversation continued, moving to less portentous topics, Anastasia asking about Lelouch's family, his friends, the places he had been. It seemed like the girl had been rather sheltered since she arrived in the Underworld, rarely venturing away from Zekram's estate yet eager to explore. Lelouch in turn asked about her abilities with magic. Based on her in-depth explanation of some concepts Lelouch had only scratched the surface of and some quick demonstrations of water and ice spells, it seemed she was entirely qualified for the job Zekram assigned to her.

All the while Lelouch kept one corner of his mind occupied on the ramifications of this meeting. Zekram wanted him to take Anastasia off of his hands. Whether that was partially because she disquieted him or not was immaterial. A man like Zekram never did anything for one reason alone. The most obvious other reason was simply what Zekram claimed it to be; offering Lelouch a powerful piece for his use. Lelouch had seen precisely nothing to indicate that this wasn't part of the old man's motivation and while Zekram was more experienced than any opponent he had ever faced, that did not mean the young devil would go down the path of mad conspiracy. Was the ancient devil capable of falsifying his intentions so thoroughly? Perhaps. But the reborn demon emperor had seen no evidence of it, and so dismissed it.

But what of ulterior motives? Placing Anastasia in his peerage would potentially give Zekram someone inside Lelouch's inner circle. However while that was undeniably true, he would get the same thing for the next few years if Anastasia merely worked as his tutor. And there was no way Lelouch could decline her tuition without looking overly suspicious of the man's intentions. He didn't trust Zekram, but showing he didn't trust Zekram to that extent would quickly turn their relationship into an adversarial one. That felt like it would be a decision. Not to mention by all accounts it didn't seem Zekram needed an insider to keep an eye on his heir. Over and over during this visit, with the coffee and chess and the meeting Anastasia in the library even though she clearly didn't want to be there, it had been shown the progenitor knew far more about the young devil than was reasonable.

No, there was very little reason Lelouch could think of beyond the obvious. Owing a favour? Lelouch didn't have the kind of clout to deny his elder anything anyway. Ingratiating himself with his heir? Well certainly, but with the war of words they had been having the entire time the boy had been at the estate he wasn't sure how effective that would end up being in the end. Hell, he was considering suspicions over such a generous offer at this very moment, and by all appearances Zekram would be disappointed if he had not done so.

The unseen risks. What Anastasia, what Viy may or may not have discovered in their brief meeting. They were risks regardless, only undone by an application of geass. But would they be? He didn't know what Viy was, it appeared to be an existence bound to but outside of Anastasia. Would it take issue if he geassed the thing's master? That was a whole different kind of risk, one Lelouch wasn't especially willing to take to keep a secret the girl might tell someone, might be believed and the secret wasn't terrifyingly dangerous in any case.

To think an ability with 'absolute' in the title might be considered small potatoes in this world.

In time, Lelouch ventured out of the room, asking Mary if he could speak with Zekram again. Before long the man himself returned. "I trust she's to your liking?" he asked as he arrived.

"What is Viy?" Lelouch asked, getting to the most important question first.

"A creature bound to the Romanov dynasty since Catherine the Great. She brought it into Russia with her and it invisibly protected her and her descendants, right up until there was only one left."

"That didn't answer my question," Lelouch pointed out, eyes narrowing.

"No, it didn't."

Lelouch continued to stare at his ancestor until the truth dawned on him. "You don't know."

The aged devil put on a helpless expression. "I looked into it. Hoped the Furcas would know. They had contact with Catherine right up until her," he smothered a laugh, "unfortunate end. Sadly, they had no idea. I have lived for thousands of years, Lelouch. There are still more than enough things in this world that defy my understanding. I will have a servant fetch you what information I could gather but in broad strokes, it exists within her and has no corporeal form. It emits an aura of unease to the point of nausea depending on the strength of the victim. And it can see… Weakness."

"... Weakness," Lelouch echoed.

"Mm, an ability difficult to quantify for how broad it is. Through Anastasia's eyes it can see the best way to get under someone's skin. Or how to ingratiate oneself with them. Mary once found the girl praying despite the pain it caused. She's doted on the girl ever since."

That rather put what she said about how Zekram treated her in a different context. She made him uncomfortable, but perhaps that was intentional so she would not receive the treatment he visited upon his other peerage members. Or she made him uncomfortable because he knew what she was doing, and it worked anyway. The man himself certainly wasn't going to give him the answer. It did answer the question of why Zekram might want her gone despite having such an undeniably useful power. "And the doll?"

"Unrelated as far as we can tell. Just a security blanket, a keepsake from her life before. So!" he exclaimed with a clap of his hands, "Will you be taking Nastya as your tutor? Or as your Bishop?"

-(-)-

He had been going mildly stir crazy up until his King ceremony, wanting to get out of his home and be somewhere, anywhere else.

And yet after his time at Zekram's estate he only wanted to go home.

He let the conversation of Sara and Anastasia happen around him on the car ride, paying attention with half an ear as he watched the scenery pass by.

On getting home he was greeted by Herodotus, quick to ask how it went, ask about Anastasia. His heir could barely summon the energy to answer the latter question, before begging off to go to bed. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, Herodotus had a look of understanding as he let his son escape to his bedroom.

"Master Lelouch?" the pale girl asked as she peeked around his door as he was getting ready for bed. "I'm not sure whether you... Would you like me to spend the night with you?"

"No thank you," Lelouch answered absently.

"Oh..." she murmured, still hanging in the doorway.

It was another minute before Lelouch realised she was still there dithering, fingers worrying at her fluffy white pyjamas and looking uncertain. He sighed to himself. "Fine."

It was so strange how happy that made her, climbing into his bed behind him with a big smile on her face, wrapping him in her arms like he was her teddy bear. It was rather comfortable. He only regretted his choice when he felt and saw the blank-faced doll she brought with her, reminding him of what else she carried into his bed with her.

Viy.

Well... It wasn't making its presence known. The eldritch creature attached to the cuddly girl could be tomorrow's problem.