The Chain-Smoking Magician (1)
Harad could tell magicians apart.
Ellen believed that. If Harad ever pointed to a man in the street and named him a magician, she would subdue the fellow first and sort out the rest after—provided the man in question wasn't a knight. That was the depth of her trust.
Children had to be excluded as well. Ellen simply could not bring herself to accept that someone the North was sworn to protect might be a demon.
"What's that?"
The girl, Shura, asked, tilting her head.
"Which part don't you follow? The Ivory Tower? Ios? Or...?"
Ellen chopped Harad in the Adam's apple, cutting him off mid-sentence.
"Sorry about him. This man carries his jokes too far. You said your name was Shura?"
"..."
Shura didn't answer. She didn't so much as glance at Ellen; her eyes stayed fixed on Harad alone. And yet, for all that fixation, she seemed to know nothing at all. The Ivory Tower, the Tiers, Ios—she had reacted to none of them.
But... she had reacted to the word magician.
Harad had clearly seen the tips of her fingers flinch. Only her face remained composed.
A continental magician?
It was possible. But he didn't think so. The memory was surfacing more vividly by the moment. Eyes like moss—the owner of those eyes, as Harad remembered them, had been a man.
"It was a joke."
Harad held out a palm toward Ellen, who was glaring daggers at him, then crouched down to meet Shura at eye level.
"That woman there is kinder than she looks. It's all right to answer her."
Shura nodded. For reasons he couldn't fathom, the girl responded to Harad alone.
"You're not a lost child. It's only that you can't go home yet. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"Your father told you to. This, too?"
"That's right."
Her voice grew a little louder.
"His name was... Kubel, wasn't it. Built like an ox, but cried at the drop of a hat. Loved his daughter more than anything in the world. So that daughter is you, Shura."
This time even her eyes went wide.
"If I remember right, he was a chain-smoker. Is he still?"
Shura nodded again and again.
"Yes! My dad smokes all the time."
Shura beamed. It was a truly lovely sight—all the more so, surely, for her father Kubel.
"You know my dad?"
"Second only to you."
In his previous life, Kubel had become a demon. Just as the continent's custom decreed, which called every magician a demon.
"I stay home all the time. Dad doesn't like it when I go out."
Shura—the girl the soldiers had taken for a mute—answered readily.
"But actually, there's a secret passage in my room."
She spoke like a kid showing off a secret hideout. A child's hideout would be make-believe, but Shura's secret passage was surely real.
"And today was one of the days you needed to use it, I take it."
"Yes. A guest comes over."
Whenever the guest came, Shura used the secret passage to slip outside.
"'You mustn't let the guest see you!' That's what he says."
Shura said, imitating her father. That was why the passage existed, she explained.
"Will the guest still be there?"
"He will. Once the guest leaves, Dad comes looking for me."
And how would he know where to look? Ellen murmured to herself.
"I'll be going into your house, then. What do you say?"
"The guest is scary, Dad said."
"Well, then. It seems I can make that scary guest never come again."
To Ellen's ears it was a chilling remark. But to young Shura, it seemed to be the best news in the world.
"That would be wonderful!"
Shura briskly opened the door and clattered down the stairs.
"...The child takes to you rather well."
Ellen's lips were jutting halfway out. She didn't seem pleased that Shura followed Harad alone. The North loved its children dearly, after all.
"Do you really know that child's father?"
"It would appear so."
"Is he truly a good man?"
Keeping a child shut up indoors. And a chain-smoker on top of that.
"What kind of man smokes around a child..."
Ellen said, crushing the cigarette she had tucked away in her coat pocket.
"My dad's smoke never comes to me."
Shura, walking ahead, overheard and replied. She only answered; she didn't turn to look at Ellen.
Ellen pointed at the girl with a look of pure disbelief. The gesture meant, does that even make sense?—though at a glance it just looked childish.
"Planning to trade words with a child?"
"That's not it. It simply doesn't make sense."
"It makes perfect sense. Think it through."
Ellen was a woman of action. Instead of thinking, she fished an intact cigarette from her pocket and lit it. She turned her head away and blew the smoke in the direction opposite Shura, then said, as if only now realizing:
"Ah. You mean he doesn't smoke at home?"
"..."
But Shura's house lay quite far from the Inner Castle.
"How strange. Families with children are given housing near the Inner Castle."
Ellen's brow furrowed. The North's partiality toward children ran deep, and so did the welfare that came with it. Serzilla settled households with children closest to the Inner Castle.
"There it is."
After a long walk, Shura stopped and pointed out a house. It stood a good distance off.
"If we get any closer, he might notice us."
Shura whispered it. This "guest" seemed far more frightening than expected—or her father had simply told her so.
"Ha."
Either way, it was more than enough to anger Ellen. Picturing the guest who frightened a child, she rested her hand on her sword.
"I can go take him in, can't I?"
