The Envoy (3)
Bastard.
They had exchanged words like that in his previous life. Back then, Elaine had truly loved teasing Harad, because she believed the more she needled him, the closer they grew. Like a child poking fun at the one they liked.
Pelatz had come with the envoy. Gazdag — that gold-swollen house formed the backbone of the delegation. But it was not Gazdag that caught Ellen's attention first. It was the name Pelatz.
She's recalling the dream — not the envoy.
It was proof that she was confusing dream with reality. A good sign, though most would have feared for her sanity. Ellen was the exception. She needed to confuse the two even further — until the day she understood that the dream was a reality all its own.
"My apologies. It seems our young lady hasn't quite slept off the drink. She's fond of her cups, you see."
Harad drew out the chair beside him and rapped its back, and Ellen sat down as though spellbound.
Her daze lasted only a moment. Ellen recovered herself almost at once.
"Ah — sorry. I'm not quite sober yet."
The tunneler Rick, it seemed, had been of help. This was not the first time someone from her dream had walked into the waking world.
"I-It's quite all right."
In truth, drunk or sober made no difference. Pelatz was a mere knight the Gazdags had brought along, and Ellen was a daughter of Serzila's blood — the very house the Gazdags needed to charm. However Ellen chose to behave, enduring it was simply his lot.
"You served as a knight of Iagar, then."
"Yes, that's right."
Ellen leaned slightly forward, her eyes gleaming as though she had never once been flustered in her life.
"How long were you with Iagar?"
"Three years ago, by the count... that is, until the year the young master Harad turned eighteen."
"I wouldn't know about what happened that day."
Pelatz's eyes went wide. His gaze swung toward Harad — because Ellen had just put the day the house fell into her mouth.
"It's fine. It isn't as if swallowing your words could make it never have happened."
"B-But—"
"Which is why you're a fortunate man, Sir Pelatz."
Harad smiled warmly. If Pelatz had not resigned his commission as a knight of Iagar, he would have died that day along with the rest of the house.
"...You've changed a great deal, young master."
Pelatz's eyes wavered. His face looked almost moved.
"Thank goodness. So the rumor that you were a demon was baseless after all, young master."
It was Harad who had turned the inner castle of Iagar into a sea of flames — that, at least, was how the territory came to know it, though in truth the hand behind the fire had been the Torch's.
"Don't tell me you actually believed such a rumor?"
"H-How could I? Not the young master Harad."
Pelatz spoke as he glanced around him. The annex of Serzila — the stronghold that faced the Outer Realm itself. No magician could set foot inside. The very existence of this room proved that Harad was no magician.
"Just as I'd expect of you, Sir Pelatz."
Pelatz's eyes wavered once more as he looked back from surveying the annex. Harad obliged him with another warm smile.
In truth, his memories of Pelatz were hazy. The man had resigned his post and left while Harad was still in seclusion — which was why he had failed to recognize him at once when they crossed paths at the leather shop.
"You really have changed so much."
"I was bigger, I suppose."
"It hardly seems a change of the outside alone."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. Back in the day—"
Pelatz's eyes drifted upward, as if searching the past.
"What was he like back then?"
Ellen cut in without warning, her head thrust forward like a turtle poking from its shell.
"It's quite all right," Harad said to the flustered Pelatz. "That I'm staying in Serzila as a guest at all is entirely thanks to this young lady. So speak at your ease — hold nothing back."
Pelatz let out a small sigh. It was a shallow, fleeting thing.
"...The young master Harad was... introverted. No — quiet. He was a quiet gentleman."
"And he disliked going out?"
"Y-Yes. That's right."
Harad lowered his gaze a touch. Pelatz's fingers had not stopped moving — cautious, wary little motions.
"Was that his nature from the start?"
"Not when he was very small. He was terribly bright and lively, back then."
Ellen pressed him with question after question. Curiosity was in her nature, but this was exceptional even for her. The questions leapt out one after another, as though she had arrived with a list prepared.
So what she was hiding all day was information on me.
So that was why Arika was pulling late nights every single day. Ellen had clearly demanded Harad's information from her — and no doubt read the report cover to cover on the way back from dropping Shura off. It was hardly surprising. Elaine, in the previous life, had demanded the same of Arika. Though back then, they had looked through it together.
"Here, have a read. No — actually, just listen."
No — to be precise, Elaine had read it aloud beside him, whether he wanted it or not.
"My, you were cute as a child. And now look at you. Creepy."
"..."
"Tsk, tsk. Honestly. You shut yourself in your room over a little thing like this?"
"Cursing at a child — is that a custom of the North?"
