The Quill (1)
Pelatz's son, Locke, was a magician — a magician belonging to the Liberation Magic Tower.
"The Rebel Faction, most likely."
The regular clientele of Russell's leather shop were mercenaries. In the North, perhaps, things might have been different — but an imperial knight had no business in such a place. Which meant Pelatz hadn't come looking for monster-leather armor at all. He had come to meet Isota.
Isota had a quill.
A magic tool that made communication across vast distances possible. Naturally, that distance had its limits — the communication orb Cassion had handed him was no different.
"The contact must have failed, so he came to see the situation for himself. Or he came to deliver something."
The Liberation Tower would have known by now that the tunnel brokers had been executed. Why else behead them out in the open, in the plaza, for all to see? The beheading hadn't been mere spectacle. It had been a warning.
"Either he came in his son's stead, or Pelatz himself had ties to the Liberation Tower."
Perhaps, finding himself headed that way anyway, he had offered to run the errand for the boy. Pelatz was a man capable of anything for his son Locke.
"Of course, the latter is far more likely. The Liberation Tower is far too secretive an outfit to entrust its work to outsiders."
Being a gathering of magicians, the Liberation Tower was a closed circle. That said, not every one of its members was a magician. Ordinary folk who shared their creed existed, rare as they were — and most often, they were kin to the tower's own magicians.
"Gazdag, I'd wager, has no part in this. An envoy draws far too many eyes."
They might have turned that very assumption inside out and used it as cover, of course — but who could say. Continental magicians were seldom so bold. The odds were that this had been Pelatz's crime alone.
Gazdag.
The name sat awkwardly on his tongue. It meant Gazdag had not been among the places that raised their banners in his past life, seizing the Outer Realm's southward march as their moment. A man chews over his enemies and his traitors far longer than over blameless allies.
"I'd like to have seen his face, mind you, but not at the cost of the hassle. It won't be him regardless... Are you listening?"
He had been saying it for Ellen's benefit — that this affair left no reason to meet with the envoy. Yet no answer came. He turned his head to find Kubel weeping, tears streaming freely down his face.
"Such a thing happened to you..."
Come to think of it, Kubel had known only that Harad the magician had been taken hostage. The details had never reached him. It wasn't anything important — a past that changed nothing whether Kubel knew it or not.
"...Are you all right?" Ellen looked sheepish as she asked it.
"Of course. Is there a reason I wouldn't be?"
The fire had been precise. Pelatz had burned away to nothing, yet the armor that had wrapped him remained whole. Proof that Harad had not lost his reason.
"But he was your enemy."
"My enemy is the Torch."
Harad's measure was a clear one. His enemy was the Torch Mage — and the Outer Realm, which in his past life had broken the North and ground it under heel.
"I told you — I understand. Pelatz's choice had its own logic. To someone, it was perfectly rational."
The rumor was bound to surface sooner or later, no matter when. If anything, what deserved wonder was that it had stayed buried for eight whole years.
"Even so. Don't you feel any anger at all?"
"I do. I simply hold it in."
The Torch. Truthfully, he could leave that debt unpaid and be none the lesser for it. For the Harad who had regressed, what mattered was Elaine. And after her, the erasing of her regrets.
"...I'm sorry."
Ellen, who had been biting her lip, spoke in a small voice. She had meant to satisfy her curiosity — her doubts about the dream had driven her. Dredging up the whole story was an achievement, if it could be called one. But at the same time, it amounted to picking at a raw wound.
"I never imagined it would turn out like this."
"Neither did I."
"..."
"I'm not reproaching you. I was merely startled."
He had never expected the questions of his past life to be answered like this.
"The way I see it, what you owe me isn't an apology. It's a little smugness."
The smugness of thanks to you, I finally learned who'd been spreading the rumor, didn't I.
"But..."
"And you needn't apologize for digging into my past, either. That's how I learned the truth."
"...How did you know?" Ellen's eyes had gone round.
"One look is all it takes."
Harad smiled gently. Ellen did not smile back; something still seemed to weigh on her.
"But you're the one who brought Pelatz here."
"I did."
"...You already knew, didn't you? That Pelatz was the one spreading the rumor."
She had meddled for nothing. Ellen seemed unable to shake the thought loose — because before she had ever arrived, Harad had already been sitting across from Pelatz.
"I see. A fair thing to think."
Harad nodded slowly. It was an easy misunderstanding to make.
"There are three reasons I brought Pelatz here."
"...?"
"Kubel needed a real fight."
Pelatz had been a knight. Through him, Harad had meant to toughen Kubel's nerve.
"I met Pelatz at Russell's — no, Isota's leather shop. The kind of shop whose regulars are mercenaries. No place for a knight to frequent, and it doesn't even deal in monster leather."
Monster-leather armor was in fashion, so he'd claimed. It was the first Harad had ever heard of such a thing. As if continental knights would wear something like that.
"So I suspected Pelatz was tied to Isota."
"But he's a knight."
"I get along well with knights."
"Serzilla excepted."
Ellen drew a firm line between Serzilla and the Empire.
"The world is a wide place. A magician's friend or comrade isn't necessarily a magician himself."
Just as Ellen said, Serzilla was indeed a singularly special land — but even so.
"Every so often, someone takes a magician's hand. Some trade with them; some try to use them, or end up used."
To borrow their phrasing, a magician was a bungling devil — the powers outlandish, yet the one bearing them, in the end, only human.
"Family, lovers, friends. Those are the most common reasons a person takes a magician's side. And in fact, Pelatz was a magician's father."
Had Iagar not been the same? That was why Harad understood Pelatz's choice.
