Moving Day (2)
The gates of the Inner Castle swung open with ease.
The gatekeeper did not click his tongue this time. Even the way he looked at Harad had changed markedly.
Word of the First Knight Order's business must have spread.
The doors of the Grand Duke's residence stood open. On closer look, a shade wider than on his first or second visit — and the Grand Duke's aura, shrouding the residence, lay thicker than it had back then as well.
Has it been open since yesterday?
The overnight absence had not been of his choosing. Apparently the Grand Duke had known nothing of it and had simply waited the whole while; the angle of that door seemed to speak his feelings for him.
The most eye-catching thing on the residence's ground floor was the carpet rolled out toward the staircase — white, with curves embroidered across it like blood. Anyone bound for the second floor had no choice but to see it, and no choice but to walk on it. The moment Harad set foot on it, the carpet rippled like a wave.
It left the impression of a voice murmuring, so the bastard finally came. Harad barely steadied his tipping body and climbed the stairs.
From the second floor upward, the weight was another beast entirely — enough to conjure the illusion that the world itself was bearing down on him. Even so, Harad somehow made it to stand before the Grand Duke.
"You're late."
Grand Duke Aratus's voice was heavier still. It seemed less as though breath and words left his mouth than aura did.
Just how had the man died?
He was retired. Unless he had stormed into the Outer Realm single-handed, there should have been nothing in this world capable of taking his life.
"Something came up."
"That damn magician."
The Grand Duke snorted.
He was already aware of Kubel and Shura.
Arika?
No — the one who had uncovered the carving on the Great Wall hadn't been Arika. The timing didn't fit. Which meant Grand Duke Aratus kept an information network all his own.
"The 'damn magician' exposed the tricks carved into the Great Wall and learned of the Red Tower's existence. And yes — he has even been to the Second Boundary."
The Grand Duke's eyes shifted. He looked, by turns, furious and amused.
He really is terrifying to look at.
It was a face that gave nothing away.
"That was your doing."
Even with his aura pinning Harad in place, the Grand Duke conceded it without ceremony. For all that he behaved as though he harbored prejudice against magicians, he treated them as though he felt none.
"As I understand it, merit earns a reward."
"Speak."
"There is an annex I need. I ask that you grant it."
"..."
"Ah — not for me. The 'damn magician' will be the one living there."
"You have lost your mind."
Without warning, Harad's body was driven into the floor.
The depth of it exceeded expectation. Last time only half of him had sunk in; now he slid into the floorboards entirely.
No further pressure followed. It seemed an instruction: speak from there. Whether he would be buried deeper, the Grand Duke would decide after hearing him out.
"The 'damn magician' has a child. One whom Serzilla himself loves dearly."
"The child is permitted."
"Understood."
At that, the crushing aura vanished. Harad picked himself up, tidied his shirt, and said:
"I didn't know the one Serzilla loved was an orphan."
KRAKOOM—!
Harad was slammed bodily into the very spot he had just vacated — deeper this time, his whole body feeling close to caving in.
"...It would not be a 'damn magician' who died. It would be her parent."
"Then you will protect them."
"In that case I will be unable to go to the Boundary."
"Then so be it."
"Yes."
Harad gave a curt, blunt affirmative. But the crushing aura did not lift. If anything, it bore down a little harder — the answer had not pleased him.
The Grand Duke wants me in the Boundary.
Face buried in the floor, Harad smiled. He had been only half-certain before; now conviction settled in at last. Aratus Serjilla wanted the Boundary.
"As I understand it, Serzilla once kept table guests."
Not ordinary table guests. Serzilla's table guests had been special. Only those who had earned the North's recognition could hold the position, and they carried the authority to cross back and forth over the Boundary with Serzilla's leave.
"The institution was abolished."
Abolished it had been — back when Grand Duke Aratus was placed under the imperial sabbatical. Back when he attacked the imperial palace alone.
