Cassion (4)
There are relationships where a single meeting of the eyes is enough to know everything. Trust brings them into being, and time builds them, layer by layer. Elaine had no one with whom she had formed such a bond — not yet. Many people trusted her, but not one of them knew her all the way down to her core.
Such had been her life. Her knights believed in Elaine and followed her, and Elaine believed in them in turn — but the foundation of it all was Serzila. It was the name Serzila that made such relationships possible. And of course, that was enough. To wish for more would have been greed. Everything beyond it was Elaine's own to earn.
On the foundation of that name, Elaine would build her bonds with the North, until someday any knight, meeting her eyes, would know her through and through. For now, expression was still necessary. Words had to be spoken to be understood; feelings had to be shown to be felt. If even her closest knights were like that, how could she hope to read the heart of a magician she had known barely any time at all? And from his eyes alone, at that.
…Still, she had never intended to kill him. The time she had spent at Harad's side was her grounds for that. There was more than enough reason to hear him out. Subdue him first — then listen.
…To Harad.
But her sword had swung for Cassion. At a knight. At Cassion, who had even spoken to her.
Why? Elaine could not understand her own actions. She still couldn't. To the very end, her eyes had been fixed not on Cassion, who looked so utterly wronged, but on Harad.
Something like dust drifted down from the sky. Fragments of mana — what had been Harad's magic was crumbling into nothing. And beneath it stood what could only be called a corpse. He was drenched head to toe in blood, his face too ruined to make out. Had she not just watched the Projection vanish, she might not have recognized him as Harad at all.
At the sight of him, her mouth opened on its own.
"Are you all right?"
"…"
Instead of answering, Harad staggered. Elaine caught him as he started to fall.
This time, too, it was not her own doing. Her body had moved before she knew it. She had caught him around the upper body, and she didn't even notice the blood soaking into her own clothes. Harad's body was hot — far, far too hot. Merely touching him felt like it would raise blisters on her skin.
No. It already had. Szzt. The fabric where she touched him melted away, and the smell of her own flesh cooking rose from her body.
Even so, Elaine did not let go. If anything, she gathered him in more carefully, wary that her Heavenly Might might injure him.
Why? It was just as confusion began to seethe through Elaine's mind—
"…"
A sound seeped into her left ear. Harad's voice, his face resting against her shoulder.
"Rabbit?"
Elaine somehow managed to decipher it. Harad's face moved, ever so slightly. It seemed like an affirmation.
It came out of nowhere, but Elaine understood at once. The rabbit. That magical beast had never attacked Harad. It had healed him instead — injured, as he was now, by his own magic — with some foreign object.
"The bead."
Supporting Harad's weight with her shoulder and chest, Elaine moved only her hands. She felt along his body until she found his trouser pocket and slipped her fingers inside; in the left pocket they knocked against something round. The bead.
Now what?
"His heart?"
A magician's core was the heart. Elaine's left hand reached out with care, parting their clinging bodies to slide upward, and rubbed the bead over the left side of Harad's chest.
The bead, which had been merely cool, went cold. It was a chill even Elaine of Serzila had never known — worse than the deadly cold of the Boundary. Her left hand felt as though it would freeze solid.
And yet that savage cold seemed exactly right for Harad, who carried the sun inside him. His body, hotter than fire, cooled rapidly, and the convulsions that had shaken him began to subside.
"Hoo…"
How long had it been? An unusually long breath tickled Elaine's left ear.
"My apologies."
With the voice ringing at her ear, the weight on her shoulder vanished — Harad was standing on his own two feet. He stepped back a pace or two, swept a hand up through his blood-soaked hair, and with that same hand scrubbed the blood from his face.
"You saved my life."
The face that said it was, surprisingly, full of life.
Only then did Elaine notice that something about Harad's wounds was strange. Or rather — the direction the blood covering his body had come from was wrong. These were no external injuries. Every last one had begun from within.
"Was it like this with the rabbit, too?"
The rabbit had never attacked Harad. But he had been hurt all the same, and he had taken that bead from the rabbit and healed himself. It looked to be the same now. Harad had not been felled by Cassion. He had been felled by his own magic.
"Aftereffects. I've only just reached the 3rd Circle — it's nothing serious."
"Then what do you call that?"
Elaine pointed at Harad's body. There was nothing to see but blood.
"I did it trusting in the bead."
"You couldn't move so much as a finger."
"And thanks to you, I lived."
Harad thanked her once more.
"…So you would have died, if I hadn't come."
"But you did come."
To Elaine, it sounded like a claim of pure luck.
