The Tunnel Digger (3)
It was magic.
Thud. The instant that sound left Isota's body, Harad felt it—a distinct flare of magical power.
"Her heart burst."
Elaine, crouched over the corpse, sounded genuinely thrown.
"Did she take her own life?"
"Someone burst it for her."
"Who?"
Elaine swept an exaggerated glance around the room.
There were only three people here—Harad, Elaine, and Rick. Not one of them was capable of the trick of bursting a heart and nothing else.
"It would be a magician of whatever organization Isota belonged to. One whose magic isn't weakened by distance."
"There's magic like that?"
"It's magic, isn't it."
There was no need to try to grasp that vagueness. Only Elaine stood to lose anything by trying.
Isota had been a magician who treasured her own life above everything else. So that was why they'd kept someone like her around. She'd come with this kind of measure built in.
Harad crouched before the corpse. A thin, long flame rose along his index finger.
It split Isota's chest open. Szzt. The cut seared itself shut the moment it parted, and so not a single drop of blood sprayed.
Blood had pooled inside. Harad evaporated it—blood alone, nothing more, with surgical precision. The charred dregs drained downward, and there between them lay the ruptured heart.
Burst from the inside out.
The shape of it was not unfamiliar. He had seen it once before, in his previous life.
A Promise.
The magic of a magician whose Origin was the Promise—a spell that carved words into another person's heart, and when those words were broken, the heart tore itself apart like this.
Or, to be precise, the words carved within it did.
A finicky magic, and one bound by considerable constraints: the words took hold only if the target affirmed them.
Not that Isota, by the look of it, had ever known the words were inside her at all.
"Do you know what it is?"
Elaine asked as Harad rose to his feet.
"It's magic I've never seen before. But it will be the Liberation Magic Tower's."
How many organizations could a magician even belong to, on this continent? He had expected as much before he ever questioned Isota. He had merely wanted to hear it from her own lips.
No. This is as good as hearing it from her.
If anything, it was ironclad proof. A Promise magician belonged to the Liberation Magic Tower.
"...The nerve on them."
Elaine clicked her tongue. She seemed to be picturing Kubel and Shura.
"Which is exactly why they founded the Liberation Magic Tower."
What magician on the continent would even think to build an organization of his own? The Liberation Magic Tower was, true to form, a crowd with gall to spare.
They had their fingers in more pies than I imagined.
It had caught Harad off guard as well—that the ones who first dug the tunnels would turn out to be the Liberation Magic Tower.
So my ignorance wasn't limited to the Outlands after all.
He had regressed, and all for what, if he still knew so little. Apparently there was a great deal he didn't know about the Liberation Magic Tower either. He couldn't help it; his paths had rarely crossed theirs.
If it were fifteen years from now, perhaps.
When the Outlands marched south—maybe. But what the Liberation Magic Tower got up to in this era, he simply did not know.
"What will you do with Rick?"
Rick was still asleep. Having lived all this time as an old woman, his strength had plainly worn thin.
The loose ends he had failed to catch in his previous life. Harad had no intention of sparing Rick either. With him dead, the tunnel problem would be solved completely—one of the decisive causes of Serzila's fall would simply cease to exist.
"I don't want to kill him."
But Elaine wanted Rick alive.
I have no grounds to object.
Caprice breeds suspicion—the suspicion of whether this person can be trusted any further. For Harad, returned to the past, that was a troublesome suspicion indeed.
Until Elaine became aware of her previous life, Harad had to guide her, to prod her along. Which meant consistency. He could kill only those magicians who were wicked, or criminal, or had brought harm to Serzila.
Rick had brought harm to Serzila. But he was also a victim who would have died had he refused to dig.
"Do as you wish, my lady."
"You're certain I may?"
"There's no need to persuade me. You are the Grand Duke's daughter."
The regression belonged to Elaine. Harad kept that fact engraved in his mind. Every moment had to be for her sake. If Elaine wished it—or if it would spur her on—Harad would oblige gladly. Not that he intended to indulge her blindly; the regression had not been granted so she could be spoiled. Change had to come with it, whether outward or inward.
"One question. Is it pity?"
"...Shameful as it is to admit, yes."
"Then that settles it."
Elaine's eyes went round. She seemed not to understand. To Harad, it was a deeply satisfying answer.
Pity.
And toward a magician, of all people. It was a thought that belonged to Ellen more than to Elaine. Proof that Elaine was learning to be honest.
