Even Nobles Die
Mod, the leader of Muddy Hand, collapsed.
A man who had carved out a notorious name for himself at the head of that gang. His death was this hollow. This meaningless.
A single gesture. Gone from this world.
He hit the floor with a dull thud. I took in the sight of Mod's fallen body and settled the iron helm back over my face.
The Muddy Hand building had never been this quiet. Death had come here without warning, and it had taken every last one of them.
People connected to Muddy Hand might come after me for this. I didn't care. They would only meet the same end.
I crossed the room and looked through the ledger Mod had kept. It was packed with entries of every kind. I scanned it for a long time, then put it away on my person. Page after page, it was nothing but human malice bound up tight as stone. I could barely stand to look at it — but the ledger would have its uses. Not that this was a problem my current mind or strength could solve.
To think I'd have to feel it again — that I still lack the knowledge and the power to carry out justice.
The thought dragged a sigh out of me. It was all right. That was what I had been working this hard for. So for now, I would do the best of what I could. So that Oble's death would not be in vain. So that no one's death would be in vain. I would change this world, even if only by an inch.
I may not be able to do much else, but I memorized the nobles' names.
I held those names clearly in my mind and rummaged at my belt. The oil I had taken from downstairs. I poured it slowly through the room, then struck a match and put a flame to it.
This building was full of drugs and dangerous goods. Leave it standing and it would only end up in someone else's hands. So I would tear the evil out by the root. And I would leave a warning. If anything like this happened again, I would be the one to deliver the punishment.
I threw the match. Fire leapt up at once, swallowed the room whole, and jumped to everything around it. I turned while it spread and started down the corridor, meaning to oil each room as I passed and set it burning.
I was pouring with the single-minded intent of reducing the place to ash when my Third Eye caught a flame still wavering somewhere ahead.
On the way in, I had snuffed every life flame belonging to Muddy Hand. I hadn't expected one to be left.
I followed it. A room tucked into a corner — the kind of place no one had any reason to walk into. And yet it was cleaner than the rest of the building, lined with ornaments a cut above anything else I'd seen. A parlor for receiving guests, maybe. Holding that thought, I opened the door.
A wet, rhythmic slicing came from inside. At the same time, the thick smell of blood needled at my nose. Something ugly rose from the pit of my stomach. I followed that feeling with my eyes, and my face went hard in an instant.
A man was torturing a boy in there.
He was well-fed, solid with fat, and he was singing a cheerful little tune as if this were some pleasant game. The boy's face was familiar. Before I had come here, I had pressed a storybook into that boy's hands. I'd told him to keep his wits about him and live sharp. In the end, his luck had not lasted.
The reek of drugs stabbed at my nose. A man high out of his mind, soaked through with blood. It was a sight no human being should have to keep their eyes open for. The boy's breathing had already stopped. Whether that was a mercy, I couldn't tell.
Was that a demon? A monster? What was unfolding in that room was something no one who shared the name of human would ever do. A creature worse than a monster. After Trenba, it had been reborn here all over again.
The moment I saw it, my body was already moving. My leg drove into the small of the man's back.
"Gweh?!"
The fat man, caught completely off guard, went rolling across the floor. I climbed on top of him and put my fist into his face without a second's hesitation. His facial bones gave way in a wet, cracking snap.
"Wh— gah! Ah! S-stop! Hhk, ack!"
I ignored the screaming and kept swinging, wild and relentless. After a while the man was a wreck, his whole body shuddering.
"P-please stop. Hhk, hh, nngh. W-why are you doing this to me. Ghk."
I felt not a shred of pity. If anything, it was worse that a human voice was coming out of him.
"If you're human."
I drove another fist into the bastard's face.
"If you were born a human being, you keep the bare minimum of human decency. That's what being a person means."
A pig-like scream tore out of him.
"So how did you throw away even that? Are you a beast? A monster?"
"Khhk, hhk, I-I'm — I'm Eron, a man named Eron. I serve Lord Frendal Laoren — a noble!"
He forced the words out through a face already swelling shut. Bloody phlegm surged up his throat, but he shouted anyway, desperate, as if noise alone might keep him alive.
Frendal Laoren.
I stopped punching when I heard the name. The youngest son of the Laoren Count family — and of that family, the one famous for causing trouble. His name had been written clearly in the ledger I had just read. The noble who had been buying drugs from Muddy Hand in bulk. That was Frendal.
"I-if I die, hhkk, you'll be in trouble too! My master is extremely fond of me — he will never let anyone who harms me walk away!"
Eron had no idea who I was, but he babbled on all the same. He seemed to think I had stopped hitting him because of his station.
