The Kidnapping (2)
Harad and Ellen were, so it was said, that kind of couple. That was the first rumor.
The witness: Kalinos, Commander of the 3rd Knight Order. Ellen was so hopelessly besotted with Harad that she would follow him even along that deadly Boundary — so he testified. Then again, the rumor had been around even before that. Kalinos had merely poured oil on the flames. A great deal of it, at that.
"Harad. When you lay gravely wounded, Lady Ellen waited on you hand and foot. She even stayed under your own roof while she did it!"
Harad regarded Tusten with pitying eyes. Tusten was speaking like a schoolmaster at his lectern, a sword clutched in his hand in place of a pointer. Scritch. The blade's tip bored into the wooden board hung on the wall.
The board carried Harad's and Ellen's names, the rumors themselves, and a catalog of everything Harad had done of late. Tusten called those deeds atrocities.
The Information Bureau annex, hm.
Judging by the damp, it lay underground. That sort of board was something agents used only when sharing intelligence.
"Harad. You toyed with Lady Ellen's cheek."
"…"
"Worse still, Harad — you even said you enjoyed it. Called yourself wicked with Lady Ellen, didn't you!"
That had happened during their encounter with the Agwi — and it had been twisted beyond recognition besides. The culprit, naturally, was Kalinos. Harad was confident he could explain all of it. If words had gotten through to them, none of this uproar would have happened.
Harad was lashed tight to his chair — not with rope but with iron chains, and the chair itself was steel. Three knights watched him, one at each side and one behind: Delic, Jambello, and Gulen. Up front, Tusten pressed on with his harangue.
So Pissarro's gone into the Boundary.
Cohort-mate of Vice Commander Delic, and the brains of the 1st Knight Order — Pissarro had unmistakably been pulled onto the search detail. Had he been here, none of this would have happened.
Of course, an iron chair and a few chains were nothing he couldn't melt, and he was confident he could subdue the knights as well. But Harad knew all too well how childish that would be. Do it, and he would become no different from these fools. Harad had no wish to be a knight.
"I get that the festival has you all worked up, but isn't this going a bit far?"
"Shut your mouth, Harad!"
"You must be dreadfully bored."
"…"
Jambello, standing at his right, flinched. He was the most level-headed knight in the room. The knights hadn't been devoured by the rumor — they'd been devoured by the festival. And with the festivities not yet properly begun, they meant to burn off their uncontainable high spirits on Harad.
"Harad, you wretch!"
Tusten, at least, seemed sincere.
"Tusten… once carried a torch for Lady Ellen," Jambello whispered.
Harad gave a slow, bobbing nod. So that explained it.
"Interesting."
"I'm not the only one! I came here on behalf of them all!"
There seemed to be no few knights cut from Tusten's cloth. Ellen was popular among the knights — so what Cassion had once said was true after all.
Tusten had audacity to spare. He'd taken that beating in his duel against the 1st Knight Order, and still gone and drawn up a plan to abduct Harad.
"You truly are a knight."
Harad marveled at the sheer gall. The man knew full well how this side would come at him. Had Harad's temper run even a shade hotter, the room would already be a sea of fire.
"You're right, Harad. I am — we are — knights. We tried to acknowledge you as knights should. No — we did!"
"I'm grateful. Thanks to that, in Serzilla—"
"And then — another woman!"
"…"
Evidently, the acknowledgment Tusten meant differed considerably from the acknowledgment Harad had in mind.
"And I gave her up for nothing!"
"…"
"Lady Ellen is in love with you!"
Tusten's face crumpled. The shadow of the lone candle wavered across it like tears.
"It's a misunderstanding."
"You've been shacking up with the priestess!"
Tusten had seized on the second rumor — that Harad had fallen for the priestess Ceria. That was the second rumor.
"Serzilla wore itself ragged hiding the fact that you're a mage."
"Well, ours is a symbiotic relationship. I'm grateful, of course."
If Harad blew up, Serzilla would blow up with him. Of course, that wasn't the only reason the Inner Castle kept his secret — and for that heart of theirs, Harad was sincerely thankful.
"And yet you used territory patrols as a pretext to go traipsing about with the priestess."
That was the evidence behind the rumor that Harad had fallen for Ceria. A mage — the very thing a priestess must flee — and what other reason could there be for him to idle at her side?
"We weren't traipsing. That was work."
He had brought Ceria along because she might stumble upon the tunnels. The trip to the Great Plains had been much the same — the Liberation Tower might let slip about the Ivory Tower and Psina.
"Besides — would I have to be insane to keep company with a priestess?"
From a mage's standpoint, the rumor's premise was absurd. A love between mage and priestess — from anyone's perspective, a horrifying thing.
"Which is exactly what makes it more romantic. You were counting on that, weren't you."
Tusten, it seemed, nursed a special romanticism about love.
"We weren't even alone together, to begin with. Ellen came along too."
"…"
"You're enjoying this, aren't you."
"Half of it's sincere!"
Harad sighed. Sincere or not, Tusten too was riding the festival mood.
"I understand. You're excited — enough that waiting for the subjugation to end must be unbearable."
Harad was willing to play along, up to a point. He needed to grow closer to the knights than he had in his past life.
"But you'd best wrap this up soon."
"…?"
The knights cocked their heads.
"You chose a poor venue. Why, like idiots, kidnap me to an Information Bureau annex — what department does Ellen belong to, again?"
"This place was abandoned long ago."
"You think I don't know that? And if you truly wanted to play, you should have abducted me somewhere discreet."
The knights had left Kubel behind — and Kubel was hardly the only witness. They had strolled brazenly down the main thoroughfare to get here.
