The Quill (2)
The sabbatical was an amusing punishment. On its face it was an act of imperial clemency; in substance, it was fear of Serzila.
'He made them rebuild the imperial palace, and all he got was a sabbatical.'
It meant the imperial family was watching Serzila's mood. They dared not impose anything harsher, for who knew what a displeased Grand Duke Aratus might do.
'And yet he actually honors the sabbatical. Curious. That is not a temperament built for endurance.'
Grand Duke Aratus was not a man inclined to such patience. He would sooner have started a war. Of course, had any true sign of war appeared, the imperial family would have scrambled to appease him. If Serzila played the madman — turned its back on the Outlands, abandoned the Great Wall, and marched south — the empire would have had to brace for staggering losses. Perhaps even defeat.
That was why the empire, hand in hand with the Order of the Sun and Moon, kept Serzila in check. The empire found Serzila burdensome. At the same time, it ached to bring Serzila to heel.
'Greedy, as ever.' Harad clicked his tongue. It was not a greed beyond comprehension. Enberk was the master of the empire, and Serzila merely its vassal.
"Worse than scarecrows, the lot of them."
Past-life Elaine had once called the imperial House of Enberk exactly that. Harad had agreed wholeheartedly. The emperor's devotion to the Order of the Sun and Moon was devotion past all reason. Then again, perhaps it was Serzila whose standards were too high, and Enberk was not so incompetent after all. The imperial nobles followed Enberk loyally and worshipped the Sun and Moon devoutly, after all.
To the regressed Harad, it was a hypothesis not worth a second thought. What mattered was Elaine, and the regrets she had carried. In the crudest terms, so long as the Outlands were repelled and the North remained standing, the empire and the Order could rot for all he cared. Truthfully, even the North...
'No.'
It took someone of Grand Duke Aratus's or Elaine's stature to dismiss such things as worthless — the empire was still the empire. The Order was no different. And the faith the empire and the continent clung to would undoubtedly prove useful against the Outlands.
'If only it were wielded well.' But he had no confidence in wielding it so. He was hardly idle enough to labor for the continent's sake. And in the first place, there were limits to what Harad, a magician, could do.
'It should be Elaine who does it.' Considering that she had shoved the regression onto him, the empire and the Order ought, in the near future, to become the burden of an Elaine who had recognized her dreams for what they were — her past life.
Harad knocked at the door of the heir's mansion. He did so because, asked where Elaine was, Ellen had answered that he was sleeping at the mansion — and then, naturally, she had departed on some errand or other.
"H-hii...!"
"Long time no see, Hi-Hiren."
Hiren — the maid who had once come within a hair's breadth of serving in Harad's annex — opened the door and nearly leapt out of her skin.
"I'm told the heir is inside. Ah — we do have an appointment."
"B-but...!"
"It could hardly be a lie."
At Harad's words, Hiren nodded reflexively.
"H-he's upstairs!" she blurted, with such force that every servant nearby turned to stare. Yet there was no wariness or hostility in their gazes. At some point, they had simply accepted Harad as a man.
'A magician, no less.'
Harad let out a hollow laugh. This was why the North was ignorant — and this was why Elaine could never have stopped loving it.
"Much obliged."
"It's Hiren!" she cried again. The nervousness was written all over her, but it sprang from unfamiliarity, not fear. What they had accepted was not a magician. It was Harad.
"I'll be sure to remember it."
That was why, in his past life, he had learned all of their names by heart. Just as Elaine had.
"The room at the very end!" Hiren shouted as Harad started up the stairs, having belatedly realized she had never told him where it was.
'Spirited, that one.'
The voice of someone scolding Hiren to keep it down faded by the time he reached the second floor. Hiren's consideration was, in truth, wasted. Harad could have walked the heir's mansion blindfolded.
"Go to my room and fetch me something to change into."
"...?"
"Oh. Quick, aren't you. But why empty-handed?"
"It caught fire on the way here."
"Haha. You madman."
That was how mercilessly past-life Elaine had driven him. Her summons spared neither day nor night.
"What is it? Hiren came by looking for me earlier."
"Put out the fire."
"...?"
"Sing a song too, if you're bored. Until I fall asleep."
"Haha. You madman."
Harad came to a stop before the door he had once burned to ashes.
"My lord."
There was no need to raise his voice. Elaine's ears caught everything regardless. It was one of her few virtues.
"I'm bathing!"
The voice rang out from within, hurried in a way that was nothing like her. The disguise, it seemed, was not yet complete.
'An outer-realm trinket with an activation delay?' It was not. However simultaneously they set out, Ellen had always been the first to arrive at their appointed hour.
'Ah. She has to change, of course. The clothes she wore as Ellen must be hidden.' The hiding was the delicate part. Stuffed away carelessly, they might invite suspicion. Not, of course, the suspicion that Ellen and Elaine were one and the same person — it would take a truly spectacular imagination to suspect that.
'A man caught hiding a female relative's clothes and undergarments in his room. Utterly revolting.' That, no doubt, was what Elaine feared being taken for.
Harad waited a respectable interval before stepping inside.
"I told you not to come in!"
