Hurt Feelings (1)
The building had half melted away, rising into something like a jagged peak. The walls that must once have stood tall were gone without a trace, and across the training yard, melted stone had run together with the dirt in ugly blotches.
In a word, it was an eyesore — closer to a ruin than to the communal building of a knight order. Of all days, today even the laborers were on holiday, so the monstrosity stood out all the more. Perhaps it was the equipment left abandoned here and there, but the ruin felt shabbier still.
Cassion could only stare at the communal building, his expression complicated. He had heard the reports, but its condition was worse than he'd imagined.
From a distance, the culprit was making his way over. Harad picked out Cassion at a glance — the man crouched in hiding, his presence erased, peeping at the building — and spoke to him.
"You got off cheap."
"…"
It wasn't wrong. He hadn't known his comrade was a magician — had even treated the man with the deference owed a superior. It was the kind of negligence that should have cost him his post at the very least.
And yet the 2nd Knight Order had come through unscathed. Because Cassion's identity had never come to light.
"How was it?"
A week had passed since his return from the Sacred Ground of Fire. For that entire week, Cassion had been made to stand before the Grand Duke for half of every day.
"He said nothing to me at all."
He hadn't even spared him a glance.
"Must have been a bitter humiliation."
"As if."
Cassion couldn't bring himself to see it that way. Even the thought was blasphemous. That he was permitted to stand in Serzilla at all was grace enough.
"…I did get off cheap."
Just as Harad said. Cassion still felt dazed by the simple fact that he was alive. Fourteen years of deception, and on top of that, he had sent a magician after the Grand Duke's heir.
"If I were His Grace, I'd have ground you up and drunk you."
"Does His Grace drink magicians too? I thought he only put them on display."
"…"
Cassion stared at Harad, dumbfounded. It was an utterly irreverent joke, but he couldn't work up any anger over it. That was simply the position he was in.
"I hear it was thanks to you. That you spent your merit on saving my life."
"I did. It was a precious merit, too."
It sounded half like a joke, half like the truth. Cassion didn't much care which.
"I'll repay it. I swear it."
"Don't repay me. Repay the Grand Duke's heir."
"But—"
"My position was the same as His Grace's. You should have died."
This time there was no mistaking it. Harad's voice was that resolute.
"…Then why did you save me?"
"What can I do? The Grand Duke's heir was against it."
As if nothing had happened, Harad's tone evened out. It was hard to tell joke from sincerity. Yet it wasn't barren either — calm, and somehow quietly threatening beneath it.
"Your life belongs to the Grand Duke's heir."
"I know."
"Then know it better still. It's the Grand Duke's heir — not Serzilla."
What was the difference? Unlike other houses, Serzilla had only one successor: the Grand Duke's heir. To serve Elaine was to serve Serzilla. Even without being told, that was exactly what Cassion intended.
"And the Grand Duke's heir?"
"Sleeping. In my bed."
"…"
"No prejudice on your part, I see? I have plenty."
Harad pulled a face of genuine disgust. Cassion cleared his throat and let the silence pass.
"She simply drank herself under the table yesterday."
She wanted to try dreaming — that was the reason. Because of Harad's request that she share her dreams with him, as payment for this latest debt.
"Drinking… did she perhaps smoke tobacco as well?"
"She said she'd kill me if I nagged her again."
"Ahem."
Cassion changed the subject.
"Dreams. They are a fascinating thing, I'll grant."
Cassion nodded along. More magicians took an interest in dreams than one might expect. Curiosity was the reason, and there was nothing to fault in that. Magicians, by their very nature, were creatures who swam in curiosity.
"But there's no way you out-drank the Grand Duke's heir."
Elaine's tolerance was monstrous. Even without resorting to aura — that was Heavenly Might for you.
"I didn't drink. I don't care for alcohol."
"Is that because you're fire?"
"You know your lore."
"Hard not to."
Cassion had never had dealings with the Red Tower. But he'd heard plenty. Magicians who carried fire were, without exception, either foul-tempered or strange.
"Must be hard to bear. Impressive, truly. They say the bigger the fire, the more fucked-up its bearer."
Cassion realized at once that Harad's temperament was no accident of birth but something acquired.
"Not fire. The Sun."
"You called it fist-fire, once."
Cassion remembered their first meeting. The day Ios of the Ivory Tower died — Harad had stood before him and declared his origin to be fist-fire.
"We were enemies then, weren't we?"
Meaning he had been preparing since that day.
