Steel (1)
He couldn't blame Elaine.
From where she stood, she'd had no choice — she must have said it letting herself be won over, playing along to the end, because there had been nothing else left to say.
Which meant the persuasion had failed.
It was a different case from Cassion's. Rick had no grounds to be spared. Coerced he might have been, but the harm he had done Serzila was beyond denying — and the decision to let such a man live had been Elaine's alone.
It would never have worked on him. Sympathy. That was an emotion an absolute ruler could not afford to carry — reason enough that Aratus the Grand Duke would never have accepted it.
So Elaine, too, must have been out of options. She had needed to throw something — anything — at him.
Still. To think she would actually go through with it.
If he won't listen, then I won't speak to Father again either — the sort of advice only a child would give. And Elaine had taken it.
It meant she relied on Harad to exactly that degree. So Harad laughed.
The pressure had bruised his innards and his mouth tasted of blood, but the joy ran deeper than the pain.
"Laughing, are you?"
Aratus the Grand Duke's eyes slit into something murderous.
Harad dragged the corners of his mouth straight down.
"I'm crying, sir."
"…You've lost your mind again."
"Not on purpose, sir — it was a joke. I truly never imagined the Young Duke would actually say such a thing."
The corners of the Grand Duke's eyes did not relax. It meant this was not the answer he wanted.
"To say it once more, Your Grace — it was the Young Duke who decided to spare the tunneler."
"She is not a child who should be making such decisions."
The advice hadn't been the problem. The problem was Elaine, who had taken it.
"Begging her meals off some two-bit magician. Pardoning a spy. Groveling for a magician's life."
Things the Elaine of mere weeks ago could not have imagined. Every one of them a change that had begun the day she met Harad.
"So it's you who has been ruining that child."
Aratus had called Elaine his child. Grown though she was, she was evidently still the apple of his eye.
"Do you truly believe that?"
The Grand Duke said nothing. This was a man who knew of Elaine's deviations.
And perhaps knowing was the least of it. Perhaps it hadn't been Elaine who began the deviation — perhaps the Grand Duke had suggested it himself. Harad suspected as much.
Elaine had been known to the world as a boy from the day she was born.
It had to be the Grand Duke's doing. Who would ever think to disguise an infant? That the world knew Elaine as male could only have been Aratus's design.
But why? Nothing came to mind. It wasn't as though Serzila's history had never known a Grand Duchess.
In the North, strength was what mattered. Not something as small as sex.
In his past life he had never asked. There had been no chance to. Only on the eve of his regression had he learned Elaine was a woman.
And this was hardly the moment to ask. Too soon. What mattered now was that Aratus was letting Elaine's deviations slide. The Elaine obsessed with being the perfect Grand Duke must have been weighing on him.
"If you ask me, she is a far better sight as she is now."
The Elaine of old had been too heavy a burden — and she had felt that weight herself. That was why Ellen had been born.
Harad believed the line between Ellen and Elaine needed to disappear. And that day was not far off.
"Pining over a magician, is it?"
"You are the one who had me brought here, Your Grace."
The change had begun with Harad. But it was Aratus who had dragged that magician north.
"Climbing, I see."
The crushing pressure swelled. Harad forced himself upright regardless — it had never been heavy enough to kill him in the first place. Which meant the Grand Duke, for his part, didn't think so badly of Elaine's changes either.
"Then I'll take that as approval."
The Grand Duke liked capable men with gall. With ability enough, a man could cross the line now and then — hadn't it always been so? The North was that kind of land.
"We found the tunneler."
"And you think that earns you credit?"
The subject turned. For all his words, it meant he didn't think badly of Elaine's changes at all.
"It is not your credit."
It had been Shura's, Aratus pointed out. Had Shura not been a magician, they would never have found Rick and Isota.
"I talked you around on the very thing you opposed, Your Grace."
"The child opposed nothing."
"How very cooperative of the child, then."
The Grand Duke's eyes twitched. His aura drifted through the annex without pressing down on Harad. He disliked saying it aloud — but it was an admission.
Still, there are limits. She crossed the line in broad daylight. Such was the standing a child held in the North. Before a child, even Aratus the Grand Duke trod carefully.
"Will you be asking for another annex?"
The Grand Duke's gaze tipped upward, as though counting the annexes still standing in the Inner Castle.
"I have no intention of going that far."
Harad had no intention of bringing Rick into the Inner Castle.
"As I understand it, the Young Duke has already settled the tunneler's arrangements."
Rick would live quietly — in Arika's keeping or the Information Bureau's on ordinary days, following Elaine's or Harad's orders when it suited. That, presumably, was where Elaine's report had ended.
