Interlude: Those Who Pursue
Interlude: Those Who Pursue
The Regent of Charlotia had held his post barely a year when he found himself confronting an unexpected political crisis.
It all came down to a single letter in his hand.
It wasn't a petition for independence from some province, a declaration from someone claiming to be the Queen, or an anonymous denunciation thick with ugly rumors about the Regent himself.
It was a letter of resignation from Gaston Haliwooden, the greenhouse gardener.
Some might ask how the retirement of a mere gardener could add up to a political crisis. He served at the Prime Minister's Residence, yes, but his work was no different from any other gardener's. Tending flowers and pruning trees made up the sum of his daily duties.
But his presence had an immense impact on the agricultural output of the Regent's Residence.
And the produce grown there was a single thing.
The Golden Tomato, known as the Queen's gracious gift.
When the Queen herself had tended the tomato tree, it had borne over a hundred Golden Tomatoes a year. After her disappearance, the yield had shrunk, year after year.
The tree had withered like a dog waiting for an owner who would never return. Gardeners from across the land had gathered and put their heads together, and still they had failed to restore its productivity.
By the thirtieth year since her vanishing, the harvest had dropped below ten.
The political standing of the regental family, which had taken upon itself stewardship of the Tomato Greenhouse, had plummeted right along with it.
Then, thirty years ago, a genius gardener named Gaston Haliwooden had appeared and brought the yield back up to thirty.
His methods for tending the tree followed no fixed formula.
Sometimes he played music to it on a piano. Sometimes he polished its branches with a warm, damp cloth. Sometimes he procured dragon dung and worked it into the soil.
When people asked what his technique actually was, Gaston gave only one baffling reply: "You need only listen to what the tree says."
For three decades, the tomato tree had produced its Golden Tomatoes with steady reliability.
And now, without warning, the man wished to retire. The new Regent could hardly see it as anything but a political emergency.
That was why he had cleared his afternoon schedule and urgently arranged a meeting with the gardener.
"Old man, how can you leave us so suddenly?"
The Regent reached for a form of address he hadn't used since childhood.
Ever since rising to his position, he had always strived to project authority so as not to be underestimated. That he was reduced to practically begging an old man, like a child, made the gravity of the situation plain.
But even the pleas of Charlotia's highest authority could not sway the old man's resolve.
"Knowing that my abilities fall short, I wish to step down."
"Fall short? In what way? Aren't you the greatest gardener in the world, Gaston? Be honest with me. Why? Is the salary insufficient?"
Gaston slowly shook his head.
"Think of it as an investment in the future."
"The future?"
"Yes. I will bring you someone worthy to succeed me—no, someone more gifted than I am."
"Is there... someone like that?"
The Regent asked again, his voice softening.
If the man was finding a successor, that was good news.
But whether it was actually possible was another question.
Gaston had tried to recruit a replacement many times before.
Yet none of the candidates had ever satisfied him.
"There is. Absolutely."
Gaston was able to depart only after extracting a few more promises from the Regent.
He stepped out of the Regent's Residence, pulled his travel bag behind him, and climbed into a carriage.
Gazing up at the distant sky, he murmured to himself.
"It must be the boy."
Gaston Haliwooden.
At the age of sixty-eight, he stepped down from his post as gardener of the Tomato Greenhouse and set out to bring back the young man he had marked as his disciple.
***
The elderly Father Tishiang of the Rouge church stared at the visitor seated in the chapel with undisguised distaste.
Under the rule of Sanctuary, every church of the Holy Spirit Church was obliged to protect its guests at all times.
In the past, when the church's authority was at its peak, even violent criminals—murderers, robbers—could not be arrested by the police so long as they remained within these walls.
The obligation of Sanctuary still held. That didn't mean Tishiang was obliged to feel warmth toward someone who offended his personal moral sensibilities.
The priest could smell the stench coming off the man seated before him.
It was the sort most people couldn't perceive.
Only someone who had once served as an inquisitor for the Heresy Inquisition could detect it.
He wrinkled his nose and frowned.
A scent this thick was something he hadn't encountered in a very long time.
This man was unmistakably a powerful Madosa.
"I'm not to your liking, I see."
At the man's words, the priest flinched.
Still, the guest before him had been sent from on high. He couldn't afford discourtesy.
The man raised both hands in a placating gesture.
