When Xialuote opened her eyes, the curtains had already been drawn back again. Warm sunlight laid a sheen of gold across the velvet quilt. The personal maid who had attended her yesterday waited beside the bed, and the moment she saw her wake, she offered a handkerchief soaked in warm water.
She went to bed later than I did, and got up earlier. Serving as a maid in a noble house is no easy thing either... Xialuote thanked her without thinking, took the handkerchief, and wiped her face, driving off the last thread of languid sleepiness. Then, with the other's help, she finished washing, changed out of her nightgown, and put on a chemise and a morning robe for the house.
Next, the maid Laila undid the braids that had been plaited for sleep and wove them anew, so that some circled the sides of her head while the rest fell straight down her back. Only after she had changed into soft-soled slippers did she follow the maid down to the dining room on the ground floor.
By then the clock in the hall had already struck eight in the morning. Nearly an hour had passed since Xialuote got out of bed!
I ought to be glad the original Xialuote was not someone who loved dressing up or cared about ceremony, and that Baron Suolun's household has only Father left as an elder, with no mother to concern herself with her daily life; otherwise this whole routine would have been even longer... Once the knowledge of aristocratic etiquette that had belonged to her original body gradually settled into her, all she had left for the fussy details of noble life in this age was disdain and loathing.
Of course, it was not only the noble parts that gave her a headache. The many inconveniences that came with the change in her body's sex troubled Xialuote as well. Before sleep, that beautiful long hair had to be braided into sleep-plaits that would not easily come undone. She had to change into a nightgown made for the purpose, and after waking she had to groom and dress all over again, putting on layer upon layer of skirts, and so cut still further into a night's rest that was already none too plentiful.
And compared with all that, the greatest vexation was facing a woman's body when she bathed...
At the thought, Xialuote felt her cheeks grow warm again. She dismissed her personal maid, Laila, and stepped into the dining room, with its several round windows letting in the light. She noticed that her father, Lawuer Suolun, was already seated, his own breakfast set before him.
"Good morning, Father."
She curtsied in the manner she remembered, and sat down opposite Lawuer. A servant waiting at the side set out a plate and a teacup. The scent of butter and hot chocolate slipped at once into her nose, and she could not help narrowing her eyes.
Whenever it is, a hot breakfast can put the life back into a wage slave, even if I am no longer a wage slave and have become one of the upper class... She muttered it silently, and began to enjoy the first meal she had eaten since coming to this world.
As a rule, a noble's informal breakfast was taken in the bedroom or the study. But only these two members of Baron Suolun's family remained, so father and daughter came to the dining room every day by a tacit understanding, talking of light things as they ate, and giving each day a warm beginning.
This habit, rooted deep in memory, had even swayed Xialuote, who had possessed this body for less than a day. She appeared at the dining-room door right on time, and showed not the slightest flaw.
A pity that last night had gone as it had. Baron Suolun was clearly in no mood for idle talk, and Xialuote, scooping at a boiled egg with her spoon while she sorted the fragments of memory in her mind, did not speak up either. The dining room grew rather heavy.
Only when the last half cup of hot chocolate had gone down, and the cloying breakfast had slowed even Xialuote's thoughts, did Lawuer, across the table, speak.
"I will be going out shortly to see a few old friends. I may not be back until evening.
"Do not go anywhere today. Even if someone calls about last night, do not show yourself. Everything can wait until I return."
Old friends... Was this the matter he had spoken of yesterday, when he talked with Baron Gusitafu? Xialuote nodded thoughtfully, then put on a hesitant look and said:
"I want to go to the church today."
Lawuer's brow, which had been smooth, furrowed at once. He was about to speak, glanced to the side, and waved the servant out of the dining room. Only after the door had shut did he say:
"Did I not already tell you? What happened yesterday will certainly draw the Church's attention, and you know well that the Eternal Blazing Sun is a stern father."
As the principal faith of the Kingdom of Yindisi, the Eternal Blazing Sun was not only the embodiment of order, the god of contracts, and the guardian of commerce, but was also regarded as the father of all living things. And because the Inquisition within the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun was harsh in the means it used to preach doctrine and strike down heresy, talk of a "stern father" circulated in private among the common people.
Lawuer's meaning was plain. While the murder case in the Old City was still under investigation, if Xialuote, connected as she was to Aidian's death, appeared at the church and was seized as a suspect and taken into the Inquisition, even Baron Suolun's authority would be hard-pressed to bring her out unscathed.
Seen in that light, the warning Aidian had given while he was deceiving Xialuote had in fact come from the heart. It was probably bound up with his being an Extraordinary among the common people.
But Xialuote had her own view. She had been at no fault in Aidian's death, and the Church had no reason to arrest her. If she could offer some useful clues and help clear up the murder case in the Old City, she might not only shake off that power hidden in the dark and troubling her, but, just as Hengli'aite had said, might even have a chance to come into contact with Extraordinary power.
Yet Lawuer's face was grave, and he did not look like a man who would yield. She sighed inwardly all the same, and nodded.
"I understand."