"Well. Even so, such cases hardly abound. They're the rare exceptions."
The Order never stands idle. To side with family was to side with a devil.
"...And the last reason?"
"Pelatz remembered me."
That was the greatest reason of all.
"Scarcely anyone in this world knows my face."
From a young age, Harad had been kept within four walls. He had seldom stepped beyond the Inner Castle, let alone the territory itself. And when Iagar was exterminated, Harad — the one who had burned that Inner Castle — was believed to have perished with it. The Order does not broadcast the faces of dead magicians to the world; it merely certifies the death of a magician named Harad, nothing more.
"Moving about as plain Harad is one thing. Harad of Iagar is another."
That was why the Harad of his past life could appear in public as Elaine's escort knight. Few had known him to begin with, and with the years piled on top, he might as well have been a new man. No one recognized him, much less connected him to Iagar.
"And yet Pelatz recognized me. Not Harad the man — Harad of Iagar."
To the Order, Harad Iagar was a dead magician. And Pelatz had laid eyes on proof that he lived.
"Which left me with a duty to seal Pelatz's lips."
Whether Pelatz knew the truth or not, whether he had spread the rumor or not — Harad would have had to kill him regardless. Pelatz had introduced the very possibility that Harad's survival would reach the ears of the Order or the Empire.
"...You meant to kill him from the very beginning?" Disbelief was written plain across Ellen's face.
"There were gentler ways, I suppose — appealing to the heart. But I would likely have killed him all the same. I've never cared for uncertainty."
"..."
"All you did was add one more line to the list of reasons Pelatz had to die."
"Disappointed?"
"No."
Ellen spoke as though exhaling a long-held breath. She did not hesitate — that would have been a discourtesy to Harad.
"I understand. It was a choice made for Serzilla's sake, not only your own."
He was not a man who stood alone. Harad had said as much earlier — the other half of the pair was Serzilla.
If Harad's survival came to light, the Order would tear into Serzilla as well. In his own way, Harad had been protecting Serzilla. His choice, then, had been a rational one. Only... it was a pity, all the same.
When Harad had resolved to kill Pelatz, he had not yet known the truth. Never mind Pelatz's position — the man had hidden the truth, after all. But to Harad, Pelatz should have been a welcome face. And that was the person Harad had meant to kill from the very start.
"...Would you have killed him even if he had been a good man?"
"I would have. I'm not a good magician."
Harad named himself a bad person, and Ellen hated hearing it. As she worried at her lip, Harad turned to Kubel.
"So, Kubel — from here on, you'll have to be even more shameless."
Kubel's expression was grave. But it was not, in the end, the look of a man disappointed in Harad. The feeling written on his face was much like Ellen's own.
"The more often you're found out, the longer grows the list of people you'll have to kill."
"A bad person doesn't worry about others."
At Kubel's words, Harad broke into a bright smile. "You really are a good person."
Ellen scowled. Kubel had beaten her to the punch — worse, it was the very thing she had meant to say.
Her mind spun into high gear. She had to offer some comfort, and if she could, something better than Kubel's... Then her eyes met Harad's, and her mouth opened on pure reflex.
"Well — anyone can be a bad person, I suppose."
"Dear me. So I truly am a bad magician."
And at that, Harad laughed. A bigger laugh than the smile he had shown Kubel.
Crouched low, Harad studied the armor that had wrapped Pelatz. He meant to take it apart, piece by piece.
"You know how to strip armor, too?" That, of all things, had surprised Ellen.
"...Just what do you take me for?"
"Nothing. I'm right, aren't I?"
Putting a suit on was another matter — but taking one off? A single look was enough to get the feel of it. A duller man might have struggled; Harad had always been quick to catch on.
"Knowing how and being practiced at it are two different things."
If this were his first time seeing the mechanism, he might have fumbled. Harad's hands undid the armor without a single hitch. This was not the touch of a man who had removed a suit once or twice in his life.
And yet Harad had never worn armor in his past. He hadn't been close with the knights of Iagar, either — when it came to magicians, knights bristled far more readily than any servant.
It chafed at Ellen. Pelatz. The man had known a fair share of Harad's past, but he had resolved none of her questions. How had Harad — once nothing but frail — grown into this...?
"I'm usually the sort who gets the hang of a thing after one look. It isn't as though this is difficult."
Harad dismantled the armor as though it were nothing at all. He stripped away the chainmail beneath it, then the thick garment under that — and from within the clothing, something emerged. A small crystal orb.
"A communication orb."
It was smaller than the Moon Tower's orb Cassion had handed him. The smaller the orb, the shorter its reach, Harad added.
"Every communication orb carries its own color."
The one from Cassion had been a quiet, subdued silver. Pelatz's, by contrast, was a dull grayish-white.
"Once, I found a communication orb in the dwelling of one of Ios's comrades. It was this exact color. Grayish-white is the Ivory Tower's color."
The Rebel Faction of the Liberation Tower had secured itself a means of reaching the Ivory Tower.
Harad smiled, satisfied — the unburdened smile of a man who had finally untied a knot that had long refused to give.
"What will you do now?"
"I'm thinking of paying a visit to the Grand Duke's heir."
"Why?"
"To ask whether she's been dreaming."
"..."
Dreams. Harad was fixated on dreams. And there was nothing the least bit frail about a Harad like that. He was the very image of the Harad from her dream — not the Harad of the days when she was the heir, but the one who had attended Elaine once she became Grand Duke.
"...Could it be that you dream too?"
"Afraid that's the wrong answer."
A deep smile spread across Harad's face. A sly one.