"I understand. You certainly didn't expect the leader of a team tasked with hunting the Black Magician to be a Madosa himself."
Ahead of the Circus Grand Prix's opening ceremony, an official directive had been circulated to all churches.
Any information, any whisper concerning the Black Magician was to be reported immediately to the upper diocese.
Rumor had it that the six nations had pooled their strength to form a dedicated team to track the Black Magician before the Grand Prix began.
Tishiang had filed his report some time after the cabaret trial incident had erupted.
The whole affair had simply seemed too absurd to connect to the Black Magician.
The trial itself had been exposed as a frame-up born of political scheming, and the Black Magician's name had been mentioned only once, at the very end of the proceedings.
Yet even the faintest scrap of information, however small, must have been precious when clues were so scarce—because they'd sent someone all this way to verify it.
He'd never dreamed that the team leader himself would come in person, let alone that he would be a Madosa.
The old priest's report had been nothing more than a brief summary, and the man now pressed him for details.
The incident had occurred two months ago, however, and the priest had only heard of it secondhand. He knew no more than what the magazines and newspapers had printed.
"I understand there was a police officer who investigated the case."
At that, Tishiang thought of the young vice-commander of the Mounted Police, with whom he'd been friendly.
It felt like an age ago—the two of them had worked together to subdue rampaging acrobats before the opening ceremony, driving Sacred Stakes into them.
"You mean young Sabo? He's been transferred to a remote post."
"Then might it be possible to speak with the leader of the circus troupe involved in the case?"
"That's no good, I'm afraid. The Wonderstein Circus Troupe left Rouge three days ago."
At the priest's answer, the tracking team's leader set down his report, a look of regret on his face.
"And the investigation files on the case? Are they available?"
"I attempted to obtain them when I heard you would arrive yesterday, but it seems they were simply discarded—perhaps because the trial was a rushed affair driven by political concerns. Ah, wait. Come to think of it, there is one person. The man who served as the plaintiff. He would have read all the investigatory materials."
Relief flickered across the team leader's face.
"Where is he?"
"As luck would have it, he's here. A guest of the church at the moment."
The priest led him to a small attic room in a corner of the chapel.
There, curled up in a beggar's squalor, lay Baron Dosville, fast asleep.
He had borrowed heavily, thrown himself repeatedly into gambling dens, and ultimately lost everything—left fleeing from creditors and reduced to a life of squatting in the church, exploiting Sanctuary.
Waking with a start, Dosville took one look at the man before him, recognized danger on pure instinct, and shrank back.
In his swaggering old days, he would have smelled an opportunity and tried to extort something from anyone demanding answers. Now, roughed up by debt collectors, fear had eaten away every trace of his bravado.
He answered every question the man posed with meticulous honesty.
The team leader listened to Baron Dosville's account and nodded.
This had indeed never been an incident worthy of their attention.
A farce, nothing more than noble political intrigue clashing with the groundless suspicions of an investigator.
Suppressing an inward sigh at the waste of time, the team leader rose.
He had come hoping that an incident tied to the Circus Grand Prix's opening might yield some clue.
The old priest urged him to stay the night, given the late hour.
He wasn't so dense as to mistake polite courtesy for a genuine invitation.
"No. I must be off. I'm to meet a colleague not far from here."
Besides, the spectacle of an Demon God's Apostle bedding down in a church was too absurd even for him.
***
The Nevada Wasteland, north of Vegas.
At its entrance had once stood a small village called Alamo.
Once—because it no longer existed.
About a year ago, a demon had crawled out of the Abyss. Every villager in Alamo had been slaughtered overnight.
Alamo had been nothing more than an ordinary hamlet where caravans crossing the wasteland stopped to wet their throats and rest.
It had possessed one distinctive feature, though.
A school that taught circus skills to children with nowhere else to go.
Seventeen years earlier, the Circus Grand Prix terror attack had drastically reduced the number of acrobats nationwide, and schools like this had sprung up like weeds to fill the desperate demand.
Most of the children attending it had died in the incident a few months back.
The appearance of a demon meant this region had a loose connection to the Abyss.
The survivors had abandoned the village and scattered elsewhere.
On the hillside beside the village stood over a thousand graves.
Roughly erected by the survivors as they gathered the remains.
They were makeshift things, little more than wooden planks hastily torn apart and hammered into place—shabby and without dignity.
A young man stood among them.
Barely past twenty, tall, with curly brown hair.
