The Chain-Smoking Magician (3)
Kubel was an immigrant.
He had come to Serzilla four years ago, and before that, he said, he had made his living as a hunter in a small domain in the western Empire. What had driven him to move was word that a church was going up in his home territory.
For a magician, that was a bolt from the blue, but...
"A poor move, that."
He should have stood his ground instead of running. That would have made the church bastards suspicious. Kubel admitted it with a face on the verge of tears.
"Don't do that again."
Harad issued the warning as though a meeting with the church were bound to happen sooner or later.
"That said, you landed on your feet, I see. It's a spacious house."
"I got lucky. The previous owner was a magician..."
Kubel let the words trail off, glancing at Ellen.
The neighbors had beaten the previous owner to death and dumped the body in the street. Thanks to that, the building had gone for next to nothing — no one could know what a magician might have done inside it.
You can beat a magician to death, but not his magic.
Kubel talked on for a long while after that. To Harad it was a stale, familiar story; any magician born on the continent was in the habit of lamenting his lot. Harad had known magicians luckier than Kubel, and magicians who died the very moment their child was born. Babies, too, who died without anyone ever learning whether they had been magicians or not.
"And what do you do for a living now?"
To Ellen, the story was new. She wanted to hear all of it from Kubel's own mouth. It was hard to tell whether she was trying to understand him or interrogating him.
"At first, I ran a tavern."
The ground floor had been set up as one.
"I kept at it about a year and gave up."
"Why?"
"...There were too many customers."
It was the kind of windfall other men prayed for, but to Kubel it was nothing short of torment. The timid man flinched in dread every time he had to greet a guest — the exact opposite of the Flowerbed's Flesh.
"Even when I doubled the price of the drinks, they kept coming."
In the North, gouge a man on his tab and he reaches for his fists. Quite the fist he has, though. Kubel's was a good twice the size of Harad's; an ordinary Northerner would go down in a single blow from it. Of course, it would be simplest not to come at all — then there'd be neither the gouging to swallow nor that fist to cower from.
"Your cooking must be something else, then."
At Harad's praise, Kubel scratched the back of his neck with a bashful face. The sight left Ellen at a loss. Who could look at him and think of a demon? There couldn't be a more docile creature alive.
"A mountain of a man, and this is what he does with it."
"Pardon?"
"Just talking to myself."
Ellen was curt. It wasn't Kubel she disliked so much as his guileless, bumbling air. The more of it she saw, the more absurd she felt — she was the one who had insisted last night that he had to be killed.
"I-I'm sorry."
"Why are you the one apologizing?"
Kubel fidgeted with his fingers. Those fingers were thick enough to be frightening, which only made Ellen more exasperated.
Before long, she found in them something to pick at. It was a matter touching on Shura's health.
"You're holding out well, I see? And here I heard you were a chain-smoker."
In front of Harad and Ellen, Kubel had not lit a single cigarette.
"Do you only avoid it in front of us? Is it only in front of Shura that you smoke?"
"Th-that's..."
"He wouldn't have smoked even when alone with Shura."
Back when he ran the tavern, he must have puffed away constantly. Harad answered in Kubel's stead, for the man looked thoroughly stumped.
"It's not that he smokes because he wants to."
"Th-that's right."
Kubel nodded hard. Ellen demanded an explanation with her eyes alone.
"Magicians are beholden to their environment."
Harad lit a flame the size of a match on the tip of his index finger. Then he turned to the fireplace and swelled the fire there all at once. The mana he had used was identical both times.
"For me, using a fire that already exists is easier than making fire where there is none. It's only natural."
The trouble was that such an environment was limited.
"That's why magicians make preparations."
That was why Ios had gone around completing dozens of paintings. In Kubel's case, the preparation had taken the form of a smoking habit so entrenched that even his own daughter vouched for it. Burning dozens of cigarettes in front of Grex had not simply meant his mind was troubled. At that moment, Kubel had plainly been readying himself to respond. Just in case. That was what his words had meant back then.
"Papa's smoke never comes at me."
Ellen recalled Shura's words. At the time, she had concluded that he smoked them outside the building — because she hadn't known how an ordinary magician worked.
"You don't do that, though."
"In my case it's not that I don't — it's that I can't. That sort of preparation isn't very rational."
Truthfully, when Ios had called it out, Harad had felt a little wronged. You couldn't carry fire around with you. There was no striking flint in the thick of a fight.
"I'd manage it if I had to, but it wouldn't mean much. At best, it's oil."
