Ceria (2)
Guillotine, she says. It was a bloodcurdling nickname. Heaven only knew how many kinds of necks she'd lopped clean off.
Had the Church truly possessed the power to pick out mages—only mages—and put them to death, mages would never have been branded demons in the first place. Then again, I suppose we'd still be treated like rabid beasts.
Unfortunately for Ellen, her opening gambit of intimidation had failed to land.
"Thank you for understanding, Ellen."
To a priest, a savage nickname was the highest compliment there was.
"I heard about you as well. That you're from a cadet branch."
Her attack having come to nothing, Ellen leveled a glare at Harad, who was entirely blameless.
"It's not as if it's a secret, is it."
"It's not something I go around broadcasting, either."
"Don't take it so hard. It needed doing."
Harad put it in roundabout terms. The Serzila name had been necessary—a leash to hold a zealot like Ceria in check.
"That's true enough."
Ellen appeared to accept it. It was the look she wore when her head was actually working. She'd worn that same look all of yesterday, too, back when she was going about as Elaine.
"If it's no imposition, might I go and offer my morning prayers?"
Ceria asked, mild as milk.
Ellen's eyes narrowed a fraction. Tell her not to, and she'd actually stop? She was clearly thinking exactly that.
"Serzila has no church, mind you."
"So long as devotion is present, the setting is of no import, or so it's said."
Ceria tipped her head back toward the inner wall. Her gaze asked plain as day: may I go up there and back? Within the Inner Castle, that spot was the closest point to the sun.
"Go and return at your ease. Think nothing of it."
"Thank you."
Ceria gave thanks toward the heavens as though even that permission were Laan's doing.
"She's completely out of her mind."
As Ceria started up the stairs of the inner wall, Ellen let out a hollow laugh.
"Not every priest is like that."
Mages were people. Priests were people too.
"Really?"
"Probably?"
But Harad couldn't vouch for it. Every priest and templar he'd dealt with in his past life had been a zealot.
"Wouldn't she have stopped if we told her not to? The praying, I mean."
"You just answered that yourself. Utterly insane."
"Oh. Right."
Ceria would have prayed regardless. Told not to, she'd simply have prayed as she walked. As she herself said—the place hardly mattered.
"What matters is the heart. Faith."
"Have you ever believed, though?"
"As if. Picked it up secondhand."
He hadn't believed, but he'd set foot in his share of churches. The Holy See itself, even.
"Faith. No—her sheer persistence, praying every day, deserves some credit at least. Prayer doesn't actually grow divine power, after all."
Prayer and the growth of divine power had nothing to do with each other. And yet the Church prayed three times a day, to the sun or the moon, believing beyond all doubt that the power granted them belonged to the god, and bowing in genuine awe before that grace.
"Then how does divine power grow?"
"Much the same as aura, from what I understand."
Like muscle. The more it was used, the more it grew.
"How is it first made, then?"
"I hear it comes with baptism."
Sun and Moon. Two popes, with five cardinals apiece, held jurisdiction over them.
"There's an enormous spring at the Holy See. Those who receive baptism there, administered by a pope or a cardinal, are said to be granted divine power."
"……And that's supposed to make sense?"
"What can one do? It happens to be true."
In his past life, Harad had never witnessed the rite himself, but he had known someone who underwent it. The person had been a complete nobody—yet after the trip to the Holy See, they carried divine power within them.
"That is why baptism is called proof that the gods are real. A devout believer who did nothing but pray every day receives the rite and comes back a powerhouse to rival any knight."
"Short of that, there's no explaining it. Not unless it's a miracle handed down by a god's own hand."
Divine power defied reason. It was the power of Laan, god of the sun, and Ruan, god of the moon.
"I couldn't bring myself to believe that."
"Truthfully, neither could I."
Divine power was far too easily obtained. There would be hardships peculiar to it, of course—but regardless. Easy to obtain, and powerful to boot. It was causality that strayed from the world's order. Though not straying all that far.
In crude terms, divine power was the perfect all-rounder. Its versatility was tremendous, but dig deep enough and it ultimately lost out to aura's raw destructive force. It was neither as precise nor as sharp as magic.
Were it truly a god's miracle, that should never have been possible. It ought to have been even more absurd than that. For a power they called a god's.
Divine power was bound to the same category as aura and magic.
"You do know an awful lot."
"Is that news?"
Harad hid nothing that he knew. The more Ellen suspected him, the better it suited him.
"What rank wears the black vestment? I heard it must be someone high up."
It was a question out of nowhere.
"They say the Grand Duke's daughter killed a priest in black vestments in a dream. Out on the Eastern Great Plain."
"Ah."
Ellen had laid it out without a shred of embarrassment. Coming by later to say it as Elaine was apparently too much bother—she preferred spending her time with Harad as Ellen.
So that was the day. Pynel?
It was a day engraved in Harad's memory. A humiliating one, at that—and Ellen, of all people, had seen it.
"You don't know it?"
