The Envoy (2)

"Can I go out and play?"

"It doesn't matter... hm. No—never mind. Shura, you may go."

The envoy had arrived sooner than expected, but there would be no trouble. The delegation had gone straight to the Inner Castle, and even if something did happen, Shura was a clever child. Kubel might blunder; Shura would never be caught out as a magician.

"Back before sundown. That's all."

"Okay!"

"I'll come fetch you then."

A few guards were still posted permanently in the alley where Shura played — because no one knew when the Liberation Tower might show its face. Arika had once flushed out a handful of those rebels, but they could not afford to relax over it. That had simply been luck.

By nature, it was the strange magician who got flushed out at all — the ones Arika had dragged in back then, by all accounts, had been riffraff. Still, there was no telling when a real magician might set his sights on Kubel or Shura. Yet Arika had kept at her other duties without drowning in that possibility. Hated as she was to admit it, that was thanks to Harad. The man could tell magicians apart. All she had to do was haul in anyone remotely suspicious, and Harad would tell her whether the person was one or not.

"...Harad Iagar."

He was an uncanny man. Arika, agent of the Information Bureau, could not fully comprehend the human being called Harad. ...Presumably because her own abilities fell short.

"Is this Harad's file?"

Which meant that the eyes of that flawless person would see what hers could not.

"Yes. Everything we have on Harad Iagar."

Arika added, "Some of it may be inaccurate."

It was intelligence gathered under the Church's nose, and there were bound to be holes. The Church still kept a standing presence in the County of Iagar, where a magician had once appeared — it might well become Church ground yet, seeing as the puppet imperial house of Enberk handed the Church whatever it asked for. The dossier Ellen held had never been cross-verified, and it was riddled with gaps besides. It wasn't that no one from Iagar's Inner Castle had survived, but contact with them was impossible; the pitiful handful of survivors were all in the Church's keeping.

"It's fine. Better than nothing. I can feel him out bit by bit."

Feel out Harad. It would be no easy task — and that, Arika judged, was why Ellen's voice had dipped a touch lower. Ellen, who had spent all that time at his side, knew better than anyone what manner of man Harad was.

Harad was by no means a man to be taken lightly. She didn't mean his strength. Set aside his magical achievements, and he was still a difficult man. Had he not been a magician, House Iagar might have marched into the heart of imperial politics. That much Arika could not fathom — by every account, Harad Iagar had been an easy young master to handle. It was exactly why she had flagged the dossier's errors in advance. The young master of House Iagar and the hostage of Serzila were simply too different; you could be forgiven for taking them for two different men.

Ellen opened the dossier. Arika waited in silence, feeling like a student awaiting her grade. Pages turned slowly, but at a steady pace — until Ellen reached the final page.

Thud.

Ellen's head dropped onto the desk.

"My lady?"

Arika jolted and hurriedly studied her condition.

Not a word. She was asleep.

That was all the information Serzila had ever compiled on Harad. They hadn't needed more. What Grand Duke Aratus wanted was not the man called Harad, but the fire he carried.

"Are you all right?"

The moment Ellen woke, Arika asked, her worry plain. These sleeping fits of hers were nothing new — hadn't it happened on the way to hunt down the tunnel diggers? As though caught in a spell, Ellen would sink into sleep. Then, and now.

"...I'm fine."

Her head felt hazy — a sensation of dream and reality bleeding into each other. It was always like this after a dream.

"How long was I asleep?"

"A little over four hours."

Outside the window, the sun was already slanting low. Winter had set in.

"I'll head back for today."

"To the delegation?"

"No. I'm not meeting them this year. First, I'm going to see Harad."

The delegation's stay would last five days. If she went in her Elaine guise, those five days would be nothing but a nuisance. The title of the Grand Duke's daughter drew every eye ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the territory; even a visit to Harad would become an ordeal. Someone in the delegation might know his face, after all. Ellen, on the other hand, could come and go freely. Publicly she was merely a distant branch of the house — but so what. Ellen was a person destined to disappear someday. The delegation wanted the Grand Duke or his daughter anyway.

Arika bowed to Elaine and set off for the alley where Shura was. Elaine walked on with her eyes on the Inner Castle.

Harad Iagar. The only son of House Iagar.

Harad had been the child Count Iagar had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gotten in his twilight years, and so his worth could only be beyond price. House Iagar was no impoverished line — a capable lord, a solid knightly order, finances with room to spare. Harad had grown up wanting for nothing, and as an only child he had their love all to himself. But the Iagars had been a wise family for generations, and the Count did not misuse that love. Young Harad grew up sound.

He was a brilliant jack-of-all-trades. Capable in a dozen fields, above average at everything he touched. Sadly, that was where it ended — though only by the continent's measure. Viewed from the Outlands, Harad was a genius without rival. Born as he was, carrying the Sun.

How had young Harad regarded that Sun? Had the Iagars truly known what he was? Naturally, Arika had never been able to dig up such intimate details. It was a past no one but those who lived it could ever know.