It would help, yes, but stacked against a water magician who could simply carry water along, it was a sorely disadvantaged kind of preparation.
"An enviable Origin. And an excellent preparation."
And so Harad praised Kubel.
"Did anyone ever teach you this?"
"I felt it back in my hunting days, lighting campfires. Using smoke that's already there is far easier."
Kubel understood his own Origin well.
"So that campfire led all the way to cigarettes. Certainly — nothing is as simple as a cigarette, or such a natural excuse to have one burning."
The Kubel before them did not smoke. It meant he saw no need to make preparations against Harad and Ellen.
Kubel trusted the two of them.
"You're calmer than you were yesterday."
"...To tell the truth, I saw the two of you standing in front of the house at dawn."
Kubel let out a long, soft breath. It drifted along the line of his own gaze. His magic, it seemed, could do rather more than they had given it credit for.
"Can you see it?"
"Not see it, exactly... I can feel it."
Kubel seemed stumped, as though that was the only way he could put it into words. It was a vagueness that could nonetheless be understood.
"I understand. And that is precisely what makes it magic."
Kubel went on, laughing awkwardly. He said he had felt Ellen kill five magicians in front of the house — and, beyond that, that Harad had turned all five corpses to ash.
So he doesn't hear them. It's akin to how knights sense a presence.
He must catch movement through the flow of smoke — much the same as smoke scattering when a hand waves through it.
And Ellen never noticed.
Smoke. Kubel's Origin was more discreet than they had thought.
"And you did that from the ground floor? Or the second?"
"The second floor."
The building was narrow, but the ceilings were high. A fair distance separated the second floor from the ground, and the obstructed sightlines and the building's layout had to be factored in besides.
"You're 3rd Tier, then."
"Uh, um... well..."
Kubel couldn't answer. Not because he was hiding it — he genuinely didn't know. He was an untrained magician of the continent. Such magicians were born alone, and so, by default, they were ignorant.
"It seems you'll need to learn from the very beginning, then."
By Kubel's account, he had learned of the Liberation Magic Tower's existence three months ago. How he came to know it, he couldn't say — but Grex, who turned up out of the blue, already knew full well that he was a magician.
"They'll come again. And this time, coaxing won't be all they want."
Grex was dead. Ellen had killed five more besides. For the Liberation Magic Tower — where magicians were precious to begin with — this could only be a supremely displeasing turn of events.
"...I'm prepared for it."
Kubel said it while his eyes shook.
"I regret to say it, but we cannot protect you. Shura, perhaps — but you are not someone worth that trouble."
Ellen's expression turned odd.
"You said you'd help him."
"Did I? All I said was that he shouldn't be killed."
Isn't that the same thing?
Ellen knit her brows.
"I would like to help, but I'm not in a position to. Neither are you. Or perhaps you'd care to put in a request with the higher-ups?"
Ellen made no reply.
So she isn't at that point yet.
It meant that while Ellen did not know, Elain would not acknowledge it. He wondered if it was truly necessary to distinguish one and the same person that finely — but there was nothing for it. The time they had spent together was still not long.
"I was brought here as a hostage. Ah — Serzilla took me in knowing full well that I was a magician."
Harad said this to Kubel.
"And yet I'm far freer than you'd imagine. Because I have proven my usefulness, and go on proving it still."
"That's because His Highness the Grand Duke vouches for you."
"Had I not proven my usefulness, that guarantee would have been revoked long ago."
Harad looked at Kubel.
"Prove your usefulness as well. Then I will vouch for you — I, the man the Grand Duke himself has vouched for."
"...I'll do whatever you ask of me."
Kubel answered with resolve. His voice trembled, but his body did not. He knew full well that if he retreated here, there would be no guarantee of Shura's safety.
Just then, something tapped at the window. Not a person — a bird. A pigeon white as fresh snow: a messenger dove employed by Serzilla's intelligence bureau, a sheet of parchment clasped in its beak.
Ellen opened the window and, with practiced ease, stroked the bird and parted its beak. She unfolded the half-folded parchment, read it, and tossed it across to Harad.
"The interrogation is finished."
"Good timing."
Only now was there any sign of the sun rising. There was time to spare yet before Shura would wake.
"Tell me — have you ever killed a man?"
"Pardon?"
Kubel's eyes went round.
The interrogation's subject had been the third squad leader of the town watch, the man who had arrested Harad in front of the tunnel. The parchment held information on whoever had reported Harad to him: the informant's identity, portrait included, his place of residence and the layout of the building, and even the things he kept hidden.
That woman's handiwork.
