The Thirteenth Seat of the Rounds
At the news that Ekaterina's true body was somewhere else entirely, Lupin did not hesitate.
"I'll be right back, so just wait here a moment."
Well. How many people in the world could throw on a single cloak, kick off the earth, and soar into the sky? Yegor decided it was time to accept the facts: that Lupin was an Apostle of the Calamity Star, and that he himself had become the special supervisor charged with managing her.
"Vatslava."
"Yes?"
"You'd do well to keep giving everything you have to the study of drink. It'll help a great deal in keeping Lupin stable."
Vatslava, her worth acknowledged out of nowhere, lit up.
"R-really? I see. I'll work even harder! I can do it!!"
The Rounds.
Put it the old way, and they were the swords of the Imperial Alliance. Put it the modern way, and they were closer to its cannons. They did still wield swords, so the former wasn't wrong — but by an ordinary person's reckoning a cannon outclassed a blade, and so both turns of phrase saw plenty of use. The point was that they were strong.
Stronger than any instrument of force the Empire possessed, they were spoken of as Elysium's ultimate weapons. There was even a joke that if every nation in the world were destroyed, they would survive all the same — as weapons.
If the Rounds had one sore finger among them, it was the Twelfth Seat, Ekaterina.
Emelin sneered at Ekaterina, the lowest seat, every chance she got, but in truth it was less a matter of martial power than a personality beyond any hope of reform. Even Kain, who had spent ten years trying to make a person of her, had given up on her completely when he settled on this expulsion.
"So this is where you were."
"Eek?!"
Ekaterina, who had been lying flat atop the clock tower, shot upright in shock.
"Wh-what. Why'd you come here, Gramps."
Kain swung a fist through empty air. Ekaterina clutched her head and ducked, and a moment later a crunch sounded as a faint light scattered like powder from around her hand.
"Damn it. Violence the second you see me."
"Lupin."
Ekaterina's long finger stabbed toward the courtyard of the Adventurers' Association. There was another Ekaterina there, pressed flat against the dirt, groveling and pleading that this one thing, please, she simply could not do.
"So the real one was over there."
"Wh-what are you talking about? Obviously this one's the real me!"
"Looking at the way you usually carry on, that one's the real one, isn't she."
"Ah! Seriously!"
Ekaterina shrieked and lunged to grab him, but it was useless. To an eye that didn't know better, the movement was truly bizarre. Speed without a single afterimage created the illusion of stepping clean across space. There was no winning a game of tag like this, and Ekaterina grumbled, her voice thick with irritation.
"Ugh. Quit teasing me and go do your job already."
"You didn't say anything unnecessary to Lupin, did you."
"I-I just tested whether she was someone fit for the Rounds. That's all."
She called it a test, but since she was leaving anyway, she was merely staging a spectacular send-off — closer, in truth, to hazing. The grief of having begged every woman of the Rounds to become her master, only to be refused. That, perhaps, only Ekaterina would ever know. She had saved Lupin for last, and this, too, was a breath away from refusal.
"Are you prepared to be imprisoned in Ginnungagap?"
Ekaterina's face twisted as she snapped back.
"What are you on about. It isn't even decided yet."
"After all the women's skirts you've gone around flipping up — you really think so?"
"Oh please, as if I only flipped them. I went and stuffed it right—"
Kain's fist came down through empty air and crushed the skull of the Ekaterina standing far away. The crown of her head flattened slightly, and a hard clang rang out, like a bell.
"Ghhhhk."
Anomalous-type aura users always had a screw or two loose, just like this. Someone groaning under a bitter reality happened to awaken to power, but by that moment they were already broken in the mind. There was no way they could be sound.
Kain had come running, breathless, all the way to distant Rostov because of a full report from the Sub-Rounds who had been watching the fight between Ekaterina and Lupin. He had spent years teaching Ekaterina and only barely made half a person of her, and now the new Twelfth Seat was another anomalous type? Out of pure worry he had wanted to see the face at once and judge, first of all, whether this one was all right. He had set his mind at ease because she was the Sword Emperor's prized disciple, but the story had changed within a matter of days, and even he was more than a little thrown.
"I heard Lupin wields anomalous aura."
"Wow, word really does travel fast. Yeah. She commanded a whole swarm of spirits. So many I spent a good while doing nothing but taking hits."
"Your clone consumption."
"Obscene. Can't you see I'm barely running a single clone now? That one won't hold out much longer either."
Kain pressed her, as if to hurry the point along.
"And the Shadowless Sword Style?"
"The sword art? Swift Advance — she just kept repeating that one thing."
"And she used it properly?"
"If she hadn't used it properly, would I be telling you? It's identical to what the old Sword Emperor was using ten years ago. The weight was a little lighter, sure, but she didn't load a shred of aura and still drove the blade into my clone. That says it all."