"You racked that brain of yours."
Thanks to it, a sliver of Harad's credit had survived.
"I was for killing him."
"Why."
The Grand Duke asked it shortly — yet the interest in him was unmistakable.
"However little choice he had, he brought harm to Serzila."
Harad spoke as though looking down on the matter from a height. Those who stood above others were bound to strip sentiment from their judgments.
"Lofty thinking — for a hostage."
"Believe it or not, I was once heir to a county."
"A mere count of the Empire."
Scornful as it was, the Grand Duke laughed — a shallow breath of a laugh. The answer seemed to have satisfied him. Perhaps, now that Elaine had begun to show emotion, he had come to feel the need for someone to hold her reins.
"And the tunnels — what will you do with them?"
Every last location had been mapped. By tomorrow, even the securing would be finished.
No — knowing him, it might already be done. Judging by the Grand Duke's expression, that was the likelier bet.
"Will you seal them?"
"We won't."
"Then?"
"Leave the knights posted there. For guillotine duty."
The brokers who had swung for Ellen's neck on his return had handed Harad the idea. There was no need to seal the tunnels at all. Left open, they would become a trap for catching the rats called Outlands magicians.
"It will be good experience for the 6th Knight Order."
The 6th Knight Order was less an order of knights than a corps of cadets — swordsmen judged not yet ready to be committed to the Boundary. Guarding the tunnels would amount to little more than taking the head off whatever magician poked it through, but even that meant something. When else would they ever behead an Outlands magician?
"So I'm to understand you mean to keep making free with the tunnels."
"Might I use more of them?"
At that, the Grand Duke laughed — a great, rolling laugh. He had chosen the right answer.
So it had been a test.
Harad's usefulness lay in the Boundary — not along the well-worn search routes, but in the Boundary beyond the tunnels. To put it in a figure, Harad was a lantern. A lantern to light the unknown called the Boundary — and there was nothing suspicious about that lantern. Harad was a magician, and a magician in the Boundary was the most natural thing in the world.
A lantern that could be cast aside at any time.
The Grand Duke meant to use that lantern to find something in the Boundary — something tied to the Moon Tower, and to his own Imperial Sabbatical. Until the Duke found what he wanted, Harad would be made to pace the Boundary end to end. Had Harad answered that the tunnels should be sealed, the Grand Duke would have been sorely disappointed.
"Your credit, then. Is there anything you desire?"
Satisfied, the Grand Duke spoke of a reward.
"I hear you have collected trophies as well," Harad said, looking about the room.
What the Grand Duke had gathered was not only heads.
Outlands items.
An object steeped in magic power was treated much as a magician was — because a magician had made it. Of course, such things were hardly common. On the continent, magicians skilled enough to craft magic tools were few; the Outlands was another matter entirely. Hence the name. Most magic tools in existence had first seen light in the Outlands.
Serzila's distaste for them ran comparatively shallow. This was land near the Outlands, and a people long accustomed to magicians did not find a magician's handiwork ominous. Even Elaine, who believed magicians to be devils, had savored her small rebellions through Outlands items, hadn't she?
A devil. In truth, that, too, was a notion Serzila should never have entertained. A magician was no devil — only an enemy to be killed.
Because of the Imperial Sabbatical, no doubt. It was why Aratus had caused that incident in the imperial palace. And so this generation of Serzila seldom crossed paths with an Outlands magician.
Harad was the first magician Elaine had ever laid eyes on. As if, in any ordinary age, she wouldn't have met them as often as she ate. He'd heard it had been so in Aratus's younger days. For generations, Serzila had fought countless magicians at the Boundary.
Which meant Elaine's want of real battle was the Grand Duke's doing — because the man had up and attacked the imperial palace out of nowhere.
A man ought to clean up his own mess. Harad, without thinking, was glaring at the back of the Grand Duke walking ahead of him.
In his past life, that Grand Duke had built a hut in the Boundary and whiled away his retirement there — until one day he vanished without a whisper. In this life, Harad had no intention of letting it play out the same. When Aratus retired in the years to come, Harad meant to keep him pinned to the Inner Castle. Through Elaine, of course.
"Quite the nerve in those eyes."
"They came out defective, sir."
The Grand Duke seemed to keep eyes on the back of his head. Harad dropped his gaze at once. A heartbeat longer, and it would have been a dare — an open invitation to fight.
The Grand Duke stopped at the residence's uppermost floor. A small attic, its entrance heaped with dust — untouched, evidently, for years.
The Sabbatical's doing as well, no doubt. The Grand Duke's hunts had ceased from that point on. Not only his — every Sword Master in Serzila had become a creature barred from the Boundary.
