Ceria (1)
"So… you two just happened to run into each other?"
While she was keeping company with Rebel Faction mages of the Liberation Magic Tower, no less?
Elaine pressed hard at the bridge of her nose.
The cause, apparently, was stress. The Liberation Magic Tower mages had cornered the priestess in a dead-end alley and made sport of her — and Elaine could not summon a shred of worry over it. At bottom, it was a mess Harad had stirred up himself.
"And?"
"She seemed lost, so I escorted her here. She is a guest of Serzilla, after all."
Then why on earth are you the one dragging her in?
Elaine swallowed the retort. It was then that Guillotine Ceria — the Church's Inquisitor-in-waiting — added her piece.
"She wasn't lost. She was surveying the streets."
Part of Elaine's irritation dissolved on the spot. It felt as though her eyes had been forced wide open — and in those eyes, Harad's face was grave. He had not been keeping the priestess's company out of any lighthearted whim.
She was watching the streets.
Harad must have decided he could not let that continue.
The tunnel. It has to be the tunnel.
That, Elaine surmised, was the reason — to keep the tunnel from being discovered. The burrow that linked to the Boundary was a secret, and were it ever found out, the Empire and the Church would raise every kind of clamor, wailing that the Promise had been broken.
"I see."
Her overheated head cooled at last. Just as he had done with the Rebel Faction of the Liberation Magic Tower, Harad had drawn Ceria's attention onto himself.
He must have felt like a man who had chanced upon a hunting dog slipped loose from its leash — and he had judged it necessary to keep that dog from tearing free.
"Well done, Harad. Thanks to you, I find myself receiving a guest as one ought."
Only then could Elaine smile.
Ceria. In truth, that woman was a priestess who would one day become the Church's own hunting dog.
"I merely did what any retainer of Serzilla is bound to do."
An Information Bureau agent — Arika's successor. Calling Harad's new identity to mind, Elaine let out a hollow laugh. For him, there could be no finer cover. The identity of a Serzilla Information Bureau agent had never once been made known to the outside world.
Would have been nice to get our stories straight beforehand.
For Harad, though, there had been no helping it. He had crossed paths with Ceria by pure accident.
"I'm late with the introductions. I am Elaine Serjilla."
Elaine held out her hand to Ceria. Whether Harad could ever sit down to a meal with the true Pope she couldn't say — but the artifact that disguised her as Elaine could deceive even the real Pope's eyes.
"I am Ceria, a servant of the sun god Laan."
Ceria took the hand with a crinkle-eyed smile. As expected, there was not the faintest sign of suspicion. Elaine settled into the seat beside Harad.
Arika, meanwhile, slipped quietly out of the annex. It was so that reality would match Harad's words — from that moment until Ceria departed, the Inner Castle would treat Harad as an Information Bureau agent.
"And your superior...?"
"A busy woman. No doubt she only stopped by for a moment, to see how I was faring."
"Word truly does travel fast here."
"What else would an Information Bureau be for?"
Harad played the Bureau agent to the hilt. The performance came off remarkably natural — more convincing than Ellen herself.
"A curious coincidence, though — me tailing the very mages who were tailing me."
Harad murmured it as if to himself, but Elaine knew the words were meant for her. He was simply laying out what had happened, as naturally as drawing breath.
Somehow I doubt that's the whole of it.
A priestess. To Harad, an enemy. And before an enemy, Harad never wasted words. However careless he might look on the surface, there was always iron underneath.
"How did you know they were mages?"
"They went tense at the sight of me. They flinched."
Ceria held out the hem of her garb with both hands. The white cassock — the emblem of the Church, worn by the faithful of sun and moon alike. Any mage who glimpsed that garment could think of only one thing: death.
"And?"
"That was the evidence. Is more required?"
Ceria tipped her head, eyes still curved in a smile. The slow blink of those eyes looked the very picture of innocence.
Elaine found that innocence chilling.
It was the first conversation she had ever held with a priest of the Church — and she thought she could see Harad's hand in it. He had always preferred to teach by experience rather than by words. Just as he had once let Ellen go through mages firsthand, so now he was letting Elaine go through a priestess.
"Tense and flinching, hm. Isn't that evidence a touch thin? I'd say you can't dismiss the chance they were nothing of the sort."