"It's you I'm cursing."
"...Fuck."
Well — so what. None of it stung. Harad stood tall, unashamed.
"You really were a sad little creature, you know."
"That only makes it more impressive. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold back?"
"Then why can't you manage it now?"
"Back then there was no pest at my side, needling me day and night."
"You don't possibly mean me?"
"I do."
And the information Arika had gathered in the previous life had been far from complete.
It would be no different this time.
Few indeed had survived the fall of the house. Iagar had been occupied by the cult — which meant Harad alone remembered the past with any accuracy.
"First kill at twenty, hmm. Not especially precocious."
Looking back, that had been a jest that doubled as a comfort — a clumsy way of saying: don't let it weigh on you.
"It was twelve. Not twenty."
"...Truly?"
"Truly."
"Then why did the rumor only surface at twenty?"
"Huh?"
Come to think of it, that question had existed back then too.
Ellen's and Pelatz's voices settled gently over the annex. Harad listened in silence, now and then giving Kubel's rigid shoulders a light pat. Kubel, understanding it for praise, managed a shy, awkward smile. A little disappointing, perhaps, but not bad at all — Kubel was tense, certainly, yet he betrayed no opening.
Pelatz.
Young Harad had rarely been able to keep company with knights. People frightened him, and knights frightened him more — they carried the power to take a young magician's head in a single stroke. And just as Harad knew little of him, what Pelatz knew would be limited in kind: scraps gleaned from other people's gossip, nothing more.
"What about adolescence? They say it can come as early as thirteen."
Growing up did not mean adolescence inevitably followed. For Harad, walled up in his room, it was a season that never arrived.
"You didn't go outside even then?"
"Never, that I know of. He kept to his room. He did emerge on occasion, but only ever to wait upon the Count."
The longer the questions and answers ran, the more at ease Pelatz appeared. His thick fingers, which had kept winding around one another, had gone still at some point without his noticing.
"Then did anyone ever come calling on Harad?"
"Not that I ever heard. The servants did look in from time to time, but... he never received them."
Pelatz said this with a sidelong glance at Harad.
"How long did that last?"
"It was the same right up until I left Iagar."
"What a dreary young master. No fun at all."
"Haha. Everyone in Iagar loved him all the same."
Before long Pelatz was even laughing. It was a pleasant laugh — his voice deep, unhurried, quiet in volume.
"And yet I told you to hold nothing back."
Harad slipped the words in, quiet as a blade.
"Pardon?"
"The servant, I meant. Didn't I meet one of them, just once? The one who came into my room."
"Ah—"
Pelatz froze, mouth agape. It lasted only a heartbeat.
"You mean the rumor that the young master killed a maid? The young master I knew would never do such a thing. And he is certainly no demon."
"Is that so."
"Yes. The demon is the vile magician who attacked Iagar."
Pelatz added this, and his fingers had quietly resumed their motion.
"The stain on your name will wash out before long. I know the truth of it, of course — and has even Serzila not received you as an honored guest?"
"I thank you for saying so."
Pelatz smiled and gestured toward Ellen. Harad smiled along with him.
"Enough about me. Let's hear about you."
"Y-Yes, of course."
Pelatz answered, his eyes straying — and following them, Harad found a clock.
"...My, is it that late already? Forgive me. I ought to go make my report to the head of my house."
"Ah. You mentioned stopping by the leather shop to have armor made from monster hide."
"Yes. I'm told that here in the North, monster hide serves better than any metal. And the head of my house chases after any fashion that so much as stirs."
Pelatz gave his armor a light tap as he spoke.
"Doesn't the envoy depart in five days?"
"It does. But armor of monster hide is all the fashion in the imperial heartland just now."
"I see. That, I didn't know."
"You could hardly be blamed for it. You have kept to the North alone for half a year now, haven't you?"
"True enough. This place feels like home to me now."
"How can you say such a thing? The Count would be heartsore to hear it."
"'Heartsore,' is it. And toward whom, I wonder."
Harad murmured the words under his breath — so faintly that—
"Pardon?"
Pelatz asked him to repeat it.
"Nothing. Just thinking aloud."
With the man seated before him, memories turning over, talk flowing back and forth, his recollection was waking piece by piece.
"Now that I think of it — you had a son, didn't you? Around my age, as I remember."
"...You remember him?"
"Well, as you said yourself earlier — I took a keen interest in everyone around me, didn't I?"
Harad beamed. Pelatz, by contrast, had gone rather stiff.
"Gazdag of gold. A house of plenty. Your old age is surely seen to, and your daughter's future shines bright. Now then — what is Locke doing these days?"