The Sabbatical. Back then — twenty years ago. Why had the Grand Duke attacked the imperial palace?
He was no fool. If anything, a wise one — so strong that thinking had never been required of him. That was all.
"Do not go seeking to know."
"As you say."
Aratus was uncanny as a ghost.
"There would be nothing worth learning anyway."
Meaning they were simple spoils of war, presumably. It sounded like: don't waste your time on them.
The Grand Duke opened the attic, and the dust came pouring out in a rush, burning away around Harad in tiny bursts of sparks.
"Nothing here of any use, I'd wager."
"So it would seem."
The Grand Duke was right. There weren't many Outlands items. His way of hunting had likely been the problem — anything short of extraordinary would have broken apart, unable to endure his blade. Which meant, viewed the other way, that every item carried here had earned its place. Every one had survived even the Grand Duke's sword.
Counted, the attic held ten Outlands items in all. One of them commanded the eye. Too thick and too long to stand up or to lay down, it was wedged between the floor's left corner and the ceiling's right — and looked at closely, it was no pillar but a sword. A magnificently blunt sword.
"An Outlands item said to have felled a dragon."
The Grand Duke spoke like a hunter showing off his kill. An unexpected side of him.
"That's a heavy stretch of the truth."
A dragon. A beast of legend — a mythical monster that existed only in the Outlands' old tales.
"Dragons exist."
That, too, was unexpected. The Grand Duke appeared to believe in them — though even in the Outlands, he'd heard, believers were scarce.
"Have you ever seen one yourself?"
"No."
"I see."
Some remnant of a child's heart seemed to live in the Grand Duke. Harad let none of it show as he surveyed the items.
Most Outlands items could serve magicians alone; they needed an infusion of magic power to stir at all. Now and then there were exceptions — special pieces that did not. The diversion items Elaine amused herself with were of that kind.
Just as I thought. Fitting that they should rot up here. Everything in the attic needed magic poured into it to work. Everything but the dragon-slaying sword.
And that one had no practical use at all. Fanciful story aside, the sword was too large by half — a blade for a giant, not a man.
The rest looked no more useful: a giant's armor crushed in on itself, a staff severed in two, a mass of fused scrap, a headless mannequin, some strange object kneaded into mud….
Not one whole thing among them. This attic, Harad suspected, hadn't been made to keep usable items. It had been made to boast of the Grand Duke's strength.
The last item was a ring. Bar the dragon-slaying sword, it was the only Outlands item in the attic left whole. It was small and crude — plain gray, without ornament or pattern — and it fit his little finger perfectly.
Harad closed his ringed left hand around a sword hilt. No interference. Nothing felt foreign to the touch; the ring was simply that thin.
He fed his magic into it, and in an instant a strange sensation bloomed at the ring and spread through his entire body — the feeling of being gripped fast by something unseen. The hand he looked down upon was the same as ever, yet it felt different. Just then the Grand Duke held something out: a dagger.
Harad pricked his own palm with it, lightly. Nothing. He pressed harder, and steel sang against his hand.
Like steel. No illusion. His whole body had turned to steel — or to something of a hardness near it.
"An iron of a man wore this once," the Grand Duke added.
A magician of the Cloud-Iron Tower, then. So the word steel had not surfaced for nothing.
Defense. It was exactly what he lacked. Most magicians were fragile on the defense — magic followed its Origin, and the Origins suited to defense were a breed apart. The Sun was not among them. Harad's body was, at best, that of a knight.
And a knight who could not wield aura, at that. In the end, Harad was a magician and nothing more. The Sun had no talent for hardening the body with aura as knights did.
To grow that durable, he would have to climb to the 5th Circle. Even then, a Sword Master's aura would be beyond him — but still. He could blunt an attack; he could not receive one. At least, the magician called Harad could not.
"I will take this one."
The ring might not amount to a spare life, but it would stop at least one grievous wound. And there was room to refine it, too. Iron — a nature with an old affinity for fire.
"Then why is this one still whole?"
"He died walking."
…Meaning the ring's owner had died simply for standing near the Grand Duke.
Then, abruptly, the Grand Duke fell into step beside him. The floor was wide enough; there was no need. …And Harad understood why the moment he walked out of the residence.
"How did it go?"
Ellen had been waiting.
"…So that's what that was."
"Pardon?"
The Grand Duke's stride had been a threat. Elaine would have read it; Ellen never would — a warning to keep his distance from her.
He had no intention of heeding it.
"Shall we have a drink?"
"But you don't drink."
"You don't like it?"
"I meant it's even better."