The Second Knight Order (4)
Sometimes.
There were moments when, with her eyes closed, the darkness before them seemed to fill with light.
From that instant, thought became possible.
It felt like just having woken — but in truth it was the opposite. It was the moment of slipping into a dream.
"Congratulations."
The one who greeted him with a smile was Elaine.
Elaine, the Grand Duke's daughter — her face alive with expression, brimming over with life.
"Three years of devotion, and you've already reached the Fourth Tier. You truly are a genius."
The Elaine of the dream seemed to set a rather low bar for genius.
The Fourth Tier was a realm the Harad of reality could reach as well. Only Third Tier, true — and yet what he accomplished outstripped magicians a full rank above him.
"I know."
"Which is exactly what makes it such a shame. With a teacher at your side, it would have come far more easily."
The Harad of the dream appeared to have clawed his way to the Fourth Tier entirely on his own.
Ellen wasn't particularly surprised. The Harad of reality had said the same of himself.
And yet the real one's pace had been far swifter than the dream's.
"How about defecting?"
"Have you lost your mind?"
Even to Ellen's ears, the suggestion was lunacy.
"Who said anything about going for good? Go for a while and come back — once you've learned all there is to learn."
But Elaine was serious.
"If I go, I'll be living there. Why would I come back?"
"Because I'm here, aren't I?"
Elaine broke into a grin soon after.
The smile of someone utterly certain that Harad would return.
No — certain from the very start that Harad would never accept the offer at all.
"You'll need to be at least Fifth Tier, if you're to become my right hand."
Harad didn't answer.
Elaine knew that silence was his yes.
Their bond read so clearly that even Ellen, dreaming, could see it.
"Answer me."
"Not even a Sword Master yet, and the cheek on him."
"I'll be one soon."
"Then by all means, go and become one."
"The sheer nerve of this brat."
Elaine smashed her fist into the back of Harad's head.
Flames surged up around him, but her hand broke straight through, and Harad's face was driven into the training ground.
"Fuck."
"Curb that temper. Up you get — I have something to tell you."
Harad rose and glared at her with murder in his eyes.
Elaine paid it no mind in the slightest.
"We caught a Fourth Tier magician in the Boundary recently. He used a strange magic. He called that magic Projection."
"Projection?"
As if he had never been angry at all, Harad listened intently.
"Yes — Projection. I couldn't learn more. But I watched the magic itself, every bit of it. It was unlike any other magic. How should I put it — uncanny. If ordinary magic is a hand swinging a sword, Projection was like beholding the sword itself."
A shit dream, Ellen thought all over again.
Because the Harad of the dream plainly knew nothing of Projection.
"No — perhaps not quite the sword itself. It didn't feel that grand. Hmm... how should I put it... incomplete, wouldn't you say?"
"Leaking out at the edges?"
"Oh? Could be?"
Elaine looked unsure of herself.
Because she was no magician.
Harad, an actual magician, showed no such uncertainty.
His lips moved without pause — half a murmur, half an incantation.
How long did it go on?
After a long while of mumbling, Harad sprang to his feet.
"Where are you going?"
"To the Second Knight Order's garrison."
From where Ellen stood, the answer came out of nowhere.
"Hm? Ah. The tunnel? That was six years ago."
"It still comes to me in dreams."
"I thought magicians didn't dream."
"Is that the point?"
The dream's Harad had eyes that burned like fire.
Ellen understood what he meant.
Harad was going to take his revenge on the Second Knight Order — the ones who had thrown him into that tunnel against his will.
"Even if I did tell him to simmer down—"
"Would you stop me?"
"Why on earth would I?"
Elaine grinned wide and trotted along behind Harad, chattering about how much fun this would be.
Dreams really were dreams, Ellen felt all over again.
One moment they'd been standing on the training ground — the next, a garrison sprawled open before them.
The garrison of the Second Knight Order.
"Hey, Square," Harad called.