He moved sorrowfully from grave to grave, brushing each one with his hand.
There wasn't a single child here he had no memory of. Not one who hadn't left a mark on him.
He let out a breath and lifted his gaze to the sky.
"Is it really true?"
The question was directed at a freckled boy of small build standing a short distance away. The boy understood exactly what he meant, even without a subject or object.
"It's true. How many times do I have to say it?"
"I just can't believe it."
"Dammit, it's just as hard for the rest of us! That Ella... she..."
The boy barely choked back the sob threatening to break free and turned his head away.
The young man stepped closer and patted his back.
"I'm sorry. Asking you again for no reason."
"Ah, no... W-we're all having trouble believing it too..."
Watching the boy's tears streak down his cheeks, a bitter expression settled over the young man's face.
He and Ella had been friends from childhood, as close as family.
They'd constantly competed for the top two spots in school.
The Ella he had known was a remarkable child with a boundless talent for acrobatics.
Stronger than anyone, yet bright and warm-hearted.
And now—this same girl had summoned a demon, murdered the villagers and her school friends, and fled?
No matter how many times he heard it, he couldn't make the story fit.
Had the surviving children not all told the same account, he would never have believed it.
"Captain!"
A girl in her late teens came running up the hill toward him.
In her hand was a magazine.
He looked at the photograph printed on the page she held out.
The photographic technology of this era didn't produce crisp, sharp images, but it was more than enough to make out the face of someone he already knew.
The spread featured the circus troupes that had earned stars at one of the six great theaters this season.
His eyes caught on a girl in a tailcoat, standing at the edge of one of the photos.
He knew her.
"Ella."
Until a moment ago, his heart had been wavering.
He'd been far away when the incident had happened.
So even after hearing the story from the surviving children, it had never quite felt real.
Ella had killed all their friends.
There must have been some misunderstanding.
But the look on her face in that photograph—something inside him surged at the sight of it.
She was beaming.
He had known her for so long that he could see through her acting.
This wasn't acting.
She was smiling from the heart, genuinely, happily.
The deaths of the friends buried here.
The grief of those left behind.
She looked as if she knew nothing of any of it.
She looked a complete stranger.
What are you doing over there.
Our friends are dead.
The master has collapsed.
Why are you standing there smiling.
Hm?
"What do we do?"
The girl's question jolted him. He folded the magazine and lifted his head.
"Have you told the master?"
"No. He'd definitely stop us."
The master had lain in a hospital in Vegas ever since that day.
He'd been helpless to stop his students from dying before his eyes. His physical injuries were secondary; the wound to his spirit ran far deeper.
He had told the children to stay out of this. Absolutely.
Don't even think of telling anyone, he'd warned. Everyone would be in danger.
He'd said he would find them places in other troupes. To forget and go live quietly.
Some of the surviving children had done exactly that.
But there were always those who couldn't forget.
The five who had gathered here—the young man among them—were all graduates of that school.
"We were family. The world will forget orphans like us fast enough, but I don't think we can. I don't care about prospects or careers or any of that. I'm going to have my revenge."
She said it flatly, then fixed the young man with a pointed stare.
His constant wavering had clearly bothered her.
"But can you really do it, Captain? You liked Ella."
Color rose faintly in his cheeks.
"You're not the one who should be saying that."
"......Half the kids at school liked Ella."
The remark came from a heavily built boy climbing the hill.
A mountain of luggage was strapped to his back.
Perched on top of it was a girl in a jester's costume, clutching a dagger and glaring murderously at the young man.
"What's there to agonize over? You liked her? Who cares? She's a traitor! Let's kill her! Kill that bitch Ella!"
"......You're right."
The young man nodded.
He turned to face the others gathered there.
"If you want to leave, now's the time. I've never seen the demon you all talk about, but I can't guarantee any of us will survive against it."
"Don't worry."
"We're going together."
"Our goal is one thing! I don't care about some demon. We just need to kill her!"
"I'm not backing down either."
The young man looked far north and clenched his fist.
Any hesitation he'd clung to, he sent drifting away on the wind.
The graves of his friends, and the image of Ella smiling brightly—he held both in his mind.
They overlapped.
The hatred he didn't quite feel, he wrenched out of himself as a vow.
Ella.
He would kill her.
He would settle the blood-debt of his friends.
Five people departed that place, walking with a shared grudge smoldering in their chests.