The 2nd Knight Order (3)
"There's Severan, for one. A knightly house that once ran thick with Iagar."
Harad was improvising.
It was far from a lie. Severan truly had been a house of renowned knights, and its ties with Iagar had run deep. Whether those ties still held — whether the house would let its knights be driven this hard — was another matter.
"You never pulled this with the 1st Knight Order."
"They never had to be. Back then, there was no reason to strain them."
"Plenty of knights are ignorant where magicians are concerned. The 1st was too. But they can still afford to be — they'll learn through me, given time."
Apart from Toremote, the 1st Knight Commander, the rest of the order could lack their vigilance a while longer yet. They rarely crossed paths with Outlands magicians, and it would be enough to teach them as they went. Harad meant to join the 1st's searches often from here on.
"Then the 2nd Knight Order could do the same."
"For them, it's already too late."
Harad gestured at the knights laid out in their sickbeds.
"You said it yourself. They're the order that has killed more magicians than any other."
And for all that record, the 2nd Knight Order knew next to nothing about magicians.
"Magicians have become an easy fight, you see — and with that very record, ignorant of them."
The knights, who had brightened at what they took for praise, scrunched up as though they'd chewed on dung.
"They'd been misunderstanding magicians all along. Which means a day like today could come again any day."
Left as they were, the 2nd Knight Order would have died one of these days — done in by their own contempt for magicians.
In his past life, that hadn't happened. But Harad did not believe this life would trace the last one exactly. He wanted nothing of the sort, and in truth the future was already changing.
"Our task is to find whoever sent a magician here as an assassin. That is no business to approach in ignorance."
"And yet that very business got postponed?"
"Better than dying."
What means were there, in this future already changed and changing still, to raise the survival rate of Serzila's knights?
"You all need to learn about magicians anew."
That was all — of that much, Harad was certain.
"I'm not asking you to learn it all. What I want is an objective eye."
Harad spoke to the knights in their sickbeds, and not one face showed a glimmer of understanding.
"You talking about the 4th Circle?"
Horn was no part of that incomprehension. The commander of the 2nd Knight Order was the cleverest knight of them all — and befitting the vice commander who served such a man, Horn was quicker of mind than he looked.
"You're the sharpest one in this room."
"I know."
Horn nodded with a face that said obviously.
"It's not only the 4th Circle. That's simply where it shows."
Horn listened intently, and so did the others. Before anyone noticed, they had leaned back against the wall, every eye on Harad. True to their record as the deadliest order to magicians, they had a genuine appetite for the subject.
"The Boundary drains a knight of aura — and it drains a magician of mana all the same."
"But magicians still come out ahead."
Interrupting was none other than Ellen. Harad's eyes went round at her.
"Who fed you that load of garbage?"
"It isn't garbage. It's common sense."
The knights shook their heads slowly. Harad, for his part, held his tongue and listened.
"The Boundary was once Outlands soil. It turned strange because the residual mana of the Outlands has mutated, and mutated again."
That much was true.
"So at its core, it's mana. Magicians can't help but hold the advantage. You're proof of that yourself."
"Good grief."
Harad groaned at the conclusion she arrived at. Magicians did burn mana in the Boundary — but surely less than knights did. That was what Ellen believed.
"You've been laboring under a rather grand misconception, it seems."
This was not Ellen's first piece of nonsense, either. When they'd faced the patchwork beast, she had declared it a minion of the Outlands.
So that was what had felt off.
It was his own blunder. It had seemed the most elementary of common sense, so he had simply let it pass. The Elain of this era was dimmer than he'd imagined.
"You too. Sit over there."
He pointed at the floor beside the sickbeds. Ellen stood there blinking, sure it was a joke — but when Harad kept staring with unwavering eyes, she plopped down with a face like she'd chewed dung.
"Magicians hold the advantage in the Boundary. That isn't because magicians are made that way. It's because I am."
Ellen opened her mouth to argue, and he raised a palm to stop her.
"The Boundary is impartial beyond anyone — and impartial to everyone. It is never kindly disposed toward magicians. If anything, it spurns them."
Mutated upon mutation it might be, but its essence was still mana.
"Of course, what you said holds. Your conclusion doesn't. Mana has a will of its own, and a stubborn one. It does not suffer intrusion."
Harad figured that was simply its nature.
"Mana is born of Origins as different as the mages themselves... ah, never mind. We'll skip that."
He was being considerate of the 2nd Knight Order's depth of learning — and Ellen's. Push much deeper, and they would give up on the lesson entirely.
"Do you know why the margin of error runs widest for knights, of all people? It's the tier system."
He questioned them like a schoolmaster, and one knight raised his hand.
"Knight Difren. Go ahead."
Difren's eyes went round — Harad knew his name. He spoke.
"Because the tier system belongs to the Outlands."
"Right. It was built without aura in mind. But the error springs from other causes too. Why?"
This time, no hands went up. Not out of defiance — bar Cassion, the 2nd Knight Order had already conceded Harad's ability. They simply didn't know the answer.
"Serzila rates the 5th Circle as a Sword Master's match, and files the 4th Circle alongside knight commanders who aren't."