Harad had a fair guess as to which agent had written it. So they had known each other even by this point. In her previous life, Elain had kept that woman close. A capable one — the vicious sort who, once she sank her teeth into something, would not stop until she had dug to the very end.
Harad pointed at the face drawn on the parchment.
"A familiar face?"
"I don't know him."
"...Nor do I."
Ellen was the only agent residing in Serzilla, yet she had never done intelligence work. Kubel had lived there three years without ever really getting to know his neighbors; they did not even know Shura existed.
Their destination was a certain inn. The building was smaller than expected — and yet, remarkably, it sat near the heart of town. Tilt your head, and the plaza was visible far down the main street.
Harad pushed open the inn's door, and Ellen slipped in behind him as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Why?
Kubel tilted his head. In all the walk over, he had been told nothing. He had simply set out at Harad's word that they were going to prove his usefulness. It was hardly his place to ask questions — hadn't he just answered that he would do whatever was asked of him? If Harad ordered him to leap from a cliff, Kubel would have to leap. That was the resolve he had made.
That is how Shura lives.
Kubel repeated his daughter's name to himself over and over, clenched a fist the size of a man's head, and stepped into the inn.
The ground floor was an ordinary inn that doubled as an eating house. There were a fair few people about, and by their getup, most were mercenaries. The food smelled decent enough, but there was no smell of liquor; the mercenaries settled at their tables seemed to have ordered nothing but food.
Mercenaries are a rough crowd. Northern mercenaries rougher still. And yet the ones here were quiet — far from brawling, they didn't so much as raise their voices. The floor was clean to the point of gleaming. Squeak. The soles of his boots met it with a pleasant friction. It felt like an expensive establishment.
Apparently this was not, after all, where he was meant to prove his usefulness.
At some point, Harad and Ellen had seated themselves side by side at a table in the very middle of the ground floor. Kubel took the seat across from them.
"What do you think?"
Harad asked.
"A fine inn, it seems."
"Nothing strike you as odd?"
"...Pardon? Ah. The lack of liquor does seem strange."
"It isn't lacking. They're simply not drinking. As a precaution."
Harad spoke gently, in the very tone of a man giving a lesson.
"They dress as mercenaries so that being armed looks natural."
"Pardon?"
"They keep quiet so they can eavesdrop on their guests — for telling a true customer from something else."
Kubel couldn't make sense of a word of it, and yet he found himself bobbing his head along. Harad's particular way of speaking, soft and unyielding at once, had a power that won assent before one knew it.
"As for the cleanliness — it's because there's so much cleaning up to do. They must have cleared out magicians short on coin. This tunnel seems to come at a steep price."
This time, it won no such nodding agreement. Kubel understood nothing at all.
"Who the hell are you."
The others, however, understood plenty. The air went cold in an instant. The mercenaries' faces had hardened; one after another, they drew their weapons. Some had even drawn out aura.
"Aura certainly is common in the North."
"...What are you on about? One glance and you can tell none of them are Northerners."
The mercenaries began to steal forward, ringing the table where Harad's party sat. And in the thick of it, Harad and Ellen stayed perfectly composed.
"How does it look to you?"
"I don't think I could take all of them."
"My sentiment exactly."
Then the mercenaries parted, and through the gap came a single man — the innkeeper, his face and neck a lattice of scars.
"Who the hell are you."
Instead of answering, Harad turned to Ellen.
"And the interest?"
"Looks fair enough."
CRASH! The table burst apart. The hammer the innkeeper had drawn slammed into the floor at the three's feet.
"I asked who the hell you are."
"The magician you reported. That would be me, Golas."
Golas answered by swelling his muscles. But the hammer would not come free — Ellen's foot was planted squarely on it, and though he strained until his face went scarlet, it would not lift.
"Kill them!"
Golas bellowed as he released the hammer. And Harad said,
"Golas is your share, Kubel."
"Pardon?"
"This friend here will deal with the rest."
Ellen scowled as though the whole business were a nuisance, and Kubel jolted in alarm. Then Ellen moved.
Kubel hadn't even seen her rise to her feet, and yet her sword was already bare. The arc it traced sheared through the necks of four mercenaries in a single stroke.
The blood that erupted spattered Kubel where he stood. His heart plunged with a jolt — then hammered, wild and hard.
"Prove your usefulness, Kubel."
"I, I... no, I... I..."
He had seen plenty of blood in his time. All of it had belonged to beasts. He had never killed a man. He had, though, watched people die more than a few times — and every one of them had been a magician.
...And the families of magicians.
"That is how Shura lives."