"Don't tell me you even anticipated the Grand Duke's heir would come?"
"I did, as it happens. Though I didn't expect him to spare you."
Cassion clicked his tongue at Harad's thoroughness. Unlike his innate origin, Harad was a man who planned everything.
"By the way — no denial this time? You were so certain at first."
"The king's fire is black and white. So they say in the Red Tower."
Cassion had seen the white fire. And that, too, had come through the form of Projection, at a time when suspicion had already taken root.
"First I've heard of that saying."
"Just remembered it now."
"…"
"Is there black fire too?"
"There will be, once I project."
"Figured as much."
Cassion could no longer deny Harad's origin. He was the Sun, plain and simple.
"…You should be careful."
So he warned him. The Prophecy of the Moon admits no error.
"I know."
Harad looked entirely unbothered. Cassion found it exasperating, then let it slide. From experience, Harad was a man who planned. He must have thought it all through. Besides, he meant to warn Elaine as well — that Grand Duke's heir seemed to hold Harad dear, after all.
So this is how easily a man flips, like a coin.
Cassion, who had been worrying over Harad, let out a hollow laugh. The envy was gone. He was too busy drowning in boundless gratitude and honor — because Elaine had chosen him, Cassion, as a person.
"The Ivory Tower magicians had some means of reaching each other. An outer artifact of some kind — a crystal orb, perhaps."
Harad spoke up. So that was why he'd come — it seemed he meant to finish the questions he hadn't gotten to ask upon his return.
"You mean a communication orb."
"No?"
"Communication orbs aren't exclusive to the Ivory Tower. They're among the most common outer artifacts in the Outlands."
Cassion himself carried two at that very moment. One was a spare. He was a double agent now, after all — obliged to pass the Moon Tower's orders and intelligence along to Serzilla.
"It's true the Ivory Tower devised them. Their usefulness was recognized, and they spread to every tower."
Even a snot-nosed brat knew that much. But Harad, apparently, had not.
"You didn't know?"
"I'm from the continent, my friend."
"Ah."
Which made it stranger still, in hindsight, that Harad had seemed so well-versed in Outlands matters all this time.
"Give me one, then. A communication orb."
"…"
"Don't worry. It's not as if I'd cause trouble. I'm not even a knight."
"…I'll bring you one later."
Cassion nodded, forcing down a flicker of unease.
"How does this get filled?"
Harad held out an orb — a Moon artifact. It should have been filled with silver; instead it was perfectly transparent. Every last drop had gone into Harad's treatment.
"My magic won't take."
Cassion accepted the orb and channeled magic into it. Nothing. His power merely skated across the orb's surface and slid away. The orb was rejecting him.
Then, all at once, he felt a gaze on him. Harad was staring at him intently. At his left chest, precisely. His heart.
"…If magic won't do it, what chance does a heart have?"
"You never know until you try, do you?"
Harad tilted his head. He seemed entirely sincere.
"It would have to be magic from a Moon-related origin, most likely."
"'Most likely.' That's just what I was thinking."
"…"
Harad's business, it seemed, had consisted entirely of a few questions. Once he understood the orb could not be solved, he made to leave. Cassion spoke to his back.
"There's something I want to ask."
"Ask away."
Cassion's gaze dropped. Serzilla's heirloom sword, Pater, hung at Harad's waist.
"How did you get leave to carry that?"
"Won it in a bet. From Ellen."
"…What kind of bet?"
"Whether you were a magician or not."
His already crushing debt had just grown heavier. The sin of deceiving Ellen — of Serzilla's own cadet branch — was now added to the tally. And she had even trusted him…
"All thanks to you."
Harad added, insufferably. His hand slid along Pater's hilt.
His hands were dry and smooth as a child's. It wasn't only the orb's doing — Harad's hands had been like that even before his treatment. Come to think of it, so had the rest of him. Harad's body was pristine; not a trace of conditioning showed anywhere.
Which was why Cassion marveled all over again. With a body like that, the man had crossed blades with him. It meant their swordsmanship had been even. No — pride aside, it had been more than even. Harad's physique had been wretched compared to Cassion's.
"Did you build your body with your Origin, then?"
"I've been receiving nourishment from the Sun."
Cassion had never heard of such a thing, but it didn't strike him as impossible. He had seen for himself that Harad's origin was the Sun — that the Red Tower's king had dwelt in him, however briefly. The kings of the towers, those colossal origins, played on an entirely different plane from ordinary ones. And the Sun was foremost among them. No wonder it was the Red Tower. The Sun. The Outlands dared not speak that king's name carelessly.