"…Be careful. Your life belongs to Serzila — not to you."
Elaine bit out the words. For some reason, they left her feeling unsettled.
"Why did you come alone? Did you truly mean to defect?"
Elaine's grip tightened on her sword. Because Cassion's final words had come back to her.
"I meant to come with Ellen."
Defect… Elaine, who had been turning the word over, flinched.
"But then she suddenly fell asleep. She said she would stay up all night beside me until Cassion came — and then she was out."
"…"
"That is why I nearly died."
Elaine rolled her eyes — then squared her shoulders, proud and upright. Right now, she was not Ellen. She was Elaine.
"Then why did you come to the Boundary? You could have stayed in the Inner Castle."
"If I had, I would be dead without a soul knowing. I have held out this long precisely because I am here."
Elaine nodded slowly. It was a sound answer. The Sacred Ground of Fire — this land made Harad stronger. If not for this ground, and if Cassion had truly set his heart on assassination, Harad would already be dead.
…If Cassion really was a magician.
"You still don't believe me."
"All I've seen with my own eyes is your magic. And Cassion's sword."
"I used magic before the Young Duke arrived."
"And by remarkable coincidence, you were the only one there to see it."
She said it, but Elaine's expression remained uneasy. She already knew, deep down, that denial was no longer possible.
"…Then I'll ask the man himself."
"Didn't you kill him?"
"He isn't dead."
Cassion was alive.
"I struck him with the flat of the blade."
Because that sword had first been swung at Harad. Elaine had never intended to kill him.
"And why did you steal Ellen's sword?"
"Because it offended me."
"…"
"And now it is mine."
She should have smashed that insufferable face when she had the chance.
What is even so pretty about that thing?
Elaine could not understand.
The North is the harshest land there is — so the world says. But in truth, the coldest land lies beyond it. The coldest place in the world was the Outer Realm. A land where fire was scarce. Cassion had come from there.
His will had not mattered. No — there had been no will at all. That is what vermin are. What mattered was that the order had come down. For the Moon. Cassion had simply been planted in Serzila, that was all.
"He'll be of use." That was how he had caught the eye of Grand Duke Aratus.
"Sir Cassion." That was how he had won the trust of the Young Duke, still a child then.
"Commander!" That was how he had come to carry the knights' faith on his back.
Had it been difficult? It had not. The Great Wall of the continent — for all its dreaded name, Serzila was full of gaps. Simple and guileless. Ignorant, in a word. And so, warm.
That warmth was what had been difficult. A warmth that did not exist in the Outer Realm. Perhaps that was why.
"Commander!" — that even in a moment like this, it was Serzila that surfaced in his mind.
"…"
Magicians do not dream. Cassion knew his consciousness was adrift — knew that he was chewing over old memories, already aching with longing for them. Which meant… he was still alive. And Cassion knew, as naturally as breathing, whom he owed that to.
"…Young Duke."
Elaine was sitting before him. Harad was beside her. Only moments ago, the man had looked like a corpse that hadn't heard the news — yet the Harad before him now seemed perfectly whole. Which meant he had prepared himself a way out in advance, no doubt. Just like a magician to do so.
Cassion let out a hollow laugh. He was a magician, yet he had never been much of one. That was simply what he had become.
"Still calling me 'Your Highness' — for a mere magician," Harad said. Cassion glared at him. The look was more naked than before, for he no longer had any intention of hiding it.
"Not that you're one to talk." Elaine shot Harad a sidelong glance. Harad answered without a shred of shame.
"I am officially recognized."
Cassion was not. That, presumably, had been the problem.
"Is everything I heard true?" Elaine asked, her face bitter. Cassion did not look away from it.
"I am sorry, Young Duke."
Cassion knew what the last of his duties was. It was time to prepare the truth, not excuses.
"…You're not denying it."
Elaine's face, which had clung to a sliver of hope until that very moment, went cold.
"It was you. All of it."
Elaine laughed at herself. She was pathetic to her own eyes — she who had sided with Cassion so devotedly all this time.
"What did you do in Serzila?"
"My orders concerned Serzila's—"
"I asked what you did. Not what you were ordered to do."
"…I reported their movements."
Elaine smiled coldly.
"Commander of the 2nd Knight Order, and that is all you ever amounted to?"
"I was merely planted here."
Cassion was a seed — planted and primed to bloom into calamity whenever it was needed. That seed had never bloomed. The time had not come, the Moon Tower said, and so it only ever left him waiting on orders.
"So you were waiting for orders."
"Yes."
"Was this business an order as well?"