Locke. At the sound of his son's name, the stiffness climbed all the way into Pelatz's face.
"...Locke dreams of becoming a knight."
"A son who means to walk his father's road. You must be proud."
"I-I really must be going now. Forgive me."
Pelatz rose from his seat.
"About the rumor that I burned a person to death this year."
"...It was baseless rumor."
"Quite right. Baseless."
Pelatz could not make his feet move. Fire stood across his path.
"I burned her to death when I was twelve."
"W-What are you saying—"
"My, what sharp ears you have."
The flames licked at Pelatz's ear. Szzt. The lobe stretched long, melting like wax.
"How did you know the one who died was a maid?"
"..."
"Even Serzila's Information Bureau doesn't know who she was."
"Oh."
Ellen's mouth fell open, her eyes going round as the realization belatedly landed.
Serzila's Information Bureau had never managed to determine the victim's sex. They had simply lumped the dead together as 'a servant.' In the dream, she had been a maid — Lily. That little maid had died wiping the tears from Harad's face.
Lily.
Harad put the dream-maid's name into words. That the dream was true mattered little just now. What mattered was that Pelatz knew a truth only Harad was meant to know.
"You're less rattled than most would be — it's a rare magic, after all."
...And the truth of it was that what had startled her was not Harad's magic at all, but the sheer firepower behind it.
"At the time, I felt nothing strange about it. It was the truth, after all. Rumor or no rumor, the fault was mine."
"..."
"But looking back later, something felt off. Why would the rumor surface only eight years afterward, out of nowhere?"
Ellen nodded. It was the very question she herself had harbored only moments ago.
"Why did you do it?"
Harad seemed certain that Pelatz was the one who had spread the rumor, and Ellen did not doubt that certainty. In the past half year, Harad's judgment had not been wrong once.
"I-It's a misunderstanding—!"
"Don't imagine for a moment that I can't find Locke."
Pelatz's eyes bulged. For an instant they slid toward Ellen — and Ellen gave a small, easy nod. A wordless assurance: if Harad wished it, Serzila's Information Bureau would dig up Pelatz's daughter.
"How did you come to know of her death... no. That's not the question."
How Pelatz had learned of Lily's death was a meaningless thing to ask. Iagar had already fallen.
"Why did you tell no one back then?"
"...Locke. My son, too, was a magician."
In other words — the same kind. Toward Iagar, the house that had birthed a magician, Pelatz had felt pity and kinship.
"Was that all?"
"I judged Iagar the safest place to be."
The Count of Iagar had poured painstaking effort into concealing that Harad was a magician, and Pelatz had meant to shelter beneath that count's wing.
"Then why did you leave?"
"...My son entered the Liberation Magic Tower."
Pelatz had wanted to live as near his son as he could, and for the boy's sake he needed money. Gazdag was wealthy enough to be counted among the richest houses in the Empire.
"And?"
"...An order came down for my son to make contact with a magician of the Outer Realm."
It was much the same order Isota had received. The Liberation Tower sought a line to the Outer Realm.
"There is a magician who will come running the moment there is fire, they said — and that magician was the biggest catch of all, so—"
"The Torch. So you sold me out. For your son's merit."
For his son, Pelatz had dug up an old memory. A rumor allowed to slip — and the Torch came lured into Iagar. He had manufactured the very opportunity for his son to meet the Torch.
"Now it begins to make sense. Were I in your place, perhaps I'd have done the same. Every merit the boy earned made him that much safer."
Harad spoke as though sorting through his own thoughts. He looked calmer than expected — even the wavering flames felt almost gentle. Ellen found that strange. He had cursed Tyrell Aquins out of nowhere, after all.
"So — did your boy manage his great deed? The Torch was no small find, after all."
"..."
"Well. I'll know soon enough, once I ask him myself."
Harad spoke as if he meant to go and find Pelatz's son — and Pelatz's head came up.
"...I was not the only one."
"Right. There may well have been others who knew, besides you. Father was never good at hiding things. He was far too upright a man for that."
Even without Pelatz, the rumor might have surfaced all the same.
"I-I will hold my tongue for the rest of my life."
"I'm sorry — I'm not a man alone in this world."
Harad smiled faintly. His gaze lingered a moment on Ellen. He was thinking of Serzila's safety.
"I have a son! A boy in the same position as you, young master!"
"I'll tell Locke myself. That I was the one who killed you."
"...?"
"He shouldn't have to spend his life searching and straying, the way I did."
The calmly flowing fire melted the face of Pelatz, whose eyes were still stretched wide. Down his throat it poured, flowing on into his armor.