The Chain-Smoking Mage (2)
Kubel had tried to offer up his own neck instead of fighting.
Because he lacked confidence? No — a father with his beloved daughter held hostage was never going to be that rational. Before thought could even take shape, Kubel had chosen his daughter. That was simply his nature: a kind, delicate human being, and above all a father for whom his daughter was everything.
The perfect mark to exploit.
Harad thought of the Liberation Magic Tower. The Liberation Faction he respected; the Rebel Faction, never. Those creatures knew nothing so noble as good — they were violent, they were insidious, and Kubel would have made superb prey for them. Perhaps... Harad shook his head as he studied the charred floor. Shura could never be allowed to fall into the Rebel Faction's hands.
"What's wrong with that spot over there?"
Shura pointed at the scorched floor — the place where Grex had been burned down to ash.
"Someone got careless playing with fire."
"And that guest? Is he really never coming back?"
"He isn't. This gentleman here took care of that."
"How?"
Instead of answering, Kubel looked to Harad. He seemed hopeless at lying — or perhaps he simply could not bring himself to lie to his daughter.
"The frightening guest has gone very, very far away," Harad said gently. "What did I tell you? That I could see to it he never returns."
He sounded for all the world like some dignified nobleman — and that, if anything, made him more terrifying to Kubel. The image of Harad burning Grex alive refused to leave his head.
"What about you, big brother?"
"If you'd rather, I could stop coming too."
"You have to come every day."
Shura beamed, blissfully ignorant of her father's heart. But the smile did not last long. Even in the middle of her delight she was nodding off — it must have been a punishing day for a girl of ten.
"E-excuse me just a moment."
Swift as anything, Kubel scooped Shura into his arms and hurried up to the second floor.
"What did you do to him, that he's that terrified?"
No sooner had father and daughter vanished than Ellen opened her mouth, as though she had only been waiting for the chance.
"I merely cleared away a guest."
"That?"
Ellen pointed at the charred floor. She had known from the moment she first stepped inside that the scorch mark was a grave.
"Did you eat him?"
Harad's brow creased faintly.
"The Sun ate him."
"What a waste."
To Ellen, Harad's heart-feeding was nothing worth a second glance. Harad himself might be the exception, but in her eyes every other magician was still a demon — one whose death cost nothing at all.
"That magician belonged to the Rebel Faction of the Liberation Magic Tower."
Harad gestured at the scorched floor and explained what had happened earlier — the part of the story that could not be told with Shura in the room.
"What's the Liberation Magic Tower?"
The North was a remote island unto itself. Unlike the continent, the name Liberation Magic Tower meant nothing in Serzila, and Harad gave a brief account of it.
"Magicians like that exist in our lands too?"
"Why would they not? Didn't I tell you — the North may well be the second most magician-rich land in the world."
Magicians swarmed to the very word Outer Realm — and Serzila was the land closest to it in all the world.
"Of course, even granting 'many' — it's many by a magician's measure," Harad said.
Measured against ordinary people, the number would be laughably small. After all, how many could that 'many' ever really amount to? Even so, it made the North half water and half fish for the Liberation Magic Tower — rich waters all the same.
"Kubel is one of those fish. Unluckily for him, he caught the Rebel Faction's eye."
The Rebel Faction casts its favors only at capable magicians — because rebellion is their purpose.
"And the Liberation Faction?"
"They want the pitiful ones."
"How odd."
"It means they want every magician alive. Left alone, most of them die."
The Liberation Faction's purpose was survival — and a small, quiet peace besides.
"If you weren't in Serzila, the Liberation Magic Tower would have come knocking for you too, wouldn't it?"
"It would have. Though the Church would have beaten them to it."
Ellen said nothing.
The catastrophe that struck House Iagar had been considerable in scale. Not only had the entire clan perished, the whole Inner Castle had been swallowed by a demonic blaze that bore no smell of lamp oil. There was even a church within the territory. The very structure of it guaranteed the Church would arrive long before the Liberation Magic Tower ever could.
Footsteps sounded. Kubel came back down to the first floor with Shura tucked into bed, walked straight up to Harad, and spoke with the face of a man who had made up his mind.
"I will join the Liberation Faction of the Liberation Magic Tower."
…?
Ellen was not the only one left short on explanation. Harad, for the moment, withheld the correction and heard him out.
"I will do whatever you order of me. In exchange, please — I ask only that you keep my daughter safe."