So Lupin commanded spirits by the hundreds with anomalous aura, and as if that weren't enough, she had perfectly reproduced even the forms of the Shadowless Sword Style? And yet, without aura, the speed of that style ought to have been impossible. Worse still, the sword she swung was no ordinary blade. If it was the Lightning Sword...
An Apostle of the Calamity Star?
The Imperial Astronomy Bureau had never passed word of a Calamity Star sighting on to the Rounds. Every time an Apostle descended, the Rounds and the Seven Stars had become, directly or indirectly, the root of the calamity. Always, one of them would prod the Apostle and set them at odds with humanity. And every time, because of that single person, the Apostle never returned to humanity's side in the end. What was there to do about it?
Humanity, for its part, could not cast the Rounds or the Seven Stars aside — the moment they did, they would sow the seed of yet another calamity. The Apostle, for their part, swayed by the whispers of the stars, only sank deeper into the rift of feeling. A vicious cycle, repeating without end.
The result had been the grand unification of every astronomy bureau on the continent. The Imperial Alliance and the North Country alike had reached a tacit understanding: the moment secrecy failed, it was calamity.
And it was not as if the Rounds could uncover that truth on their own. To read the courses and positions of the stars, one would have to turn day and night inside out and stare at the sky all night long — and were the Rounds the sort of people who could sit still with their backsides planted? They announced to the world that they kept strictly to their posts, so everyone might rest easy, but in truth each of them was rushing about as need demanded.
I'll have to leave the confirmation to Nebeldrak.
As it happened, Kain did not have much time either. However curious he was, he had no choice but to entrust the later appraisal to the Second Seat of the Rounds, whose sensitivity to aura ran high. What mattered to him now was driving off Ekaterina — who looked ready to stick her nose in and do nothing but interfere — and having a proper, searching talk with Lupin.
Her skill was beyond doubt. She had beaten Ekaterina into the ground. If she was someone whose character would not smear the name of the Rounds, Kain meant to propose she join on the spot.
— Coo.
Still, no matter how finely he chose his words, persuading Lupin would not be easy. Her head was full of treasure chests, and only Tasili, who had seen clean through that truth, had ever properly handled the uncontrollable force of nature that was Lupin. Right now there was exactly one thing she cared about: whether Ekaterina would choose the extreme poison, or the treasure chests. With her treasure-chest life at risk of being thrown off course, Lupin had to get the beast named Ekaterina under control, no matter what.
— Coo. Coo.
Kain caught the repeated sound of a pigeon, trod the empty air, and rose into the sky in a single breath. An eyeblink later he was back down, and caught in his hand was a gaudily colored pigeon.
Ekaterina saw it and yelped.
"Huh? That's Lupin's pigeon..."
In that instant, from beneath the clock tower's railing, Lupin's voice drifted up, brimming with mischief.
"If you're curious who owns that pigeon, then answering you is only common sense!"
Lupin, flying in a straight line against gravity, alighted lightly on the clock tower roof. At that alien trajectory, the eyes of the two Rounds could not look away.
"So, Ekaterina. You're not going to choose? You really mean to end it like this? Don't pick, and I'll just go, you know? The moment we part, we're total strangers. You'll never see me again. You get what I'm saying?"
Somehow she was already standing in front of Ekaterina, thrusting out a vial.
"Hurry up. The extreme poison, or 32,768 treasure chests. Choose. I'll give you ten seconds. Last chance."
Ekaterina glanced over for a cue, and Kain jerked his chin. Don't do anything stupid. Decide cleanly, then get out.
But how could Ekaterina give it up? A harem of beautiful women was right before her eyes!
Unable to bring herself to choose the extreme poison, she spoke with her eyes squeezed shut.
"I'll take the treasure chests..."
Of all things, she had picked the very option offered in the hope she wouldn't take it. Lupin was startled. But Lupin was not the sort to turn away a slave who came of her own accord.
"Then I'm counting on you. A hundred a week ought to do it. Find them, mark them on a map, and bring them to me."
Ekaterina, who had been sure that if she hemmed and hawed long enough Lupin would be the one to give up first, startled.
"Wh-what? A hundred?"
"What are you doing? Why aren't you moving? Treasure chests don't wait, you know."
Ekaterina stared blankly at Kain, begging for help with her eyes. The look that came back flashed cold and sharp — a silent threat not to make this any worse, and to get lost.
Left with no choice but to choke it down, Ekaterina muttered.
"Uh. Uh... if I find them, who should I deliver them to?"
"My pigeon. The one caught right there. From now on, that's Ekaterina's supervisor."
Kain released the bird at once. It fluttered off and settled atop Ekaterina's gold epaulette. She shot it a sidelong glance and asked.
"If. If I can't fill a hundred a week... what happens?"
Lupin, who had been grinning without a break ever since she climbed the clock tower, went dead serious for the first time.
"What do you think happens? I'll have to part ways with a negligent employee."
Knowing full well that the end of that road was Ginnungagap, Ekaterina clutched her face in her hands.
