14. Melting Point (9)
14. Melting Point (9)
Ruelo had been with the Monster Circus for nearly two weeks, but the early-morning silence still felt foreign to her.
Thanks to their recent group training, Wonderstein already knew exactly how lethally loud Minova's snoring could be. On the very first night, he had cast a Mute spell on him. The rest of the troupe, spared the sonic assault, had been able to sleep without torment.
Ruelo, however, suffered from the opposite problem: it was too quiet for her to sleep. She had lived with her father since she was a baby. His snoring was, to her, no different from a lullaby. Without it, every little noise set her on edge. More than once, the rustle of a blanket or a creaking floorboard had jolted her awake.
"Mmm... Ella?"
Ruelo sat up, rubbing her sleepy eyes. Ella, sitting at the vanity and pulling a stocking up past her thigh, noticed she was awake and gave her an apologetic look.
"Did I wake you, Ruelo? Was I too loud?"
It was still pitch black outside. The other troupe members were all asleep. Ella had gotten up especially early because she had something to take care of ahead of everyone else.
"No... I just wake easily anyway... But why am I in your room, Ella?"
Since joining the circus, Ruelo had been sharing a bed with Clara. She was the only other person in the troupe who could comfortably talk with the Samson spirit residing in Ruelo's hair. The others still weren't at ease with him, calling him a malevolent spirit clinging to her locks.
Ruelo remembered going to the night market with Umon yesterday and being so drowsy she had ridden back to the inn on his back. But why was she lying here, in Ella's room, and not Clara's?
"Ah, that? I won the bet yesterday."
"A bet?"
One of Ruelo's strands of hair twisted itself into a large question mark above her head. Ella saw it, let out a laugh, and answered.
"Yeah. The winner of the card game got to sleep holding Ruelo. Instead of a normal prize."
Ruelo blinked, tilting her head.
"Why is sleeping with me a prize?"
"Because our Luri is so pretty, obviously."
Embarrassed, Ruelo squirmed and fumbled with the blanket.
"I'm not that pretty..."
"Oh, so are the rest of us, who are less pretty than Luri, ugly then?"
"That's not what I meant..."
Ella smiled, watching the flustered Luri.
Ruelo had a maturity well beyond her years. It was largely because she had suffered from a cruel illness since childhood and had been forced to accept, far too early, the reality that she might not live long. Even after she was cured, the unconscious habit of keeping others at a distance had remained.
But her attitude had changed a lot since she joined the Monster Circus. She was still shy, but now she sometimes acted spoiled or stubborn. Like a girl her age should.
No small part of that was due to the teenage members who had insisted she drop the formal speech. The younger you are, the more formality shapes your attitude. Once she started speaking casually, her entire demeanor around others relaxed.
"Ella, get back safe... I'll sleep a bit more..."
Once Ella was fully dressed, Ruelo closed her eyes and lay back down, falling asleep almost instantly. Her hair slithered like a snake, coiling itself into a resting curl beside her pillow. Ella watched it for a moment with a disapproving eye before turning her back and leaving the room.
The light in the eastern sky was gradually driving the darkness westward. Ella walked through a dark alley where unlit street lamps stood like forlorn totems, heading toward the train station.
The reason she was heading to the station earlier than the others was simple: the monster troupe members were not allowed in the passenger cars. The railway staff had refused to let them board, citing a threat to the other customers.
This left them with no choice but to use the freight car, but putting people in a freight car required navigating a number of complicated procedures. She figured it was better for everyone if she went ahead alone to handle it, rather than having the whole troupe crowd the station and go through the process together.
As she neared the station, Ella realized she was being followed. Her Gudol, which she had released as soon as she had left the inn, had signaled the warning with a cry, and the Jjiksun in her pocket agreed, twitching its whiskers.
The reason she had hugged the wall and crept back around the corner was to flush out whoever was tailing her. Just as she reached the edge, she came face-to-face with a strange figure.
It looked like a demon. Its face was twisted in a grimace that seemed both angry and weeping, and two horns sprouted from its head. But Ella didn't flinch—in fact, she felt a sense of relief. The mask belonged to someone she knew well.
"Reina. What brings you here?"
"Thought you'd be bored going alone."
Reina replied coolly. Her voice was as chilly as the pre-dawn air.
But the troupe members all knew that behind that chilly exterior, she was an innocent, deeply considerate girl. Her cold demeanor was merely a product of the brutal, abusive training her father had forced on her since childhood.
Knowing this, Ella let her guard down and greeted her with a welcoming smile. They chatted about this and that, as girls their age did, walking side-by-side toward the station.
"Look at that. A circus train."
While Ella was having her contract reviewed by a station employee, Reina, who had gone into the freight yard ahead of her, pointed to one particular train. Amid dozens of freight cars lined up on the tracks, one brightly colored train stood out. It appeared to be about twenty cars long, and the side bore the name of a circus troupe.
"Do you recognize the name?"
"No. It's not a Grand Prix participant, at least. It's strange, though. A place with its own dedicated train should be decently famous..."
"It must be new."
Within the Empire, a Railway Circus culture had developed, where troupes traveled and performed by train. The large-scale circuses even had their own dedicated trains and professional engineers.
If they had asked the Bergson Trading Company, they could have easily received that kind of support. If they had, they wouldn't have to struggle with chartering a freight train every single time. But even at most, they would only use it for about three months—asking a patron for that felt too shameless.
"As per the contractor's request, the freight car will be intermediately opened before reaching its final destination. From this time onward, the railway is not liable for any ordinary loss or damage to the contents of said freight car."
The station worker who unlocked the freight car read the contract's terms mechanically and then left. Getting people into a freight car that wasn't meant for passengers required this kind of charade, a so-called "intermediate opening."
