Shadow (1)
"Mm."
Arika was dying.
The first to sense death's shadow creeping up on her had been Arika herself.
The cause of death would be overwork.
"Oh."
The culprit, however, was not the Grand Duke's heir. It was Arika herself — too inadequate to bear the workload the heir had assigned — who would stand accused.
"Well, well."
And so, at long last, salvation came for Arika. Unpleasantly enough, it arrived in the form of Harad.
"It all holds up. Impressive work."
"I don't need your praise."
The moment Harad finished leafing through the stack of documents, Arika swept them up as if wresting back stolen property. Had it not been for Ellen's request, she would never have shown them in the first place.
"How long did it take?"
Harad asked, eyes still on the materials she had reclaimed. Arika did not answer. Seeing this, Ellen stepped in.
"How long did it take you?"
"Since Ellen requested it."
Arika answered at once.
"She says it took about a month."
"Alone?"
……
Arika said nothing. Harad looked to Ellen.
"...Arika, did you do all this alone?"
"Yes."
"She says she did."
Ellen made an excellent interpreter.
"Remarkable."
Harad marveled a second time.
A month, alone. The volume and quality of the material were considerable. Done single-handed, it should have taken half a year; done within a month, it would have taken ten people. Yet Arika had managed it all by herself, in a single month — though she looked likely to die as the price of the feat.
"Did you assign her other work as well, by any chance?"
"...Yes."
"What?"
"The tunnel-digger's whereabouts, the Liberation Tower's movements...?"
Ellen let the words trail off, deliberately vague. It meant there was more she had assigned.
"If Arika dies, the culprit will be you."
To exaggerate only slightly: Arika's face was pitch-black. The dark circles saw to that.
Her aura has all but run out.
It was proof of just how mercilessly she had been driven. Arika was a swordswoman who lost nothing even when measured against the knights of Serzila.
The stack of documents in Arika's hands was the product of narrowing down — and narrowing down again — every location and individual suspected of a connection to the tunnels. Even after all that distilling, the places and people still numbered in the dozens. From here, Arika would thin the list further. She would go in person, meet each one face to face, and cross them off one by one. And while she was at it, she would have to hunt the tunnel-digger, circulate inquiries about the Liberation Tower, and push through whatever other tasks Ellen had piled on her. The workload was suffocating to so much as contemplate.
"Has the Information Bureau no one to spare?"
"...We have plenty."
Ellen, murderer-in-the-making, faltered. She seemed to know, on some level, that she was asking too much.
So no agents are being rotated back. It meant the Bureau still kept its eyes fixed on the continent rather than the North. Because the source of the request was me, no doubt. Elaine might have relayed it, but in the end it was Harad who had come asking after the North's troubles. For the Bureau to take the matter more seriously, his influence would have to grow.
So the problems I solved turned out to be poison. To build that influence, Harad had worked diligently to change the future — only for those efforts to do nothing but shelter the Bureau's complacency. Had he simply stood by and let the Ivory Tower's 4th-circle Ios slip into the North, the Bureau would have reacted far more sharply.
"Twenty-one sites presumed to hold tunnels, and fifty-three suspects. At even a day apiece, that stretches well past two months — and in practice it will take longer."
In his previous life, Arika had been a perfectionist about anything Elaine demanded of her. Her reports were without flaw. Judging by the stack in her hands, she was no different in this era. She would investigate every name and place on those papers to the bitter end — running on her own two feet until the results were perfect, however many rounds that took, all while driving her other duties forward besides.
She'll be dead in ten days.
That had never happened in his past life. Harad felt a small twinge of guilt.
"I'll help."
To Grand Duke Elaine, Arika was an indispensable person.
"Your help is not needed."
Arika refused.
"I don't believe it's something you're capable of."
And yet she tacked on a postscript. It landed like a provocation, but the manner of it felt familiar.
Consistent to the very end.
The Arika of his past life, too, had come to Harad with requests when truly pushed to her limit.
"You won't be able to manage it."
Her requests had always taken this shape. They meant: if you can, then do it.
"I was the one who first discovered the tunnels."
……
"I was the one who caught Ios, too."
……
"And I can tell a magician when I see one."
Harad smiled, pointing at his own eyes. The last claim was a lie, but that hardly mattered. Anyone truly suspicious could be verified by the simple expedient of killing them.
"As I understand it, you have your orders from His Grace the Grand Duke."
The question underneath: with the mastermind hunting Elaine still at large, did he have time to spare for this? That was what she was really asking.