Square was the nickname of Horn, Vice Commander of the Second Knight Order.
Ellen had heard it before, too.
His frame was so slab-sided, they said, that from behind he looked like a walking square.
"I won't kill you, Harad."
"And I will you?"
The Harad of the dream was the polar opposite of the real one. The man was pure fire.
He had been like that in the days when Elaine was the Grand Duke's daughter — and, seemingly, not in the days when she was Grand Duke herself.
Of course, both were dreams.
"I'll kill every last one of you."
It was while Harad was growling at the assembled knights that Elaine approached one of them.
Astonishingly, it was Moresz Palaz.
Elaine's swordsmanship master — the man who had set down the commander's post of the First Knight Order and retired ten years ago.
"Forgive the intrusion, Commander of the Second."
Elaine addressed Moresz as Second Knight Commander.
"Not at all, my lady. Harad's challenges are practically routine by now."
Moresz didn't dispute it.
On the left breast of his leather armor, beneath the crest of Serzilla, a mace was engraved — the emblem of the Second Knight Order.
"I hear that everyone below the Order Commanders has already been broken."
"It has been instructive."
Thanks to Harad's existence, Elaine said, they had come to know that the Outlands, too, found itself constrained within the Boundary.
"What I find stranger is that it's only now the Second Order's turn."
"I'm told he's been saving it. That he means to devour them whole, at the height of his confidence."
"And today is that day?"
"So it would seem — though this time the circumstances differ somewhat. As you know, this one is revenge...... li—"
Without warning, a jet-black sun rose above the garrison.
Elaine knew at once that it was the magic Harad had called Projection.
"Utter madman." Elaine said it in open admiration.
Ellen could not.
Neither the fact that the dream's Harad had brought Projection into being the moment he learned the word, nor the sight of the Second Knight Order about to be caught beneath it, surprised her in the least.
"You won't stop him?"
"Stop him? He's reaping what he sowed. Let's just talk, Commander. Are you equal to it?"
"It has already been six years, after all."
"I only feel sorry, is all — I'm the one who made you un-retire."
"What could I do? If I'm to curse anyone, let me curse the dead Cassion."
It was that conversation between Elaine and Moresz.
"To be honest, I still can't believe it. Cassion, of all people......"
The words... dragged on and on.
It felt as though they would stretch on forever — and Ellen knew, with sudden certainty, that she was waking.
A ceiling.
Ellen bolted upright.
"Seriously, what a shit dream......"
Even now, her hand was clenched tight around Pater — the sacred heirloom of Serzilla.
A born sucker, through and through.
However excessive the man's competitive streak, to think he would carelessly stake Serzilla's sacred heirloom on a wager.
And of all things — Pater.
He had taken it for an ordinary masterwork blade at first; look closer, and it was one of Serzilla's three sacred heirloom swords.
Harad had learned that five days ago — at the exact moment Ellen, having proposed the bet, went oops and moved to hide the sword.
He felt no particular thrill about it. Harad had never cared much for swords. That had been Elaine's passion.
He'd use it if it was given, though.
He had no intention of voiding the wager, either.
On the surface, Pater looked like an ordinary sword. Merely sturdier than the other two heirloom blades — and that sturdiness was an advantage beyond measure for Elaine. Few swords in the world could endure her particular brand of Heavenly Might and aura.
Not a concern for the Elaine of today, of course. She wasn't at that level yet.
Borrow it for a while, then hand it back.
He would simply return it around the time he became a Sword Master.
"What are you thinking about?"
"I was thinking about myself — wielding that sword."
"..."
"Worry not. A few years' use, and back it comes to you."
"Anyone listening would think you'd already won."
Five days had passed.
It was recovery time for the Second Knight Order — and for Harad as well. For as long as Harad remained Third Tier, the aftereffects of Projection were inevitable.
"Any gains?"
For the past five days, Harad had done nothing but rest.
Ellen, apparently, had not. He was seeing her for the first time in five days.