But Ellen knew. Even if its source was a dream — even knowing that made its credibility laughable...

"There's something inside me."

Young Harad's voice was still vivid.

"What else would be in there but Mom and Dad?"

"There's a huge space. Bigger than our house — no, bigger than our whole territory. Mom and Dad aren't in it. There's just a small sun."

The young Harad of the dream had confided the Sun's existence to his parents just so.

"Forget about that. There is no sun in you."

Wise Iagars. Fittingly, the mistress of the house was every bit as wise. They let nothing show; they simply buried the thing called the Sun. If that was a problem, it was a problem. Covering it was Harad's role. All the Count and his wife could do was pretend not to know. Watching the dream, Ellen judged that young Harad covered it remarkably well — but the strain wore him down. The older he grew, the more of the world he learned, the more frightened he became. Because he had realized that the little sun he spoke of inside himself was a magician's Origin.

"It's the devil's work!"

One day, when the Church of the Moon staked a magician's corpse in the square, Count Iagar forbade Harad many things.

"I beg you. Do nothing. Touch nothing."

Harad obeyed those words well. He never went astray; he simply changed — from a young master good to everyone into an indifferent one. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The Sun, however, did not obey. Contrary to Iagar's hopes, Harad was a genius. Or rather, the Origin he had been born with was. And so Ellen could not bring herself to compare the young Harad of the dream with the Shura of reality. Their innate Origins were different — far, far too different.

"Why does it keep growing..."

The Sun grew with every passing year, until the swelling flame burst clean past his heart and out into the world. In Harad's own words, it was a seizure. An Origin peers over the edge of reality — and the larger it is, the more violent its struggling becomes.

The first seizure came at eleven. He woke to find himself lying on the floor, and the floor was smeared black with ash; the flame that had slipped into reality while he slept had burned his bed to cinders. Count and Countess Iagar cleaned up the wrecked room with their own hands. Only the two of them and Harad knew the Sun existed.

The seizures came faster as the years passed, and their reach and force grew with them. The study the Iagars had cherished for generations turned to ash — because the books had grown too difficult, and Harad felt suffocated. For that trifling reason, the Sun had lent him its fire.

"It's fine. It's fine..."

Count Iagar gave thanks that no witness had seen. But what his own eyes had looked like, reflected in his child's gaze — only Harad would ever know that.

From then on, twelve-year-old Harad shut himself inside his room. Why, then, would a maid come calling on a boy like that, with no errand whatsoever to justify the visit? Because of who Harad had been. The young master of the past had been adorable and bright — and kind-hearted on top of it, so that he'd soaked up every drop of love the Inner Castle of Iagar had to give.

"Young master?"

The young maid opened Harad's door and poked her head in.

"Go... g-get... get lost..."

"There you go again, saying things you don't mean."

The maid ignored him and stepped inside — because Harad, even as he told her to get lost, was crying.

"What's the matter? Everyone worries so."

"L-Lily..."

"Yes, it's Lily. The very Lily you told to get lost!"

Lily said it with a smile. It was a name that appeared nowhere in the dossier Arika had handed over; the Information Bureau had never identified the dead servant.

"I'm sorry..."

"Oh my. I was only teasing."

Lily was a woman who soothed you just to look at. She sat down carefully at the edge of the bed and took out a handkerchief.

"I don't know what's wrong, but please don't hide away much longer. If you won't show your face, they say everyone will give up on you."

Lily wiped Harad's tears, and little by little the handkerchief soaked through.

"Everyone's waiting for you and you alone, you know?"

Emotions must have surged up in him then. And in those emotions there must surely have been a grievance, a festering sense of wrong.

"Huh?"

From Harad's eyes, fire flowed where tears should have been. The handkerchief went up in flame as though it had soaked in oil rather than tears, and before anyone could breathe, the fire had leapt to Lily. A scream tore from her mouth, flung wide in horror.

That scream was the last testament of Lily as she melted.

...This time, too, Count Iagar smoothed it all over. The scream had belonged to Harad, who'd suffered a nightmare, and the maid Lily had gone home to her hometown. A few voices raised suspicion, but in the end it was written off as a momentary mishap.

After that, the dream flowed fast. Harad, who had killed Lily, became a wreck and buried himself deeper in his room. To Ellen's mind, that was the more remarkable thing — it meant the young Harad of the dream had been holding down a temper turned to fire by the Sun. For his family's sake, presumably.

Eight years flew past like an arrow. To Harad they must have felt like decades; to the dream, an instant. ...Eight years on, the Inner Castle of Iagar was a sea of fire. And within that sea of fire — precisely, in a hidden space beneath its floor, through a crack barely wide enough to see through — twenty-year-old Harad watched the servants die. Watched his parents' hearts be devoured.

"Ah! O great King!"

He saw the face of his enemy. The Torch that had made Iagar into ash.