"You already keep one magician as a table guest in all but name."
One more would pose no problem.
"That 'damn magician' has his uses. Keep him on alongside me, and discard him the moment he becomes a nuisance."
If such a time ever came, that would be the time to discard him.
"Is this the beginning, or the last?"
Would there be more like this to come — was Kubel to be the last? It was phrased as a question, yet it rang like a threat: if he was not the last, he would be killed.
"If what I brought back from the Second Boundary proves worthless, then he will be the last."
"Continue."
Harad recounted what had happened in the Second Boundary. He carved Ellen's existence out of it entirely and improvised to paper over the gaps. It was not a difficult task; Ellen hadn't done all that much this time.
So he truly doesn't know I go to the Boundary with Ellen.
Grand Duke Aratus possessed his own information network, but he did not appear to turn it upon Ellen. The transgression she had only just worked up the nerve to begin — presumably he meant for her to see it through freely.
"I learned that it was the King's Foreign Object. Even the smoke rising off the burning watchtower pointed the way."
Then it happened. The aura that had been crushing him vanished all at once, as if struck dead. Harad rose by reflex — and for the first time, the Grand Duke's expression was legible. It was unmistakable elation.
"The First Boundary?"
"Near the Second Wall."
The elation curdled into disappointment, then drained away entirely. For reasons Harad couldn't fathom, the Grand Duke had apparently expected the King's Foreign Object to lie in the First Boundary.
He knew of the King's Foreign Object?
No. Serzilla had known nothing of the Red Tower.
Then there is something else in the First Boundary.
The King's Foreign Object — and that king was the master of the Red Tower. It seemed something belonging to a different tower existed in the First Boundary.
Not that he could be certain. Had it been certain, the Grand Duke would have moved long ago.
Harad did not pry further. That was still a matter above his station.
"Do you know why the table-guest institution was abolished?"
"I understand it was by imperial decree, issued together with Your Highness's sabbatical."
The knight orders' restrictions on Boundary access had come down as part of the same decree. The search range narrowed, and the knight commanders were barred from entering at all.
"I asked whether you knew the reason."
All of it — because Grand Duke Aratus had attacked the imperial palace alone. But that did not appear to be the answer the Grand Duke wanted. He was asking why he had attacked the imperial palace alone.
"That far, I do not know."
Even Elaine didn't know that. Grand Duke Aratus had received the punishment of the sabbatical not long after Elaine was born.
"I will let you live."
Meaning: had he known, the Grand Duke would have killed him. More than afraid, Harad grew curious. What reason on earth could make even that Aratus so finely strung?
"It had best be the last."
The Grand Duke permitted Kubel's entry into the Inner Castle. It was no final decree — room had been left. Earn more merit, it meant, and he might bring more magicians. The regressed Harad needed at least ten more. Kubel had never been one of his planned pieces.
The silence stretched on. Feeling very much an unwelcome guest, Harad turned to let himself out. Then the Grand Duke spoke at his back.
"You have become entangled with the Information Bureau, I hear. Over that 'damn magician's' affair."
The Information Bureau. That was how the Grand Duke phrased it, but Harad caught on at once — it was Ellen he meant.
"It seems this was not your first meeting. Is that true?"
The Grand Duke spoke as though reading from a report — then let the killing intent bleed through.
"A drinking companion. I see him now and then."
The hair rose on Harad's head. This despite his feeling no aura whatsoever.
"Do not make contact with the Information Bureau."
"I have never once reached out first."
The world went perfectly still, and a chill the likes of which Harad had known only a handful of times in his life crawled over him.
"I will make the effort — but I am in no position to refuse, whenever that friend asks to meet."
"..."
"I am, after all, still a hostage."
It seemed that when the Grand Duke was truly enraged, even his aura stopped. Harad ran before it could move again.