This was why Harad hoped the gap between Elaine and Ellen would keep narrowing. The Elaine of my previous life was closer to Ellen.
That woman had been Elaine's true nature. But the Elaine of the previous life had shown that nature to Harad alone. To the world, Elaine had been the perfect Northern Grand Duke. He hoped it would not be so in this life.
And that, too, must be one of her regrets.
For Harad, cast back into the past, there was a duty to erase Elaine's regrets. Live as you fucking please. It was the extension of that advice Elaine had once wanted to give her past self. Elaine was to live exactly as she pleased—and, in the end, without regret.
Only then will I have something to say when the time comes.
When Elaine one day recovered her memories of her previous life. When that day came, Harad wanted to be able to hold his head high before her. Only then could she demand why he had dumped the regression on her—and hit him for it.
By the time they left the fur shop, dusk had settled over the sky.
Rick had not woken by then.
"I'll leave him in your care."
"I'll report the moment he wakes."
Elaine handed Rick over to Arika. She meant to keep him alive, but had no intention of bringing him into the Inner Castle, nor of turning him loose. From this point on, Rick would live under Serzila's watch and management.
Elaine and Harad walked side by side. Harad looked to be thinking of nothing at all, and watching that profile of his, Elaine let out a hollow laugh.
My position is the exact opposite of when we met Kubel.
Back then, it had been her side calling for the kill.
Is it because of Sir Cassion?
No. It was because of Harad.
Elaine laughed at herself, hollow again. She could feel, anew, that she was changing. She didn't think it a bad change. Prejudice had simply fallen away—she had simply become able to tell one person from another.
"What will you do tonight?"
Elaine mimed going for a drink.
Harad shook his head.
"I have to report to His Grace the Grand Duke first."
Elaine had settled on sparing Rick, but in truth, the one who would decide that was Grand Duke Aratus.
"I'll report this matter myself."
Elaine was not the sort of superior to shove responsibility onto those beneath her. Harad nodded. When she was offering to take the hard part off his hands, there was no reason to refuse.
"Though I doubt he'll listen to me. His Grace dotes on me, true, but he's not a man who heeds my every word."
Elaine seemed to be recalling the business with Cassion. Back then, if not for Harad's persuasion, Cassion would have died at Grand Duke Aratus's hand.
"It's why I've never once set foot properly inside the Boundary, even at this age."
The hunts were one example. Only on hunt days could Elaine enter the Boundary—and even then, only alongside the knights conducting that day's search. Grand Duke Aratus, by contrast, had been crossing into the Boundary countless times since his teens. Alone, at that.
Granted, that was in the days when the imperial family did not yet interfere.
In any case, Grand Duke Aratus doted terribly on Elaine. On Elaine and no one else.
"Then threaten him. Tell him that if he won't listen, you won't speak to Dad from now on."
"...Dad?"
She was not some child.
Elaine was so dumbfounded she couldn't even laugh.
"Say things that make sense."
"Isn't he your dad?"
"...Have you gone mad?"
"If you think it won't work, then consider it a fool's errand and try it just once."
"I won't."
Elaine ignored him and walked on.
It would work like a charm, though.
Harad swallowed the words. The advice had been sincere. The Elaine of the previous life did get what she wanted that way. Granted, that was a few years further along than now—the older Elaine had learned exactly how to put Grand Duke Aratus's love to use.
"The truth is, it wasn't only because of pity."
They had walked a while when Elaine spoke up suddenly.
"What I said about not wanting to kill Rick."
Elaine stopped walking.
"On the way here, I dreamed. Draped over your back, that is."
Harad stopped with her.
Dreams. No subject in this world weighed more heavily on Harad.
"I met Rick. Me, that is. In the ruined Flowerbed's Flesh."
"In the dream, did you know that Rick was the tunnel digger?"
"No. It felt like we were meeting for the first time."
As expected.
Harad nodded slowly. If the Elaine of the previous life had known that fact, she would never have kept it from him.
"But he didn't seem like a bad man. I told Rick I could help him. And he said he'd already been given help."
Harad knew at once who had given it. Ios. The Ivory Tower's fourth-tier. That paint-mage had saved Rick out of Isota's hands.
"Unlike the dream, the Rick of reality seemed never to have received it. So I wanted to help him."
"I see."
"Do I sound mad to you?"