"It's an Inquisitor."
The black habit. A vestment granted to Inquisitors alone.
"They're called demon hunters as well. Their habit is dyed black to proclaim the blood it means to spill."
Small wonder the young Ellen wouldn't know it. There were no churches in the North; a priest was rare enough to glimpse—where would she have learned of Inquisitors?
"You'll seldom cross one. They rarely come north."
"Why not?"
"Because killing them is legal."
"I'm sorry—what?"
"Ah. 'Legal' is perhaps less precise than 'self-defense.' The Church files no protest over an Inquisitor's death."
It was a truth Harad himself had learned only belatedly, in his past life. But Elaine, who had visited the imperial capital on every birthday, had known it. Inquisitors receive no shelter from the Church.
"Because they are people who cast everything else aside for the sake of hunting demons alone. That is the will of the Inquisition. Or perhaps of the Holy See itself."
Harad believed the latter. An Inquisitor would do anything at all to kill a mage—and so the wake they left behind was horrific. Even the Church could not help but balk at the cost of shielding them. So the Church had dumped that burden onto the Inquisitors themselves.
"'It is for the hunting of demons.' Put it that way on the continent and most will wave it through. The North, though, crashes in first and asks questions after."
The North dealt with its mages on its own. Hence the Inquisitors' reluctance to come—they would end up crossing blades with Northerners before they ever laid hands on a mage. And whenever such friction sparked, Serzila's rear-guard knight orders were sure to arrive: the knights second in rank only to the six orders guarding the Great Wall.
"So they're practically outlaws."
"Precisely."
Not that their lives were treasured for their own sake. They were spared because they might yet be spent on the demon hunt. If the mage being pursued was in the North, the Inquisitor would enter it, naturally.
"I'll have to keep an even closer eye on her."
Ellen turned her gaze toward Ceria. Her prayers finished, the priestess was descending the inner wall.
"Why?"
"She's been slated for the Inquisition next year, I hear."
Meaning that one month from now, that habit of hers would go pitch black.
"A Guillotine indeed."
Find the mage who killed Pelatz, and kill him in turn. Such was Ceria's purpose.
"I've no standing to lecture you after yesterday's help, but do bear this in mind. The only demon you may kill is the demon that killed Pelatz."
"There will be more demons than that."
"No doubt. But that would be overreach."
Grand Duke Aratus's permission ran precisely that far.
"Rooting out demons is my sacred charge."
"That may hold on the continent. This is the North."
Dealing with the North's mages was the North's own affair.
"……"
Ceria's face warped.
"That said—anyone you judge to be a demon, I will look into separately."
Harad handed her a graceful pretext to stand down.
"……I shall respect that."
At that, Ceria conceded, if grudgingly. True to a future Inquisitor, she seemed versed in the North's temperament.
Her logic is a marvel, I'll grant her that. What made her so certain Pelatz had died at a mage's hand? Harad couldn't keep pace with Ceria's reasoning. And yet, remarkably, she had the right answer. Pelatz had died at Harad's hand.
How did she know? Did Laan himself show her? Then he ought to have shown her me. Harad laughed inwardly. The real answer was more likely a loathing of mages bordering on paranoia. Whenever misfortune struck, the Church's habit was to cry "mages" first and investigate never.
She's cut out for the Inquisition, no mistake. The Empire would presume Serzila stood behind Pelatz's death, concluding that Pelatz had crossed the line. But Ceria had been certain it was a mage's doing—a conclusion beyond anyone short of a dyed-in-the-wool zealot.
"What a land brimming with vitality."
Ceria was smiling gently, as though none of the earlier fury had happened. In front of her, a pair of brawny men were trading punches. She had looked upon that display of savagery and named it vitality. And it seemed no pretense—she appeared to mean every word.
"Miss, are you a nun?"
"So they tell me?"
A boy who had been tearing about posed the question. Ceria ran a hand over his hair.
"You're pretty!"
"You're far more precious."
Light seeped softly from her palm. Ceria laughed as she healed the child's bleeding knee—a beneficent smile, every inch the cleric's.
"There don't seem to be any here. Let's move somewhere else."
The boy scampered off, and Ceria nodded with a look of deep satisfaction. Ellen's face was a tangle. Just now, Ceria hadn't resembled a Guillotine in the slightest. If only there were no mages about.
"Let's be moving on."
Harad started walking. Playing guide was his lot.
"Might I ask that we head where the crowds are?"
"By all means."
Harad left the alley behind and walked out onto the broad avenue. Footsteps echoed behind him in even measure—Ceria's light, Ellen's soft yet weighted. And threading between the footfalls ran a steady murmur of low laughter. Hm-hm. Ceria was developing a fondness for that liveliness so particular to the North.
Harad had just passed a salt vendor when— clack. The footsteps cut off without warning. So did the laughter.
He looked back to find Ceria's face in full contortion. The expression of one who had discovered the most repulsive thing in the world.
"A demon, it seems."