Grand Duke Aratus keeps an information network all his own. It must have been that network which found the carving on the Great Wall, and it surely ran throughout the territory as well. Yet there was no doubt whatsoever that the same network bent around Ellen and Ellen alone — out of respect for Elaine's transgression. Thanks to that, Grand Duke Aratus had no idea that Ellen and Harad met every single night.
He had learned of it through this affair. The incident at Kubel's house had been caught by the network, and — by ill luck — so had the fact that Harad and Ellen were both there. And the two of them, thus caught, had looked altogether too familiar with one another.
So his anger was never about my coming late.
The Grand Duke had raged because Harad was keeping company with Ellen.
In his past life, the Grand Duke had adored Elaine beyond all measure. That was why the genius Elaine had never been allowed into the Boundary — and it was how the Hunting Day had come to be as well. Elaine had begged so persistently that he had grudgingly allowed her to accompany the knights' search.
Not a fool for a son. A fool for a daughter.
The way he handled that illustrious son of his like a child abandoned at the water's edge had always seemed strange — but with the truth known, it made perfect sense. Parents are always weakest, after all, toward a child of the opposite sex.
If he ever learns she went all the way into the Boundary with me, he'll faint on the spot.
Harad had, in effect, committed every one of the Grand Duke's hates at the same time. He had no idea when the next report would come due, and he dreaded it.
Bringing Ellen along... would be suicide.
The next achievement he built would have to dwarf this one. Only then could he expect to survive it.
"Oh — you've come."
When Harad reached Kubel's house, Kubel had finished packing to the last bundle.
"Where is Ellen?"
Neither Ellen nor Arika was anywhere in sight. Gone after the Rebel Faction's remnants, Kubel answered, his face full of shame.
"Straighten that face. You need to learn to stand a little prouder."
"But..."
"Even if it's only an act — that's the point. We must keep iron laid over our faces at all times. Doubly so in the place we're about to live."
The Inner Castle was safe — but it was a place that demanded a constant reading of every gaze. To the regressed Harad it meant nothing; for Kubel it would be no small trial.
"...Do we really have to leave?"
"We do. To a place where no fearsome guest could ever follow — not even dying to get in."
Harad gently smoothed Shura's hair.
"You don't want to go?"
"But we have to."
"This time you'll like it too."
For Shura, the Inner Castle would be a good home. Magician's daughter or not, the Inner Castle would show her no difference in treatment. The North's love of children was a ferocious thing.
"It's right next to mine, too."
At that, Shura's face bloomed into a smile. Somewhere along the way, Harad had become the most steadfast ally the Kubel family had.
There was more luggage than expected — most of it Shura's toys, hoarded from all the playing she never got to do outdoors. Kubel hoisted the bundle, twice his own size, onto his shoulder as though it weighed nothing. His steps were lighter still. He couldn't have said why, but living beside Harad seemed to have set his heart at ease.
And then Kubel's feet turned heavy as a thousand pounds.
"...This place is..."
"The Inner Castle. The safest place in all the North."
The annex granted to Kubel and Shura stood near Harad's own. The walk there drew no small number of stares — mostly, no, every last one of them the very feelings Harad himself had known in days gone by. Evidently the Grand Duke had bared Kubel's identity to the castle exactly as he had bared Harad's. He was the sort of man who believed a person's true nature only showed itself under a crowd's eyes.
"Get used to it. And keep iron over that face."
"..."
"If it's too hard, just do as I do."
Kubel seemed to draw inspiration from those words. His stooped shoulders squared themselves, however awkwardly.
"There's no need to walk about glaring at everyone. They'll merely mutter that the dog is at its sniffing again. Sooner or later they'll come around to you regardless."
"Me...?"
"If they cannot bring themselves to trust you, let them trust me."
"Yes."
The annex they arrived at was larger than Harad's.
"Please, Harad — you live here. It is far too fine for the likes of me."
"I'm fine. I like my own house."
"...Thank you."