Stepping down from the carriage, Xialuote pressed the broad-brimmed hat lower on her head, so that the shadow of the brim hid her all-too-conspicuous reddish-brown hair and most of her face. Only then did she raise her head and look toward the resplendent Saint Luoke Cathedral.
She had told her father she understood the risk, but understanding was not the same as obeying. The moment the baron left the residence, Xialuote ordered the servants to ready a carriage, changed into clothes suited for going out, and prepared, on Hengli's advice, to "turn herself in" to the Church.
After the defeat in the Three-Year War, extravagance among the nobility had been somewhat curbed. The culture of the Luen Kingdom was gradually spreading through Yindisi, and together with the ideals the Suolun royal family had always upheld, women's dress in this age was highly varied. At aristocratic balls, most ladies still wore towering wigs and tight corsets, and used panniers to dress themselves up like walking petals, while at home they preferred simpler gowns, flat shoes, and hair pinned up.
Out of doors, the choices were more varied still. Just now Xialuote wore a fitted jacket with a high standing collar and a double row of buttons, together with a long skirt whose hem fell to the tops of her shoes. She looked like a young lady setting out for a walk in the country or a ride, and drew the eyes of quite a few passersby at the cathedral doors.
But this is still better than dressing too formally. After all, I am here on real business... She grumbled inwardly, mounted the fan-shaped steps, and went into the cathedral among believers dressed in every fashion and of every station, all of them with devout faces.
This, the largest church in the city of Suxite, was golden throughout. The onion dome high above was even covered in real gold leaf, and in the sunlight it was like a sun truly burning. The main building below was chiefly gold and white as well, set off by vivid stained glass. The image of Saint Luoke's baptism painted across the dome, and the huge murals that filled every blank stretch of wall around it, let every believer who entered feel holiness and grandeur at a glance. They instinctively lowered their voices and slowed their steps, and seemed all the more devout.
So lavish. But would no one scrape that gold leaf off the outside in the middle of the night... Many irreverent thoughts about the divine turned through her mind. She sat down in a corner of the prayer hall, closed her eyes like the other believers, crossed her arms over her chest, and listened as the priest presiding over the sermon behind the altar held a heavy holy canon and recited the deeds written in it. Within, her prayer was half perfunctory and half devout.
After learning that this world possessed Extraordinary power, and that the Church had trained quite a few Extraordinaries, she saw the deeds of Saint Luoke in the sermon differently from before. She instinctively felt that those acts of purifying evil and upholding justice were Extraordinary abilities at work, like the way Hengli'aite concealed her form and moved without a sound.
If the saints were so, then the gods... might they be real as well?
She questioned it for a while in the spirit of science, then gathered up her tangled thoughts. In a pause in the sermon she went to the confessional beside the prayer hall, waited until the few believers in line had left, and slipped into the narrow room with its heavy wooden door.
Unlike the old face-to-face confession, a wooden screen now stood in the confessional between the one confessing and the one who listened. A thin slit was cut in the screen, and through it only the outline opposite could be faintly seen. After she sat down in the chair, the priest's voice came from behind the partition. It was not old, yet it had a weight that set one at ease.
"Sister, what do you wish to say?"
In a hesitant tone, Xialuote slowly told the account she had already shaped in her mind: that from half a year ago she had met with one misfortune after another, until last night she had lost part of her memory for no reason, been hunted by a man posing as her father's assistant, and in the end had accidentally harmed him. She concealed only her own transmigration, and Hengli'aite's existence.
When she spoke of waking in an alley of the Old City, she noticed the priest on the other side of the screen pull a thin cord that hung in the corner. And when she came to how Aidian had sprung up to do harm and tried to abduct her, an extremely light footstep sounded behind the screen. At some moment the priest had already gone, and another, somewhat slighter figure had sat down in his place and gone on listening to her confession.
"...I believe I made some mistakes in this matter. Although I harmed someone in order to protect myself, I am still uneasy at heart, and so I came today to repent."
When she had finished, Xialuote fell briefly silent and waited for an answer.
She guessed that the priest who ordinarily heard confessions had already passed word deeper into the cathedral, and that the cleric who had come in answer, and who now sat opposite her, was most likely someone who truly handled Extraordinary affairs.
The bustle that had filled the space outside the confessional gradually receded as well. The believers waiting in line seemed to have been urged away by other clergy, and even the footsteps in the prayer hall grew sparse.
This was, without doubt, meant to make a private space for the talk to come.
Sure enough, a gentle voice unlike the one before came from behind the screen.
"Sister, is that the whole of it?"
To her surprise, it was a rather young woman's voice.
The Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun was not like the Storm Church, which worshipped the Lord of Storms, likewise one of the Seven Gods, and which held female believers in contempt from its doctrine all the way down into its private thoughts. Even so, the numbers of men and women among its own clergy were still grossly uneven. Aside from a few convents, the great majority of churches that received ordinary believers were staffed chiefly by male priests, and she had scarcely ever heard of a woman holding any office of bishop or above.
At that thought, Xialuote could not help asking in return, out of curiosity:
"May I ask how I should address you, Sister?"
The figure beyond the screen tilted her head, as if a little surprised by the question, and after a moment answered:
"You may call me Weiyefu, Miss Xialuote Suolun."
Chapter 10