Those brackets were never absolute. There was precedent for a mere ranker killing a 4th Circle magician — and for a former commander of the 5th Knight Order dying to a 3rd Circle one.
"You, Horn, have killed two 4th Circle magicians yourself. A vice commander, no less. What's your read?"
"...You're the one who called them half-baked 4th Circle."
"Could be. Not everyone who reaches the 4th Circle can manage Projection."
But they might not have been half-baked at all — and that was the point.
"Serzila's operating range is the 1st Boundary. And barely a sliver of that — the sliver nearest Serzila."
Meaning every Outlands magician met on a search route or found at the Great Wall had crossed the 2nd Boundary and come over the Second Wall to get there.
"Why does that matter?"
Ellen tilted her head.
"You still don't see it? The Boundary is a land fairer than anyone."
Then Horn's eyes went wide as saucers. He got there faster than Ellen did.
"Set aside those with special Origins — Origins like mine, made for the Boundary — and an Outlands magician stands in much the same position as you do."
Just as a knight's aura bled away, the Boundary gnawed the mana out of an Outlands magician all the same.
"And you have spent your years killing just such magicians."
Magicians already weakened.
...
Harad's last words settled over the sickroom for a long while. It was a line that scored a gash across the pride of the 2nd Knight Order — no, of every knight order in Serzila. It meant that the 2nd's fame as the deadliest order to Outlands magicians might be, at best, a half-truth.
Horn and the rest could not manage a word. Shock, more than anger, seemed to have them in its grip. For as long as any of them could remember, their strength and their victories had been simple fact — and the possibility that those victories might have been gifts of an enemy fighting at half strength was a truth that would not go down easily.
Some knights stared blankly into empty air; others bit their lips, faces frozen. Ellen was no different. Her face burned. She was thankful, right now, to be Ellen — had she been Elain, she could never have lifted her head. It was mortifying. The knights might be forgiven for not knowing. She should have known.
"No harm done. A collateral branch, I could understand not knowing."
Knowing full well, Harad hollowed her out all over again.
"Perhaps I spoke out of turn. The Grand Duke's heir would surely know."
...
"Should've kept your mouth shut. The Grand Duke's heir would have taught them well enough on their own."
Harad chuckled. Ellen raged at that face — and more at herself, for having nothing to answer it with.
So the maxim goes — a knight should be layered onto, not rebuilt. In Harad's judgment, the 2nd Knight Order was the exception.
Frankly, he had assumed that of all the orders, the 2nd at least would know. It was no esoteric knowledge; a little thought was all it took. Of course, everyone in Serzila prone to such thoughts had long since been skimmed off into the Intelligence Bureau — the only trouble being that the Bureau sat on the continent, not in the North.
So they really were never taught.
Not so the 2nd Knight Commander, Cassion. That man knew. Cassion was better versed in magicians than anyone alive — it was why the 2nd had become the order that killed the most of them. And for all that, he had never once released that knowledge to his own order. That was what grated. Or, more precisely, every circumstance surrounding Cassion left Harad unable to get a clean read on him.
"Where is the 2nd Knight Commander away on leave?"
"With the 5th Knight Order. Their commander filed a report of an unsavory trace found mid-search."
The commander of the 5th was no Sword Master.
"So the 2nd's commander went to verify it in his stead."
Work that fell to Cassion of the 2nd Knight Order alone. He was the only Sword Master who could slip in and out of the Boundary undetected.
"So whenever something suspicious surfaces in the Boundary, it always lands on the 2nd Knight Commander's desk."
Harad thought of the rabbit. Had that rabbit been found on a search route, Cassion would have been dispatched to the very spot.
"He goes alone?"
"Yes. It could be dangerous work for ordinary knights."
"Any results to show?"
"They're counted among the magicians the 2nd Knight Order has killed."
Meaning that each time he was dispatched, he'd often come back with a magician's head or two.
"The 2nd Knight Commander doesn't take these dispatches merely because he's the only Sword Master who can enter the Boundary."
Cassion was an outsider, and it showed — the air of a schooled man hung about him. He had lost his family to magicians and taken refuge in Serzila to have his revenge on them. And so he knew a great deal about magicians.
"No knight alive knows magicians better than Cassion."
"And yet not one soul has ever learned from him."
"I beg your pardon?"
"No knight in the 2nd Knight Order knows magicians well."
Cassion had never passed the knowledge down to his own order.
"Is the 2nd not a close-knit order?"
"...There's no way it isn't."
"Then why wouldn't he teach? Knowing magicians as he does. Having already lost something precious once."
Only then did Ellen's face go rigid.
"Has loyal Cassion's knowledge ever reached Serzila even once?"
"Don't tell me you suspect the 2nd Knight Commander."
They spoke almost at the same moment — but Harad was a hair quicker.
"I asked first."
Ellen bit down hard on her lip. After a long moment, she spoke.
"There has been."
"That's a lie."
...
Harad had set out to unmask the mastermind who had moved against Elain; Ellen had set out to prove that the mastermind was no knight. Yet Harad had been suspicious before the investigation even began — of the commander of the 2nd Knight Order, the very man whose cooperation they had secured.