Kubel took it for consideration, but Harad meant every word. He liked that smallest annex in the Inner Castle.
"Not for a while yet, but perhaps someday you'll find yourself running a tavern by night. Once Shura has settled in here, that is."
Ellen had fallen hopelessly for Kubel's cooking — though she would want to take her meals outside the Inner Castle, not within.
"Ah — of course, you'd run it while Shura sleeps."
"..."
"If it were me, that's what I'd do. To show them all a face that won't be pushed about."
"I will do that."
Harad did not lend a hand with the move. Furnishing a new home was the owner's right — and besides, his help would scarcely have mattered. Kubel's strength outmatched even Harad's, tempered body and all.
Around the time hunger began to gnaw, someone knocked at the door. It was Ellen, and Arika was not with her.
"Took you long enough."
"They had fled beyond the walls."
By the look of her, she had been tearing through the snowfields. Harad melted the snow caked over every inch of her.
"Thank you. But so the 'surer place' turned out to be here?"
Ellen gave a baffled, hollow little laugh.
"There's nowhere safer than the Inner Castle, is there."
"That much is true, but... how did you swing it?"
"His Highness the Grand Duke loves children too, it seems."
"Spare me the jokes."
"It appears I'm more special than I thought. To His Highness, I mean."
It was different from his past life, when he had been nothing more than a precious flame. To Grand Duke Aratus, Harad was a tunnel — the sole opening through which the Boundary could be watched without cost.
"There's no way."
But though she murmured it, Ellen did not dig any deeper. That was not the role the identity called Ellen was meant to play.
"I'm hungry."
"As it happens, so am I. Once the move is finished, I'll have to ask Kubel to cook something."
Ellen rolled up her sleeves without a word of protest. That had been her intent in coming at all — the sooner the move ended, the more time remained for playing with Shura.
"...Aren't you going to help?"
"The only one in this house I could beat in a test of strength is Shura."
"That's insane."
Laughing in disbelief, Ellen went to find Kubel. He was up on the second floor, setting up Shura's room, and looked thoroughly awkward tying the fabric — his fingers so thick that the cloth never made it near its holes, simply slipping free again and again.
"I'll do that."
"I can do it. Being allowed to move into the Inner Castle at all is already..."
"That was Harad's doing. I haven't done anything."
"But Lady Ellen, what you did to those bastards..."
"It's because I'm hungry. Why are you so slow to take a hint?"
Ellen plucked the cord from Kubel's hand. He had been trying to make a ribbon, presumably — Shura loved ribbons. As Ellen sat on the bed, absorbed in her tying, Kubel drew Shura's toys from a corner and arranged them in place.
He had just lifted out a grimy, well-loved teddy bear when Ellen spoke.
"It's worn right through. I could buy her a new one."
"If it is a gift from you, Lady Ellen, Shura will love it."
"...Kubel."
Ellen said his name, then let a silence steep.
"May I ask you just one thing?"
"You may ask me anything."
"Were you ever thinking of leaving Serzilla?"
"Yes."
Kubel answered without a heartbeat's hesitation.
"I would surely have left. I have no wish to live as a magician."
Kubel held not a flicker of interest in the Liberation Magic Tower. What he wanted had never been rebellion or liberation — Shura was no magician.
"Where to?"
"There is said to be a small region called Drott, off in the western Empire."
"...Drott."
"Yes. I heard of it back when I worked the taverns. They say it is an exceedingly quiet land."
Kubel spoke with the air of a man who envied nothing anymore.
"So peaceful that in one village, they say, a magician lived out his years and died of old age — and the villagers knew full well that the old man was a magician."
Yet a strange emotion threaded through his voice. To grow old and die — that was Kubel's wish. Without Shura, he would have no reason to live that long. But none of it reached Ellen.
"...Drott."
From the moment she heard that name, Ellen had been seized by the sensation of falling into something.
Drott.
The Shura in her dream had died in that land.