A Changed Future (3)
Toremote, Commander of the 1st Knight Order, was a knight who ran hot. But never once had that fire boiled over into excess.
And yet that same commander had handpicked Delic and Pissarro to accompany Harad.
In other words, his gut had told him this was work for elite troops.
What exactly he had sensed, no one could say — but today's search was bound to be unlike any other.
A rabbit?
Elaine, who had been mulling it over, shook her head. No, it wouldn't be a rabbit. It would have something to do with the capture of three magicians.
I should have tagged along, after all.
In this form it would have been hard to justify — but as Ellen, she could surely have bullied her way in.
Elaine smacked her lips. Her instincts were telling her: Harad was going to run into something big today. In truth, it wasn't instinct so much as regret.
Sounds like fun.
"I'm bored."
Good food... no — that wasn't it. Neither Kubel nor Harad was around. Shura was off playing with the other children in some alley. In short, every last shred of fun had evaporated. All that remained to her now were liquor and tobacco. Granted, she was wearing Elaine's face at the moment, but that changed precious little.
It was the first genuinely free day in ages.
"Ah."
Elaine lifted the cigarette to her lips, then tucked it back into her breast. Even lighting it felt like too much trouble. Normally, Harad would have lit it for her.
With the wind thoroughly taken out of her sails, she kicked at the blameless floor of the training yard. She had come out because there was nothing else to do, but as expected, no appetite for training stirred. What a joyless business.
"Bored."
"What could possibly be so boring?"
A voice drifted over, unexpected. She turned her head and there stood Moresz Palaz — closer than she'd expected.
"If you're going to arrive, announce yourself."
"And when, exactly, would I ever have managed that?"
Moresz had never once announced his arrival. Elaine had always sensed him first. Today, she hadn't.
"What were you thinking of, that your mind wandered so far afield?"
...She had been thinking of Harad. Elaine shook her head hard.
"Nothing at all."
"Your face says otherwise. Did you come out to train today?"
"Regrettably, no. I came out because I was bored."
"If you're bored, then train."
There was something almost pleading in Moresz's voice. Elaine, who already shirked training as a rule, had been shirking it even more of late.
"Now that I think of it, Sir Moresz — you've stopped calling me out for slacking off lately, haven't you?"
"...I told you at the time that I had gone too far. Did I not?"
"Mm. That's right. And I apologized too — promised I'd cut down on my absences."
"You did not cut them down."
Elaine's absences had only multiplied as the days went by.
"You've nothing to say to that?"
"I trust that everything you do, my lady, has its purpose."
"Mm. Not a very grand purpose, though."
"Might I ask what it is?"
"I'm trying to learn to live however the fuck I please."
"...Pardon?"
Moresz's face scrunched up all at once, and he stretched his neck out like a turtle poking from its shell to ask again.
"Was what I just heard correct? Live... live how, exactly?"
"You heard me perfectly."
Elaine pointed at her own crotch and snickered.
"What of it? I'm the sole heir, and the sole one born with Heavenly Might. The thought simply came to me."
"..."
"Disappointed?"
Moresz's face had gone the color of dirt — the face of a man watching a dear friend slide into ruin.
"...I am not disappointed. Though I confess a lament does escape me — how did it come to this?"
"Not the reaction I was expecting, then."
"What reaction, exactly, were you expecting?"
"I thought you'd be disillusioned with me."
However the fuck I please.
Moresz was the second person she had confessed that resolve to. And since the first had been Cassion, Moresz was, in truth, hardly different from a first.
"Why on earth would I be disillusioned with you?"
Moresz was angry — a rare thing. He had only just realized how much Elaine had been suffering, all this while.
"Whatever you may do, the Grand Duke's daughter remains the Grand Duke's daughter."
"..."
"There is no one in the North who would hate you for having changed."
"You can't be sure there isn't."
"If there is, I will cut him down for you."