"Ah, that matter is as good as closed."
Harad waved a hand. This order, too, was an easy thing for the regressed Harad.
"Don't let it weigh on you. We simply needed work of our own."
"We?"
Arika cocked her head; Ellen knit her brows. At that moment, thunderous battle cries rolled in from outside the residence. The 2nd Knight Order had arrived.
...With nothing better to do.
"Here, here. Take one each."
Harad handed the 2nd Knight Order their papers, one apiece. Each sheet bore a fair copy of Arika's findings.
"All you need do is find the place or person written on your paper and look into them. If it's a place, comb through it thoroughly. If it's a person... hm, you may hit them a little."
For Arika to have put someone on the suspect list meant that person had a problem.
"Just don't draw your swords — hit them only. They'll open up on their own."
When a Serzila knight came calling out of nowhere swinging his fists, anyone would talk.
"And if they won't talk, do we kill them?"
"If such a person exists, call for me."
If someone kept silent even under a knight's blows, they truly had something to hide. A genuine tie to the tunnels, or some other sin worth concealing.
"But what's all this got to do with the mastermind who sent a magician after the Grand Duke's heir?"
It was Horn, the second-sharpest man in the 2nd Knight Order, who pointed it out.
"Well spotted. First we stir the pot. Keep poking, and the ones who stand out will show themselves. Those, I'll verify personally."
"How will you verify them?"
"I can tell magicians apart."
Harad made no attempt to hide that "fact" — a lie, though it was. The more they knew, the more the knights would come to depend on him. Case in point: the 1st Knight Order was forever trooping over to Harad with suspicious objects in hand. Sooner or later they would be dragging people in too, claiming they looked suspicious.
"And yet I hear there's no such magician in all the world."
At Horn's words, Harad's eyes gleamed. That was a line of reasoning rarely heard in the North.
"Where did you hear that?"
"From the 2nd Knight Commander."
"I see. The 2nd Knight Commander is quite the learned man."
Horn glowed at the compliment as though it were his own doing.
"The Commander isn't wrong. I'm simply the exception."
"Why's that?"
"Because I'm a magician. The Commander is a knight, no? On matters of magic, I cannot help but be the more accurate."
"True enough."
Horn accepted this without another thought. He was a knight, after all. Had he been any brighter, he would have enlisted with the Information Bureau instead of a knight order.
Clutching a paper or two apiece, the knights scattered into the streets. A few circled back to Harad with questions, which he answered in good faith. Before long, the grounds of the Information Bureau's residence grew quiet. The nearest knight stood far down the street, driving a fist into someone's solar plexus and dragging the man off into a dreary alley.
"...What is he doing right now?"
"It's fine. Everyone on the suspect list has a checkered past."
The one who had vetted them was the redoubtable Arika. Decent people did not end up on her suspect lists.
"Not that."
Ellen tore her gaze from the alley the knight had vanished into and fixed it on Harad.
"I'm asking what the meaning of this is."
"Helping Arika."
"Not that. You know perfectly well what I'm asking."
Ellen looked ready to draw steel on the spot.
"The order you were given was to investigate the mastermind."
"Why investigate? The culprit is Cassion."
As good as done already. That was what he had told Arika earlier, while offering his help with the tunnels — because he had already pronounced Cassion the culprit in his own mind.
"You aren't hoping Sir Cassion turns out to be the culprit, are you?"
That was how it looked to Ellen.
"If I were, there'd be a reason for it — on my side of things, at least."
"Because Sir Cassion despises you."
"Personal feelings, hm. Then I must have a great many knights to kill."
Setting aside the 1st and 2nd Knight Orders, four more remained. They had yet to acknowledge Harad. They actively disliked him.
"That's not it. The other knights all come around after a duel."
This business with the 2nd Knight Order had shown Ellen just how simple knights were. The moment Harad flung down a gauntlet, they came flocking.
"So isn't this just because you haven't the confidence to win Sir Cassion's acknowledgment?"
"Do you mean that sincerely?"
She did not. Ellen's expression was so blatant that even Harad — the one posing the question — could read the answer. He had a fair idea of what she was really after. She meant to unearth proof of Cassion's innocence in the course of the investigation, and with Harad refusing to so much as begin, her temper had boiled over.
"A conviction and a stubborn whim are two different things. If you want to make that judgment, bring me proper grounds."
……
"My grounds are these: I can see magicians with my own eyes."
In truth, he knew it thanks to his regression.
"Grounds that exist only for you."