"They were demons."
Guillotine Ceria answered almost before Harad had finished speaking. She sounded like a person in whom the very possibility of being wrong did not exist.
"The eyes of the sun god Laan see into every corner of the world, and the ears of the moon god Ruan hear all that can be heard."
Ceria's smile was deep and serene; her voice, soft as falling snow.
"This time, too, Laan simply deigned to look upon the demons."
"I see. As ever, He showed you that they were demons — is that it?"
"You know the doctrine of the Sun?"
Ceria's eyes lit up with delight.
"It would be stranger if I didn't. Tell me — have you ever slain a demon of fire?"
"Fire. The most unforgivable of demons. Fortunately, no. Not yet."
The most unforgivable of demons sat directly across from her.
"I see. Ah — do I not look the least bit suspicious?"
Harad asked, pointing at his own face. Elaine very nearly choked.
"Aren't you an Information Bureau agent?"
"I'm told demons may hide wherever they please without its seeming strange, but—"
At that, Ceria's eyes narrowed to slits.
Elaine broke into a cold sweat for no good reason.
But her fears proved needless — Ceria was smiling again in short order.
"I sensed it from the start — you really are a tease. Harad, you are no demon."
"And the proof?"
"The five demons tried to kill you. Were Harad a demon, they would never have done so."
Ceria declared it with total conviction. Elaine very nearly burst out laughing.
She thought of her past self. Ceria was the very image of the Elaine of those days. The continent knew nothing of mages.
Even the Church.
"Laan, it seems, did not shine upon you. That is proof enough that you are no mage."
"Truly omniscient."
Harad nodded along in frank admiration. To Elaine's eyes it looked like open mockery.
"And omnipotent. It's wondrous. Though I hear there are more who do not know Him in the North."
"No doubt because fire is a precious thing here. That's why He never quite struck home."
Sun and moon. The world bundled the two churches into one, but strictly speaking they were distinct — and in the North, the moon's faithful were the more numerous. It was a land where the sun could not flex its strength.
"What a pity. If only more of the North would come to the faith, Laan would surely look upon them."
Elaine snorted. Ceria had just laid the blame for the North's cold at the northerners' own feet.
"And you, Harad — you follow the moon, I expect?"
Ceria asked with studied delicacy. Everything about her said she hoped he was a child of the sun.
"Regrettably, I am an atheist. Serving Serzilla leaves me little time for gods."
"Laan, too, would treasure such devotion."
Ceria broke off mid-sentence, lifted her face, and raised both hands — cupped as though to cradle something vast and round. A prayer toward the sun.
Above her palms a pristine white light began to shimmer.
Divine power. That formless force swept through Kubel's annex like a gentle tide. The interior, already warm thanks to Harad, grew warmer still.
"Impressive indeed. Mages — demons, rather, or so I'm told — have only the one talent apiece."
Harad was bound to fire, and Kubel could wield nothing but smoke. A mage's magic was, in the end, chained to its Origin.
"And that very limitation is what makes a demon a demon."
The word vague suited divine power far better than it had ever suited magic — and at last Elaine understood what Harad had once told her. That warm light of Ceria's would work as a guillotine the moment it met a mage; at times it would be a shield, and at other times it would heal the wounded. So it was vaguer, more boundless, than any magic — which was precisely why the Church's sway outweighed even the Empire's. The latent strength called divinity made the Church warrior, mage, and healer all at once.
"At first light, I mean to hunt the demon who set upon the Empire's knights."
"You mean Knight Pelatz."
Ceria nodded.
"Any leads?"
"Laan will show me."
To Elaine it sounded precisely like a declaration that she would poke about wherever she pleased.
"Didn't you say He watches the North rather less?"
"He watches me, and those around me, here in the North — just as He showed me the five demons earlier."
Elaine could not begin to fathom such certainty. But of one thing she was sure: Harad had made an excellent choice in bringing Ceria here.
"Still — there is much I do not know of the North. Might I ask you to accompany me?"
Ceria spoke with a sheepish face. Perhaps she was embarrassed to confess such ignorance before the Grand Duke's heir — yet that did not seem to be the whole of it.
"Then I shall accompany you as well."
The words left Elaine before she could stop them.