"The Grand Duke's daughter spent those five days trudging all over the territory."
She had walked the whole domain without a single day's rest, she said, and Harad gave a hollow laugh.
"And here I thought the Grand Duke's daughter was under house arrest. His Grace somehow saw fit to permit it, did he?"
"...I suppose so."
Ellen answered like a woman with a guilty conscience.
She snuck out, then.
And surely not for the wager's sake alone.
Her trust in knights — in a Knight Commander, no less — ran deeper than imagination.
"No attacks while I was gone, I take it."
"Probably because the investigation is underway."
"It hasn't even started."
"The order has, though."
Ellen insisted it was because Grand Duke Aratus had issued his command: root out the mastermind.
"And who else knows of that command, besides me and the Second Knight Order? Ah — you do as well."
"..."
"Astonishing. Don't tell me you were the mastermind all along."
"Don't talk crap."
Ellen must have known, even as she said it, how thin the claim was. The silence stretching out between them now was proof enough.
"How convenient that the Second Knight Commander has yet to return to his post."
The moment the command came down — or rather, the moment Cassion departed on his dispatch — the attacks had stopped.
"What a remarkable coincidence."
"...That's no proof it was Sir Cassion. A knight, perhaps. Not him."
At that quiet addition, something kindled in Harad's eyes.
So suddenly, the knights are on the list of suspects.
The mastermind could not be a knight.
If — and it was a very, very big if — then perhaps the slightest possibility existed.
That had been Ellen's claim, five days ago, when she had accompanied Harad on his visit to the Second Knight Order.
And today, her claim had gained a leg to stand on: a knight might truly be behind it after all.
Five days later.
She dreamed.
That she had dreamed, Harad knew in his gut.
The rabbit did not become a dream.
No doubt because it was a being the previous life had never once encountered.
But it must surely have left its mark. The rabbit was a disaster incapable of being anything less.
Stimuli accumulate.
Faint as it might be for now, pile it up long enough and it would begin to work its way into dreams. She hadn't dreamed in a while — so this time, she surely had.
Trusting me the way she trusts knights... no. Surely not that.
Judging by her expression, it was closer to a reflex of self-defense.
She seemed to think the lesser evil — a knight who was a magician — preferable to the worst: the Knight Commander himself being one.
Though even that was cold comfort, of course.
"If Sir Cassion were a magician, why on earth would the Second Knight Order have killed more magicians than any other order?"
"And you've just handed me the evidence for it."
"What?"
"You don't doubt it by a hair, do you — that Cassion has killed so many magicians. Not one hair."
"..."
Harad was certain: the mastermind was Cassion.
"And what if you're wrong?"
"Then I suppose I defect — to the Outlands."
Ellen's eyes turned nothing short of murderous.
"Why not just die instead?"
"His Grace the Grand Duke would never permit it."
"..."
"I'll be defecting, you see. So kill me on the way — in the Boundary. That much, he'll allow."
Grand Duke Aratus wanted Harad.
But whether Harad died inside the Boundary would not concern him in the least. Such was the promise between them — a condition attached to Harad's use of the tunnel.
"How is that any different?"
"So there was such a promise."
It was a promise Ellen had known nothing about.
"While you were wandering — did you see how the Second Knight Order is faring?"
"It was the Grand Duke's daughter who wandered, actually."
"As if you'd have sat still yourself."
"...They say most of them have healed up."
Harad drained the tea Arika had poured for him in one long swallow.
Arika's eyes, glaring at him from her corner, went perfectly round.
The cup she'd handed Harad was scalding hot — several times hotter than Ellen's — yet he showed not the slightest reaction.
"Next time, make it cold instead."
Arika cursed him with her eyes alone.
Had Ellen not been present, she looked ready to draw a blade on him.
Beneath the naked hostility, her face looked dead on its feet. Plain evidence of overwork.
Keep going like this and she'll die younger than she did in her past life.