"And have I ever been wrong? Have I?"
……
And so — no. He never had been. At least, not yet. So far, the things that had stayed the same far outnumbered the things that had changed.
"Then why don't you report it?"
How much time had passed? Ellen returned bearing a piece of evidence.
"You've won the 2nd Knight Order's acknowledgment. One report to His Grace and it's finished, no?"
A fair point. Harad could have fulfilled the Grand Duke's order on the spot.
"You're right. His Grace would be convinced on the spot. He'd have the 2nd Knight Commander executed."
Harad spoke with certainty. Grand Duke Aratus was that sort of man.
"But you would not be convinced."
……
"I want you convinced. Seeing everything with your own eyes. Living through it yourself."
The regressed Harad wanted Ellen at his side for everything he did — hoping, too, that it would spur her on.
"...Why do you treat only me this way? Because I'm a cadet branch?"
"I was like this before I ever knew that. And if blood were the reason, I'd have favored the Grand Duke's heir instead of you."
"But you did favor me."
"The Grand Duke's heir favored you. Not I."
Harad had never once gone to Elaine first.
"It's nothing so grand. I'm simply saying you are my one and only friend."
"...Friend."
Ellen turned the word over and over in her mind. It was a familiar word. Because of the dream.
"Was I the only one who thought that way?"
Harad smiled, soft and gentle.
...Just like in the dream.
……
Ellen quietly lowered her gaze to her own palm. The Elaine of her dreams would have smashed that infuriating back of his head without a moment's hesitation.
"If you want to hit me, go ahead."
"Why on earth would I hit you?"
Ellen couldn't bring herself to. Not yet.
Lunch was taken at Kubel's annex. So was dinner — with Ellen joining them. She never stopped pleading Cassion's case, but she did not avoid Harad either.
"Sir Cassion is not a magician."
"Bring me evidence."
"I have none, but it's the truth. Watch him, and you'll see."
There was something almost serene about Ellen. Perhaps she had conceded to Harad's argument; perhaps the word friend had made her conscious of the dream. Either way, one thing was certain: Ellen was changing, day by day.
After collecting Shura from her games in the alley and sharing the evening meal, they returned to find the knights waiting outside the Information Bureau's residence. To sum up their findings: a bust, as expected. An inevitable result, if ever there was one.
The Sacred Ground of Fire. The only reason Arika had ever found the tunnel hidden in its vicinity was that a suspect who had reported Harad existed. Without a solid lead, the odds of stumbling upon a tunnel were vanishingly small.
……
Hearing the results, Arika wore the face of a woman whose pride had taken a savage beating. All the more so, surely, with this investigation bearing Ellen's orders.
"...Even so. Thank you."
It hadn't been entirely pointless, though. For her, it meant buying time to investigate twenty-one sites and fifty-three suspects. And since she would have run herself ragged doing it, the value of that time included every last ounce of energy she would have burned.
"Starting over?"
"I must."
Unless Ellen rescinded the order, Arika would keep investigating. And one day, she would find it. The Arika of his past life had possessed tenacity beyond imagining.
"I hear you're hunting the tunnel-digger as well."
"...Does he even exist?"
Arika showed an uncharacteristic flicker of doubt. Presumably because she hadn't managed to find so much as a thread.
"He exists. Without question."
……
Arika did not dispute it. This latest assistance had planted in her the barest seed of trust in Harad.
"He might be fat. He might be thin."
At the non sequitur, Arika cocked her head.
"Man or woman. An infant, or an old crone."
……?
"But one thing is certain: the tunnel-digger does not work alone. There are two of them."
"You're telling me he keeps a magician who can change his shape as a companion?"
Harad beamed. Arika was easy to talk to, as these things went.
"Exactly. A magician whose Origin is the Mask serves as the tunnel-digger's companion — and that one's traits will run much the same."
"...And how, exactly, am I to find them?"
"Is the Information Bureau asking me for intelligence?"
The jab to her pride creased Arika's brow.
"I will find them myself."
"I'll be watching with interest."
And then—
The door of the Information Bureau's residence burst open.
"Harad."
Horn. He was dragging someone along behind him.
"Who is that?"
Both hands shackled in iron chain — for all the world like a man under formal arrest.
"The mastermind."
"What?"
"The magician who sent a magician after the Grand Duke's heir. I caught him."
Harad's eyes went round.
"That can't be right?"
It was the first time Ellen had ever seen Harad so shaken.
"What? Who's a magician?"
And by just that much, her triumph swelled.