"I think it's possible."
There was the Regression Constraint to consider. Harad had no proper answer to give.
"The night before, I dreamed of visiting the capital. You were on standby nearby, you see."
Where a young magician was saved.
Harad nodded slowly. That event lived in his memory. From five years hence, Elaine would be summoned to the imperial capital on every one of her birthdays—the Empire's way of coaxing Serzila closer. Harad was dragged along from six years on. At Elaine's insistence.
"The night you met Sir Cassion. I dreamed then, too. His Grace was holding Sir Cassion's severed head, saying it was a magician's head."
Harad's eyes gleamed. This he had never heard.
"When Kubel and Shura entered the Inner Castle. I dreamed then as well. You and I were talking about Kubel and Shura."
Elaine pressed on.
"In that dream, Kubel belonged to the Liberation Magic Tower. A demon so vile the Church and the Empire had warrants out for him. That gentle soul, no less."
"A load of nonsense, then."
"A load of nonsense. Yes, that's what I thought. Shura dead, of all things. Branded a magician, that is."
In the previous life, Shura had been branded a magician and burned at the stake. She had been thirteen. It was why Kubel had become the Heart Addict.
"She died in a village called Drott, apparently. Do you know where that is?"
"First I've heard of it."
"First I'd heard of it too. And yet the place exists. In the Empire's west, in the very spot the dream put it."
Elaine looked straight at Harad. Her gaze was grave in the extreme.
"So Cassion truly was a magician."
"......"
"Rick. I already knew his name."
Before Rick had spoken his own name, Elaine had called it first. She had been conscious of the dreams without ever realizing it.
"The price of Sir Cassion's life. In exchange for it, you asked me—tell me of the dreams I dream. You called them something very important to you."
"I did."
"What were you after?"
Cassion. Drott. Rick. Those names had planted a wrongness in Elaine. She had begun to doubt her dreams.
"You appear in every dream I have. Ever since I met you, that's how it's been."
Even had he wanted to, Harad could not give himself away. He sensed that to do so would be to stop his own heart. The Regression Constraint was warning him not to affirm it.
"Is it your doing?"
"It is not."
Harad answered without a beat's hesitation. It was not his doing. It was Elaine's. The Elaine of the previous life.
"Are the things I dream truly dreams at all?"
Elaine's face was a tangle of confusion. There was little Harad could say to it.
"I don't know what dreams are. I'm a magician."
"......"
"But were I the Grand Duke's daughter, I would mind those dreams. I couldn't tell you why, but parts of them match reality."
If it were Drott alone, perhaps—but Rick's name as well. The dreams were undeniably useful. Someday, a moment might even come when they helped.
Elaine nodded slowly. But hers was not the face of someone convinced.
"What I want isn't their help. It's what they are."
"On that, I have only this to offer. Keep dreaming. If it confuses you—dream until you know."
Harad's face, as he said it, was graver than it had ever been.
"Until I know......"
Deep enough that the words would carve themselves into Elaine's mind.
That drink never happened. He waited at Kubel's annex, but neither Elaine nor Ellen came. No doubt busy persuading Grand Duke Aratus. Or she'd fallen asleep again.
Harad headed for his own quarters. His steps toward the bed were remarkably light. It had been a day that earned it.
She's finally begun to take the dreams seriously.
No—finally wasn't the right word. Shura, dead in Drott. From the moment Elaine dreamed that, the doubt must have taken root. It was far sooner than he had calculated. It meant every word and every action of Harad's since his regression had carried meaning.
The sooner, the better.
The faster she dreamed, and the more of them she had, the more Elaine would change. Someday she would reclaim the self she had been, and the more she did, the smoother the road ahead would grow. Serzila would not fall, and the conquest of the Outlands would not end as a mere long-cherished wish.
And—
Crunch!
Then it happened. Without warning, Harad's new-model body plunged straight down into the bed. Crrrack. The bed shattered to pieces. His body burst through the frame and hit the floor—and the floor shattered too.
Boom!
Harad's new-model body tore through the ground floor's ceiling and crashed down onto it.
"So it was your doing."
Grand Duke Aratus looked down at Harad, crushed flat against the ground.
"...If it's the tunnel digger you mean, didn't I spare him?"
"And if I don't spare him."
The voice was heavier than a lump of lead.
"That she won't speak to me from now on, she says."
...So she actually went and did it.