The dream was more detailed than Arika's dossier — and a little different besides. The fall of House Iagar had been an event of early summer this year. A rumor that Harad had burned a servant to death had drawn the Red Tower's magician — the Torch. That was why Arika had dated Harad's killing to early this year: that he had hidden it cleanly until twenty, when the incident finally broke, because the rumor had surfaced in early summer.

But the Harad of the dream had killed the maid in the winter of his twelfth year. Lily's death back then had been covered without a hitch — far from spreading as rumor, it had never even come out within Iagar's Inner Castle. Of course, a witness might have existed. That much could not be dismissed. And yet, suddenly, eight years later? Why would the rumor stay silent then, and only erupt eight years on? Had it existed quietly all the while before that? As if. Ellen shook her head firmly. This was a Church that dug into anything touching magicians, however trivial. Iagar had even housed churches of the sun and the moon alike. Had so much as a whisper existed, the Church would certainly have combed Iagar over stone by stone.

The rumor had begun this very year — no doubt the reason the Serzila Information Bureau dated Harad's murder to its first months. Eight years. The dream didn't line up with Arika's records. If the dream were true, the rumor should have surfaced eight years ago. Arika's dossier, for all its gaps, made the better sense. Except that it named no victim at all. Arika's word, or the dream's? Which was the truth... Ellen, chewing it over, soon smiled wryly. The side her heart leaned toward was, as ever, the dream. It had been that way ever since dream and reality began to overlap. Cassion, Drott, Locke — and a Harad in the flesh who resembled the dream's Harad more than anything on paper. Ellen could no longer turn her back on the dream.

In the end, Harad defies explanation. Dossier and dream alike painted the same boy of Iagar: frail, powerless to master his Sun. But the Harad of reality was the exact opposite — calculating to the bone, risen to the 4th Circle in a bare half year. Half year or not, he had been extraordinary from the moment he met Gulen, the man ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sent to take him in. To be exact, from partway through the journey north at Gulen's side. "He suddenly came to his senses." That had been Gulen's report — a broken invalid drowning in trauma, and then, all at once, he came to. From that moment Harad had become remarkable. A man who had been a wreck — suddenly. It wasn't utterly implausible; a surge of vengeance can come out of nowhere. But Harad was not mad with vengeance. He was composed, for the most part. And he knew a great deal about magic — yet by dream and dossier alike, he had never studied magic in Iagar. Of the Boundary and the Outlands he was, naturally, ignorant. He changed overnight, and overnight became someone who knew. Harad had become a different man all at once. ...Like a man who had stepped straight out of a dream. Ellen could not interpret it any other way.

But how? That question she could not answer. From twelve to twenty. What happened in those eight years? There was a gap of eight years, and the dream did not show it. Neither did the dossier. House Iagar was exterminated; the Inner Castle survivors could be counted on one hand, and even those were in the Church's grip. Information on Iagar had grown precious — far, far too precious. Could he have gotten lucky and found a magician for a teacher? It wasn't without sense. Harad had been a frail young master: timid, shunning people. That was all. The dossier held nothing finer, and the dream was the same — rushing by, showing nothing but a boy boxed up in his room. Ellen found it maddening. Left as it was, it would end as nothing more than a skillfully woven tale, built on the past Arika had brought and embroidered with Ellen's dreams. So she had to verify whether it was fiction — or a real past with the details filled in...

"Oh. There you are at last."

Harad came into view. Somewhere in the middle of all that thinking, Ellen's feet had already carried her through the door of Kubel's annex. Kubel, seated beside Harad, was squirming for some reason — apparently because of the guest sitting across from them. He was a man Ellen had never seen before, yet she knew at a glance that he was a knight. He wore armor rarely seen on anyone in the North, and on his breastplate was engraved a crest she did not recognize.

"Greet her, won't you. This is a distant kinswoman of Serzila — a very exalted lady, mind you."

Harad prompted his guest to pay his respects. At the gilded introduction, Ellen's brow creased.

"A knight come out with this year's envoy, you see. Once upon a time, a knight of Iagar."

At that, Ellen's eyes went round.

"I am called Pelatz — one of the swords of gold-gleaming Gazdag."

What Ellen had asked for was every scrap of information on Harad. Not every scrap of information on Iagar. And yet, strangely, the name Pelatz did not feel unfamiliar at all.

"I once had the honor of serving the young master Harad."

It had been... a dream. She had heard it in a dream.

"You know a man called Pelatz?"

"Who's that, the bastard?"

"A knight of Iagar."

"My. So he died at your hand."

"Son of a bitch."

The dream in which the place-name Drott had come up. In that dream, Harad and Elaine had exchanged words like these.

"That bastard...?"

"...?"

Insulted to his face, Pelatz's expression went slack.

"You're not dead?"

She said it without thinking, and without thinking turned her gaze away.

"Haha."

Harad was laughing. Looking utterly, thoroughly pleased with himself.