Ceria's eyes widened a fraction.
"Your kindness is appreciated — truly — but I must decline. Should the Grand Duke's heir of Serzilla ride with me, I fear I will grow confused."
"Confused?"
"Yes. I would no longer be able to tell whether the people were reacting to me, or to the Grand Duke's heir."
Ceria said this, once more presenting her cassock.
And yet it's God who shows you everything.
Elaine knitted her brow. Seen clearly at last, the Church lived however the hell it pleased.
It was then that Harad spoke.
"Do just that. If I can be of help, I am at your disposal anytime."
"Thank you, Harad."
The priestess who had managed only an apologetic smile for Elaine now beamed at Harad, bright as a spring morning. And Harad smiled back.
Elaine had nothing to say to that. She only found it galling.
"The more helping hands, the better, surely."
"As I said just now, if the Grand Duke's heir—"
"Setting the Grand Duke's heir aside, I do know a capable person. Ellen — she would be convenient to have along. Sound credentials, and not so widely known, either."
It was Ceria, and Ceria alone, who grated on her.
Elaine was holding a sword.
The blade was drenched in blood. The edge was so keen that it ran down the steel in a thin, unbroken line.
A pool of it had gathered on the ground. No — pool was far too modest a word.
It was a sea of blood, and at its center lay a single headless corpse dressed in black.
"—Tenacious to the very end, this one."
Elaine, looking half-disgusted, shook the blood that still clung to her sword. The feeling came through with startling vividness.
That this was the Grand Duke's heir, Elaine — Ellen knew it at once. She understood, too, why she had called the dead man tenacious.
There was only one corpse. Which meant that the sea of blood — enough, surely, to be wrung from a dozen men or more — belonged entirely to this single body.
The sea of blood lay on a snowfield. A snowfield Ellen knew well: the great plain that opened east of the territory.
The still-steaming blood cooled in an instant and froze. By the time the snow had all but buried it, Harad arrived.
"—What is all this?"
Harad's face was set like stone. He seemed to have made out who the corpse was. Ellen could not.
"—An enemy. A criminal who dared try to take a child's life in the North."
Elaine said it in a voice stripped of all feeling.
"—The child we brought north last year, on my birthday. Piniel. A tail had fastened itself to that child."
Only then did Ellen remember. It was a dream she had dreamed once before. Back then — while Elaine was away at the imperial palace — Harad, waiting behind, had wrested a mage child from the Church's hands.
"—Had Arika not told us, we would have been too late. Their obsession with mages is monstrous."
Back then, Harad had not killed the Church's people. He had done nothing but scorch them.
That was why the tail had fastened.
"—I told you so at the time, did I not? We should have killed them."
Harad's face was a tangle of feelings.
"—I'm not chiding you. If I didn't know your heart was soft, who would? Only — every so often, a man must know how to be merciless. As I am gentle only in front of you."
Had it been like the dreams of ordinary days, Harad would have fired back.
But not in this one. Harad was too busy blaming himself.
"—...They were the Church."
"—I know. I killed him, after all. Quite a strong one, too. His rank must have been considerable."
"—They will raise the matter with Serzilla."
That was why Harad blamed himself.
Come to think of it, Harad worried for Serzilla ceaselessly in the waking world as well. No doubt because he was a mage.
"—No. That one died of exposure, traveling the treacherous North."
"—...Do you truly believe that story holds water?"
The Harad of the dream was a man of scrupulous common sense. Somehow, he looked smaller for it.
In other words — the exact opposite of the man in reality. Had this been reality, it would have been Harad standing in Elaine's place.
"—And if it doesn't hold water, so what."
"—What could the Church possibly do about it? This is Serzilla."
The Grand Duke's heir said it with magnificent arrogance.
To Ellen's eyes, that figure loomed somehow immense.
"—I will say it as many times as I must, Harad. Trouble yourself not with the reckoning. I stand behind you."
The Church, daring to. Ellen found those words very sweet indeed.
Before dawn had even broken.
"It's good to meet you, Ceria."
Ellen met Harad and Ceria in front of Harad's annex.
Ceria's hair was still damp.
"I've heard all about you. They say they call you the Guillotine of Fremont."
As greetings went, it was a striking one.