Ella and Reina climbed into the car and shifted the luggage around to create a few passable-looking spots for people.
"This should be good enough to last a couple of hours, right?"
"The cold might be more of a problem than the seats."
"We'll just have to wear thicker clothes."
"I feel a draft coming in from here. What if we move that crate over there and put it here?"
Ella and Reina lifted a large crate in the corner and placed it in front of the source of the draft. But Reina dropped her end at the last second, and the impact sent the luggage piled beside it cascading to the floor.
"Hey, you should be more careful!"
"It's your fault for being so much shorter than me."
"Hmph. You're the one who's too tall!"
"...Little pipsqueak Ella."
"Oh really?"
The two traded playful jabs as they tidied up the fallen luggage.
"Nothing broken, right?"
"No. But... here... there's a pile of human bones?"
"That's Sven's stuff. The old man does a trick where he swaps out his own bones sometimes."
"This old one... looks like a female pelvis..."
"...Let's just pretend we don't know about his personal tastes."
Once they had sorted the mess, the two approached the last item, a trunk that had tumbled far to the side, to set it upright.
"Hold on, isn't this Troupe Leader Wonderstein's luggage?"
The rule had always been that everyone was responsible for their own personal luggage, so Ella had never once seen what was inside Wonderstein's trunk.
Could there be something dangerous, or suspicious inside?
Her curiosity piqued, Ella pretended to be putting things back into the trunk while she rummaged around inside. But no matter how she looked, there was nothing remarkable. Just a few pieces of clothing and some odds and ends that looked like he had picked them up during their travels.
Just then, Reina picked up a bundle wrapped in old packaging paper and spoke.
"It's a tie."
"What?"
"Looks like a gift. But he never unwrapped it."
Ella quickly looked at the object in her hand.
It was a box of a familiar color. The silhouette of the object inside was also familiar.
From a distant shore of memory, she heard a voice whispering what it was.
'A color like this is inoffensive and good.'
'No, I prefer a brighter color.'
'Why?'
'The clothes he wore were all black. I wanted at least one thing to be bright.'
The item in Reina's hand was a gift she had bought for Wonderstein a year ago, in the shopping district of Vegas.
"Why is this...?"
Ella had no idea how this was here. It was something she had crumpled up in a fit of rage and despair, throwing it away on the day she had followed Wonderstein out of the village.
Yet here it was, inside his trunk.
Why?
"Do you know what this is?"
Ella, who had been lost in a daze, snapped out of it at Reina's question and shook her head firmly.
"No. I don't know."
She erased the absurd scene she had just imagined from her mind, cursing herself for ever thinking such a thing.
There's no way. I must have been mistaken.
Maybe I just tossed it in a corner of the wagon and forgot about it.
As Ella watched Reina put the crumpled box back into the trunk, she considered secretly taking it and throwing it away, but then gave up. It didn't matter anymore. A thing from back then...
Once they had finished organizing the inside, the two came out of the train and observed the circus train they had seen earlier in more detail. There, big, sturdy men in thick coats were loading luggage with warily guarded expressions.
"Why are they so tense?"
"Their bodies look well-trained, though."
"I don't know. Their movements are too stiff. They seem more like soldiers than acrobats."
Soon, the train coupled with its locomotive and began to depart the station. Just as it was disappearing over the tracks, Wonderstein and the troupe members arrived at the station.
***
The travel plans of government VIPs were always kept classified. Even if the schedule for a political tour or an event was announced in advance, it was standard practice to never reveal how or when the VIP would get there.
And so, a rumor had spread among the station workers: if a train not on the schedule passed through the station without stopping, it was carrying one of three people. The Emperor, the Pope, or the Crown Prince.
Dmitri Makarov, squad leader of the Imperial Guard, watched the stations his train passed through and prayed the employees there wouldn't recall that rumor. He knew this feeling stemmed less from a profound sense of a bodyguard's security protocols and more from a loyal retainer's deep concern for his lord's dignity.
Of course, the truth was that many of the loyalists currently calling themselves the Crown Prince's close aides were hoping his dignity would fall just a little bit further. This brilliant idea of riding a circus train was surely one of theirs. And Makarov couldn't deny that it was sound advice for the Crown Prince.
The Imperial Guard was full of the second or third sons of high-ranking nobles. They were men who had eaten more than their fair share of humble pie within their own families. They knew that a lofty reputation wasn't always a good thing.
Especially when someone with a lesser reputation than you held power.
The Emperor, who had been bedridden, had miraculously risen from his sickbed. Makarov could guess that the celebratory drink taken up by the Empire's subjects upon hearing the news had been mostly bitter. A conservative estimate would put it at 70 percent. The serfs, at least, would have tasted it that way. That was because, ever since the Emperor had collapsed, all the reforms the Crown Prince had so passionately pushed forward during his regency had been rolled back.
The look in the Emperor's eyes when he looked at the Crown Prince had been more than a little unsettling. That was why the Crown Prince had hurriedly fled the Imperial Palace under the pretext of an eastern tour. The movements that day had been so urgent, they had rivaled a military operation.
For the first time in a while, Makarov found himself cheering for the Imperial Theater Troupe's jesters. He hoped, as they often did, they would pour their lies into the Emperor's ears. He hoped they would mock the Crown Prince's reforms, declaring them all failures. He hoped they would comically mimic his usual conduct, claiming it was unbecoming of the Emperor's throne. He hoped they would flatter him by saying the nobles who were displeased with the Crown Prince's actions missed the Emperor.
The Crown Prince had to look like a fool right now. Makarov was finding himself increasingly convinced that his liege's choice of a circus train as a means of transport for the eastern tour was a very, very sound decision.