This time too, Kubel raised the white flag rather than resist. He had begged a man he had met only today to guarantee his daughter's safety. It was a figure hard to credit as that Kubel from his past life. This must have been his true self. Kubel with a daughter.
"Regrettably, I am not, in fact, of the Liberation Magic Tower."
"…Pardon?"
"I hold no affiliation — though I did, as it happens, come from Serzila. This friend here is Ellen, an agent of the intelligence bureau."
The color drained from Kubel's face. Then he slammed his head straight down against the floor.
"My daughter — my daughter is not a magician! If someone must die, please kill me and me alone!"
It had been the correct judgment.
From Kubel's position, Serzila was bound to be more terrifying than the Liberation Magic Tower. Measured against the Church or the continent, the Liberation Tower was practically a friend to magicians.
"I have no intention of doing so."
Even with a fellow magician saying so, Kubel could not easily lift his head.
Ellen neither spoke nor looked at him. She only stared straight at Harad — and he read the meaning of that gaze without difficulty.
"It's far too late. I'll call again tomorrow. Rest well."
Harad left Kubel's house. Ellen followed slowly behind, and her face was nothing short of savage.
"Why didn't you kill him?"
"Why should I have?"
"He's a magician. Don't you kill every magician you find?"
He had never said any such thing. But his actions had spoken for him. Only three magicians had crossed his path since his regression, and Harad had killed every one of them. It was a misunderstanding Ellen could hardly avoid.
"I never did. I don't kill just anyone."
"Just anyone?"
Ellen snorted. "They're magicians."
"I am a magician too," Harad said, spreading his arms wide. "And yet here I stand, alive."
"You're alive thanks to His Highness the Grand Duke."
Ellen did not see Kubel as human. Nor was her willingness to keep company with Harad merely a matter of him filling her interest. It was that Harad was a being who had received Grand Duke Aratus's sanction. Without it, she would never even have had this chance to speak with him.
"That one isn't. He's a menace that slunk into Serzila in secret."
Kubel was precisely that kind of existence: a magician granted neither leave to exist nor any power to amuse her. To Ellen, Kubel was a demon.
"Flowerbed's Flesh. The keeper of that den had his sins. So I killed him."
Ellen nodded grimly. It was the right answer.
"Ios of the Ivory Tower. He was an enemy. So I killed him."
…
"Grex of the Liberation Magic Tower. What crimes he had committed I do not know, but he was more than likely to become a menace."
Grex's killing intent had been unmistakable. Had an ordinary person stood in that room instead of Harad, they would have died.
"And Kubel?"
He had committed no crime yet. He was no enemy, and he was nothing like Grex.
"A father with the strength to fight, and yet whose knees go soft with worry for his daughter."
"A good magician, you mean?"
Ellen said the words — words she had once heard from Harad himself.
"That's right. And innocent of any crime, besides."
"And who decided that? You?"
Ellen was unusually sharp-edged today. It might have been the strain of being the Grand Duke's daughter, or it might have been Ios — the knowledge that a magician of the Outer Realm had crossed the Great Wall may well have fed her wariness of all his kind.
"It might be me. It might be you."
Ellen snorted.
"Am I wrong?"
"Yes. You are. He has to die."
"Then why only now do you say so? Why not back in the house?"
…
"You had every chance to speak. You could have cut Kubel's throat with your own two hands."
Inside Kubel's house, Ellen had done nothing at all. She had not opened her mouth; she had not so much as glared at him.
"It's because of Shura, isn't it."
Because a child had been there. Ellen did not deny it. Harad laughed without a sound.
"What's so funny?"
"You hold Kubel to be a demon, yet treat the child that demon fathered as a person. That is what's funny."
…
"So demons can sire humans after all. Then tell me — which is the demon? The demon, or the human?"
Ellen's pupils trembled.
Harad looked at her — and pointed back toward Kubel's house.
"I won't stop you. Go and kill him."
…
"And then go comfort the orphaned Shura. Tell her to rest easy — the demon was slain by me."
Ellen did not move.
"What is there to hesitate for? Shura will understand. Kubel is a demon, no?"
Harad took Ellen's hand and pulled. She did not so much as sway, rooted like a boulder.
"Loath to dirty your hands? Then here is a tidy method. Stand aside and watch. Left alone, Kubel will die soon enough on his own."
Only then did Ellen meet his eyes.
"The Rebel Faction will arrange it. They'll name Kubel as the beast that killed Grex."
Ellen tore her hand away. The motion was vicious enough to sting, and Harad gently kneaded his throbbing wrist.