"I-I'll let today's incident slide as a mistake! S-so please, just ease your anger! I can pay you — I'll give you money!"
I looked down at him and said nothing. Maybe that silence unnerved him more than the fists had. Mid-plea, Eron's lips began to move more slowly. Whatever he saw in my eyes drained the color from his face.
"S-so, what I'm saying is — if you kill me, you'll be in tr-trouble too."
"You're saying if I kill you, Frendal will come after me with his knights. Is that it?"
"Th-that's right. His pride is enormous — he can't stand anything of his being ruined! He'll punish you for the sake of that pride alone. He will. I know he will!"
I see. That made sense enough. From Frendal's position, it would be infuriating. A subordinate he had sent was dead, and his little playground had been smashed apart. A spoiled child whose toy had been taken was not going to sit quietly. If only to show the nobles he ran with that his pride was intact, he would hunt down whoever had caused this mess and try to kill them.
And so what.
"......What?"
Eron echoed it stupidly, the look of a man who could not believe what he had just heard.
"I'll kill the knights who follow a master like that. I'll kill the nobles. I'll kill all of them."
Nobles lived in a world entirely apart from commoners. Harming one of them was enough to get a man hanged. But that had nothing to do with the justice I was after. Mine was a justice that would stand against even a mage, if they were in the wrong. Was I going to start fearing nobles now? Compared to a mage, they were just people. Same as me. People who died to a single cast of Instant Death Magic.
Instant Death Magic. There was no justice more equal than this. It was the unshakable justice of my calling.
I reached down and seized his face in my hand. Eron thrashed. I didn't care.
"W-wait! Kill a noble? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds? Think again! That is not a thought a sane person has!"
"Are you sane?"
His face filled my eyes.
"Is it normal to wear a human face, torture a child, and hum a little tune while you're high on drugs? Is that what a normal person does?"
No. I would stake anything that this did not pass for normal in any world that existed.
"And the man you see in front of you. Do I look normal to you?"
Eron's face slowly locked up. He had finally understood the death hanging over him.
"You're dead! You're going to die! If you kill me, Lord Frendal will never let it go! You think nobles are a joke? You don't know a damn thing!"
He had started shouting now. He seemed to have decided that talking to me was useless.
"I don't know."
Even so.
"I do know you're going to die by my hand today. What happens to me after that, what happens to Frendal, whether he's a noble or not — you'll never know. You die here. Today."
After that, Eron's voice slowly thinned away. He began to shake. At some point his pant leg had gone dark and wet. The strength ran out of him in a long, emptying slide. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes and spilled over, wrung out by the fear of a death that was already on top of him.
Death was this frightening. Even the hard ones ended up the same in front of it.
"I-I'm sorry. I-I'm so sorry. I-I just — I just don't want to die. I don't want to die."
So Eron begged. He begged, wretchedly, to be allowed to live. I didn't answer. I didn't even give him time to accept what was coming. Mercy was meaningless to a pest like this.
The life flame hanging over him went out.
Death arrived in a single instant. Eron's face was not even given time for the terror to leave it. Just a wretched thing, eyes brimming, still begging at nothing.
Frendal's servant, Eron. I left his death where it lay and slowly got to my feet. Outside, I could hear the fire eating its way through the building. I looked at the boy's body on the desk, then picked up a cloth that had been lying nearby and drew it over him. A last courtesy for a boy whose life had already ended.
There was no one left in the Muddy Hand building. I walked out and left the burning structure behind me.
I did not feel as though I had carried out justice. Only a hollow I couldn't name circled around inside me. I knew perfectly well that destroying the Muddy Hand that had sold Trenba his drugs would not bring Oble back. The dead do not come back to life. That was a reality no one got to escape.
I unclenched the fist I had been holding. I pulled the iron mask off my head and tossed it down in front of the building. I couldn't say whether this had been revenge for Oble or just me venting. But it was something someone had to do. Leave the pests eating the city alone, and more people would only have gotten sick.
Frendal.
The youngest of Raoren County. He was no different. Even I couldn't kick in the door of a noble's mansion. The knights lined up in a house like that were men who hunted people for a living. Facing them was nothing like putting down Muddy Hand's alley thugs — heaven and earth apart.
But a noble couldn't stay inside a mansion forever. Frendal in particular, that spoiled child of a noble, was famous for coming and going through the pleasure districts.
Did being a noble mean you didn't die? Did being a noble mean you were allowed to throw away human decency?
No. It did not.
A monster is a monster, whatever shape it takes. A pest is a pest. Pests are to be exterminated.
I held that thought and turned away in silence. Through ash that drifted down like snow, I walked off quietly, carrying a justice I might someday be able to accept.