That was what she said, but to Harad it sounded like: I'll kill him somewhere Shura can't see.
"That won't do. You stay here."
"You're going alone?"
"Someone has to stay and protect Shura."
Only then did Ellen realize this affair involved a magician.
"Who is it? The guest? Or...?"
Ellen let the words trail off. She was mindful of Shura. If the father was also a magician—and if there was no mother—Shura would be left an orphan.
"Probably both."
"..."
Harad gave an awkward laugh at Ellen's reaction—because she had drawn in close against Shura's side.
"Are you going to help my dad?"
Shura asked then.
"..."
Ellen couldn't answer. She was a poor liar.
"Does Dad hate the guest too?"
Harad stroked Shura's hair in Ellen's stead.
"A lot."
"Really?"
"Yes. He says he's scared of him, and sick to death of him."
"Then I'll have to put him at ease."
Ellen flinched. To her ears, it sounded like: I'll put him at ease by killing him.
Harad walked on alone toward the building Shura had pointed out.
He had taken it for a house, but it was a tavern—at least the ground floor was, though it appeared to be out of business now. Dust had settled over the liquor bottles lined up on display, and before them sat two men facing each other.
Harad's eyes gleamed when he spotted the enormous man among the pair.
The real Kubel.
Even while startled by the new arrival, Kubel was puffing away at his cigarette.
A true chain-smoker.
Thanks to Kubel's efforts, the entire ground floor was thick with tobacco haze. The acrid stench stung his nose.
"Who are you."
asked the man sitting across from Kubel, his face shaped like a horse's.
"Harad."
Harad offered a handshake with a smile.
"Pleased to meet you."
"..."
The man's face was openly wary. Natural enough—Harad was an uninvited guest.
"This fellow's name is Kubel, isn't it?"
"...Who are you, exactly?"
"I told you. Harad."
Harad composed himself for a beat, then put iron force into his outstretched hand as he spoke.
"I've come from the Liberation Magic Tower. Just assigned here today, in fact."
"Oh! A comrade!"
The horse-faced man clasped his hand as if spellbound.
"My name is Grex."
Even Serzilla, closest of all lands to the Outlands, possessed only scant information about it—yet, laughably, the continent knew the word Magic Tower. It simply didn't call the Outlands to mind. The Magic Tower the continent knew was the Liberation Magic Tower.
The Liberation Magic Tower. Just as the name said: a gathering of continental magicians who wanted liberation.
It had always been a thorn in the continent's side. The continent never found their stronghold. They were secretive, and no few of their magicians were skilled. That was all, though—their deeds and achievements had always been minor. So it went until the Outlands reared its head. When the Outlands rose, the Liberation Magic Tower split in two, and one of the halves became the continent's outright enemy.
"Which faction? I'm with the Rebellion."
The Grex before him was of that side.
A face and a name I've never seen before.
The Rebel Faction's aims aligned with the Outlands. They wished for the fall of the Empire and the Church, and claimed allegiance to the risen Outlands.
The Master of the Liberation Magic Tower was the head of the Rebel Faction.
Come to think of it, it couldn't have been otherwise. How else would the continent have learned the name "Magic Tower"? The Tower Master of the Liberation Magic Tower was a magician with ties to the Outlands.
"Dear me. I'm with the Liberation."
Harad answered, feigning disappointment.
"The naive lot, then."
Grex clicked his tongue softly. Unlike the Rebel Faction, the Liberation Faction's aims were modest. They truly wanted liberation—a place where those born magicians could live in peace.
In his previous life, Harad had respected the Liberation Faction. They drew the hatred of the Empire and the Church, yet still fought the Outlands on their own. Their strength was meager, but their will deserved nothing less than recognition.
"If you came after hearing he was being recruited, you're too late. We got here first."
In his previous life, Kubel had been with the Rebel Faction too.
So this was when they recruited him?
As far as Harad knew, Kubel had joined because of his daughter's death. He had chosen the Rebel Faction out of vengeance.
"Have you asked the man himself what he wants?"
"It's only a matter of time. This one is a magician too, after all."
Grex, by contrast, was brimming with confidence. Harad thought he understood why Kubel had kept Shura hidden. True to his faction, Grex looked the hardline type.
"Coercion is unseemly, Grex."
"The continent is the one doing the coercing. Kubel—say it with your own mouth. Will you die on a cross, or will you become our comrade?"
Grex pressed him, driving him on. The Liberation Faction's entry into the war had made him impatient.
He doesn't know about Shura.
Shura would have made an excellent hostage. But Grex never once mentioned her.
"...Please leave."
Kubel's voice was terribly low. It brought a deep cavern to mind, and so even spoken softly, it carried a threat in it. The fingers holding his cigarette trembled. He seemed to be holding back his rage—and seeing it, Grex's hand dropped beneath the table, as if bracing for magic.
He is intimidating, I'll grant.
