The Knight Raised the Switch (3)
"—I'll begin with an apology. I can only say how sorry I am."
"Mm. How about you don't bow your head, for starters? You're making me feel like the villain here..."
Lee Han could not sit easy with it—the old priest's scrupulous courtesy, head lowered all the way to the floor. Receiving an apology from an elder of advanced years, no, from a man of a hundred and sixteen, an age for which even advanced fell short, left him feeling guilty in the old man's place. He tried to help him up. The elder would not have it.
"What does age matter, when one has done wrong? Is it not rather proper that the elder set the example, and apologize?"
"...Now there's a true adult."
An elder whose sense of decorum ran to the bone. Lee Han registered all over again that this man was a more thoroughly sensible, more normal adult than any he had met in this world, felt a small tick of fondness rise somewhere inside him, and opened his mouth.
"...I only worked as hard as the down payment called for. I looked into it. That holy water you gave me—the highest grade of it takes three years of labor to make, doesn't it? And the price is absurd."
Put in the terms of a martial world, highest-grade holy water was something like a Shaolin Great Restoration Pill, or viridian stone oil. A rarity among rarities, the sort of thing that could not be bought even with money in hand. A treasure that drove out every sickness and malign influence, and let a man live out his whole life in health. It was also the one thing that could stand equal to a troll's vital blood—boasted at 99.99 percent, with odds of acquisition on par with reaching up and plucking a star. For a knight who had taken the sword as his trade, it amounted to the same thing as being granted one more life. Excessive, even for a down payment, and as far as Lee Han was concerned it had been nothing more than a satisfying deal.
...Above all else.
"Far as I can see, it's too much of a down payment for handling greenhorns like those. A few gold coins and I'd have done it anyway."
"They are, in their way, precious combat personnel of the temple. Heh heh."
"...Those things?"
A remark he could not bring himself to agree with in the slightest. And no wonder.
"I don't think I've ever seen idiots quite that idiotic..."
Trash, save for one. It was an assessment that cut like a blade, and that trash was—
"Ghk—"
"J-just kill me...!"
"Urgh... ugh..."
—nothing more than beasts, howling and writhing in pure agony.
"......"
Only the red-haired priest, the one judged to be of any use at all, endured the pain with his eyes shut.
"......"
...Raphael fixed that red-haired priest, Pierre, with a sorrowful gaze.
"You will have heard, brother, that you stand under suspicion of heresy."
"That load of bullshit?"
"It is nothing but a shame."
"Honestly, it's terrifying. Do something useful and they suspect you. Nearly get yourself killed over it. How's a man supposed to live in a world like this?"
"...It is nothing but the temple's failing."
"Mm..."
Lee Han recalled what the priest had said three days ago, naming him a heretic. Clearly enough.
"Was it that I'd distinguished myself too suddenly, and that made me suspicious?"
"That was nothing more than the reason on the surface."
"?"
"The Inquisition's sudden designation of you as a heretic came about because certain high priests and cardinals within the temple fell into the paranoid delusion that they had suffered losses on your account."
"...And what is that supposed to—"
Nonsense that stole the words right out of his mouth. Lee Han blinked, both eyes. Raphael, for the first time, let out a sigh. For a man who never lost his ease, it was a sight rare in the extreme.
"...It will sound like an excuse, but even I have not clearly known for two full days why you were ruled a heretic. Before that, I moved only because the brothers of the Inquisition were stirring uneasily, and I saw signs they meant to take aim at you."
"So you were protecting me?"
For Lee Han it was a story that went past puzzling and into outright astonishment—assuming the words were not a lie.
So he went and made himself a shield. Of his own accord?
Raphael had been protecting him, a man the temple had fixed its eye on, without even knowing why. The reason for those daily visits had come clear at last. That a complete stranger had shielded him felt strange, and it felt grateful too, but the feeling that rose ahead of strangeness or gratitude was something else.
"No. Why?"
Why had he protected him? The question came first. They were strangers who had never so much as seen each other's faces. Why go against the temple's will and play the shield—and this from a man called the temple's foremost elder?
To that, Raphael answered.
"Is it not obvious? What would I not do for one saddled with an unjust charge? Even this worthless body of mine ought to move."
"......"