"Think it over. Whether you kill him with your own hand — or borrow the Rebel Faction's."
He walked away without so much as a backward glance.
"It does hurt, though."
Before he knew it, his wrist had swollen thick and taut.
A throne came into view. A familiar throne — the throne of Serzila, standing there since before the empire was ever founded.
Elain sat upon it. The figure sat sprawled back as though half-lying — and it was a man's.
Elain's eyes, resting on the door shut fast, were languid. Only for a moment. The instant the door swung open, those eyes took back their light as if nothing had ever dulled them.
"You're late."
Elain welcomed the one who pushed through the door. It was Harad — like his real self and yet not: a shade larger in build, with an air of easy command in every gesture. His dress was strange as well. A magician, dressed as a knight. The sword at his hip felt oddly familiar. It was one of the blades kept in Serzila's secret vault.
"The Third Prince is outside."
"Why?"
"He's come to seize a magician, or so he says."
"And his proof?"
"He's brought three apostles with him."
To the Church, proof had never been necessary. If they declared a man a magician, a magician he became.
"Refuse them. Kill them, if killing them is what you want."
"Have you taken leave of your senses?"
"How timid, for one whose temper is said to be wildfire."
"I hold my hand because of Your Highness."
Harad spoke as he crossed the chamber and came to stand beside Grand Duke Elain. The distance between them was strikingly close — as though to show the world just what the two of them were to each other.
"You may hand me over, if it comes to that."
"Why would I."
"One declaration from the Church, and the North becomes the continent's common enemy."
The Third Prince's maternal grandfather was a cardinal of the Church.
"No. They can do no such thing."
Elain, chin propped on his hand, looked utterly unimpressed. He gazed down on the empire and the Church alike.
"Cowards who shut their eyes and play deaf for fear of the Outer Realm. They will never lay a finger on the Great Wall."
To Ellen, dreaming, that figure looked thoroughly arrogant.
"Even so, the Church is a burden."
"Not burden enough to hand you over."
"And who, pray, sent me here?"
At Harad's answer, Ellen's breath caught. She had taken it for the usual friction between lord and man, but it seemed Serzila truly was sheltering magicians.
"That magician is your friend."
"Nothing so fond. We merely share the same plight."
Tsk. Harad clicked his tongue softly.
"Do you truly wish it so?"
"For Serzila's sake, it cannot be helped."
"Then for your sake, it cannot be helped either."
Elain took up his sword and rose. The motion looked languid — but in Ellen's eyes, it looked proud and imperious.
Slow and unhurried, Elain walked out of the Inner Castle. At the castle gate he caught the Third Prince by his bulging-eyed face and drove it into the ground, then beheaded the three apostles. It was over in an instant. Before Elain's aura, their divine power was helpless. More precisely, the divine power seemed to flee the aura of its own accord — it existed, plain as day, and yet accomplished nothing at all.
"Begone. There are no magicians in the North."
No. There were.
Ellen was certain of it. Elain was sheltering a magician other than Harad.
Why?
Ellen thought of Harad. Because he was gentle? Or because he was without sin?
But what did any of it mean? It astonished her that she could think at all inside a dream — and struck her as just as pointless.
It's only a dream anyway.
Only it was no idle fantasy. Grand Duke Elain of the dream had shown her. The aura that had beheaded the apostles bore down on the Third Prince like a mountain. That aura — Ellen knew, with certainty, that it was the realm she herself had long yearned for.
As she gazed upon that realm, Ellen's dream-eyes came undone. She wanted to see it properly, and could not. Her vision smeared into black, and when her eyes opened once more, they held not the dream, but reality.
"Have a nice dream, did you?"
Harad stood before her — a Harad thinner than the one from the dream, with no sword at his side.
"More like a nightmare."
Ellen gave a short, dry laugh.
"I must have been sick to death of you — here you are, turning up even in my sleep."
"And what did I say in this dream?"
"You barely said a word. I did the talking. Apparently I go around protecting magicians."
Snow lay heaped on top of her.
Ellen brushed it away as she sat up. She was lying in front of Kubel's house.
The snow piled around her had turned scarlet.
Five corpses lay sprawled in it.
"You killed them over a dream like that?"
"I killed them, and then I dreamed it."
Ellen answered flatly.
"What did you behead?"
"Bad bastards."
Not demons.
"Very well done."
Harad beamed.
"…I'm doing this because I can't leave Shura an orphan. That's all."
"That is exactly what I meant."
"What of it."