Harad privately agreed with Grex's assessment. Because he remembered his previous life.
Kubel had been one of the Rebel Faction's core assets. He ate magicians' hearts instead of meals, and no one who met his eyes had ever been spared. Weeping all the while, he killed them all. People who saw him spoke of crocodile tears and shuddered.
"Kubel."
At Harad's call, Kubel looked at him. His eyes were, indeed, the color of moss—deeper even than Shura's. And those eyes wavered faintly. As if the crocodile were about to weep.
In his previous life, when that crocodile shed its tears, people died.
Did the magician called Grex die here, back then?
Perhaps. It hardly mattered. Among the magicians Harad remembered, there was no name like Grex—which meant the man was nothing special. Every magician Harad remembered had been formidable in his own right.
"If you're going to kill this fellow, do it a little later."
Harad said, patting Grex on the shoulder.
"I have questions for him."
The words were meant for Kubel, but Grex's face flushed crimson.
"H-how dare—"
A fist-sized whirl of wind coiled around the hand that burst up through the table. The motion was remarkably smooth—no amateur's work, not the skill of someone who had attacked a person once or twice. The level, however, was not high. A mere 2nd Tier.
"My, my. A small fry, were you?"
At this level, he wouldn't know much worth hearing, either. Harad snatched Grex's wrist and snapped it. Then, hauling him down to the floor, he drove his knee into his throat. With a soft crack, Grex's eyes rolled back.
Harad stepped off Grex's body and spoke to Kubel.
"You can kill him now."
A single tear fell from Kubel's eye.
Is he really a good man?
When Ellen had asked that, Harad hadn't answered. No—he couldn't. Because by his memory, Kubel had not been a good man.
Kubel. He had never met that 5th-Tier magician in person. He had only heard stories about him. That alone had been enough.
Kubel the Heart Addict.
He had been a core asset of the Rebel Faction, yet his aims never aligned with theirs. He despised even the Outlands. Kubel was the enemy of the Outlands and the enemy of the continent alike. He hated magicians. He hated the Empire and the Church. He hated a world without his daughter in it. He believed this world itself had made his daughter die. He was a man who ate magicians' hearts and meant to use that power to destroy the world.
That reckless thinking had been a headache—and not for Elain and Harad alone. The Empire lost a Sword Master to Kubel; the Church, two cardinals. The Outlands, too, had lost—what was it—two 5th-Tier magicians.
"S-spare me, please."
...And that Kubel was on his knees, begging.
Harad's gaze darted to the door despite himself. Thankfully, it was closed.
"I'm not the one killing here. You're the one who has to do the killing."
Harad pointed at Grex.
"H-how could I ever kill a person?"
Kubel spoke like a man who had never taken a life in his days.
"Hearts. Don't you eat them? I heard you're fond of them."
"Wh-what a hor—horrible thing to—!"
Kubel shook his head frantically, his face drained white.
"Is that why you've been puffing away so desperately?"
Harad pointed at the floor. Stub-short cigarettes and ash lay scattered about—spilled from the ashtray that had fallen when the table broke. There were dozens of the stubs. Every one of them smoked by Kubel, no doubt. He must have smoked without pause from the moment he met this man.
"It was j-just in case. That's all."
As Kubel waved his hand, the thick tobacco smoke gathered toward a corner.
It was the Kubel Harad knew, all right. That heart-addicted magician had been a chain-smoker, and his Origin was Smoke.
The same man.
And yet his temperament was different—far too different. He had already shed dozens of tears; by the stories, dozens of men should be dead by now. But the Kubel before him hadn't even killed the unconscious Grex.
His daughter. It's the daughter.
In his previous life, Kubel's driving force had been vengeance. If the death of Shura was what transformed him, then the parallel to the Agwi held. Hadn't his joining the Liberation Magic Tower also been because of his daughter's death?
—There had certainly been magicians on the continent who were kind, or who helped.
In Elain's words, the Kubel before him was a good magician. He wept because he lacked even the courage to kill the magician who threatened him.
But what guarantee is there he won't become what he was in my past life?
There was none. Even with Shura alive, Kubel might still turn out as he had before. Kubel already had a record, after all—the trouble was that the record belonged to a future that no longer existed.
A dilemma. Kill him, and though it left a bad taste in the mouth, one threat would be removed. Spare him, and though he might prove useful, the unease would remain.
...A difficult one.
His head throbbed. The aftereffects still lingered. For now he would set it aside and decide once he had recovered.
"I mean Shura. Your daughter."
Kubel's whole body flinched hard.
"She's with me."
Kubel's eyes went wide as lamplight.
"She's remarkably grown-up for her age."
"Is Sh-Shura safe?"
"...?"
"I'll do whatever you ask, so please, just spare my daughter's life—"
Suddenly turned kidnapper, Harad burst into a hollow laugh.
"This is maddening."