"Still looks lacking to me."
Surprising, yes — but the change wasn't so astonishing as all that. Next to Cassion, it was a matter of class. A fifth-tier magician, even short of Sword Master, saw his physical abilities leap by orders of magnitude. As one's magic grew vast, the body bearing it grew sturdy to match. Which was exactly why Harad's swordsmanship struck Cassion as all the more remarkable.
"Who taught you the sword?"
"That's what you're curious about? Not the principle behind reinforcing a body with an Origin?"
Harad gave him an odd look. Cassion paid it no mind.
"That's what I'm curious about."
"I learned from the Grand Duke's heir."
Cassion's face twisted.
"The Grand Duke's heir has never taught you the sword."
"Oh, that was very magician-like of you just now. You must have watched her closely indeed, my friend."
Cassion's face reddened faintly.
"In that case, I'll call it self-taught. I am a genius, after all."
And Cassion nodded. He actually looked convinced — which Harad found stranger still.
"You really are like a true knight."
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"How could it not be?"
"…"
Harad gave up on understanding Cassion. Instead he turned his gaze. Out on the bare training yard, the 2nd Knight Order was at drill.
"Why don't you go over? They'd all be glad to see you."
The distance was nothing, and yet the 2nd Knight Order hadn't noticed Cassion. Even Harad had failed to pick him out at first — thanks to Cassion's presence-erasing magic. Cassion only watched them.
"Conscience pricking you?"
"…"
Even under Harad's jab, Cassion couldn't make himself move. He had deceived them until now, and he would have to keep deceiving them. If the day ever came when Cassion revealed what he was, that day would be the day Cassion died. He was bound to deceive and to devote himself until his dying breath. It was everything he himself had wished for — and yet the position of it, the need to go on deceiving his own comrades, sat in him like a stone he couldn't dislodge.
"What's the point of agonizing over it now?"
To Harad's eye, it was a light trouble. He didn't imagine the Serzilla knights would feel much betrayal. They'd land a few punches and come around. So that's how he got into the Boundary — he was a magician all along.
It wasn't his place to counsel him, anyway. He doubted the man would listen. From the outside, even the smallest things look grave to the one carrying them.
"As I said before — you got off cheap."
"That much is true."
"Enjoy it while it's cheap. You never know when the price goes up."
"…?"
"Who's to say the Outlands doesn't march south tomorrow?"
The joke had no humor in it, so Cassion didn't laugh. Harad couldn't either. The Outlands would march south in twenty years. In this life, it might come slower — or sooner.
"You know nothing of the world. So enjoy it while you can."
A week.
During that week Cassion had suffered through, Harad's days had been monotonous, if monotonous was the word — and novel, if that was. He meditated upon waking, then went to Kubel for breakfast. He taught Kubel until lunch, and in the evening sat down before the drinks table. Only, the one beside him was Elaine, not Ellen.
Whenever Elaine was briefly absent, it was one of two things: work had come up, or she had gone to see Shura.
When Harad returned to the annex, there was no sign of her. He headed straight for Kubel's annex. Elaine had grown shameless enough these days to beg her meals off Kubel.
Before the large annex stood a large figure. Kubel. His face looked somehow impatient — he was biting his nails, pacing aimless circles.
"Is the Grand Duke's heir inside?"
"Harad!"
Kubel scurried over the moment he spotted him.
"What's the matter? Did the Grand Duke's heir strike you?"
"D-did you two fight, by any chance?"
Harad tilted his head.
"Fight? With the Grand Duke's heir?"
"With Lady Ellen, I mean."
"We haven't fought."
Not once in the past week had they even exchanged their usual war of words. Aside from the absence of any new dreams, things with Elaine were smooth sailing.
"Um… I think you should go back. Right away."
Kubel kept glancing over his shoulder as he said it. That was when the annex door burst open.
Burst was the word. The door slammed against the wall — it practically flew off its hinges. Kubel groaned in despair. Ellen stood with her arms crossed, glaring at Harad.
"Why haven't you been coming out for drinks lately?"
Her voice was sharp enough to prick.
"Who?"
"You."
"Me?"
Harad pointed at his own face. Ellen nodded. Crack — a chilling sound came from her neck.
"You haven't been going out either."
They had been together every moment of it.
"What are you talking about? I've been waiting at the Footprint of the Snow Leopard every single day."
"…?"
What the hell is that supposed to mean?