As if to prove his sincerity, Moresz laid a hand on his sword hilt.
"It may be advice too late, my lady, but there is no need to make this so heavy."
"..."
"You are Serzila's sole heir. It is, yes, a position that demands you bear great weight — but it is not a position that demands you abandon anything."
Elaine found him astonishing in that moment. Never had she imagined he would take it so easily in stride.
"Why else would I never have chased you when you ran off, my lady — though I could have caught you in a heartbeat?"
Now that she thought of it, for all his pleading, Moresz had never once pursued her himself.
"His Grace attacked the imperial palace itself — and he remains Grand Duke still. Not because there is no other Serzila."
Even if another Serzila drew breath, Aratus would be Grand Duke all the same.
"It is because he is Serzila. And so, my lady, are you."
"..."
"You may do everything you wish to do. You may grasp everything you wish to hold."
Serzila. When desire stirs, act. When greed rises, take.
"...You might have told me a little sooner."
"I did not know you had been suffering so."
The Moresz nearest to her hadn't known.
"And yet that friend of mine knew at once."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Talking to myself."
Elaine smiled, faint and bitter.
Of course, Harad had offered that counsel to Ellen — but even so. Had Elaine stood there in Ellen's place, he would have said the very same words.
For that counsel chimed with what Harad had told her on the night she'd met the rabbit.
'Why live by everyone else's eyes?'
Elaine recalled his words and smiled bitterly. It had been the right answer.
'And it was this simple.'
There are bonds that only form once words are spoken. Such had it been between Elaine and the North. The Elaine of the dream had never managed it. She had become Grand Duke all the same — and gone on aching, and regretting.
"In any case — thank you for saying it. It's a comfort."
"I am glad to hear it."
"Then I'll be off now."
"Pardon?"
They had finally crossed paths at the training grounds after so long, and she was just leaving?
"You're not going to train?"
"The mood has left me."
"..."
"Part of me feels I ought to. But I am Serzila — and so it seems I mustn't."
Elaine vaulted straight over the wall.
"My lady?"
And she ran into Cassion.
"Not busy?"
"I stopped by briefly — there is something I must tell you."
She had asked it half in jest, but Cassion's face was utterly serious.
"It concerns the Prophecy of the Moon."
Elaine's face sobered in turn.
"You may already know this, but—"
"Speak. Even if I know it, I'll treat it as if I don't."
The Prophecy of the Moon. It was a prophecy concerning Harad.
There had been eight swamps in all.
Once the last of them was behind them, Harad warmed Pissarro with flame. As the moisture dried, the dark-red filth caked over his whole body flaked away. What it revealed was Pissarro's skin, raw and swollen crimson — the swamps were poison as much as mire, and he might as well have soaked himself in venom and climbed back out.
"You all right, Pissarro?"
"No lasting damage."
Pissarro said it as if discussing a stranger's health. He counted the search more important than his own condition.
Almost enviable. The more Harad saw of him, the finer a knight Pissarro proved. Regrettably, he couldn't poach him — without Pissarro, the 1st Knight Order would likely fall to pieces. Not that the man would ever have accepted. To Pissarro, the 1st Knight Order must be comrades and family both.
Harad had no confidence he could ever grow that close to knights himself. He would try harder than in his past life — but that was all.
"That'll do."
Pissarro brushed off the last of the filth and pulled his clothes back on — leather from a 4th-tier magical beast. Delic's were the same. Only Gulen wore the hide of a 3rd-tier beast.
"Because you're the youngest, I take it?"
"What we're issued only goes up to 3rd-tier."
Anything better, you had to get for yourself. It was tradition in the Order.
"Laying hands on a 5th-tier beast's hide is one of my dreams," said Delic, working through the rations Kubel had handed out.
Serzila's knights were mad for beast hide. The higher the tier of the hide a knight wore, the less aura it drained.
"Have you ever tried skinning an Outland magician, by chance?"
