A Knight Acts in the Time It Takes to Ask Permission (2)
The people of the royal capital were bewildered.
No—bewildered, and unable, in the same breath, to keep from marveling.
What shook them was that a stone figure so immense had simply been set down overnight, solid as if it had always stood there. What stole their breath was the certainty that they might search the whole world and never find another statue so vast, or so grand.
"What in the world is that…?"
It was beautiful. It was magnificent. Before they knew it, curiosity had them: who on earth had made the thing, and what thought had driven a person to raise a statue like this?
The wonder was only natural.
"Why does it feel so sad?"
For all its splendor and its grandeur, a sorrow they could not name clung to it. The feeling of the one who had carved it had soaked into their chests.
…And the man who had brought this colossal sculpture into being—
Trickle—.
"Ah. I wanted to build it bigger. There just wasn't enough time. Seriously."
—was scattering wine at the statue's feet.
Had they seen him, they might have understood why a quiet grief had touched them. This was a rite for someone's death, and what he had made so that death would not be forgotten was a tomb.
…A tomb for a person who no longer even had remains.
From behind Lee Han, as he scattered the wine, voices came.
"So. You satisfied now?"
"Not even a king's tomb could be bigger than this!"
The two chief hands in the whole affair. Lark and Maximus had suffered plenty themselves.
And how could they not? They had crushed earth and sand with raw strength until the mass was hard as iron, then dressed that iron-hard stuff, stroke by stroke, with their spears. As for him, he had assembled the hand-cut blocks, welded them with Sword River, and finished them with Repulsion Qigong, so he could claim his own share of the labor without blushing.
But neither Lee Han nor the other two had any wish to boast.
"I haven't poured it all out. Want a drink? Jun said it's a fairly precious vintage."
"…I'll take a single cup."
"A man of the North doesn't turn down a drink!"
Honoring a death was not the sort of thing they cared to preen over.
The three knights shared the wine that way. It was the first time the three of them had drunk together.
…The nun's remains were gone.
They had vanished like a mirage, and the few who witnessed it said as much.
"The Light has taken her."
"Just as He did the Great Saintess of the age before…."
The remains of the previous Great Saintess, too, were said to have disappeared before every watching eye.
Ascension. A human chosen by God had surely risen into heaven.
It was a feat worthy of being written into history itself. And yet—
"What, You just haul her off without even flipping on a turn signal?"
For the man who had seen it with his own eyes, it was nothing but bewildering.
"At least let us hold the funeral. Honestly."
It was not that some buried Confucian light had woken inside him. Only regret, that she had vanished so emptily, and a hollowness, as if the whole of it had turned out to be an illusion.
She had left not a single trace. It felt as though the only friend remaining to him was an imaginary one who lived solely in his memory.
And so what he thought was this.
Hmm… shall I just build a tomb? A big one?
As if to prove she was not merely some imaginary friend shut inside his memory, he decided to make a tomb after all.
A truly enormous one. Say, for instance—
Big as a pyramid.
Pharaohs, when they died, had vast stone tombs raised to hold them. A Great Saintess appearing once in a thousand years—a saintess who had distinguished herself in stopping a high demon, and who had erased the Hellgate—would be greater than any pharaoh if she was anything. Never lesser.
So Lee Han made up his mind to build a tomb.
Had some minister of the treasury heard of it, the man would have had a fit, demanding why anyone would go out of his way to drag into the open a matter that ought to have stayed secret.
But if such a minister had been standing in front of Lee Han, the answer would have been simple.
It's my business.
When you are only doing what you already mean to do, nothing is less productive than asking someone else for leave. More than that, it had always been said that causing the trouble and begging forgiveness afterward was faster than asking permission first. And Lee Han—
—passed judgment on the spot.
Working alone, though, would take too long. He went looking for simple fellows willing to indulge this piece of self-satisfaction, found two of them, and put the idea to them—
"Have you lost your mind?"
"Haha. Do a thing like that, and my elder brother the Grand Duke won't leave me in peace. Heh."
"So. Your answer?"
"…Hmm. Wouldn't a statue be better than a stone tomb?"
"My brother scolding me is an everyday affair! Kahahaha!!"
And so a team was formed.
Three men who could boast function and strength beyond most modern heavy machinery.
After that, things moved quickly.
First—
"You want to make what? No—what is it you're asking us to provide?"
Thanks to Taichang, a gray-haired young magnate who "gladly" bought them a whole mountain of stone, they had material for the carving.
"Land, you say? I do have some property, but… Pardon? What did you just say you're putting up?"
And a black-haired regressor, who "gladly" offered a piece of "real estate" with a fine view.
"Instructor! It's been ages! Guess what I brought you as a gift…. What? You want help moving a statue? …Heavier than a pyramid? ……H-how are we supposed to move that?"
They had also secured a mage chick possessed of a historically absurd store of mana, who would move the finished statue "somehow," "with everything she had," and "properly."
Thanks to all of that, the work flew, and it was finished in less than fifteen days.
And now—
"A person made this?"
"And only three people…?"
"Whoa…."
"Good heavens…."
"P-people, as animals go—set their minds to it, and they really can do anything."
"No, no, don't fool yourself. Only those gentlemen could pull off a thing like that. Try to copy it and you'll wind up dead."
"……."
Acquaintances stood gaping, for all the world like people seeing a pyramid for the first time. They were the ones who had helped, in ways great and small, to set the statue in its place.
"Master…!"
"Ah, you worked hard. The trip must have worn you out already, and then I went and made it worse. Here—want a cup?"