Elaine shielded his body. He had been on the verge of pulling on a shirt.
"What is there to fuss over? We're both men."
The sight was strange, and unpleasant. The unpleasantness ran deeper. He knew perfectly well she was a woman — and yet. Blushing in a man's body.
"You shared a room with a man often enough, didn't you?"
"We did not change clothes together."
"Regrettably, I'm the opposite."
"How unfortunate."
"If you knew that, then get out."
Harad left without a word of protest. Stay any longer, and she seemed genuinely liable to lose her temper.
With her out of sight, the unpleasantness dissolved — and a strangeness he had long forgotten came rushing back.
'We bathed together often enough.' A far cry from the Elaine of his past life.
'Is it the youth?' The twenty-year-old Elaine, it seemed, still lacked a certain thickness of hide. The Grand Duke Elaine had been a man's man among men.
"Can you see them? My muscles."
"Yes."
"Yours are... just enough to please the eye."
"I mean to build them further."
"No. Don't. This is exactly right."
...Or had it not been so?
"I dreamed of your past. In a dream, that is to say."
Elaine was speaking of the dream she had had that day. It had not been a pleasant one.
'How novel.' Harad's past — every piece of it already shared with the Elaine of his past life. There had been no secrets between them. At least, none on Harad's side.
'I told her everything in the past life. And now it goes and shows her the past firsthand.' He felt flayed open, his guts laid bare. Seeing a thing with one's own eyes was another matter entirely from hearing it told.
'A far more sinister trinket than I gave it credit for.' The regression pebble. That item was meddling far more than he had imagined — with the regressed Harad, and with the dreaming Elaine alike.
"Was the dead maid's name Lily?"
"It was."
Harad did not deny it. The feeling of his past being pried open was not one he could wave away with empty comfort... yet neither was it so unpleasant. Because it was Elaine.
"I knew it. You are using magic to make me dream."
Elaine was trying to pick up the very conversation they had had when she was Ellen. The tension was absent — absent to an absurd degree. Even if there were no chance of discovery, still.
"The Sun knows no such vagueness."
"You say I'm wrong?"
"Yes."
Elaine's lips kept twitching. She plainly disliked the wrong answer. Apparently she had no other theories in reserve.
"But why am I the one doing the guessing? Do you even know what the dream is?"
"I never asked you to guess. You started that quite on your own, my lord."
"……"
Keep having the dreams — that was all Harad had ever said on the matter. There was nothing else that could be said.
"Why would I show you my own past? It is hardly a thing to boast of."
"Don't say that. It was a past to be proud of — genuinely so."
Harad's eyes went round. Those were not words that mouth should produce. That Elaine, offering comfort.
"Young you did well. Impressively well."
"So you do know how to say such things."
This openly kind Elaine left Harad at a loss.
"What do you take me for? When have I ever spoken ill of anyone?"
"Fair enough."
Come to think of it, it was true. This life's Elaine had almost never rubbed him the wrong way. The past-life Elaine had had a rotten temperament — soured through by a life she had never been allowed to live on her own terms.
'It must be the age. Not yet twisted.' The twenty-year-old Elaine did not seem soured at all. If the regression had borne any fruit, it was this. Elaine's regrets were, unmistakably, being erased one by one.
"So. Am I to receive the delegation, then?"
He had already told her, as Ellen, that there was no need. Elaine asked like a perfect stranger. Still, she did seem to be making some effort at the charade.
"If I ask you to meet them, will you?"
"If it is your request, there is little I would refuse."
"Oh."
"In exchange, you will grant me one favor of my own. Later."
"Then it is settled. Do not meet them."
"I was joking. I shall go meet them."
"I was not joking."
"...Did you truly come all this way just to hear about a dream?"
Elaine looked hollowed out. Angry, too. The reason was perfectly legible to Harad. She was sore at having troubled herself to come all this way in disguise, no doubt.
"Then how do you intend to explain Pelatz's death?"
That pique set Elaine's seldom-turning mind in motion.
"By now the delegation will be searching for Pelatz."
"Say you do not know. Or say he is dead, if you like."
"……?"
Elaine's face showed no comprehension.
"Cause of death?"
"How would we know a thing like that? He simply died."
"Will that truly suffice?"
"Since when has the North given a damn about imperial bastards?"
The delegation existed to curry favor with Serzila. One knight's death was nothing at all, from the empire's standpoint. Ordinarily, Elaine would have handled it exactly so. Had Harad not existed.
"Is Pelatz not a lackey of the Liberation Tower?"
"That must not be spoken of."
"Why?"
If that fact were reported back, everyone in Pelatz's orbit would be executed. Gazdag, or part of it, would number among them.
"Gazdag will not be implicated regardless."
"A moment ago it was imperial bastards. You do care about Gazdag, it seems."
"I hate the Order."
"There is another reason."
Harad's eyes went round. Such was Elaine — sharp at the strangest moments. It was why he could never simply dismiss her, and why he kept hoping in spite of himself. If only that sharpness would, just once, turn toward the dream.
"Pelatz's son, Locke, is innocent."
"He may yet come for your head."