Clicking his tongue with a face full of pity, Harad left the Information Bureau annex behind.
"I'm off, Arika."
Ellen rose and followed him out.
"Does the Information Bureau have no hierarchy at all?"
"Sorry?"
"First I've ever seen of a senior being called by her given name."
"We're close."
Ellen shot back without a flicker of shame.
"I see."
Harad asked nothing further.
He hadn't the slightest intention of pressing her, or of doubting her. The longer her irregular standing lasted, the better it served him.
Even so, he had made a point of asking — because it was the ordinary reaction. Now and then it had to be this way; a man who wonders at nothing only looks the more suspicious for it.
Playing along in time, it seems, is harder than it looks.
They walked for a while before a listing building came into view.
The knight order's common hall, wrecked by Harad's own hand — and now swarming with people. Laborers, by their clothing.
"We didn't bill you for the repairs, by the way."
"Much obliged."
"You'll be paying it back with your body."
Ellen made a point of noting that Serzilla's taxpayer money had gone into it.
"My. So that's your taste?"
"Wow. Disgusting."
Ellen regarded him with pure, uncut contempt.
"A joke."
"Some joke for a forty-year-old to be making."
Ellen had a keen edge that surfaced now and then. More so in anything concerning a fight. The Elaine of the previous life had been a beast.
Harad headed first for the quarters that had been converted into a sickroom. It stood empty — and from somewhere in the distance came the sound of battle cries.
Half disbelieving, he went to look. The knights were on the training ground.
They sweated away atop the wreckage — the wall gone, the training ground cooled to a churned crust of caked earth.
Bandages blotched with blood and pus whipped in the northern wind.
Tough, or just plain witless?
Harad gave a hollow laugh, realizing anew what an outrageously stubborn lot Serzilla's knights were.
Beside him, Ellen watched them with a face brimming with pride.
"Harad."
Someone bellowed. Horn — and at his cry, every knight froze mid-motion at once.
It was much the same scene as five days ago, when Harad had last visited this place.
But the faces before him had changed utterly.
Not one of them wore hostility. Every last knight acknowledged him.
This was Cassion's knight order — the one that loathed magicians.
Ellen's worry on that score had been for nothing.
Knights really are knights.
They say water mixed with ink turns black. Serzilla's water ran a little different — it was already mud. Whatever you poured into it, it refused to blend. Muddy water you gave up trying to dye, and simply splashed where it was needed — and all the dearer for it.
"We're ready."
"You don't look it to me."
Horn, ambling over to speak, was a wreck.
Training had unwound every bandage he wore, and blood and pus were running sticky down the skin of his whole body.
"It's only the skin."
"And the skin looks like precisely the problem."
"Looks are all it is. It's grown tougher than ever — your fire's doing."
"...That shouldn't be possible."
"It is."
Horn would not be moved.
"Go on, touch it."
"I'll pass."
"If you won't touch, then let me in as well."
Presumably his reasoning: if the newer men were stepping forward, the Vice Commander could hardly sit out.
"Fine. In exchange — fresh bandages."
"Got it. What do I do?"
The knights' ears all pricked at once.
"Something of the utmost importance. Work that will add to the glory of great Serzilla."
Gulp.
Someone swallowed. Excitement.
"This is about finding the mastermind who tried to assassinate the Grand Duke's daughter, isn't it?"
So deduced Horn, the second-sharpest mind in the Second Knight Order.
"The very thing."
"We're ready."
"Do go on."
Harad gripped tight Horn's hand, blotched with blood and pus, and spoke — his face as grave as it had ever been.
"Fail, and it is over. The honor of the Second Knight Commander now rests in your hands."
At the news that their superior's honor hung in the balance, the knights turned resolute.
"..."
Ellen was dumbfounded.
"Move out."
Then Horn roared.
"MOVE OUT!"
The knights bellowed it back as one.
"..."
For the first time in her life, Ellen thought the knights pathetic.