"Only, I could be of no great help, and I am sorry beyond measure that this frail body could not stop the brothers. I put your hands to needless hardship. I did give you the holy water, but how could that outweigh the wellbeing of your own body? Set against the wound to the heart of a brother who nearly came to harm for no reason at all, even that is nothing but cheap consolation."
"...It's not, though. I'm satisfied."
"Are you troubling yourself over a man like me?"
"No, I'm really not—"
...He was thinking it all over again, but still.
This old man really is a good elder, isn't he?
Lee Han caught himself marveling that, aside from his own grandfather, he seemed to have met an adult worth respecting for the rest of his life. The bearing of a man who helps others without hunting for a reason, ready to lay his own life down. A way of living anyone might know and no one could imitate, the sort that stirred awe of its own accord.
A man like that is probably what they mean when they say...
A great man.
Through no intention of his own, Raphael had eyes and ears in every corner of the temple. The fruit, no doubt, of those who still respected him and still regarded him as a cardinal. Personal virtue, plain and simple, and thanks to it, once Raphael set his mind to the matter, he had learned the temple's hidden shame before long.
The substance of that shame was nothing other than—
"—So, to sum it up, those bastards called the temple's high priests..."
They were holding shares in the Tunnels. Is that how I'm meant to take it...?
"And those shares turned to scrap paper when the Tunnels collapsed, so they got angry at me for bringing them down, and that's why they ruled me a heretic. That it?"
The Tunnels were a den for locking criminals away, and at the same time the largest fertilizer works on the southern continent. A place with no business failing—treated as something like a safe asset, gold by another name—and just as well suited to hiding the various black funds that must not come to the royal house's attention. The temple's high priests, keen to make use of that very safety, had bought shares in the Tunnels themselves. Which, as it happened—
...I ground to powder.
They must have been certain the place could never collapse. How were they to know that a single knight—no, that two knights—could bring down the Tunnels and their hundred years of history? Those who had invested would have taken a loss to rival the Dutch tulip mania, at the very least. A disaster no one could have foreseen, and it was not that he failed to understand the grievance. Even so.
"A man of religion loses the dirty money he was skimming and puts out a request for assassination? And to the kids who interrogate heretics, no less?"
"......"
"Even the temple has to know the Tunnels were a genuine heretic nest... right?"
"...They would know."
"And they're still holding me responsible?"
"......"
"Th-this is right...?"
"...Even if I had two mouths, I would have nothing to say."
"Wow.... Seriously?"
"......"
"I'm losing it. ...I am genuinely rattled right now."
Silence was affirmation, and this time Lee Han was so thoroughly rattled that his wits deserted him.
Yes—lose your property and anger is the natural thing, and taking that anger out on the one responsible is an event that happens often enough. But.
The temple pulls something like this?
Religious men who prided themselves on believing in a god, in a world where gods actually existed?
Is this a hidden-camera prank?
The suspicion rose, and Lee Han smacked his own forehead.
...It hurt.
History class had taught him how horrific religion could become once it rotted. But he had only learned it. He had never lived through it. He had only ever met it as a story. Now, meeting the corruption and the fall of religion with his own hands, he understood in his whole body that the baseness of it, the disgust, ran past anything he had imagined. Enough to leave the back of his skull buzzing.
"Well, I'll be. No—wow..."
It even dragged a noise of wonder out of him.
So they weren't telling me to watch out for the temple for nothing.
The regressor, Blackie, and the timid System Window. The warning about the temple that the two of them had in common.
"You must not get involved with the temple."
"You have to be careful of the temple."
Words the two of them had always said, and only now did Lee Han feel he understood why. Weren't they, past anything he had imagined, bullshit—no, dregs that reeked worse than filth?
"A thing to lament.... To think something like this would come to pass in the brief while I was away from my post..."
"...It isn't your fault, is it?"
According to what he had heard from the guild, Raphael had stepped down from cardinal and gone on pilgrimage. He had become a mere wanderer, begun a life of carrying the word of God, and been gone from the temple some seven years.
They said he'd come back all of a sudden, didn't they?
No one had put it in so many words, but it amounted to this: a heavyweight of the political world, a man who had declared he was retiring, had returned.
"You coming back to the temple and turning inquisitor—that's tied up with the sorry state of the place now, I take it?"
"Something of the sort. To think a situation like this would arise in seven years..."
"Hm. I don't think so."
"Pardon?"