"He would need the chance first — and even that much would make it less unjust."
"Are you the same way?"
Harad nodded. Watching him, Elaine muttered with a crooked expression.
"I understand. But behind the torch stands the Outlands."
"……"
"And behind you stands Serzila."
"I doubt His Grace the Grand Duke would go so far."
"I, the next Grand Duke, will. Ah — and Ellen as well."
Five days passed, and the delegation left the North with their heads bowed. The mockery from the soldiers atop the walls had been quite blatant, reported Cassion, who had come to freeload a meal off Kubel's cooking.
"And yet you claim to be busy. Seems you had the leisure to eavesdrop on all that."
"A 5th-tier — no, a knight-commander-class — has sharp ears."
"……"
Whether he was feigning denseness or had genuinely become dense, Harad could not tell. He felt, anew, just how formidable Grand Duke Aratus was. How on earth had the man seen through someone swallowed whole by that persona and known him for a mage?
Over roasted vegetables, Cassion mentioned that he had taken the heads of several magic beasts and one mage that had crossed through the tunnel. It was merit, plain and simple, yet there was no boast in his tone. It was the voice of a man saying he had slept at night — of someone who had merely done what ought to be done. That was why Cassion felt no particular shame. As a mage, perhaps not — but he was an excellent commander of the 2nd Knight Order.
Perhaps thinking the same, Ellen set a piece of meat onto Cassion's plate. Cassion looked up at her with shining, grateful eyes.
"Just eat quietly. Stop staring — you're making it awkward."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Harad's plate bore an even greater mound of meat. He saw no need to mention it. It was far too much for him to begin with. Ellen's scheme was to pile his plate high on purpose, then finish whatever he left herself — that way she would not look like a pig. Ellen had not forgotten the day Cassion had treated her as one.
Harad held his plate out to Ellen. Not a trace of mess remained on it. Aristocratic. That was why Ellen made use of Harad's plate.
"Already? Have more."
"Don't offer what you don't mean. Eat."
"Yes."
Ellen swapped the plates with a smile. Her own was spotless, without a trace.
Harad slid that plate aside and produced the communication orb. The grayish-white orb of the Ivory Tower that had belonged to Pelatz. To look at it was to think of Ios — Ios, who in the past life had met with the tunnel-digger and turned those tunnels into invasion routes for the Outlands.
'And here I wondered how Ios ever found the tunnel-digger.' It had been the other way around. Ios had not sought her out; the Liberation Tower's rebel faction had made contact with the Ivory Tower. 'The orb's origin must be an Ivory Tower mage embedded on the continent — and the rebel faction had connections to that mage.' That was the thread that had tied Isota to Ios.
'Five days.' Five days had passed since this orb reached Serzila. For someone out there, it had been five days since it passed into Isota's hands.
'News of Pelatz's death will take time to spread.' From Serzila to the empire's north lay a good month's ride, even on horseback. Word of Pelatz's death might travel faster, but not in five days. It had to be done before then. Only then could he rewrite the reason Pelatz had died. 'In that case...' Harad carefully drew the quill from his breast.
"What's that?"
Cassion, who had been indifferent to the orb, lit up.
"Looks rather crude. Not an outer-realm relic — a continental magic tool?"
Cassion drew a distinction between outer-realm items and magic tools. They meant the same thing, save that "magic tool" marked continental make — and continental tools were, as a rule, inferior to their outer-realm counterparts.
"It's the Liberation Tower's means of contact."
"It connects by writing? What an inconvenience."
For once in his life, Cassion spoke like a proper mage, sneering at the quill.
"This quill is one of a pair. It can carry writing only to its mate."
"There'd be a limit of distance, then. Shorter than the orb's reach."
"Precisely. What does it look like to you? My guess is that at too great a distance, nothing would be written at all."
"I think so as well. The writing would appear only while its mate lingered within reach."
Their opinions aligned. Harad smiled, satisfied.
"You're like a mage with dementia. We only manage to communicate once in a while."
Cassion's hand closed around his knife.
Harad ignored him, channeled mana into the quill, and wrote.
It wrote. No — letters surfaced crisp and clear upon the table, shimmering with a faint glow.
"It went through."
It meant contact had been made. Five days. All this while, whoever held this quill's mate had come within reach and waited.
Harad lifted his hand from the quill. It stood upright on its own. Cassion's interest sharpened; Ellen, too, stopped eating and fixed her eyes on the quill. How long had passed? Under all that attention, the quill moved.
The words were aggressive.
"Seems we've been made, though."
"It does seem that way, sir."
Cassion and Ellen spoke in unison. Harad ignored them both.
'The hand gives itself away.' He could not pass himself off as Isota. No — the other side would have already seen that he was not her. Even in that simple "Aa," a hand leaves its fingerprints. It was nothing ventured, nothing gained regardless. Harad wrote.
Ellen regarded Harad with weary eyes.
"Again. Again with this."
The effect, however, was tremendous.
A reply came. Exceedingly courteous.
"As expected of you, Harad."
"...So this works too, huh."
Kubel and Cassion, who had just emerged from the kitchen, marveled aloud.