"Yes. Harad burned down the watchtower. The Moon Tower wished to confirm that fire."
Elaine looked down at Cassion in silence.
"Your hatred of magicians. Was that an act too?"
"Yes. It was how I earned Serzila's trust."
"And the Outer Realm magicians you killed?"
The 2nd Knight Order — Cassion was the knight who had put down more Outer Realm magicians than any other.
"For the same reason."
"And keeping all knowledge of magic from the 2nd Knight Order?"
"Because that is what a knight of Serzila is."
Cassion was compliant.
"The answers come awfully easily. Why is that?"
"Because I have no path left."
The spy called Cassion had been exposed. For a spy whose cover is blown, nothing remains but death.
"So you think I'm a fucking joke too, then."
"…?"
Cassion's eyes went round. That Elaine — cursing?
"There's no spy in this world who spills everything without so much as a single torture session."
Only then could Cassion truly look at Elaine's face. A face he had watched for fourteen years — and yet, somehow, it was unfamiliar. The reason for that change was sitting beside her. Harad. That magician had changed Elaine.
"I'll ask again. Why?"
"…I thought of it as my final act of loyalty."
No magician fails to know his own heart. There are only those who deny it.
"Then about that loyalty, I'll ask once more." Elaine retraced her questions. "Keeping magic from the 2nd Knight Order."
"…I didn't want to be found out."
It was greed. The greed to go on living exactly like this.
"The Outer Realm magicians you killed."
"I could not stand their filthy feet touching Serzila."
He could have avoided it. Each Magic Tower's affairs were its own to mind, and laying hands on another tower's business was taboo upon taboo. Cassion had violated that taboo. A magician himself, he had killed more of his own kind than all of Serzila's knights combined.
"Your hatred of magicians."
"I did not want to be a magician."
Cassion had wanted to be a knight. No — he had wanted to be Serzila.
"And this business?"
"Harad's existence will draw trouble down on Serzila. I hated that."
The fire that had consumed the watchtower. The Outer Realm had begun to take notice of it. They did not yet know the magician behind the fire was Harad — but it was only a matter of time. The Outer Realm was already moving. Cassion had been one of the ones moving.
"…I had my own greed as well."
There had been things he could not bear to look at. Jealousy — just as Harad had said.
"I hated that magician standing in Serzila as a magician. A magician — and yet Harad had Serzila's blessing. He was winning the knights' acceptance, melting right into their number. I refused to accept that reality."
If such a thing was possible, then why couldn't I—
…He had dug his own grave. A mistake committed with jealousy blinding his eyes. He had never meant to kill the Young Duke, but the Grand Duke's wrath had been inevitable all the same.
"And as Commander of the 2nd Knight Order — what did you do?"
"…Nothing. I did nothing."
The information he had passed to the Moon Tower was the sort any Northerner would know — utterly commonplace. The Moon Tower had demanded more. Cassion could never bring himself to give it. It had not been that way at the beginning; but at some point, it had become so.
"One last question, then."
The last. Cassion sensed his death.
"What did you do in Serzila?"
"I felt warmth."
Cassion answered without pausing for breath. Because it was the truth.
"In the North?"
"…Yes."
"You really are a strange one."
That voice was not unfamiliar. Cassion realized he was smiling. Which meant his face must have looked pleasant enough.
"Cassion. I am Serzila."
"I know."
Cassion closed his eyes and bared his neck.
"And not just any Serzila — the Serzila that will be the greatest in all its history."
"…?"
"I mean you can do whatever the hell you want."
Swearing again. But this time Cassion's eyes went round for a different reason. These were not words the Young Duke he knew would say.
"From now on, spare me the nagging. If you don't, I'll go back on my word and kill you."
And that Young Duke had never once been one to make exceptions. Cassion realized that this, too, was Harad's doing. Elaine was looking at Harad.
"You're the one who told me — look at the person, not the magician." Harad merely nodded, insolent as ever. To Cassion's eyes, it looked downright disrespectful.
"And to never lose my own convictions."
Another nod.
"Right up until this moment, I was looking at Cassion — the person."
Knight or magician. It no longer mattered to Elaine.
"Submission and loyalty are not the same thing."
Cassion had submitted to the Outer Realm. He had been loyal to Serzila.
"It seems worth trusting you one more time. The fourteen years I spent at your side — that is my grounds."
That was Elaine's conviction.
"Well, Harad? What do you say?"
"As the Young Duke wishes."
"I knew you'd say that without my asking."
For some reason, Elaine looked positively triumphant.
"Because this is my dick talking."
…Not that she had one.
Harad thought it, and only to himself.