"H-hardly work. I only leveled the ground."
"Yeah. That right there was an enormous amount of work."
If one were to name the chief contributors to this plan besides the three of them, some seven people would come to mind. There were the two young financiers who had provided materials and land, and the mage who had moved the structure—and four more besides those.
One of the four might be the Sword Saint who had taken charge of the design. There was also the magic faculty's professor, worked like a slave, who for ten days had not been permitted so much as a forced nap while he laid reinforcement magic so that no one could lay a hand on the statue. It might be the chief of the Hundred Ghosts, who had hidden the sculpture's coming all the way to this spot with the power of spirits.
But in Lee Han's eyes, a contributor every bit their equal was surely the blue-haired girl who, in place of those busy men, had kept the people in hand and carried the last of the construction through to the end—leveling this ground and finishing the work without a hair of error.
Driving people is brutal enough on its own. Doing a job like this perfectly, without a single slip, is the more impressive thing.
He knew, because he had worked construction sites. Get the foundation right, and a building will not fall for hundreds of years. No—not for thousands.
"Thank you. This is standing because of you."
"You flatter me. B-but, Instructor… is this really all right? There's going to be trouble, isn't there?"
"What trouble? We didn't put a building up on somebody else's private land. And that dark-skinned brat already got us every permit there is. No problem at all!"
"I don't think that's the sort of problem I mean…."
The girl who called blue hydrangeas to mind—Levi—let a small smile touch her lips.
From what she had heard, the master she could not help but cherish had been through yet another enormous ordeal. He seemed to have suffered a great deal. She could understand the feeling that had raised this statue, and she thought it a remarkable thing.
…Even so.
He's going to be scolded within an inch of his life later….
That was only Levi's guess, but the people on high would not have wanted this man revealed to the world. Ten years, at the least. Until then, they would have had no intention whatever of bringing the truth to light.
The kingdom's troubles abroad are bad enough, but the mess at home is far too chaotic.
There were the economy and the temple to consider, but those could wait. What mattered most—
—is their own gain.
Someone might say that the worship of a hero could draw the kingdom more tightly together, but the nobles would not welcome that, and they would fight desperately to stop it.
There isn't a noble alive who wants the temple's authority restored.
The temple's collapse had created problems of its own, and yet, to just that extent, the kingdom's nobles were securing their profits without the slightest ambiguity. Merely cursing the temple was already raising their standing with the common people. If the saintess's sacrifice were suddenly brought into the light, those in power would be struck as if by lightning from a clear sky.
Of course, the temple had a history of grinding the saintess's pleas for help into nothing for decades on end….
That won't matter.
People are animals easily dazzled, easily spellbound by nothing more than the appearance of a gifted agitator. And so unity cannot happen. Even if it does, it will be the unity of the people, not the unity of politics. They will only go back to tearing at one another.
That is the nature of those who hold power.
However dire the kingdom's crisis, however plainly it drifted toward ruin, people would bare their lust for power and indulge their greed to the full—just as her own adoptive father and adoptive grandfather, nobles in nothing but name, had been unable to let go of power to the very end, even when the house was past ruin and they were one step from sitting in the street.
Which was why—
"I sank my Intent into it, deep, mine and the spearman's and the big fellow's. It'll stand through an earthquake, and ordinary cannon won't break it. In that spirit, how about the Unbreakable Saintess Statue? Not a bad name, is it?"
"…Hehe."
Levi could only find her master admirable, and tremendous. He was acting on his conviction for no reason but the pure wish to offer thanks—and in a way that did not step outside the law.
"…You really are incredible, Master."
"Hm? Oh, the statue? Come on. You just haven't seen a truly incredible building yet. There's even a 330-meter iron tower—ah. Not here, there isn't."
"One thousand and thirty-eight feet? A building that incredible exists?"
"……."
"Master?"
"…Converting that into feet on the spot is a hell of a talent. Seriously."
"Pardon?"
"Ah, it's nothing…."
"??"
And so the people looked up for a long while at the structure they had raised, until the soldiers came.
"Whoa! Mister, look at that! It's huge!"
"…Louise, isn't it about time you called me Dad?"
"What?"
"…Your eyes and your hair are exactly the same as mine. Why won't you believe me?"
"Mmm, because I'm still at the stage where I have to be suspicious. Santa said so. You shouldn't believe people too easily. He said there are lots of swindlers who change their own faces!"
"…He really did educate you thoroughly. …Thoroughly, and pointlessly."
"Hehe."
"That was not praise for Sir Santa…."
The margrave, who made no effort to hide how wretched he felt, grumbled so, and before the riddle of what on earth he had to do before she would call him Dad, he did not bother to conceal his distress.
There was, however, one thing.
The girl had a secret. She already knew he was her dad.
The reason she still could not say it—
It's embarrassing.
The word was still hopelessly awkward, and not an easy one to speak. So even if she felt a little sorry, Louise could not call him Dad just yet. She only needed a little more time.
That's all right, isn't it, Mama?
The child looked at the woman pressed close against her side. A presence she had begun, at some point, to feel with perfect clarity—the precious spirit of the woman who had watched over her from the time Louise was a baby until now.
And the woman smiled, and nodded.
As if to say that man could still stand to be tormented a little.
Louise wore a mischievous smile, the very image of that woman, and then looked at the stone statue again.
The child's gaze climbed to the very top—
"Ah!"
—and she swung both hands with all her strength, as if greeting someone.
"Hehe."
The child broke into a bright laugh. The woman up there, wearing a gentle smile meant for her and waving back in just the same way, was simply too welcome to bear.