"The 2nd Knight Commander is not that kind of man."
"Perhaps. Even loyal Cassion might have things he doesn't know."
Harad said it like a jab.
"Then let me ask. Has that knowledge ever been passed on?"
Ellen sealed her lips tight.
He added, to her:
"Get angry if you like. Ignore me if you like. Only — don't lose your own conviction. Keep that, and I won't be angry, whatever you do."
Conviction. Ellen understood that the conviction Harad spoke of was no mere stubbornness. His kind of conviction demanded proper grounds. She sensed instinctively that if she simply insisted without them, Harad would be angry. So her mouth would not open easily. Somehow, she didn't want to see Harad angry. Not at her, of all people.
At me?
She was laughing hollowly at herself when—
"Then I'll speak first. I can tell a magician on sight. And I have seen Cassion."
...
"The Cassion I saw was a magician. Beyond doubt."
Harad was certain.
That was Harad's conviction. His words always came with proper grounds. And Ellen believed him — because to date, Harad had never once been wrong.
In Iagar, who could say. But here in Serzila, Harad had plucked out nothing but right answers. Some had been for Serzila's sake; some had left lives owed in their wake.
Even so, it was not a trust deep enough to shoulder much risk. Grand Duke's sanction or no, Harad was, in the end, a magician. Their time together ran deep, perhaps — but set against the knights, its depth was shallow, and its length absurdly short. Her trust in him was rooted, at bottom, in curiosity and interest — nothing sticky, nothing like love or sworn loyalty.
A slender tightrope. That was the only way Ellen could describe what she had with Harad. A bond that ended the instant one of them fell.
If Harad erred, or brought harm to Serzila, Ellen was confident she could cut him loose without a flicker of hesitation. And her instinct told her that now was the time to cut it. The mastermind might be a knight. She didn't believe it, of course — but she had readied herself for as much before facing him again.
But suspecting the 2nd Knight Commander crossed the line. Worse — it wasn't even suspicion. It was certainty. By Ellen's nature, a certainty like that called for severing the tie on the spot.
So this was the moment. The time to end it.
And yet...
Why would I? What was it that snagged?
The thought had come the moment her eyes met Harad's. That insufferable face, without one sliver of doubt that he could be wrong. Come to think of it, Harad had always worn that face. At least with her, he never once failed to be insufferable.
The keeper of Flowerbed's Flesh really had been a magician, and the tunnel really had laid the Intelligence Bureau's arrogance bare. The patchwork beast truly had been stronger than her, and Kubel truly had been the wronged, innocent magician. The 1st Knight Order had welcomed straying from the search route, and the rebuke aimed at the 2nd had been just. So too the advice he tossed off like small change — every piece of it scratched her itch dead on. It was, Ellen conceded in the smallest corner of her heart, uncannily like a master instructing a pupil.
And through all of it, Harad had never once picked the wrong answer.
"No."
But not this time. No — it had to be wrong this time. Her stubbornness flared. She ached to press that high-flown nose of his straight down. She wanted, badly, to prove that he was not always right — that this time, he was the one who had it wrong.
"This time, you're the one who's wrong."
She had her grounds. The difference in trust Harad himself had once described — the kind of trust only time can build.
"Sir Cassion has given Serzila fourteen years of loyal service as a knight. You, on the other hand..."
"A hostage."
Harad wasn't angry.
"I understand. A knight, and time. That's your conviction, then."
His expression hadn't shifted by a hair. Somehow, that displeased Ellen all the more. An old saying drifted up through her mind: expect nothing, and you will never be disappointed.
"Then trust your judgment. As I trust mine."
"...I was going to anyway. Nobody had to tell me."
Her purpose had turned. From here on, Ellen would move to prove that the mastermind was not the 2nd Knight Commander.
"I will act on my certainty that it is not Sir Cassion."
"By all means."
Harad answered as if it hardly mattered. That stung Ellen worse. Her will to win only swelled.
"Not leaving this time?"
Ten days ago, she had made herself scarce — because she'd felt that one more minute facing him and she wouldn't be able to hold back.
"Why would I leave? I'm the one who's right."
Not today. It was hard to stomach, but she didn't feel her fist itching to fly.
"Shall we make it a wager, then?"
Her appetite was whetted instead. The mere thought of that placid face cracking was delicious before it even happened.
"If I'm right, you'll be my fire."
Ellen mimed smoking a cigarette.
"Whenever I call, you come running and light it for me. What do you say?"
"Very well."
Harad agreed, indifferent as ever — as if there existed no world in which he lost.
"And if I win, that sword comes to me."
He pointed at the sword at Ellen's hip, and she flinched like a man caught unawares.
"Scared?"
"I'm not scared."
She drew it whole — blade, scabbard and all — and held it out to him.
"Take it."
Ellen trusted her judgment. Which was to say — Cassion.
"If you win, this sword is yours."
One of the three sacred heirlooms of House Serzila. She was staking Pater itself on this.
"For the record, I detest a man who reneges on a wager."
Harad broke into a wide grin, like a man who knew exactly what Pater was worth.
"So do I."
Of course, Ellen was certain she would win.