The swamp went abruptly silent.
Urrk. Kubel, who had been eating in silence, gagged.
"...Leather? Not skin?"
"Sounds plausible, no?"
It wasn't an idea Harad had ever tested in his past life, but it didn't strike him as meaningless.
"Flaying one alive might even be worth a try."
"..."
"Ah. No — the yield would be poor. Unless it's a 5th-tier magician, beast hide would be sturdier. A 5th-tier beast's hide would beat a 5th-tier magician's skin any day of the week."
Delic and Pissarro muttered to each other under their breaths.
"...Are you serious?"
Gulen stared at Harad the way one stares at a magical beast.
"A joke."
"..."
"I was checking how that sat with you. Glad to see your stomach's settled."
Harad patted Gulen on the shoulder. The young knight's color had lifted considerably — which meant the "advice" had done its work.
"By the way, this really is delicious. Another world from our mess rations."
"Seconded. Mage Kubel — you're a man of many uses."
Delic, ration finished, smacked his lips as though it hadn't been enough. Pissarro and Gulen wore much the same expression. In that moment, Kubel had captured the knights with his cooking as well.
Harad looked back over the swamp they had crossed.
"This can't be the way they came."
The terrain here was far too treacherous for Ink and Mirror to have passed through. The magicians they were hunting must have used another route — whether a proper road, or simple luck that carved them a path, he couldn't say.
A road, hm.
Every tower kept its own roads, and among them were infiltration routes that ran all the way to Serzila's Great Wall. That much had been shared within the knight orders back when Cassion's fate hung in the balance. Officially, the credit went to Harad — the story being that he had learned it through Outland magicians. Not entirely a lie. Cassion, after all, was an Outland magician too.
"However many times I hear it, I can hardly believe it."
Like Delic before him, the knights found it hard to accept that infiltration routes from the Outlands reached all the way to the Wall.
"We've none of our own, after all."
It was less a denial of reality than a bruised pride.
"Well, it's hardly your doing. Blame the imperial family."
"Exactly right. The imperial house is narrow-minded."
Harad said it, and Delic thumped his agreement. Granted, it had been Grand Duke Aratus who struck at the imperial house first — but calling the palace petty was no slander either. The imperial house of Enverck forgets a kindness, but never a grudge.
By the time Pissarro's skin had settled somewhat, the search party rose to its feet.
"Sorry to have held you up."
"Think nothing of it. It was ordinary ground, after all."
"'Ordinary,' he says."
At that, Pissarro gave a hollow laugh. Harad had just described the spot where they'd rested — swept by the Boundary's peculiar chill and its razor winds — as ordinary. And it was: so long as that was all there was, Harad's surroundings stayed safe even without a thread of magic spent.
"You are a special one, Harad."
"I hear that often."
Pissarro had called him not Mage Harad but simply Harad. It meant they'd grown closer than at the start. Knights, it turned out, were the sort of people who only came around once they'd been through something with you.
The search party walked on. Delic and Pissarro knew where they were going.
The ground where Cassion had killed Compaso of the Ivory Tower.
Cassion had called it a zone of nothing — nothing but earth dead and black. It should be easy to recognize. The spot itself, though, had yet to come into view.
He came a long way.
Harad marveled anew at Cassion's stealth. No doubt that very stealth was what made him so fast. Where others advanced by cutting down every beast in their path, Cassion could push straight ahead, noticed by no one.
I'd love to order him to run the length of that watchtower's smoke trail sometime.
If anyone could reach the end of that smoke, perhaps it was Cassion. But it would remain an experiment untested. Grand Duke Aratus had no intention of turning Cassion loose in the Boundary.
Out of fear, perhaps, that he'd slip past the Moon Tower.
The Grand Duke's obsession with the Moon Tower ran deeper than Harad had imagined.
What in the world happened between him and the Moon Tower?
How long had they walked?
"Harad."