"Ellen will be here any moment, I'd wager. Arika will have reported it by now."
Speak of the devil.
KWA-BOOM!
The hatch set into the ceiling burst apart, fragments raining down and dragging the ladder to ruin with them.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?"
It was not a question born of ignorance. The eyes of Ellen, descending into the room, had sunk into a dead frost.
"…"
Clank. Behind him, Gulen had quietly unfastened the chains binding Harad.
"You look worn out."
Ellen's body seemed fine; it was her mind that looked wrung dry. The backlog of work was one thing — what lay ahead would be worse. As Grand Duke, she would have to preside over the subjugation and the festival besides.
"I'm not tired. You're the tired one, Grand Duke."
Ellen gave no one cause for needless worry. It was simply that Harad knew the truth.
"Then why do you just sit there and take it?"
Ellen's gaze traveled over the chain marks left on Harad's body; then she pressed hard at the bridge of her nose.
"It's the festival, no? I can allow myself this much play."
"Since when are you so accommodating… no — never mind. It isn't your fault."
Ellen turned her gaze on the knights. They clamped their mouths shut and dropped their eyes. Hic. Tusten's diaphragm gave a slight spasm.
"Did everyone enjoy themselves? Then that's all that matters."
Her face said otherwise. Ellen's expression was frost.
When Grand Duke Elaine grew angry, she went cold. Ellen the cousin seemed much the same — or so thought Delic and Gulen, who had once been on the receiving end of Elaine's wrath in the Boundary. And by coincidence, the cause was the same: Ellen, too, was angry because of Harad.
The only difference was that back then, the one in the wrong had been Psina. Now it was the knights. Should have gone on the search with Pissarro, Delic regretted inwardly. Should have just been swinging an axe. Gulen shared the sentiment.
"I heard the rumors too. Both of them."
That Ellen, an Information Bureau agent, would know the rumors went without saying. Arika stood at her side.
"I don't know who first spread them, but don't inflate them any further. We're not like that."
"…"
"The same goes for Ceria. Harad doesn't even like Ceria."
Oh. Tusten, eyes lowered, parted his lips a fraction and stole a glance at Harad. The other knights were no different — Delic winked, as if to say well done.
They've gone completely mad. Harad shook his head at the four of them, winking away. True to their name, the Northern knights had nerve to spare.
It wasn't disrespect for Ellen that drove them. Branch line she might be, but she was still Serzilla — they stood ready to die if she so much as said the word. Stunts like this came of genuinely rooting for Harad and Ellen. Of course, it was all for nothing.
"From now on, don't so much as breathe another word of such rumors. It's an insult to me — and to Harad."
"…But Lady Ellen."
That was when Vice Commander Delic mustered a useless scrap of courage. Perhaps, as the senior man, he had resolved to set an example.
"I heard you entered the Boundary at his side because you feared Harad was in danger."
It was the kind of devotion that could strike any knight dead on the spot.
"And that he touched your cheek, too…"
"The cheek is confirmed, at least," Tusten murmured.
Ellen opened her mouth and no words came. She seemed struck speechless by the sheer absurdity of it.
"Nothing of what you're imagining ever happened."
Harad spoke in Ellen's stead. Come to think of it, this was a chance — the matter needed to be nailed down once and for all.
"And nothing of the sort ever will."
Harad needed to stand out in Serzilla's eyes; Ellen was the opposite of that. Hers was an identity that would have to vanish one day — needless attention would only make things a hassle later. Ellen's presence could not be allowed to grow any larger.
"Gulp."
At those words, the knights swallowed down nothing but air.
"…Huh?"
Ellen's eyes went round.
Ellen broke up the childish kidnapping game. The knights were chased out into the streets, and Harad returned to the Inner Castle.
They had traded words along the way — what were they, again? Ellen couldn't remember. Whatever it was, it must have been trivial.
Promised one.
That's right — Harad had a promised one. "Because it seems I have a promised one of my own." She had heard those words when they first met.
And that wasn't all. There was also a woman who hated it when Harad devoured hearts. Mad, he'd called her.
The same woman, no doubt.
Harad's promised one despised his devouring of hearts. He had once described her, flatly, as a madwoman. Looking back, it was the sort of insult only affection could afford — short of that, there would have been no reason to hold himself back from devouring hearts.
Harad was clearly striving to keep the promise he had made to her. He'd claimed it was no great vow, but…
If that were true, he'd have forgotten it by now.
The very act of keeping it fresh in his memory meant he took it seriously. Of course, Ellen too hated it when Harad devoured hearts. But his abstaining was not for Ellen's sake.
It was for his promised one's sake…
"Ellen."
Why do I even care about this?
That question had just surfaced when Arika called for her.
"Are you all right? Your color is poor."
"I'm fine. What reason would I have not to be?"
Ellen had been born with Heavenly Might. She could live buried under work for weeks at a stretch if she had to.
"It's about the rumors…"
Arika let the end of the sentence trail off. Her intent, though, was plain. Is it true? — that was what she was asking.
"You heard it earlier too, Arika. Harad has a promised one."
"…It's not as if your heart is unmoved by it."
Arika's concern carried a different intent than the knights'. Where theirs was cheering, hers was holding Ellen back — because she knew Ellen was the Grand Duke. In time, she was the heir who would have to rule Serzilla as Elaine.
Ellen knew that weight well. She was a person who would have to disappear one day.
"No. It's nothing."
"You're better off not knowing."
That advice of Ceria's — Ellen was in no position to accept it. Even if Ellen did whatever the hell she pleased… the situation would not allow it. This was not a matter Ellen could decide.
"I don't like it."
…He has a promised one, after all.