At the end of her gaze stood a middle-aged woman—fresh from buying salt, the very picture of an ordinary housewife out on her errands. Yet each time the woman moved, Ceria's face twisted a little further.
Ellen flicked Harad a glance: is it true? Because she trusted Harad, who could tell a mage on sight. She did not believe that god shone a light upon mages for his priests—and neither, for that matter, did Harad. Still, it bore watching. He had never observed a priest's mage-hunt from this close before. Harad needed to know exactly how accurate it was.
"You mean to simply let her be?" Ceria asked, her face crawling.
"Is that woman the demon who killed Pelatz? Then step in, by all means."
If this were the continent. Whether the woman had killed Pelatz or not, Ceria would have brought her blade down on that neck long before now. But this was the North—the land that gave even Inquisitors pause. The presence of Ellen, daughter of Serzila's cadet branch, was holding her leashed.
"And if not, I'll look into the woman myself, in due course."
Ceria nodded at last, with visible effort.
The North was, in all likelihood, the second most mage-riddled land in the world. That remark he'd once made to Ellen stood a good chance of being true. It lay close to the Outer Realm, famed as the mages' paradise, and it had none of those ever-present churches besides. Even for those with no thought of defection, no land on earth suited a mage better.
Such mages as these, Harad had deliberately left untouched. It was a problem that could not be settled today. What needed thinning first were the mages of the Outer Realm and the Liberation Tower—lawbreakers included. No small share of mages were criminals, and the gravity of their crimes would have to be weighed as well. It was work that would devour an enormous amount of time.
"A demon."
Ceria was cutting that time down for him.
"A demon."
Whether she was truly saving him time or merely complicating everything further remained to be verified, of course.
"A demon."
Ceria's eyes never knew rest. They combed the surroundings without pause, and now and then her face would warp as she marked another demon.
Not a single snag. The reason lay in Ceria's attire. The habit. That pristine white vestment was one of the Church's methods for hunting demons. Because demons are hard to find, the Church instead makes itself conspicuous—and thus culls whoever reacts. Its effect was said to be negligible, granted.
"A demon."
Ceria was calling out every soul who stiffened or flinched at the sight of her habit. Cast the net that wide, and one or two real ones are bound to be caught. Harad gave a hollow laugh. Ellen looked, if anything, even more incredulous.
"Is that actually how it's done?"
Ceria was utterly implacable. It offered a rare window into how the Church ordinarily went about finding mages.
"It isn't altogether without effect."
In fact, Harad found it a surprisingly workable method. Even to his eye, a few people were reacting rather more sharply than the rest.
"Must be something about the North."
Preparing to defect, or hiding from the Church—the mages living in concealment up North were almost invariably one or the other. And Ceria was, without meaning to, weeding out the latter: mages who had fled the Church, settled in the North, let themselves grow comfortable—and then caught sight of a priest strolling about out of nowhere and felt their hearts slam against their ribs.
In the North, the accuracy might actually be respectable. A new discovery. It seemed acquiring a habit might be a fine tactic in its own right. After all, there was no church here to certify whether a priest was the real thing.
"……Still, isn't that far too many?"
The tally of the marked had already climbed past several dozen. On the continent, that would mean dozens dead. Admittedly, the North accounted for the unusual volume. Some of those startled by a priest would surely be mages—but far more would be Northerners startled by the sheer novelty of seeing a priest at all.
"This is really starting to get on my nerves."
By now Ellen's anger was unmistakable. Apparently some of those Ceria had marked were faces she knew.
"She does go too far."
Even granting the North's peculiarities, Ceria was over the line.
"Demon!"
Her emotions were tipping past excess as well. She had marked dozens of demons and been permitted to kill not a single one—no doubt that was why. Her cries of "Demon!" swelled louder and louder. The warped face now put one in mind of a vengeful spirit, as though she'd forgotten her original purpose entirely.
"Are all priests like this?"
"……Not all. So long as the one across from them isn't a mage, a fair number are decent folk. They don't stamp people with the brand wholesale like this, either."
They did swing blindly often enough—but they didn't spend the word this freely.
"Then what is her problem?"
"I hear Inquisitors do tend to run that way."
"The Church certainly knows how to pick them."
Ceria was already an exemplary Inquisitor. Disgustingly so.
"And you're just going to sit there and take it?"
"That's the position I'm in. My status being what it is."
The Pelatz affair had left a precedent. Outwardly, Harad now had to tread with a little more care.
"And me?"
"Didn't I tell you? You don't have to take anything."
"……You never said that."
"I brought you along precisely so you wouldn't. You're the leash. You're a Serzila, after all."
Then it happened.
"DEMOOON!"
Ceria was shrieking down at a little girl building a snowman, her eyes jittering with frenzy.
"Those goddamn eyes of hers—she keeps staring, so of course she keeps finding them."
Ellen, vanished from before his eyes, appeared in an instant in front of Ceria.
By the time Harad registered it, the fist had already flown.
……What followed was the sound of a fortress wall coming down.