Heir of the Karak Workshop
Karak? I've seen that somewhere. What was it?
While Nina was still turning the name over, Poco finished what she had been saying.
"I am the rightful heir of the Karak Workshop. For certain reasons, I was cast out of it."
Poco bit her lip once, and went on.
"And so, to reclaim my place as heir, I came all this way in search of the bright iron my ancestors are said to have carried home."
"Bright iron?"
When Jin asked, Poco looked at him and answered.
"Yes. Iron brighter than pure silver, and clear, with the power to purify. I am not drawing a weapon. If I may, a moment..."
She drew a necklace from inside her clothes. Fixed to it was a mineral like a flake of silver, and it seemed to give off a faint light.
"Ah."
The small sound escaped Nina before she could catch it. This was the bright-iron mine — the one found while they were searching for Fiona, the heroine the Bellac had carried off. Afterward they had suffered bitterly, for want of any blacksmith who could work the metal. Then a smith who said he had come from far away launched into it: he had heard the legend that the great founder of Karak once brought this very iron, and so on, and so on. So that was this.
The rightful heir of the Karak Workshop had declared she would go looking for bright iron, and then she had vanished. After that the workshop lost a great many of its secret methods, and it was never what it had been.
So they all died here. That bear earlier must have wiped them out.
"What? You know something?"
At Jin's question, Nina shook her head.
"No. Nothing. I understand your circumstances, but entering our lands without a word is a separate matter, and I mean to see it answered. How exactly did you get in?"
"We came by ship."
"What?!"
It was Jin who cried out. The far edge of the Purple Forest did meet the sea. It was also a cliff sheer as a cut, where no ship could ever put in.
"The reefs out there are so thick that by sea it's simply—"
"Yes. Thanks to them, a great many of our people were lost. We climbed the cliff with tools, but to think the Bellac would take us..."
Poco smiled bitterly. Jin looked at the solid set of her body and was impressed in spite of himself. Hauling oneself up a cliff like that.
"First we head back into the territory. What comes after, we decide after. We've already spilled more than enough blood-scent..."
Nina smiled.
"Look. The next Bellac."
Jin rolled his shoulder and took up his halberd. Just then Poco accepted a spear from the person beside her and held it out to him.
"Please use this. The iron in this spear is of far better quality."
"Then I'll give it a try. Commander?"
"Later."
"Right. Fall back that way, and keep your backs flat to the cliff."
Jin waved the others off. Nina's eyes narrowed, and she spoke the incantation.
"O sun that burns without end,"
"annihilating heat,"
"searing blaze that blinds the eye."
The instant her sword began to shine with white light, Nina shot forward as if she had burst.
"Hyaaah!!"
She carved through a pack of dozens of leopard-like Bellac. Whatever still lived in her wake, Jin finished.
Mid-swing, he was so dumbfounded the words got out of him on their own.
"What is this?"
There was no feel in his hands at all. The spearhead was so sharp it was less like cutting meat than slicing sausage.
"This is no joke."
Only when he sheared one through, bone and all, did the sensation finally arrive.
Once the two of them had dealt with the Bellac, Poco's companions quickly gathered their dead and saw to them. Climbing the stony slope again, they stared at the black unicorns and marveled. Nina brought the party through the Purple Forest at an easy pace, then lodged them not in the main castle, but in a small fort.
"I'll go and ask His Grace what he thinks."
"Thank you for the consideration."
"It isn't consideration. I simply don't care to bring strangers into the main castle."
Nina said it with a shrug, and Poco raised her clasped hands in the greeting particular to the Rengshi Kingdom.
"That you did not abandon us in the Purple Forest, and brought us even this far, is thanks enough."
"Don't mention it."
With that, Nina touched in a light spur. The black unicorn set off with a neat, easy step, and Jin followed. For a while he watched her riding ahead and said nothing.
"You don't have to be quite so hard on them. How Rengshi steel is made is a closely guarded secret. If this goes well, we might even get it out of them, no?"
"Heh..."
"What?"
"Heheheheh."
"...You are laughing, aren't you?"
"Ehehe, Jin! The Karak Workshop, she said — the Karak Workshop! We've hit the jackpot!"
"What's a jackpot?"
"Never mind. It's a saying. We'll make them forge heaps of bright iron. No — we'll make them hand over the method. I'll wring them dry. We saved their lives, so I'll lean on that for all it's—"
"Yes, yes."
Jin nodded. In truth, he rather liked the company himself. Walking into the territory uninvited was an affront, of course, but who in the world had no hunger for a better weapon? Their spears far outstripped his own. With steel like that, facing the upper grades of Bellac would be a very different matter, and for his own people it was life itself at stake.
"Sir Louis or His Grace will handle the bargaining well enough. Bright iron... Does such a thing really exist?"
"It does. Of course it does."
Grinning, Nina picked up speed. The black unicorn, pent up from matching a human pace all through the forest, began to lengthen its stride, faster and faster. Jin flattened himself along his own mount and drove it harder to keep up.
"We're much later than we planned."
"We might not make it back today."
Nina, too, shook her head as she watched the sun go down. They hurried, but the sun fell first, and the two of them had no choice but to make camp.
"I want a proper meal."
Nina sighed, jaw working at a tough mouthful of dry rations. Poco's party had almost no food left, so the crossing had depended on what Nina and Jin could forage and hunt.
"Oh — right."
Nina opened the pouch that held the seed crystals.
"These couldn't be edible... could they..."
"How were you planning to eat that? It's a seed made of glass. Huh? Why is it glowing?"
Nina drew one crystal out of the pouch. It was shining, clear and steady, about as bright as two or three candles. When she spilled the rest out in a rush, every crystal was glittering gold. Nina's mouth fell open. So did Jin's.
"That's incredibly bright."
Nina nodded.
"How long will they keep it up?"
"We'll have to test it."
She left a single crystal out and put the rest back in the pouch. She meant to see whether it would shine the whole night through.
It did. The two of them watched even the end of it — sunlight touched the crystal, and the glow thinned and went out — and then they returned to the castle.
"The Karak Workshop..."
Adrian turned a chess piece over in one hand, lost in thought, until Nina smacked his knee.
"Young Master. Your hand stopped."
He swallowed a sigh and went back to stroking Nina's head where she lay squirming on his thigh.
"I don't know the Rengshi Kingdom well, but wouldn't it be to their benefit to teach us the method? Surely they aren't planning to dine and dash on nothing but the bright iron."
"Dine and dash?"
"Eat, and then run."
"Mining the ore takes considerable labor, time, and money."
"But they only need it as proof, don't they? They could vanish with a single piece."
"I wonder."
His tone was strange enough that Nina asked.
"Do you know something?"
"She is an heir who risked her life to come this far. Do you think going home with that one piece would be enough to have her succession given back?"
"Now that you say it... Did she lie?"
Did she take me in? Nina tipped her head, and Adrian asked.
"You left them at the fort?"
"Yes."
"And if they run?"
"I put a spirit on Miss Poco. If she runs, that will be the day her neck and her head part company."
Nina let the explanation out on a satisfied breath. Adrian's petting seemed to be improving by the day.
"That would be a waste."
What's in her head.
"Then I'll bring her to you with it still attached. Whatever you wish, Young Master."
Adrian spun the piece in his palm.
"'Whatever I wish...'"
He smiled, just a little.
"I should go and meet them properly."