"You just didn't know. It was probably moving along, step by step, the whole time. It isn't normal for an organization this huge to rot in only seven years. The rot was advancing bit by bit even while you didn't know about it. Only, it would have advanced quietly enough that you wouldn't notice. Making a fool of one man is easy enough, if just five people gather to do it."
"......"
"I could be wrong."
"...Heh heh. No. That, too, seems to be the right of it."
Hearing him, Raphael wore the look of a man struck across the back of the head. Like someone who had heard a thing he had not expected, and come awake.
"Truly, I was slothful, and I was foolish. I should not have gone on pilgrimage. I should have remained at the temple, even a little, and made the effort."
"Can one man's effort change an organization? Once the mold sets in, there's no getting a hold of it."
"......Brother, you are kind, contrary to how you look."
"What's wrong with how I look?"
"Heh heh."
"You're laughing?"
The old priest laughed, his face a good deal easier than before, as if the talk had lifted a little of the weight from his heart. And so the knight and the old priest went on, bickering their way through it.
For quite some time.
As the talk settled, Lee Han came to understand why he had been branded a heretic, and that there might be more still taking aim at him.
To that, Raphael said:
"Do not worry on that point. I will do my utmost to hold them off."
His station was nothing much, but he had the dignity of the temple's foremost elder. Set his mind to it, and he could be a shield. Resolve showed through the words, and in one corner of his heart Lee Han was grateful. Even so.
"No. Leave them."
"...Brother?"
"I needed a decent punching bag anyway. Far as I'm concerned, they can keep coming."
Had the temple's level been higher than he imagined, he might have welcomed the offer. As it was, Lee Han did not spare the words to say there was no need for the old man to step forward. And no wonder.
I could let them keep coming and they still couldn't do me any harm.
Not bad opponents, for killing time. He had been feeling the limits of training alone anyway, and men who wielded a peculiar power called Holy Law made for a fresh stimulus. And beyond that—
If every last one of these so-called inquisitors is in this kind of shape, there's no way I get done in.
Trash.
He had said it playfully to old man Raphael, but it was no empty talk. They were genuinely trash.
The young masters—no. About the same as the Silver Lions, aren't they?
Bastards who ran wild on nothing but faith in Holy Law. Bullies, to anyone weaker than themselves. Unable to so much as hold their own against anyone even a little stronger. In short, nothing but thugs rampaging on Holy Law and Holy Law alone.
That one, Pierre or whatever his name is, was decent enough. At least.
If the others were men who simply lived by trusting Holy Law, that one gave the impression of having set Holy Law aside as an auxiliary and trained his technique and his body properly. Impressive, in its way. A fresh style Lee Han felt like pressing a little longer.
...Except.
His spirit is rotten.
Lee Han's face creased hard. The skill was excellent. The spirit did not match it. To reach for suicide the moment things turned a little against him—no, the moment defeat became certain...
The sort of person Lee Han loathed most. The sort that made his skin crawl.
Some people clawed and scrambled to live even when life was that goddamn filthy...
The man might have fine qualities, fine talent. As a human being he was base, and Lee Han did not bother to hide the contempt.
"Heh heh. You seem greatly disappointed in that child, in a great many ways."
"...Something like that."
"......Please look on him generously. He is a child with many wounds, in many ways."
"That doesn't count as an excuse. Not even if 'he's young.'"
"......"
"How did I know? I could tell from the bone structure while I was hitting him. Still, he's a hard one. Kept the outer shell up, right to the end."
"...Being with you, brother, seems to be one surprise after another."
"Hardly worth making a fuss over."
Lee Han was letting out a short scoff of a laugh when—
Thud.
In an instant, the red-haired priest fainted once more beneath the pain of Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation.
And with it—
Flash.
As if a snake were shedding its skin, the priest's shell peeled away, and the red-haired priest's true form lay bare. A little smaller than the build he had worn. Skin a little finer. Him—no.
"Mm. I'm only asking because I've got a suspicion, but is that one staying in a man's shape on account of gender identity? If that's what it is, I'd understand, but..."
"Is that what you are curious about?"
"Then what else am I supposed to be curious about?"
"......"
Tastes were to be respected, as a rule, and Lee Han respected other people's identities as well.
......Well. He respected tastes. If someone had no decency, though, he raised his fists with perfect fairness.