Delic and Pissarro, on point, halted. Beyond their boots the land changed — the black-dead ground Cassion had spoken of.
"Not quite what he described."
And indeed, contrary to Cassion's account, it was not empty. Far off, something rose in a low bulge from the blackened earth. It looked like a hut, but the material was singular: raised not of wood, but of something black.
"An Outland structure?"
"It's magic."
It was no structure, as the watchtower of flame had been. The magician had wound his magic about himself like a hut, warding off the Boundary's chill and wind. What Toremote's instinct had spoken of must be this magic — or, more precisely, this magic's master.
"There's a magician inside it."
Harad was impressed by Toremote's instinct all over again. This was why no one could afford to dismiss a Sword Master.
"A considerable operator, I'd wager. No telling how long he's been here, but the very idea of holding position inside the Boundary isn't one just anyone entertains."
It was proof of exactly that much reserve.
The hut of magic was small — barely room enough for one. Magic that could drift far from its caster was rare, and this was not that kind.
"He hasn't spotted us yet."
The magician was surely within.
"First contact is our chance."
In his heart, Harad wanted to wring information out of the man — but that would be arrogance. He assumed the magician inside that magic to be 5th-tier.
A Sword Master and a 5th-tier magician were bracketed in the same class of threat, but the two were plainly different. Unlike the former, a 5th-tier magician was not a superhuman at every waking moment. He needed preparation. He needed time.
"I'd like to make the first move right now — but I can't. Not yet."
The instant he acted, he'd be seen. He could unleash a Projection, or drop white flame — but the white flame was still too slow. The magician would surely have time to answer. Harad's tier had not yet caught up. That was why.
"We kill him before he can achieve Manifestation. Together."
Delic and Pissarro nodded. The two knew how to bring down a 5th-tier magician. The method was simple — just as Harad had said: kill him before the Manifestation. The way Ellen had faced the lake magician on the Deep Sea's road.
But simple was not the same as easy. Ellen had failed that day. She had cut his heart clean in half, and still the Manifestation came. Delic and Pissarro were slower and weaker than she had been. So they could only hope their quarry was of a lesser grade.
"And if we fail... we'll think about that when it happens. You two are used to making do, I expect."
He glanced back. Gulen and Kubel wore looks of grim resolve. No one there looked like a man planning to wait behind — Gulen, perhaps understandable, but Kubel, too.
Harad smiled bitterly. Kubel, that timid giant, stood on the line between life and death. It was for Shura's sake.
"Your smoke will surely be of use."
Whether Gulen would be, who could say — but Kubel would help. Without question.
"And me?"
"Go."
Harad ignored Gulen entirely and spoke to Delic and Pissarro. The two turned their heads straight ahead. The magician was still nowhere in sight.
The instant Delic's and Pissarro's boots first pressed the black-dead earth, Harad followed.
Behind him, heavy footfalls thudded against the ground. Gulen's and Kubel's.
...And then the footsteps were gone.
In the same breath, Harad's brow drew tight. Delic and Pissarro were no longer in his sight. He looked back — Gulen and Kubel were gone as well.
Magic?
Since when?
Five strides.
Harad had been counting his own sprinting strides with perfect precision. Two strides in, Delic and Pissarro vanished. Four strides in, Gulen's and Kubel's footfalls fell silent.
The magic had vanished too.
There was no hut to be seen.
Harad waited a moment. Nothing changed. No attack came — and that was the important part.
His brow eased, degree by degree. And then he took a single step.
The hut swam back into view. From within it, someone was walking out — a young woman draped in a drab, ash-gray robe.
Ash-gray.
The color of the Ivory Tower. Harad knew it at a glance.
"Harad — 3rd-tier of the Red Tower..."
"So it was that mouth of yours that hoodwinked our Ios, was it?"
"Dear, dear. That blockhead was remarkably easy to deceive."
The woman's eyes went wide.